322 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

which the knowledge or inventions of the present time can afford to their art. They intend to return to early days in this one point only-that, as far as in them lies, they will draw either what they see, or what they suppose might have been the actual facts of the scene they desire to represent, irrespective of any conventional rules of picture-making; and they have chosen their unfortunate though not inaccurate name because all artists did this before Raphael’s time, and after Raphael’s time did not this, but sought to paint fair pictures, rather than represent stern facts; of which the consequence has been that, from Raphael’s time to this day, historical art has been in acknowledged decadence.

Now, Sir, presupposing that the intention of these men was to return to archaic art instead of to archaic honesty, your critic borrows Fuseli’s expression respecting ancient draperies “snapped instead of folded,” and asserts that in these pictures there is a “servile imitation of false perspective.” To which I have just this to answer:-

That there is not one single error in perspective in four out of the five pictures in question; and that in Millais’ “Mariana”¹ there is but this one-that the top of the green curtain in the distant window has too low a vanishing-point; and that I will undertake, if need be, to point out and prove a dozen worse errors in perspective in any twelve pictures, containing architecture, taken at random from among the works of the popular painters of the day.

Secondly: that, putting aside the small Mulready, and the works of Thorburn and Sir W. Ross,² and perhaps some others of those in the miniature room which I have not examined, there is not a single study of drapery in the whole Academy, be it in large works or small, which for perfect truth, power, and finish could be compared for an

¹ [For other references to Millais’ “Mariana,” see below, pp. 323, 327; Academy Notes, 1857, s. 283; The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism, § 19; and Notes on the Millais Exhibition of 1886, reprinted in a later volume of this edition.]

² [The “small Mulready” was No. 168, “A Music Lesson” (painted in 1809). There were several small works in the exhibition by Robert Thorburn (1818-1885) and Sir William Charles Ross, R. A. (1794-1860).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]