(Go to Summary of review of Modern Painters I, Spectator, 7 December 1844, pp. 1167-69.)
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The root of the matter is found in the following
Painting, or art generally, as such, with all its tech-
Go to
the passage in Modern Painters I
nicalities, difficulties,
and particular ends, is nothing
but a noble and expressive language,
invaluable as the
vehicle of thought, but by itself, nothing. He who
has
learned what is commonly considered the whole art
of painting, that is,
the art of representing any natural
object faithfully, has as yet only
learned the language
by which his thoughts are to be expressed. He has
done
just as much towards being that which we ought
to respect as a great
painter, as a man who has learned
how to express himself grammatically
and melodiously
has towards being a great poet. The language is, in-
deed,
more difficult of acquirement in the one case
than in the other, and
possesses more power of delight
ing the sense, while it speaks to the
intellect, but it is,
nevertheless, nothing more than language, and all
those
excellences which are peculiar to the painter as
such, are merely what
rhythm, melody, precision and
force are in the words of the orator and
the poet, ne-
cessary to their greatness, but not the tests of their
greatness.
It is not by the mode of representing and
saying, but by what is represented
and said, that the
respective greatness either of the painter or the
writer
is to be finally determined.
Speaking with strict propriety,
therefore, we should
call a man a great painter only as he excelled in
pre-
cision and force in the language of lines, and a great
versifier,
as he excelled in precision or force of the
language of words. A great
poet would then be a term
strictly, and in precisely the same sense applicable
to
both, if warranted by the character of the images or
thoughts which
each in their respective languages con-
veyed.
Take, for instance,
one of the most perfect poems
or pictures (I use the word as
synonymous) which
modern times have seen:-the "Old Shepherd's chief-
mourner."Here
the exquisite execution, of the glossy
and crisp hair of the dog, the
bright sharp touching of
the green bough beside it, the clear painting
of the wood
of the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are language-
language
clear and expressive in the highest degree.
But the close pressure of
the dog's breast against the
wood, the convulsive clinging of the paws,
which has
dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total power
lessness
of the head laid, close and motionless, upon its
folds, the fixed and
tearful fall of the eye in its utter
hopelessness, the rigidity of repose
which marks that
there has been no motion nor change in the trance
of
agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin-
lid, the quietness
and gloom of the chamber, the spec-
tacles marking the place where the
Bible was last
closed, indicating how lonely has been the life-how
unwatched
the departure of him who is now laid soli-
tary in his sleep;-these are
all thoughts-thoughts by
which the picture is separated at once from
hundreds
of equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which
it
ranks as a work of the highest art, and stamps its
author, not as the
neat imitator of the texture of a
skin, or the fold of a drapery, but
as the Man of
Mind.
It is not, however, always easy, either in painting
or
literature, to determine where the influence of language
stops,
and where that of thought begins. Many thoughts
are so dependent upon
the language in which they are
clothed, that they would lose half their
beauty if otherwise
expressed. But the highest thoughts are those which
are
least dependent on language, and the dignity of
any composition and praise
to which it is entitled are
in exact proportion to its independency of
language or
expression[.]
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REAL MEANING OF THE TERM 'IMITATION'
Whenever anything looks like what it is not, the
Go to
the passage in Modern Painters I
resemblance being so
great as nearlyto deceive, we
feel a kind of pleasurable surprise, an
agreeable ex-
citement of mind, exactly the same in its nature as
that
which we receive from juggling. Whenever we
perceive this in something
produced by art, that is to
say, whenever the work is seen to resemble
something
which we know it is not, we receive what I call an idea
of
imitation. Why such ideas are pleasing, it would
be out of our present
purpose to enquire; we only
know that there is no man who does not feel
pleasure
in his animal nature from gentle surprise, and that
such
surprise can be excited in no more distinct man~
ner than by the evidence
that a thing is not what it
appears to be. Now two things are requisite
to our
complete and most pleasurable perception of this:
first, that
the resemblance be so perfect as to amount to
a deception; secondly,
that there be some means of
proving at the same moment that it is a deception.
The
most perfect ideas and pleasures of imitation are,
therefore, when one
sense is contradicted by another,
both bearing as positive evidence on
the subject as
each is capable of alone; as when the eye says a thing
is
round, and the finger says it is flat; they are, there-
fore, never felt
in so high a degree as in painting,
where appearance of projection, roughness,
hair, velvet,
&c. are given with a smooth surface, or in wax-work,
where
the first evidence of the senses is perpetually
contradicted by their
experience; but the moment we
come to marble, our definition checks us,
for a marble
figure does not look like what it is not: it looks like
marble,
and like the form of a man, but then it is
marble and it is the form
of a man. It does not look
like a man, which it is not, but like the
form of a man,
which it is. Form is form, bona fideand actual,
whether
in marble or in flesh-not an imitation or re-
semblance of form, but
real form. The chalk outline
of the bough of a tree on paper, is not
an imitation,
it looks like chalk and paper-not like wood, and that
which
it suggests to the mind is not properly said to be
like the form of a
bough, it is the form of a bough.
Now, then, we see the limits of an
idea of imitation;
it extends only to the sensation of trickery and de-
ception
occasioned by a thing being intentionally dif-
ferent from what it seems
to be; and the degree of the
pleasure depends on the degree of difference
and the
perfection of the resemblance, not on the nature of the
thing
resembled. The simple pleasure in the imitation
is precisely of the same
degree (if the accuracy be
equal), whether the subject be a Madonna or
a lemon
peel.
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He thus characterizes the chief aim of the old landscape-painters
[T]he
deception of the senses was the
Go to
the passage in Modern Painters I
great and first end of all their art.
To attain this they paid deep
and serious attention to effects of light
and tone, and to, the
exact degree of relief which material objects take
against light
and atmosphere; and sacrificing every other truth to these,
not
necessarily, but because they required no others for deception, they
succeeded
in rendering these particular facts with a fidelity and
force which,
in the pictures that have come down to us uninjured,
are as yet unequalled,
and never can be surpassed. They painted
their foregrounds with laborious
industry, covering them with details
so as to render them deceptive to
the ordinary eye, regardless of
beauty or truth in the details themselves;
they painted their trees
with careful attention to their pitch of shade
against the sky, utterly
regardless of all that is beautiful or essential
in the anatomy of
their foliage and boughs: they painted their distances
with exquisite
use of transparent colour and aerial tone, totally neglectful
of all
facts and forms which nature uses such colour and tone to relieve
and
adorn. They had neither love of nature, nor feeling of her
beauty; they
looked for her coldest and most common-place effects,
because they were
easiest to imitate; and for her most vulgar forms,
because they were
most easily to be recognized by the untaught eyes
of those whom alone
they could hope to please; they did it, like
the Pharisee of old, to
be seen of men, and they had their reward.
They do deceive and delight
the unpractised eye ;-they will to all
ages, as long as their colours
endure, be the standards of excellence
with all, who, ignorant of nature,
claim to be thought learned in
art. And they will to all ages be, to
those who have thorough
love and knowledge of the creation which they
libel, instructive
proofs of the limited number and low character of
the truths which
are necessary, and the accumulated multitude of pure,
broad, bold
falsehoods which are admissible in pictures meant only to
deceive[.]
This is exaggeration almost to untruth; and it may serve to exemplify how the writer vitiates his conclusions by pushing his inferences too far. (p.1168)
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It is the indefiniteness of his forms and the bad drawing of his figures that most provoke ridicule; for people not being able to make out the meaning of the picture, are apt to regard it as only some smudges of gay colour harmoniously blended. This defect in Turner's pictures is thus ingeniously palliated by his defender, in explaining the rationale of space in the landscape of Rubens and Turner.
[I]f in a painting our foreground is anything, our
Go to
the passage in Modern Painters I
distance must be nothing,
and vice versa ; for if we represent
our near and distant objects as
giving both at once that distinct
image to the eye, which we receive
in nature from each, when we
look at them separately;] and if we distinguish
them from each
other only by the air-tone; and indistinctness dependent
on positive
distance, we violate one of the most essential principles
of nature;
we represent that as seen at once which can only be seen by
two
separate acts of seeing, and tell a falsehood as gross as if we had
represented
four sides of a cubic object visible together.
Now, to this fact and
principle, no landscape painter of the old
school, as far as I remember,
ever paid the slightest attention.
Finishing their foregrounds clearly
and sharply, and with vigorous
impression on the eye, giving even the
leaves of their bushes and
grass with perfect edge and shape, they proceeded
into the distance
with equal attention to what they could see of its
details-they
gave all that the eye can perceive in a distance, when it
is fully
and entirely devoted to it, and therefore, though masters of
aërial
tone, though employing every expedient that art could supply
to
conceal the intersection of lines, though caricaturing the force and
shadow
of near objects to throw them close upon the eye, they never
succeeded
in truly representing space. Turner introduced a new
era in landscape
art, by showing that the foreground might be sunk
for the distance, and
that it was possible to express immediate
proximity to the spectator,
without giving anything like complete-
ness to the forms of the near
objects. This is not done by slurred
or soft lines, observe, (always
the sign of vice in art,) but by a
decisive imperfection, a firm, but
partial assertion of form, which
the eye feels indeed to be close home
to it, and yet cannot rest
upon, nor cling to, nor entirely understand,
and from which it is
driven away of necessity, to those parts of distance
on which it is
intended to repose. And this principle, originated by
Turner,
though fully carried out by him only, has yet been acted on with
judgment
and success by several less powerful artists of the English
school[.]
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