Chapter XXVII (1)

We returned down the Rhine through Holland. I was willing to see the contrast between flat and lofty, and between Venice and Amsterdam. We left Vevey on the 20th of September, and arrived in England on the 16th of October. It was at first exceedingly hot; we encountered several days of severe cold on the road, and it afterwards became mild and pleasant again. We hired a _char-aux-bancs_ from Vevey to Basle, and it took us four days to reach this latter place; the expense of the conveyance was twenty-four francs a day, besides the driver. The first part of our journey, as we ascended from the Lake on the way to Moudon, was like an aërial voyage, from the elevation and the clearness of the atmosphere; yet still through the most lovely country imaginable, and with glimpses of the grand objects behind us (seen over delicious pastures, and through glittering foliage) that were truly magical. The combinations of language, however, answer but ill to the varieties of nature, and by repeating these descriptions so often, I am afraid of becoming tiresome. My excuse must be, that I have little to relate but what I saw. After mounting to a considerable height, we descended to Moudon, a small town situated in a most romantic valley. The accommodations at the inn here were by no means good, though it is a place of some pretensions. In proportion to the size of the house and the massiveness of the furniture, the provisions of the kitchen appeared to be slender, and the attendance slack. The freshness of the air the next morning, and the striking beauty and rapid changes of the scenery, soon made us forget any disappointment we had experienced in this respect. As we ascended a steep hill on this side of Moudon, and looked back, first at the green dewy valley under our feet, with the dusky town and the blue smoke rising from it, then at the road we had traversed the preceding evening, winding among thick groves of trees, and last at the Savoy Alps on the other side of the Lake of Geneva (with which we had been familiar for four months, and which seemed to have no mind to quit us) I perceived a bright speck close to the top of one of these—I was delighted, and said it was Mont Blanc. Our driver was of a different opinion, was positive it was only a cloud, and I accordingly supposed I had taken a sudden fancy for a reality. I began in secret to take myself to task, and to lecture myself for my proneness to build theories on the foundation of my conjectures and wishes. On turning round occasionally, however, I observed that this cloud remained in the same place, and I noticed the circumstance to our guide, as favouring my first suggestion; for clouds do not usually remain long in the same place. We disputed the point for half a day, and it was not till the afternoon when we had reached the other side of the lake of Neufchatel, that this same cloud rising like a canopy over the point where it had hovered, ‘in shape and station proudly eminent,’ he acknowledged it to be Mont Blanc. We were then at a distance of about forty miles from Vevey, and eighty or ninety from Chamouni. This will give the reader some idea of the scale and nature of this wonderful scenery. We dined at Iverdun (a pretty town), at the head of the lake, and passed on to Neufchatel, along its enchanting and almost unrivalled borders, having the long unaspiring range of the Jura on our left (from the top of which St. Preux, on his return from his wanderings round the world, first greeted that country, where ‘torrents of delight had poured into his heart,’ and, indeed, we could distinguish the _Dent de Jamant_ right over Clarens almost the whole way), and on our right was the rippling lake, its low cultivated banks on the other side, then a brown rocky ridge of mountains, and the calm golden peaks of the snowy passes of the Simplon, the Great St. Bernard, and (as I was fain to believe) of Monteroso rising into the evening sky at intervals beyond. Meanwhile we rode on through a country abounding in farms and vineyards and every kind of comfort, and deserving the epithets, ‘verd et riant.’ Sometimes a tall rock rose by the road side; or a ruinous turret or a well-compacted villa attracted our attention. Neufchatel is larger and handsomer than Iverdun, and is remarkable for a number of those genteel and quiet-looking habitations, where people seem to have retired (in the midst of society) to spend the rest of their lives in ease and comfort: they are not for shew, nor are they very striking from situation; they are neither fashionable nor romantic; but the decency and sober ornaments of their exterior evidently indicate fireside enjoyments and cultivated taste within. This kind of retreat, where there is nothing to surprise, nothing to disgust, nothing to draw the attention out of itself, uniting the advantages of society and solitude, of simplicity and elegance, and where the mind can indulge in a sort of habitual and self-centred satisfaction, is the only one which I should never feel a wish to quit. The _golden mean_ is, indeed, an exact description of the mode of life I should like to lead—of the style I should like to write; but alas! I am afraid I shall never succeed in either object of my ambition!

The next day being cloudy, we lost sight entirely of the highest range of Alpine hills, and saw them no more afterwards. The road lay for some miles through an open and somewhat dreary country, in which the only objects of curiosity were the tall peasant-girls working in the fields, with their black gauze head-dresses, sticking out from their matted hair like the wings of a dragon-fly. We, however, had the Lake of Bienne and Isle of St. Pierre in prospect before us, which are so admirably described by Rousseau, in his ‘Reveries of a Solitary Walker,’ and to which he gives the preference over the Lake of Geneva. The effect from the town of Bienne where we stopped to dine was not much; but in climbing to the top of a steep sandy hill beyond it, we saw the whole to great advantage. Evening was just closing in, and the sky was cloudy, with a few red streaks near the horizon: the first range of Alps only was discernible; the Lake was of a dull sombre lead colour, and the Isle of St. Pierre was like a dark spot in it; the hills on one side of the Lake ascended abrupt and gloomy; extensive forests swept in magnificent surges over the rich valley to our left; towns were scattered below us here and there, as in a map; rocky fragments hung over our heads, with the shattered trunks of huge pine-trees; a mountain-torrent rushed down the irregular chasm between us and the base of the mountain, that rose in misty grandeur on the opposite side; but the whole was in the greatest keeping, and viewed by the twilight of historic landscape. Yet amidst all this solemnity and grandeur, the eye constantly reverted to one little dark speck, the Isle of St. Pierre (where Rousseau had taken refuge for a few months from his sorrows and his persecutions) with a more intense interest than all the rest; for the widest prospects are trivial to the deep recesses of the human heart, and its anxious beatings are far more audible than the ‘loud torrent or the whirlwind’s roar!’ The clouds of vapours, and the ebon cloud of night prevented our having a distinct view of the road that now wound down to ——, where we stopped for the night. The inn here (the Rose and Crown), though almost a solitary house in a solitary valley, is a very good one, and the cheapest we met with abroad. Our bill for supper, lodging, and breakfast, amounted to only seven francs. Our route, the following morning, lay up a broad steep valley, with a fine gravelly road through it, and forests of pine and other trees, raised like an amphitheatre on either side. The sun had just risen, and the drops of rain still hung upon the branches. On the other side we came into a more open country, and then again were inclosed among wild and narrow passes of high rock, split either by thunder or earthquakes into ledges, like castle walls, coming down to the edge of a stream that winds through the valley, or aspiring to an airy height, with the diminished pines growing on their very tops, and patches of verdure and the foliage of other trees flourishing in the interstices between them. It was the last scene of the kind we encountered. I begin to tire of these details, and will hasten to the end of my journey, touching only on a few detached points and places.

BASLE.—This is a remarkably neat town; but it lies beyond the confines of the picturesque. We stopped at the Three Kings, and were shewn into a long, narrow room, which did not promise well at first; but the waiter threw up the window at the further end, and we all at once saw the full breadth of the Rhine, rolling rapidly beneath it, after passing through the arches of an extensive bridge. It was clear moonlight, and the effect was fine and unexpected. The broad mass of water rushed by with clamorous sound and stately impetuosity, as if it were carrying a message from the mountains to the ocean! The next morning we perceived that it was of a muddy colour. We thought of passing down it in a small boat; but the covering was so low as to make the posture uncomfortable, or, if raised higher, there was a danger of its being overset by any sudden gust of wind. We therefore went by the Diligence to Colmar and Strasburg. I regretted afterwards that we did not take the right hand road by Freybourg and the Black Forest—the woods, hills, and mouldering castles of which, as far as I could judge from a distance, are the most romantic and beautiful possible. The tower at Strasburg is red, and has a singular appearance. The fortifications here, in time of peace, have an effect like the stillness of death.

RASTADT.—We crossed the Rhine at Strasburg, and proceeded through Rastadt and Manheim to Mayence. We stopped the first night at the Golden Cross at Rastadt, which is the very best inn I was at during the whole time I was abroad. Among other things, we had _chiffrons_ for supper, which I found on inquiry were wood-partridges, which are much more highly esteemed than the field ones. So delicately do they distinguish in Germany! Manheim is a splendid town, both from its admirable buildings and the glossy neatness of the houses. They are too fine to live in, and seem only made to be looked at. Would that one of the streets could be set down in Waterloo-place! Yet even Manheim is not equal to the towns in Italy. There the houses are palaces.

Mayence is a disagreeable town. We half missed the scenery between this and Coblentz, the only part of the Rhine worth seeing. We saw it, however, by moonlight (which hung over it like a silver veil), with its nodding towers and dismantled fortresses over our heads, the steep woody banks on the opposite side, and the broad glittering surface of the Rhine, reflecting the white clouds or dark sail gliding by. It was like a brilliant dream; nor did the mellow winding notes of the horn, calling to the warders of the drawbridges as we passed along, lessen the effect. Ehrenbreitstein overlooks Coblentz, and crowns it with magnificence and beauty. The Duke of Wellington, I understood, had been here, and being asked by a French officer, ‘If it could be taken?’ answered, ‘Yes; in two ways, by hunger and gold.’ Did the Duke of Wellington make this answer? I cry you mercy—it was the Frenchman who gave the answer: the Duke said nothing.

Cologne is the birth-place of Rubens; and at one of the churches, there is a _Crucifixion_ by him, which we did not see, for it being the time of divine service, the back was turned to the spectator, and only a copy of it was exhibited. The road from Cologne to Neuss is the only really bad one we found on the Continent; it is a mere sand-bank, and not likely to be soon mended, from its vicinity to the Rhine.

From Neuss to Cleves we went in the Royal Prussian Diligence, and from thence to Nimeguen, the first town in Holland. From a small tower here we had an admirable view of the country. It was nearly a perfect flat all round, as far as the eye could reach; yet it was a rich and animated, as well as a novel scene. You saw a greater extent of surface than is possible in a hilly country; all within the circumference of the horizon lay exposed to the eye. It was like seeing a section of the entire globe, or like ‘striking flat its thick rotundity.’ It was a fine clear afternoon, and in the midst of this uniformity of surface, you saw every other variety—rich meadows, with flocks and herds feeding, hedge-rows, willowy banks, woods, corn-fields, roads winding along in different directions, canals, boats sailing, innumerable villages, windmills, bridges, and towns and cities in the far-off horizon; but neither rock, nor mountain, nor barren waste, nor any object that prevented your seeing the one beyond it. There were no contrasts, no masses, but the immense space stretched out beneath the eye was filled up with dotted lines, and minute, detached, countless beauties. It was as if the earth were curiously fringed and embroidered. Holland is the same everywhere, except that it is often more intersected by canals; and that as you approach the sea, the water prevails over the land. We proceeded from Nimeguen to Utrecht and Amsterdam, by the stage. The rich uninterrupted cultivation, the marks of successful industry and smiling plenty, are equally commendable and exhilarating; but the repetition of the same objects, and the extent of _home_ view, become at last oppressive. If you see much at once, there ought to be masses and relief: if you see only detached objects, you ought to be confined to a few of them at a time. What is the use of seeing a hundred windmills, a hundred barges, a hundred willow-trees, or a hundred herds of cattle at once? Any one specimen is enough, and the others hang like a dead-weight on the traveller’s patience. Besides, there is something lumpish and heavy in the aspect of the country; the eye is clogged and impeded in its progress over it by dams and dykes, and the marshy nature of the soil damps and chills imagination. There is a like extent of country at Cassel in France; but from the greater number of woods and a more luxuriant vegetation (leaving the bare earth seldom visible,) the whole landscape seems in one glow, and the eye scours delighted over waving groves and purple distances. The towns and villas in Holland are unrivalled for neatness, and an appearance of wealth and comfort. All the way from Utrecht to Amsterdam, to the Hague, to Rotterdam, you might fancy yourself on Clapham Common. The canals are lined with farms and summer-houses, with orchards and gardens of the utmost beauty, and in excellent taste. The exterior of their buildings is as clean as the interior of ours; their public-houses look as nice and well-ordered as our private ones. If you are up betimes in a morning, you see a servant wench (the domestic Naiad,) with a leathern pipe, like that attached to a fire-engine, drenching the walls and windows with pail-fulls of water. With all this, they suffocate you with tobacco smoke in their stage-coaches and canal-boats, and you do not see a set of clean teeth from one end of Holland to the other. Amsterdam did not answer our expectations; it is a kind of paltry, rubbishly Venice. The pictures of Rembrandt here (some of which have little shade) are inferior to what we have in England. I was assured here that Rembrandt was the greatest painter in the world, and at Antwerp that Rubens was. The inn at Amsterdam (the Rousland) is one of the best I have been at; and an inn is no bad test of the civilization and diffusion of comfort in a country. We saw a play at the theatre here; and the action was exceedingly graceful and natural. The chimes at Amsterdam, which play every quarter of an hour, at first seemed gay and delightful, and in a day and a half became tedious and intolerable. It was as impertinent as if a servant could not come into the room to answer the bell without dancing and jumping over the chairs and tables every time. A row of lime-trees grew and waved their branches in the middle of the street facing the hotel. The Dutch, who are not an ideal people, bestow all their taste and fancy on practical things, and instead of creating the chimeras of poetry, devote their time and thoughts to embellishing the objects of ordinary and familiar life. Ariosto said, it was easier to build palaces with words, than common houses with stones. The Hague is Hampton-Court turned into a large town. There is an excellent collection of pictures here, with some of my old favourites brought back from the Louvre, by Rembrandt, Vandyke, Paul Potter, &c. Holland is, perhaps, the only country which you gain nothing by seeing. It is exactly the same as the Dutch landscapes of it. I was shewn the plain and village of Ryswick, close to the Hague. It struck me I had seen something very like it before. It is the back-ground of Paul Potter’s _Bull_. From the views and models of Chinese scenery and buildings preserved in the Museum here, it would seem that Holland is the China of Europe. Delft is a very model of comfort and polished neatness. We met with a gentleman belonging to this place in the _trackschuyt_, who, with other civilities, shewed us his house (a perfect picture in its kind,) and invited us in to rest and refresh ourselves, while the other boat was getting ready. These things are an extension of one’s idea of humanity. It is pleasant, and one of the uses of travel, to find large tracts of land cultivated, cities built and repaired, all the conveniences of life, men, women, and children laughing, talking, and happy, common sense and good manners on the other side of the English channel. I would not wish to lower any one’s idea of England; but let him enlarge his notions of existence and enjoyment beyond it. He will not think the worse of his own country, for thinking better of human nature! The inconveniences of travelling by canal-boats in Holland is, that you make little way, and are forced to get out and have your luggage taken into another boat at every town you come to, which happens two or three times in the course of the day. Let no one go to the Washington Arms at Rotterdam; it is only fit for American sea-captains. Rotterdam is a handsome bustling town; and on inquiring our way, we were accosted by a Dutch servant-girl, who had lived in an English family for a year, and who spoke English better, and with less of a foreign accent, than any French woman I ever heard. This convinced me that German is not so difficult to an Englishman as French; for the difficulty of acquiring any foreign language must be mutual to the natives of each country. There was a steam-boat here which set sail for London the next day; but we preferred passing through Ghent, Lille, and Antwerp. This last is a very delightful city, and the spire of the cathedral exquisitely light, beautiful, and well-proportioned. Indeed, the view of the whole city from the water-side is as singular as it is resplendent. We saw the Rubenses in the great church here. They were hung outside the choir; and seen against the huge white walls, looked like pictures dangling in a broker’s shop for sale. They did not form a part of the building. The person who shewed us the Taking Down from the Cross, said, ‘It was the finest picture in the world.’ I said, ‘One of the finest’—an answer with which he appeared by no means satisfied. We returned by way of St. Omers and Calais. I wished to see Calais once more, for it was here I first landed in France twenty years ago.

I confess, London looked to me on my return like a long, straggling, dirty country-town; nor do the names of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, or Coventry, sound like a trumpet in the ears, or invite our pilgrim steps like those of Sienna, of Cortona, Perugia, Arezzo, Pisa and Ferrara. I am not sorry, however, that I have got back. There is an old saying, _Home is home, be it never so homely_. However delightful or striking the objects may be abroad, they do not take the same hold of you, nor can you identify yourself with them as at home. Not only is the language an insuperable obstacle; other things as well as men speak a language new and strange to you. You live comparatively in a dream, though a brilliant and a waking one. It is in vain to urge that you learn the language; that you are familiarized with manners and scenery. No other language can ever become our mother-tongue. We may learn the words; but they do not convey the same feelings, nor is it possible they should do so, unless we could begin our lives over again, and divide our conscious being into two different selves. Not only can we not attach the same meaning to words, but we cannot see objects with the same eyes, or form new loves and friendships after a certain period of our lives. The pictures that most delighted me in Italy were those I had before seen in the Louvre ‘with eyes of youth.’ I could revive this feeling of enthusiasm, but not transfer it. Neither would I recommend the going abroad when young, to become a mongrel being, half French, half English. It is better to be something than nothing. It is well to see foreign countries to enlarge one’s speculative knowledge, and dispel false prejudices and libellous views of human nature; but our affections must settle at home. Besides though a dream, it is a splendid one. It is fine to see the white Alps rise in the horizon of fancy at the distance of a thousand miles; or the imagination may wing its thoughtful flight among the castellated Apennines, roaming from city to city over cypress and olive grove, viewing the inhabitants as they crawl about mouldering palaces or temples, which no hand has touched for the last three hundred years, and see the genius of Italy brooding over the remains of virtue, glory and liberty, with Despair at the gates, an English Minister handing the keys to a foreign Despot, and stupid Members of Parliament wondering what is the matter!

THE END.

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS ON THE FINE ARTS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Of the essays on the Fine Arts which follow, none were collected for publication in volume form by Hazlitt. Particulars as to their source will be found at the head of the Notes referring to each essay.

In 1838 the articles on _Painting_ and _The Fine Arts_, ‘contributed to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, by B. R. Haydon, Esq., and William Hazlitt, Esq.,’ were republished in Edinburgh by Messrs. Adam & Charles Black, in a post 8vo. volume. See the article in the present volume and notes thereto.

In 1843 appeared a fcap. 8vo. volume of ‘Criticisms on Art: and Sketches of the Picture Galleries of England. By William Hazlitt. With Catalogues of the Principal Galleries, now first collected. Edited by his Son,’ and published by John Templeman, 248, Regent Street. A Second Series appeared the year following, published by C. Templeman, 6 Great Portland Street, London. These volumes contain the essays printed in the present volume, together with others on Art which are to be found in _Table Talk_, _The Round Table_, _The Plain Speaker_ and volume x. of the present edition, where the _Edinburgh Review_ articles will be found. They also contain two appendixes of catalogues of pictures in the various galleries, compiled by Hazlitt’s son, and not here reprinted. In the Advertisement to these volumes Mr. W. Hazlitt (the second) states: ‘I have carefully corrected all the references to the pictures described, according to the latest arrangement of each particular gallery; and I have here and there ventured to append an illustrative or corrective note, where such seemed to be required as to a matter of fact.’ In the present edition the Essays are given as Hazlitt published them, and in the order of their first publication.

A ‘New Edition’ of ‘Essays on the Fine Arts by William Hazlitt,’ was published in one volume by Messrs. Reeves & Turner in 1873, edited by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt.

CONTENTS

PAGE
On Haydon’s Solomon 309

The Catalogue Raisonné of the British Institution 311

West’s Picture of Death on the Pale Horse 318

On Williams’s Views in Greece 324

On the Elgin Marbles 326

Fonthill Abbey 348

Judging of Pictures 356

The Vatican 359

English Students at Rome 367

Fine Arts 377

James Barry 413

Originality 423

The Ideal 429

Royal Academy 434

ESSAYS ON THE FINE ARTS

ON HAYDON’S SOLOMON

The Tenth Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours opened on Monday last. The productions of Glover, Cristall, De Wint, &c. principally fill and adorn the Water Colour Department.—Among the oil pictures in the room, the principal are, _The Judgment of Solomon_, by Mr. Haydon, and _Don Quixote receiving Mambrino’s Helmet from Sancho_, by Mr. Richter. The former is a work that evidently claims a place in the higher department of art; and we are little disposed to reject that claim. It certainly shews a bold and aspiring mind; in many parts (that which we hold above all other things to be essential to the painter) an eye for the picturesque both in form and colour; considerable variety of expression, attitude and character, and great vigour and rapidity of execution throughout. It would, at the same time, be in vain to deny, that the success is not always in proportion to the effort made; that the conception of character is sometimes erroneous; that the desire to avoid insipidity and monotony has occasionally led to extravagance and distortion; that there are great inequalities in the style, and some inconsistencies in the composition; and that, however striking and admirable many of the parts are, there is a want of union and complete harmony between them. What was said of the _disjecta membra poetæ_ is not inapplicable to this picture. It exhibits fine studies and original fragments of a great work—it has many powerful starts of genius—without conveying that impression of uniform consistency and combined effect, which is sometimes attained by the systematic mechanism of well-disciplined dullness, and at others is the immediate emanation of genius.

That which strikes the eye most on entering the room, and on which it dwells with the greatest admiration afterwards, are the figures of the two Jewish Doctors on the left of Solomon. We do not recollect any figures in modern pictures which have a more striking effect. We say this, not only with respect to the solid mass of colour which they project on the eye, the dark draperies contrasting finely with the paleness of the countenances, but also with respect to the force, truth, and dramatic opposition of character displayed in them. The face of the one is turned in anxious expectation towards the principal actors in the scene: the other, looking downwards, appears lost in inward meditation upon it. The one is eagerly watching for the catastrophe,—the other seems endeavouring to anticipate it. Too much praise cannot be given to the conception of the figure of Solomon, which is raised above the rest of the picture, and placed in the centre—the face fronting, and looking down, the action balanced and suspended, and the face intended to combine the different characters of youth, beauty, and wisdom. Such is evidently the conception of the painter, which we think equally striking and just; but we are by no means satisfied that he has succeeded in embodying this idea, except as far as relates to the design. The expression of the countenance of the youthful judge, which ought to convey the feeling of calm penetration, we think, degenerates into supercilious indifference; the action given to the muscles is such as to destroy the beauty of the features, without giving force to the character, and instead of the majesty of conscious power and intellect, there is an appearance of languid indecision, which seems to shrink with repugnance from the difficulties which it has to encounter. The colouring of the head is unexceptionable. In the face of the good mother, the artist has, in our opinion, succeeded in overcoming that which has been always considered as the greatest difficulty of the art—the union of beauty with strong expression. The whole face exhibits the internal workings of maternal love and fear; but its death-like paleness and agony do not destroy the original character of feminine beauty and delicacy. The attitude of this figure is decidedly bad, and out of nature as well as decorum. It is one of those sprawling, extravagant, theatrical French figures, in which a common action is strained to the extremity of caricature. The action and expression of the executioner are liable to the same objection. He is turbulent and fierce, instead of being cold and obdurate. He should not bluster in the part heroically like an actor—it is his office.—On the whole, we think this picture decidedly superior to any of this Artist’s former productions, and a proof not only of genius, but of improved taste and judgment. In speaking of it with freedom, we trust we shall best serve both him and the art.

THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTION

We will lay odds that this is a fellow ‘damned in a fair face;’ with white eyes and eye-brows; of the colour of a Shrewsbury cake; a smooth tallow-skinned rascal, a white German sausage, a well-fed chitterling, from whose face Madame de —— would have turned away in disgust,—a transcendental stuffed man! We have no patience that the Arts should be catechised by a piece of whitleather, a whey-face, who thinks that pictures, like the moon, should be made of green-cheese! Shall a roll of double tripe rise up in judgment on grace; shall a piece of dough talk of feeling? ‘Tis too much. ‘Sdeath, for Rembrandt to be demanded of a cheese-curd, what replication should he make? What might Vandyke answer to a jack-pudding, whose fingers are of a thickness at both ends? What should Rubens say, who ‘lived in the rainbow, and played i’ th’ plighted clouds,’ to a swaddling-clout, a piece of stockinet, of fleecy hosiery, to a squab man, without a bend in his body? What might Raphael answer to a joint-stool? Or Nicholas Poussin, charged in the presence of his _Cephalus and Aurora_ with being a mere pedant, without grace or feeling, to this round-about machine of formal impertinence, this lumbering go-cart of dulness and spite? We could have wished that as the fellow stood before the portrait of Rembrandt, chattering like an ape, making mocks and mows at it, the picture had lifted up its _great grimy fist_, and knocked him down.

The _Catalogue Raisonné_ of the British Institution is only worth notice, as it is pretty well understood to be a declaration of the views of the Royal Academy. It is a very dull, gross, impudent attack by one of its toad-eaters on human genius, on permanent reputation, and on liberal art. What does it say? Why, in so many words, that the knowledge of Art in this country is inconsistent with the existence of the Academy, and that their success as a body of men instituted for promoting and encouraging the Fine Arts, requires the destruction or concealment of all works of Art of great and acknowledged excellence. In this they may be right; but we did not think they would have come forward to say so themselves. Or that they would get a fellow, a low buffoon, a wretched Merry Andrew, a practical St. Giles’s joker, a dirty Grub-Street critic, to vent his abominations on the _chef-d’œuvres_ produced by the greatest painters that have gone before them, to paw them over with his bleared-eyes, to smear the filth and ordure of his tongue upon them, to spit at them, to point at them, to nickname them, to hoot at them, to make mouths at them, to shrug up his shoulders and run away from them in the presence of these divine guests, like a blackguard who affects to make a bugbear of every one he meets in the street; to play over again the nauseous tricks of one of Swift’s Yahoos—and for what? Avowedly for the purpose of diverting the public mind from the contemplation of all that genius and art can boast in the lapse of ages, and to persuade the world that there is nothing in Art that has been or ever will be produced worth looking at but the gilt frames and red curtains at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy! We knew before that they had no great genius for the Arts; but we thought they might have some love of them in their hearts. They here avow their rankling jealousy, hatred and scorn, of all Art and of all the great names in Art, and as a bold put indeed, require the keeping down of the public taste as the only means of keeping up the bubble of their reputation. They insist that their only hope of continued encouragement and support with a _discerning public_ is in hood-winking that public, in confining their highest notions of Art to their own gross and superficial style of daubing, and in vilifying all works of standard genius.—This is right English. The English are a shop-keeping nation, and the Royal Academy are a society of hucksters in the Fine Arts, who are more tenacious of their profits as chapmen and dealers, than of the honour of the Art. The day after the _Catalogue Raisonné_ was published, the Prince Regent, in the name and on behalf of his Father, should have directed it to be burned by the hands of the hangman of their Committee, or, upon refusal, have shut up their shop. A society for the encouragement and promotion of Art has no right to exist at all, from the moment that it professes to exist only in wrong of Art, by the suppression of the knowledge of Art, in contempt of genius in Art, in defiance of all manly and liberal sentiment in Art. But this is what the Royal Academy professes to do in the _Catalogue Raisonné_.

The Academy, from its commencement and up to the present hour, is in fact, a mercantile body, like any other mercantile body, consisting chiefly of manufacturers of portraits, who have got a regular monopoly of this branch of trade, with a certain rank, style, and title of their own, that is, with the King’s privilege to be thought Artists and men of genius,—and who, with the jealousy natural to such bodies, supported by authority from without, and by cabal within, think themselves bound to crush all generous views and liberal principles of Art, lest they should interfere with their monopoly and their privilege to be thought Artists and men of genius. The Academy is the Royal road to Art. The whole style of English Art, as issuing from this Academy, is founded on a principle of appeal to the personal vanity and ignorance of their sitters, and of accommodation to the lucrative pursuits of the Painter, in a sweeping attention to effect in painting, by which means he can cover so many more whole or half lengths in each season. The Artists have not time to finish their pictures, or if they had, the effect would be lost in the superficial glare of that hot room, where nothing but rouged cheeks, naked shoulders, and Ackermann’s dresses for May, can catch the eye in the crowd and bustle and rapid succession of meretricious attractions, as they do in another hot room of the same equivocal description. Yet they complain in one part of the Catalogue, that ‘they (the Academicians) are forced to come into a hasty competition every year with works that have stood the test of ages.’ It is for that very reason, among others, that it was proper to exhibit the works at the British Institution, to show to the public, and by that means to make the Academicians feel, that the securing the applause of posterity and a real rank in the Art, which that alone can give, depended on the number of pictures they finished, and not on the number they began. It is this which excites the apprehensions of the cabal; for if the eye of the public should be once spoiled by the Old Masters, the necessity of doing something like them might considerably baulk the regularity of their returns. Why should they complain of being forced into this premature competition? Who forces them to bring forward so many pictures yearly before they are fit to be seen? Would they have taken more pains, more time to finish them, to work them up to that fastidious standard of perfection, on which they have set their minds, if they had not been hurried into this unfair competition with the British Institution, ‘sent to their account with all their imperfections on their heads, unhouseled, unanointed, unanealed?’ Would they have done a single stroke more to any one picture, if the Institution had never been opened? No such thing. It is not then true, that this new and alarming competition prevents them from finishing their works, but it prevents them from imposing them on the public as finished. _Pingo in eternitatem_, is not their motto. There are three things which constitute the art of painting, which make it interesting to the public, which give it permanence and rank among the efforts of human genius. They are, first, _gusto_ or expression: _i.e._ the conveying to the eye the impressions of the soul, or the other senses connected with the sense of sight, such as the different passions visible in the countenance, the romantic interest connected with scenes of nature, the character and feelings associated with different objects. In this, the highest and first part of art, the Italian painters, particularly Raphael, Correggio, &c., excel. The second is the _picturesque_; that is, the seizing on those objects, or situations and accidents of objects, as light and shade, &c. which make them most striking to the mind as objects of sight only. This is the _forte_ of the Flemish and Venetian painters, Titian, Paul Veronese, Rubens, Vandyke, Rembrandt, and they have carried this part of the art as high as it can go, some of them with more, some of them with less of the former excellence. The third is the exact and laborious imitation of natural objects, such as they exist in their component parts, with every variety and nicety of detail, the pencil performing the part of a microscope, and there being no necessity for expression or the picturesque in the object represented, or anything but truth in the representation. In this least interesting but still curious and ingenious part of the Art, the Dutch School have been allowed to excel, though with little of the former qualities, which indeed are not very much wanted for this purpose. Now in all these three the English School are notoriously deficient and they are so for these following reasons:—

They cannot paint _gusto_, or high expression, for it is not in the national character. At least, it must be sought in Nature; but our Painters do not go out of their way in search of character and expression—their sitters come to them in crowds; and they come to them not to be painted in all the truth of character and expression, but to be _flattered_ out of all meaning; or they would no longer come in crowds. To please generally, the Painter must exaggerate what is generally pleasing, obvious to all capacities, and void of offence before God and man, the shewy, the superficial, and the insipid, that which strikes the greatest number of persons with the least effort of thought; and he must suppress all the rest; all that might be ‘to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles foolishness.’ The Exhibition is a successful experiment on the ignorance and credulity of the town. They collect ‘a quantity of barren spectators’ to judge of Art, in their corporate and public capacity, and then each makes the best market he can of them in his own. A Royal Academician must not ‘hold the mirror up to Nature,’ but make his canvass ‘the glass of fashion, and the mould of form.’ The ‘numbers without number’ who pay thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred guineas for their pictures in large, expect their faces to come out of the Painter’s hands smooth, rosy, round, smiling; just as they expect their hair to come out of the barber’s curled and powdered. It would be a breach of contract to proceed in any other way. A fashionable Artist and a fashionable hair-dresser have the same common principles of theory and practice; the one fits his customers to appear with _éclat_ in a ball room, the other in the Great Room of the Royal Academy. A certain dexterity, and a knowledge of the prevailing fashion, are all that is necessary to either. An Exhibition-portrait is, therefore, an essence, not of character, but of commonplace. It displays not high thought and fine feeling, but physical well-being, with an outside label of health, ease, and competence. Yet the Catalogue-writer talks of the dignity of modern portrait! To enter into a general obligation to paint the passions or characters of men, must, where there are none, be difficult to the artist; where they are bad, be disagreeable to his employers. When Sir Thomas Lawrence painted Lord Castlereagh some time ago, he did not try to exhibit his character, out of complaisance to his Lordship, nor his understanding, out of regard to himself; but he painted him in a fashionable coat, with his hair dressed in the fashion, in a genteel posture like one of his footmen, and with the prim, smirking aspect of a haberdasher. There was nothing of the noble _disinvoltura_ of his Lordship’s manner, the grand _contour_ of his features, the profundity of design hid under an appearance of indifference, the traces of the Irish patriot or the English statesman. It would have puzzled Lavater or Spurzheim to have discovered there the author of the Letter to _Mon Prince_. Tacitus had drawn him before in a different style, and perhaps Sir Thomas despaired of rivalling this great master in his own way. Yet the picture pleased, and Mr. Perry of the _Chronicle_ swore to the likeness, though he had been warned to the contrary. Now, if this picture had erred on the side of the characteristic expression as much as it did on that of mannered insignificance, how it must have shocked all parties in the State! An insipid misrepresentation was safer than a disagreeable reality. In the glosses of modern art, as in the modern refinement of law, it is the truth that makes the libel.—Again, the _picturesque_ is necessarily banished from the painting rooms of the Academicians, and from the Great Room of the Academy. People of fashion go to be painted because other people do, and they wish to look like other people. We never remember to have seen a memorable head in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. Any thing that had any thing singular or striking in it would look quite monstrous there, and would be stared out of countenance. Any thing extraordinary or original in nature is inadmissible in modern art; any thing that would strike the eye, or that you would ever think of again, would be a violation of decorum, an infringement of professional etiquette, and would disturb the uniform and well-arranged monotony of the walls of the Exhibition ‘with most admired disorder.’ A man of any originality of mind, if he has also the least common sense, soon finds his error, and reforms. At Rome one must do as the people at Rome do. The Academy is not the place for the eccentricities of genius. The persons of rank and opulence, who wish to have their pictures exhibited, do not wish to be exhibited as objects of natural history, as extraordinary phenomena in art or nature, in the moral or intellectual world; and in this they are right. Neither do they wish to volunteer their own persons, which they hold in due reverence, though there is nothing at all in them, as subjects for the painter to exercise his skill upon, as studies of light and shade, as merely objects of sight, as something curious and worth seeing from the outward accidents of nature. They do not like to share their triumph with nature; to sink their persons in ‘her glorious light.’ They owe no allegiance to the elements. They wish to be painted as Mr. and Mrs. Such-a-one, not as studies of light and shade; they wish to be represented as complete abstractions of persons and property, to have one side of the face seen as much as the other; to have their coat, waistcoat and breeches, their muslin dresses, silks, sophas, and settees, their dogs and horses, their house furniture, painted, to have themselves and all that belongs to them, and nothing else painted. The picture is made for them, and not they for the picture. Hence there can be nothing but the vapid, trite, and mechanical, in professional Art. Professional Art is a contradiction in terms. Art is genius, and genius cannot belong to a profession. Our Painters’ galleries are not studies, but lounging shew-rooms. Would a booby with a star wish to be painted (think you) with a view to its effect in the picture, or would he not have it seen at all events and as much as possible? The Catalogue Writer wishes the gentlemen-sitters of the Royal Academy to go and look at Rembrandt’s portraits, and to ask themselves, their wives, and daughters, whether they would like to be painted in the same way? No, truly. This, we confess, is hard upon our Artists, to have to look upon splendour and on obscurity still more splendid, which they dare not even attempt to imitate; to see themselves condemned, by the refinements of taste and progress of civilization, to smear rouge and white paste on the faces and necks of their portraits, for ever; and still ‘to let _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_, like the poor cat in the adage.’ But why then complain of the injury they would sustain by the restoration of Art (if it were possible) into the original wardship of nature and genius, when ‘service sweat for duty, not for meed.’ Sir Joshua made a shift to combine some of Rembrandt’s art with his portraits, only by getting the start of public affectation, and by having the lead in his profession, so that like the early painters he could assert the independence of his own taste and judgment. The modern makers of catalogues would have driven him and his _chiaro scuro_ into the shade presently. The critic professes to admire Sir Joshua, though all his excellencies are Gothic, palpably borrowed from the Old Masters. But he is wrong or inconsistent in everything.—The imitation of the details of nature is not compatible with the professional avarice of the painter, as the two former essentials of the art are inconsistent with the vanity and ignorance of his employers. ‘This, this is the unkindest blow of all.’ It is that in which the understanding of the multitude is most likely to conspire with the painter’s ‘own gained knowledge’ to make him dissatisfied with his disproportioned profits or under the loss of them. The Dutch masters are instructive enough in this way, and shew the value of detail by shewing the value of Art where there is nothing else but this. But this is not all. It might be pretended by our wholesale manufacturers of _chef-d’œuvres_ in the Fine Arts, that so much nicety of execution is useless or improper in works of high gusto and grand effect. It happens unfortunately, however, that the works of the greatest gusto and most picturesque effect have this fidelity of imitation often in the highest degree (as in Raphael, Titian, and Rembrandt), generally in a very high degree (as in Rubens and Paul Veronese), so that the moderns gain nothing by this pretext. This is a serious loss of time or reputation to them. To paint a hand like Vandyke would cost them as much time as a dozen half-lengths; and they could not do it after all. To paint an eye like Titian would cost them their whole year’s labour, and they would lose their time and their labour into the bargain. Or to take Claude’s landscapes as an example in this respect, as they are in almost all others. If Turner, whom, with the Catalogue-writer, we allow, most heartily allow, to be the greatest landscape-painter of the age, were to finish his trees or his plants in the foreground, or his distances, or his middle distances, or his sky, or his water, or his buildings, or any thing in his pictures, in like manner, he could only paint and sell one landscape where he now paints and sells twenty. This is a clear loss to the artist of pounds, shillings, and pence, and ‘that’s a feeling disputation.’ He would have to put twenty times as much of every thing into a picture as he now has, and that is what (if he is like other persons who have got into bad habits) he would be neither able nor willing to do. It was a common cant a short time ago to pretend of him as it formerly was of Wilson, that he had other things which Claude had not, and that what Claude had besides, only impaired the grandeur of his pictures. The public have seen to the contrary. They see the quackery of painting trees blue and yellow, to produce the effect of green at a distance. They see the affectation of despising the mechanism of the Art, and never thinking about any thing but the mechanism. They see that it is not true in Art, that a part is greater than the whole, or that the means are destructive of the end. They see that a daub, however masterly, cannot vie with the perfect landscapes of the all-accomplished Claude. ‘To some men their graces serve them but as enemies’; and it was so till the other day with Claude. If it had been only for opening the eyes of the public on this subject, the Institution would have deserved well of the art and their country.

WEST’S PICTURE OF DEATH ON THE PALE HORSE