Modern Painters Vol. III.

ed myself in receiving their differently intended impressions, the more I have found this truthfulness a final test, the only test of lasting power; and, although our concern

e sure of it for a moment, but

ys simply in proportion to the quantity of truth it grasped. And now the question, left undetermined some hundred pages back (Chap. II. § 6), recurs to us in a simpler form than it could befor

and yet, in what we have just seen of the grotesque ideal, it seemed there was a certain desirableness in incompleteness. And the schools of art in Europe are, at this moment, set in two hostile ranks,-not nobly host

in this, as in other matters, our almost tiresome test is not the only right one; whether there be not a fallacious finish and a faithful finish, and whether

is so full in its details, as to produce the effect of reality on the spectator. And, in England, we seem at present to value highly the first sort of finish which belongs to workmanship, in our manufactures and general doings of any kind, but to despise totally the impressive finish which belongs to the work; and therefore we like smooth ivories better than rough ones,-but careless scrawls or

nk over th

tantial roughness; it does not necessarily follow that the window which shuts easiest will last the longest, or that the harness which glitters the most is assuredly made of the toughest leather. I am afraid, that if this peculiar character of finish in our workmanship ever arose from a greater heartiness and thoroughness in our ways of doing things, it does so only now in the case of our best manufacturers; and that a great deal of the work done in England, however good in appearance, is but treacherous and rotten in substance. Still, I think that there is really in the English mind, for the most part, a stronger desire to do things as well as they can be done, and less inclination to put up with inferiorities or insufficiencies, than in general characterise the temper of foreigners. There is in this conclusion no ground for national vanity; for though the desire to do things as well as they can be done at first appears like a virtue, it is certainly not so in all its forms. On the contrary, it proceeds in nine cases out of ten more from vanity than conscientiousness; and that, moreover, often a weak vanity. I suppose that as much finish is disp

ve nothing to say against it. Even the vanity which displays itself in giving strength to our work is rather a virtue than a vice. But so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "polish," there is much to be said against it; this first, and very strongly, that the qualities aimed at in common finishing, namely, smoothness, delicacy, or fineness, cannot in reality exist, in a degree worth admiring, in anything done by human hands. Our best finishing is but coarse and blundering work after all We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till we are sick at heart; but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle of skill, and the invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thr

of angels. Man comes and digs up this finished and marvellous piece of work, which in his ignorance he calls a "rough stone." He proceeds to finish it in his fashion, that is, to split it in two, rend it into ragged blocks, and, finally, to chisel its surface into a large number of lumps and knobs, all equally shapeless, colorless, deathful, and frightful.[39] And the block, thus disfigured, he calls "finished," and proceeds to build therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent animal. Whereas, all that he has really done is, to destroy with utter ravage a piece of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by the Deity to regulate his work in this world, it must take good twenty years to produce the like of again. This he has destroyed, and has himself given in its plac

at finish does not consist in smoothing or polishing, but in the completeness of the expression of ideas. For in painting, there is precisely the same difference between the ends proposed in finishing that there is in manufacture. Some artists finish for the finish' sake; dot their pictures all over, as in some kinds of miniature-painting (when a wash of color would have produced as good an effect); or polish their pictures all over, making the execution so delicat

f finish is not, properly speaking, so much completing the picture as adding to it. It is not that what is painted is more delicately done, but that infinitely more is painted. This finish is always noble, and, l

, but on its truly following the contours of the tree, which it conventionally represents; conventionally, I say, because there is no such line round the tree, in reality; and it is set down not as an imitation, but a limitation of the form. But if we are to add shade to it as in fig. 2., the outline must instantly be made proportionally delicate, not for the sake of delicacy as such, but because the outline will now

ns who draw trees know nothing of them, and will not look at them, it results necessarily that the effort to finish is not only vain, but unfinishes-does mischief. In the lower part of the plate, figs. 3, 4, 5, and 6. are facsimiles of pieces of line engraving, meant to represent trunks of trees; 3. and 4. are the commonly accredited types of tree-drawing among engravers in the eigh

ng of Tr

boughs, that piece of engraving is more finished than the other examples, while its own networked texture is still false and absurd; for there is no texture of this knitted-stocking-like description on boughs; and if there were, it would not be seen in the shadow, but in the light. Miller's is spirited, and looks lustrous, but has no resemblance to the original bough of Turner's, which is pale, and does

ing of the Finding of ?dipus. It displays considerable power of handling-not mechanical, but free and firm, and is just so much more finished than any of the others as it displays more intelligence about the way in which boughs gather themselves out of the stem, and about the varying character of their curves. Finally, fig. 9. is good work. It is the root of the apple-tree in Albert Durer's Adam and Eve, and fairly represents the wrinkles of the bark, the smooth portions emergent beneath, and the general anatomy of growth. All the lines used conduce to the representation of these facts; and the work is therefore highly finished. It still, however, leaves out,

s. That which conveys most information, with least inaccuracy, is always the highest finish; and the question whether we prefer art so finished, to art unfinished, is not one of taste at all. It is simply a question whether we like to know much or l

of his practice. I have, therefore, assembled on the next page, Plate 4., some of the most characteristic passages of ramification in the Liber Veritatis; the plates themselves are sufficiently cheap (as they should be) and accessible to nearly every one, so that the accuracy of the facsimiles may be easily tested. I have given in Appendix I. the numbers of the plates from which the examples are taken, and it will be found that they have been rather improved than libelled, only omitting, of course, the surrounding leafage, in order to show accurately the branch-outlines, with which alone we are at pre

gth of O

ion, accordi

unks of trees fork, and fork m

g.

est in, and knowledge of, human form; we do not object to Claude's trees, because we have no interest in, nor knowledge of, trees. And if it be still alleged that such work is nevertheless enough to give any one an "idea" of a tree, I answer that it never gave, nor ever will give, an idea of a t

ton Abbey. In order to show its perfectness better by contrast with bad work (as we have had, I imagine, enough of Claude), I will take a bit of Constable; fig. 2. is the principal tree out of the engraving of the Lock on the Stour (Leslie's Life of Constable). It differs from the Claude outlines merely in being the kind of work which is produced by an uninventive person dashing about idly, with a brush, instead of drawing determinately wrong, with a pen: on the one hand worse than Claude's, in being lazier; on the other a little better in being more free, but, as representative of tree-form, of course still wholly barbarou

stiffness with a zigzag behind, so that the boughs, ugly individually, are beautiful in unison. (In what I have hereafter to say about trees, I shall need to dwell much on this character of unexpectedness. A bough is never drawn rightly if it is not wayward, so that although, as just now said, quiet at first, not caring to be looked at, the moment it is looked at, it seems bent on astonishing you, and

nd Bad Tr

e beneath, reflected lights in recessed hollows, stains of dark moss, and flickering shadows from the foliage above, all are there, as clearly as the human hand can mark them. I place a bit of trunk by Constable (fig. 5.),[41] from another plate in Leslie's Life of him (a dell in Helmingham Park, Suffolk), for the sake of the same comparison in shade that we have above in contour. You see Constable does not know whether he is drawing moss or shadow: those dark touches in the middle are confused in his mind between the dark s

will see, in the cluster of leaves and grass close to your face, something as delicate as this, which I have actually so drawn, on the opposite page, a mystery of soft shadow in the depths of the grass, with indefinite forms of leaves, which you cannot trace or count, within it, and out of that, the nearer leaves coming in every subtle gradation of tender light and flickering form, quite beyond all delicacy of pencilling to follow; and yet you will rise up from that bank (certainly not making it appear coarser by drawing a little back from it), and profess to represent it by a few blots of "forcible" foreground color. "Well, but I cannot draw every leaf that I see on the bank." No

ground

the same scale. I have therefore magnified the upper part of it in fig 4. (Plate 5.), so that the reader may better see the beautiful lines of curvature into which even its slightest shades and spots are cast. Every quarter of an inch in Turner's drawings will bear magnifying in the same way; much of the finer work in them can hardly be traced, except by the keenest sight, until it is magnified. In his painting of Ivy Bridge,[43] the veins are drawn o

e arts-but it is that of one who finished to his utmost. Take Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael for a triad, to begin with. They all completed their detail with such subtlety of touch and gradation, that, in a careful drawing by any of the three, you cannot see where the pencil ceased to touch the paper; the stroke of it is so tender, that, when you look close to the drawing you can see nothing; you only see the effect of it a little way back! Thus tender in execution,-and so complete in detail, that Leonardo must needs draw every several vein in the little agates and pebbles of the gravel under the feet of the St. Anne in the Louvre. Take a quartett after the triad-Titian, Tintoret, Bellini, and Veronese. Examine the vine-leaves of the Bacchus and Ariadne, (Titian's) in the Nat

the same thing? For where does Nature pause in her finishing-that finishing which consists not i

dare not; but accept their teachin

errible requirement of completion? And if there be none, what is the meaning of all you have said elsewhere about rud

rawbacks and exceptions into another chapter, and close this one, without obscuring, in any wise, our broad conclusion that "finish

3

Yemen swor

it carr

tches on t

of the new Army

, because, on the whole, he is the b

csimile it faithfully: but the figure is all the fairer, as a representation of Constable's art, for those mezzotints in Leslie's life of him have many qualities of

he original, the whole drawing be

ft. 6 in.), and very broad in its masse

urring as they do in, perhaps, the very grand

a, the ivy-leaved toad