364 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

refinement of drawing almost miraculous, and appreciable only, as the minutić of nature itself are appreciable, by the help of the microscope. The value, therefore, of his works, as records of the aspect of the scenery and inhabitants of the south of Spain and of the East, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, is quite above all estimate.

28. I hardly know how to speak of Mulready:¹ in delicacy and completion of drawing, and splendour of colour, he takes place beside John Lewis and the Pre-Raphaelites; but he has, throughout his career, displayed no definiteness in choice of subject. He must be named among the painters who have studied with industry, and have made themselves great by doing so; but, having obtained a consummate method of execution, he has thrown it away on subjects either altogether uninteresting, or above his powers, or unfit for pictorial representation. “The Cherry Woman,” exhibited in 1850, may be named as an example of the first kind; the “Burchell and Sophia” of the second (the character of Sir William Thornhill being utterly missed); the “Seven Ages” of the third;² for this subject cannot be painted. In the written passage, the thoughts are progressive and connected; in the picture they must be co-existent, and yet separate; nor can all the characters of the ages be rendered in painting at all. One may represent the soldier at the cannon’s mouth, but one cannot paint the “bubble reputation”³ which he seeks. Mulready, therefore, while he has always produced exquisite pieces of painting, has failed in doing anything which can be of true or extensive use. He has, indeed, understood how to discipline his genius, but never how to direct it.

29. Edwin Landseer⁴ is the last painter but one whom

¹ [See above, p. 300, and for a summary of references to this painter, Vol. IV. p. 336 n.]

² [This picture, exhibited at the Academy in 1838, is now in the Victoria and Albert (South Kensington) Museum, being part of the Sheepshanks Gift. “Burchell and Sophia,” exhibited in 1847, is noticed in the Addenda to Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 336).]

³ [As You Like It, ii. 7.]

⁴ [For a summary of Ruskin’s references to Landseer, see Vol. IV. p. 334 n.]

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