Modern Painters Vol. III.

beings, they are eminently biped; and, although, as far as apprehended by human intelligence, they are usually seen in a crane-like posture, standing on one leg, wheneve

e. He will wonder how it was that Turner, finishing in this exquisite way, and giving truths by the thousand, where other painters gave only one or two, yet, of all painters, seemed to obtain least ackn

elf: "All this reasoning is of no use to me. Turner does not give me the idea of nature; I do not feel before one of his pictures as I should in the real scene. Constable takes me out i

ot you go and walk in them without help from De Wint? But if you want to sit in your room and look at a beautiful picture, why should you blame the artist for giving you one? This was the answer actually made to me by v

wing of the chain of the Alps from the Superga above Turin; then a study of a block of gneiss at Chamouni, with the purple Aiguilles-Rouges behind it; another, of the towers of the Swiss Fribourg, with a cluster of pine forest behind them; then another Turner, Isola Bella, wit

scpsi hun

wrote t

Superga; then the real block of gneiss, and Aiguilles-Rouges; then the real towers of Fribourg, and pine forest; the real Isola Bella; and, finally, the true Mary and Elizabeth; and beneath

on me, "the more closely the picture resem

e

ssion of such a window, that is of Nature,

e

impression of such a window, there must be

e

more right th

o

explain

ty, which cause no deception, but give inner and deep resemblance. These two classes of truths cannot be obtained together; choice must be made between them. The bad painter gives the cheap deceptive resemblance. The good painter gives the precious non-deceptive resemblance. Constable perceives in a landscape that the grass is wet, the meadows flat, and the boughs shady; that is to say, about as much as, I suppose, might in general be apprehended, between them, by

just now that because Turner did not get his work to

and not Turner; but that is impossible to man. There is much that is wrong in him; much that is infinitel

nge your Turners for windows, why

Bella. That is to say, for all the truth that there is in Turner, and all the truth besides which is not in him; but I would not

ve desired the relative merits of painters to be judged. I have always said, he who is closest to Nature is best. All rules are useless, all genius is useless, all labor is useless, if you do not give facts

themselves, and answ

un-visionary; that nobody had ever given so many hard and downright facts. Glance back to the first volume, and note the expressions now. "He is the only painter who ever drew a mountain or a stone;[47] the only painter who can draw the stem of a tree; the only painter who has ever drawn the sky, previous artists having only drawn it typically or partially, but he absolutely and universally." Note how he is praised in his rock drawing for "not selecting a pretty or interesting morsel here or there, but giving the whole truth, with all the relations of its parts."[48] Observe how the great virtue of the landscape of Cima da Conegliano and the early sacred painters is said to be giving "entire, exquisite, humble, realization-a strawberry-plant in the foreground with a blossom, and a berry just set, and one half ripe, and on

for his truth and finish; that truth of which I am beginning to give examples. Pre-Raphaelitism is praised for its trut

be inculcated upon the student, more than this to be admitted o

n exchange of a less good of one kind, for a greater of another kind, but that it was definitely exchange, not pure gain, not merely getting more truth instead of less. The picture would be a serious loss; something gone wh

d then, so far as he has been convinced by them, have been inclined to say, "Why not give up this whole science of Mockery at once, since its only virtue is in representing facts, and it cannot, at be

virtues, not only consistent with but even resulting from, its

ve sometimes done before, to begin

a precipice of almost unimaginable height; on the other, sloping away for leagues in one field of lustrous ice, clear and fair and blue, flashing here and there into silver under the morning sun. For a moment I received a sensation of as much sublimity as any natu

ing object of a certain apparent length and breadth, and whether of glass or ice, whether twenty feet in length, or twenty leagues, would have made no difference to them; or, rather, would not have been in any wise conceived or considered by them. Examine the nature of your own emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you find all the brightness of that emotion hanging, like dew on gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. First, you have a vague idea of its size, coupled with wonder at the work of the great Builder of its walls and foundations, then an apprehension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the grass upon its sides; then, and in this very sadness, a sense of strange companionship with past generations in seeing what they saw. They did not see the clouds that are floating over your head; n

edly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy mountain than any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these are the kind of images which cause you to do so; and, observe, these are nothing more than a greater apprehension of the facts of the thing. We call the power "Imaginat

d not cleared partially away, the glass roof might have pleased me as well as an alp, until I had quite lost sight of it; and if, in a picture, the imagination can be once caught, and, wi

all that they ever felt about ships and thunderstorms, attributing the whole current and fulness of their own feelings to the painter's work; while probably, if the picture be really good, and full of stern fact, the poet, or man of feeling, will find some of its fact in his way, out of the particular course of his ow

nigrescence than in many a labored picture. And thus, in a slovenly or ill-finished picture, it is no credit to the artist that he has "addressed the imagination;" nor is the success of such an appeal any criterion whatever of the merit of the work. The duty of an artist is not only to address and awaken, but to guide the imagination; and there is no safe guidance but that of simple concurrence with fa

tation is accredited, it must be a stubborn kind of person indeed whom he will not please, or seem to please; for all the vain and weak people pretend to be pleased with him, for their own credit's sake, and all the humble and imaginative people seriously and honestly fancy they are pleased with him, deriving indeed, very certainly, delight from his work, but a delight which, if they were kept in the same temper, they would equally derive (and, indeed, constantly do derive) from the grossest daub that can be manufactured in imitation by the pawnbroker. Is, therefore, the pawnbroker's imitation as good as the original? Not so. There is the certain test of goodness and badness, which I am always striving to get peopl

nation at all, if you have nothing more to say for it than this; if

t aroused. The something wrong may be in the spectator or in the picture; and if the picture be demonstrably in accordance with truth, the odds are, that it is in the spectator; but there is wrong somewhere; for the work of the picture

f the imagination is to be called to take delight in any object, it will not be always well, if we can help it, to put the real object there, before it. The imagination would on the whole rather have it not there;-the reality and substance are rather in the imagination's way; it would think a good deal more of the thing if it could not see it. Hence, that strange and sometimes fatal charm, which there is in all things as long as we wait for them, and the moment we have lost them; but which fades while we possess them;-that sweet bloom of all that is far away, which perishes under our touch. Yet the feeling of this is not a weakness; it is one of the most glorious gifts of the human mind, making the whole infinite fu

from seeing too much. It is not that the monotony and number of the beautiful things seen have made them valueless, but that the imaginative power has been overtaxed; and, instead of letting it rest, the traveller, wondering to find himself dull, and incapable of admiration, seeks for something more admirable, excites, and torments, and drags the poor fainting imagination up by the shoulders: "Look at this, and look at that, and this more wonderful still!"-until the imaginative faculty faints utterly away, beyond all farther torment or pleasure, dead for m

at if I confined myself to one thing,-and that a little thing,-a tuft of moss, or a single crag at the top of the Varens, or a wreath or two of foam at the bottom of the Nant d'Arpenaz, I began to enjoy it directly, because then I had mind enough to put into the thing, and the enjoyment arose from the quantity of the imaginative energy I could bring to bear upon it; but when I looked at or thought of all together, moss, stones, Varens, Nant d'Arpenaz, and Mont Blanc, I had not mind enough to give to all, and none were of any value. The conclusion which would have been formed, upon this, by a German philosopher, would have been that the Mont Blanc was of no value; that he and his imagination only were of value; that the Mont Blanc, in fact, except so far as he was able to look at it, could not be considered as having any existence. But the only conclusion which occurred to me as reasonable under the ci

ject to the painter to make his work look real, he ought to dread such a consummation as the loss of one of its most precious claims upon the heart. So far from striving to convince the beholder that what he sees is substance, his mind should be to what he paints as the fire to the body on the pile, burning away the ashes, leaving the unconquerable shade-an immortal dream. So certain is this, that the slightest local success in giving the deceptive appearance of reality-the imitation, for instance, of the texture of a bit of wood, w

long dogmatic chapters of yours about giving noth

to make it real. Between the painter and the beholder, each doing his proper part, the reality should be sustained; and after the beholding imagination has come forward and done its be

oes present may be so chosen and ordered as not only to be more easily seized, but to give the imagination rest, and, as it were, places to lie down and stretch its limbs in; kindly vacancie

trength and willingness in the beholder to follow them all out; the redundance, perhaps, being not too great for the mind of a careful observer, but too great for a casual or careless observer. So that although the perfection of art will always consist in the utmost acceptable completion, yet, as every added idea will increase the difficulty of apprehension, and every added touch advance the dangerous realism which makes the imagination languid, the difference

e most wonderful piece of divine work in the whole matter-the great human spirit through which it is manifested to us. So that, although with respect to many important scenes, it might, as we saw above, be one of the most precious gifts that could be given us to see them with our own eyes, yet also in many things it is more desirable to be permitted to see them with the eyes of others; and although, to the small, conceited, and affected painter displaying

how their preciousness and exalt their clearness. They are always orderly, always one, ruled by one great purpose throughout, in the fulfilment of which every atom of the detail is called to help, and would be missed if removed; this peculiar oneness being the result, not of obedience t

; the elaborate arrangement of sightlessness and emptiness; the order which has no object; the unity which has no lif

y Edinburgh Lectures, that Pre-Raphaelitism, as long as it confined itself to the simple copying of nature, could not take the character of the highest class of art. But it has already, almost unconsciously, supplied the defect, and taken that character, in all its best results; and, so far as it ought, hereafter, it will assuredly do so, as soon as it is permitted to maintain itself in any other position than that of stern antagonism to the composition teachers around it. I say "so far as it ought," because, as already noticed in that same

n we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds out of our own charcoal. And for this God-made supremacy, I generally have used, and shall continue to use, the word Inspiration, not carelessly nor lightly, but in all logical calmness and perfect reverence. We English have many false ideas about reverence: we should be shocked, for instance, to see a market-woman come into church with a basket of eggs on her arm: we think it more reverent to lock her out till Sunday; and to surround the church with respectability of iron railings, and defend it with pacing inhabitation of beadles. I believe this to be irreverence; and that it is more truly reverent, when the market-woman, hot and hurried, at six in the morning, her head much confused with calculations of the probable price of eggs, can nevertheless get within church porch, and church aisle, and church chancel, lay the basket down on the very steps of the altar, and receive thereat so much of help and hope as may serve her for the day's work. In like manner we are solemnly, but I think not wisely, shocked at any one who comes hurriedly into church, in any figurative way, with his basket on his arm; and perhaps, so long as we feel it so, it is better to keep the basket out. But, as for this one commodity of high mental supremacy, it cannot be kept out, for the very fountain of it is in the church wall,

istent or possible at all. All that it expects or hopes of human nature is, that it should have show of sincerity,] stand forth as the thick and thin [I perceive the writer intends to teach me English, as well as honesty,] eulogist of both. With a certain knowledge of art, such as may be possessed by the author of English Painters, [Note, farther, that the eminent critic does not so much as know the title of the book he is criticising,] it is not difficult to

. Sec. I. Ch

9. The whole of the Preface to the Second Edition is written to maintain

apter on Penetra

s subject have already been noticed in the l

done in art, in the full extent of its influence. It has been not only shadow, but shadow of Death: passing over the face of the ancient art, as death itself might over a fai