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Sir loshua Keviuilds, F. R. A.

Sir Joshua Reynolds's

DISCOURSES

EDITED IVITH NOTES AND AN HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

BV

EDWARD GILPIN JOHNSON

litf) EUustrations

\iTAklO COllEGV. or- A LIBRARY

^ ' 100 McCAUL STREET

frORONTO, ONTARIO MoJ m

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY

1S91

Copyright,

By a. C. McClurg and Co.

A. D. iSqi.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

DISCOURSE I.

The Advantages Proceeding from the Institution of a Royal Academy. — Hints offered to the Considera- tion OF the Professors and Visitors. — That an Im- plicit Obedience to the Rules of Art be exacted from the Young Si'udents — That a Premature Dis- position to a Masterly Dexterity be repressed. — That Diligence be constantly recommended, and (that it may be effectual) directed to its proper OBjEcr 53

DISCOURSE 11.

The Course and Order of Study. — The Different Stages of Art. — Much Copying discountenanced. — The Artist at all Times and in all Places should be

EMPLOYED in LAVING UP MATERIALS FOR THE EXERCISE OF

His Art 63

DISCOURSE III.

The great leading Principles of the Grand Style. — Of Beauty. — The genuine habits of Nature to be Dis- tinguished FROM those of Fashion 8i

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

DISCOURSE IV. General Ideas, the presiding Principle which Regulates

EVERY PART OF ArT; INVENTION, EXPRESSION, COLORING,

AND Drapery. — Two distinct Styles of History-paint- ING : THE Grand, and the Ornamental. — The Schools IN which Each is to be Found. — The Composite Style. — The Style formed on local Customs and Habits, or a partial View of Nature 99

DISCOURSE V.

Circumspection required in Endeavoring to Unite con- trary Excellences. — The Expression of a mixed Pas- sion NOT TO BE Attempted. — Examples of Those who Excelled in the great Style. — Raphael, Michael An- gelo, those two extraordinary men compared with Each Other. — The Characteristical Style. — Salvator Rosa mentioned as an Example of that Style ; and Op- posed TO Carlo Maratti. — Sketch of the Characters of Poussin and Rubens. — These two Painters entirely Dissimilar, but Consistent with Themselves. — This Consistency required in All Parts of the Art. . . 123

DISCOURSE VI.

Imitation. — Genius begins where Rules end. — Inven- tion : acquired by being Conversant with the Inven- tions of Others. — The true Method of Imitating. — Borrowing, how far Allowable. — Something to be Gathered from every School 143

DISCOURSE VII.

The Reality of a Standard of Taste, as well as of Cor- poral Beauty. — Besides this Immediate Truth, there are Secondary Truths, which are Variable ; Both requiring the Attention of the Artist, in Proportion TO Their Stability or Their Influence 171

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

DISCOURSE VIII.

Thk Principles of Art, whether Poetry or Painting, HAVE their Foundation in the Mind; .such as Nov- elty, Variety, and Contrast; these in their Excess become Defects. — Simplicity, its excess Disagreea- ble. — Rules not to be always observed in their Lite- ral Sense: sufficient to PRESEi^VE the Spirit of the Law. — Observations on the Prize Pictures 207

DISCOURSE IX.

On the Removal of the Royal Academy to Somerset Place. — the Advantages to Society from Cultivat- ing Intellectual Pleasure 237

DISCOURSE X.

Sculpture: — has but one Style. — Its Objects, Form, and Character. — ineffectual Attempts of the Modern Sculptors to Improve the Art. — III Effects of Modern Dress in Sculpture 241

DISCOURSE XI.

Genius, — consists principally in the Comprehension of a Whole ; in taking General Ideas ONLY 259

DISCOURSE XII. Particular methods of Study of little Consequence. —

LITTLE of the ArT CAN BE TaUGHT. — LoVE OF METHOD

OFTEN A Love of Idleness. — Pittori Improvvisatori apt TO be Careless and Incorrect; seldom Original and Spriking. — this proceeds from their not Studying the Works of other Masters 279

DISCOURSE XIII.

Art not merely Imitation, but under the Direction of THE Imagination. — In what manner Poetry, Painting, Acting, Gardening, and Architecture, depart from Nature 305

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS.

DISCOURSE XIV.

Character of Gainsborough. — His Excellences and Defects 327

DISCOURSE XV.

The President takes leave of the Academy. — A Review OF THE Discourses. — The Study of the Works of Michael Angelo recommended 349

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, P. R. A Frontispiece

Miss Nelly O'Brien To face page 13

Schoolboys (John Bellenden and Henry Gawler) 17

Sir W. Hamilton 33

Lady Charles Spencer 39

Mrs. SiDDONs as the Tragic Muse ...... 53

The Age of Innocence 63

Miss Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra 81

Lady Sophia St. Asaph and Child 99

Mrs. Merrick 123

Mrs. Lucy H.a.rdinge 143

Lady Louisa Manners (Countess Dvsart) . . . 171

Mrs. Robinson 207

Sir Joseph Banks 237

St. Agnes 241

Mrs. Ann Hope 259

Master Jacob Bouverie (afterwards Earl of

Radnor, 1776) 279

Mrs. Billington as St. Cecilia 305

Miss Nelly O'Brien 327

John, Earl of Upper Ossory 349

TO THE KING.

The regular progress of cultivated life is from necessaries to accommodations, from accommodations to ornaments. By your illustrious predecessors were established Marts for manu- factures, and Colleges for science; but for the arts of elegance, those arts by which manufactures are embellished, and science is refined, to found an Academy was reserved for your Majesty.

Had such patronage been without effect, there had been reason to believe that Nature had, by some insurmountable impediment, obstructed our proficiency; but the annual im- provement of the Exhibitions which Your Majesty has been pleased to encourage shows that only encouragement had been wanting.

To give advice to those who are contending for royal liber- ality has been for some years the duty of my station in the Academy; and these Discourses hope for Your Majesty's acceptance, as well-intended endeavors to incite that emulation which your notice has kindled, and direct those studies which your bounty has rewarded.

May it please Your Majesty,

Your Majesty's

Most dutiful servant

And most faithful subject,

[1778] JOSHUA REYNOLDS

TO THE MEMBERS

Ol'-

THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

Gentlemen,

That you have ordered the publication of this discourse is not only very flattering to me, as it implies your approbation of the method of study which I have recommended, but likewise, as this method receives from that act such an additional weight and authority as demands from the students that deference and respect which can be due only to the united sense of so considerable a Body of Artists.

I am, With the greatest esteem and respect, Gentlemen,

Your most humble,

And obedient Servant,

JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

M/s-s Nellv (rBiieii.

INTRODUCTION.

ALTHOUGH Sir Joshua Reynolds contributed more perhaps than any other one man to the elevation and reputation of the art of his country, the title of " founder of the English school," sometimes bestowed upon him, im- plies a distinction to which he is not justly entitled. The expression is in itself a loose one ; doubly so as applied to Reynolds, who, though he left successors — more or less attenuated — in portraiture, as well as in his less frequent flights into ideal and historical painting, formed no school ; and essentially so, because there is not, strictly speaking, and in the sense in which we speak of the several Italian schools or of the Dutch or Flemish schools, an English school of painting at all. The term "school " as thus used has a special and technical sense, embracing the common methods of technique, the special traditions and processes tending to the production of one general type of picture or fixed national ideal, to which painters of the same age and country have been constrained to submit ; and the rise of a school of painting implies a general diffusion of artistic taste, and a close system of training and apprenticeship such as have never prevailed in England. The English painter, after leaving the academy schools, is generally free to follow his personal bent ; and no art owes more to indi- vidual initiative and less to the cumulative force of consist- ent principle and tradition than English art. To say, then,

14 IXTRODUCTION.

that this or that painter is of the English school means lit- tle more than that he is an English painter, — not that he is one who in his work carries out certain national conventions and processes, for these have not as yet been developed in England.

Still, while England has not, in the confined sense, evolved a school of painting, while her art is, consequently, richly varied, " full of surprises and unexpected originality," and not, indeed, free from that " mania of eccentricity " remarked by the foreigner, its productions, stamped through- out with the genius of the race, form a connected and con- siderable whole. Lacking in the academic uniformity which springs from a consistent aim and a fixed ideal, English painting, like English literature, presents through all its contrasts of form a marked national character. " From whatever side one regards it," observes a recent French critic,^ " the English school always discloses some idiosyncracy peculiar to the ordinary British mind ; " and it is hardly necessary to add that the " ordinary British mind " has not an aesthetic bent ; that it must be appealed to on other, and, as it holds, higher and more " serious " grounds than that innate feeling for harmony and sensuous beauty characteristic of the Latin races. " The prosaic British mind," said Emerson, " seeks the prose in nature." Purely decorative and sensuous forms of art, the sponta- neous outgrowth of the southern temperament, are exotics in England ; and no system of hot- house forcing and observance of patent method and recipe have produced there anything but the feeblest reflection of the theological and " historical " painting of the Latin schools.

Seeking for the prevailing tendency of English painters as a body, one may say that it is to impute to their art the special office of language, — to make the picture unduly

.n 1 M. Chcsncau, The English School of Painting.

INTRODUCTION. 1 5

subsidiary to the thought expressed or fact described ; and it is in the branches which allow this tendency freest play — in pictorial narrative, genre and historical-^^^;?;r, and in literary illustration — that English art is notably profuse ; while even in portraiture and landscape the aim is rarely a purely aesthetic one, the painter's success depending, says Ruskin, " on his desire to convey a truth, rather than to produce a merely beautiful picture, — that is to say, to get a likeness of a man or of a place." The predominance of the moral element, too, is as noticeable in the national art as in the national literature, — English painters, like Eng- lish novelists and playwrights, rarely failing in some degree to point the moral while adorning the tale.

Such being the general characteristics, it is not difficult to name the early master whose work bears the closest affinity to the great body of English art. Hogarth, not Reynolds, is the Giotto of the "school," — the first native painter who shook off foreign influences and ideals and held up to the life around him " Nature's unflatt'ring glass." And he is as English in aim as in subject. Hogarth was not sensitive to beauty, in art or nature ; and the stray touches of it that one finds in his works — a turn of expres- sion, an attitude, a face here and there — are not of his seeking, still less of his producing ; they exist on the can- vas because they existed in the model. He ministered to the pleasures of his countrymen only in so far as they could take pleasure in laughing at the national humors and con- demning the national vices. Like his literary prototype, he used his art to —

"strip the ragged follies of the time Naked as at their birth . , . and with a whip of steel Print wounding lashes on their iron ribs."

" His graphic representations," said Charles Lamb, " are indeed books ; they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive

1 6 INTRODUCTION.

meaning of words. Other pictures we look at, — his we read."

How different all this from Reynolds, — a true painter's painter who sought to delight the eye even at the expense of a little gentle flattery, " discreetly touched, just enough to make all men noble, all women lovely." His superb portraits, " Italian music set to English words," are antholo- gies of the beauties of his sitters and of the lighter graces of the old masters. In aim and accomplishment he is the least English, as the moralizing bluntly truthful Hogarth is the most English, of painters ; and his artistic charm is an essence distilled from flowers gathered in fields where the founder of British painting never trod. Reynolds's incense is ever burning at the shrines of the great Italians whose names adorn his Discourses. " Even when painting the most graceful lady, the most English — in other words the brightest and freshest — of boys, he never becomes so lost m his model as to forget the old masters." '

Reynolds's art, rich as it was in the results of personal observation of nature, was a forced but magnificent hot- house growth, exotic and necessarily ephemeral ; that of Hogarth was a hardy native plant, which sprang from the soil and throve and multiplied in a fit environment ; and the homely truth, the fondness for everyday life, the turn for humor, satire, and narrative that prevail in English art to-day were first manifest in "The Harlot's Progress."

In fixing the rise of English painting proper with Hogarth, it is not, of course, meant that before him the art was un- known in England, or that no Englishman had practised it. English art begins under him, as every national art begins, with reflecting the life and temper of the times ; yet he learned the rudiments of his profession from an Englishman and a Londoner. The monastery was the cradle of the arts

' M. Chesneau, The English School of Pninting.

Schoolboys.

[John P.'lletidfu ami /fi-urv r,V?7,Vrr).

I NT ROD UC TJON. 1 7

in England ; and the real first fruits of the artistic instincts of the race are to be found in the relics of that school of illuminators who from an early date, possibly the beginning of the seventh century, until the suppression of the monas- tic houses, were employed in the decoration of breviaries, missals, and other religious books, confining their efforts at first to ornate capitals and painted and gilded letters, then essaying borders of flowers, foliage, etc., and finally ventur- ing upon text illustrations and miniatures,^ the latter usually portraits of those to whom the work was to be given.

Later and more ambitious attempts may be seen in the Gothic cathedrals and on the walls of the Chapter House at Westminster. These works, done in the thirteenth cen- tury, compare not unfavorably with similar contemporary productions of France, Italy, and the Netherlands. With the next century came a complete pause in English picto- rial art, not to be broken until the splendid revival under George III. For this long term of sterility it is difficult to account ; especially so for the fact that a period which produced Shakspeare (I may cautiously add, and Bacon) and his brilliant following should not have boasted at least a Holbein or a Van Dyck. Mr. Ruskin suggests, among kindred reasons, a lack of mountains ; but as the Dutch and Flemings seem to have done very well without them, and as the want was certainly not supplied in the day of Reynolds and Gainsborough, we may ascribe the pause rather to the unfavorable social conditions brought about by the French wars and the Wars of the Roses, to the chill- ing influence of early Protestantism, and to the influx of a long line of foreign painters, who set the mode and warped

' " The word ' miniatura ' in its original sense Iiad no reference to tlie size of the work, being derived from the Latin word minium, signifying red lead, in which material all the headings, capital letters, etc., of the most ancient MSS. were drawn." — J. L. Propert, History of Miniature Art.

2

1 8 INT ROD UCTION.

or repressed the native talent. It is mainly in the lives of these foreigners that the history of English art from Henry III. (12^6-1292) down to the second quarter of the eighteenth century is to be read.

The first of them whom we need mention is Jean de jMabuse, a Fleming, who drifted into England rather un- accountably during the reign of Henry VIL, a monarch little given to munificence. " He reigned," says Walpole, " as an attorney would have reigned, and would have pre- ferred a conveyancer to Praxiteles."

Of a very different temper was Henry VIII. , a liberal, ostentatious prince, whose bounty attracted and sustained several foreign painters of merit, notably the great Holbein, — a man in whom universality of talent did not preclude special excellence. As a portrait painter he is, take him all in all, unsurpassed ; while his " Madonna " at Darmstadt is one of the glories of religious art. Henry's high opinion of him is recorded in his rebuke to a courtier who had in- sulted the painter : " You have not to do with Holbein, but with me ; and I tell you that of seven peasants I can make seven lords, but not one Holbein." Holbein's superb por- traits are usually models of accuracy, — a quality which on one occasion he rashly disregarded. Henry having deter- mined to take a fourth wife, Anne of Cleves was selected as the candidate for decapitation, and Holbein was despatched by Thomas Cromwell, who favored the match, to paint her portrait. In obedience to the minister he grossly flattered his model ; so that Henry, who was completely taken in, upon seeing the original landing at Dover, roared out in disgust, " She is a great Flanders mare ! " and wanted to send her back to Germany. Cromwell paid for the deceit with his head, but Holbein escaped unnoticed. Henry's patronage of the arts was due, not so much to his love for or appreciation of them, as to his emulation of FVancis I. ; and the crudity of his own ideas, as well as the state of the

I NT ROD UCTION. 1 9

public taste at the time, may be inferred from the directions he left for a monument to his memory. The note directs that " the king shall appear on horseback of the stature of a goodly man, while over him shall appear the image of God the Father, holding the king's soul in his left hand and his right extended in the act of benediction," — a conceit which proves at least the royal faith in the capabilities of art.

Under the reign of Edward VI., a minor prince, and amidst a struggle of religions, the arts were in abeyance, nobody having leisure to patronize, practise, or record them. Holbein v/as, however, still alive, and he drew several por- traits of the young king.

The reign of Mary, though shorter even than that of her brother, is more considerable in the annals of painting. Her favorite painter was Antonio Moro, who had been sent to England by Charles V. Many of his English portraits, painted in the realistic manner of Holbein, and fine exam- ples of color, are extant. Moro was a striking figure at the Spanish court, to which he returned after Mary's death. Though a courtier as well as painter he lacked discretion, even venturing upon familiarities with such a tiger as Philip n. One day while Moro was at work, Philip, who was looking on, rested his arm on the shoulder of the painter, who, to the dismay of surrounding flunkeydom, dipped his brush in carmine and with it smeared the royal hand. The king surv-eyed the member seriously a while, and in that moment of suspense the fate of Moro balanced on a hair; but caprice, perhaps even pity, turned the scale, and Philip passed the silly jest off with a smile of complacency.

The long and eventful reign of Elizabeth is almost a blank in the history of art, the royal taste for painting extending only to representations of her own dubious charms. .Art could flatter ; therefore she employed it. It is only fair to the profession, however, to add that there is not a single

20 INTRODUCTION.

portrait of Elizabeth that can be called beautiful, — the "Virgin Queen" serving, in general, as a mere lay figure for the display of robes and trinkets — "like an Indian idol, all hands and necklaces," says the sarcastic Walpole. " A pale Roman nose, a head of hair loaded with crowns and powdered with diamonds, a vast ruff, a vaster fardingale, and a bushel of pearls are the features by which everybody knows at once the pictures of Queen Elizabeth." Her chief painters were the Italian Zuccaro, the Flemings De Heere and Hetel, and the Englishman Isaac Oliver, a mini- ature painter unrivalled in England, save by his own son Peter, and later, Cooper, a pupil of Van Dyck. Elizabeth's appetite for flattery is shown in a curious portrait of her by De Heere. She is represented as coming out of a palace, " in maiden meditation, fancy free," with her crown, sceptre, and globe, and two female attendants. Before 'her, flying in dismay from her combined charms, are Juno, Venus, and Minerva ; Juno drops her sceptre, Venus her roses, while Cupid, abashed, perhaps, before such adamantine virtue, flings away his bow and arrows and clings to his mother.

Luckily for the arts, James I., a tasteless pedant, was not disposed to meddle with them, and he may be dismissed v/ith a quotation from Hayley : —

"James, both for empire and for arts unfit (His sense a quibble, and a pun his wit), Whatever works he patronized, del)ased ; But haply left the pencil undisgraced."

The accession of Charles I. marks the first era of real taste in England. Elizabeth was avaricious and pompous. James I. lavish and mean. Charles I., a scholar, a man of taste, and a gentleman, knew how and where to bestow, encouraging men of the first merit only, and these abun- dantly. Jones was his architect, and Van Dyck his painter ; he royally entertained and employed Rubens, and purchased the cartoons of Raphael. " The art of reigning was the

IXTRODUCTION. 21

only art of which he was ignorant." To the taste and en- lightened liberality of Charles I. England owes some of her choicest treasures.

The arts were virtually banished from England with the royal family, and the restoration brought them back — but not taste. Charles II. had, in addition to his turn for gal- lantry, a turn for the sciences, but none for art. His chief painter was Sir Peter Lely, a Westphalian, an artist of ques- tionable taste but talented, a favorite with the ladies, whom he flattered liberally. He is well represented in the collec- tion of portraits at Hampton Court, where a bevy of Charles's Paphian beauties, their charms half hidden in " a sort of fantastic night-gowns fastened with a single pin," look down in a most un- Puritan way upon the visitor. Lely was not always called upon to flatter. When Cromwell sat to him he said, " Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all ; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and every- thing as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it " — a command which was literally obeyed. Lely died in 1680, and was succeeded by Godfrey Kneller, of Liibeck, who reigned supreme in English portraiture until his death in 1723, the year of Sir Joshua Reynolds's birth. Kneller was a painter of varied instruction, of some talent and even originality, but his influence was, on the whole, debasing to the national taste. He preferred portrait paint- ing, for, as he said, "painters of history make the dead live, and do not begin to live themselves till they are dead. I paint the living and they make me live," — a characteristic reason, for, as Walpole states, " where he ofl"ered one pict- ure to fame, he sacrificed twenty to lucre." He is even charged with the meanness of selling copies of his pictures for originals.

Many anecdotes are related of Kneller's excessive vanity. He once said to a low fellow whom he overheard cursing

22 INTRODUCTION.

himself : " God d you ! God may d the Duke of

Marlborough, and perhaps Sir Godfrey Kneller ; but do you

til ink he will take the trouble of d g such a scoundrel as

you?" Pope used to say, " Have you heard Sir Godfrey's dream? I thought I had ascended a very high hill to heaven, and saw Saint Peter at the gate with a great crowd behind him. When arrived there Saint Luke ^ immediately descried me, and asked if I were not the famous Sir God- frey Kneller? We had a long conversation about our be- loved art, and I had forgotten all about Saint Peter, who called out to me, ' Sir Godfrey, enter in, and take whatever station you like best.' " " Pope was once badly v/orsted in an encounter with the witty painter. Having laid a wager that there was no flattery so gross but that Kneller would swallow it, he said to him as he was painting, '' Sir Godfrey, I believe if God Almighty had had your assistance, the world would have been formed more perfect." "'Fore God, sir," replied Kneller, " I believe so ! " and he laid at the same time his hand gently upon the poet's deformed shoulder. Kneller lived through the reigns of Charles II., James II., William and Mary, Anne, and George I. who knighted him.

Naturally the presence in England of so many foreign painters of merit was not without its effect in stimulating and awakening the native talent ; and there had been all along native artists, some of them " painters to the King," such as were Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619) and Isaac Oliver (1555-1617), the celebrated miniature painters; George Jamesone (1586-1644), called by Walpole "the

^ The patron saint of painters.

'^ Sir Godfrey, vain as he was, was a modest man compared with his contemporary, Jervas. It is related of this poor dauber that, hav- ing copied, and as he thought, surpassed, a picture of Titian, he looked first at one and then at the other, exclaiming with parental compla- cency, " Pour little Tit ! how he would stare ! "

INTRODUCTION. 23

Scottish Van Dyck ; " William Dobson (1610-1646), called by Charles his " English Tintoret ; " Robert Walker, Cromwell's painter; Richard Gibson (16 15-1690), the dwarf; and Robert Streater ^ (1624-1680). These men, however, were successful only as clever imitators of the ruling style ; they were content to follow, without a thought of emulating, much less of innovating ; and it was only when patrons saw that painting was not, in the nature of things, extraneous, that it might be independently practised and improved by their own countrymen, that native art had a chance of free development. In Anne's reign Sir James Thornhill was elected over his competitor, the Italian Ricci, to paint the dome of St. Paul's ; and henceforth Englishmen began to hold the field. Sir James Thornhill was Hogarth's father-in-law, and Hogarth was, as we have seen, the Ciiotto of the '* school," the first native painter whose work bears upon it " the strong stamp of the native land."

Endeavoring to state more specifically the genealogies of English painting, we may say that in so far as it treats the incidents and philosophy of social life it flows, through Wilkie, Mulready, Leslie, and the older genre painters, direct from Hogarth, — whose art, minus its satirical and narrative spirit, was a heritage from the Dutch ; English landscape takes its origin from Wilson and Gainsborough, and English portraiture from Reynolds. With Hogarth,

1 Streater was the painter wliose decoration of the Oxford theatre inspired the silly panegyric, —

" That future ages must confess they owe To Streater more than Michael Angelo."

Graham called him "the greatest and most universal painter that England ever had;" and says that his being a good historian con- tributed not a little to his being a good historical painter; upon which Walpole tartly remarks, " He might as well say that reading the T<.ape of the Lock' would make one a good haircutter."

24 INTRODUCTION.

Reynolds, and Gainsborough we reach the grand period of English art ; and we may turn from following its general course to a brief sketch of its chief luminary.

The life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, prince of portrait paint- ers and most affable of men, was free from instances of that instability and unfitness for the ordinary business of life which proverbially mark the children of genius, and were so amusingly shown in his friend Goldsmith. Sir Joshua's success was two-fold ; he was the successful man as well as the successful painter, his career throughout supporting his own theory that effects commonly ascribed to innate powers, or " genius," are really due to unremitting, well-directed effort.

He was born, July i6, 1723, at Plympton, Devonshire, where his father, the Reverend Samuel Reynolds (a " Par- son Adams " in real Ufe), rector of the Plympton grammar- school, initiated him into those classical studies which, later, contributed to the refinement and grace of his pencil. He early discovered an inclination for his art — to the dis- satisfaction of his father who would have made him an apothecary — by diligently copying the prints that fell in his way, notably those in Cats's " Book of Emblems " and Plutarch's " Lives," and by mastering and applying, while in his eighth year, the Jesuit's " Rules of Perspective," and, afterwards, Richardson's " Theory of Painting." Overborne by the advice of friends the senior Reynolds was, in 1 740, mduced to yield to his son's preference of the palette and brush over the mortar and pestle ; and Joshua was sent to London and placed under the tuition of Hudson, a portrait painter of more vogue and pretension than merit. Under this barren source of instruction, however, he rapidly over- took his master, who did not, it seems, like Cimabue in a similar case,

" smile upon the lad At the first stroke which passed what he could do."

INTRODUCTION. 25

but, on the contrary, soon contrived to make things so un- pleasant for the too promising pupil that he remained in the studio but two of the four years for which he was bound, returning in 1 743 to Devonshire, and setting up for himself as portrait painter. He settled at Plymouth, where he met with prompt and unexpected success, painting some thirty portraits, and finding patrons whose good offices secured his future success. At this period he derived great benefit from the works and practical hints of William Gandy, of ICxeter, a fine colorist whose father had been a pupil of Van Dyck. One of Candy's maxims, never for- gotten by Sir Joshua, was that " a picture ought to have a richness in its texture, as if the, colors had been composed of cream or cheese, and the reverse of a hard and husky or dry manner."

While at Plymouth Reynolds saw his early dream of one day visiting the painter's Parnassus, the land of Raphael and Michael Angelo, shape itself into reality. Commodore Keppel, to whom he had been recommended by Lord Edgecombe, his life-long friend and patron, being appointed to the Mediterranean station, invited the young painter to accompany him, and he sailed from Plymouth early in 1749, and on his arrival at Leghorn proceeded to Rome, whence he reported, " I am now at the height of my wishes, in the midst of the greatest works of art that the world has produced."

Reynolds's practice and habit of study during his two years in Rome were regulated by the soundest judgment. Seeking truth, taste, and beauty at the fountain-head, he diligently copied, sketched, and mentally analyzed such portions of the works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Cuido, Titian, Veronese, and many others, as seemed to him to bear most directly upon his chosen branch, rarely copying the whole of a picture, but endeavoring to fix in his mind the peculiar excellence of each ; aspiring to the concep-

26 INTRODUCTION.

tions of the master as well as analyzing his processes, and studying the masterpieces in the Vatican for their subjec- tive effect rather than with the view of carrying them away piecemeal for future recombination, — though, as his notes and his whole theory and practice show, the borrowing and transplanting of the ideas of others was as little abhorrent to his artistic conscience as to Raphael's.

It need not surprise us that Reynolds's first feeling on viewing the wonders of Italian art was one of disappoint- ment, — especially when we reflect that the processes which in our day multiply masterpieces on every hand were unknown in his. Works conceived and wrought out in the spirit of noble simplicity and quiet dignity of the Greek sculptures — the true school of Michael Angelo and Raphael — seemed to him lacking in precisely those quali- ties, richness of color and striking effects of light and shade, which he had been used to regard as the crowning excel- lences of painting. The rhapsodies of Richardson had prepared him to be dazzled, like Saul of Tarsus, by a blaze of visual splendor ; and, his ideals not reaching beyond the showy effects of the painter's rhetoric, he did not at once perceive the less obvious qualities which place the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo beside those of poets and philosophers. Among his notes Reynolds left the following ingenuous account of his first visit to the Vatican ; and certainly no portion of his writings is more instructive and more characteristic of their author : —

" It has frequently happened, as I was informed by the keeper of the Vatican, that many of those whom he had con- ducted through the various apartments of that edifice, when about to be dismissed, have asked for the works of Raphael, and would not believe that they had already passed through the rooms where they are preserved ; so little impression had these performances made on them. One of the first painters in France told me that this circumstance happened to himself;

INTRODUCriON. 27

though he now looks on Raphael with that veneration which he deserves from all painters and lovers of art. I remember very well my own disappointment when I first visited the Vatican ; but on confessing my feelings to a brother student, of whose ingenuousness I had a high opinion, he acknowleged that the works of Raphael had the same effect on him ; or rather, that they did not produce the effect which he expected. This was a great relief to my mind ; and, on inquiring farther of other students, I found that those persons only who from natural imbecility appeared to be incapable of ever relishing these divine performances, made pretensions to instantaneous rap- tures on first beholding them. In justice to myself, however, I must add that, though disappointed and mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great master, I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of Raphael and those admirable paintings in particular owed their reputa- tion to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind ; on the con- trary, my not relishing them as I was conscious I ought to have done was one of the most humiliating things that ever haj)- pened to me. I found myself in the midst of works executed upon principles witli ivJiich I was unacquainted. I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed.

" All the indigested notions of painting which I had brought with me from England, where the art was at the lowest ebb — it could not indeed be lower — were to be totally done away with and eradicated from my mind. It was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should become as a little child. Notwithstanding my disappointment, I proceeded to copy some of those excellent works. I viewed them again and again; I even affected to feel their merits and to admire them more than I really did. In a short time a new taste and new perceptions began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced that I had originally formed tl false opinion of t/ie perfection of art, and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he holds in the estimation of the world.

" The truth is that if these works had been really what I ex- pected, they would have contained beauties superficial and alluring, but by no means such as would have entitled them to the great reputation which they have long and so justly obtained.

28 INTRODUCTION.

" Having since that period frequently revolved the subject in my mind, I am now clearly of opinion that a relish for the higher excellences of the art is an acquired taste, which no man ever possessed without long cultivation and great labor and at- tention. On such occasions as that which I have mentioned we are often ashamed of our apparent dulness, as if it were expected that our minds, like tinder, should instantly catch fire from the divine spark of Raphael's genius. I flatter myself that 7101U it would be so, and that I have a just perception of his great powers; but let it be remembered that the. excellence of his style is not on the surface, but lies deep, and at the first view is seen but mistily. It is the florid style which strikes at once, and captivates the eye for a time, without ever satisfying the judgment. Nor does painting in this respect differ from other arts. A just poetical taste, and the acquisition of a nice discriminative ear, are equally the work of time. Even the eye, however perfect in itself, is often unable to distinguish between the brilliancy of two diamonds, though the experienced jeweller will be amazed at its blindness, — not considering that there was a time when he himself could not have been able to pronounce which of the two was the most perfect, and that his own power of discrimination was acquired by slow and imperceptible degrees."

As already stated, Sir Joshua, while in Rome, by no means neglected the executive parts of his art, but was at the utmost pains to discover and acquire the various arti- fices by which the great masters had obtained their effects ; and I may say parenthetically that although he seems at times in his discourses disposed to belittle technical skil', no one more thoroughly knew its vital importance or owed more to its effects than himself. That he was, theoreti- cally, so determined a stickler for the intellectual in art may be regarded as the outcome, in a measure, of his de- bates with the jealous Johnson, who, with characteristic urbanity, pretended to despise his friend's profession as a handicraft. Critics are apt enough to undervalue those accomplishments of which they know least; and had the

IXTRODUCTION. 29

doctor himself made a serious practical essay with the pencil he must have discovered that the " handicraft " which painting certainly includes implies in itself, when fully attained, a rare combination of mental and physical gifts, — gifts in which, by the way, the short-sighted and un- pliable philosopher was himself eminently deficient. That Reynolds, though his chief aim at this period was to grasp the conceptions and imbibe something of the spirit of the great masters, did not overlook those details which are, after all, the blood, bone, and sinew of his calling, is shown in his voluminous notes, a specimen or two of which may be quoted as illustrative of his methods : —

"The Adonis of Titian in the Colonna palace is dead colored whit^, with the muscles marked bold; the second painting he scumbled a light color over it; the lights a mellow flesh color; the shadows, in the light parts, of a faint purple hue ; at least they were so at first. That purple hue seems to be occasioned by blackish shadows under, and the color scumbled over them.

"I copied the Titian in the Colonna collection with white, umber, minio, cinnabar, black; the shadows thin of color, perhaps little more than the dark ground left.

"In respect to painting the flesh tint, after it has been finished with very strong colors, such as ultramarine and carmine, pass white over it, very thin with oil. I believe it will have a won- derful effect.

"Or paint carnation too red. and then scumble it over with white and black.

"Then dead color with white and black only; at second sit- ting, carnation. (To wit, the Barocci at the palace Albani, and Correggio in the Pamphili.)^

1 In Reynolds's memoranda of December, 1755, we find the follow- ing record of the colors which he then made use of, and of the order in which they were arranged on his palette : —

" For painting the flesh : black, blue-black, white, lake, carmine, orpiment, yellow ochre, ultramarine, and varnish.

"To lay the palette, first lay carmine and white, in different

30 INTRODUCTION.

"Avoid the chalk, the brick-dust, and the charcoal; and

think on a pearl or a ripe peach."' ^

•

Thus Reynolds, while in Rome, " forged for his own use an armory of weapons, a magazine of rules and well-tried systems." Regarding, as he did, a great work of art, not as the reflection of a fitful, half-fortuitous flash of innate genius or " inspiration," but as the forced fruit of deliberate method and selection, he used his gleanings from the old masters as material to be reduced into fixed and definite principles for his own future guidance.

On leaving Rome he visited other Italian cities, Parma, where he fell under Correggio's influence, Florence, Venice, where he remained six weeks studying the great colorists upon whose works his own style was chiefly founded. ^

He had now been absent from England about three years, when he began to think of returning. He arrived in London in 1752, and took rooms in St. Martin's Lane, afterwards removing to the large house on Newport Street where he remained until his final removal to Leicester Square.

English art, as a national art, had already begun, as we have seen, under Hogarth ; and it remained for the genius of Reynolds to mature and elevate it, — his influence ex- tending more direcdy, of course, to his peculiar branch. That Sir Joshua, with his leaning toward what he called " the grand style," chose portraiture as his profession was due partly to his consciousness of an ignorance of anatomy which made it impossible for him at any period of his life

degrees ; second, lay orpiment and white, ditto; third, lay blue-black and white, ditto.

"The first sitting, for expedition, make a mixture on the palette as near the sitter's complexion as yon cnn."

^ An agreeable variation from the prosaic Gandy's " cream or cheese."

■^ His style " is precisely that denominated in his lectures the orna- mental style." — Thomas Phillits, K. A., Rces's Cyclopcvdia.

INTRODUCTION. 31

to draw the nude figure accurately, and partly to the fact that portrait painting was in England then the only path to substantial success. His propensity for ideal and historical painting, however, made him ambitious of infusing some- thing of its variety and picturesqueness into his chosen branch, and it was largely to this ambition that his supe- riority and the novelty of his style were due. At the period of his return the rapacity of Kneller and the affectations of Lely had contributed to reduce portraiture to its lowest ebb. Hogarth had already passed his prime, Wilson and Gains- borough were painting landscape, Hudson and a few others were making likenesses of the wooden, sign-post order. The art of elevating a portrait — by the addition of pleas- ing and suggestive accessories and by imparting life, character, and action to the figure — from a bald likeness into a true picture, a work charming and interesting irre- spective of the name and condition of the sitter, was un- known or forgotten. So far as they had gone, it was the Dutch side, the purely imitative side of their talent, that English painters had developed ; and painting was with them the merest mechanical operation, uninformed by taste, a simple transferring of the object before them to the can- vas, without reference to an animated or pleasing effect. If the painter chanced to be a man of unusually exuberant fancy, he modified the dress of the sitter, or, perhaps, by adding a sheep, or a dog, or a crook, aspired to the pas- toral. But such flights, inspired by Lely, were rare ; and the artist was commonly content to hand his patrons down to posterity, fishily staring, in the hats and wigs they usually wore.

The advent of Reynolds, equipped with the weapons and fired with the spirit of a higher school, revealed to his countrymen possibilities in the art hitherto undreamed of by them. His portraits were entirely unlike the vapid per- formances— mere transcripts of the sitter's outer shell — to

32 IXTRODUCTION.

which they were accustomed. By placing his figures in the midst of active Ufe, by revealing the individuality in the mind and form of each, and by surrounding them with ap- propriate circumstances and speaking details, he imparted to his portraits a spirit and attractiveness, an element of general and lasting interest, that seemed to raise them to the dignity of a higher branch of art. " They remind the spectator," said Burke, " of the invention of history, and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere."

Naturally, such expansive ideas did not at first hit the taste of the town. The jealousy of competitors — notably of his old master Hudson, who, on seeing one of his pieces, exclaimed, " Reynolds, you don't paint so well now as you did before you went to Italy," — and the prepossession in favor of Kneller and Lely were not easily overcome. Ellis, an eminent painter of the time, on seeing the picture which had displeased Hudson, was equally dissatisfied, or alarmed, and observed, with a prophetic shake of the head, " Oh, Reynolds, this will never answer ; why, you don't paint in the least degree in the m.anner of Kneller ; " and when the young artist began to vindicate his methods, the veteran, finding himself unable to defend his position logically, cried out in a rage, " Shakspeare in poetry, and Kneller in paint- ing, damme ! " and immediately left the room.

But the scale was finally and decisively turned when Rey- nolds exhibited his portrait of Commodore Keppel, — a work of such truth and spirit, combined with richness of color and picturesque general effect, as to silence disparagement. Al- luding to this portrait Malone has observed : " The whole interval between the time of Charles I. and the conclusion of the reign of George II., though distinguished by the per- formances of Lely, Riley, and Kneller, seemed to be an- nihilated ; and the only question was whether the new

5/V W. Hamilton.

INTRODUCTIO.W 33

painter or Van Dyck were the more excellent." Reynolds speedily became the vogue, and his studio was thronged, says Northcote, " with women who wished to be transmitted as angels, and men who wished to appear as heroes and philosophers."

From this time fonvard Reynolds's life, during a brilliant period of upwards of thirty years, was one of unbroken suc- cess. Other painters rose from time to time to share his popularity, — Gainsborough, Romney, Opie, Hoppner, — but not to contest his supremacy. Not to be painted by Rey- nolds was, for a person of note, almost a breach of duty ; and in his canvases we see mirrored the men and women who contributed, in whatever department, to the eminence of the period. Garrick, Siddons, Burke, Johnson, Gold- smith, Sterne, Fox, Boswell, Erskine, Gibbon, — philosophers, statesmen, actors, soldiers, — all are there, not stiffly or affect- edly posturing, but snatched, as it were, from the midst of life, the expression and action of the moment caught and held in suspension by the genius of the painter. We read in the German fairy-tale that, when the princess pricked her finger with the spindle, all life and motion in the castle was in an instant checked. Bound by the spell of the bad fairy, the queen sat, stilled for a hundred years, with uplifted fin- ger and parted lips, upon which a syllable still trembled ; the maid at her needle remained with bent head, and thread half-drawn ; the servant stood with bowl outstretched and foot advanced in the midst of the hall ; and the angry cook in the kitchen paused with spit in air and malediction half- uttered, while his victim's fleeting look and attitude of terror were frozen into perpetuity. So with Reynolds's figures ; the painter seems to have stolen upon his model unawares, and to have held in check, as if by magic, the passing act and look until he could fix it forever upon his canvas. For- ever? No. The saddest defect in his portraits is their evanescence. As with the auroral canvases of Turner, their

3

34 INTRODUCTION.

pristine splendor is passing into tradition. Italian paintings done three, or four, or five centuries ago are in many cases as bright and firm, almost, as when they left the easel ; while Reynolds's, after less than a century, are already fading into dimness. " Reynolds filled the halls of Fngland," says Ruskin, " with the ghosts of her noble squires and dames." " But alas ! " adds a commentator, " they are now, too many of them, the ghosts of ghosts." •*

Sir Joshua's " flying colors," so exquisite when newly laid, were pardy due, no doubt, to his lack of thorough element- ary training, and in part to a fondness for dabbling in ex- perimental mixtures,^ — a damnosa haereditas, perhaps, of his early studies in pharmacy. A firm believer in the " Vene- tian secret," he spent a great portion of his life in explor- ing arcana the key to which might endow his canvases with the richness of Titian and the flowery hues of Veronese ; and to such a length did he carry experiment that he utterly de- stroyed several fine paintings of the Venetian school to trace the process of laying on, and to analyze the chemical mix- ture of the tints. "There is not a man on earth," he used to say, " who has the least notion of coloring ; we all of us have it equally to seek for and find out, as at present it is totally lost to the art." That Reynolds did not realize that permanence, was the one quality lacking in his work to place him beside the world's greatest colorists is one of the most deplorable f'xcts in the history of English painting.

^ When a collection of them was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gal- lery, in 1SS4, "it was seen," said Ruskin, "broadly speaking, that neither the painter knew how to paint, the patron to preserve, nor the cleaner to restore " (Art 0/ England.) It is well to qualify this char- acteristic statement by (|uoting Sir George Beaumont's conclusion when some one complained that Sir Joshua "made his pictures die before the man " " Never mind," said Sir George, " a faded portrait by Reynolds is better than a fresh one by any one else "

■^ " The wonder is," said Haydon, alluding to this practice, " that the pictures did not crack beneath the brush."

INTRODUCTION. 35

Sir Joshua's career was, as has been stated, one of un- broken success, and it is in the ascending scale of his prices that his rising reputation is most readily traced. His origi- nal price for a head was five guineas ; in 1755 he raised it to twelve ; five years later it was twenty- five, ten years later thirty-five, while in his later years it was fifty. His industry may be judged from the fact that at the time when his price was twenty-five guineas, he told Ur. Johnson that he was making ;^6,ooo a year. He received six sitters a day, and calculated ui)on finishing a portrait in four hours. Yet his diligence was not the rapacious haste of Kneller. He said to Northcote that whenever a new sitter came for a portrait he began it with a full determination to make it the best of his works, even if the subject were unfavorable ; for there was always nature, and this was enough. One of the speedi- est of painters, Sir Joshua boasted that he had covered more canvas than any preceding artist in the three generations which he portrayed ; and within two years after his death Richardson published a list of seven hundred prints from his works. Taylor thinks that his authenticated pictures numbered about 3,000 ; and Hamilton's Catalogue states that there are 2,000 that can be placed.

Sir Joshua's life was not without external honors. In 1768, when the Royal Academy was founded, he was elected president by acclamation, and was knighted by the king, — an honor that has ever since been bestowed upon the holder of the office. In 1773 he was chosen mavor of his native town, Plympton, — a distinction, he told the king, which gave him more pleasure than any he had ever received, except, he politely added, " that which your Majesty so graciously conferred upon me." The academy dinners were started by him, and his discourses were delivered before the students at the annual prize-giving. In order that means might not be lacking to follow his constantly reiterated advice, " study the old masters," he

36 INTRODUCTION.

offered the academy his own collection of pictures at a very low price, but the proposal was unwisely declined. A quarrel with the directors, the one embitterment of his life, was perhaps the outcome of this refusal. The ostensible ground of dispute was the election of the eccentric Anglo- Swiss Fuseli to the professorship of perspective over Rey- nolds's candidate, Bonomi. During the contest Gibbon wrote him from Lausanne : " I hear you have had a quarrel with your academicians. Fools as they are ! for such is the tyranny of character that no one will believe your enemies can be in the right."

In 1789, when he was in his sixty-sixth year, his left eye became suddenly darkened while he was painting a por- trait. Within ten weeks its sight was totally gone, and he was thenceforth compelled to practically relinquish his profession, taking up the pencil only occasionally to re- touch the many portraits which had been left on his hands. " There is now an end of the pursuit," said he to Sheri- dan ; " the race is over, whether it is won or lost."

His final discourse was delivered December 10, 1790; he was afterwards seized with a liver complaint, and after a long illness, " borne with a mild and cheerful fortitude," he died on February 23, 1792. A magnificent funeral was accorded the dead painter. The pall-bearers were the Dukes of Dorset, Leeds, and Portland ; the Marquises of Abercorn and Townshend ; the Earls of Carlisle, Inchiquin, and Upper Ossory; and Lords Palmerston and Eliot. Ninety-one carriages followed the hearse, bearing a noble company of peers and knights, scholars and prelates, and the entire body of the Royal Academicians. Burke wrote that " everything turned out fortunately for poor Sir Joshua, from the moment of his birth to the hour I saw him laid in the grave. Never was a funeral of ceremony attended with so much sincere concern by all sorts of people." He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, the resting-place of Sir

INTRODUCTION. 37

Christopher Wren and the great Van Dyck, and his eulogy was written by Burke, who characterized him as " one of the most memorable men of his time, and the first English- man who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country."

On Sir Joshua's deficiencies as a painter we need not dwell. For the most of us there is Uttle to be gained and much to be lost in prying into and analyzing things pri- marily meant for our enjoyment. Beauty analyzed is beauty slain ; and it is, after all, wiser to rest satisfied with inhal- ing the fragrance of the flower of art and enjoying its per- fections, than to pull it to pieces, count the petals and stamens, and resolve the perfume into an essence scientifi- cally procurable from wayside weeds. ^

Reynolds's defects are, for the most part, imi)lied in his perfections. He was too wise to put in practice what at times he impliedly preached, — the attempt at blending "contrary excellences;" and one may as well regret that the crimson of the rose is not added to the whiteness of the lily as to impute to his works a lack of qualities negative to those to which they owe their peculiar charm. The dash and freedom, the light touch and ready artifice, the prefer- ence of the momentary grace and prettiness, the transient look and act, give to his portraits a sketchiness or littleness of effect when we compare them with the best of the old masters ; yet the defect is the concomitant of the charm ; anil the world is certainly the richer in that to the finish and consummate workmanship of a Holbein is added the "magnificent sketching" of a Reynolds.

1 There is a fine moral to be drawn from Heine's summary of a too dialectical man : —

" In seinem Streben nach dem Positivum liatte der arme Mann sich alles ITerrliche aus dem Leben herausiihilosojihiert, alle St)n- nenstralilen, alien Glaubcn und alle Blumen, und es blieb ihm nichts iibrig als das kalte, positive Grab."

38 INTRODUCTION.

He is the painter of English gentlemen, and English ladies, and English children, painting these to perfection and painting little else — save charming bits of English landscape to set them in. This is his range ; but within that range, how various he is ! He is the courtliest, the most graceful of his crafl. His portraits stir no profound thoughts, challenge no inquiry. He rarely meddles with the deeper moods and passions, and in his world one finds none of those sombre, solemn-thoughted people of Italian portraiture, faces with an under-glovv of smouldering passion or hidden import, like that of Leonardo's " Mona Lisa," — a Sphinx-face with its veiled eyes and enigmatic smile. "The style is the man." From the profusion of nature the painter selects the facts most congenial to his temperament, sequesters them, and fixes them upon the canvas. Sir Joshua was all gentleness and afifability, one of the most gra- cious of recorded characters, in the best sense a courtier ; his lines had fallen in pleasant places, and he reflected the world as he saw it, — a trim, well-kept English world of park and woodland and cheerful vista, of smooth-rolling green- sward chequered with flickering lights and shadows, peopled with the stateliest of gentlemen, the loveliest of ladies, the most artless of children. The grace of Reynolds has passed into a proverb ; and in this quality, within certain limits, he is equal to any of the Italians. As a painter of children he stands pre-eminent, — thanks, perhaps, in part to his models, for no children are so charming as English chil- dren, with their unspoiled naturalness and dainty freshness and purity of color. There was something in the kindly nature of the painter keenly responsive to the humors of the little ones, to whom he never failed to endear himself; and, oddly enough, no one has rendered so lovingly and ac- curately, and in such manifold phases, the special charm of childhood as the childless Reynolds.

His greatness stopped with portraiture. Admirable and

Ladv Chillies Spencer.

INTRODUCTION. 39

various as he was within his scope, his scope itself was strangely limited, petty, even, when one recalls the mag- nificent universality of a Raphael, whose genius swept the field of pictorial achievement, taking all art for its province, equally at home amid the flowering arabesques of the Loggie, and the sublime conceptions of the Camera della Segnatura. Reynolds's attempts at ideal and historical com- positions are failures, — at the best, pale reflections, some- times, it must be confessed, mere caricatures. When he touches the tragical and supernatural he is at his worst ; as bad, almost, as Fuseli, Barry, West, Haydon, and the rest of the Italianized group, — " moths who burnt thei: poor wings in the flame of Latin art." Let the reader mentally compare the grotesque goblins, the paltry panto- mine terrors of his " Macbeth and the Witches," or the vapid symbolical figures that debase his superb portrait of Mrs. Siddons, with the terrific forms,

" The airy shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,"

that rose at the beck of Michael Angelo, and his feebleness becomes apparent.

To this slight sketch of Reynolds the painter, it remains to add a few words of Reynolds the man. Northcote, his pupil and biographer, has thus described him : —

" In his stature Sir Joshua Reynolds was rather under the middle size, of a florid complexion, roundish blunt features, and a lively aspect, — extremely active, with manners uncommonly polished and agreeable. In conversation his manner was per- fectly natural, simple, and unassuming. He most heartily enjoyed his profession, in which he was both famous and illus- trious ; and I agree with Mr. Malone, who says he appeared to him to be the happiest man he had ever known."

Eminent as he was in his profession, Reynolds is perhaps even better known as a member of the Boswellian coterie, — as a sharer, with Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Gibbon, Gar-

40 INTRODUCTION.

rick, and the other Olympians, in the famous symposia at the " Turk's Head." No name appears more frequently in the memoirs of the time, and none is more tenderly treated. He was the founder, with Johnson, of the Literary Club, — the original purpose of which seems to have been to afford the " Great Cham " a fair field and plenty of heads for the exercise of his controversial cudgel. Gold- smith's crown was cracked the most frequently, — except, of course, Boswell's, — and Sir Joshua's the least. " Sir Joshua Reynolds, sir," Johnson once said to Boswell, " is the most invulnerable man I know ; the man with whom if you should quarrel, you would find the most difficulty how to abuse." With the disputatious scholars of the day conver- sation meant a duel a outrance. The monologue epoch, the epoch of Coleridge, Macaulay, Carlyle, had not yet dawned, and the giants of talk loved an antagonist who, like Burke, "calls forth all your powers," and "puts his mind fairly to yours." It was pre-eminently the age of dispute , and Lord Ashburton — himself no mean comba- tant— once said to Reynolds, after a specially stormy sitting, "The last time I dined in your house the company was of

such a sort that, by ! I believe all the rest of the world

enjoyed peace for that afternoon." Like the beasts in a menagerie, the quarrelsome literati seem to have been most unruly at feeding-time. At the "Turk's Head," where the Genius of Discord was often active. Sir Joshua's function seems to have been that of moderator or peacemaker in general. No voice was so potent as his to still the angry growls of the dread lexicographer, who even admitted that " when Sir Joshua Reynolds, sir, tells me something, I con- sider myself as possessing an idea the more." Not that Reynolds did not come in for an occasional tap from the lion's paw. Upon one occasion, when the argument turned upon the use of wine, Johnson, who was rather worsted in the dispute, impatiently exclaimed, " I won't argue any

LXTRODUCTION. 41

more with you, sir ; you are too far gone ! " "I should have thought so indeed, sir," mildly replied the painter, "had 1 made such a speech as you have now," — which was perhaps the most effective rebuke ever received by the bullying Doctor. Such scenes, however, were rare between these illustrious friends, each of whom, in his way, admired and reverenced the other. " Reynolds," says Northcote, " was truly the duke decus, and with whom he maintained an uninterrupted intimacy to the last of his life." Johnson, though no judge of art, respected his friend's genius, sitting to him several times,^ and denouncing reluctance to sit for one's portrait as " an anfractuosity of the human mind." He even took up the cudgels for Sir Joshua's branch of art as contradistinguished from ideal and historical painting. " Genius," he said, " is chiefly exerted in historical pict- ures, and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as it is in life ; what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendor and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead." It was at Reynolds's house that the Doctor had his fiimous bout with the Dean of Derry, whom he grossly insulted. Naturally, the Dean lost his temper, which, as became his cloth, he afterwards regretted. He signified his admiration of the placid de-

1 In the famous portrait in the National Gallery he is shown read- ing, with the book held close to the eyes after the manner of near- sighted people, — a mode of representation strenuously objected to by the ]5hilosopher. "It is not friendly," he said, "to hand down to posterity the imperfections of any man. . . . Let Sir Joshua do his worst, ... he may paint himself as deaf as he chooses ; but I will not be Blinkivi^ Sam." Upon some one else, however, remarking that the portrait lacked dignitv, he growled out, " No, sir ! the pencil of Reynolds never wanted dignity or the graces."

42 INTRODUCTION.

meanor of the painter under like trials in the following

verses : —

" Dear Knight of Plympton, teach me how To suffer with unclouded brow

And smile serene as thine, The jest uncouth, and truth severe ; Like thee to turn my deafest ear, And cahnly drink my wine.

" Thou say'st not only skill is gained But genius too may be attained

By studious invitation ; Thy temper mild, thy genius fine, I '11 study till I make them mine

By constant meditation."

With Goldsmith, Sir Joshua's relations were no less friendly. When the Royal Academy was founded the poet was, at his instance, appointed Professor of Ancient His- tory, an honor which he thus amusingly mentioned in a letter to his brother : —

"The King has lately been pleased to make me Professor of Ancient History in a Royal Academy of Painting which he has just established ; but there is no salary annexed, and I took it rather as a compliment to the Institution than any benefit to myself. Honors to one in my situation are something like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt."

Reynolds's portrait of the poet is an excellent example of his faculty of elevating his works by showing the sitters in their finer moods, — for there are moments when the plainest faces light into a sort of beauty, — preserving at the same time strict accuracy of likeness. Leslie called this portrait the most pathetic picture Reynolds ever painted, and he was right. It is not the childish " Goldy " of Bos- well, the vagrant flute-player, the whimsical lodger who used to put the candle out by throwing his slipper at it, that the painter shows us; the cap and bells (so often associated with the profoundest pathos) are laid aside ;

INTRODUCTION. 43

the cloud of folly, absurdity, caprice, seems to have fallen from him like a mantle ; it is the patient, kindly scholar, the genius who left the nations in his debt, that looks out from the canvas.

Goldsmith inscribed " The Deserted Village " to Rey- nolds in the following touching words : " The only dedica- tion I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this poem to you." Had Reynolds never limned a canvas these words should have kept his memory green. Goldsmith's last work — left unfinished — was the sportive epitaph which, Taylor thinks, will ever remain the best epitome of Sir Joshua's character. It reads as follows :

" Here Reynolds is laid ; and, to tell you my mind, He has not left a wiser or better behind. His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; Still born to improve us in every part, — His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, When they judged without skill he was still hard of hearing; When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff."

Northcote says that on the day of (joldsmith's death Sir Joshua did not touch the pencil, — "a circumstance the most extraordinary for him, who passed no day without a line."i

Reynolds's character may be fitly summed up in the words of Edmund Burke, who said, " I do not know a fault or a weakness of his that he did not convert into something that bordered on a virtue, instead of pushmg it to the con- fines of a vice."

1 Some of Reynolds's friends used to remonstrate with him on his liabit of working at his art on Sundays. Johnson's death-bed request to him was, never to paint on Sunday, to read his Bible often, and to forgive him a debt of ^^30

44 INTRODUCTION.

Like all original thinkers, Sir Joshua Reynolds has been, to adapt the words of Falstaff, not only wise in himself, but the cause that wisdom is in other men, his discourses hav- ing long served as a quarry for subsequent builders, as well as a pretext for laborious comment and confutation. Their composer was too shining a mark to escape detraction ; and the genial painter has even been made the victim of a phase of criticism that displays its acumen in beclouding the titles of authors to their own works, — a curious, and not very amiable " anfractuosity of the human mind," as Dr. John- son might have said, which bred the suspicion that Sir Joshua Reynolds's discourses were the work of Burke, of Johnson, of any one, in fact, rather than of the man who claimed them, and to whom they were credited by the com- mon sense of mankind. Death is thus armed with a new terror for authors ; but, happily, in Sir Joshua's case the charge of imposture has been fully disproved.

In addition to their character as a collection of precepts and observations drawn from the experience of a great painter, the discourses embody a definite attempt at a pliilosophy of art, the first serious essay in the English lan- guage in the direction of aesthetic science ; and it is, nat- urally, on their speculative side that they have provoked attack. Sir Joshua has been accused, not entirely without reason, of belittling personal greatness, of denying the ex- istence of genius, or, what amounts to the same thing, of asserting that it may be acquired. The visionary Blake, to whom Reynolds's substitution of reason for rhapsody in aesthetic discussion was both distasteful and unintelligible, was specially bitter on this point. " Reynolds's opinion," he said, " was that genius may be taught, and all pretence to inspiration is a lie or a deceit, to say the least of it. If it is deceit, the whole Bible is madness." The famous Third Discourse Blake vehemently denounced as " particularly in- teresting to blockheads, as it endeavors to prove that there

INTRODUCTION. 45

is no such thing as inspiration, and that any man of plain understanding may, by thieving from others, become a Michael Angelo." Again : " It is evident that Reynolds wished none but fools to be in the arts, and in order to compass this, he calls all others rogues, enthusiasts, or mad- men. What has reasoning to do with the art of painting? " Reasoning had certainly very little to do with his own dis- tempered productions, and the cairn, philosophical Rey- nolds had certainly very little sympathy with mystics who ascribe to their own incoherent whimsies a divine origin ; but that the strictures quoted are absurdly overstrained, those who read the discourses throughout, and fairly con- sider them as a whole, need not be told.

Still, there is color of truth in Blake's censures, and the casual reader is not unlikely to fall into his error as to Rey- nolds's idea of genius, — which, as interpreted by Blake, is certainly a comfortable one for the rank and file of man- kind. The meaning of an author may be easily distorted by citing, or mistaken by reading, him in detached passages ; and this is especially true of Reynolds, whose discourses were deliv'ered at long interv^als, and who, in those portions in which he assumes the dual role of speculative thinker and practical teacher, is occasionally led into inconsistencies. Reynolds the painter not infrequently qualifies the dicta of Reynolds the theorist ; and it is only by reading him as a a whole that his real sense is to be got. At times, in his anxiety for the logical compactness of his scheme, he seems to justify the censures of Blake ; while in the next sentence, perhaps, loosed from the meshes of his metaphysical web, he bows to the truth that every truly great art-product is the unique fruit of personal qualities which, it is infinity to one, will never be exactly repeated in an individual. That so sensible a man as Sir Joshua Reynolds really believed in the efiicacy of his own system, or of any system wr.atsoever, to produce artistic figs from intellectual thistles, to trans-

46 IXTR OD UC TIOiV.

form the incipient daubers to whom he was trying to con- vey a proper conception of their art into Raphaels or Michael Angelos, is too absurd to be supposed for a mo- ment. Indeed, he cautiously prefaces his famous definition of great art, to be quoted presently, by saying, " It is not easy to define in what this great style consists ; nor to de- scribe by words the proper means of acquiring it, if the ?nind pf the student should be at all capable of such an acquisition,''' — a courteous but sufficiently forcible way of stating that in no event is one to expect the blast of a trumpet from a penny whistle. Touching this point, too, it is to be remem- bered that the lectures were primarily addressed to students, and it was a part of the speaker's duty to lay stress upon the potency of well-directed industry ; and I may add that its noble results in his own case may stand as his best justification.

Reynolds's system is the reflection of his own career and character. He was an intellectual rather than an imagina- tive man, — a man accustomed to observe closely,^ and to systematize his observations ; his own art was largely the result of careful study and selection, a splendid victory of the will ; and his mental complexion led him to believe — or, at least, when the brush was out of his hand, to believe that he believed — that " the whole beauty and grandeur of the art " could be reduced to a few set principles, and packed away snugly in a definition. Great art he held to be largely a matter of method and procedure ; those who had attained it had obeyed certain rules and carried out certain principles ; and to ascertain those rules and princi- ples was the task he proposed to himself, — not that he hoped to formulate a recipe by which average men could produce the effects of genius, as Blake hints. Setting the wayfarer upon the high road is one thing ; guaranteeing

- " I know no man who has passed through life with more observa- tion than Sir Joshua Reynolds," said Johnson.

IXTRODUCTIOX. 47

his arrival at his destination is quite another. " It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine."

That Reynolds was far from underrating what was unique and unteachable in the genius of the great masters whose names were so often upon his lips, his writings testify. His profound veneration of Michael Angelo, for example, as expressed at the close of the last discourse, could scarcely have b^en due to a conception of Michael Angelo as a phenomenally industrious and methodical man. " Yet however unequal," he says, " I feel myself to that attempt, were I to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master ; to kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man. I feel a self- congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite.-^ I reflect, not without vanity, that these discourses bear testimony to my admiration of that truly divine man ; and I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy and from this place might be the name of Michael Angela'' These are not words of detraction.

Reynolds's theory as to the nature of great art was largely the fruit of his Italian studies, and may be described as the dawning consciousness in English art-criticism that there is an excellence in painting distinct from that belonging to manual skill ; and that the tooth-drawings, fisticuffs, and boorish merrymakings of a Brouwer or a Teniers, exquisitely painted and, in their degree, desirable though they may be, do not fulfil the highest office of art. Greatness of style consisted essentially, he held, in a preference of the gen- eral to the particular ; of the typical to the individual ; in

1 In his Roman notes Sir Joshua naively speaks of passing an entire clay in the Sistine Chapel, " walking up and clown it with great self-importance," glorying in the fact that he was able to comprehend the works of Michael Angelo.

48 INTR OD UCTION.

the suppression of all incident and detail in favor of general harmony. Perfect beauty exists in the individual only in so far as the individual conforms to the type. As he ex- pressed it, greatness of style lies " in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind; " and the first study of the painter who aims at excellence should be the " long, laborious com- parison " which, by "observing what any set of objects of the same kind have in common, has acquired the power of discerning what each wants in particular." The painter so equipped is "enabled to distinguish the accidental deficien- cies, excrescences, and deformities of things from their gen- eral figures," and thus " makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any original."

To Reynolds, as we have seen, great art was but the lengthened shadow of the Italian masters ; in their works alone were the elements of grandeur to be sought, and his definition of greatness of style is essentially a statement of the tendency of Latin, as distinguished from Saxon art, — its disposition to generalize, to soar into the abstract, to get above, or, at least, to get away from, the plain facts of actual life. One can fancy Reynolds, broadly speaking, to have reasoned the matter out in this way : Italian art is the only great art ; Italian art generalizes ; therefore, great art generalizes. From the art of a race and an epoch he ex- tracted the spirit, and pronounced it the criterion. of excel- lence for all races and all time. That there could be another phase of greatness, another field in which another type of genius could expatiate, does not seem to have oc- curred to him, — nor the folly of attempting to ingraft upon his countrymen ideals and aspirations as foreign to their dispositions as are the olive and the vine to their soil.

We need not enter here upon the old discussion of the relative merits of the two styles, the Latin and the Saxon, — one of those time- honored, futile questions in which, as

INTRODUCTION. 49

Sancho Panza sagely observed, " there is a great deal that may be said on both sides," and in respect of which no human being was ever yet brought by force of logic to change his opinion. This much is certain, the world's greatness is not of one race or period, nor is true greatness even a reflected light ; " whatever is to be truly great and truly affecting must have on it the strong stamp of the native land."

To accept Reynolds's standard literally would be to ex- clude from the pale of great art a multitude of works — his own certainly included — justly reckoned among the glories of painting, and to confine the term to a grand but narrow class best exemplified by the works of Michael Angelo and a few incomparable fragments of Greek sculpture. His definition is insufficient rather than wholly false, for it touches a vital characteristic of a great class, and dimly foreshadows the truth as to detail in art, — that high art " gets above," not the details themselves, but the paltry use of them, the treating them as an end rather than a means ; for genius is as " the wind w-hich bloweth where it listeth," making free use of even " all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind," whenever they may be made to serve its purposes.

It may, perhaps, be argued in support of Reynolds's views that the greatest examples of great art have been wrought out upon principles identical with or analogous to those he advances. That there may be, when the hand of the workman is fitted to the task, an added grandeur due to the departure from the individual and the approach to the type, one cannot but feel when comparing certain masterpieces that conform to his rule with kindred repre- sentations that do not. Compare, for example, the Venus de Milo, that highly artificial synthesis in marble of womanly perfections, with the coquettishly beautiful Queen of the Tribuna, the Venus tie Medicis. There can be no doubt

50 INTRODUCTION.

in which of these two cases the sculptor has held to the rule that "' nature herself is not to be too closely imitated." In the former work one sees, not portraiture, but the result of a deliberate selective process, the material em- bodiment of an ideal ; it is not the wanton Aphrodite whom Vulcan snared in his net amid the laughter of high Olympus, but a goddess divinely unconscious of the pas- sions over which she presides, — the ideal of Lucretius, " the desired of men and gods, the universal mother, who beneath the circling stars gives increase to the ship- bearing sea, gives increase to the earth the mother of harvests, and favors the conception of every living creature, and their birth into the light of day." The Medicean Venus is simply the model transferred to marble, a beautiful woman — her individuality emphasized by the immodestly modest attitude and modishly dressed hair — posing as Aphrodite ; some forgotten Phryne, perhaps, who still

" loves in stone, and fills The air around with beauty."

The spirit that informs Sir Joshua Reynolds's discourses is a noble one. Aim at the highest, — " hitch your wagon to a star," — is the burden of his counsel. He has left an eloquent and convincing plea for mind in the arts ; for the strangely controverted truth that the painter's work — leaving for the moment executive merit out of the count — rises in quality with the degree of taste, culture, intellectual power it exhibits. Given two men of like manual dexterity, it is the one whose mind is enriched with the fruits of a liberal culture that will climb the higher. To insist upon intellectual quality as the final test ; to adopt the rule that " the art is greatest which includes the greatest ideas," ^ is not to detract from technical skill, but to presuppose it. In art or in literature the expression of great ideas implies

1 Ruskin.

INTRODUCnOX. 51

grandeur of diction, and a consummate power over mate- rials or words, without which the genius of a Raphael or a Francia, a IMilton or a Byron would be inarticulate and null.

On the other hand, a high degree of technical merit may exist in a work which a man like Reynolds would not hesi- tate to pronounce despicable, and hopelessly outside the pale of the fine arts. To cite a very moderate example : " A few years ago," says Professor Middleton, "a gold medal was won at the Paris saloii by a naturalist picture, a master- piece of technical skill. It represented Job as an emaciated old man covered with ulcers, carefully studied in Paris hospitals for skin diseases." As a piece of technique this normal fruit of a deplorable canon of artistic criticism may have been as perfect as the "Transfiguration;" we may admit that it was so, and yet blush to institute, even for the sake of illustration, the comparison between them.

Sir Joshua Reynolds set his standards high, — much too high for average human achievement ; and, in his exaltation of the Grand Style he would seem to have forgotten that the snow-clad peaks, the glacier regions of solitary grandeur to which he pointed the gaze and ambition of the student, tower remotely above the real interests and affections of men ; that the teeming valleys below the regions of eternal snow are infinitely richer in the elements of human sym- pathy and enjoyment.

Sublime as he was, and, in his province and degree, in- comparably great, there are few of us, I think, who do not turn with heart- felt if shame- faced pleasure from the chill- ing intellectual sublimity of a Michael Angelo to the gentler graces, the sweet humanity, and familiar charm of a Gainsborough, a Steen, a Wilkie, a Reynolds.

E. G. J.

July 16, 1 89 1.

Mrs. Siddons as the Traffic Muse.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

DISCOURSE I.

Delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy^ January 2, 1769.

THE ADVANTAGES PROCEEDING FROM THE INSTITUTION OF A ROYAL ACADEMY. — HINTS OFFERED TO THE CONSIDERATION OF THE PROFESSORS AND VISITORS. — THAT AN IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE TO THE RULES OF ART BE EXACTED FROM THE YOUNG STUDENTS. — THAT A PREMATURE DISPOSITION TO A MASTERLY DEXTERITY BE REPRESSED. — THAT DILIGENCE BE CONSTANTLY RECOMMENDED, AND (that IT MAY BE EFFECTUAL) DIRECTED TO ITS PROPER OBJECT.

An academy in which the polite arts may be regularly cultivated is at last opened among us by royal munificence. This must appear an event in the highest degree interesting, not only to the artist, but to the whole nation.

It is, indeed, difficult to give any other reason why an empire like that of Britain should so long have wanted an ornament so suitable to its greatness, than that slow progression of things which naturally makes elegance and refinement the last effect of opulence and power.

An institution like this has often been recom- mended upon considerations merely mercantile ; but an academy founded upon such principles can never

54 REYiYOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

effect even its own narrow purposes. If it has an origin no higher, no taste can ever be formed in manufactures ; but if the higher arts of design flour- ish, these inferior ends will be answered of course.

We are happy in having a prince who has conceived the design of such an institution according to its true dignity, and who promotes the arts as the head of a great, a learned, a polite, and a commercial nation; and I can now congratulate you, gentlemen, on the accomplishment of your long and ardent wishes.

The numberless and ineffectual consultations which I have had with many in this assembly to form plans and concert schemes for an academy afford a suffi- cient proof of the impossibility of succeeding but by the influence of Majesty. But there have, perhaps, been times when even the influence of Majesty would have been ineffectual ; and it is pleasing to reflect that we are thus embodied when every circumstance seems to concur from which honor and prosperity can probably arise.

There are at this time a greater number of excel- lent artists than were ever known before at one period in this nation ; there is a general desire among our nobility to be distinguished as lovers and judges of the arts ; there is a greater superfluity of wealth among the people to reward the professors; and, above all, we are patronized by a monarch who, knowing the value of science and of elegance, thinks every art worthy of his notice that tends to soften and humanize the mind.

After so much has been done by His Majesty it will be wholly our fault if our progress is not in some

THE FIRST DISCOURSE. 55

degree correspondent to the wisdom and generosity of the institution. Let us show our gratitude in our diligence, that, though our merit may not answer his expectations, yet, at least, our industry may deserve his protection.

But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this wc may be sure, that the present institution will at least contribute to advance our knowledge of the arts, and bring us nearer to that ideal excellence which it is the lot of genius always to contemplate, and never to attain.

The principal advantage of an academy is that, besides furnishing able men to direct the student, it will be a repository for the great examples of the art. These are the materials on which genius is to work, and without which the strongest intellect may be fruitlessly or deviously employed. By studying these authentic models that idea of excellence which is the result of the accumulated experience of past ages may be at once acquired ; and the tardy and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us a shorter and easier way. The student receives at one glance the principles which many artists have spent their whole lives in ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect, is spared the painful investigation by which they came to be known and fixed. How many men of great natural abilities have been lost to this nation for want of these advantages! They never had an opportunity of seeing those masterly efforts of genius which at once kindle the whole soul and force it into sudden and irresistible approba- tion.

56 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

Raphael, it is true, had not the advantage of study- ing in an academy; but all Rome, and the works of Michael Angelo in particular, were to him an acad- emy. On the sight of the Capella Sistina, he imme- diately, from a dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner, which attends to the minute accidental discriminations of particular and individual objects, assumed that grand style of painting which improves partial repre- sentation by the general and invariable ideas of nature.

Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowl- edge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat con- genial to its own original conceptions. Knowledge thus obtained has always something more popular and useful than that which is forced upon the mind by private precepts or solitary meditation. Besides, it is generally found that a youth more easily receives instruction from the companions of his studies, whose minds are nearly on a level with his own, than from those who are much his superiors ; and it is from his equals only that he catches the fire of emulation.

One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our Academy which no other nation can boast; we shall have nothing to unlearn. To this praise the present race of artists have a just claim. As far as they have yet proceeded, they are right With us the exertions of genius will henceforward be directed to their proper objects. It will not be as it has been in other schools, where he that trav- elled fastest only wandered farthest from the right way.

THE FIRST DISCOURSE. 57

Impressed as I am, therefore, with such a favor- able opinion of my associates in this undertaking, it would ill become me to dictate to any of them. But as these institutions have so often failed in other nations, and as it is natural to think with regret how much might have been done, I must take leave to offer a few hints by which those errors may be recti- fied, and those defects supplied. These the profes- sors and visitors may reject or adopt as they shall think proper.

I would chiefly recommend that an implicit obedi- ence to the Rules of Art, as established by the prac- tice of the great masters, should be exacted from the yoimg students, — that those models which have passed through the approbation of ages should be considered by them as perfect and infallible guides ; as subjects for their imitation, not their criticism.

I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a progress in the arts ; and that he who sets out with doubting will find life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments. For it may be laid down as a maxim that he who begins by presuming on his own sense has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them. Every oppor- tunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that false and vulgar opinion, that rules are the fetters of genius ; they are fetters only to men of no genius, — as that armor which upon the strong is an orna- ment and a defence, upon the weak and misshapen becomes a load, and cripples the body which it was made to protect.

58 REVA'OLDS'S DISCOURSES.

How much liberty may be taken to break through those rules, and, as the poet expresses it,

" To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,"

may be a subsequent consideration, when the pupils become masters themselves. It is then, when their ge- nius has received its utmost improvement, that rules may possibly be dispensed with. But let us not de- stroy the scaffold until we have raised the building.

The directors ought more particularly to watch over the genius of those students who, being more advanced, are arrived at that critical period of study on the nice management of which their future turn of taste depends. At that age it is natural for them to be more captivated with what is brilliant than with what is solid, and to prefer splendid negligence to painful and humiliating exactness.

A facility in composing, a lively, and what is called a masterly, handling of the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed, captivating qualities to young minds, and become, of course, the objects of their ambition. They endeavor to imitate these dazzling excellences which they will find no great labor in attaining. After much time spent in these frivolous pursuits, the difificulty will be to retreat; but it will be then too late ; and there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labor after the mind has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious mastery.

By this useless industry they are excluded from all power of advancing in real excellence. While boys they are arrived at their utmost perfection ; they have taken the shadow for the substance, and make

THE FIRST DISCOURSE. 59

the mechanical fehcity the chief excellence of the art, which is only an ornament, and of the merit of which few but painters themselves arc judges.

This seems to me to be one of the most dangerous sources of corruption ; and I speak of it from experi- ence, not as an error which may possibly happen, but which has actually infected all foreign academies. The directors were probably pleased with this pre- mature dexterity in their pupils, and praised their despatch at the expense of their correctness.

But young men have not only this frivolous ambi- tion of being thought masters of execution inciting them on one hand, but also their natural sloth tempt- ing them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labor, to take the citadel by storm. They wish to find some shorter path to excel- lence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other means than those w4iich the indispensable rules of art have prescribed. They must, therefore, be told again and again that labor is the only price of solid fame, and that whatever their force of genius may be, there is no easy method of becoming a good painter.

When we read the lives of the most eminent painters every page informs us that no part of their time was spent in dissipation. Even an increase of fame served only to augment their industry. To be convinced with what persevering assiduity they pur- sued their studies, we need only reflect on their method of proceeding in their most celebrated works. When

60 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

they conceived a subject, they first made a variety of sketches; then a finished drawing of the whole; after that a more correct drawing of every separate part, — heads, hands, feet, and pieces of drapery; they then painted the picture, and after all, retouched it from the life. The pictures thus wrought with such pains now appear like the effect of enchantment, and as if some mighty genius had struck them off at a blow.

But, while diligence is thus recommended to the students, the visitors will take care that their diligence be effectual; that it be well directed, and employed on the proper object. A student is not always advancing because he is employed ; he must apply his strength to that part of the art where the real difficulties lie, — to that part which distinguishes it as a liberal art; and not by mistaken industry lose his time in that which is merely ornamental. The stu- dents, instead of vying with each other which shall have the readiest hand, should be taught to contend who shall have the purest and most correct outline ; instead of striving which shall produce the brightest tint, or, curiously trifling, shall give the gloss of stuffs so as to appear real, let their ambition be directed to contend which shall dispose his drapery in the most graceful folds, which shall give the most grace and dignity to the human figure.

I must beg leave to submit one thing more to the consideration of the visitors, which appears to me a matter of very great consequence, and the omission of which I think a principal defect in the method of education pursued in all the academies I have ever visited. The error I mean is that the students never draw exactly from the living models which they have

THE FIRST DISCOURSE. 6 1

before them. It is not, indeed, their intention, nor are they directed to do it. Their drawings resemble the model only in the attitude. They change the form according to their vague and uncertain ideas of beauty, and make a drawing rather of what they think the figure ought to be than of what it appears. I have thought this the obstacle that has stopped the progress of many young men of real genius ; and I very much doubt whether a habit of drawing cor- rectly what we see will not give a proportionable power of drawing correctly what we imagine. He who endeavors to copy nicely the figure before him not only acquires a habit of exactness and precision, but is continually advancing in his knowledge of the human figure ; and though he seems to superficial observers to make a slower progress, he will be found at last capable of adding (without running into capricious wildness) that grace and beauty which is necessary to be given to his more finished works, and which cannot be got by the moderns, as it was not acquired by the ancients, but by an attentive and well-compared study of the human form.

What I think ought to enforce this method is that it has been the practice (as may be seen by their drawings) of the great masters in the art. I will mention a drawing of Raphael, " The Dispute of the Sacrament," the print of which, by Count Caylus, is in every hand. It appears that he made his sketch from one model ; and the habit he had of drawing exactly from the form before him appears by his making all the figures with the same cap, such as his model then happened to wear; so servile a copyist was this great man, even at a time when he was

62 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

allowed to be at his highest pitch of excellence. I have seen also academy figures by Annibale Ca- racci, though he was often sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all the peculiarities of an individual model.

This scrupulous exactness is so contrary to the practice of the academies that it is not without great deference that I beg leave to recommend it to the consideration of the visitors, and submit to them whether the neglect of this method is not one of the reasons why students so often disappoint expectation, and, being more than boys at sixteen, become less than men at thirty.

In short, the method I recommend can only be detrimental where there are but few living forms to copy; for then students, by always drawing from one alone, will by habit be taught to overlook de- fects and mistake deformity for beauty. But of this there is no danger, since the council has determined to supply the academy with a variety of subjects ; and indeed those laws which they have drawn up, and which the secretary will presently read for your confirmation, have in some measure precluded me from saying more upon this occasion. Instead, there- fore, of off"ering my advice, permit me to indulge my wishes, and express my hope, that this institution may answer the expectation of its ROVAL Founder ; that the present age may vie in arts with that of Leo the Tenth; and that the dignity of the dying art (to make use of an expression of Pliny) may be revived under the Reign of George III.

The, /foe of Jim or pure.

DISCOURSE II.

Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Dis- tribution of the Prizes, December 1 1, 1769.

THE COURSE AND ORDER OF STUDY. — THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF ART. — MUCH COPYING DISCOUNTENANCED. — THE ARTI.ST AT ALL TIMES AND IN ALL PLACES SHOULD BE EMPLOYED IN LAYING UP MATERIALS FOR THE EXERCISE OF HIS ART.

I CONGRATULATE yoii on the honor which you have just received. I have the liighest opinion of your merits, and could wish to show my sense of them in something which possibly may be more useful to you than barren praise. I could wish to lead you into such a course of study as may render your future progress answerable to your past improvement, and while I applaud you for what has been done, remind you how much yet remains to attain perfection.

I flatter myself that from the long experience I have had, and the unceasing assiduity with which I have pursued those studies in which, like you, I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in offer- ing some hints to your consideration. They are, indeed, in a great degree, founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit. But the history of errors, properly managed, often shortens the road to truth. And although no method of study that I can

64 REYNOLDS'S DISCOL/RSES.

offer will of itself conduct to excellence, yet it may- preserve industry from being misapplied.

In speaking to you of the theory of the art, I shall only consider it as it has a relation to the method of your studies.

Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall address you as having passed through the first of them, which is confined to the rudiments ; including a facility of drawing any object that pre- sents itself, a tolerable readiness in the management of colors, and an acquaintance with the most simple and obvious rules of composition.

This first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may after- wards choose for his more particular application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colors is very properly called the language of the art, and in this language the honors you have just received prove you to have made no inconsiderable progress.

When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree of correctness, he must then en- deavor to collect subjects for expression, — to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and varied as occa- sion may require. He is now in the second period of study, in which his business is to learn all that has been known and done before his own time. Having hitherto received instructions from a particular mas- ter, he is now to consider the art itself as his master. He must extend his capacity to more sublime and general instructions. Those perfections which lie scattered amoncr various masters are now united in

THE SECOAD DISCOURSE. 65

one general idea, which is henceforth to regulate his taste and enlarge his imagination. With a variety of models thus before him he will avoid that narrowness and poverty of conception which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master, and will cease to follow any favorite where he ceases to excel. This period is, however, still a time of subjection and discipline. Though the student will not resign himself blindly to any single authority when he may have the advan- tage of consulting many, he must still be afraid of trusting his own judgment and of deviating into any track where he cannot find the footsteps of some for- mer master.

The third and last period emancipates the student from subjection to any authority but what he shall himself judge to be supported by reason. Confiding now in his own judgment, he will consider and sepa- rate those different principles to which different modes of beauty owe their original. In the former period he sought only to know and combine excellence, wherever it was to be found, into one idea of per- fection ; in this he learns, what requires the most at- tentive survey and the most subtle disquisition, to discriminate perfections that arc incompatible with each other.

He is from this time to regard himself as holding the same rank with those masters whom he before obeyed as teachers, and as exercising a sort of sovereignty over those rules which have hitherto restrained him. Comparing now no longer the per- formances of art with each other, but examining the art itself by the standard of nature, he corrects what is erroneous, supplies what is scant}', and adds by his

5

66 J^EVNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

own observation what the industry of his predecessors may have yet left wanting to perfection. Having well established his judgment and stored his memory, he may now without fear try the power of his imagina- tion. The mind that has been thus disciplined may be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm, and venture to play on the borders of the wildest extravagance. The habitual dignity which long converse with the greatest minds has imparted to him will display itself in all his attempts ; and he will stand among his in- structors, not as an imitator, but a rival.

These are the different stages of the art. But as I now address myself particularly to those students who have been this day rewarded for their happy passage through the first period, I can with no propriety sup- pose they want any help in the initiatory studies. My present design is to direct your view to distant excel- lence, and to show you the readiest path that leads to it. Of this I shall speak with such latitude as may leave the province of the professor unin\'aded ; and shall not anticipate those precepts which it is his busi- ness to give and your duty to understand.

It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life must be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of genius. Invention, strictly speak- ing, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Nothing can come of noth- ing; he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.^

1 Of the speaker's own art, in contradistinction to that of Gains- borough, a French critic says : " It is by the artifice of a perfected

THE SECOND DISCOURSE. 6/

A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is ahvays apt to overrate his own abili- ties, — to mistake the most trifling excursions for dis- coveries of moment, and every coast new to him for a new-found country. If by chance he passes be- yond his usual limits, he congratulates his own arrival at those regions which they who have steered a better course have long left behind them.

The productions of such minds are seldom distin- guished by an air of originality ; they are anticipated in their happiest efforts ; and if they are found to differ in any thing from their predecessors, it is only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more extensive, therefore, your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more exten- sive will be your powers of in\-ention ; and what may appear still more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions. But the difficulty on this occasion is to determine what ought to be proposed as models of excellence, and who ought to be con- sidered as the properest guides.

To a young man just arrived in Ital}', many of the present painters of that country are ready enough to obtrude their precepts, and to offer their own per- formances as examples of that perfection which they affect to recommend. The modern, however, who recommends himself as a standard, ma\' justly be sus- pected as ignorant of the true end, and unacquainted

science that Reynolds obtains such striking effects in his portraits. He forged for his own use a complete armory of weapons, a magazine of rules and well tried systems, which he had gathered and selected by a careful study of the old masters." — Chesneau, English Painting.

68 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

with the proper object, of the art which he professes. To follow such a guide will not only retard the stu- dent, but mislead him.

On whom, then, can he rely, or who shall show him the path that leads to excellence? The answer is obvious : those great masters who have travelled the same road with success are the most likely to con- duct others. The works of those who have stood the test of ages have a claim to that respect and venera- tion to which no modern can pretend. The duration and stability of their fame is sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart by every tie of sympathetic approbation.

There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great men ; but how they may be studied to advantage is an inquiry of great importance.

Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the real dignity of the art, and who rate the works of an artist in proportion as they excel or are defective in the mechanical parts, look on theory as something that may enable them to talk but not to paint better; and confining themselves entirely to mechanical practice, very assiduously toil on in the drudgery of copying, and think they make a rapid progress while they faithfully exhibit the mi- nutest part of a favorite picture. This appears to me a very tedious, and, I think, a very erroneous method of proceeding. Of every large composition, even of those which are most admired, a great part may be truly said to be commonplace. This, though it takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improve-

THE SECOND DISCOURSE. 69

merit. I consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry: the student satisfies himrelf with the appearance of doing something; he falls into the dan- gerous habit of imitating without selecting, and of laboring without any determinate object; as it re- quires no effort of the mind, he sleeps over his work; and those powers of invention and composi- tion which ought particularly to be called out and put in action, lie torpid and lose their energy for want of exercise.

How incapable those are of producing anything of their own who have spent much of their time in mak- ing finished copies, is well known to all who are con- versant with our art.

To suppose that the complication of powers and variety of ideas necessary to that mind which aspires to the first honors in the art of painting can be ob- tained by the frigid contemplation of a few single models, is no less absurd than it would be in him who wishes to be a poet to imagine that by translat- ting a tragedy he can acquire to himself sufficient knowledge of the appearances of nature, the opera- tions of the passions, and the incidents of life.

The great use in copying, if it be at all useful, should seem to be in learning to color; yet even coloring will never be perfectly' attained by servileh" copying the model before you. An eye critical!}' nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention; and by close inspection and minute examination you will discover, at last, the manner of handling, the artifices of contrast, glazing, and other expedients by which good colorists have

70 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

raised the value of their tints, and by which nature has been so happily imitated.

I must inform you, however, that old pictures, deservedly celebrated for their coloring-, are often so changed by dirt and varnish that we ought not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their reputa- tion in the eyes of unexperienced painters, or young students. An artist whose judgment is matured by long observation considers rather what the picture once was than what it is at present. He has by habit acquired a power of seeing the brilliancy of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured. An exact imitation, therefore, of those pictures is likely to fill the student's mind with false opinions, and to send him back a colorist of his own formation, with ideas equally remote from nature and from art, from the genuine practice of the masters and the real ap- pearances of things.

Following these rules, and using these precautions, when you have clearly and distinctly learned in what good coloring consists, you cannot do better than have recourse to nature herself, who is always at hand, and in comparison of whose true splendor the best-colored pictures are but faint and feeble.

However, as the practice of copying is not entirely to be excluded, since the mechanical practice of painting is learned in some measure by it, let those choice parts only be selected which have recom- mended the work to notice. If its excellence con- sists in its general effect, it would be proper to make slight sketches of the machinery and general manage- ment of the picture. Those sketches should be kept

THE SECOND DISCOURSE. 7 1

always by you for the regulation of your style. In- stead of cop}ing the touches of those great masters, copy only their conceptions. Instead of treading in their footsteps, endeavor only to keep the same road. Labor to invent on their general principles and way of thinking. Possess yourself with their sj^irit. Con- sider with yourself how a IMichael Angelo or a Raphael would have treated this subject, and work yourself into a belief that }'our picture is to be seen and criticised by them when completed. Even an attempt of this kind will rouse your powers.

But as mere enthusiasm will carry you but a little way, let me recommend a practice that may be equivalent to and will, perhaps, more efficaciously contribute to your advancement than even the verbal corrections of those masters themselves, could they be obtained. What I would propose is that you should enter into a kind of competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a companion to any picture that you consider as a model. After you have finished your work, place it near the model, and compare them carefully together. You will then not only see but feel your own deficiencies more sen- sibly than by precepts or any other means of instruc- tion. The true principles of painting will mingle with your thoughts. Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects will be certain and definitive, and sinking deep into the mind will not onl\' be more just but more lasting than those presented to you b\' precepts only, which will always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined.

This method of comparing )'our own efforts with

^2 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

those of some great master is, indeed, a severe and mortifying task, to which none will submit but such as have great views, with fortitude sufficient to forego the gratifications of present vanity for future honor. When the student has succeeded in some measure to his own satisfaction, and has felicitated himself on his success, to go voluntarily to a tribunal where he knows his vanity must be humbled, and all self-approbation must vanish, requires not only great resolution but great humility. To him, however, who has the ambi- tion to be a real master, the solid satisfaction which proceeds from a consciousness of his advancement (of which seeing his own faults is the first step) will very abundantly compensate for the mortification of pres- ent disappointment. There is, besides, this alleviat- ing circumstance: every discovery he makes, every acquisition of knowledge he attains, seems to proceed from his own sagacity; and thus he acquires a confi- dence in himself sufficient to keep up the resolution of perseverance.

We all must have experienced how lazily, and con- sequently, how ineffectually, instruction is received when forced upon the mind by others. Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers. We prefer those instructions which we have given ourselves, from our affection to the instructor; and they are more effectual from being received into the mind at the v^ery time when it is most open and eager to receive them.

With respect to the pictures that you are to choose for your models, I could wish that you would take the world's opinion rather than your own. In other

THE SECOND DISCOURSE. 72,

words, I would have you choose those of established reputation rather than follow your own fancy. If you should not admire them at first, you will, by en- deavoring to imitate them, find that the world has not been mistaken.

It is not an easy task to point out those various excellences for your imitation which lie distributed among the various schools. An endeavor to do this may, perhaps, be the subject of some future dis- course. I will, therefore, at present, only recommend a model for style in painting, which is a branch of the art more immediately necessary to the young- student. Style in painting^ is the same as in writing, a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. And in this Ludovico Caracci (I mean in his best works) appears to me to approach the nearest to perfection.^ His unaffected breadth of light and shadow, the sim- plicity of coloring, which, holding its proper rank, does not draw aside the least part of the attention

1 Tlie following definition is merely technical ; in the Third Dis- course Reynolds approaches the subject on its intellectual side.

■■^ Sir Joshua throughout overrates the Caraccis. Ludovico (1555- r6i9),with his cousins Agostino and Annibale, founded the Bolognese Eclectic school, which includes Guido Reni, Domenichino, Sasso- ferrato, and Guercino. As Agostino said, their object was to "ac- quire the design of Rome, Venetian action and Venetian management of shade, the dignified color of Lombardy, the terrible manner of Michael Angelo, Titian's truth and nature, the sovereign purity of Correggio's style, and the just symmetry of Raphael," — briefly, to select and unite the salient merits of earlier schools; a vaulting am- bition, which, as Symonds puts it, "doomed their style to the sterility of hybrids." Let us not, however, underrate these once belauded, now vituperated painters, who, while they fell short of excellence, left many works that refuse to be dogmatized into contempt.

74 REVAOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

from the subject, and the solemn effect of that twi- h"ght which seems diffused over his pictures, appear to me to correspond with grave and dignified sub- jects better than the more artificial brilliancy of sun- shine which enlightens the pictures of Titian, — though Tintoret thought that Titian's coloring was the model of perfection, and would correspond even with the sublime of Michael Angelo ; and that if Angelo had colored like Titian, or Titian designed like Angelo, the world would once have had a perfect painter.

It is our misfortune, however, that those works of Caracci which I would recommend to the student are not often found out of Bologna. The " Saint Francis in the Midst of his Friars," " The Transfiguration,"' " The Birth of Saint John the Baptist," " The Calling of Saint Matthew," the " Saint Jerome," the fresco paintings in the Zampieri palace, are all worthy the attention of the student. And I think those who travel would do well to allot a much greater portion of their time to that city than it has been hitherto the custom to bestow.

In this art, as in others, there are many teachers who profess to show the nearest way to excellence; and many expedients have been invented by which the toil of study might be saved. But let no man be seduced to idleness by specious promises. Excel- lence is never granted to man but as the reward of labor. It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in habits of industry, without the pleas- ure of perceiving those advances; which, like the hands of a clock, while they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape ob-

THE SECOND DISCOURSE. 75

servation. A facility of drawing, like that of playing upon a musical instrument, cannot be acquired but by an infinite number of acts. I need not, therefore, enforce by many words the necessity of continual ap- plication, nor tell you that the porte-crayon ought to be forever in your hands. Various methods will occur to you b}' which this power may be acquired. I would particularly recommend that after your re- turn from the Academy (where I suppose your attend- ance to be constant), you would endeavor to draw the figure by memory. I will even venture to add that by perseverance in this custom you will become able to draw the human figure tolerably correctly, with as little cfi"ort of the mind as is required to trace with a pen the letters of the alphabet.

That this facility is not unattainable, some mem- bers in this Academy give a sufficient proof. And be assured that if this power is not acquired while you are young, there will be no time for it after- wards ; at least, the attempt will be attended with as much difficulty as those experience who learn to read or write after they have arrived at the age of maturity.

But while I mention the porte-crayon as the stu- dent's constant companion, he must still remember that the pencil is the instrument by which he must hope to obtain eminence. What, therefore, I wish to impress upon you is that, whenever an opportunity ofi"ers, you paint \'Our studies instead of drawing them. This will give you such a facility in using colors that in time they will arrange themselves under the pencil, even without the attention of the hand that conducts

^6 REYNOLDS' S DISCOURSES.

it. If one act excluded the other, this advice could not with any propriety be given. But if painting com- prises both drawing and coloring, and if, by a short struggle of resolute industry, the same expedition is attainable in painting as in drawing on paper, I can- not see what objection can justly be made to the prac- tice, or why that should be done by parts which may be done all together.

If we turn our eyes to the several schools of paint- ing, and consider their respective excellences, we shall find that those who excel most in coloring pursued this method. The Venetian and Flemish schools, which owe much of their fame to coloring, have en- riched the cabinets of the collectors of drawings with very few examples. Those of Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, and the Bassans, are in general slight and undetermined. Their sketches on paper are as rude as their pictures are excellent in regard to harmony of coloring. Correggio and Baroccio have left few, if any, finished drawings behind them. And in the Flemish school Rubens and Vandyck made their designs for the most part either in colors or in chiaro- oscuro. It is as common to find studies of the Vene- tian and Flemish painters on canvas as of the schools of Rome and Florence on paper. Not but that many finished drawings are sold under the names of those masters. Those, however, are undoubtedly the pro- ductions either of engravers or their scholars, who copied their works.

These instructions I have ventured to offer from my own experience ; but as they deviate widely from received opinions I offer them with diflidence, and

THE SECOND DISCOURSE. 77

when better are suggested shall retract them without regret.

There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by the vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid that I shall repeat it too often. You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities industry will sup- ply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well- directed labor; nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysical discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will venture to assert that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposi- tion eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects similar to those which some call the result of natural powers.^

Though a man cannot at all times and in all places paint or draw, yet the mind can prepare itself by lay- ing in proper materials at all times and in all places. Both Livy and Plutarch, in describing Philopcemen, one of the ablest generals of antiquity, have given us a striking picture of a mind always intent on its pro- fession, and by assiduity obtaining those excellences which some all their lives vainly e.xpect from nature. I shall quote the passage in Livy at length, as it runs parallel with the practice I would recommend to the painter, sculptor, and architect : —

^ " Tlie true genius is a mind of large general |)o\vers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, tlie great jiaintcr of the present age, had the first fondness for his art ex- cited by the perusal of Richardson's treatise." — Dr. Johnson, Life of Ccnvhy.

78 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

" Philopcemen was a man eminent for his sagacity and experience in choosing ground, and in leading armies ; to which he formed his mind by perpetual meditation, in times of peace as well as war. When in any occasional journey he came to a strait, difficult passage, if he was alone he considered with himself, and if he was in company he asked his friends what it would be best to do if in this place they had found an enemy, either in the front or in the rear, on the one side or on the other. ' It might happen,' says he, ' that the enemy to be opposed might come on drawn up in regular lines, or in a tumultuous body formed only by the nature of the place.' He then considered a little what ground he should take ; what number of soldiers he should use, and what arms he should give them ; where he should lodge his carriages, his baggage, and the defenceless fol- lowers of his camp ; how many guards, and of what kind, he should send to defend them ; and whether it would be better to press forward along the pass, or recover by retreat his former station. He would consider likewise where his camp could most commodiously be formed ; how much ground he should enclose within his trenches ; where he should have the convenience of water, and where he might find plenty of wood and forage ; and when he should break up his camp on the following day, through what road he could most safely pass, and in what form he should dispose his troops. With such thoughts and disquisitions he had from his early years so exercised his mind that on these occasions nothing could happen which he had not been already accustomed to consider."

T cannot help imagining that I see a promising young painter equally vigilant, whether at home or abroad, in the streets or in the fields. Every object that presents itself is to him a lesson. He regards all nature with a view to his profession, and combines

THE SECOND DISCOURSE. 79

her beauties or corrects her defects. He examines the countenances of men under the influence of pas- sion, and often catches the most pleasing hints from subjects of turbulence or deformity. Even bad pict- ures themselves supply him with useful documents ; and, as Leonardo da Vinci has observed, he improves upon the fanciful images that are sometimes seen in the fire, or are accidentally sketched upon a discolored wall.

The artist who has his mind thus filled with ideas, and his hand made expert by practice, works with ease and readiness ; while he who would ha\'e you believe that he is waiting for the inspirations of genius is in reality at a loss how to begin, and is at last de- livered of his monsters with difficulty and pain.

The well-grounded painter, on the contrary, has only maturely to consider his subject, and all the me- chanical parts of his art follow without his exertion. Conscious of the difficulty of obtaining what he pos- sesses, he makes no pretensions to secrets, except those of closer application. Without conceiving the smallest jealousy against others, he is contented that all shall be as great as himself who have undergone the same fatigue ; and as his pre-eminence depends not upon a trick, he is free from the painful suspicions of a juggler who lives in perpetual fear lest his trick should be discovered.

v.. J

LIBP.A.T/

100 K^.cCAUL STR'TT

TORONTO, ONTARIO M6T IWl

Miss Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra.

DISCOURSE III.

Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distri- bution of the Prizes, December 14, 1770.

THE GREAT LEADING PRINCIPLES OF THE GRAND STYLE. — OF BEAUTY. — THE GENUINE HABITS OF NATURE TO BE DISTINGUISHED FROM THOSE OF FASHION.

It is not easy to speak with propriety to so many students of different ages and different degrees of advancement. The mind requires nourishment adapted to its growth ; and what may have pro- moted our earlier efforts might retard us in our nearer approaches to perfection.

The first endeavors of a young painter, as I have remarked in a former discourse, must be employed in the attainment of mechanical dexterity, and con- fined to the mere imitation of the object before him. Those who have advanced beyond the rudiments may, perhaps, find advantage in reflecting on the advice which I have likewise given them, when I recom- mended the diligent study of the works of our great predecessors ; but I at the same time endeavored to guard them against an implicit submission to the au- thority of any one master, however excellent, or, by a strict imitation of his manner, precluding themselves

from the abundance and variety of nature. I will

6

82 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

now add that nature herself is not to be too closely copied. There are excellences in the art of painting beyond what is commonly called the imitation of nature, and these excellences I wish to point out. The students who, having passed through the initia- tory exercises, are more advanced in the art, and who, sure of their hand, have leisure to exert their under- standing, must now be told that a mere copyist of nature can never produce anything great, can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator.

The wish of the genuine painter must be more ex- tensive; instead of endeavoring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his imitations, he must endeavor to improve them by the grandeur of his ideas ; instead of seeking praise by deceiving the superficial sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame by captivating the imagination.

The principle now laid down, that the perfection of this art does not consist in mere imitation, is far from being new or singular. It is, indeed, supported by the general opinion of the enlightened part of man- kind. The poets, orators, and rhetoricians of an- tiquity are continually enforcing this position, — that all the arts receive their perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to what is to be found in individual nature. They are ever referring to the practice of the painters and sculptors of their times, particularly Phidias (the favorite artist of antiquity), to illustrate their assertions. As if they could not sufficiently express their admiration of his genius by what they knew, they have recourse to poetical enthusiasm;

THE THIRD DISCOURSE. 83

they call it inspiration, — a gift from heaven. The artist is supposed to have ascended the celestial re- gions, to furnish his mind with this perfect idea of beauty. "He," says Proclus,^ "who takes for his model such forms as nature produces, and confines himself to an exact imitation of them, will never attain to what is perfectly beautiful ; for the works of nature are full of disproportion, and fall very short of the true standard of beauty. So that Phidias, when he formed his Jupiter, did not copy any object ever presented to his sight, but contemplated only that image which he had conceived in his mind from Homer's description." And thus Cicero, speaking of this same Phidias: "Neither did this artist," says he, " when he carved the image of Jupiter or Minerva, set before him any one human figure, as a pattern which he was to copy ; but having a more perfect idea of beauty fixed in his mind, this is steadily con- templated, and to the imitation of this all his skill and labor were directed."

The moderns are not less convinced than the an- cients of this superior power existing in the art, nor less sensible of its eftccts. Every language has adopted terms expressive of this excellence. The gusto grande of the Italians, the beaii ideal of the French, and "great style," "genius," and "taste" among the English, are but different appellations of the same thing.- It is this intellectual dignity, they

' Lib. 2, in Timaeum Platonis, as cited by Junius de Pictura Veterum. — R.

* " The art is greatest which includes the greatest ideas. . . . Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be, taught ; it is

84 REVAOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

say, that ennobles the painter's art, — that lays the line between him and the mere mechanic, and pro- duces those great effects in an instant which elo- quence and poetry by slow and repeated efforts are scarcely able to attain.

Such is the warmth with which both the ancients and moderns speak of this divine principle of the art ; but, as I have formerly observed, enthusiastic admi- ration seldom promotes knowledge. Though a stu- dent by such praise may have his attention roused, and a desire excited of running in this great career, yet it is possible that what has been said to excite may only serve to deter him. He examines his own mind, and perceives there nothing of that divine in- spiration with which he is told so many others have been favored. He never travelled to heaven to gather new ideas ; and he finds himself possessed of no other qualifications than what mere common ob- servation and a plain understanding can confer. Thus he becomes gloomy amid the splendor of figurative declamation, and thinks it hopeless to pur- sue an object which he supposes out of the reach of human industry.

But on this, as upon many other occasions, we ought to distinguish how much is to be given to enthusiasm, and how much to reason. We ought to | allow for, and we ought to commend that strength of vivid expression which is necessary to convey, in its full force, the highest sense of the most complete effect of art ; taking care at the same time not to

pre-eminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men."

— RUSKIN.

THE THIRD DISCOURSE. 85

lose in terms of vague admiration that solidity and truth of principle upon which alone we can reason, and may be enabled to practise.

It is not easy to define in what this great style consists ; nor to describe, by words, the proper means of acquiring it, — if the mind of the student should be at all capable of such an acquisition. Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius. But though there neither are, nor can be, any precise invariable rules for the exercise, or the acquisition, of these great qualities, yet we may truly say that they always operate in proportion to our attention in observing the works of nature, to our skill in selecting, and to our care in digesting, methodizing, and comparing our observations. There are many beauties in our art that seem, at first, to lie without the reach of pre- cept, and yet may easily be reduced to practical principles. Experience is all in all ; but it is not every one who profits by experience ; and most people err, not so much from want of capacity to find their object, as from not knowing what object to pursue. This great ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought in the heavens, but upon the earth. They are about us, and upon every side of us. But the power of discovering what is deformed in nature, or, in other words, what is particular and uncommon, can be acquired only by experience ; and the whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists, in my opinion, in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind.

All the objects which are exhibited to our view by

S6 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

nature, upon close examination will be found to have their blemishes and defects. The most beautiful forms have something about them like weakness, minuteness, or imperfection. But it is not every eye that perceives these blemishes. It must be an eye long used to the contemplation and comparison of these forms, and which, by a long habit of observing what any set of objects of the same kind have in com- mon, has acquired the power of discerning what each wants in particular. This long, laborious comparison should be the first study of the painter who aims at the great style. By this means he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms ; he corrects nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficien- cies, excrescences, and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original ; and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls the ideal beauty, is the great leading principle by which works of genius are con- ducted. By this Phidias acquired his fame. He wrought upon a sober principle what has so much excited the enthusiasm of the world ; and by this method you who have courage to tread the same path may acquire equal reputation.

This is the idea which has acquired, and which seems to have a right to, the epithet of divine ; as it may be said to preside, like a supreme judge, over all the productions of nature, appearing to be pes-

THE THIRD DISCOURSE. 8/

sessed of the will and intention of the Creator, as far as they regard the external form of living beings. When a man once possesses this idea in its perfec- tion there is no danger but that he will be suffi- ciently warmed by it himself, and be able to warm and ravish every one else.

Thus it is from a reiterated experience, and a close comparison of the objects in nature, that an artist becomes possessed of the idea of that central form, if I may so express it, from which every deviation is deformity. But the investigation of this form, I grant, is painful, and I know but of one method of shorten- ing the road; this is by a careful study of the works of the ancient sculptors; who, being indefatigable in the school of nature, have left models of that perfect form behind them which an artist would prefer as supremely beautiful who had spent his v/hole life in that single contemplation. But if industry carried them thus far, may not you also hope for the same reward from the same labor? We have the same school opened to us that was opened to them ; for nature denies her instructions to none who desire to become her pupils.

This laborious investigation, I am aware, must appear superfluous to those who think everything is to be done by felicity and the powers of native genius. Even the great Bacon treats with ridicule the idea of confining proportion to rules, or of producing beauty by selection. " A man cannot tell," says he, " whether Apelles or Albert Diirer were the more trifler: whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions ; the other, by taking the

88 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

best parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent. . , . The painter," he adds, " must do it by a kind of felicity . . . and not by rule."

It is not safe to question any opinion of so great a writer and so profound a thinker as undoubtedly Bacon was. But he studies brevity to excess ; and therefore his meaning is sometimes doubtful. If he means that beauty has nothing to do with rule he is mistaken. There is a rule, obtained out of general nature, to contradict which is to fall into deformity. Whenever anything is done beyond this rule it is in virtue of some other rule which is followed along with it, but which does not contradict it. Everything which is wrought with certainty is wrought upon some principle. If it is not, it cannot be repeated. If by felicity is meant anything of chance or hazard, or something born with a man, and not earned, I cannot agree with this great philosopher. Every object which pleases must give us pleasure upon some cer- tain principles ; but as the objects of pleasure are almost infinite, so their principles vary without end, and every man finds them out, not by felicity or suc- cessful hazard, but by care and sagacity.

To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in each species of beings is an invariable one, it may be objected that in every particular species there are various central forms, which are separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably beautiful ; that in the human figure, for instance, the beauty of Hercules is one, of the Gladiator another, of the Apollo another ; which makes so many different ideas of beauty.

THE THIRD DISCOURSE. 89

It is true, indeed, that these figures are each perfect in their kind, though of ditterent characters and pro- portions; but still none of them is the representation of an individual, but of a class. And as there is one general form which, as I have said, belongs to the liuman kind at large, so in each of these classes there is one common idea and central form which is the abstract of the various individual forms belonging to that class. Thus, though the forms of childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a common form in childhood, and a common form in age, which is the more perfect as it is more remote from all peculiari- ties. But I must add, further, that though the most perfect forms of each of the general divisions of the human figure are ideal and superior to any individual form of that class, yet the highest perfection of the human figure is not to be found in any one of them. It is not in the Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, "nor in the Apollo ; but in that form which is taken from all, and which partakes equally of the activity of the Glad- iator, of the delicacy of the Apollo, and of the mus- cular strength of the Hercules. For perfect beaut}- in an}' species must combine all the characters which are beautiful in that species. It cannot consist in an}' one to the exclusion of the rest ; no one, therefore, must be predominant, that no one ma}' be deficient.

The knowledge of these different characters, and the power of separating and distinguishing them, is undoubtedly necessary to the painter, who is to vary his compositions with figures of various forms and proportions, though he is never to lose sight of the general idea of perfection in each kind.

90 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

There is, likewise, a kind of symmetry, or propor- tion, which may properly be said to belong to de- formity. A figure lean or corpulent, tall or short, though deviating from beauty, may still have a cer- tain union of the various parts, which may contribute to make them on the whole not unpleasing.

When the artist has by diligent attention acquired a clear and distinct idea of beauty and symmetry, when he has reduced the variety of nature to the abstract idea, his next task will be to become ac- quainted with the genuine habits of nature, as dis- tinguished from those of fashion. For in the same manner, and on the same principles, as he has ac- quired the knowledge of the real forms of nature, distinct from accidental deformity, he must endeavor to separate simple, chaste nature from those adventi- tious, those affected and forced airs or actions, with which she is loaded by modern education.

Perhaps I cannot better explain what I mean than by reminding you of what was taught us by the pro- fessor of anatomy, in respect to the natural position and movement of the feet. He observed that the fashion of turning them outwards was contrary to the intent of nature, as might be seen from the structure of the bones, and from the weakness that proceeded from that manner of standing. To this we may add the erect position of the head, the projection of the chest, the walking with straight knees, and many such actions, which we know to be merely the result of fashion, and what nature never warranted, as we are sure that we have been taught them when children.

THE THIRD DISCOURSE. 9 1

I have mentioned but a few of those instances in which vanity or caprice have contrived to distort and disfigure the human form; your own recollection will add to these a thousand more of ill-understood methods, which have been practised to disguise nature among our dancing-masters, hairdressers, and tailors, in their various schools of deformity.^

However the mechanic and ornamental arts may sacrifice to Fashion, she must be entirely excluded from the art of painting; the painter must never mistake this capricious changeling for the genuine ofifspring of nature. He must divest himself of all prejudices in favor of his age or country; he must disregard all local and temporary ornaments, and look only on those general habits which are every- where and always the same.- He addresses his works to the people of every country and every age ; he calls upon posterity to be his spectators, and says, with Zeuxis, " In cEternitatem pijigo."

The neglect of separating modern fashions from the habits of nature leads to that ridiculous style which has been practised by some painters, who have given to Grecian heroes the airs and graces practised

' " Those," says Quintilian, "who are taken with the outward show of things think that there is more beauty in persons who are trimmed, curled, and painted, than uncorrupt nature can give ; as if beauty were merely the effect of the corruption of manners." — R.

" " Nearly every word that Reynolds wrote was contrary to his own practice ... he enforced with his lips generalization and idealism, while with his pencil he was tracing the patterns of the dresses of the belles of the day ; he exhorted his pupils to attend only to the in- variable, while he himself was occupied in distinguishing every varia- tion of womanly temper ; and he denied the existence of the beautiful at the same instant that he arrested it as it passed, and perpetuated it forever." — Ruskin, Mo<L Painters, Part iv. c. iii.

92 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

in the court of Louis XIV., — an absurdity almost as sreat as it would have been to have dressed them after the fashion of that court.

To avoid this error, however, and to retain the true simplicity of nature, is a task more difficult than at first sight it may appear. The prejudices in favor of the fashions and customs that we have been used to, and which are justly called a second nature, make it too often difficult to distinguish that which is natural from that which is the result of education ; they fre- quentl}^ even give a predilection in favor of the artifi- cial mode ; and almost every one is apt to be guided by those local prejudices who has not chastised his mind, and regulated the instability of his aff"ections by the eternal, invariable idea of nature.

Here, then, as before, we must have recourse to the ancients as instructors. It is from a careful study of their works that you will be enabled to attain to the real simplicity of nature ; they will suggest many observations which would probably escape you if your study were confined to nature alone. And, indeed, I cannot help suspecting that, in this in- stance, the ancients had an easier task than the moderns. They had, probably, little or nothing to unlearn, as their manners were nearly approaching to this desirable simplicity; while the modern artist, before he can see the truth of things, is obliged to remove a veil, with which the fashion of the times has thought proper to cover her.

Having gone thus far in our investigation of the great style in painting, if we now should suppose that the artist has found the true idea of beauty.

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which enables him to give his works a correct and perfect design ; if we should suppose, also, that he has acquired a knowledge of the unadulterated habits of nature, which gives him simplicity ; the rest of his task is, perhaps, less than is generally imagined. Beauty and simplicity have so great a share in the composition of a great style that he who has ac- quired them has little else to learn. It must not, indeed, be forgotten that there is a nobleness of con- ception which goes beyond anything in the mere exhibition even of perfect form ; there is an art of animating and dignifying the figures with intellectual grandeur, of impressing the appearance of philo- sophic wisdom, or heroic virtue. This can only be acquired by him that enlarges the sphere of his understanding by a variety of knowledge, and warms his imagination with the best productions of ancient and modern poetry.

A hand thus exercised, and a mind thus instructed, will bring the art to a higher degree of excellence than, perhaps, it has hitherto attained in this country. Such a student will disdain the humbler walks of painting, which, however profitable, can never assure him a permanent reputation. He will leave the meaner artist servilely to suppose that those are the best pictures which are most likely to deceive the spectator. He will permit the lower painter, like the florist or collector of shells, to exhibit the minute dis- criminations which distinguish one object of the same species from another; while he, like the philosopher, will consider nature in the abstract, and represent in every one of his figures the character of its species.

94 REVA'OLDS'S DISCOURSES.

If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed; but it is not the eye, it is the mind which the painter of genius desires to address; nor will he waste a moment upon those smaller objects which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart.

This is the ambition which I wish to excite in your minds ; and the object I have had in my view throughout this discourse is that one great idea which gives to painting its true dignity, which entitles it to the name of a liberal art, and ranks it as a sister of poetry.

It may possibly have happened to many young students, whose application was sufficient to over- come all difficulties, and whose minds were capable of embracing the most extensive views, that they have, by a wrong direction originally given, spent their lives in the meaner walks of painting, without ever knowing there was a nobler to pursue. Albert Diirer, as Vasari has justly remarked, would probably have been one of the first painters of his age (and he lived in an era of great artists) had he been ini- tiated into those great principles of the art which were so well understood and practised by his contem- poraries in Italy. But, unluckily, having never seen nor heard of any other manner, he, without doubt, considered his own as perfect.

As for the various departments of painting which do not presume to make such high pretensions, they are many. None of them are without their merit,

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though none enter into competition with this univer- sal presiding idea of the art. The painters who have applied themselves more particularly to low and vul- gar characters, and who express with precision the various shades of passion as they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the works of Hogarth), deserve great praise; but as their genius has been employed on low and confined subjects, the praise which we give must be as limited as its object. The merrymaking or quarrelling of the boors of Teniers, the same sort of productions of Brouwer or Ostade, are excellent in their kind; and the excel- lence and its praise will be in proportion as, in those limited subjects and peculiar forms, they introduce more or less of the expression of those passions as they appear in general and more enlarged nature. This principle may be applied to the battle-pieces of Bourgognone, the French gallantries of Watteau, and even beyond the exhibition of animal life, to the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, and the sea views of Vandervelde. All these painters have, in general, the same right, in different degrees, to the name of a painter, which a satirist, an epigrammatist, a sonnet- eer, a writer of pastorals or descriptive poetry, has to that of a poet.

In the same rank, and perhaps of not so great merit, is the cold painter of portraits. But his cor- rect and just imitation of his object has its merit. Even the painter of still life, whose highest ambition is to give a minute representation of every part of those low objects which he sets before him, deserves praise in proportion to his attainment, because no

96 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

part of this excellent art, so much the ornament of polished life, is destitute of value and use. These, however, are by no means the views to which the mind of the student ought to be primarily directed. Having begun by aiming at better things, if from particular inclination, or from the taste of the time and place he lives in, or from necessity, or from failure in the highest attempts, he is obliged to descend lower, he will bring into the lower sphere of art a grandeur of composition and character that will raise and ennoble his works far above their natural rank.

A man is not weak, though he may not be able to wield the club of Hercules ; nor does a man always practise that which he esteems the best, but does that which he can best do. In moderate attempts there are many walks open to the artist. But as the idea of beauty is of necessity but one, so there can be but one great mode of painting, — the leading prin- ciple of which I have endeavored to explain.

I should be sorry if what is here recommended should be at all understood to countenance a careless or undetermined manner of painting. For, though the painter is to overlook the accidental discrimina- tions of nature, he is to exhibit distinctly and with precision the general forms of things. A firm and determined outline is one of the characteristics of the great style in painting; and let me add that he who possesses the knowledge of the exact form which every part of nature ought to have, will be fond of expressing that knowledge with correctness and pre- cision in all his works.

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To conclude : I have endeavored to reduce the idea of beauty to general principles ; and I had the pleasure to observe that the professor of painting proceeded in the same method, when he showed you that the artifice of contrast was founded but on one principle. I am convinced that this is the only means of advancing science, — of clearing the mind from a confused heap of contradictory observations that do but perplex and puzzle the student when he compares them, or misguide him if he gives himself up to their authority ; bringing them under one general head can alone give rest and satisfaction to an inquisitive mind.

Liiiv Sophui S/. Asaph and Child.

DISCOURSE IV.

Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distri- bution oj the Prizes, December lo, 1771.

GENERAL IDEAS, THE PRESIDING PRINCIPLE WHICH REGULATES EVERY PART OF ART; INVENTION, EXPRESSION, COLORING, AND DRAPERY. — TWO DISTINCT STYLES IN HISTORY-PAINTING: THE GRAND, AND THE ORNAMENTAL. — THE SCHOOLS IN WHICH EACH IS TO BE FOUND. — THE COMPOSITE STYLE. — THE STYLE FORMED ON LOCAL CUSTOMS AND HABITS, OR A PARTIAL VIEW OF NATURE.

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleas- ure produced by it. As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession becomes either a liberal art or a mechanical trade. In the hands of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to the noblest faculties ; in those of another it is reduced to a mere matter of ornament, and the painter has but the humble province of furnishing our apartments with elegance.

This exertion of mind, which is the only circum- stance that truly ennobles our art, makes the great distinction between the Roman and Venetian schools. I have formerly observed that perfect form is pro- duced by leaving out particularities and retaining only general ideas ; I shall now endeavor to show that this principle, which I have proved to be metaphysi-

100 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

cally just, extends itself to every part of the art; that it gives what is called the grand style to invention, to composition, to expression, and even to coloring and drapery.

Invention in painting does not imply the invention of the subject, for that is commonly supplied by the poet or historian.^ With respect to the choice, no subject can be proper that is not generally interest- ing. It ought to be either some eminent instance of heroic action or heroic suffering. There must be something, either in the action or in the object, in which men are univ^ersally concerned, and which powerfully strikes upon the public sympathy.

Strictly speaking, indeed, no subject can be of uni- versal, hardly can it be of general, concern ; but there are events and characters so popularly known, in those countries where our art is in request, that they may be considered as sufficiently general for all our pur- poses. Such are the great events of Greek and Roman fable and history, which early education and the usual course of reading have made familiar and interesting to all Europe, without being de- graded by the vulgarism of ordinary life in any coun- try. Such, too, are the capital subjects of Scripture history, which, besides their general notoriety, become venerable by their connection with our religion.

As it is required that the subject selected should be a general one, it is no less necessary that it should be kept unembarrassed with whatever may any way

1 "Invention and novelty in his subjects are far from being the prin- cipal things we look for in an artist; a familiar subject furthers and renders more easy the effect of his art." — Lessing.

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. lOl

serve to divide the attention of the spectator. When- ever a story is related every man forms a picture in his mind of the action and expression of the persons employed. The power of representing this mental picture on canvas is what we call invention in a painter. And as, in the conception of this ideal pict- ure, the mind does not enter into the minute pecu- liarities of the dress, furniture, or scene of action, so, when the painter comes to represent it, he contrives those little necessary concomitant circumstances in such a manner that they shall strike the spectator no more than they did himself in his first conception of the story.

I am very ready to allow that some circumstances of minuteness and particularity frequently tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and to interest the spec- tator in an extraordinary manner. Such circum- stances, therefore, cannot wholly be rejected ; but if there be anything in the art which requires peculiar nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of these minute circumstantial parts; which, according to the judgment employed in the choice, become so useful to truth, or so injurious to grandeur.

However, the usual and most dangerous error is on the side of minuteness; and, therefore, I think cau- tion most necessary where most have failed. The general idea constitutes real excellence. All smaller things, however perfect in their way, are to be sacri- ficed without mercy to the greater. The painter will not inquire what things may be admitted without much censure; he will not think it enough to show that they may be there ; he will show that they must

I02 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

be there, — that their absence would render his picture maimed and defective.

Thus, though to the principal group a second or third be added, and a second and third mass of light, care must be taken that these subordinate actions and lights, neither each in particular nor all together, come into any degree of competition with the prin- cipal ; they should merely make a part of that whole which would be imperfect without them. To every kind of painting this rule may be applied. Even in portraits, the grace, and, we may add, the likeness, consists more in taking the general air than in observ- ing the exact similitude of every feature.

Thus figures must have a ground whereon to stand ; they must be clothed ; there must be a background ; there must be light and shadow; but none of these ought to appear to have taken up any part of the ar- tist's attention. They should be so managed as not even to catch that of the spectator. We know well enough, when we analyze a piece, the difficulty and the subtlety with which an artist adjusts the back- ground drapery and masses of light; we know that a considerable part of the grace and effect of his pict- ure depends upon them ; but this art is so much concealed, even to a judicious eye, that no remains of any of these subordinate parts occur to the memory when the picture is not present.

The great end of the art is to strike the imagina- tion. The painter, therefore, is to make no ostenta- tion of the means by which this is done ; the spectator is only to feel the result in his bosom. An inferior artist is unwilling that any part of his industry should

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. 103

be lost upon the spectator. He takes as much pains to discover, as the greater artist does to conceal, the marks of his subordinate assiduity. In works of the lower kind everything appears studied and encum- bered; it is all boastful art and open affectation. The ignorant often part from such pictures with wonder in their mouths and indifference in their hearts.

But it is not enough in invention that the artist should restrain and keep under all the inferior parts of his subject; he must sometimes deviate from vul- gar and strict historical truth in pursuing the grandeur of his design.

How much the great style exacts from its profes- sors to conceive and represent their subjects in a poetical manner, not confined to mere matter of fact, may be seen in the cartoons of Raphael. In all the pictures in which the painter has represented the apostles, he has drawn them with great nobleness ; he has given them as much dignity as the human figure is capable of receiving; yet we are expressly told in Scripture they had no such respectable ap- pearance ; and of Saint Paul, in particular, we are told by himself that his bodily presence was mean. > Alexander is said to have been of a low stature ; a painter ought not so to represent him. Agesilaus was low, lame, and of a mean appearance ; none of these defects ought to appear in a piece of which he is the hero. In conformity to custom, I call this part of the art History Painting; it ought to be called Poetical, as in reality it is.

All this is not falsifying any fact; it is taking an allowed poetical license. A painter of portraits re-

104 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

tains the individual likeness ; a painter of history- shows the man by showing his action. A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit.^ He cannot, like the poet or historian, ex- patiate, and impress the mind with great veneration for the character of the hero or saint he represents, though he lets us know, at the same time, that the samt was deformed or the hero lame. The painter has no other means of giving an idea of the dignity of the mind but by that external appearance which grandeur of thought does generally, though not al- ways, impress on the countenance, and by that cor- respondence of figure to sentiment and situation which all men wish, but cannot command. The painter who may in this one particular attain with ease what others desire in vain, ought to give all that he possibly can, since there are so many circum- stances of true greatness that he cannot give at all. He cannot make his hero talk like a great man ; he must make him look like one. For which reason he ought to be well studied in the anal)'sis of those cir- cumstances which constitute dignity of appearance in real life.

As in invention, so likewise in expression, care must be taken not to run into particularities. Those

1 "Behold, I said, the painter's sphere! The limits of his art appear . . . In outward semblance he must give A moment's life of things that live ; Then let him choose his moment well, With power divine its story tell." Matthew Arnold : Epilogue to Lesshig's Laocobn.

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expressions alone should be given to the figures which their respective situations generally produce. Nor is this enough ; each person should also have that expression which men of his rank generally ex- hibit. The joy or the grief of a character of dignity is not to be expressed in the same manner as a similar passion in a vulgar face. Upon, this princi- ple, Bernini, perhaps, may be subject to censure. This sculptor, in many respects admirable, has given a very mean expression to his statue of David, who is represented as just going to throw the stone from the sling ; and, in order to give it the expression of energy, he has made him biting his under lip. This expression is far from being general, and still far- ther from being dignified. He might have seen it in an instance or two ; and he mistook accident for generality.

With respect to coloring, though it may appear at first a part of painting merely mechanical, yet it still has its rules, and those grounded upon that presiding principle which regulates both the great and the little in the study of a painter. By this, the first effect of the picture is produced ; and as this is per- formed, the spectator, as he walks the gallery, will stop, or pass along. To give a general air of gran- deur at first view, all trifling, or artful play of little lights, or an attention to a variety of tints, is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must reign over the whole work ; to which a breadth of uniform and simple color will very much contribute. Grandeur of effect is produced by two different ways, which seem entirely opposed to each other. One is, by

I06 J^EVNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

reducing the colors to little more than chiaro-oscuro, which was often the practice of the Bolognian schools ; and the other, by making the colors very distinct and forcible, such as we see in those of Rome and Flor- ence; but still, the presiding principle of both those manners is simplicity. Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony; and the distinct blue, red, and yellow colors which are seen in the dra- peries of the Roman and Florentine schools, though they have not that kind of harmony which is produced by a variety of broken and transparent colors, have that effect of grandeur which was intended. Perhaps these distinct colors strike the mind more forcibly from there not being any great union between them ; as martial music, which is intended to rouse the nobler passions, has its effect from the sudden and strongly marked transitions from one note to another which that style of music requires ; while in that which is intended to move the softer passions, the notes imperceptibly melt into one another.

In the same manner as the historical painter never enters into the detail of colors, so neither does he de- base his conceptions with minute attention to the dis- criminations of drapery. It is the inferior style that marks the variety of stuffs. With him the clothing is neither woollen, nor linen, nor silk, satin, or velvet: it is drapery; it is nothing more. The art of dispos- ing the foldings of the drapery makes a very consid- erable part of the painter's study. To make it merely natural is a mechanical operation, to which neither genius nor taste are required; whereas it requires the nicest judgment to dispose the drapery so that the

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. lOJ

folds shall have an easy communication, and grace- fully follow each other with such natural negligence as to look like the effect of chance, and at the same time show the figure under it to the utmost advantage.

Carlo Maratti was of opinion that the disposition of drapery was a more difficult art than even that of drawing the human figure ; that a student might be more easily taught the latter than the former ; as the rules of drapery, he said, could not be so well ascer- tained as those for delineating a correct form. This, perhaps, is a proof how willingly we fa\or our own peculiar excellence. Carlo Maratti is said to have valued himself particularly upon his skill in this part of his art; yet in him the disposition appears so ostentatiously artificial that he is inferior to Ra- phael, even in that which gave him his best claim to reputation.

Such is the great principle by which we must be directed in the nobler branches of our art. Upon this principle, the Roman, the Florentine, the Bo- lognese schools have formed their practice ; and by this they have deservedly obtained the highest praise. These are the three great schools of the world in the epic style. The best of the French school, Poussin, Le Sueur, and Le Brun, have formed themselves upon these models, and consequently may be said, though Frenchmen, to be a colony from the Roman school. Next to these, but in a very different style of excellence, we may rank the Venetian, together with the Flemish and Dutch schools; ail professing to depart from the great purposes of painting, and catching at applause by inferior qualities.

I08 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

I am not ignorant that some will censure me for placing the Venetians in this inferior class, and many of the warmest admirers of painting will think them unjustly degraded; but I wish not to be misunder- stood. Though I can by no means allow them to hold any rank with the nobler schools of painting, they ac- complished perfectly the thing they attempted. But as mere elegance is their principal object, as they seem more willing to dazzle than to affect, it can be no injury to them to suppose that their practice is useful only to its proper end. But what may heighten the elegant may degrade the sublime. There is a simplicity, and, I may add, severity, in the great manner, which is, I am afraid, almost in- com.patible with this comparatively sensual style.

Tintoret, Paul Veronese, and others of the Vene- tian school, seem to have painted with no other pur- pose than to be admired for their skill and expertness in the mechanism of painting, and to make a parade of that art, which, as I before observed, the higher style requires its followers to conceal.

In a conference of the French Academy, at which were present Le Brun, Sebastian Bourdon, and all the eminent artists of that age, one of the Academi- cians desired to have their opinion on the conduct of Paul Veronese, who, though a painter of great con- sideration, had, contrary to the strict rules of art, in his picture of Perseus and Andromeda, represented the principal figure in shade. To this question no satisfactory answer was then given. But I will ven- ture to say that, if they had considered the class of the artist, and ranked him as an ornamental painter.

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. I09

there would have been no difficulty in answering: " It was unreasonable to expect what was never in- tended. His intention was solely to produce an effect of light and shadow ; everything was to be sacrificed to that intent, and the capricious composi- tion of that picture suited very well with the style which he professed."

Young minds are indeed too apt to be captivated by this splendor of style, and that of the Vene- tians is particularly pleasing; for by them all those parts of the art that gave pleasure to the eye or sense have been cultivated with care, and carried to the degree nearest to perfection. The powers exerted in the mechanical part of the art have been called " the language ot painters ; " but we may say that it is but poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk. Words should be employed as the means, not as the end ; language is the instrument, conviction is the work.^

The language of painting must indeed be allowed these masters ; but even in that they have shown more copiousness than choice, and more luxuriancy than judgment. If we consider the uninteresting sub- jects of their invention, or at least the uninteresting

1 " In art, men have frequently fancied that they were becoming rhetoricians and poets when they were only learning to speak melo- diously, and the judge has over and over again advanced to the honor of authors those who never were more than ornamental writing masters. . . . No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought. Three penstrokes of Raphael are a greater and a better picture than the most finished work that ever Carlo Dolci polished into inanity."

RUSKIN, Modern Painters.

no HEVNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

manner in which they are treated ; if we attend to their capricious composition, their violent and affected contrasts, whether of figures or of hght and shadow, the richness of their drapery, and at the same time the mean effect which the discrimination of stuffs gives to their pictures; if to these we add their total inattention to expression ; and then reflect on the conceptions and the learning of Michael Angelo, or the simplicity of Raphael, we can no longer dwell on the comparison. Even in coloring, if we compare the quietness and chastity of the Bolognese pencil to the bustle and tumult that fills every part of a Venetian picture, without the least attempt to interest the pas- sions, their boasted art will appear a mere struggle without effect, — "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Such as suppose that the great style might happily be blended with the ornamental, that the simple, grave, and majestic dignity of Raphael could unite with the glow and bustle of a Paolo or Tintoret, are totally mistaken. The principles by which each is attained are so contrary to each other that they seem, in my opinion, incompatible, and as impossible to exist to- gether, as that in the mind the most sublime ideas and the lowest sensuality should at the same time be united.^

1 " Their glory " (the great masters) " is their dissimilarity, and they who propose to themselves in the training of an artist that he should unite the coloring of Tintoret, the finish of Albert Durer, and the tenderness of Correggio, are no wiser than a horticulturist would be, who made it the object of his labor to produce a fruit which should unite in itself the lusciousness of the grape, the crispness of the nut, and the fragrance of the pine." — RusKiN, Modern Painters.

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. Ill

The subjects of the Venetian painters are mostly such as give them an opportunity of introducing a great number of figures, — such as feasts, marriages, and processions, pubhc martyrdoms, or miracles. I can easily conceive that Paul Veronese, if he were asked, would say that no subject was proper for an historical picture, but such as admitted at least forty figures; for in a less number, he would assert, there could be no opportunity of the painter's showing his art in composition, his dexterity of managing and dis- posing the masses of light and groups of figures, and of introducing a variety of Eastern dresses and char- acters in their rich stuffs.

But the thing is very different with a pupil of the greater schools. Annibale Caracci thought twelve figures sufficient for any story ; he conceived that more would contribute to no end but to fill space; that they would be but cold spectators of the general action, or, to use his own expression, that they would be figures to be let. Besides, it is impossible for a picture composed of so many parts to have that effect so indispensably necessary to grandeur, that of one complete whole. However contradictory it may be in geometry, it is true in taste, that man}' little things will not make a great one. The sublime impresses the mind at once with one great idea, — it is a sin- gle blow; the elegant, indeed, may be produced by repetition, by an accumulation of many minute circumstances.

However great the difference is between the com- position of the Venetian and the rest of the Italian schools, there is full as great a disparity in the eft'ect

112 REYNOLDS'S DISCOLTRSES.

of their pictures as produced by colors. And though in this respect the Venetians must be allowed ex- traordinary skill, yet even that skill, as they have em- ployed it, will but ill correspond with the great style. Their coloring is not only too brilliant, but, I will venture to say, too harmonious, to produce that so- lidity, steadiness, and simplicity of effect, which heroic subjects require, and which simple or grave colors only can give to a work. That they are to be cau- tiously studied by those who are ambitious of tread- ing the great walk of history is confirmed, if it wants confirmation, by the greatest of all authorities, Michael Angelo. This wonderful man, after having seen a pic- ture by Titian, told Vasari, who accompanied him, "that he liked much his coloring and manner; " but then he added that " it was a pity the Venetian painters did not learn to draw correctly in their early youth, and adopt a better manner of study T

By this it appears that the principal attention of the Venetian painters, in the opinion of Michael Angelo, seemed to be engrossed by the study of colors, to the neglect of the ideal beauty of form, or propriety of expression. But if general censure was given to that school from the sight of a picture of Titian, how much more heavily and more justly would the censure fall on Paolo Veronese, and more especially on Tintoret ! And here I cannot avoid citing Vasari's opinion of the style and manner of Tintoret.

" Of all the extraordinary geniuses," says he, "that have practised the art of painting, for wild, capricious, extrava- gant, and fantastical inventions, for furious impetuosity and boldness in the execution of his work, there is none like

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. II3

Tintoret ; his strange whimsies are even beyond extrava- gance ; and his works seem to be produced rather by chance than in consequence of any previous design, as if he wanted to convince the world that the art was a trifle, and of the most easy attainment."

For my own part, when I speak of the Venetian painters, I wish to be understood to mean Paolo Veronese and Tintoret, to the exclusion of Titian ; for thoufrh his style is not so pure as that of many other of the Italian schools, yet there is a sort of sena- torial dignity about him, which, however awkward in his imitators, seems to become him exceedingly. His portraits alone, from the nobleness and simplicity of character which he always gave them, will entitle him to the greatest respect, as he undoubtedly stands in the first rank in this branch of the art.

It is not with Titian, but with the seducing quali- ties of the two former, that I could wish to caution you against being too much captivated. These are the persons who may be said to have exhausted all the powers of florid eloquence to debauch the young and inexperienced ; and have, without doubt, been the cause of turning off the attention of the connois- seur and of the patron of art, as well as that of the painter, from those higher excellences of which the art is capable, and which ought to be required in every considerable production. By them and their imitators, a style merely ornamental has been dissemi- nated throughout all Europe. Rubens carried it to Flanders, Voet to France, and Luca Giordano to Spain and Naples.

The Venetian is indeed the most splendid of the s

IM REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

schools of elegance ; and it is not without reason that the best performances in this lower school are valued higher than the second-rate performances of those above them ; for every picture has value when it has a decided character, and is excellent in its kind. But the student must take care not to be so much dazzled with this splendor as to be tempted to imi- tate what must ultimately lead from perfection. Poussin, whose eye was always steadily fixed on the sublime, has been often heard to say, " that a particu- lar attention to coloring was an obstacle to the stu- dent in his progress to the great end and design of the art; and that he who attaches himself to this principal end will acquire by practice a reasonably good method of coloring."

Though it be allowed that elaborate harmony of coloring, a brilliancy of tints, a soft and gradual tran- sition from one to another, present to the eye what an harmonious concert of music does to the ear, it must be remembered that painting is not merely a gratification of the sight. Such excellence, though properly cultivated where nothing higher than ele- gance is intended, is weak and unworthy of regard when the work aspires to grandeur and sublimity.

The same reasons that have been urged to show that a mixture of the Venetian style cannot improve the great style will hold good in regard to the Flem- ish and Dutch schools. Indeed, the Flemish school, of which Rubens is the head, was formed upon that of the Venetian ; ^ like them, he took his figures too

^ "The conditions of art in Flanders — wealthy, bourgeois, \)ro\xA, free — were not dissimilar to those of art in Venice. As Van Ejck

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. II5

much from the people before him. But it must be allowed in favor of the Venetians, that he was more gross than they, and carried all their mistaken methods to a far greater excess. In the Venetian school itself, where they all err from the same cause, there is a difference in the effect. The difference between Paolo and Bassano seems to be only that one introduced Venetian gentlemen into his pictures, and the other the boors of the district of Bassano, and called them patriarchs and prophets.

The painters of the Dutch school have still more locality. With them a history-piece is properly a portrait of themselves ; whether they describe the inside or outside of their houses, we have their own people engaged in their own peculiar occupations, — working or drinking, playing or fighting. The cir- cumstances that enter into a picture of this kind are so far from giving a general view of human life that they exhibit all the minute particularities of a nation differing in several respects from the rest of mankind. Yet let them have their share of more humble praise. The painters of this school are excellent in their own way; they are only ridiculous when they attempt general history on their own narrow principles, and debase great events by the meanness of their characters.

Some inferior dexterity, some extraordinary me- chanical power, is apparently that from which they seek distinction. Thus, we see that school alone has the custom of representing candle-light, not as it

is to the Vivarini, so is Rubens to Paolo Veronese. This expresses the amount of likeness and difference."-^ Symonds : iii. 362, n.

Il6 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

really appears to us by night, but red, as it would illuminate objects to a spectator by day. Such tricks, however pardonable in the little style, where petty effects are the sole end, are inexcusable in the greater, where the attention should never be drawn aside by trifles, but should be entirely occupied by the subject itself.

The same local principles which characterize the Dutch school extend even to their landscape paint- ers ; and Rubens himself, who has painted many landscapes,^ has sometimes transgressed in this par- ticular. Their pieces in this way are, I think, always a representation of an individual spot, and each in its kind a very faithful but a very confined portrait. Claude Lorrain, on the contrary, was convinced that taking nature as he found it seldom produced beauty. His pictures are a composition of the various draughts which he had previously made from various beautiful scenes and prospects. However, Rubens in some measure has made amends for the deficiency with which he is charged ; he has contrived to raise and aoimate his otherwise uninteresting views by intro- ducing a rainbow, storm, or some particular acci- dental effect of light. That the practice of Claude Lorrain, in respect to his choice, is to be adopted by landscape-painters in opposition to that of the Flem- ish and Dutch schools, there can be no doubt, as its

^ Rubens "perhaps furnishes us with the first instances of complete, unconventional, unaffected landscape. His treatment is healthy, manly, rational, not very affectionate, yet often condescending to minute and multitudinous detail ; always, as far as it goes, pure, forcible, and refreshing, consummate in composition, and marvellous in color." — RUSKIN, Modern Painters.

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. \\^

truth is founded upon the same principle as that by which the historical painter acquires perfect form. But whether landscape-painting has a right to aspire so far as to reject what the painters call accidents of nature, is not easy to determine. It is certain Claude Lorrain seldom, if ever, availed himself of those acci- dents ; either he thought that such peculiarities were contrary to that style of general nature which he professed, or that it would catch the attention too strongly, and destroy that quietness and repose which he thought necessary to that kind of painting.

A portrait-painter likewise, when he attempts his- tory, unless he is upon his guard, is likely to enter too much into the detail. He too frequently makes his historical heads look like portraits ; and this was once the custom among those old painters, who re- vived the art before general ideas were practised or understood. A history-painter paints man in gen- eral ; a portrait-painter, a particular man, and conse- quently a defective model.

Thus an habitual practice in the lower exercises of the art will prevent many from attaining the greater. But such of us who move in these humbler walks of the profession are not ignorant that, as the natural dignity of the subject is less, the more all the little ornamental hel[)s are necessary to its embellishment. It would be ridiculous for a painter of domestic scenes, of portraits, landscapes, animals, or still life, to say that he despised those qualities which have made the subordinate schools so famous. The art of coloring, and the skilful management of light and shadow, are essential requisites in his confined labors.

Il8 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

If we descend still lower, what is the painter of fruit and flowers without the utmost art in coloring, and what the painters call handling; that is, a lightness of pencil that implies great practice, and gives the appearance of being done with ease? Some here, I believe, must remember a flower-painter whose boast it was, that he scorned to paint for the million ; no, he professed to paint in the true Italian taste; and, despising the crowd, called strenuously upon the few to admire him. His idea of the Italian taste was to paint as black and dirty as he could, and to leave all clearness and brilliancy of coloring to those who were fonder of money than immortality. The consequence was such as might be expected. For these petty excellences are here essential beauties ; and without this merit the artist's work will be more short-lived than the objects of his imitation.

From what has been advanced, we must now be convinced that there are two distinct styles in his- tory-painting, — the grand, and the splendid, or ornamental.

The great style stands alone, and does not require, perhaps does not so well admit, any addition from inferior beauties. The ornamental style also pos- sesses its own peculiar merit. However, though the union of the two may make a sort of composite style, yet that style is likely to be more imperfect than either of those which go to its composition. Both kinds have merit, and may be excellent though in different ranks, if uniformity be preserved, and the general and particular ideas of nature be not mixed. Even the meanest of them is difficult enough to at-

THF FOURTH DISCOURSE. I 19

tain ; and the first place being already occupied by the great artists in each department, some of those who followed thought there was less room for them ; and feeling the impulse of ambition and the desire of novelty, and being at the same time, perhaps, willing to take the shortest way, endeavored to make for themselves a place between both. This they have effected by forming a union of the different orders. But as the grave and majestic style would suffer by a union with the florid and gay, so also has the Venetian ornament in some respect been injured by attempting an alliance with simplicity.

It may be asserted that the great style is always more or less contaminated by any meaner mixture. But it happens in a few instances that the lower may be improved by borrowing from the grand. Thus, if a portrait-painter is desirous to raise and improve his subject, he has no other means than by approaching it to a general idea. He leaves out all the minute breaks and peculiarities in the face, and changes the dress from a temporary fashion to one more perma- nent, which has annexed to it no ideas of meanness from its being familiar to us. But if an exact resem- blance of an individual be considered as the sole object to be aimed at, the portrait-painter will be apt to lose more than he gains by the acquired dignity taken from general nature. It is very difficult to ennoble the character of a countenance but at the expense of the likeness, which is what is most gener- ally required by such as sit to the painter.

Of those who have practised the composite style, and have succeeded in this perilous attempt, perhaps

I20 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

the foremost is Correggio. His style is founded upon modern grace and elegance, to which is super- added something of the simplicity of the grand style. A breadth of light and color, the general ideas of the drapery, an uninterrupted flow of outline, all conspire to this effect. Next to him (perhaps equal to him), Parmegiano has dignified the genteelness of modern effeminacy, by uniting it with the simplicity of the ancients and the grandeur and severity of Michael Angelo. It must be confessed, however, that these two extraordinary men, by endeavoring to give the utmost degree of grace, have sometimes, perhaps, exceeded its boundaries, and have fallen into the most hateful of all hateful qualities, — affectation. Indeed, it is the peculiar characteristic of m.en of genius to be afraid of coldness and insipidity, from which they think they never can be too far remov^ed. It particularly happens to these great masters of grace and elegance. They often boldly drive on to the very verge of ridicule ; the spectator is alarmed, but at the same time admires their vigor and intrepidity.

" Strange graces still, and stranger flights they had,

Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create,

As when they touch'd the brink of all we hate."

The errors of genius, however, are pardonable, and none even of the more exalted painters are wholly free from them; but they have taught us, by the rectitude of their general practice, to correct their own affected or accidental deviation. The very first have not been always upon their guard, and perhaps

THE FOURTH DISCOURSE. 121

there is not a fault but what may take shelter under the most venerable authorities ; yet that style only is perfect in which the noblest principles are uniformly pursued ; and those masters only are entitled to the first rank in our estimation who have enlarged the boundaries of their art, and have raised it to its high- est dignity, by exhibiting the general ideas of nature. On the whole, it seems to me that there is but one presiding principle which regulates and gives stability to every art. The works, whether of poets, painters, moralists, or historians, which are built upon general nature, live forever; while those which depend for their existence on particular customs and habits, a partial view of nature, or the fluctuation of fashion, can only be coeval with that which first raised them from obscurity. Present time and future may be considered as rivals ; and he who solicits the one must expect to be discountenanced by the other.

A//s\ Menicli

DISCOURSE V.

Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distri- bution of the Prizes, December lo, 1772.

CIRCUMSPECTION REQUIRED IN ENDEAVORING TO UNITE CONTRARY EXCELLENCES. — THE EXPRESSION OF A MIXED PASSION NOT TO BE ATTEMPTED. — EXAMPLES OF THOSE WHO EXCELLED IN THE GREAT STYLE. — RAPHAEL, MICHAEL ANGELO, THOSE TWO EX- TRAORDINARY MEN COMPARED WITH EACH OTHER. — THE CHAR- ACTERISTICAL STYLE. — SALVATOR ROSA MENTIONED AS AN EXAMPLE OF THAT STYLE; AND OPPOSED TO CARLO MARATTI. — SKETCH OF THE CHARACTERS OF POUSSIN AND RUBENS. — THESE TWO PAINTERS ENTIRELY DISSIMILAR, BUT CONSISTENT WITH THEMSELVES. — THIS CONSISTENCY REQUIRED IN ALL PARTS OF THE ART.

I PURPOSE to carry on in this discourse the subject which I began in my last. It was my wish upon that occasion to incite you to pursue the higher excel- lences of the art. But I fear that in this particular I have been misunderstood. Some are ready to im- agine, when any of their favorite acquirements in the art are properly classed, that they are utterly dis- graced. This is a very great mistake; nothing has its proper lustre but in its proper place. That which is most worthy of esteem in its allotted sphere be- comes an object, not of respect, but of derision, when it is forced into a higher, to which it is not suited ; and there it becomes doubly a source of disorder, by occupying a situation which is not natural to it, and

124 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

by putting down from the first place what is in reality of too much magnitude to become with grace and proportion that subordinate station, to which some- thing of less value would be much better suited.

My advice, in a word, is this : keep your princi- pal attention fixed upon the higher excellences. If you compass them, and compass nothing more, you are still in the first class. We may regret the innum- erable beauties which you may want ; you may be very imperfect ; but still you are an imperfect artist of the highest order.

If, when you have got thus far, you can add any, or all, of the subordinate qualifications, it is my wish and advice that you should not neglect them. But this is as much a matter of circumspection and cau- tion at least, as of eagerness and pursuit.

The mind is apt to be distracted by a multiplicity of objects ; and that scale of perfection which I wish always to be preserved is in the greatest danger of being totally disordered, and even inverted.

Some excellences bear to be united, and are im- proved by union; others are of a discordant nature, and the attempt to join them only produces a harsh jarring of incongruent principles. The attempt to unite contrary excellences (of form, for instance) in a single figure can never escape degenerating into the monstrous but by sinking into the insipid, — by taking away its marked character, and weakening its expression.

This remark is true to a certain degree with regard to the passions. If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in its most perfect state, you cannot

THE FIFTH DISCOURSE. 1 25

express the passions, all of which produce distortion and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces. ^

Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his ideas and his powers, or from attempting to preserve beauty where it could not be preserved, has in this respect succeeded very ill. His figures are often engaged in subjects that require great expres- sion; yet his Judith and Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias with the Baptist's head, the Andromeda, and some even of the Mothers of the Innocents, have little more expression than his Venus attired by the Graces.

Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many writers on our art who, not being of the profession, and consequently not knowing what can or cannot be done, have been very liberal of absurd praises in their descriptions of favorite works. They always find in them what they are resolved to find. They praise excellences that can hardly exist together; and, above all things, are fond of describing, with great exactness, the expression of a mixed passion, which more particularly appears to me out of the reach of our art.

Such are many disquisitions which I have read on some of the cartoons and other pictures of Raphael,

' There are passions and degrees of passion, which are expressed by the ugliest possible contortions of countenance, and throw the whole body into such a forced position that all the beautiful lines which cover its surface are lost. From all such emotions the ancient masters either abstained entirely, or reduced them to that lower de- gree in which they are capable of a certain measure of beauty. Rage and despair disgraced none of their productions ; I dare maintain that they have never painted a Fury. — Lessino, The Laocoott.

126 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

where the critics have described their own imagina- tions ; or, indeed, where the excellent master himself may have attempted this expression of passions above the powers of the art, and has, therefore, by an indis- tinct and imperfect marking, left room for every im- agination, with equal probability, to find a passion of his own. What has been, and what can be done in the art, is sufficiently difficult; we need not be morti- fied or discouraged at not being able to execute the conceptions of a romantic imagination. Art has its boundaries, though imagination has none. We can easily, like the ancients, suppose a Jupiter to be pos- sessed of all those powers and perfections which the subordinate deities were endowed with separately. Yet, when they employed their art to represent him, they confined his character to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore, though we are under great obligations to him for the information he has given us in relation to the works of the ancient artists, is very frequently wrong when he speaks of them, which he does very often, in the style of many of our modern connois- seurs. He observes that in a statue of Paris, by Euphranor, you might discover, at the same time, three different characters: the dignity of a judge of the goddesses, the lover of Helen, and the conqueror of Achilles. A statue in which you endeavor to unite stately dignity, youthful elegance, and stern valor, must surely possess none of these to any emi- nent degree.

From hence it appears, that there is much diffi- culty, as well as danger, in an endeavor to concen- trate, in a single subject, those various powers which,

THE FIFTH DISCOURSE. 1 27

rising from different points, naturally move in differ- ent directions.

The summit of excellence seems to be an assem- blage of contrary qualities, but mixed in such pro- portions that no one part is found to counteract the other. How hard this is to be attained in every art, those only know who have made the greatest prog- ress in their respective professions.

To conclude what I have to say on this part of the subject, which I think of great importance, I wish you to understand that I do not discourage the younger students from the noble attempt of uniting all the excellences of art ; but suggest to them, that, besides the difficulties which attend every arduous attempt, there is a peculiar difficulty in the choice of the ex- cellences which ought to be united. I wish to attend to this, that you may try yourselves, whenever you are capable of that trial, what you can and what you cannot do; and that, instead of dissipating your natural faculties over the immense field of possible excellence, you may choose some particular walk, in which you may exercise all your powers in order that each of you may become the first in his way. If any man shall be master of such a transcendent, com- mandincj, and ductile fjcnius, as to enable him to rise to the highest, and to stoop to the lowest, flights of art, and to sweep over all of them, unobstructed and secure, he is fitter to give example than to receive instruction.

Having said thus much on the union of excellences, I will next say something of the subordination in which various excellences ought to be kept.

128 I^EYNOLDS'S DISCOL/RSES.

I am of opinion that the ornamental style, which, in my discourse of last year, I cautioned you against considering as principal, may not be wholly unworthy the attention even of those who aim at the grand style, when it is properly placed and properly reduced.

But this study will be used with far better effect, if its principles are employed in softening the harshness and mitigating the rigor of the great style, than if it attempt to stand forward with any pretensions of its own to positive and original excellence. It was thus Ludovico Caracci, whose example I formerly recom- mended to you, employed it. He was acquainted with the works both of Correggio and the Venetian painters, and knew the principles by which they pro- duced those pleasing efTects which, at the first glance, prepossess us so much in their favor ; but he took only as much from each as would embellish, but not overpower, that manly strength and energy of style which is his peculiar character.

Since I have already expatiated so largely in my former discourse, and in ni}- present, upon the styles and characters of painting, it will not be at all unsuit- able to my subject if I mention to you some partic- ulars relative to the leading principles and capital works of those who excelled in the great style, that I may bring you from abstraction nearer to practice, and, by exemplifying the positions which I have laid down, enable you to understand more clearly what I would enforce.

The principal works of modern art are in fresco, a mode of painting which excludes attention to minute elegances ; yet these works in fresco are the produc-

THE FIFTH DISCOURSE. 1 29

tions on which the fame of the greatest masters de- pends. Such are the pictures of Michael Angelo and Raphael in the Vatican ; to which we may add the cartoons ; which, though not strictly to be called fresco, yet may be put under that denomination ; and such are the works of Giulio Romano at Mantua. If these performances were destroyed, with them would be lost the best part of the reputation of those illus- trious painters ; for these are justly considered as the greatest effort of our art which the world can boast. To these, therefore, we should principally direct our attention for higher excellences. As for the lower arts, as they have been once discovered, they may be easily attained by those possessed of the former.

Raphael, who stands in general foremost of the first painters, owes his reputation, as I have observed, to his excellence in the higher parts of the art; his works in fresco, therefore, ought to be the first object of our study and attention. His easel-works stand in a lower degree of estimation ; for though he continually, to the day of his death, embellished his performances more and more with the addition of those lower ornaments which entirely make the merit of some painters, yet he never arrived at such perfection as to make him an object of imitation. He never was able to conquer perfectly that dryness, or even littleness of manner, which he inherited from his master. He never acquired that nicety of taste in colors, that breadth of light and shadow, that art and management of uniting light to light, and shadow to shadow, so as to make the object rise out of the ground, with the plenitude of effect so much admired

9

130 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES.

in the works of Correggio.^ When he painted in oil, his hand seemed to be so cramped and confined that he not only lost that facility and spirit, but I think even that correctness of form, which is so perfect and admirable in his fresco-works. I do not recollect any pictures of his of this kind, except the " Trans- figuration," in which there are not some parts that appear to be even feebly drawn. That this is not a necessary attendant on oil-painting, we have abun- dant instances in more modern painters. Ludovico Caracci, for instance, preserved in his works in oil the same spirit, vigor, and correctness which he had in fresco. I have no desire to degrade Raphael from the high rank which he deservedly holds ; but by comparing him with himself, he does not appear to me to be the same man in oil as in fresco.

From those who have ambition to tread in this great walk of the art, Michael Angelo claims the next attention. He did not possess so many excel- lences as Raphael, but those which he had were of the highest kind. He considered the art as consist- ing of little more than what maybe attained by sculp- ture,— correctness of form and energy of character. We ought not to expect more than an artist intends in his work. He never attempted those lesser ele- gances and graces in the art. Vasari says he never

^ I have no hesitation in saying that, froip the technical