The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

's Views

sters and

ably paid no money at first. The masters took pupils and taught them because they had more work to do than they could get through and wanted some one to help them. They sold the pupil's work as th

learned from Titian and Giorgione who both came to him in the same year, as boys, when Bellini was 63 years old. What a day for p

mind about Titian. I

c System an

ming that they should be taught how to do things before they do them, and not by the doing of them. Good economy requires

bilee

particular, but when the nation did at last try all it knew to design a sixpence, it failed. [136] The other coins are all very well in their way, and so are the stamps-the let

ng fro

tting what manner of man he was. He will know no more about nature at the end of twenty years than a priest who has been reading his breviary day after day without committing it to memory will know of its contents. Unless he gets what he has seen well into his memory, so as to have it at his fingers' ends as familiarly as the characters with which he writes a letter, he can

and the

osite him in an omnibus, and goes straight home and puts down what little he can of what he has seen, dragging it out piecemeal from his memory, and going into another omnibus to look again for what he has forgotten as near as he can find it-that man is studying from

ng from

ch of salt on her tail. And yet

rt and

desire to record with good effect, there is but sham art, or none at all: where both these are fully present, no matter how rudely and inarticulately, there is

culate

o would call attention to something without exactly knowing what. This is as it s

ta

r hand, no matter how little one gives, the eye will generally compromise by wanting only a little more. In either case the eye will want more, so one may as well stop sooner or later. Sensible pa

and Ass

sociation's not sticking to the letter of

redul

a good, simple, credulous organ-very ready to take things o

from

difficulty is that it is often so hard

cu

accurate, we must spend as many more in

rt Sp

ure to Fuseli-

our and R

hen far and in shadow, they are unimportant. Form and colour are li

and Te

s or painters with great command of technique seldom know what to do wi

n and

a great theorist; the theorist is never a great compos

nd Profa

o or any of the pagan gods that are not as great

ei

drawing, his eyes are wild; learning to draw tames them. The first

m long sustained effort after rightness and comes u

ement

depends upon looking for this or th

ugh it were done by your enemy. If yo

, will go on improving as long as he i

t is wrong, we shall see this and make it righter. If we look at it to see where it is right, we sh

and

ngs, and you will puzzle him very much. He is trying to put down what he sees; he does not care two straws about composition or light and shade; if he sees two tones of such and such relative intensity in nature, he will give them as near as he ca

liar in drawing-masters' copies; it may be right or it may not, I don't know-I am afraid I ought to know, but I don't;

ing in something which does not exist at the moment, but which easily might exist and which gives a lot of facts which you otherwise could not give at all, than by giving so much as you can alone giv

you are to be true to nature you must break your lights into your shadows and vice versa; and so usual is this that, if there happens here or there

a bit of a very similar colour not far off, but having no connection with it. This holds good in

lo

any number of bits of brilliant colour in their work which for the life of me I could not see in nature. I used to hear people say of a man who got pleasing and natural colour, "Does he not see colour well?" a

rendered amid the wholesale slaughter of innocents which is inevitable in any painting. Painting is only possible as a quasi-hieroglyphic epitomising of nature; this means that the half goes for the whole, whereon the question arises which half is to be

s said of money that it is more easily made than kept and this is true of many things, such as friendship; and even life itself is more easily got than kept. The same holds good of colour. It is also true that, as with money, mor

or colour in this, we shall find here and there a broken brick with a small surface of brilliant crimson, hard by there will be another with a warm orange hue perceivable through the grime by one who is on the look out for it, but by no one else. Then there may be bits of old advertisement of which here and there a gaily coloured fragment may remain, or a rusty iron hook or a bit of bright green moss; few indeed are the

at all unless he knows how to do it daily and hourly without departure from the truth even in his boldest lie; but the child in art must stick to what he sees. If he looks harder he will see more, and may put more, but till he sees it without being in any doubt about it, he must not put it. There

erence to the colour side of the matter. In equity, if the exigencies of the convention under which we are working require a sacrifice of a hundred details, the majority of which are uncoloured, while in the minority colour can be found if looked for, the sacrifice should be made pro rata from coloured and uncoloured alike. If the facts of nature are a hundred, of which n

vitably must he fail to satisfy, or indeed to appeal to us at all as poet-as one whose sympathies with nature extend beyond her superficial aspect, or as one who is so much at home with her as to be able readily to dissociate the permanent and essential from the accidental which may be here to-day and gone to-morrow. If he is to come before us as an artist, he must do so as a poet or creator of that which is not, as well as a mirror of that which is. True, experience in all kinds of poetical work shows that

est, somewhat sober, and his work will be colourless or disagreeable in colour. The faithful copyist, who is still a mere copyist, will give nine details of dull uninteresting colour and one of interesting. The artist or poet will find some reason for slightly emphasising the coloured details and

ne sees all manner of colours which are not there, it is only the getting oneself into a mental habit of looking out for episodes of colour, and of giving them a somewhat undue preference in the struggle for rendering, whe

deal of reconsideration for which I ca

and

A great colourist is no better than a great wordist unless the col

and Pro

heart, telling of things as he sees them without fear of what man shall say unto him; he must think not of what appears to him right and loveable but of what his patrons will think and of what the critics will tell his patrons to say they think; he has got to square everyone all round and will assuredly fail to make his way unless he does this; if, then, he be

s best he can to put before the few nice people whom he knows? If this is his position he can do no wrong, the spirit in which he works will ensure that his defects will be only as bad spelling or bad grammar in some pretty saying of a child. If, on the other hand, he is playing fo

idei Ra

sentiments arising from antiquity and foreignness, and the inability of most people to judge of the work on technical grounds, because they can neither paint nor draw, prevents us from seeing what a mere business picture it is and how poor the painti

; I can see no expression in it; the hand upon the open book is as badly drawn as the hand of S. Catharine (also by Raffaelle) in our gallery, or even worse; so is the part of the other hand which can be seen; they

re is gold thread work in the picture. It is so on S. Nicholas's cloak where a larger space is covered, but the pattern is dull and the smallest quantity of gold is made to go the longest way. The gold cording which binds this is more particularly badly done. Compare the embroidery and gold thread work in "The Virgin adoring the Infant Christ," ascribed to Andrea Verrocchio, No. 296, Room V; "The Annu

rves S. Nicholas for a brooch. The jewels in the mitre are rather better than this, but much depends upon the kind of day on which the picture is seen; on a clear bright day they, and indeed every part of the picture, loo

extend much beyond those necessary to make him pass as stronger than he is; especially the folds in the white linen over S. Nicholas's throat, and about his girdle-weaker drapery can hardly be than this, unless, perhaps, that from under which S. Nicholas's hands come. There is not only no art

hich are all they as yet have strength for; they cannot do much, but the little they can do they do and never tire of doing; they grow by getting juster notions of proportion and subordination of parts to the whole rather than by any greater amount of care and patience bestowed upon details. Here there are no bits of detai

a painter. His reputation, indeed, rests mainly on his supposed exquisitely pure and tender feeling. His colour is admittedly inferior, his handling is not highly praised by any one, his drawing has been much praised, but it is of a penmanship freehand kind which is particularly apt to take people in. Of

I can see nothing in it beyond the power of a very ordinary painter, and nothing that a painter of more than very ordinary power would be satisfied with. When I look at the head of Bellini's Doge, Loredano Loredani, I can see defects, as every one can see defects in every picture, but the more I see it the more I marvel at it, and the more profoundly I respect the painter. With Raffaelle I find exactly the reverse; I am carried away at first, as I was when a young man by Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, only to be very angry with myself

younger portrait of himself, in his old woman, in the three Van Eycks, in the Andrea Solario, in the Loredano Loredani by Bellini, all in our gallery, with the nose of Raffaelle's S. Nicholas will not be long in finding out how slovenly Raffaelle's treatment in reality is. Eyes, eyebrows, mouth, cheeks and chin are treated with the same weakness, and this not the weakness of a child who is taking much pains to do something be

ssible, so as to save doing more country details than could be helped. As for the little landscape there is, let the reader compare

reputations? A hundred years ago these men were held as hardly inferior to Raffaelle himself. They had a couple of hundred years or so of triumph-why so much? And if so much, why not more? If we begin asking questions, we may ask why anything at all? Populus vult decipi is t

looked well from a purely decorative standpoint. I believe, however, that at least half of those who sit gazing before this Ansidei Raffaelle by the half-hour at a time do so rather that they may

ectedly on some holy, peaceful survivors of an age long gone by, when the struggle was not so fierce and the world was a sweeter, happier place than we now find it, when men and women were comelier, and we should like to have lived among them, t

d also the way in which this particular picture has been written up by critics, and the prestige of Raffaelle's name, the wonder is not that

a Rem

I might have travelled all Europe over for no one can say how many years, looking for a good, well-preserved, forty-shilling Rembrandt (and this was what I wanted), but on two occasions of my life cheap Rembrandts have run right up against me. The first was a head cut out of a ruined picture that had only in part escaped destruction when

rand. I very nearly let this slip too. I saw it and was very much struck with it, but, knowing that I am a little apt to be too sanguine, distrusted my judgment; in the evening I mentioned the picture to Gogin w

requires more experience and good sense. It is only those who know how not to let the luck that runs against

to Buy

but still not repainted. The Madonna was lovely, the Child very good, the landscape sweet and Belliniesque. I was much smitten and determined to bid up to a hundred pounds; I knew this would be dirt cheap and was not going to buy at

72 (I think) and purporting to be by Giorgione but, I fully believe, by Titian. I bid up to ￡10

a

had disliked them. He said some of them had been exhibited in Paris a few years ago and

hough their appearance in such a place at all were something

rd Po

them occupation; it was felt that, though an animal by itself was well, an animal doing something was much better. The mere fact of companionship and silent sympathy i

court and brought it home, and the two lay together a

in at

the city, but he has not done them as we should do them now. I think the tower on the hill behind the city is t

n

ause up to the last he is essentially impressionist, that is, he keeps a just account of relative importances and keeps them in their true subordination one

ot

does. How is it that our so greatly better should be so greatly worse-that the farther we go beyond him the higher he stands above us? Time no doubt has much

ly

s most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledg

cer

e and without affectation. Of all the lies a painter can tell the worst is saying that he likes what he does not like. But the poor wretch seldom knows himself; for the art of kno