(Go to Summary of review of Modern Painters I, Athenaeum 3 and 10 February 1844, pp. 105-107)
There is too much reasoning in this book, without the higher qualities of reasoning, which are clearness and conclusiveness, subordination of parts, and able summation of the whole... Yet it is a clever book - neither less nor more. It exhibits what may recommend it to many readers, some characteristics of Hazlitt's style - boldness and brilliancy, bigotry amidst liberality, and great acuteness amid still greater blindness. (p.105)
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With respect to the great artist whose works have
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the passage in Modern Painters I
formed the chief subject
of this treatise, the duty of the
press is clear. He is above all criticism,
beyond all
animadversion, and beyond all praise. His works are
not
to be received as in any way subjects or matters of
opinion; but of Faith.
We are not to approach them
to be pleased; but to be taught: not to form
a judg-
ment; but to receive a lesson. Our periodical writers,
therefore,
may save themselves the trouble either of
blaming or praising: their
duty is not to pronounce
opinions upon the work of a man who has walked
with
nature threescore years; but to impress upon the pub-
lic the
respect with which they are to be received, and
to make request to him,
on the part of the people of
England, that he would now touch no unimportant
work-that
he would not spend time on slight or small
pictures, but give to the
nation a series of grand, con-
sistent, systematic, and completed poems,
using no
means nor vehicle capable of any kind of change. We
do not
presume to form even so much as a wish, or an
idea, respecting the manner
or matter of anything pro-
teeding from his hand. We desire only that
he would
follow out his own thoughts and intents of heart, with-
out
reference to any human authority. But we request,
in all humility, that
those thoughts may be seriously
and loftily given; and that the whole
power of his un-
equalled intellect may be exerted in the production
of
such works as may remain for ever for the teaching of
the nations.
In all that he says, we believe; in all that
he does, we trust. It is
therefore that we pray him to
utter nothing lightly-to do nothing regardlessly.
He
stands upon an eminence, from which he looks back
over the universe
of God, and forward over the genera-
tions of men. Let every work of
his hand be a history
of the one, and a lesson to the other. Let each
exertion
of his mighty mind be both hymn and prophecy,-adora-
tion
to the Deity,-revelation to mankind[.]
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Now for some few other examples of Turneromania, and volcanic eruptions from the crater of a fervent imagination:-
Turner-glorious
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in
conception-unfathornable in knowledge-solitary in
power-with the elements
waiting upon his will, and
the night and the morning obedient to his
call, sent as
a prophet of God to reveal to men the mysteries of
His
universe, standing, like the great angel of the
Apocalypse, clothed with
a cloud, and with a rainbow
upon his head, and with the sun and stars
given into
his hand[.]
Speaking of Mr Turner's 'War' (vide Athen. no.759), he has the hardihood to assert -
There was not one hue in this whole picture which was not
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far below what
nature would have used in the same circumstances,
nor was there one inharmonious
or at variance with the rest;-the
stormy blood-red of the horizon, the
scarlet of the breaking sun
light, the rich crimson browns of the wet
and illumined sea-weed,
the pure gold and purple of the upper sky, and,
shed through it
all, the deep passage of solemn blue, where the cold
moonlight
fell on one pensive spot of the limitless shore-all were given
with
harmony as perfect as their colour was intense; and if, instead
of passing,
as I doubt not you did, in the hurry of your un-
reflecting prejudice,
you had paused but so much as one quarter
of an hour before the picture,
you would have found the sense
of air and. space blended with every line,
and breathing in every
cloud, and every colour instinct and radiant with
visible, glowing,
absorbing light[.]
The same painter's palpitating light (?) seems to have inflicted a sort of sun-stroke on its worshipper:-
There
is the motion, the
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actual wave and radiation of the darted beam-not the
dull univer
sal daylight, which falls on the landscape without life,
or direction,
or speculation, equal on all things and dead on all things;
but the
breathing, animated, exulting light, which feels, and receives,
and
rejoices, and acts-which chooses one thing and rejects another
which
seeks, and finds, and loses again-leaping from rock to rock,
from leaf
to leaf, from wave to wave,-glowing, or flashing, or
scintillating, according
to what it strikes, or in its holier moods,
absorbing and enfolding all
things in the deep fulness of its
repose, and then again losing itself
in bewilderment, and doubt,
and dimness ; or perishing and passing away,
entangled in drifting
mist, or melted into melancholy air, but still,-kindling,
or declin
ing, sparkling or still, it is the living light, which breathes
in its
deepest, most entranced rest, which sleeps, but never dies.
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He observes, with extreme soreness:-
THERE is nothing so high in art but that a scurrile jest
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the passage in Modern Painters I
can reach it,
and often, the greater the work, the easier
it is to turn it into ridicule.
To appreciate the science
of Turner's colour would require the study
of a life,
but to laugh at it requires little more than the know-
ledge
that yolk of egg is yellow, and spinage green; a
fund of critical information
on which the remarks of
most of our leading periodicals have been of
late years
exclusively based. We shall, however, in spite of the
sulphur
and treacle criticisms of our Scotch connois-
seurs, and the eggs and
spinage of our English ones,
endeavour to test the works of this great
colourist by a
knowledge of nature somewhat more extensive than is
to
be gained by an acquaintance, however familiar, with
the apothecary's
shop, or the dinner table[.]
He seems to think landscapes should be, throughout their details, little facsimiles of real objects, and that no other merit surpasses minute faithfulness... He professes, indeed, a noble disdain of servile imitation in art, but half his book is a ding-dong against the Ancient Masters on its sole account... He would have geologic landscape-painters, dendrologic, meteorologic, and doubtless entomologic, ichthyologic, every kind of physiologic painter united in the same person... No, landscape-painting must not be reduced to mere portraiture - portraiture of inanimate substances - Denner-like portraiture of the Earth's face, with all its wrinkles and pimples, line by line, shade by shade. As we have said elsewhere, if people want to see Nature let them go and look at herself; wherefore should they come to see her at second-hand on a poor little piece of plastered canvas? We disapprove the 'natural style' in painting, not because we dislike Nature, but because we adore her; she is so far above any imitation of her, that the very best disappoints us and dissatisfies. Ancient landscapists took a broader, deeper, higher, view of their art: they neglected particular traits, and gave only general features: thus they attained mass, and force, harmonious union, and simple effect, the elements of grandeur and beauty. (p.133)
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It
had
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been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the Campagna
the
clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder
or two,
and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian aqueduct,
lighting up the
infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. But
as I climbed the
long slope of the Alban mount, the storm swept
finally to the north,
and the noble outline of the domes of Albano
and graceful darkness of
its ilex grove rose against pure streaks of
alternate blue and amber,
the upper sky gradually flushing through
the last fragments of rain-cloud
in deep, palpitating azure, half
aether and half dew. The noon-day sun
came slanting down the
rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of entangled
and tall foliage,
whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure
of a thousand
evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot
call it
colour, it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet,
like
the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into
the
valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant
and
burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the
sun-beam,
first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the
recesses of the valley,
the green vistas arched like the hollows of
mighty waves of some crystalline
sea, with the arbutus flowers
dashed along their flanks for foam, and
silver flakes of orange spray
tossed into the air around them, breaking
over the grey walls of rock
into a thousand separate stars, fading and
kindling alternately as the
weak wind lifted and let them fall. Every
glade of grass burned
like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden
gleams as the
foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens
in a
cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock-dark though
flushed
with scarlet lichen,-casting their quiet shadows across its
restless
radiance, the fountain underneath them filling, its marble
hollow with
blue mist and fitful sound, and over all-the multitu
dinous bars of amber
and rose, the sacred clouds that have no
darkness, and only exist to
illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals
between the solemn and orbed
repose of the stone pines, passing
to lose themselves in the last, white,
blinding lustre of the measure
less line where the Campagna melted into
the blaze of the sea[.]