>vv! - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 rA>>Kl^ak^^^ 
 
 In'INtKSS 
 
 
TO 
 
 EARL GRANVILLE, K.G. 
 
 LORD PRESIDENT OP THE COUNCIL, AND CHAIRMAN OP HER MAJESTY’S 
 COMMISSIONERS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF 1862 
 
 Whilst dedicating this little book, by your kind permission, 
 to your Lordship, I am anxious to state, at once, that although 
 undertaken under the Commissioners’ sanction, it contains no 
 judgment for which the writer is not solely responsible. It 
 has been a serious task ; unpleasant from the tone of asser- 
 tion which, in so brief a criticism, is unavoidable without a 
 wearisome repetition of diffidence and qualifying phrases ; — 
 in one sense indescribably unpleasant, from the necessity, of 
 uniting censure with praise. But having accepted this un- 
 gracious judicial function, in the interests of Art I could not 
 honestly do otherwise than express opinions, which I have 
 done my best to form impartially, and to write fearlessly. 
 
 I shall hope that the work may prove useful to visitors ; 
 but I cannot expect to escape giving temporary annoyance 
 to some sincere but (as it seems to me) mistaken artists. 
 And in this wide region of gain and glory a few counterfeit 
 wares (how should it be otherwise ?) have crept in, which in 
 justice to the good men and true, I have felt bound to specify. 
 Especially is this the case in regard to Sculpture : an art to 
 which, it is fair to add, I have give many years’ close attention. 
 But no word of dispraise has been admitted without repeated 
 revision, and sincere regret. 
 
HANDBOOK 
 
 TO THE 
 
 FINE ART COLLECTIONS 
 
 — — oo>®4oo — 
 
 THE ENGLISH SCHOOL OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 R EAD or not read, a few words of Preface must be given, to tell 
 the plan and principles of this little book. Among spectators 
 in all galleries of art two phrases are constantly heard, that we Jcnow 
 nothing about Painting, and that tastes cannot he disputed. The 
 writer intends here to make war against both of them. 
 
 So far as mere information is concerned, very little is needed to 
 understand really good Art. What we want, in fact, is rather to 
 forget than to remember. Let a man come with a true open heart, 
 putting away the fine learned phrases he may have heard and super- 
 subtle reasons for admiring commonplace and charlatanry, and asking 
 himself always, whilst he sees pictures, whether they are like Nature, 
 and when away, which pictures dwell on his memory ; and he will 
 soon find the discernment of the good and the less good growing up 
 within him. A temper ready to love and quick to admire, patient in 
 comparison, but firmly holding what is clearly true to Nature, is 
 the sure groundwork for good taste, and he who comes thus, cannot 
 fail so far as he sees, to see truly. It is not meant that experience 
 or time can be dispensed with. The greatness of Art is accurately 
 proportioned to the quantity of the facts, and the force of the 
 thoughts, it conveys : it teaches us by every fresh work whilst it 
 delights us : we are always learning more from it while more 
 admiring it. To be very simple and very subtle at once, is one 
 of the many apparent paradoxes of all Genius:' it may bring 
 the message of Angels, but its voice is the downright voice of 
 children. Good Art is straightforward and intelligible in its first 
 
 15 
 
2 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 elements to all 'who bring ears to hear or eyes to see, whilst, like 
 the Nature it imitates, every advance in it which we make opens 
 further avenuejs to pleasure and admiration. 
 
 In truth it is more often obstinate indolence than ignorant 
 humility which says we know nothing about Art; — as tastes can- 
 not be disputed is generally the next remark, as the spectator who 
 knows nothing passes on to the conviction that he cannot be mis- 
 taken in anything. This idle saying, fit for the tasteless race that 
 invented it, is one of the many which govern us by false metaphor. 
 If Judgment or Discernment had been the word we used, no one 
 would have had courage to claim that it could not be reduced to 
 principles, or tried by facts. Even of the strict Tastes, in the purely 
 a’nimal sense of the term, it is scarcely true that they are infallible 
 and indisputable. To judge of the finest wine, for instance, is 
 matter of education : and no healthy person will doubt that, — 
 whatever his inexperienced first liking may be, — he would at last 
 prefer the finest. So of colours : only children in their play have 
 each their favourite : as the common words ‘ gaudiness,’ 1 refined 
 tint ’ and the like testify to the feeling that taste in colour is matter, 
 not of instinct, but of thought and education. Good Taste is merely 
 sound knowledge : human feebleness and our short life can never 
 carry it to an infallible law, but like any other science, it is open 
 to question, examination, and perpetual reference to the one and 
 only standard, — Nature. By this, right and wrong in Art are 
 tried as surely, as right and wrong in Morality by the standards 
 of conscience and religion. Some points in all will always be 
 doubtful ; about many we shall doubt long, whilst we analyze or 
 wait for experience to test them. But the last thing an honest 
 heart and clear intellect could do, would be to retreat within the 
 complacent egotism of de gustibus non disputandum , — ‘ my taste is 
 indisputable.’ 
 
 Some points, however', in the Morality of Taste, for we must 
 use the word, — have been so fairly fixed that they are no more 
 open to rational question than arithmetic. Every Art uses certain 
 means fox definite ends. But the final cause, — - the end of ends, — 
 in all the Fine Arts is the same : to give noble pleasure. Hence, 
 in forming our taste in any one art, we must first ask if the special 
 means have been truly exercised. And as the special method of 
 eaclh Art is that by which it differs from other arts, it follows that 
 the .essential duty of an Oil painter is to Colour welh If he cannot 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 3 
 
 'do this, it is clear he should have taken some other mode of ex- 
 pressing himself ; he should have engraved, or drawn in chalk, or 
 modelled ; — nay, amongst painters, in Germany especially, we 
 shall find men who have so much thought and story to tell, and so 
 little command of the means of telling, that we may fairly say their 
 vocation was not to Painting, but to Philosophy. People do not 
 like to own this, and hence whenever painters who cannot Colour 
 have flourished, we find a world of subtle theories and learned 
 labour spent to prove that colour is an unimportant or even a 
 degraded and sensual quality : - — or perhaps it is settled that all 
 tones are to be kept ‘ low ’ (which means only in fact, feeble and 
 obscure), or in some other way should deviate from Nature. This 
 doctrine has had its day in Italy and England ; and in France it is 
 still popular. But let the spectator remember only as he looks, 
 that the first duty of a painter is — to paint : and the simple 
 truth will enable him to sweep aside these perplexing speculations. 
 They, with a hundred more of the ‘ mysteries of the art,’ are only 
 excuses, how not to do it. We may be justly pleased with works 
 which fail more or less in one point, but have other merits. But 
 this must not drive us from our clear first principle. Without true 
 Colour we have no true Painting : — and neither good drawing, nor 
 rapid invention, high thought, or sweetness in feeling, can atone for 
 the absence of it. 
 
 With Colour may be placed good management of Light and 
 Shade, which are only Colour in its simplest stage : although under 
 the name of Cluar oscuro this has also been the unfortunate subject 
 of innumerable speculations, entirely profitless to Art, and (like the 
 rest) available only to the idle critic, or the imperfect painter. 
 A natural eye for these qualities is an instinct, which, like other 
 human instincts, differs from those of animals in this, that it 
 may be either lost or refined. To think of Nature is of course the 
 one standard by which spectators should try the colouring of pic- 
 tures, — bearing but this in mind, that as the lights and darks of 
 Nature immensely surpass those that Art can produce, but the lights 
 more especially, — the painter must always make a compromise 
 between the intensity of his hues compared one with another. Pic- 
 tures may be roughly divided into three classes in regard to this 
 gradation or scale of tone ; I- — those where every colour is treated 
 in relation to the rest, so as to gain the greatest general truth of 
 effect; II —those where some relations of tone are carried out eor- 
 
 J3 2 
 
4 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 rectly, and the rest sacrificed ; III — those in which a subject is 
 chosen admitting of reproduction, more or less complete, by our 
 range of colours. This last is the manner of Eembrandt ; the 
 next of the old landscape painters and many of the modern 
 French; the first of Turner, Eeynolds, and the really great 
 Colourists of all ages. 
 
 The next quality, shared by the Painter with all the arts of De- 
 sign, Drawing, is so simple ; its necessity so clear, and its deficiency 
 perceptible with such comparative readiness, that it requires no 
 discussion. Let us suppose a picture satisfies us in its truth in these 
 two points : — they stand first, because without them the primary 
 or technical conditions of Art are not fulfilled : — yet, looking at it 
 from another point, we know that they are of no value irnless put 
 to fit use. What then, makes a good Picture in regard to Subject ? 
 Colour and Design are the painter’s language and style : — what 
 story is he to tell us ? 
 
 Here again, wdiat the spectator has to do most, is to forget. Put 
 away all ingenious theories on Composition, on High and Low Art, 
 on the Grand Style and the Historical Style, — on Imitation, on the 
 Ideal, on the Beautiful, the Classical, and so many other great Adjec- 
 tives, — ‘ clear your head of that cant,’ — and remember only that the 
 aim of Art is to give us noble pleasure, and its means of so doing the 
 representing sweet or lofty thoughts by Form and Colour. 
 
 I hope the reader will submit to look at the last words 
 twice. It is in the quality of Thought that what makes Art 
 emphatically Art, lies. The photograph gives us an Imitation : 
 Nature gives us herself, — a beauty which nothing can repro- 
 duce : — but, if it were reproducible, we should still desire 
 something different from either, — something which shall repeat 
 Eeality for us coloured by the soul of another human creature. It 
 is the same with a more comprehensive Art ; we are indifferent to 
 the bare tale of civil war or domestic struggle ; — our interest and 
 our hearts are in such events when they come to us with the 
 vivacity of Waver leg } or the passion of Lear. From the simplest 
 realization of common things to those pictures which are all poetry, 
 if we ask ourselves truly, the same law holds; it is the cottage child 
 as Gainsborough sees him, or the bird’s nest as it looks to William 
 Hunt that we vahie, not less than the Cornish seas as they appear 
 to the sweet fancy of Hook, or the glory of the sunset going down 
 behind the Timer air c in the visions of Turner. Nor is this great 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 5 
 
 human prerogative of Thought confined to the idea of the picture : 
 by that law of our nature which binds body and soul in unity, the 
 mechanical execution, proportionately to its excellence, is penetrated 
 by the spiritual element. The heart and intellect of a true Artist 
 steal mysteriously into his lines and colours ; they, too, are par- 
 takers in ‘ the Soul, or whatever it is, without which the material 
 frame is inanimate and inexpressive.’ 
 
 It is on these simple conditions that vitality in art rests : they 
 dispense at once with all the wise trifling and jargon of the schools, 
 and leave us alone with Truth, in her sweet serious simplicity. Let 
 the aim and the work be true : why should philosophers inquire 
 further? — in proportion to the degree of these things, those who 
 look receive noble pleasure. It is by such easy tests that we are to 
 judge. The highest aim will be that which joins nobleness of sub- 
 ject, — involving ‘ wide interests and profound passions,’ with the fullest 
 statement of fact and the greatest amount of beauty, and expressing 
 all in the most imaginative manner. Thus in the best picture we 
 find always most of the painter’s own Soul ; and such work bears 
 with it also another unfailing sign in its thoughtfulness and refine- 
 ment of Execution. ‘ The first universal characteristic of all great 
 Art is Tenderness,’ remarks one to whom the writer and many of 
 his readers are deeply indebted : ‘ an infinitude of tenderness is the 
 chief gift of all the truly great men.’ * But men’s capacities differ : 
 to one is given force of Imagination, to another simple earnestness 
 of statement, to another, perhaps, humorous observation, to a fourth 
 the passion and poetry of common life. The test of all styles is, how- 
 ever, the same, — Sincerity of purpose. The higher the aim, the harder 
 the triumph ; here we must make allowance for human shortcoming, 
 and place even imperfectly executed work, if sincere in its loftiness, 
 above a narrower perfection. But the choice must be sincere : a 
 weak religious picture will rank far below an honest farmyard scene, 
 and all the good intentions and sweet feelings of men like Overbeck 
 or Scheffer or Dobson make us only regret the want of that power 
 and truth without which their works are a laborious mockery. 
 It cannot be too much remembered, that nothing but a great mind 
 can produce a great picture. The greatest Art is that which ex- ' 
 presses the widest and truest thoughts : the utterance of the greatest 
 soul. Such will never be common, but we may have true and 
 
 * J. Buskin : The Two Paths. 
 
6 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 wholesome work from lesser faculties. To quote the same writer 
 again, ‘the difference between great and mean art lies, not in 
 definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or choices 
 of subject, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which the effort 
 of the painter is addressed. We cannot say that a painter is great 
 because he paints boldly, or paints delicately ; because he generalizes 
 or particularizes ; because he loves detail, or because he disdains it, 
 He is great if, by any of these means, he has laid open noble truths, 
 or aroused noble emotions. It does not matter whether he toil for 
 months upon a few inches of his canvass, or cover a palace front with 
 colour in a day, so only that it be with a solemn purpose that he has 
 filled his heart with patience, or urged his hand to haste. And it 
 does not matter whether he seeks for his subjects among peasants or 
 nobles, among the heroic or the simple, in courts or in fields, so only 
 that he behold all things with a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of 
 meanness and vice,’ 
 
 There is no need to add much to these fine words. When the 
 qualities enumerated come together with sincerity, we have true 
 Art : and so clear are the signs of it, that no one who brings the open 
 heart and child’s frank acceptance can fail in the first steps towards 
 correct judgment, however inexperienced in pictures. 
 
 Methinks I see a quickening in his eye : — 
 
 He will find that there is no profound secret in the subject, no 
 rules only of ‘ taste ’ and fancy, but a standard of ascertainable right 
 and wrong, falsehood or truth. But he will not the less see, that 
 a thorough judgment on Art is to be won, like all other knowledge, 
 by no royal road except that of honest will and patient endeavour. 
 
 Whilst the writer would thus say to his readers, ‘ look much,' he 
 would however be not less disposed to say, ‘ hut not at many.' The 
 eye may not be satisfied with seeing, but the Imagination is quickly 
 wearied by attending ; the vast mass of different works which must 
 fill all collections fatigues and blunts the judgment. One good work 
 well studied ; one great master, truly understood, will give a hun- 
 dredfold more pleasure and profit than a glance over a thousand 
 mediocrities. Better not to look at all, than to look only as a means 
 to fill an idle hour with a worse idleness. Men give their lives to 
 Art ; it is base to make their toil and endeavour an excuse for transient 
 joke and frivolous fancy. ‘ Did these bones cost tio more the 
 breeding? ’- 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 7 
 
 In this little book I have tried to conform to the plan here sug- 
 gested. To try to criticize all or many of the works in so vast a col- 
 lection were useless : I shall therefore in general notice only those 
 which are of real excellence, or important to the story of Art in their 
 respective countries. This, if well carried out, would be nearly suffi- 
 cient ; for great artists are always ‘ representative men ; ’ their work 
 includes the aims of the smaller, exhibiting what they do with more 
 force and sweetness, and exceeding it by the glorious colour thrown 
 by Genius over all it touches. But it is not only their own Art 
 which such men represent ; like Poets, they give back to the age 
 its forms and feelings ; they embody national tastes and passions ; 
 the mirror they hold up is not so much to Nature, as to Human 
 Nature, — painting Rank in the last century, and Poverty in this, as 
 society shifts its interests ; satirical then, sentimental now ; and 
 even in the Landscape obedient to modern manners, travelling to 
 Monte Rosa with Turner, or encamped on the shores of the Dead 
 Salt Sea with Hunt. Whilst we chronicle the History of Painting, 
 we are painting the History of nations : for nations, like the cloud 
 of the Poet, ‘ move altogether, when they move at all : ’ this large 
 advance carries with it and rules its lesser manifestations : — thus it 
 will be needful to notice a few main events and changes of modern 
 Europe to explain the great underlying laws which have governed 
 the growth of Art. And it is hoped that this plan will be of more 
 interest and value than if the page was filled with the anecdotes 
 which illustrate nothing, or the names and dates that no one can 
 remember. — Criticism on this subject, as on all others, should be 
 expressed (in the writer’s opinion) so far as possible in the terms 
 appropriated to the subject itself, — avoiding metaphors and fine 
 philosophical language. Such phrases as ‘ generalization,’ ‘ idealiza- 
 tion,’ ‘ naturalism,’ ‘ objective,’ and the like, admit of a certain 
 cautious use when the facts pointed at have been made quite clear ; 
 but in general, with the imbecile criticism of pictures by other 
 pictures, in place of reference to Truth and Nature, they are the 
 contrivances by aid of which ignorance tries to mask itself.* Such 
 words, with the absurd ‘still-life,’ the unmeaning ‘genre,’ and other 
 technicalities, I shall do my best to shun ; and speak throughout, 
 without fear and without favour. 
 
 * This rule, however, is not to bar us from occasionally referring to first- 
 rate work, as a kind of standard how much may be legitimately asked of human 
 powers, 
 
8 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 LARGE ROOM 
 
 This Gallery contains what may be roughly called the first century 
 of our Painters in Oil, from 1750 to 1850. Time has more or less 
 fixed the place in art of most Masters here represented, although a 
 few works by men still in their prime have been admitted. The 
 intelligent and harmonious arrangement of the pictures speaks of 
 itself to the skill and taste of Mr. Redgrave and Mr. Creswick, who 
 have been alone responsible for a task, to which (the writer may 
 add) they brought an equal degree of conscientious toil and 
 patience. 
 
 One thing that appears to strike foreigners much, in regard to 
 English Art, is the variety and individuality of our painters. They 
 are all unmistakeably English, no doubt : they are generally alike 
 in a certain neglect of figure drawing, and in a certain success in 
 colour : — but they do not show signs of any systematic pursuit of 
 art, they are not like students of any national Academy. Although 
 there is a less favourable side to these characteristics of English 
 Painting, yet on the whole Englishmen will not be disposed to think 
 them unsatisfactory. The best Art is that which best represents 
 the mind of the race, and we may read ourselves as a nation in the 
 independence and vigorous individuality of our artists. But, like 
 other liberties, these have not been gained without a struggle. 
 
 We must go back a few centuries to understand laoAv the English 
 school was founded. It differs in one notable point from all other 
 Euiopean schools. They have their root more or less in the art of 
 the middle ages, the German and Italian especially : but although 
 England in early days displayed a capacity for the Pine Arts in 
 many directions, especially in those where Colour or Construction 
 are concerned, yet it can hardly be said that the spirit which pro- 
 duced our cathedrals with their admirable decorations in glass and 
 carving, had any direct connection with modern art. In fact after 
 1500 this early feeling almost died out, and for more than two cen- 
 tiuies we veie content to take lessons in taste from Germany and 
 Italy. The few English oil painters whom we find were scholars of 
 the foreign artists Holbein, Zuccaro, Vandyke, Rubens, Lely, 
 Kneller, and many others of less note : and they appear to have 
 attempted nothing but Portraiture. Hence at the beginning of 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 9 
 
 the last century, when wealth and peace began to create a class 
 of buyers, there was an absolute disbelief in the ability of Eng- 
 land to produce anything valuable in Art. It was then supposed 
 that this power, by some law of Nature, was confined to Italy : and 
 as for more than a hundred years no one could fail to see that Italy 
 had ceased to produce what was valuable, a variety of learned theories 
 sprang up to justify the bad pictures of the day, and blind Englishmen 
 to the testimony of their own eyes. Art was divided into ‘ High ’ 
 and ‘ Low High Art meant painting subjects which the artist had 
 never seen, and had not skill or genius enough to imagine ; Low Art 
 was the name for pictures of real life, represented as they actually 
 looked to the artist. A great deal was said about 1 generalization’ 
 and the ‘ broad style,’ and ‘ the Ideal’ and ‘ chiaroscuro’ and ‘ the 
 historical manner,’ and fifty other phrases, which never occur to any 
 nation whilst Art is in a living state. It took some trouble to learn 
 this ingenious jargon, and hence those who did despised the un- 
 initiated vulgar, and laid down the law for Painting in the high 
 Italian manner as it was practised in the 17th century. And any 
 Artist who ventured to think for himself and follow Nature had to 
 fight his way through criticism and ridicule, — to see the tenth -rate 
 copies of tenth-rate originals bought for great prices by men of taste, 
 — whilst he was happy if he escaped starvation by exchanging works 
 which are now the pride of palaces for a pot of beer, or disposing of 
 them by a shilling auction. — ‘ Look you, Dick,’ said a friendly pawn- 
 broker to the earliest English Landscape painter, showing him a heap 
 of his unsold works in the garret, ‘ you know I wish to oblige, but 
 see, there are all the pictures I have paid you for these three years.’ 
 
 Not very different from this was the experience of our first 
 national artist, Hogarth : (1697-1764.) His sturdy mind rebelled 
 against the eloquent nonsense of the day, and his obstinate self- 
 reliance qualified him well to lead the Reformation in English Art. 
 No man more distinctively and decidedly original and creative — not 
 even Phidias in Athens or Giotto in Florence — ever worked ; no one 
 more completely began a new style, and impressed it on his country. 
 To those who do not know the strange limitations under which the 
 human mind lies in every age it will appear almost incredible that, 
 before Hogarth, no one had put a moral into painting, or made it 
 tell anything like a distinct tale of contemporary manners. Yet this 
 is strictly true, and we cannot avoid connecting such works as the 
 splendid series of the Manage a-la-Mode , and the Bake's Progress , 
 
10 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 with the fact that precisely at the same time the modem Novel began 
 with Eichardson and Fielding. It is a fair subject of pride that 
 these two great inventions in art and additions to human pleasure 
 belong to the England of the last century. Socrates was said to have 
 ‘ brought down Philosophy from Heaven to Earth.’ So Hogarth took 
 Painting, and from gods and goddesses, nymphs and shepherds, turned 
 the canvass to reflect the real story of our common life, — its pathos, 
 its meanness, its fashions, humours, tears, laughter, triumphs, and 
 depths of degradation. He has touched on little that is simply beauti- 
 ful ; but even in his darker scenes we seldom miss some breeze of 
 wholesome laughter, some face of tender sweetness. Such is the lovely 
 creature in the right-hand corner of the Actresses. Charles Lamb has 
 noticed how frequently he introduces children to secure this contrast ; 
 
 ‘ They have a singular effect in giving tranquillity and a portion of 
 their own innocence to the subject.’ In his severest pictures, this 
 admirable critic adds, there is always something to relieve the dark- 
 ness ; ‘ there is in them the scorn of vice and the pity too ; something 
 to touch the soul, and keep alive the sense of moral beauty; the 
 lacrymae rerum , and the sorrowing by which the heart is made 
 better.’ Look at the variety of scene and character he has here 
 given us, — and all true to Nature ! The most skilful novelist could 
 hardly crowd more suggestive incidents into three volumes than fill 
 the six scenes of Marriage as it was in 1750, — 'the year when this 
 great Tale on canvass was sold to the single bidder at the painter’s 
 auction for 90Z. In the first, we see the wealthy City merchant dis- 
 posing of his daughter to the young nobleman in return for title and 
 fashionable position. So things were managed a century since. 
 Beyond the bargain, the pair are quite indifferent to the arrange- 
 ment ; they are coupled like the spaniels on the floor, only that they 
 may pull different ways and amuse themselves. We cannot doubt 
 that they go into and see the very best society ; yet 1 soon after mar- 
 riage ’ this becomes not exciting enough ; they yawn and quarrel ; 
 the Earl gambles and keeps his mistress, the Lady listens to the 
 fascinations of her lawyer. Then the scene shifts toward darker 
 issues ; there are terrible suggestions of sin accomplished, and sin 
 approaching, in the Doctor and the Dressing Room ; 1 the mill of 
 God, as the old phrase has it, grinds more rapidly and com- 
 pletely than we often see it in life (but all this was a century 
 ago ) ; the faithless husband dies by the adulterer’s hand, the 
 faithless wife by her own : — her father, true to the passion which 
 
OF OILrPAINTING 
 
 1 1 
 
 outlives most others, taking the ring from the stiffened finger as she 
 lies on her poisoned deathbed, whilst the sickly child who gives the 
 last kiss will bear into her orphan life the signs of avenging pro- 
 fligacy. — ‘What a merit were it in Death, to take this poor maid 
 from the world ! ’ — But the great artist, like Hamlet, 1 cruel that he 
 may be kind,’ and faithful to the last to the true moral of his story, 
 passes on, and leaves it as a warning for ever. 
 
 Not inferior are the prodigality of incident and force of thought 
 in the Bake's Progress (14 to 21). These, with the only two of the 
 corresponding Female series which were saved from fire at Font- 
 hill (2 and 3), complete the Artist’s great Epic of contemporary life. 
 
 Hogarth, happily for our pleasure, is not always or often in a mood 
 so severe as this. No man ever possessed more to the full that strong 
 humour which is, as it were, the natural other side to a stern serious- 
 ness. His is that hearty healthy laughter, that demure delight in 
 the - ludicrous, of which those are capable who have grasped Life 
 strongly : he stands here with Aristophanes and Sterne and Moliere, 
 with Burns and Fielding, — with Shakspeare, if we can admit any 
 one to that standing-place. I hope every one will study well those 
 brilliant pages, the Fair (84), the Actresses (87), the March to 
 Finchley (6) ; the glorious Election scenes (9 to 12) : for 
 richness of incident, variety of character, for a mingled comedy 
 and tragedy of suggestion, it will not be easy to find their 
 parallel. It would take a little volume to go through these 
 ‘ abstracts and brief chronicles of the time but a few of Hogarth’s 
 remoter touches of truth must be pointed out. In the Polling the 
 first voter, a crippled soldier, is opposed by the attorney on the ground 
 that the Act requires him to lay his ?h//h-hand (lost in the wars) 
 on the Bible when swearing. In the Entertainment , Lamb (to whose 
 inimitable analysis of the whole scene I must refer any reader who 
 wishes to enjoy himself) notices Hogarth’s imaginative suggestion of 
 the mob and pressure without, by ‘the sword that has forced an 
 entrance before its master ’ ; and, dwelling on the strong healthy tone 
 of the whole work, directs attention especially to ‘ that poor country 
 fellow, that is grasping his staff (which from that difficulty of feeling 
 themselves at home which poor men experience at a feast, he has 
 never parted with since he came into the room), and is enjoying 
 with a relish that seems to fit all the capacities of his soul the 
 slender joke, which that facetious wag his neighbour is prac- 
 tising upon the gouty gentleman, whose eyes the effort to suppress 
 
12 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 pain has made as round as rings — does it shock the dignity 
 of human nature to look at that man ?’ — In the March to Finchley , 
 (it is the Guards going out through Tottenham Court Road to 
 meet young Charles Edward, then also on a March painted in the 
 brighter colours of Waver ley,) what runs through the whole is the 
 contrast between the intriguing activity of the Jacobites, and the 
 jovial, unthinking, resolution of the British Grenadier. It will be 
 seen that one of the beauties who hang on the hero in the foreground 
 is, in one sense at least, a Sister of Mercy. — The droll reduction of 
 the classical mythology to the absurdest details of common life in the 
 Actresses is undoubtedly a sarcastic revenge on the classical subjects 
 then prescribed as essential to High Art. Juno is enthroned on a 
 wheelbarrow, Night mends her stocking, the Tragic Muse is drawing 
 rouge from a cat’s tail, and Diana reigns over the motley troupe in 
 an undress most undeniably natural. Ganymede has taken to gin, 
 and Flora sleeks her alluring tresses with the candle. . . . It is a 
 kind of Olympus below stairs. These works have suffered less than 
 others by Hogarth from that sinking-in of the surface colours and 
 fine last touches, which has ruined so many pictures begun on a dark 
 ground. Let us add the last touch of irony, — this work, almost 
 sublime in its affluence of invention, was sold for 271, and returned 
 to the painter as too dear for the money. 
 
 In the Mall (5) and Beggars' Opera (4), we have two other 
 excellent scenes from the fashions of the day : and the favourite 
 play is again illustrated by the Polly Peaclium (41). The Captain 
 Coram (33) is a fine portrait of the kindhearted officer who 
 1 ruined himself, as the phrase goes, to establish the Foundling 
 Hospital. What an air of rough, unreasoning goodness Hogarth 
 has thrown into the face ; what a weather-beaten virtue ! This 
 is true portraiture ; we see the head of the good old sailor, and 
 his heart also, and are glad to think that, amongst the sneers of the 
 world at his benevolence, he must have had a friend worthy of him 
 in our brave and admirable Humourist. 
 
 Great as Hogarth was, more single in his walk than any English- 
 man but Turner, perhaps from that very singleness he left little 
 immediate effect on English Art. It seemed incredible to the 
 critics of the day that their country could really have bred a 
 Painter. As such, said Walpole, — alive as that quick-eyed 
 observer was to the life of his designs , — 1 Hogarth has slender 
 merit. It was only through that form of art which is at once the 
 
OS' OIL-PAINTING 
 
 T O 
 
 most easily intelligible, and the most directly practical in its pur- 
 pose, that the belief in an English School could be created. Kneller 
 was the last of that long series of foreign portrait-painters to whom 
 we owe illustrations of our history often more vivid than history 
 itself. When he died, a feeble imitator, whose name only lives 
 through his pupil’s, succeeded to fame and fortune. ‘ Hudson,’ says 
 Walpole, ‘enjoyed for many years the chief business of portrait- 
 painting in the capital. The country gentlemen were content with 
 his honest similitudes, and with the fair tied wigs, blue velvet coats, 
 and white satin waistcoats, which he bestowed liberally on his cus- 
 tomers.’ Under this master, a Devonshire lad of 17, Joshua 
 Reynolds, was placed in 1740. The boy had shown that early 
 love of drawing which almost invariably seizes on hands destined 
 to Art : in the quiet little town where he was excellently educated 
 by his Father, the vicar and schoolmaster of Ply mp ton, he drew 
 and studied for himself, not without provoking a reproof which is 
 in curious contrast with the habits of his whole life. Done by 
 Joshua , out of pure idleness, is the father’s note on a sketch by the 
 child, whose patient industry is amongst the most memorable of his 
 many high endowments. — Two years exhausted all that Hudson 
 could teach, when Reynolds, returning home, fell in with the works 
 of a local painter, William Gandy of Exeter. This artist (whose 
 absence from the Exhibition walls will be regretted by many) must 
 have inherited some of the spirit of the great age : Reynolds com- 
 pared him to Rembrandt; and a phrase. of his ‘ that a picture ought 
 to have a richness in its texture, as if the colours had been com- 
 posed of cream,’ seems to have touched his young countryman with 
 the luminous suggestiveness of a word in season falling on a good 
 and fertile nature. The lesson which Gandy taught was soon re- 
 impressed on Reynolds by the glory and the glow of Venice : 
 whilst in Rome the poetry of his mind was awakened to further 
 advances by the sublime imagination of Michel Angelo, the 
 mysterious grace of Raphael. And when, on his return from 
 Italy in 1752, he dared to combine in his own portraits the qualities 
 he had so much admired, he met with what was meant for ridicule 
 by those who saw in the ‘ grand Italian manner ’ the last perfection 
 of art. ‘ Reynolds, you don’t paint so well as when you left 
 England,’ said Hudson, when he examined a bold and splendid 
 fancy picture, glowing with colour which for a hundred years had 
 been unknown in the island. ‘ Shakspeare in poetry, and 
 
14 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 Kneller in painting, d — mine ’ cried another, and shut the doof 
 in disgust on the young reformer. Nor are these judgments sur- 
 prising : there is no labour so odious as the labour of Thought ; 
 and it needs hard thinking to grasp and to delight in the new ways 
 which Genius discovers for us. 
 
 I have given this little sketch of Eeynolds’ early life because it 
 illustrates with force the position of English Art in its beginnings. 
 How he soon fought his way to sympathy and success ; how he was 
 chosen the first President of our English Academy ; how he became 
 Sir Joshua at the hand even of a king whose favourite was West, 
 — how he received the higher honour of friendship from the best of 
 his time, Johnson, and Burke, and Goldsmith, and Percy, — are 
 they not written for ever in the book of Boswell? — than which 
 Eeynolds himself has left us no more skilful portraiture. By the 
 time, however, that he formed one of that distinguished society, 
 (1760,) he no longer stood alone in his career; from the east of 
 England a painter had come with genius as graceful and capacity 
 more varied than his own, and by native feeling and what models 
 he might have found within the country, had already framed for 
 himself a style of singular charm. Gainsborough and Eeynolds are 
 inseparable names in the brief but glorious annals of English Art ; 
 their characteristics and what they did for us may best be examined 
 together. 
 
 Hogarth had given us the first examples of force and life ; to 
 these qualities, in one word, they added Poetry. The sense of 
 beauty, the love of innocence, — no artists have enjoyed these more 
 deeply than Eeynolds and Gainsborough ; nor in management of 
 colour, in gracefulness of line, and charming delineation of character, 
 have they been often equalled. Their art, in technical points, was 
 unconsciously based on that of their great foreign predecessors : in 
 them ended, in fact, at least for a time, that noble style of por- 
 traiture which begun with Giorgione and Titian in Italy, and was 
 continued by Velasquez in Spain, in Flanders and England by 
 Vandyke and Eubens. It is however with the manner of the 
 two last-named that their work has the closest sympathy: — to 
 that style which aims at more than simple likeness, giving 
 with the figure some suggestion of incident or sentiment, and con- 
 verting the portrait into an ornamental picture. As the old employ- 
 ment of Art for religious purposes died out, this fashion naturally 
 took its place ; but it was carried by Eeynolds and Gainsborough 
 
OF OIL-PAiNTING 
 
 15 
 
 into new fields, and touched with, a sweeter poetry. The progress 
 
 of human intellect is everywhere a series of strange surprizes 
 
 not more at what men attain, than at the seemingly capricious 
 laws which have so long delayed their attaining it. Thus, before 
 these artists, Childhood and Girlhood had never been caught by the 
 painter in their whole nature. Earlier art had given children of ideal 
 grandeur or prosaic truth ; but such ingenuous grace, such holy sim- 
 plicity, as Reynolds shows in the Age of Innocence (65), — that ideal 
 of maidenhood in miniature, the Penelope Bootliby (70), the Infant 
 Samuel (88), were as new in Art as the exquisite playfulness of 
 the baby in (60), or the arch laughing creature who clings to 
 Lady Galway (68). Or take the Princess Sophia (64) ; Reynolds 
 has left us little so carefully finished and so perfect, — hi fact this, 
 the Duchess of Devonshire, the Angels, the Age of Innocence, the Miss 
 Boothby, and the Lady E. Foster (69), seem the only pictures by 
 him here (nor are there more than very few elsewhere) which are 
 carried even to approximate realization. He probably worked this up 
 so highly to please George III, whose taste or eyesight led him to make 
 smoothness and neatness the standard of art : — but how large and 
 simple is the arrangement ! It is a canvass only a few inches long ; 
 yet by placing the noble child alone in a low foreground, with 
 one great sweep of dewy fields and woods beyond her, by the 
 grandeur of her fine but yielding limbs, and the earnestness of her 
 infant eyes, Reynolds has given it more greatness than Barry or 
 Haydon could have laid on an acre of surface. Turn from the re- 
 pose of this to the animation of those just noticed; and re- 
 
 member that, with the exception of a very few occasional hints, 
 such rendering of the delight of a mother’s heart was literally as 
 much Reynolds’ invention in Art as if the feeling had then for the 
 first time arisen in Europe. 
 
 Gainsborough’s track is found in not fewer new ways than Sir 
 Joshua’s. He was the first painter in England who felt the love- 
 liness of landscape : he was the first painter in Europe who felt the 
 charms of innocent poverty. The humours of common life, its 
 mirth and its degradation, had been painted in Holland ; an ideal 
 rusticity, a hundredfold more degraded, was at this time the 
 popular art of Erance, the theme of poets, and the delight of 
 courtiers : but a clothier’s son grew up in Suffolk, and by the 
 instincts of his own heart saw the truth and beauty which were 
 hidden from the eyes of Amsterdam and Versailles. .Foolish stories 
 
i6 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 have been spread with congenial delight by narrow-minded men, 
 that Sir Joshua was idly jealous of his great contemporary : — it is 
 pleasant to turn to his noble work (90), and remember that this — . 
 one of the first-fruits of Gainsborough’s work in London, — was at 
 once appreciated and bought by Reynolds. The Girl feeding Pigs (90) 
 is in a grand style but rather artificially golden in colour ; the Girl 
 and Dog (73) and the Cottage Door (95) will probably be greater 
 favourites. In his pictures of incident or character (Fancy scenes 
 would be too slight a name), Reynolds does not equal, perhaps was 
 unwilling to attempt, the common-life simplicity of Gainsborough’s ; 
 his Infant (64), his Simplicity (39), with so many more, give 
 us dear children, but not the wild wayside cottage creature; 
 his Shepherd Boy (66) is a child of idyllic fancy, meditative and 
 gracious, — lost in a maze of sweet thoughts, or awaking too- 
 
 faithful recollections It would be idle, however, to weigh 
 
 these admirable Poets against each other in a spirit of partisanship ; 
 — neither of them can be called a Painter in the complete sense ; 
 their work wants thoroughness of realization ; the drawing, always 
 exquisite in feeling, is often halting in power ; the dresses, land- 
 scape, and other details are hinted at rather than mastered. Yet, 
 after full confession of such deficiencies, they are amongst the very few 
 great portrait painters of Europe. No one has exceeded the airy grace 
 and ingenuous delicacy which Gainsborough threw into his designs ; 
 no one has surpassed Reynolds in the charm of naturalness, in ‘ his 
 profound feeling ’ (to quote the admirable words of Wilkie) 4 for the 
 indescribable thoughts of the inward man,’ in his high and holy 
 Simplicity. Take the Lady E. Foster (69), perhaps the most con- 
 summate piece of his art on these walls ; a quiet square of gray 
 and auburn, a cahn countenance, looking out with full eyes and a 
 half smile of thoughtfulness on her gentle lips : — nothing brilliant 
 or striking, only a serene serious sweetness that haunts the memory 
 like some one of the airs which Mozart seems to have stolen direct 
 from Heaven. Gainsborough’s Nancy Parsons (48) is equally 
 refined in workmanship, equally subduing in its unpretending 
 gentleness. But so it is always with the very great in Art ; the 
 perfect thing comes before us in the very modesty of Nature, jostled 
 perhaps by a throng of clamourous pretence, content to be left or 
 looked at ; but we look, and all the spell of Truth is upon us. 
 
 Neither Reynolds nor Gainsborough often touch this height, 
 although much of the inspiration is on many of their can- 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 17 
 
 vasses; — the Mrs. Siddons (110), the Graces (59), Mrs. 
 Hartley (135), Lord Pembroke (27), Mrs. Elliott (116; the best 
 preserved bit of Gainsborough’s work), the rival Duchesses (76 
 and 72), the Mrs. Sheridan (74) : — but I need not here reprint the 
 long list of our treasures. 
 
 If a cautious comparison may be risked, it may be noted that 
 Gainsborough shows, on the whole, more care in invention; 
 Eeynolds, more felicity in form ; that he has more force in colour, 
 Gainsborough more purity. There is something of the daybreak in 
 Gainsborough’s tints ; of the sunset in Sir Joshua’s. The first is 
 on the whole the truer colourist : splendid as are the tones of the 
 Iphigenia (102), they are dimmed a little by comparison with the 
 
 inner heat which glows through the incomparable Blue Boy (31) 
 
 in rich quality of Painting probably the finest thing within the walls. 
 And there is also in this magical Master’s work an incomparable 
 airiness of touch and figure, an occasional even nearer nearness to 
 nature in his girls and children. Yet Reynolds seems to me 
 decidedly the greater artist : his grace is the deeper and the more 
 memorable; when the subject allows, he rises to a peculiar and 
 subtle grandeur. I have quoted already his phrase, that ‘ no man 
 ever put more into a head than was in his own.’ But he who thus 
 expressed the essential law and limit of portraiture was reckoned 
 among the best in an age fertile in strong thinkers. A lofty equa- 
 nimity, a scorn of the world’s trifles and gossip, a sweet humility 
 towards all nature, generosity and gentleness towards fellow- work- 
 men, — such, and others like them, were the characteristics of this 
 great painter . Patient industry , — that quality so inseparable from 
 real genius, that no wonder he thought them identical, — was his 
 guiding principle through a long life of constant education and 
 advance in his art. Yet it may be doubted whether any one of the 
 pictures which to us seem masterpieces satisfied the painter, or 
 adequately rendered that idea which, in his own poetical words, 
 
 ‘ subsists only in the mind. The sight never beheld it, nor has the 
 hand expressed it ; it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist, 
 which he is always labouring to impart, and which he dies at last 
 without imparting.’ 
 
 We have one further feature to notice in Gainsborough’s art. It 
 is not represented here in full force ; yet it is as a Landscape 
 Painter that we generally first think of him. The specimens 
 exhibited are however charming scenes, touched with all the 
 
 c 
 
i8 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 poetry of his mind. They are slightly painted, it is true ; general 
 effect alone is sought, neither the colour nor the details truly 
 realized ; yet there "is a largeness and unity of feeling about them 
 which may be called the first impression of Nature. They have all, 
 also, that look of utter ease in the execution which is always a 
 source of pleasure to spectators ; a flowing facility, which reminds 
 us that Genius does its great work almost always without conscious 
 striving, as we may suppose Shakspeare composed Othello or Hamlet, 
 
 t without more trouble than it costs small people to do small 
 
 things; nay, perhaps, with less.’ The Cattle- Driving (118) is a marvel 
 in this way ; one might almost say it had painted itself, with such 
 straightforwardness of execution, such effortless ease has Gainsborough 
 laid-in the solemn march of the noble herd, and filled his sky with 
 air and sunlight. Of course, our deepest study, with our highest 
 praise, should be kept for painting more thorough than this : yet no 
 distance is greater than that between the slight work of perfect 
 feeling, and the random blot or idle dashes with which we 
 often see the canvass overscrawled by the manufacturers of pic- 
 turesqueness. 
 
 Gainsborough’s landscape is far the purest in that century ; yet 
 it does not stand alone. By force of that larger law which underlies 
 the progress of Art, Painting in this point only reflected the spirit 
 which, at the same period, led our Poets to the first attempts in 
 simple description of Nature. Something of the better mind of 
 Thomson and Goldsmith passed into Gainsborough. In other artists 
 we find more of the gloom and mannerism from which the Seasons 
 are not free, and which breaks out with greater force in Logan or 
 Shenstone. Wright of Derby, respectable as a portrait-painter, is 
 not without a certain poetry in his landscapes. They are over- 
 whelmingly heavy and monotonous ; yet the surfaces and forms of 
 the distant hills are carefully treated in the Ulleswater (56). 
 
 Loutherbourg’s vast views (106 and 130) show a more practised 
 hand than Wright’s, but less evidence of an aim at simple truth. 
 Morlaxid, once a great name, and a man of distinct capacity, has 
 suffered the penalty which at last overtakes those faithless to their 
 gift. Gleams of happy effect in landscape appear in his works ; the 
 grouping is natural ; there is an occasional air of the picturesque 
 which connects him with more recent artists: — No. 103 is a fair 
 specimen. The rest we can class only as furniture-pictures, the cast- 
 off finery and outworn fashions of the past. Morland is one of the 
 
OP OIL-PAINTING 
 
 I 9 
 
 many who influence their day mainly by their worse qualities ; one 
 painter of his careless facility and coarse effectiveness, like one 
 commonplace and easy versifier, dulls the taste and drains the 
 purse of a hundred patrons, disheartening by unmerited success the 
 true artist, and sacrificing his art to that mere ornamentalism which, 
 in modern times, is its besetting danger. 
 
 Not so Richard Wilson ; — one of the four great English artists 
 (the others I need hardly name) of our first period. Hogarth was the 
 most original of these men ; Wilson the least. Yet his pictures 
 prove that if born in better days, he would have freed himself from 
 the bonds of imitation, under which the admirers of the French- 
 Italian school may be said to have bound him on pain of starving. 
 Even so, he was in advance of his age, as the sadly-comic anecdote 
 proves which I have already quoted. His landscape wants the 
 grand conception of Gainsborough, his English sky, and air, and 
 freshness ; it wants, also, the picturesqueness, the accuracy of detail, 
 to which we are accustomed. But Nature, in the word most often 
 applied to her by her oldest poets, is pre-eminently varied , — she 
 has largeness, not less than minuteness ; beside the glory of the sun- 
 set or the tenderness of the meadow grass, — the agitation of storm, 
 and the repose of far horizons. These great elementary features of 
 the landscape were Wilson’s portion. The tempest, the calm, the 
 quiet inadiance of midday or twilight, vexed seas, or gorgeous 
 ruins, mass, and breadth, and stateliness, — in such scenes his truly 
 poetical spirit found what he could render with force and beauty. 
 In the representation of these he had-no forerunner in English art, 
 nor has he found many followers. — Most of our examples belong to 
 his half-classical style: the charming Landscape (105) with its 
 glory of golden flood and hazy hills is an excellent specimen of his 
 poetical manner: the View on the Dee (104) represents what was 
 probably the natural impulse of the great artist. The picturesque 
 point of sight chosen, clear above the foreground, — is charac- 
 teristic of Wilson : the perfect state of his colouring is not less so. 
 His straightforward and simple work contrasts in this matter favour - 
 ably with the fugitive tints of Reynolds and Gainsborough. 
 
 A country which had produced four such contemporaries as 
 Hogarth, Wilson, Reynolds, and Gainsborough, might, one would 
 think, have set at rest the doubt whether it possessed a capacity 
 for Art, at least amongst Englishmen : yet so strangely strong was 
 the prejudice in favour of what was called the 1 grand style,’ that 
 
r 4: 
 
 men lately living might have heard Reynolds apologize in public for 
 preferring such a Avork as Gainsborough’s Girl and Dog to the 
 sacred and historical pictures of Battoni, and Mengs, and Concha, 
 and Constanza, and fifty more of the illustrious obscure avIio then 
 flourished in Europe. ‘ I am Avell aware,’ he says, ‘ how much I lay 
 myself open to the censure and ridicule of the academical professors 
 of other nations, in preferring the humble attempts of Gainsborough 
 to the works of those regular graduates in the Great Historical 
 Style. But we have the sanction of all mankind in preferring 
 genius in a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the 
 highest.’ A lower rank , we observe ; — in which Sir Joshua’s own 
 admirable modesty would have placed himself; — so much Avas he 
 influenced by the theories of the day ! Meanwhile, what Avonder 
 that other artists, convinced by these theories as true, or accepting 
 them as useful, should endeavour to remove from England the 
 imaginary disgrace of deficiency in ‘the great historical style’? — 
 The fate of these attempts, from West to Haydon, is a sufficient 
 warning how the Art Avill always end, Avhich is founded on specula' 
 tion, — be it ever so learned and ingenious. Had they been men 
 gifted with real power; had they said, as Avith accuracy they might, 
 that Painting could do more than embody satire, or reflect land- 
 scape; that something beyond the strength of manhood and the 
 grace of Avoman should be held worth representing, — they might 
 undoubtedly have enriched us Avith a style to which no one Avould 
 grudge the epithets ‘ great ’ and ‘ historical.’ But when ‘ historical ’ 
 Avas limited to subjects from the far past, resting their appeal, not 
 on living interests, but on books ; or, if modern, only Avhen repre- 
 sented in classical dress, or in the manner of some former artist, 
 AA’hat but failure could come of it ? Historical Art is the vivid 
 representation of any event or emotion, not belonging to simply 
 domestic life or personal fancy, — Avhich the artist feels strongly: 
 Historical Art will hence almost always be employed with the 
 events of his own age, because these he Avill feel strongly ; although 
 a few other subjects of great meaning for all time, as those from 
 Scripture, Avill be within the reach of very gifted men. But these,. 
 ‘ W es b fuseli, Northcote, Barry, Haydon, Hilton, Avere not strong 
 men ; their reputation rested, not on the goodness of their Avork, but 
 on tne prevalence of the theories alluded to, or on the clamour they 
 raised about them. By this sign they may be known ; for the true 
 artist Avorks on silently and devotedly, hardly conscious horv he 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 21 
 
 works ; all that lie can say to explain himself is that ‘ he is trying 
 at it,’ like William Hunt, or ‘ following a certain figure in his mind,’ 
 like Raphael : whilst the false overflows with reasons for everything 
 he does, and complains that his age does him no justice. 
 
 These remarks may save me from the ungrateful task of criticizing 
 the failures of men who, — though mistaken in their aim, and un- 
 equal to their object, — gave a lifetime to their uncomfortable pic- 
 tures, and have each some gift which, better used, might have done 
 us service. Yet, where it is just to blame, the negative advantage 
 these artists rendered us should be noticed: — they kept alive the 
 study of human form on a life-size scale, without some study of 
 which no School of painting, not even Landscape, can flourish ; — . 
 we can hardly say, they kept alive, but at least they petrified and 
 preserved the feeling for Art in a form beyond mere ornament 
 for the drawing-room. And, although their united powers would 
 be below the stature of the perfect Artist, each, as is the way with 
 mankind, shows some small special faculty or the traces of individual 
 bias. Thus there is considerable dramatic power in Qpie’s Death 
 of Rizzio (119): the figure of the dying Italian is well imagined, 
 although we must regret the many parallel lines above the Mary, 
 and the piebald spaces of black and gray : — Haydon’s Judgment 
 of Solomon (269) has much force, though little taste, in colour: — 
 with Hilton’s Innocents and Crucifixion (208 and 200), it is a lesson 
 how far apart are size and sublimity. Three once celebrated names 
 may be added, each also, like Haydon, a clever author in his day, 
 — Northcote, Fuseli, and Barry. But we ‘ look, and pass on ’ 
 before the cold barren correctness of the Adam and Eve (82), the 
 theatrical insipidity of the Argyll (122), the frenzied fancy of the 
 Satan (211). ‘Nature put him out,’ said Fuseli; modern German 
 art has said the same : — but Nature takes her own quiet way, after 
 the years of loud self-assertion bringing her centuries of long for- 
 getfulness. We need not study what she has condemned : — the most 
 imperfect attempts in Art deserve respectful attention, when they 
 are the steps of children upward : — but there is little pleasure or 
 profit in the long annals of learned emptiness and ingenious self- 
 deception. 
 
 A very few specimens, however, we have in a more real style. 
 Perhaps no one ever gained celebrity with a worse manner of 
 painting than West. It is hardly possible to include such work 
 as the first President’s Iphigenia (102), and the second President’s 
 
22 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 Oath of Hannibal (161), or Death of Wolfe (123), within the limits 
 of one and the same art. The Hannibal is an excellent example of 
 the false historical school just exposed. But the Wolfe , below all 
 criticism as it is in colour and handling, and untrue to nature in 
 its landscape features, has the high merit of priority in representing 
 a serious contemporary event, — as it really might have happened. 
 Loud was the outcry of all men of taste at this barbarous truth ; 
 guns and regimentals where 4 high art ’ required battering-rams and 
 breastplates ! Barry came to the rescue with a Death of Wolfe 
 even more profoundly classical ; every one 4 standing naked in the 
 open air,’ like the figures in the groves of Blarney. This was a 
 natural extravagance to the enthusiastic Irishman ; but must we 
 not be surprized that he whose whole work was given to pictures of 
 a truth and nature rarely equalled, that he who painted the Duchess 
 of Devonshire and her Child , should have joined the discontented? 
 Such is the blindness of a little learning, and a great respect for pre- 
 cedent. — West tells us that Sir Joshua came to his house, fortified 
 by the company of an Archbishop, to dissuade him from running 
 the risk of an elementary faithfulness to Nature. 4 Reynolds began 
 a very ingenious and elegant dissertation on the state of the public 
 taste in this country, and the danger which every innovation in- 
 curred of contempt and ridicule, and concluded by urging me earnestly 
 to adopt the costume of antiquity, as more becoming the greatness of 
 my subject than the modern garb of European warriors.’ — It is 
 pleasant to tell the conclusion of the story. 4 They went away, and 
 returned when I had the painting finished. Reynolds seated him- 
 self before the picture, examined it with deep and minute attention 
 for half an hour : then rising, said, 4 West has conquered. — I re- 
 tract my objections. I foresee that this picture will occasion a re- 
 volution in art.’ 
 
 This wholesome revolution has hardly yet reached us; — although 
 our Gallery contains two admirable examples. Copley’s Death of 
 Major Pierson (killed in resisting the French attack on Jersey in 
 1781,) is a true historical work (128). Carefully coloured, and 
 better composed than West’s, it is also infinitely more dramatic 
 and vigorous. The movement of the central group, so rapid 
 and so even, as they carry off the wounded hero, and the down- 
 right honest eagerness of the black servant who revenged his 
 master s death at once, are especially good. The struggle for 
 subsistence and early death left Cross, the painter of the Death of 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 23 
 
 Coeur de Lion (403), time to execute but few works : like this, 
 however, although deficient in the graces of colour, they are 
 amongst the highest historical pictures in dramatic truth, grandeur 
 of arrangement, and beauty of line; nor in the weak point of 
 English Art, — life-size delineation of human form, — has any Eng- 
 lish artist shown greater mastery. We must regret that Pickers- 
 gill’s companion-picture (433) is a sample of the weak style 
 already noticed. 
 
 No reputation in Art is so immediate as that of a successful Por- 
 trait-painter ; — none fades so soon, unless supported by first-rate 
 excellence. It is a reputation more than any other made by mere 
 fashion, and fashion soon finds some new favourite, destined in his 
 turn to the same pilgrimage, from the drawing-room to the hall, the 
 bedroom, and the garret. Except where they painted a face of last- 
 ing interest, or touched a canvass with happy colour, such has been 
 the fate of the long succession of Reynolds’ followers. There is little 
 by them that can rank as Art in the high sense. The portraits by 
 Opie, Jackson, and Raeburn show some force : Ramsay, Romney, 
 and Copley some character. The latter’s Family -piece (51) has 
 a certain richness in colour, and a pleasing naturalness in the 
 action of the child on the right, and of the infant half falling back in 
 its eagerness to reach upwards. The chubby boy in the centre is 
 (or was — which should we say ?) the likeness of the present noble 
 possessor. Copley’s Three Princesses (129) are also animated and 
 life-like. Time has mellowed many of these works, and the half- 
 fancy subjects display a largeness and breadth in style since un- 
 common : but it cannot be said, that the painters carried their art 
 to any further development. 
 
 That Lawrence accomplished this, was the universal belief, — not 
 unwarranted by the delicacy of his early drawings, — after 1800 : — 
 and few have had a finer field than the popular portrait-painter of 
 Europe at that period. Yet beyond an occasional vivacity of expres- 
 sion, as in the Pius VII (141), and an elegant air, his portraits 
 have little merit ; even the features are in general imperfectly given, 
 the character in its reality seldom touched. Lords Eldon and Liver- 
 pool (196 and 159) are favourable specimens. In his Ladies what 
 we see is 1 not fairness, but May-fairness;’ ball-room grace, and refined 
 affectation. But Lawrence had a truer gift for children ; the Emily 
 and Laura Calmady (177) are charmingly arranged and painted 
 with a vivid touch ; yet here even the profile is rudely drawn, nor 
 
24 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 can the general effect atone for the lurid sky and coarse handling of the 
 cheeks and shadows. 
 
 Lawrence’s manner, concealing want of care and character under 
 slovenly smartness, was exactly fitted to influence art for evil : and 
 it did so. Portrait manufacture will always exist ; it is the one 
 form of Painting which cannot be dispensed with : — if it he only- 
 honest, we may be satisfied without genius : but it is a true misfor- 
 tune when a bad popular style corrupts the public taste, renders 
 spectators ignorantly indifferent to thorough work, and turns what 
 might have been living art into the riyal schools of slovenliness 
 without effect, or hardness without power. The calamitous influences 
 under which English Portrait-sculpture has been thus degraded 
 will be hereafter noticed: meanwhile, to pass rapidly over the 
 uncomfortable duty of censure, I must add that the work of 
 Grant, Pickersgill, Buckner, Knight, Swinton, and others, ap- 
 pears to fall almost hopelessly within the style just charac- 
 terized. Nor, although some better portraiture exists, can any 
 one who knows what the human face is in the hands of Titian or 
 Reynolds or Holbein, — who knows what it is in itself, to take the 
 truer standard, — claim for us any that the next age will reckon 
 great. But greatness in this sphere of art is very rare, and work 
 which does not share in that quality, if it be only sincere, has its 
 own real value. We may recognize such in the force of Gordon, 
 the grace of Boxall, the thoughtful design of H. Phillips and S. 
 Lawrence ; in the sweet colour, and rare delicacy in touch, of 
 Watts, the firm drawing and well-rendered character of Lowes 
 Dickinson, beside some steady work by artists of less marked style. 
 From the promise here shown, advance in our Portraiture may be 
 hopefully expected. 
 
 But the life of our Art in this century lies almost entirely in its 
 Schools of Landscape and Incident : both practically inventions of 
 the last sixty years. Nothing would seem more natural than to give 
 the duration and the charm of Colour to what so delights us in the 
 Landscape or the Novel. Yet nothing is more certain than that, as 
 in the parallel instance of written Romance, men seemed to stand for 
 centuries on the verge of the new fields, into which, by some law, 
 imperative as those to which we arbitrarily confine the name natural, 
 they were unable to penetrate. Except a few scattered works, notably 
 by Jan Steen and Greuze, nothing that can be fairly called a Tale 
 on canvass occurs in all the elder art of Europe. The Dutch painted 
 
as I shall point out at length, it exerted over Sculpture. The much- 
 vexed question as to the merit of the Landscape painters during the 
 seventeenth century cannot be raised here : but it will probably be 
 allowed that they treated but a limited range of Nature, that their art is 
 immature and conventional, and that the modern manner in Landscape 
 is a thing entirely different from that of Claude or Ruysdael. What 
 I most wish any readers of these notes to feel, is how much Painting 
 is the ‘ child of its age.’ From the mechanical or material features 
 which belong to them, the Fine Arts are so in a degree much beyond 
 the other Arts which employ the heart and hand of Genius. Poetry 
 may sometimes verge on Prophecy: the Philosopher has been often 
 in advance of his own audience : — but the canvass or the marble can 
 only mirror the feelings and tendencies of the Present. The writer 
 knows but three exceptions to this law, if it may be called so. Phidias 
 and Giotto, so far as can be judged by our imperfect materials, out- 
 ran in intellect even the Florence and Athens of their time. It is 
 not altogether to our glory that the third Artist of the same august 
 rank should have been a similarly misappreciated Englishman. 
 
 Yet Turner himself, alone as he is in his elevation, took the 
 impulse to his art from surrounding influences. Both the Landscape 
 and the Incident style, in all their varieties, are strictly represented 
 by similar modes of thought and feeling in the English mind and 
 literature. They mark the art of this century not less distinctly than 
 religious subjects mark that of the fourteenth. Hardly known to 
 our great grandfathers, what has rendered them so prominent now ? 
 In such inquiries the risk is great, of considering as cause what is 
 only itself an effect of some larger and, perhaps, undecipherable 
 reason. Yet it is indisputable that the growth of the Incident style 
 in painting runs parallel with the great outburst of novel writing 
 
26 
 
 ENGLISH' SCHOOL 
 
 patronage of art rather to tire mercantile than to the educated classes, 
 and with that fusion of ranks and interests which (in another sphere) 
 found expression in Burns, Scott, Crahbe, and Wbrdsworth. In 
 figure-subjects, we might broadly say that the region of our modern 
 art is Home, whilst the ancient found its home in Heaven. Without 
 pressing the moral of this memorable change to conclusions which, 
 whatever they might be, would hardly not be disputable, it may be 
 safely remarked that our Art hence runs great risk of falling from 
 the great aim of lofty pleasure. He who paints for the house is 
 liable to not less temptations than he who painted for the cloister.. 
 The feeble joke, the feeble sentiment; the pursuit of the pretty, or 
 the passion for the voluptuous, — such, and others like them, are the 
 besetting sins of the Incident Style in England, and to point out 
 prominent instances, if truly done, will be at once the vexation and 
 the value of this little criticism. 
 
 I must now briefly indicate the deeper roots of that Landscape 
 School, which, as the art which looks at Nature with a single eye, 
 or which sees in her an expression of human feeling, may be fairly 
 and fully claimed for England. Like the style of domestic Incident, 
 this style is also in strict sympathy with corresponding phases in 
 literature and taste. And as the former was contemporary with the 
 modern novel, so the latter has appeared simultaneously with the 
 love of travelling and the love of natural description. These passions 
 (we may justly so call them) are due, no doubt, in part to simple 
 increased opportunity ; to recent wealth, and peace, and multiplied 
 facilities for journeying. Perhaps the more familiar conversance 
 with nature in her loveliness or her terror, the simple sight of 
 Western Scotland, or Monte Rosa, or Sorrento, has inspired the wish 
 to transfer to our walls what, in verse or in actual vision, has so 
 charmed our senses : perhaps the poetry of physical science has 
 enlightened and enlarged our sympathies : perhaps the very con- 
 trast with the civilization which enables men to travel readily, 
 deepens their appreciation of the scenes in which civilization has no 
 part, and even the powers of man seem but a little thing before the 
 majesty of Nature. However this may be, the love of landscape has 
 been a glorious gain to modern English art, and gives it its most 
 essentially original character. We no longer see trees and moun- 
 tains through the imperfect eyes of Claude or Poussin ; we do not 
 measure the waterfall by the standard of Ruysdael, or the twilight 
 after the proportions of Rembrandt. That by which we unconsciously 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 27 
 
 test Landscape painting is rather the written landscape of the glorious 
 Poets of our own age : by what we have learned from Scott in the 
 novels or the ballads, from the imaginative wildness of Shelley or 
 the purple profusion of Keats ; we are alternately swayed by the 
 torrent force and breadth of Byron in the Pilgrimage, — or Nature 
 opens to us her 4 heart of hearts ’ in Wordsworth, and we learn that 
 the poetry of Hartleap Well or Tintern has passed into the soul of 
 Turner by a mysterious and spiritual transfiguration. 
 
 Like that of every great artist, whether in words or colours, the 
 work of Turner is stamped with the gradations of his own growth in 
 mind and in experience. From the time when his style was formed, 
 his oil painting differs essentially from all other men’s in this, — that 
 it is thought of as water-colour painting, and, even almost beyond 
 what the material admits of, conforms to the treatment of water- 
 colours. The reason for this manner is seen in the result. No 
 landscape but his adequately renders what is the first and the last 
 feature in all real landscapes, — the sense of air, space, and light. 
 Others’ work looks like a copy on canvass ; Turner’s, like a vision. 
 So far as this marvellous effect depends on technical method, he 
 gained it by repeating in oils the translucent style of water-colours. 
 This Turner learned early from the great water-colourists, Cozens 
 and Girtin, who influenced his youth. Yet the lesson was not fully 
 felt till his manhood. His first style in oils (alloyed by the imperfect 
 art of former landscapists, though careful and imaginative far beyond 
 their grasp) is not free from the heaviness and artificial arrangement 
 which he heard praised in Poussin and Vandevelde. Like Gains- 
 borough and Reynolds, this Englishman also had to wage war with 
 the blindness of those who could see in nature only what the Fleming 
 or tne Frenchman had seen before them. Several of the oil pictures 
 exhibited belong to this period. The Italy and the Herse (339 and 
 292) remind one at first sight of Claude and Gaspar : — although in 
 their delicate trees and ethereal distances they surpass the early 
 artists. These, in their best works, often give a lively effect of 
 distance by use of excellent tone and by bringing their dark masses 
 against the horizon : — the difference is, that Turner’s pictures, 
 inferior in quality of tint, render the expanse by perfect drawing. 
 The Twickenham (334) again is like Wilson glorified ; (compare his 
 landscape 105); it has exquisite passages, especially in the water and 
 middle distance : but the real force of the man is not in it. We see 
 that, when we are reminded only of Nature by the vital truth of the 
 
28 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 work, and only of Turner by the remembrance that no other man 
 has ever worked so. The Nore Guardsliip (381) and the Schaff- 
 liausen (332) are admirable specimens of his earlier treatment 
 of water. Each expresses its two essential qualities, weight and 
 fluency ; the Falls giving the arrowy swiftness, the Nore the solemn 
 heaving. And in both this effect is gained by sheer truth of design ; 
 nothing trusted to the chance-work of the brush ; every line of the 
 retiring waves and the infinite curvature of the waterfall being given 
 with a delicacy and expression which are only rivalled by their 
 beauty. What a variety in grasp do these few pictures display ! 
 Yet we have only to look up, and we see the Master already passing 
 to new efforts ; — the glow of sunset in The Mill (351), the pearliness 
 of the morning in Dunstanboro' (350). The’ Dunstar boro' should be 
 also noticed for its peculiar truth in rendering the roll of trans- 
 lucent waves towards a rocky coast, and the strange settled calm 
 with which sunlight always seems to delight in gilding the relics 
 of vexed and violent ages. 
 
 These pictures however, with those which I have not space to 
 touch on, were they twenty times multiplied, would give but a faint 
 impression of the vast industry of Turner, — of his marvellous variety, 
 of his ever-new creativeness. To describe his subjects would be to 
 re-write the landscapes of all the Poets. Yet twenty years were 
 given to such work, before he thought himself qualified to attempt 
 Colour in its full harmonies. To this point it was mastery over 
 Form : — henceforth, everything was primarily thought of in Colour. 
 Here those limitations of the Art which I briefly glanced at before 
 should be remembered : — especially on one point, which gives the 
 key to what rendered Turner at once so unapproachable in effect, 
 and so unintelligible to careless spectators. Nature distances the 
 Painter most in the force and gradation of her Light. Now, as Space 
 and Air were the qualities which Turner most aimed at, he required 
 the most luminous scale of colour attainable : and hence, in place of 
 the golden tones hitherto used to express the sunbeams, adopted pure 
 white for his highest tint. He thus sacrificed something of the posi- 
 tive truth of colour ; but in return, he gained a vastly enlarged 
 power of variety and gradation of light; — by one of the daring 
 compromises of Genius, making his work positively less true, that 
 relatively it might be much truer. 
 
 For illustrations however of Turner in his strength I must refer 
 altogether Hr the ^Water-colour Gallery. We have nothing here 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 2 9 
 
 which resembles the Temeraire, the Daphne , the Port Ruysdael , or 
 the Venice of his own collection. But a few words must be given to 
 the last period of his work, from which that of his extreme old age 
 should be excluded, in simple justice to the man. Although the failure 
 of sight and strength was approaching, the undaunted and unwearied 
 artist set himself to paint what would have foiled Titian or Tintoret 
 in the flush of their youth, — scenes which the eye can hardly see 
 for their splendour, or the mind grasp for their delicate and evanescent 
 magnificence. To be unable to render with the relative degree of 
 imitation possible when fainter lights and simpler landscapes are 
 chosen, the sun in his strength, or the twilight in its tenderness, is 
 inevitable to art and her imperfect materials. All she can give, even 
 when most utterly literal and imitative, is an effect, an imaginative 
 remembrance, a hint of far-off glory. Yet Turner, in these later 
 works, is alone in a circle no others have dared to tread. And when 
 attempting less arduous themes, he threw over his latest pictures 
 such a sweet and solemn pensiveness, a beauty so profound and yet 
 so simple, treating all with an originality so entire, and concentrating 
 in them such a magnificent mastery over every aspect of Nature, — 
 that his Art seems to pass into something of an absolutely different 
 kind from that which other men have been able to practise. 
 
 ‘ The name of Shakspeare,’ says Mr. Hallam, * is the greatest in 
 our literature — it is the greatest in all literature.’ Turner is one 
 of the very few men to whom similar words might be applied with- 
 out exaggeration. He is the greatest of English landscape painters ; , 
 he is the greatest of all landscape painters. Others have rivalled 
 him in quality of colour, others in fidelity of detail ; he has failed 
 at times from over -ambition of attempt, at times from obscurity of 
 purpose ; he trusted occasionally too much to facility in execution, 
 he was led away by caprice of fancy — yet he is still the Shakspeare 
 of another and a hardly less splendid poetical kingdom. No one has 
 penetrated so deeply into the soul of nature ; no one has so sur- 
 prized her in her sympathy with man ; no one so nearly rendered 
 her multitudinous variety, — her ineffable and infinite mysterious- 
 ness. Aspects which to others almost singly engrossed their 
 strength, are but. modes and moments in the torrent of his pro- 
 digal creativeness ; yet each of them is treated with a vitality and 
 a fullness which the best masters had not attained to. Compare 
 him with Titian in the forest, Rubens in the meadow, Rembrandt 
 in the twilight, Cuyp at midday — with the storms of Salvator, or 
 
3 ° 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 the repose of Claude ; Stanfield’s sea, Linnell’s woodland, the coast- 
 scenes of Hook, the glens of Landseer — but this one has included 
 and surpassed them all. Yet, if praise ended here, Turner’s most 
 peculiar merit would hardly be expressed. For whilst he has made 
 the closest approach to painting the infinity of nature, he is almost 
 alone in his rendering of her deeper poetry. That deeper poetry 
 springs invariably from the presence of human feeling — either con- 
 trasted with or embodied in nature ; nor, without this touch of 
 Humanity, are our profoundest sympathies ever awakened. To im- 
 press on his work this sentiment, the painter does not necessarily 
 require that man should form a part of his representation. There 
 are pictures by Turner more peopled in their waste wildness, than 
 the most elaborate figure-landscapes of Claude or Canaletti. But it 
 is still the sense of the Human element which gives loneliness to the 
 desert, and splendour to the city; which recalls the past in the 
 ruins of Rome, and speaks of the future in the fields and coasts of 
 England. There is a terrible seriousness about his work, a moral 
 sadder and deeper than Hogarth’s : 1 the riddle of the painful earth ’ 
 flashes out through many among these scenes of more than earthly 
 loveliness. Everywhere he contrasts the fate of man, his passions, 
 and his achievements, with the landscape around him, or makes the 
 landscape itself a reflection of the drama of life on the more august 
 theatre of nature. Birth and death, stories of man’s strength and 
 degradation, love and despair, poetry and pathos, are written in the 
 scarlet and azure of Turner’s skies, revealed by the repose and the 
 fury of his seas, or shadowed forth by the myriad forms and fissures 
 of his mountain-valleys. In his art there is spirit stirring in the 
 tree-tops, and a voice of more than what we rashly name Inanimate 
 Nature in the torrent : — 
 
 The light that never was on sea or land, 
 
 The consecration, and the poet’s dream. 
 
 But these are things which may be felt, though they can hardly be 
 spoken : it is impossible to put them fully into words : — if we 
 could, why should Turner have painted this world of Poetry for us ? 
 
 Turner’s long life (1775-1851) has carried us to our own days : Ave 
 must turn back to the landscape painters of his youth. Here we find 
 several who worked in a mixed style, blending the traditions of the 
 Schools with the better lessons of Nature. Callcott’s manner is the 
 most artificial ; it is a cold steady compromise between the old Dutch 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 31 
 
 and Italian artists, and will always please those who prefer recognizing 
 the imitation of familiar forms to searching out the truths presented 
 by an inventive Master. But a glance at the three large water-pieces 
 (213, 193, and 192) will show that Callcott is without the charm 
 of tone that has given Claude and Cuyp their glory ; whilst a com- 
 parison of his skies with Turner’s in 333 will bring out with equal 
 force the difference between drawing clouds and fancying them. 
 Even his Sunset at Salerno (163) is chill, unfeeling paint; one 
 would think it an Arctic evening. In this our attention is distinctly 
 drawn to the time of day ; but Callcott’s other pictures leave us 
 in an uncomfortable hesitation. This may be noted as a special 
 proof of deadness in a painter ; for the real hour is hardly ever 
 doubtful ; it is a thing we feel at once, when out of doors. Collins’ 
 work has a truer daylight look, with less vapid colour ; there 
 is air and saltness about his seas; his figures in 274 have some 
 happy vivacity ; but on the whole he must be ranked with Callcott, 
 to whose style his own appears nearly allied. The Greenwich Reach 
 (265) and Sea-piece (169), by the little-known artists, Vincent and 
 J. Chalon, are far truer landscapes ; their faults those of imperfectly- 
 trained power, not of deficient original force. The confused and 
 angry plash of the waves in the foreground of the Sea-piece is 
 especially noticeable. 
 
 Two other painters chose Hobbema as their model ; P. Nasmyth 
 and Crome. The first, as here represented, hardly quits the narrow 
 and profitless field of imitation : — but Crome of Norfolk was of a 
 much higher stamp. His work is rarely powerful ; it hardly takes 
 a wider range than the intensely rural landscape of his native county, 
 — its characteristic oak-copses, and still streams, and the gray or 
 russet cottages that for centuries have been mirrored in their gliding. 
 But Crome breathes over these scenes the poetry which lifelong- 
 attachment and faithful study revealed in them. Only one who 
 worked in this spirit could have given such grace to the pollard 
 willows in the Heath Scene (137), or thrown the delicate gleam of 
 afternoon sunlight over the copse to the right of the Landscape 
 (126). The Household Heath (157) is in a grander style ; reminding 
 us of David Cox in its sympathy for towering cloud, and wide wild- 
 ness. , Crome’s tree-drawing, as in the Oak (156), is more accurate 
 than Constable’s, but inferior to his in relief. 
 
 The artist last named is here seen in his full capacity. Powerful 
 in rendering effect, but effect only, he is one of those whose 
 
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 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 influence on Art has been unfortunate. Very few, if any, of 
 the pictures by him are quite satisfactory : several, as the 
 Waterloo Bridge (306) and the Cenotaph (286) are knife- 
 work, not brush-work : neither tree nor cloud are ever truly 
 drawn : — yet, as with Crome, there is a dominant sense of poetry 
 over all ; a self-abandonment of the painter to the sentiment 
 of his landscape. The flicker and ripple on the water-surface 
 of the Lock (320), the solemn gloom of the Dell (255), the green 
 rankness of water meadows in the Salisbury (254) — little touches, 
 it is true — but these are touches of living Nature. The London 
 (305) is an excellent example of the woven clouds and tender tear- 
 ful atmosphere to which Constable- too persistently limited himself : 
 the Hay Wain (but why without the hay ?) shows the largest 
 manner, and is particularly happy in the well-felt distance and 
 sunlight gleams over the reeking pasturage. But the Glebe Farm 
 (307) is perhaps Constable’s best work in fullness of design 
 and skill of execution. What a homely grandeur there is in the 
 ragged foreground — what a sense of the deep, deep country about 
 the Farm — 
 
 • An English home — gray twilight pour’d 
 
 On dewy pastures, dewy trees 
 Softer than sleep — all things in order stored, 
 
 A haunt of ancient Peace. 
 
 In strong contrast with these lovers of Nature and her modesty 
 are Martin and Danby. The once-famous Belshazzar (234) and 
 Fall (248), with its rival, the Bed Sea (244), — triumphs of Pers- 
 pective in paint and the Mechanical Sublime, — are monuments 
 also of the vulgar passion for novelty which seemed to raise 
 them to the rank of European masterpieces, and lessons how brief 
 the fame is, which rests on fashion and singularity without truth. 
 For these pictures are false in every vital point ; the Belshazzar in 
 the size of structure, the Bed Sea in the grotesquely-portentous 
 waves, the Fall in the suppression of the characters. No painting so 
 untrue can ever win its way deep, or touch us long ; not if the 
 artist 1 mingles earth with sea, and sea with sky ’ in his colossal 
 commonplace. But Danby rose afterwards to better work; and 
 although Poetry with him was too rarely regarded as a higher 
 mode of truth, yet in the wild waves and jagged cliff of the Sea 
 Shore (230), the purple glens and rosy mountain-tops of the- 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 33 
 
 Painter's Holiday (246), there is a solemn unity of sentiment which 
 is genuinely poetical. 
 
 John Iiinnell’s style has much analogy with Constable’s, although 
 his colouring is more varied and his drawing in some points more 
 correct. He, too, has yielded to decided preference for one class of 
 subjects, and Nature, by a law which holds good in many regions 
 beside that of Art, seems hence to have bound his power within the 
 narrow limits of a too-predominant manner. But Linnell tells his 
 favourite tale of half-unreal shepherd or harvest life with much 
 point, although we wish he would either throw his full strength into 
 the figures, or subdue them to the landscape : his favourite wreath 
 of rosy mist is drawn and coloured with rare excellence in 417, 
 and the shifting rainy network which enlaces the moon is a passage 
 of fine observation. Other familiar effects meet us in the rest ; as the 
 broken picturesque foreground in the Sandpits (398), with the clear 
 white fleecy clouds above (this time hardly quite mastered), — the 
 green abysses of sloping copse in the Shepherds (400). The Saint 
 John (416), although the upper rocks are well drawn and the scene 
 fairly imagined for effect, is not a fortunate deviation from Linnell’s 
 ordinary style; neither the wilderness nor the subject of the picture 
 appear to have been truly grasped or even thought of, in the ruling 
 wish to rival Poussin and the Carracci. — Landscapes by the younger 
 Linnells, Stanfield, and Danby have considerable family merit, and 
 the last has, more than his father, turned to reality ; but they do 
 not appear to require detailed notice. 
 
 Bonington and Miiller died before reaching their full strength. 
 They are alike in decided sense of colour, in the union of figures with 
 landscape, in the variety of scenes which they attempted. The 
 Francis (181) is a clever sketch; the Coast Scene (197) shows a 
 mastery over air and space, which Bonington missed in the cold con- 
 ventionalities of his Venice (179 and 182). Muller’s work has all 
 the charm of happy ease ; his Syrian Dance (360) and Baggage 
 Waggon (437) are the perfection of brilliant sketching : the Rhodes 
 (387), though ashy and artificial in colour, has many delicate and 
 truthful passages, and is arranged with the apparently instinctive 
 facility which marked the painter. But we must pass to men who 
 have been able to fulfil their promise. 
 
 No one who knows the gray heartless style in which Architecture 
 was painted during the last two centuries, or the shadowy picturesque- 
 ness which has since been frequent, will refuse to value what Roberts 
 
 I) 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 34 
 
 has done for us. He has made us familiar with the relics of the past 
 in half the world where any art of Building has been practised : — 
 even the small selection here shown ranges from Baalbec to Borne, 
 from Milan to Flanders. His work is however seldom true in colour, 
 
 perhaps never thoroughly true, — although the Basilica (395) is 
 
 pleasing in tone and masterly in management of light : — and a care- 
 lessness in avoiding artificial arrangement, a too ready reliance on 
 facile handling, more or less mar the effect of the gorgeous Milan (388). 
 
 Boberts, with other later men, makes us feel how much spectators 
 
 have profited through the far-wandering spirit of the Locomotive 
 Age. That adventurous industry which has led him, with Lewis 
 and Lear and Hunt, to meet Nature in the wilderness or History in 
 the ruin is probably its own reward: — but it is our great gain also. 
 
 It is natural to see a contrast, honourable to both, between the 
 mind of Turner and of Stanfield ; nor can we be better prepared to 
 honour his stern realism, than by sympathizing with the poetry of 
 Turner. Our specimens are excellent : the painter’s magnificent 
 mastery over the forms of mountain and of sea could not be better 
 illustrated than by the Tyrol (362) and the Holland (421) : his 
 powerful prose has never transmuted itself more nearly into poetry 
 than in the Abandoned (377),— and this, by sheer truthfulness. Such 
 pictures need small comment : — but, especially with reference to the 
 work of Callcott, Collins, and Constable, I would beg for a little 
 attention to the profoundly-real drawing of the mountain range and 
 of the waves. Only the courage of truth would have suffered Stan- 
 field to bar his Tyrolese scene with the horizontal vapour -lines above 
 the valley ; — as only the grasp of truth could have enabled him to 
 give in the one sea-piece the breaking wave with every sweet subtlety 
 of its curvature, in the other, the spent weariness of storm throughout 
 the drifted cloud- wreaths and heaving bosom of the waste waters 
 which will soon take the Abandoned to her resting place. 
 
 Ward and Landseer have carried our noble Landscape art into 
 another field. Those who have studied the points of bull and boar are 
 said to consider Ward’s rendering of them excellent : — but less 
 learned visitors will at least receive an impression from these pictures 
 (287 and 315) of extraordinary force and vital character. Here 
 are no tricks of texture or happy accidents of detail and story ; we 
 have the strange veiled spirit, or whatever it may be, of the creature 
 before us, ‘ the sullen isolation of the brutal nature ; the dignity and 
 quietness of the mighty limbs.’ These works also are marked by a 
 
OP OIL-PAINTING 
 
 35 
 
 quality in art as rare as it is high, — the complete self-surrender of 
 the artist to his work. Their respective scales of size appear to render 
 comparison between them idle ; yet the Boar is as mighty as the 
 Bull. This is truly to paint in the ‘ grand manner,’-— and the whole 
 English Gallery affords no more striking lesson to intelligent 
 spectators. 
 
 Landseer’s art lies generally in a different direction. It is the 
 Incident Style applied to animals : it takes the dramatic points in 
 their life. What keenness of imagination, what profound study are 
 here required ! what constant danger of transferring the workings of 
 the Reason to the creatures of Instinct ! It must be confessed that 
 Landseer, in some of his character-scenes, has not wholly escaped this : 
 — whilst in the Bolton Abbey (407) he has wasted his great powers 
 on the idle profusion of lifeless game and indolent sensuality. Nature 
 is apt to revenge herself on the true man, if he is unfaithful for 
 a moment; Landseer is generally cold in colour; — but in this 
 picture the charming picturesque touch which half-redeems that 
 deficiency has also failed him. 
 
 Of very different merit is the Abercorn Children (409) ; as painting 
 it hardly belongs to the same art as Gainsborough’s or Sir Joshua’s, — ■ 
 as a masterly design, it is one of the most charmingly imagined and 
 tenderly felt scenes of Infancy in the Exhibition. The theme is one 
 that rarely fails to lead the artist to the borders of sentimentalism and 
 silliness: — an excellent lesson for its worthier treatment is given in 
 the largeness and sweet repose of this truly noble romance of the 
 Nursery. — But let us turn from the painter’s less natural sphere to 
 Landseer in the wilderness : — the mysterious solitude of the Sanc- 
 tuary (427), the romantic gloom and rosy dawn of the Combat 
 and the Defeat (405 and 406) ; the magnificent lines and free 
 force of the Monarch and the Fatal Fight (1387 and 1388 : 
 Fourth Water - colours room) ; the glorious hillside panorama of 
 the Drive (408). — It is in the vast series of which we see here 
 a few that the true capacity of the painter shows itself. Others, 
 certainly, have shadowed out more deeply than he the mysterious 
 animal nature, and have brought to their pictures a finer sense 
 of colour, a higher instinct for grace or for grandeur; but 
 no painter has embraced a range nearly so extensive in animal 
 representation, or, again, has gone into the active life of a few wild 
 creatures with such imaginative and poetical sympathy. The fury 
 of the lion had been painted by Rubens, the repose of the cattle by 
 
 » 2 
 
3 6 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 c . Landseer, it may be said, has grasped the story of the 
 dorf a ’ nd t Le deer in its wholeness. His pictures differ from most 
 others as the animals of Scott— the bloodhound of the Lay , or the 
 Gustavus of the Legend— differ from the animals of the zoological 
 treatise. We have, not a naturalist’s summary of their likings and 
 characteristics, but the romance of their lives ; and this (in accordance 
 with the analogy between Art and Literature) surrounded and set 
 off by that bright background of landscape, or picturesque variety 
 of accessories, by aid of which the great novelist also threw more 
 vivacity and interest into the living characters of his immortal 
 drama. 
 
 We now return to figure-painting ; which takes mostly the 
 Incident manner, but falls into a few general divisions ; the half- 
 historical, the classical, the slight or sentimental domestic style, the 
 school of national character, and that which treats the rarer or rnoie 
 critical events of common life with seriousness. These lines cannot 
 be drawn sharply '• and our artists have often worked m more than 
 one manner. And, although the list given may be fairly exhaustive, 
 yet it should be remembered that almost every man has some gift 
 of his own, large or small, which no one else equally shares in. 
 
 I have noticed already how much the treatment of Incident, as before 
 defined, is a modern thing ; and how curiously it coincides with the 
 parallel outburst of the modern Tale and Lyrical narrative. Bird of 
 W olverhampton (1772-1819) appears to have been the first decided 
 master of this style in England. To name his subjects is enough to 
 mark out his tendency. We find The Will, the Country Auction, The 
 Baffle, the Saturday Evening. A glance at the two latter (127 and 144) 
 may explain why the Artist is little known : they are deficient in charm 
 of colour and liveliness of touch. But they tell their story excel- 
 lently, and what in this style is rare, without too much point in the 
 telling ; the groups are well-arranged, not overcrowded, and full of 
 character. In the Saturday Evening it is a family party increased 
 by a few neighbours who have come to practise the Psalm for to- 
 morrow’s display in the village-choir. How cleverly marked are 
 the gradations in musical zeal and knowledge between the old 
 enthusiast with the bass-viol and the yawning youngster who is only 
 interested in the lesson as a duet with his sweetheart: — in the irritable 
 Senior who is expelling the noisy child, — the couple whose political 
 heat leads them to forget their music and their mugs together ! 
 
 Many reasons have given Wilkie the fame denied to Bird. Hid 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 37 
 
 clear and picturesque, though artificial, colour, his careful drawing, 
 his minute finish, — the thoughtful care with which he has filled 
 every inch with incident, the vivid grasp of character by 
 which the incident is supported, — these are powerful means to 
 success. But he added another as powerful, not to be passed 
 over, as it exemplifies the larger law of national sentiment which 
 governs the course of Art. Precisely when Wilkie left the Manse in 
 Fifeshire where he had been born and bred, and at the Academy 
 Exhibition of 1806 ‘ woke up and found himself famous’ through 
 his Village Politicians , — the strongly coloured and peculiar points 
 which had hitherto distinguished Scottish manners and character 
 had been revealed to Englishmen by Burns. And the interest of 
 this discovery was destined during the whole of Wilkie’s earlier 
 career to be widened and strengthened by Scott. It is true that, of 
 Scott’s contemporaries in art, Turner alone was able to reach the 
 higher heights of that romantic genius; — yet these circumstances 
 secured for work so good, within its own limits, as Wilkie’s, one 
 main element of success in Painting, — true enjoyment of it. This is 
 not likely to be wanting now ; — Tor we see him here in the Village 
 Festival (281), his most sweetly finished and purely painted piece; 
 in the j Blindman's Buff (282) and the Penny Wedding (277), each 
 a triumph of blythe animation and innocent revelry : in the Fair 
 (278), — that masterwork of the student of nineteen or twenty, filled 
 but not crowded with the one hundred and forty heads which he 
 drew from life amongst his father’s parishioners and the neighbours 
 of Pitlessie. To enumerate the touches of nature in these works 
 would be almost to enumerate their figures : but I must give 
 a word to the magnificent jollity of the old woman who is central in 
 the Wedding , laughing in every line of her ; and to the group in 
 (282), where two delighted boys have seized the happy moment 
 to hug the favourite of the house. One would like her to show her 
 face, were it not engaged to so much better purpose. 
 
 Wilkie’s later style was formed under the united influence of ill- 
 health, foreign travel, and admiration for some ancient masters. We 
 can trace the spirit of modern Rome in the fine and pathetic Confes- 
 sional (259) ; of Spain and of her great painter in the Guerilla sub- 
 jects and the Posada (279, 280, and 283). These works, it is true, 
 are remote indeed from the absolute mastery, the daylight directness, 
 of the glorious Velasquez : yet they have a certain real breadth and 
 largeness of style, nor is Wilkie’s early insight into character and 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 38 
 
 characteristic incident wanting. It has been a fashion to rate his later 
 style very much beneath his earlier 5 it is imitation, it is not. 
 nature.’ But why not paint Spain, when living there, as Scotland 
 when in Fifeshire ? And, for an artist whose management of colour 
 is always conventional, was it a descent, after following Ostade, 
 to follow Velasquez ? 
 
 Wilkie’s own many followers show the weakness inherent in second- 
 hand art: — but some ability and considerable care have gone 
 into the elaborate scenes by Duncan and Harvey (296 and 441), — 
 with whom we may place Newton ; although the somewhat affected 
 grace and sentimental tone of his works remind us that he lived in 
 the age of Books of Beauty. His Beggars’ Opera scene (329) appears 
 the best here exhibited : it is a pleasant bit of colour and character. 
 
 Etty’s admirable gifts for art were joined with singular incon- 
 sistencies. He was among the greatest, if not the greatest 
 colourist of his time ; drew carefully and studied much ; had a deep 
 sense of grace in line and feature, a profound feeling for landscape ; 
 and yet, through the subjects which he mainly treated, his mag- 
 nificent painting fails in the truth of its appeal. He alone, of all his 
 contemporaries, successfully devoted himself to represent the pure 
 Human Form, which he painted with a brilliant transparency of 
 colour rarely seen beyond the precincts of Venetian art. It is 
 true that he tried portrait, landscape, sacred and historical subjects, 
 often with happy, almost always with striking result ; but his love for 
 human form led him continually back to what may be called subjects 
 of Fancy. This was unfortunate ; for scenes from mythology, whether 
 the genuine mythology of Greece, or that later artificial form which 
 for three centuries has infested Europe, — can have for us no genuine 
 and soul-stirring interest. Nor can it be said that Etty seized these 
 subjects with a firm grasp : we see that he chose them, not as 
 grounds for display in the sense of the vulgar artist, but with a pas- 
 sionate abandonment to the delight of line and the glory of colour ; 
 painting can hardly go further, but they are not thought-out also : — 
 that modesty and unselfconsciousness which so often accompany great 
 genius, were almost too predominant in his nature. The five colossal 
 works, although much should be forgiven to attempts so arduous, 
 display conspicuously the imperfection in serious grasp of subject 
 alluded to. In the Judith series (352 to 354), nothing but the 
 intensest impress of truthfulness could render such a tale of patriotic 
 murder satisfactory ; and although the heroine in the tent-scene bears 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 39 
 
 a noble expression, yet in most other points these, with the Mercy and 
 the Benciiah , are (at least to the writer) only gorgeous displays of 
 technical skill and academic grouping, — whilst in the Judith , the 
 colour wants the usual transparency of the Master, the ‘ light from 
 within,’ and the figures are shown in broad white clearness, on a back- 
 ground of midnight purple. There is little of the world before the 
 flood or the world of Homer in the two Dances (336 and 419) : in 
 the Hylas (335) the point of the legend is missed : what we see is a 
 party of girls persuading a reluctant comrade to bathe, not the over- 
 mastering allurements of the stream to youth, the divinity of the 
 running water, as we read of it in the old poem — ‘ We are not the 
 only ones, my friend, for whom the God created Love, as we were 
 wont to fancy ; we are not the first who found Beauty beautiful ’ ; 
 and how at the fountain overgrown with maidenhair and parsley 
 in the dell ‘ the ever-wakeful Nymphs, Eunfca and Malis and 
 Nycheia at once laid all their hands on Hylas, and he went head- 
 long hurrying into the dark water, as a red star which falls from 
 Heaven into the sea, precipitate.’ . . . What passion and colour does 
 Theocritus set before us here ! To paint his Idyll truly would 
 have foiled Giorgione himself. It is enough respectfully to note the 
 want of serious aim which mars the excellence of one of his greatest 
 descendants : and we may then enjoy to the full the exquisite poetry 
 and feeling of the landscape in the Hylas , the Homeric Dance, and the 
 Nympli, — perhaps on the whole Etty’s greatest work, as it was also 
 his gift on election by the Academy to which he was attached so 
 strongly. — Or, turning to more important points, what a blended 
 force and tenderness of tint, what a lavish beauty in line and feature 
 he gives us everywhere ! There is a prodigality of these fine 
 qualities about the Cleopatra {_ 374) alone, enough to stamp the artist 
 as a Painter in a sense which few have exceeded. Nor is it easy to 
 find a more complete contrast to Etty as colourist or as j)oet, than 
 we can see in Patou’s Oberon and Titania (389) : — a monument of 
 lifeless industry, and of the ghastly incredible conceits which never 
 fail to mark the imaginations of the unimaginative man. 
 
 Westall, Smirke, and Howard, chose often the same subjects of 
 fancy as Etty, but from lesser power rarely carried them beyond 
 ornamentalism. We see in these men the affectation of the time 
 when the art of Lawrence was fashionable. Something of this ap- 
 pears also in the later works of a far higher name, Stothard. But 
 what in others arose from want of strength, in him is rather the 
 
40 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 excess of that peculiar and personal grace which he gave to all he 
 touched. The Charity and Canterbury Pilgrims (167 and 172) are 
 hardly more than sketches : but there is not a line in them which is 
 not poetical. 
 
 No English work for the first forty or fifty years of this century 
 equals Mulready’s drawing ; the absolute perfection of line in the 
 children of the Hay-field (299), the dog in 303, and throughout 
 the Bathers (301), makes us feel to the utmost the impassable 
 though often almost imperceptible gulf between the designing of a 
 real Master and that of minor draughtsmen. His power over 
 character is less certain; the figures of Burchell and the nearest 
 Bather seem not quite worthy of the exquisite skill and devoted 
 industry which render these little canvasses ‘ more precious than 
 rubies ’ ; nay the last picture leaves us in doubt whether the scene 
 be England, or some one of ‘ the shores of old Romance ’ spoken 
 of by another Poet. But in whatever world we are, it has a sunny 
 loveliness, a holy calm, of which Mulready gives us glimpses every- 
 where in his landscape-backgrounds. The same intensity of feeling 
 which pervades his colour and his drawing, often animates his 
 story ; — see the united fear and courage of the noble child 
 in the picture with the Lascar beggars, where every line is 
 of Grecian grace and severity, and the admirable speakers of 
 the Whistonian Controversy (300). ‘ Look at the good-humoured 
 
 obstinacy, the absurd excellent logic written in the Vicar’s features : 
 — ‘ Confute me in argument, child ! cried I, you mistake there, my 
 dear. I believe there are but few that can do that ; I never dispute 
 your abilities at making a goose pie, and I beg you ’ll leave argument 
 to me.’ 
 
 Goldsmith and his delightful humour lead us straight ‘in, a con- 
 catenation accordingly ’ to the last of the great Masters in our earlier 
 school of Incident. Leslie may be truly named so ; and yet his 
 work must always forcibly remind us that he wanted one of those 
 qualities which are essential to true Painting, and was without 
 complete mastery of another. His drawing of the figure cannot be 
 placed near Mulready’s; and his colour is worse than valueless. We 
 should injure our own judgment and do no honour to Leslie by 
 overlooking these defects : nay, the more truly we feel them, the 
 more vividly shall we be likely to follow the charmmg Humourist 
 into the many subtle delicacies of his modest art. Whether he adds 
 to the wealth of Shakspeare in the Merry ': Wives, or makes a 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 41 
 
 Children's carnage a great event by the ingenuous solemnity of his 
 treatment, his work differs from that of minor men as the wit of Lamb 
 or Addison from the Adelphi farce, whilst his sentiment is unforced 
 and natural in the same degree if we compare it with the melodramatic 
 effects which are the besetting sin of the Incident manner. The 
 scene from the ‘ Spectator ’ (355) must be one of his earliest works ; 
 Leslie had not then reached the skill and lightness of touch with 
 which, not long before his death, he painted the same congregation 
 during sermon-time ; but Addison would have accepted at once, we 
 may fancy, the group of the mysterious Widow, so demure and 
 so sentimental, and her admirably-drawn children, — for realiza- 
 tions of his idea such as any great writer very rarely receives from 
 Art. Nothing perhaps, is so uncommon as a true Illustration to 
 good Prose or Poetry ; the artist, — painter, or sculptor, or musician, 
 — by some natural law almost always (promising as such a class of 
 subjects may seem,) sinks below his author ; look at the vignettes to 
 the Waver ley novels, or Miss Austen’s, or Milton ; of the many who 
 have tried, few indeed have entered with Leslie into the real spirit 
 of Addison or Sterne or Cervantes. But he entered into it, because 
 he shared it. The scene from Don Quixote (311) is one of his 
 least finished works ; it can never have been pleasing in tone, and 
 has now suffered by the ‘ chilling ’ of the varnish : yet nothing here 
 has more vivid strokes ofLeslie’s thoughtful humour : — How far this 
 is from any suggestion of the stage or the acted picture ; how remote 
 and Spanish the air of the landscape ; — how highbred and poetically 
 gallant the ragged Don, how arch and tender the Dorothea ! 
 
 With this, in sterling qualities, I would place the Dinner at Ford's 
 House (356); a scene which few hands but' Leslie’s could have 
 ventured to add to Shakspeare. We must suppose that it is the 
 fulfilment of Ford’s invitation (A. iii : S. 2), 1 1 beseech you heartily, 
 some of you go home with me to dinner, you shall have sport, I will 
 show you a monster ’ ; for a half-gleam, suspicious of meditated 
 treachery seems, or hardly seems, so delicately given are the shades 
 of expression, — to flicker in the triumphant visage of the 1 poor 
 unvirtuous fat knight,’ — a faint foreboding of the buck-basket. But 
 like every great artist, Leslie tells his own tale best ; — with 
 Hogarth’s, I leave it to the spectator’s study. 
 
 Webster carries much of Mulready’s manner into scenes of common 
 life, which he has painted with unpretending quiet and simplicity. 
 The subdued tones of his cottage rooms, the clear daylight of his 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 42 
 
 landscape backgrounds are in perfect harmony with his style of 
 subject. He is especially happy in children ; the little girl on the 
 left in the Sunday Evening (624 : Third room) is excellent. Come 
 what may, she will commit the sin of smiling. 
 
 It is creditable to English art that, with a few unhappy excep- 
 tions, our Religious Painting has avoided that snare of Imitation 
 which has produced so much hopeless and valueless work in modern 
 Prance and Germany. Hogarth and Reynolds each looked in his 
 own way at these subjects; and the latter threw into his Holy 
 Family , his Samuel , and other kindred pictures such an ineffable 
 tenderness, of feeling as goes far to redeem their want of grasp and 
 realization. Eastlake’s religious art lies in the same direction ; his 
 Christ and the Children (366) has great delicacy in sentiment and 
 graceful charm, and is coloured with uncommon transparency and 
 sweetness. We see similar qualities, enforced with more brilliant 
 daylight tints, in the Scio and the Escape of Carrara (368 and 
 367) : — works which, with others by this Master, have carried 
 the spirit of the modern Romance from simple domestic Incident 
 into scenes of foreign manners and adventure. 
 
 Penry Williams, Uwins, and Hurlstone have also taken Italian life 
 for their special subject. The two Festa pieces (744 and 227) are 
 pretty specimens of picturesquenesw and vivid colour, with a certain 
 natural grace, which, however, verges on affectation. Hurlstone’s 
 brilliant roguish Peasant hoys (369) have not escaped this fault. 
 In truth, like most pictures of local life not by men ‘ to the manner 
 born,’ these fail by giving only the ornamental or festive side of 
 Italy. The Saltmarshes by Mason (747), in the Fourth room, 
 though rather blurred in handling, goes far more into the soul of 
 peasant life : there is a true glow of poetry not less than of colour 
 about the straining cattle, the wild pines, and the purple threatening 
 of the horizon. 
 
 A heaviness in colour and a total want of common ragged pic- 
 turesqueness have partially obscured the high merits of Maclise. 
 Everything in his work has an air of newness ; it looks hard-cut 
 and unfeeling. Yet his Caxton and Edward IV (413) is a 
 masterly historical piece, a real commentary on the times when the 
 great material engine of the change from Feudalism to modern life 
 Was slowly framing itself. Perhaps the face of Edward hardly does 
 justice to the most marked ‘ man of genius ’ who sat on a throne 
 which has held so many mighty occupants : but the fair voluptuous 
 
OP OIL-PAINTING 
 
 43 
 
 Queen, the bright children, born to so sad a future, the gloomy brother, 
 the considerate Kivers (in armour on the left), the monk behind 
 him with bowed head and clasped hands, — the man of the Past age 
 and the men of the Coming, — are admirably rendered. And it is 
 eminently pleasant to observe that Maclise in these works shows 
 that rare proof of power, — consistent advance. The Edward is 
 superior to the able but theatrical Macbeth (414), and this in turn 
 takes a much higher aim than the somewhat prosaic fancy of the 
 Puck (415) or the stage-horrors and boudoir beauty of the Mokanna 
 (364). 
 
 The works of a few other artists, living or lately dead, have been 
 also admitted within the First room. D. Scott’s thoughtful though 
 imperfectly- executed pictures (220 and 323) deserve a steady 
 examination : they are clearly by a man of very unusual force. The 
 Paracelsus (220) is an excellent illustration of the strange position in 
 which the great chemists of the Middle Ages stood, half-way between 
 science and charlatanry : the Gloucester (323) is imagined with much 
 grandeur and tragic solemnity. Leighton’s Roman Girl (429) is a 
 truly artist-like work in a fine free style. The child-scenes by 
 Witherington and Mrs. Wells (425 and 431) are praiseworthy, the 
 Hop Garden for grace, the Crusade for earnest feeling ; and both are 
 pleasantly coloured. — Lear’s striking landscapes are examples of the 
 modern accurate style : the conscientious working-out of the Cedars 
 especially should be noticed. One is glad that so famous a group 
 should have received such careful portraiture. 
 
 I may lastly notice the beautifully imagined and excellently 
 finished Labourer's Return (438). It is low in tone, and hence 
 misses attractiveness of effect at a first glance : yet, beside subtlety 
 in detail united to largeness of style, — it has the rare merit of entire 
 freedom from sentimentalism or over-ingenuity in telling its story. 
 Arthur Hughes is one of our very few truly poetical painters : — it 
 is satisfactory to close with the name of a man who works in this 
 spirit my imperfect notice of the many treasures contained in this 
 great Gallery. 
 
44 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 SMALLER ROOMS 
 
 Schools of art, useful as they are in forming taste and handing 
 down technical methods, are dangerous from the encouragement 
 they give to second-hand and imitative work. The style and the 
 .subjects of successful leaders set the fashion ; the painters and the 
 public are pleased with variations on a favourite theme; — until in 
 place of pure honest art drawn fresh from reality, we have a deluge 
 of dilution from other men’s fountains. We in England cannot in- 
 deed understand the praise which the copyist of Raphael and P oussin 
 is apt to obtain abroad ; but painting imitated from a well-established 
 style of painting is often popular here ; and the triumph of such 
 work is much aided by the imbecile habit of criticizing art by art. 
 To say whether a painter is true, requires thought and reference to 
 reality ; but it is easy and creditable to our learning to compare him 
 with other painters. Artists meanwhile crowd with alacrity into so 
 safe and smooth a road to glory, — varying their imitations by in- 
 genious tricks of hand, or animating them by false wit and vulgar 
 sentiment. Much of the art I have now to notice appears to fall 
 into this secondary class; — some even to fall below it into sheer 
 coarseness or vacuity. If the judgment seems severe, it should be 
 remembered that it is hardly more than saying that such work is not 
 great work — so always rare — ; that men are apt to take copying 
 the steps of Genius for following them ; that there is a natural 
 temptation to do little things in a little manner. This last is the 
 besetting risk of our favourite modern styles : yet some form of 
 smaller art is, in fact, inevitable in all ages ; it will have its place ; 
 only when poptdarity wishes to proclaim it as Excellence is it worth 
 while to say ‘ Pardon us.’ But it is often creditable in its way, and 
 if the artist be sincere and unpretentious, may recall a happy re- 
 membrance or awake a pleasant thought. It is no slight labour, and 
 no slight praise, to have done this, even though Truth may be unable 
 to allow more ; and Truth will reward us with the gift of enjoying 
 it far more genuinely. We shall find much to value well, when we 
 have decided never to overvalue : the better we judge, the more 
 justice we shall do to what Phillip, and Faed, and Frith, O’Neil, and 
 Elmore, have here given us : whilst in Egg, Leighton, and others, 
 we may recognize a higher attempt or a more serious promise. And 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 45 
 
 ■vve shall free ourselves at once from what is only feeble and false, 
 with all the clever reasons for ‘ admiring such pictures as Ward’s 
 Whitehall , Frost’s Narcissus , Stone’s Cross-purposes , Pat on’s Return 
 Home, Cope’s and Hart’s impertinences to Shakspeare, the lurid 
 sentimentalism of Herbert, and the fair follies of Baxter. 
 
 When second-hand and conventional Art has run its course for 
 awhile, one of those changes will always occur, which, in proportion 
 as the pores of the soul are stopped, and her wings clipped (to use 
 Plato’s fine figure), or not, we shall consider Reaction or Advance. 
 Men will weary of mannerism and repetition, and clever common- 
 place in sentimentalism or vivacity, turn to the one Beauty that has 
 never betrayed the heart that loved her, and draw their art direct 
 from Nature. I shall not pretend to doubt that this change is an 
 advance, and a glorious one : it is a move towards the manner of 
 Shakspeare and Homer and Dante, and their kindred ; — even if it 
 comes in the morbid form of poor Rousseau, we feel in it something 
 of the breath of life; — yet when applied to the Fine Arts, to follow 
 Nature unquestionably opens its own chapter of dangers. The pic- 
 ture may aim at too simply reproducing its original, it may imitate 
 so closely that the human Thought and Feeling, which separate Fine 
 Art from the lifeless perfection of the photograph (invented by a 
 strange coincidence as if at once to aid and to mislead), shall hold 
 almost no place in the work. Or again, from the limited means of 
 Art, in the finish of the details, the total effect may be lost ; or the 
 sense of the artist’s labour may overpower to us the pleasure of the 
 work : we may feel that in his satisfaction with the simple truth, he 
 has forgotten that not every scene or subject is worth painting. 
 These accessory evils have been exhibited by several of the men who 
 during the last ten or twelve years have thrown off the prevalent 
 conventionalism of modern art ; had it not been so, Youth and Inex- 
 perience and Discovery of new ways would have been exempted by 
 a kind of miracle from their natural perplexities. It cannot be too 
 clearly borne in mind, that although a false style may ruin a great 
 artist, yet that a true style will not create one ; only a mighty mind 
 will produce mighty work : Antaeus the giant in the old story re- 
 newed his vigour when he touched Mother Earth, — but it was a 
 giant 'who touched her ; — yet even under the limitations alluded to, 
 so great has been the strength which even lesser men have drawn from 
 Nature, so marked and convincing their success, that already their 
 manner has attracted, its false followers (as Paton) or its imperfect 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 46 
 
 imitators (as Dyce) But when a healthy style, call it Advance or 
 
 Reaction, is in the hands of real genius, we have at once the condi- 
 tions of such triumph as has been achieved by the Huguenot of 
 Millais, or the Saviour in the Temple of Hunt. These works are not 
 here, but we have several of similar quality. And to bring the 
 subject back to the broad divisions of our modern School, it may 
 lastly be noticed that the greater earnestness which is inseparable 
 from fidelity to Nature, has been followed and rewarded by a deeper 
 conception and grasp of Subject, whether Landscape or Incident. 
 The Incident Style, especially, has taken hence a scope so much wider, 
 that it passes with Hunt into the passionate romance of the Sylvia 
 (728), with Martineau becomes a tragedy of common life in the 
 Manor House (727), with Hughes is elevated to the poetiy of the 
 Labourer's Return (438). — If these men have the patient devotedness 
 to be faithful to themselves, the Future of English Art is with them. 
 
 These general remarks may absolve me from attempting to charac- 
 terize as a whole the style of those who here give us either their 
 matured aim or their youthful promise. But I will add brief notices 
 of the most conspicuous works, beginning with the left-hand wall of 
 the Second Room. 
 
 Here Archer’s Child's Party (574) will be an agreeable surprize to 
 many : it is not carried very far, and the colour a little wants light- 
 ness and gradation, but there are few pieces of equally honest un- 
 affected work in subjects of the kind. That must have been a plea- 
 sant day in Gloucestershire with these unspoiled English children ; 
 — if Mr. Archer has the secret which makes him a welcome guest 
 in such companies, we hope it will not be the last in which he lets 
 us share. 
 
 Garrick’s more elaborate art is far less genuine. The Home (575) 
 is dexterously composed, and the draperies drawn with care, — almost 
 with power : yet the sentiment verge.s on that rock of the Incident 
 style, melodramatic commonplace. When we descry this qualify in 
 Art, even from] afar, untruth or weakness are rarely distant. So in 
 Carrick’s Anxiety (424 : First room) we have to ask with what 
 we are to sympathize ? It cannot be the vulgar fear which an Arch- 
 angel expressed to Adam, 1 lest dinner cool,’ for the window shows 
 darkness without, and the shadows are certainly not thrown by the 
 sun : but again it cannot be past one at night, for the room is shown 
 by clear daylight. Or is it true art, to leave the woman’s face in 
 woeful blankness, and settle all the labour on the foldings of her 
 shawl ? 
 
OB’ OIL-PAINTING 
 
 47 
 
 With Frost we have to regret skill wasted on pure ornamentalism. 
 Spenser and Milton are not to be illustrated on these old easy terms 
 (551 and 531), — pretty looks, and impossible draperies, and ballet- 
 attitudes,— Etty shorn of strength and glory. 
 
 Passing with pleasure from these works, —with a word of hearty 
 praise to the effect of Dillon’s mighty Egyptian statues, ‘ moulded in 
 colossal calm’ (550), and the modest care and thoughtful rendering of 
 Holiday’s Burgess of Calais (542), — we reach a more serious attempt 
 in F. M. Brown’s Lear (549). This is the first worthy tragic illustration 
 of Shakspeare we have met Avith ; the figure of the old King leaves 
 nothing to be desired in attitude or expression ; it is truly the sudden 
 calm after the long agitation. The other heads, though Avisely subdued, 
 with the landscape glimpse, show the same grasp of the subject and are 
 painted with scrupulous thought and completeness. The Cordelia is 
 unsatisfactory 5 but something must be forgiv en when the attempt 
 is so arduous, and the success in general so great. Leslie’s art is 
 very different from Brown’s ; but I hope it will be observed how 
 closely they are allied in one vital point, — that they re-create the 
 scene direct from the Poet, not through the Stage. This is an 
 absolute condition of success in dramatic illustration, Avhether by 
 Painter or Sculptor, and no skill in art will for a moment cover 
 its non-observance. 
 
 Much of the same force and originality appears in Brown’s other 
 pictures, — nor with less could he have grappled so well with the 
 literal truth of his Autumn Afternoon from Hampstead (533), or 
 with that difficulty of difficulties, trees realized in colour under sun- 
 light. This landscape should be compared Avith Constable’s by those 
 who have thought the writer’s assertion that his trees are not really 
 drawn , ungrounded. It Avill not please so much, for it attempts 
 Avhat the very limited means of colour cannot reproduce with such 
 relative fidelity ; but look again, and you will find the very flush and 
 glow of the late summer day in every tint, and each tree maintaining 
 its own modest but clearly -marked individuality. Is not this 
 Nature’s way ? So in the Last of England (516) we have not the 
 general effect only of our English weather given, but the rainy air 
 itself beating once more on the Emigrants, as they steam southward 
 for the lights of La Hogue and the Bay. 
 
 Few Arill leave this room Avithout a glance at Marks’ humourous 
 sketch (518), and Leighton’s Cimabue (541) both excellent illus- 
 trations of European art six centuries since. No wonder that the 
 
4 8 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 men of those times left so many fine things in the church and the 
 cathedral, within and without, when their labour could raise such 
 delight and enthusiasm. This Madonna was counted in its day one 
 of the first clear steps talcen towards a national style m Italy, and the 
 story runs that the joy of the people named the way by which it was 
 carried to Santa Maria Novella, Bor go Allegri. By Cimabue the 
 painter walks the great Giotto, his pupil, then just taken from the 
 sheepfolds of Yespignano ; their road is strown with flowers before 
 them, and Dante stands watching the procession go by, with sad 
 memories of the lost love, and how the people had been wont to cry 
 ‘ Miracle,’ when she passed along the streets of Florence. . . . Few 
 of our own painters have chosen subjects which carry one into such 
 regions of romance as this, or have given so fair a promise of excel- 
 lence in design and expression. The children and the two singers 
 ■who follow them, — Primavera, perhaps, (readers of the ‘ Vita 
 Nuova’ may fancy), or Yanna and the poet Cavalcanti, or it may be 
 Beatrice de’ Bardi with Simone, — are especially beautiful. 
 
 From this poetical art we turn, passing two landscapes by W. Linnell, 
 steadily composed and painted from Leath-Hill materials (519 and 625), 
 and two pieces of smooth prettiness by M ‘Innes and Smith (506 and 
 508), to the Hedger of Brett (492) : — with his Val d' Aosta (481), 
 the most literally realized pictures in the collection. ‘ I never saw 
 the mirror so held up to nature,’ writes the possessor of the Aosta, 
 £ but it is Mirror’s work, not Man’s.’ There is not altogether such 
 an absence of human feeling, (I do not refer to the figure only), in 
 the wood-scene ; yet certainly these remarkable pictures are the 
 nearest approach hitherto made to what would be the perfect photo- 
 graph : — both mathematically true, the fallen trees and the standing, 
 the vineyards and the rocks, 1 even to their finest serration, yet not, 
 in the strong, essential meaning of the word, a noble jncture. Keen- 
 ness of eye and firmness of hand as much as you choose ; but of 
 emotion, or of intention, nothing traceable.’ It would hardly be fair 
 not to add what follows : 1 There is no such subtle and precise work 
 on any other canvass here,’ (Royal Academy Exhibition of 1859). 
 £ The chesnut-trees are like a finished design of Durer’s ; every leaf 
 a study : the poplar trunks and boughs drawn with an unexampled 
 exquisiteness of texture and curve.’ 
 
 W. Davis’s admirable Harrowing (483) carries us back to the true 
 poetry of nature again, — he is one of the very few living landscape- 
 painters who put this quality into their work, in contradistinction tci 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 49 
 
 tile prettiness or picturesqueness we have so much of. Indeed this 
 quality is so rare, that it is a kind of effort to rise from the slight easy 
 pleasure which such a style as Hulme’s (463 and 504) will give, and 
 do justice to the tender and elevated simplicity of the Harrowing. At 
 a first glance this picture will perhaps appear incomplete or harsh ; 
 hut presently we shall see the details of the foreground come out 
 with the strange united keenness and confusion of dawning in all its 
 ‘ clear-obscurity ; ’ — there is the smell of the fresh earth and early 
 rain about us, whilst further on, the struggling crystalline whiteness 
 of an April morning is coming up over the horizon, and piercing the 
 dun veil of cloud with fitful light. Everything is finished, but 
 nothing finished too far ; observe the balanced perplexity and sharp- 
 ness of the distant trees, the gradation in the unravelling web of the 
 sky, the rich dewy purple of the earth. It is only a little square of 
 homely truth ; yet this is truly great Art, let it come before us 
 never so humbly. 
 
 The Windsor (480), with its companion picture, and two or three 
 more in the First room, will be looked at with a deeper and a 
 more affectionate interest than Art can awaken. But this is one of 
 Landseer’s most gracious scenes of indoor life : in the happy child 
 and happy parents some image of ‘ the tender grace of a day ’ 
 which, we may trust, has not passed altogether, has been successfully 
 rendered. 
 
 Except the younger Danby’s faithfully-studical Gwynant (456) 
 this room need not detain us longer ; for O’Neill’s Incident pictures 
 (458 and 462) here shown do not go beyond clever careful com- 
 monplace, and the marvellously delicate details of Hughes’s Ophelia 
 (466) are at present placed beyond examination. 
 
 Third Room. Paton’s Return from the Crimea (708) has been 
 noticed in general terms of censure. It is unspeakably unpleasant 
 to write thus ; yet the picture is not less than utterly false ; — false 
 in its sentiment, for is the lassitude of the wounded as they lay at 
 Inkerman the natural, even the possible, condition in which any 
 true-hearted soldier would be found, when home from the hospital 
 with his family ? — equally false in its art, which, spite of all its finish, 
 is the smooth vulgarity of china-ware, with a texture and a tone 
 between polished oak and leather. Egg’s scene from Esmond (707) 
 has the disadvantage of appealing to a book to clear up its story, in 
 addition to the risk which attends all attempts at simple illustration. 
 But it is painted with a fine manly feeling and glow, of colour ; the 
 
 E 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 50 
 
 head of the heartless young Beatrice behind, with its insane frivolous 
 haughtiness, appears especially well given. And similar praise is due 
 to the Pepys (660) further on. Goodall’s scene of Italian life (709), 
 from Chioggia, the fishing-port of Venice, has less force in thought 
 and execution ; the effect is pleasant, but there is a want of glow and 
 depth. His Firstborn (548 : in the Second room) is more forcible.— 
 Cervantes is a writer of such blended force and delicacy that very 
 few artists can touch him with success. Amongst these we cannot 
 include Horsley : who is seen to less disadvantage in his Madrigal 
 (701) than in the Burning of the Boohs (697). His Milton (536) 
 is a higher flight, and a more conspicuous failure : yet work such as 
 this, honest in its aim, and unaffected in its colour, is a healthy 
 thing compared with the vague postures and brown mannerism on 
 which Poole, in his Pliilomena and Solomon Eagle (591 and 578) 
 has wasted what might have been power. There is true poetry and 
 feeling in his work ; but want of drawing and want of truth have 
 left it in the region of haze and theatrical sentiment. 
 
 E. M. Ward and Elmore have chosen their subjects from history : 
 but here the one common rule holds, that the rank of a man’s work 
 depends neither upon his subject, nor his theory, nor his intention, 
 but wholly on the force he has put into it. A simple child, like 
 [Reynolds’ s Sophia , a heath by Crome, or a boar-pig by James Ward, 
 are pictures in the ‘ great manner,’ in a sense quite different from the 
 Marie Antoinette (706), the Charles V (683), and the Tuileries (682). 
 These do not rise above the ordinary Incident style, although Elmore 
 has a certain easy grace, and Ward a certain rude power. But when 
 we have to couple words as in the foregoing phrases, the Adjective 
 has a fatal facility of at last overmastering the Substantive. The 
 head of the old Emperor in 683 has good character ; the Queen 
 of the Tuileries is attacked, and defends herself with some spirit, 
 though this frightful beldame passion and impotent pride are hardly 
 fit matters for Art ; but on the whole, over-easy painting has left 
 Elmore’s work in the stage of a pleasant sketch, indicating daylight 
 and suggesting subject, but realizing neither. In Ward’s, the power 
 shown in the handling already verges on coarseness, the sentiment 
 in the face and hands of the poor wretched woman on melodramatic 
 vulgarity ; whilst in the Charlotte Corday (583) and the Clarendon 
 (729) we can only observe, with much regret, the progress through 
 these unfavourable qualities downward,— till in Whitehall at the 
 Death of Charles II (749) we reach a meretriciousness of colour and 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 51 
 
 a vulgarity of sentiment and character (besides the slovenliness in 
 handling), which might have commended themselves to Nell Gwyn or 
 c Madam Carwell ’ during the later stages of their popularity. 
 
 Power wasted is one of the world’s saddest spectacles ; but such 
 work as Cope’s Othello and Lear (705 and 651) affords a more 
 pitiable sight — scenes in which Shakspeare has put forth all his 
 inspiration, handled by total incapacity for poetical painting. 
 
 Othello ■ — My story being done, 
 
 She gave me for my pains a world of sighs : 
 
 She swore, In faith ’twas strange, ’ twas passing strange, 
 
 ’ Twas pitiful, ’ twas wondrous pitiful 
 
 « — What of the romance and tenderness of this scene, of the ineffable 
 passion and force of Lear, appear in 705 and 651 ? — Cope’s other 
 Works only cannot be ranked so low, because their subjects are less 
 ambitious ; but the gaudiness of the Sisters (652), and the wax-work 
 of the Elizabeth (534), might have been excused, if the artist had 
 been content to spare Shakspeare. 
 
 Criticism also is ‘ mix’ d, as life is mix’d, with pain : ’ let us take the com- 
 fort of better things. Calderon’s Gaoler's Daughter (694) is an honest 
 piece of work, telling its little story of sentiment well, and effectively 
 coloured. The Marriage Offer (756), elsewhere, is equally fortunate 
 in its unaffected humour. To an English eye these pictures look very 
 true to French peasant-character, which Goodall’s water-colour 
 Breton-scenes certainly do not.-— Calderon is more or less influenced 
 by the careful modern manner. We may trace this also in Wells’ 
 bright and pleasing Portrait (487), and in the landscapes of 
 Cooke, I am not sufficiently Arctic to be able to judge the truth 
 of his Terror (668) ; but the Scheveling (693) is one of the best bits 
 of surf and shore painting on the walls for the run and hoarse thrust- 
 ing of the sea, and beautifully managed lines of the brig and her 
 rigging. Cooke’s work) like Stanfield’s, gives us what may be called 
 the poetry of plain prose, and is therefore rather less successful when 
 he tries what needs such ethereal fusion of colour as a Venetian sun- 
 set (653) : — But better be reminded of Turner by absence of rivalry 
 than find his ghost before us in the Rome and Florence (679 and 754) 
 of Pyne. Redgrave’s selection of scene in his little picture (696) is 
 happy ; Severn’s Ophelia (704) picturesquely arranged, and the figure 
 pleasing and unaffected ; but the passion of madness does not seem to 
 be here. Lee’s landscape stands by that of the < better brothers ’ as 
 
 E 2 
 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 52 
 
 Wright’s of Derby by Gainsborough’s : his clay-heap rocks and inky 
 waves in the Storm (656), and hard unfeeling trees of the Avenue 
 (676) show how little value paint may have, when it is all that the 
 painter gives us. The Plymouth (785). and the landscape in the 
 Second room (457) are less crude in execution, and the subjects 
 more fortunately chosen. 
 
 Frith’s work is exactly of the kind which gains the favour of 
 the day for an artist. The execution is clear, clean, and dexterous, 
 although dependent for effect too much on painting-up the fore- 
 ground, and sketching in the distance. There is none of the mystery or 
 the rich indecision of Nature about his pictures ; their daylight seems 
 to exist by itself, without interference from sun or air, those per- 
 plexities of the ordinary painter. They look like miniature models 
 in colour ; we cannot say that drawing so careful is not good ; yet 
 the whole difference of Mastery lies between what satisfies Frith 
 and what, perhaps, hardly satisfies Mulready. In the subjects, we 
 find the Incident style in its highest popular perfection ; a little sen- 
 timent, and a little wit, and a very little humour ; — but much of the 
 fashions and the photograph ; 
 
 — The squares and streets 
 
 And the faces that one meets, — ■ 
 
 the outside of them, that is, and as much as one sees of coats and crino- 
 lines in passing. To describe the Ramsgate (665) would be an imper- 
 tinence ; it would seem to imply that the artist had left something in 
 it which could not be understood without Thought. If there be 
 nothing here which we can call by so serious a name, we have at 
 least a gay triumph of clever common-place ; although no one touch, 
 perhaps, equals that of the doll-wife already grinning on her pillow, 
 and dividing the child’s fancy with his prayers, in the Bed-time 
 (664). Absence of vital character and missing of the point will be 
 found in the scenes from Scott and the Spectator by those who are 
 sufficiently interested to study them. 
 
 We must deeply regret that so distinguished a Master as Millais in 
 Colour and Expression should only be truly represented here by the 
 Return of the Dove and the Autumn Leaves (650 and 698) : works 
 which from a certain immaturity in the first, and the slightness of the 
 subject in the second, do but imperfect justice to his powers. Yet these 
 are both stamped with the character of greatness. The Return singu- 
 larly unites severity of line with tenderness of feeling;— qualities so 
 
0F OIL-PAINTING 
 
 53 
 
 rarely found together, that the union maybe accepted without hesitation 
 as a mark of excellence. The head of the younger daughter, and the 
 action of the hands are models of how true passion expresses itself, — 
 how tremulously, how undemonstratively. The drawing and exe- 
 cution of the dresses and of the straw beneath have a force and per- 
 fection which we shall only find equalled by Holman Hunt. In the 
 Autumn Leaves it is the Colour which raises the work to greatness ; 
 
 ‘ the glow within the darkness’ of twilight ; it is also most picturesquely 
 arranged ; but already we see that neglect of the human face ill 
 comparison with the rest of the painting, which in the Spring 
 Blossoms and Vale of Rest (699 and 649) is so marked that, — whilst 
 we think of this, — they hardly appear pictures by the artist of the 
 Return , the Release , and the Huguenot. Yet in beauty of colour and 
 wealth of invention these also are mighty works ; the clear, cold, 
 palpable air in the Vale alone would stamp it with masterliness 
 like the gifted Solitary described by Wordsworth, the painter of them, 
 we feel, has still kept 
 
 ’Mid much abasement, what he had received . 
 
 From Nature, an intense and glowing mind. 
 
 Let us hope he will again do justice to himself. Such powers are 
 
 a national treasure, and we cannot afford to lose it. 
 
 In Lucy’s historical picture (618) the merits of the manly un- 
 affected design are partially obscured by the colouring, which wants 
 relief. As a fresco painting it would take high rank: the rough 
 humours of the first European Communists are well given, and the 
 glimpse of old London shows what we have lost in picturesque home- 
 liness by the architecture of Baker Street and Belgravia. His 
 Nelson (310) has qualities equally meritorious. Watts’ early work 
 (675) displays the painter to great disadvantage : the name is the 
 only thing which seems to connect it definitely with English histoiy ; 
 we are in a kind of no-man’s-land, haunted by reminiscences of 
 Michel Angelo misapplied, where people without recognizable char- 
 acter of face, or dresses belonging to any human fashion, are doing 
 nothing with vast energy. But the fine portraits of Tennyson and 
 Lawrence (567 and 568) may atone for this phantasmagoric Alfred. 
 
 Egg’s Tale of Terror (638), with Miss A. Mutrie’s Flower-groups 
 (641 and 642), appear to illustrate two opposite conditions in Art, 
 either of which partially robs it of the power to give noble pleasure. 
 The Flowers have too little evidence of human feeling ; the Tale, too 
 
 I E S B \ 
 
54 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 much. In spite of the backgrounds, Miss Mutrie’s work hardly rises 
 above very perfect ornamentalism, and, like Lance’s, leaves us unim- 
 pressed and cold ; whilst this lurid story of faithlessness and death 
 (besides a certain indistinctness in the telling), although there is a 
 terrible force about it, wants nobleness in the moral, together with 
 those happier glimpses which Hogarth rarely withholds. Gale’s very 
 delicate and thoughtful Prisoner (689) is an example how much, in 
 art, a poetry of treatment can redeem the sadness of the subject. 
 The modest effective colorm of this little work is in harmony with 
 the conception : — in both points it contrasts with Bankley’s rather 
 commonplace childhood-scene (643). Dawson’s Palace of West- 
 minster (644), although too much has been attempted, shows original- 
 ity and feeling. 
 
 Passing the door, we reach Lewis’ Kibob Shop (to be presently 
 noticed) and Dobson’s Fairy Tales (636). There is a pretty serious- 
 ness and very natural air about the little student, not altogether ab- 
 sent from the Scripture scene (633) above. But this holy sentimenta- 
 lism, like Le Jenne’s Blessing (455) and Herbert’s Outcast (659) 
 and Magdalenes (657 and 658), with Ary Scheffer’s work in the 
 sacred style, stands in the same relation to real Art as Longfellow’s or 
 Haynes Bayley’s to real Poetry, and in the case of the painters named, 
 is unredeemed by charm or value in the execution. So one false- 
 hood brings with it more. It is pleasant to turn from this to the 
 unpretending charm and homely truthfulness of Clark’s family scene 
 (625) : with the Sick Child (510 : in the Second room), two of our 
 best recent pictures of cottage-incident. The drawing and colour in 
 these little works are careful ; the face of the puzzled father, unwilling 
 to acknowledge his skill in draughts beaten by his boy’s, — and that 
 of the child, half afraid and half coaxed into courage, both excellent. 
 The details and technical disposition are, perhaps, too ingeniously 
 artificial. Clark’s Wanderer (739: Fourth room) is a much less 
 thorough piece of work in most ways ; we trust he will not be satis- 
 fied to do himself less than justice in future. 
 
 An interesting series of Landscape follows. The old school of 
 picturesque effect is almost always pleasingly represented in Harding’s 
 work ; his distant mountain-ranges deserve special praise for the 
 delicacy of their colouring and the exquisite rendering of their 
 curves, — qualities ' admirably exemplified in the Alp-view (495). 
 In the Angers , the central bridge has uncommon picturesqueness, 
 both from its outline, and the low point of sight chosen : the entire 
 
OF OXL-PAXNTING 
 
 55 
 
 canvas (the sky excepted) is Ml of good motives,— indeed, like 
 much of Harding’, s work, it suffers from its own abundance. How 
 rarely his pictures, as wholes, with all their grace and knowledge, 
 have the irresistible look of the real thing ! Not so Avith Hook, 
 whose Sea-pieces owe much of their charm to their unity of sentiment 
 and individual character of scene. Little in these works is thoroughly 
 done in the full force of the words ; it is impossible not to wish, above 
 all, that thorough draAving in the figures were added to Hook’s beau- 
 tiM colour and originality in situation : we cannot help remembering 
 the remark of the doAvnright critic in the tale, that 1 the picture would 
 
 have been better, if’ But the poetry and life and salt sunny 
 
 heaving of Hook’s delightful seas, the golden summer gloAv of his land- 
 scape (615) allure one with a good Avill from the unpleasant task of 
 criticism ; — and it is no little praise, when a painter makes us feel, 
 that he could have 1 taken more pains ’ Avith advantage. — How strange, 
 also, that, before this artist, no one should have truly felt the gladness 
 and glory of our blue Avaters ! When we further observe, that his 
 pictures are almost alone in grasping the life of sailors and country- 
 people, — not as a scene of rude humour, or sentimentalism, or misery, 
 but under the sunshine of innocent cheerfulness,, — it will be seen Avhat 
 thanks Ave oAve to Hook for the noble pleasure which his Art gives 
 us so lavishly. 
 
 We have another genuinely English Landscape Painter in Creswick. 
 His fine Trent Yalley (611), with its Passing Cloud and wet hazy 
 glimmer of sunlight on the Mill, is as true to our open earth and sky 
 as the Greta (759) to the green depths and over-arching tracery of our 
 mountain-torrents. In both Avorks Ave find that industrious and tender 
 drawing of the landscape Avhich is so marked a feature in the present 
 English school ; observe in the Greta the graceM trees Avh ich break 
 aAvay into natural avenue on the right, and in the Cloud the value 
 which has been given to the slight elevation of Belvoir, by the truth- 
 ful treatment of the long levels through which the river Avinds to the 
 horizon. Ail Creswick’s Avork shows evidence of this conscientious 
 modest care ; his painting is never slurred over in design or execu- 
 tion ; it always deserves the study, which his someAvhat monotonous 
 colour, and a rather too-equal diffusion of interest over the scene, 
 may lead hasty spectators to neglect. But the Ford (601 ) is in a 
 richer key ; the delicate warmth of the sky is here beautifully con- 
 trasted An th the cool green spaces beneath. 
 
 Naish. and Dyce, in contrast with Creswick and Harding, bring us 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 56 
 
 to the later style again. The Kynance Cove (621) is as truthful in 
 its lines as in the brilliant colouring of sea and serpentine ; the painter 
 does a bold thing who confronts such an effect, which will always 
 seem exaggerated to those who do not happen to know the purple 
 and emerald waters that wash twice daily the silver sands and gor- 
 geous caverns of the Lizard. In Dyce’s later pictures, the Pegwell 
 (613) and the Titian (596), there is a microscopic accuracy and refine- 
 ment of drawing which are of the highest value in Art, when balanced 
 and, as it were, corrected at every point by imaginative power. But 
 of Imagination we have here no trace. Nothing can be more truthful 
 than the separate passages which in the Bay fail to compose a picture 
 in the high sense : the anatomy of the rock on the right, and of the 
 ebb-surfaces in the centre, is admirable ; but there is no feeling for 
 the poetry of the dying day, nothing of the confusion and mystery and 
 indefinable life of Nature. The miniature making-out of the girl and 
 child in the middle distance, and much of the foliage in the Titian , 
 appear to me perfect examples of finish misunderstood, whilst in the 
 trees the intricacies of real leafage, both in form and colour, are almost 
 absent. This work may be instructively compared with the corre- 
 sponding passages in Holman Hunt or Turner, where far greater 
 effect of multitudinous detail is given without one stroke of micro- 
 scopic minuteness. And I would again remind the reader, that the 
 difference between the 1 great style ’ and all other styles lies alto- 
 gether in the presence of this high imaginative truth , and nowise in 
 anything which can be expressed under cover of ‘ generalization,’ 
 ‘ ideality,’ or the other catchwords for parrots. Dyce’s Jacob 
 and Rachel (597), though the virtue of oil-colour is not in it, 
 shows truly admirable drawing, and a true and tender sentiment 
 with which all the beauty of the narrative has rarely inspired the 
 Scriptural artists of any age. 
 
 O’Neil’s Eastward Ho (607), with his Volunteer (748), in the 
 fourth room, are creditable specimens of good steady work in that 
 more serious style of Incident which has lately become common. 
 The sentiment of each would try severely the most able artist; 
 indeed such a man would probably find it grow under his hands too 
 powerful for Art and her high pleasure, and would concentrate him- 
 self on one group, or, like Hogarth, mix humour and human absurdity 
 with his seriousness. In this rank it is no disrespect not to place 
 O’Neil ; but it is true merit to have so well kept clear of vulgarity, 
 or melodramatic display, or over-ingenuity. And what labour 
 must have been given to work out pictures thus arranged ! 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 57 
 
 Wolf’s Ptarmigan (585) are as full of intense truth to the wild 
 creatures as J. Ward’s Cattle, but not carried out with such force. 
 Yet the delicate grays are well managed, and the scattered stones 
 drawn with admirable care. The picture will be probably thought 
 monotonous ; but this identity in colour between the birds and the 
 granite is one of the subtle harmonies of Nature for the preservation 
 of species, dwelt on lately in Darwin’s well-known book. 
 
 We may now pass from the upper line with a word of praise to 
 Anthony’s well-sketched and originally-treated Beech and Fern 
 (604), and Holland’s bright Rotterdam (588), and a word of regret 
 that Sant should waste on waxwork and affectation, the picturesque 
 eye for colour and for childhood shown in the Bed Biding Hood 
 (592) and Whisper (617). 
 
 Faed’s incidents, like Webster’s, are mostly taken from cottage 
 life. It is an art of small pleasant surprises that he gives us ; a 
 little point of wit, and a little touch of sentiment, perhaps set off, as 
 in the First Break (595), by the contrasted indifference of the 
 children to their brother’s removal, whilst the father bears the boy’s 
 departure with shrewd hopefulness. Even the weather sympathizes 
 in its way, and repeats by clever signs the varied feelings of the 
 family ; here a gleam, and there shadow, the rainbow on one hand, 
 and the shower on the other. All this is ingenious, but it seems rather 
 after the manner of a tale for very young children, where the moral 
 comes in at the end of every sentence. We are sure that Faed’s 
 abilities would command attention for a simpler style of story. His 
 colouring, like that of other Scottish artists, is haunted by the conven- 
 tionalities of Wilkie. Faed’s work, like Frith’s, has a look of dexterous 
 facility ; he seizes momentary motion with success, and his back- 
 grounds show a happy eye for natural effect. The humour in his 
 other piece is rather over-accented. 
 
 As it would be easy to name the rival Novelists to these artists, 
 so our English love of Southern and Eastern travel is repeated in 
 Phillip and Lewis. The essential difference between them might 
 be simply summed up thus, that Lewis paints the life, and Phillip 
 sketches the manners. Phillip’s scenes are clearly and well imagined, 
 though one wishes he would rely less for effect on the burliness of 
 priests and the brownness of beggars ; the colouring careful and 
 heavy, true neither to Southern light nor shadow : they are Spanish 
 plays performed on an English stage, — and not always in a faithful 
 or spirited translation : Andalusian material, and London manufac- 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 58 
 
 tore. This painter’s skill in narration deserves notice. Except, 
 perhaps, the Prayer of Faith (605), with its pretty girl-portraits, 
 each picture tells its own tale, not with refinement or greatness or 
 any depth, it is true, hut clearly. The arrangement of his figures, 
 and the suppression of smaller incident, appear the means by which 
 this success has been compassed. But it cannot be concealed that 
 the ability shown here verges already on coarseness, both of style and 
 execution : we trust the artist will remain faithful to his better self, 
 in these first elements of genuine painting. 
 
 No one, since the art began, has probably kept a more even and 
 consistent carefulness than Lewis. Thought cannot be so distinct- 
 ively ascribed to his pictures, — rather, perhaps, the thought is, as it 
 were, absorbed and identified with the indescribable perfection and 
 completeness of the work. What he wishes to impress on us is 
 Oriental life in its great general qualities. Thus in the Cairo (590), 
 everything expresses the resignedness of the Eastern labourer, — the 
 noiseless apathy which masks the untamed wild nature within : 
 whilst in the Shop (637) we have the deep settled enjoyment of 
 wealth, possessed or prospective, which has long marked the Eastern 
 merchant. There is not a line or a tint in this strangely-fascinating 
 picture but tells of rich repose and sheltered coolness : compared 
 with the agitation and fret of European life, these Moslem mer- 
 chants of Lewis appear like the voyagers who had reached the Lotos- 
 land, ‘ in which it seemed always afternoon — yet with this calm 
 and stately fatalism, the Oriental stealthiness and craft are subtly 
 united. — What a long result of centuries Lewis has concentrated 
 in these little works, — and all by absolute truthfulness ! Here is 
 no incident shown, no moral suggested, no manners set out for 
 illustration, — nothing to strike the careless eye, — only the real 
 character of a whole nation mirrored with all the modesty of 
 Nature : — in every atom of colour, and every least little line and sur- 
 face, faithful with a majestic fidelity. The subdued clearness of the 
 lattice-work in the window of the Cairo, the varied motion and life 
 of the pigeons in the foreground of the Shop, as exquisite in form 
 as in iridescent lustre, are of a quality so much beyond the standard, 
 even of most genuine art, that one knows not in what terms to 
 praise them. 
 
 To the qualities contained in the art of Lewis, Holman Hunt adds 
 a dramatic intensity of thought and a force of expression and of 
 colour which, (to the writer at least), appear to place him amongst 
 
OF OIL-PAINTING 
 
 59 
 
 the very small band of high. Imaginative Masters who have fully 
 realized their powers. His pictures burn with a kind of inner fire, 
 which extinguishes almost all other men’s work : the sun’s heat 
 seems within the Cairo (581), the pure crystalline day itself in the 
 scene from Shakspeare (728) : the hazy celestial silver of the 
 moon, mixed with the stealthy influences of starlight and dawn- 
 ing, and subtle flashings from gem and dewdrop, have been united and 
 harmonized in his Light of the World (580) by we know not what 
 mysterious magic. This enumeration of the varieties rendered by 
 Hunt in a single natural feature leads us to another quality of his 
 art. It is without existing rival in the breadth of its range, not less 
 than in the force of its execution. Consider how wide a scope of 
 subject is shown even by the three pictures here exhibited : 
 humour in 581, dramatic passion in 728, awfulness of Divine Love 
 in 580, unquestionably the most serious piece of art in the col- 
 lection. It ‘is not meant that these works are of equal importance 
 or interest : the sentiment of the Cairo Scene (a boy trying to feel 
 out before his marriage-day the features of his betrothed), is too 
 foreign and far-off for general sympathies, and the life and lithe- 
 ness of the lines in the girl will probably offend those who admire 
 the Academic attitudes of Frost’s Una : the balanced intensity of ex- 
 pression and forceful character in the Sylvia will only be under- 
 stood by those who know Shakspeare by heart, as the truly charming 
 phrase has it : — whilst the endless delicate detail by which Nature 
 works, and which the artist finds essential for the rendering of her 
 mingled breadth and minuteness, will escape the attention of the indolent, 
 and drive the theorist into the refuges of his ‘ long-tailed words in ation' 
 Why should this surprise us ? Were it otherwise, it would not be 
 great Art, — the expression of the most numerous facts, and the 
 revelation of the highest thoughts. And we must bring our own best 
 thoughts with us, if we would wish to enjoy, or hope to fathom it. 
 
 Foueth Room. Many works here belong to painters or styles 
 noticed before, or appear to require no special notice. This does 
 not hold of IDAllim’s landscapes, which do great credit to the 
 artist s conscientious industry, and deserve hearty praise for their 
 careful rendering of a natural feature far too rarely painted, — the 
 half-cleared glades in our forests, so impressive in their effect, and so 
 valuable from their free exhibition of tree-form and surface undula- 
 tion. M‘Allum has made skilful use of the latter, and his oak and 
 beech have been honestly drawn ; — but imaginative impressive- 
 
6o 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL 
 
 ness is wanting. Like Dyce’s work, this errs from over -finish, as 
 Constable’s from over-effect : the breath of life is not in it, the myster- 
 iousness and infinity of Nature are replaced by soulless photographic 
 sharpness : it is the error, if I may risk the phrase, of a false fidelity.— 
 There is less force, but better sense of what makes art, art, in 
 V. Cole’s Autumn (777) : the bramble and fern of the foreground, 
 the copse and sky, are well felt, whilst they have been also carefully 
 studied. 
 
 Our modern Landscape, following our taste in poetry and m tra- 
 velling, has returned with a more serious purpose to the Mountain- 
 world by which Salvator was long since attracted. M’Culloch’s 
 Achray (775) shows care and feeling, though the colour wants light- 
 ness and the water limpidity, — it is reflection without surface. Oakes 
 Pool (771) gives us a beautiful foreground, rich in the wildly grace- 
 ful Flora of the rocks; even without the brown gleaming of the 
 torrent, we should recognize at once a spot of marshy stagnation, 
 The range of hill is well imagined, and full of fitful light. In the 
 Aberfraiv (469) the mountain-line is also happy, and this picture, 
 though less impressive than the Pool, has escaped that want of union 
 between the foreground and the distance which we feel often in the 
 artist’s work. A. Hunt’s Llyn Tolwal (738) is blurred and rather 
 mannered in touch, but the hillside and the great range beyond, 
 breaking through the smoking cloud-wreaths, have the impressive- 
 ness which true fidelity never fails to convey. The mountain neck 
 on the right should be noticed for its admirably gradated recession 
 into the veil of shifting mist. 
 
 Creswick’s Glen (759) I have already noticed. Compared with this, 
 Whaite’s handling in 461 (Room second) looks overminute and 
 fatiguing ; there is a timid air about his work : — but the foreground is 
 rich in most truthful and delicate detail, thoroughly drawn and mastered. 
 The - conception appears to me truly poetical, — a glen which one 
 might hope was haunted. Gilbert’s Miclcleham (758) may be 
 specially singled out for its careful and genuine cloud-drawing, 
 but it is altogether a little landscape of much modest merit. 
 
 Morris’ Captive's Return (493) has fine colour and thoughtful 
 tender intention, but it pleases rather in separate passages than as a 
 whole : one might say of such a work, that it is a sketch, rather over- 
 laboured than really completed. 
 
 A. Solomon’s two Trial pictures (720 and 734) may be classed 
 with Elmore’s Tuileries or Egg’s Tale — dramatic power and steady 
 
01? OIL-PAINTING 
 
 61 
 
 Careful painting employed on a subject too painful for Art. It is not 
 that this suspense of agony or revulsion to happiness are in them- 
 selves inadmissible ; but they far outrun the bounds of the mere 
 Incident Style : — they require the tragic earnestness of Hunt, or 
 must be relieved by Hogarth’s deep humour. Lacking these quali- 
 ties, Solomon’s work is only spirited melodrama: as Goodall’s 
 Charles (726) is simple ornamentalism. 
 
 We pass to more serious things with the Woodman's Child (742), 
 the Valentine and Sylvia (728) and the Last Day in the Old House 
 (727). Of Hunt I have already spoken : he has placed on the 
 frame the lines which the picture immediately illustrates, but it may 
 be added that it is the last scene of the play, in a forest near Mantua, 
 where the principal characters have met by one of the happy-making 
 accidents which are reserved for the other and better world of Poetry. 
 We see Julia on the left, who, disguised as a boy to follow her faith- 
 less lover Proteus, has just heard with shame his designs against 
 Sylvia, and now witnesses his abasement, as he kneels before the 
 friend whom he has treacherously tried to ruin. Sylvia meanwhile 
 learns the true story of Valentine’s exile from the court ; they are 
 both ready to forgive with happiness at meeting : — in a few moments 
 her father, the Duke, will be here, 
 
 Come, let us go; we will conclude all jars 
 
 With triumphs, mirth, and rare solemnity. 
 
 Hughes, though here again rather low and iron-gray in tone, 
 shows the same charm of poetry and execution as in his Labourer's 
 Return, the same largeness of design and faithfulness to nature. 
 Martineau’s truly great work bears some slight impression of 
 the very uncommon labour which the painter has bestowed on 
 it ; the effect of the whole is perhaps overdark : although the 
 colour in many parts, notably in the exquisitely managed shawl 
 and dress of the central figure, is of precious quality. But this is an 
 admirable example of what the Incident Style should be : it is one 
 not only interesting to us as a most faithful rendering of our own 
 age, but five hundred years hence will be of equal interest — only it 
 will then be classed amongst Historical Pictures. It is also an excel- 
 lent specimen of finished detail, thought-out not less than worked- 
 out ; the history of the house is written within this one room, yet 
 there is none of that over-accented point which is the bane of merely 
 clever story-telling. I hope this novel in colour will be read with 
 
62 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOL OP OIL-PAINTING 
 
 the cate it deserves ; it is full of most ingenious quiet detail ; -we 
 have few in print which give character with such truth and 
 pathos, as this best good fellow in the world who has so gaily 
 betted away house and land at Epsom, or the noble wife who 
 would recall him to business and ‘ furnished lodgings ’ (see the county 
 paper upon her desk) from his daredevil and idiotic defiance. This 
 again is great art, and the great manner too — - and in a sense from 
 which most of our popular figure-painters are as remote as Fuseli or 
 Haydon. I am glad that the last picture on my list should, in inven- 
 tion equally with execution, be of such good promise for the English 
 school of Oil Colours. 
 
63 
 
 ENGLISH WATER-COLOURS 
 
 In some fashion -water-colour painting is the oldest form of the art. 
 Beside its employment for fresco in Egypt and Assyria, Greece and 
 Italy, early papyri and MSS. were thus decorated ; although it 
 is probable that not before the period awkwardly named the Middle 
 Ages was the art, ■ called Illumination at Paris,’ carried to complete 
 elaboration. A few painters in France, Italy, and Belgium (as illu- 
 mination proper faded before the printing press) tried some form of 
 what we should consider water-colours ; but Diirer is the only great 
 artist of the time who felt the use to which they might be turned. No 
 school, however, was founded by his attempts, although thence on- 
 wards, notably amongst the Dutch, occasional drawings of considerable 
 finish occur. As an independent art, however, partly distinguished from 
 oils by general choice of subject, but more by the effect which it secures 
 and the comparative facility of the process, Water-colour painting 
 has hardly existed for a hundred years. It is indisputably an 
 English invention, and hitherto has only been practised as a School 
 in England. The love of the natural landscape, with two curious 
 external predisposing causes, are the great general laws which appear 
 to explain why an art apparently so obvious, could not or did not 
 arise before the reign of George the Third. On the modern passion 
 for the picturesque I have already touched : it must be enough here 
 to specify our national genius for mechanical invention and finish, 
 and the vast numerical proportion of the more educated and wealthy 
 classes in England, as the other concurrent influences, — the first 
 giving us superiority and cheapness in the materials, the latter pro- 
 viding not only an infi nite number of patrons, but of amateur 
 followers of the new art. Hence my task in this province may be 
 confined to a short view of the progress of our Water-Colour School, 
 and of the most conspicuous specimens of each master. Every one, 
 happily, has some knowledge of the art, and in direct opposition to 
 the case.of Sculpture, is ready more or less to. test it by the standard 
 of Nature. And the comparatively limited range of Water-colours, 
 (I may add), has in general so confined the artists within one style of 
 
ENGLISH 
 
 64 
 
 subject and execution, that they can be not unfairly judged by a 
 very few characteristic examples. 
 
 Brief as its career has been, our Water-colour School has passed 
 already, since the period of Sandby’s careful body-colour repro- 
 duction of Gaspar Poussin ( ), through three phases. In the first, 
 
 the stained drawing, as it was called, consisted of a design in brown or 
 blue-gray wash, strengthened more or less by a pen outline, and touched 
 over in the lighter parts, the sky, or water, or foreground, with a 
 little colour. The colour is rarely of positive tint, and the brown 
 wash itself is kept a moderate tone, as if unwilling to grasp extreme 
 effects of light and shade. This system secured a peculiar and 
 pleasing character of breadth and repose, when the artist brought 
 poetry in his heart to the work, and the nature of the subject allowed 
 it. Nicholson’s Waterfalls (907 and 937), J. Chalon’s Shorwell 
 Hocks (832), Byrne’s Twickenham (836), Glover’s Italian Scene 
 (850), Edridge’s Trees (837), and the Coursing Scene (872), by 
 Dayes are good examples : the Windsors by Sandby and Havell take 
 a loftier aim with considerable success ; whilst the beautiful Cottage 
 of Stevens (938), so full of country calm and sweetness, is trembling, 
 as it were, on the brink of colour. But in figure-scenes, or the 
 architectural designs for which the art was at first specially employed, 
 see Cristall’s j5o// (916), Rowlandson’s Reviews^ 821 and 822), 
 Edridge’s Gate and Bridge (925 and 833), and Glover’s Chapel (833), 
 these qualities, in particular when the pen lines are prominent, are 
 not seen, and hence many of the early water-colour drawings show 
 tamely beside the brilliancy to which we are accustomed. Those, 
 however, that bear the names of Cozens (died 1794) and Girtin 
 (1775 — 1802), whom, with Sandby, we may consider the founders 
 of the school, almost always deserve notice. By the first, the art 
 was practised in the most primitive fashion, though with profound 
 feeling. What a ‘ silent eloquence of Nature ’ (to quote from Leslie’s 
 charming criticism on Cozens), gentleness and greatness, appear in 
 his Isola Borromea (801) and two mountain views (827 and 828). 
 He was mostly employed in Italy, and hence his subjects differ from 
 those taken by most of our early men ; but the Italian landscape had 
 never been touched before with so sweet a solemnity. 
 
 In Girtin’s later works, washes of positive colour are cautiously 
 added, till the tones of Nature, in her sedater moods, are nearly 
 reached. Magnificent examples may be seen in the British Museum ; 
 of the specimens here, the View in Yorkshire (888), and the noble 
 
WATER-COLOURS 
 
 6 5 
 
 Durham (841), have the ‘ sobered tints of exquisite truth, and broad 
 chiaroscuro,’ which are noticed as his characteristics by Leslie : his 
 more advanced style, with no loss however of these fine qualities, 
 is represented by the Landscape (834), the Wharfe (814), and the 
 Old Ouse Bridge (803). Hooker’s architecture (823 and 824), has 
 a beautiful quiet tone and a look of firm truthfulness. Much of 
 the same poetical feeling passed into the style of J. S. Cotman, a 
 rather later artist, whose tender and imaginative appreciation of 
 Nature places him above many to whom fame has been more partial. 
 His Dieppe Harbour (858), seen from the heights of Pollet, exhibits 
 a peculiar sense for the force and dignity of the level lines of land- 
 scape, and the colour has much purity. Many who, for the first 
 time, see these early drawings will be apt to turn away from their 
 calm gray or golden tenderness : let the spectator study them with 
 care, concentrating his mind on the scenes represented — these Italian 
 valleys, or northern lakes, or romantic ruins of England — and he 
 will find the poetry of the painters sink in his heart with tranquil 
 persuasion, as he stands before visions of so sweet a serenity. 
 
 A few figure-drawings of this school carry us back, curiously and 
 pleasantly, to the Old England of our grandfathers; Westall’s very 
 pleasing Girl (802) with her simple frock and hat, — she might be 
 one of Miss Austen’s heroines ; A. Chalon’s pretty mannered things, 
 the Pet and the Girl (910 and 856) ; Cleimell’s well-drawn Sawyer 
 (908), in which the slcy-tint, as sometimes with Prout and Fielding, 
 has gone wrong; and Hills’s careful and characteristic team in the 
 Ploughing (917) of days before steam existed. 
 
 But we pass from these, Avith Gainsborough’s indescribably charm- 
 ing sketches (809 to 811), to Blake and Stothard, Avithin certain 
 limits, tAVo of the most inventive and original designers in English 
 art. Neither is here represented fully, but they may be compared 
 in their rival illustrations of the Pilgrimage to Canterbury (968 
 and 848) from the Prologue to Chaucer’s Tales. Blake’s work 
 has more poetical penetration,' Stothard’s more poetical grace ; he 
 reaches greater completeness and balance in the whole, Blake 
 goes to the heart of the matter Avhere he succeeds (the Host, 
 the Prioress), but misses much entirely. The contrast indicated 
 runs through their Avhole life and genius; Stothard the man of 
 boundless and practised Fancy, Blake of restricted and intense 
 Imagination. Yet it is hardly as art that his strange creations 
 appeal to us ; the draAving and execution are rarely successful ; they 
 
66 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 are hampered by the morbid mind of their visionary author, and 
 limited by his neglect of real form ; it is in the force of the penetra- 
 tive imagination that their value lies, — 'in their almost painful power, 
 
 in their sublime suggestions of some earlier world of patriarchal 
 
 days, or the mysteries of spiritual and ecstatic existence. These 
 qualities, however, are seen more in his strange oil-picture, Christ 
 on the Lap of the Church (221), — Blake’s conception of the favourite 
 design of early art, — than in the little-characteristic scenes from 
 Genesis (965 to 967). 
 
 Such was not the region familiar to the gentle-hearted Stothard. 
 Sharing in some degree the deficiencies of Blake as an artist, and 
 hence unsatisfactory in his larger oil-paintings, in his water-colour 
 designs he shows a delicacy of feeling and a grace than which art has 
 no fascination more enduringly attractive. Especially in his youth- 
 ful works there is an airy charm, a power of seizing evanescent 
 motions and lines of momentary loveliness, in which, with exception 
 also of Reynolds and Gainsborough, English art has been seldom 
 fortunate. But as Blake saw all things through a morbid Imagina- 
 tion, so we must admit that Stothard’s world is too much the crea- 
 tion of dominant Fancy — another and a better world, it may be, 
 than this, yet without the depth and impressiveness, as it is without 
 the woe and warfare, of real existence. His qualities are well 
 shown in the Illustrations to the Spectator (950 to 957). The Poet's 
 Dream (958) is one of the later series which he drew for Samuel 
 Rogers : the brilliant Pilgrimage (848) should be compared with the 
 same work in oil-colours. 
 
 Meanwhile in Landscape, — which we might call the true vocation 
 of Water-colours as a substantive art, — the charm and ease, as 
 compared with oils, of which the transparent tints are capable, 
 modulated and supported by the under-brilliancy of the paper, were 
 daily felt more and more, and our school advanced with rapid steps 
 towards the complete rendering of natural effect in all its richness. 
 Prout, in his outline style most resembling the earlier period, 
 ■seized especially on the picturesque in the works of men, and, with 
 English energy and patience, brought home to us innumerable 
 records of cathedral and castle, market-place and town-hall, from 
 every city of Europe ; and this precisely at the time before the 
 prosperity of the long peace and the restlessness of this century 
 had effaced the relics of ancient days, and the times when archi- 
 tecture retained beauty of form and originality of treatment. How 
 
WATER-COLOURS 
 
 67 
 
 many must have received their first impulse to travel from Prout’s 
 views ! How many have felt, when they saw their subjects, that 
 they owed much of their poetry to their painter ! The architectural 
 drawings here are treated with a skill quite unrivalled in their manly 
 picturesqueness and profound feeling for character ; but although 
 what colour there is, in its way is admirable, as pictures they do not 
 equal the subtle delicacy of the landscape in his magnificent India- 
 man (912) : one of the finest drawings for mastery over line and 
 powerful shore-landscape here exhibited. 
 
 The Style of Varley, Robson, and Barret is more artificial than 
 Prout’s, at least in those elaborately arranged views which have 
 usurped the name ‘ compositions:’ but each was a man of true feel- 
 ing, and has rendered some effects with singular skill. Our artists 
 have grown bolder and more decisive in certain points ; but we find 
 now little of that deeper poetical affection with which Varley has 
 given an English depth and serenity of atmosphere in 943 or 
 Robson touched the distant Avater beneath the massy height of tree 
 and cathedral with a faint rosy blush in his noble Ely (829). The 
 sky of his Conisborougli (862) has a fine quality of rich repose. 
 Barret shows equal power in dealing with Light, — glowing in the 
 Waggon (878), and the Sunset (835), or pale with summer’s heat 
 in the Refuge (867) ; where the beautiful effect gained by giving on 
 the water-surface the sky which is shut out by the trees should be 
 also studied. His Walton Bridge (870) is also excellent for the air 
 and river. Chambers’ Sunset at Sea (892), though coarse and little 
 draAvn, has fresh and effective colour : and the views by Austen 
 ( Rotterdam , 876) and Owen ( Sea-piece , 877) deserve notice. 
 Cook’s recent death, to our loss, has brought his Avorks already 
 amongst those of our earlier school : neither of the Trebarwith views 
 is carried out in the complete style, but in genuine tenderness of 
 feeling they are worthy of their position. The Sea in the Morning 
 (890), and the sunset gloAV of the companion picture (891) are 
 beautifully coloured. 
 
 Dewint’s is a homelier poetry ; the sharp fresh air of England, 
 with our landscape of formal fields and precise cottages, were his 
 portion ; but, somewhat after the fashion of Stanfield, he has charmed 
 them into poetry by a loving truthfulness. We have many excellent 
 specimens : Torksey (882) for grand simplicity, Putney (928) for 
 serene calm, the Corn field (919) for sweet colour, the Moorland 
 (920) for air. • For the peculiar qualities of the artist’s mind, the 
 
 r 2 
 
68 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 Lincoln (918) appears one of the most characteristic : there is a 
 truly wonderful art in the seemingly unstudied arrangement, the 
 square sail set below the smoking chimney, and the line of foreground 
 cattle, are instances which will make many spectators feel the force 
 of the old remark, ‘ questo facile, quanto e difficile ! ’ 
 
 Last of these great early Poets (so we may fitly name them), comes 
 Copley Fielding ; — after Turner, our completest master over space 
 and air, and except by Turner, who like Shakspeare, must be ex- 
 cepted everywhere, unsurpassed in rendering the desolation and bitter 
 dreariness of the sea (Ship in distress, 880) the incorporeal colour 
 and spiritual beauty of the distant mountain ( Snoivdon , 1162), or the 
 mysterious veil of delicate mist on vast moorland or distant forest 
 (Bolton, 1139). I regret that space does not allow fuller notice of 
 the many fine points which the work of these men everywhere 
 presents, but I wish to name one more before passing to him in 
 whom this admirable school culminated. This is the careful selection 
 of subject : the well-considered choice of scenes on which nature 
 has concentrated her purest and most perfect effect, and stored up her 
 deepest feeling. It is not every casual charm, or glimpse of pretti- 
 ness, which is worth the serious artist’s study : and the large consi- 
 deration of the men above named in this element of art has accom- 
 plished its object by the lasting and noble pleasure their work gives 
 to them by whom it is studied in the sincere spirit which produced it. 
 
 Let us now turn to the great artist who sympathized more deeply 
 than any since the days of Tintoret with Life and Nature as they are 
 in all their vast variety, who saw the shadows and the stains of the 
 world with the whole force of passionate imagination, — who, by the 
 discipline of such thoughts and the studies to which they led him, 
 trained himself finally to paint Space, Air, and Light, sky and rock 
 and water, with a poetry and a perfection never before attained by 
 art. For the leading characteristics of Turner’s genius, readers are 
 referred to the summary of English oil painting : here, a brief indi- 
 cation of his position in our water-colour school, and of the stages of 
 his progress is all that can be attempted. But, with reference to 
 whatever follows, and indeed to the criticism throughout this book, I 
 desire to add, that the judgments which, after much study, I feel 
 justified in holding, for myself, with firmness, are written for others 
 with diffidence and hesitation ; although within limits thus brief a 
 dogmatic tone, I fear, is hardly avoidable. Especially wherever dis- 
 praise has been given, I hope this sincere confession will be kindly 
 
■mi 
 
 WATER-COLOURS 
 
 69 
 
 borne in mind by all readers : — that it has never been given without 
 much pain, I hope there is no need of confessing. And, in the more 
 pleasant province of reverent eulogy and honour, I would wish it 
 remembered, — by those who do not feel the correctness of the terms 
 applied to a Reynolds, a Turner, or a Holman Hunt, and even more 
 by those who do, — that the essential excellence of this or any great 
 master is truly ‘ beyond and above expression : it is a truth inherent 
 in every line, and breathing in every hue, too delicate and exquisite 
 to admit of proof : ’ and that ‘ all truths of the highest order are 
 separated from those of average precision by points of extreme 
 delicacy, which none but the cultivated eye can in the least feel, and 
 to express which, all words are absolutely meaningless or useless.’ 
 In this direction, therefore, what I write must be taken only in the 
 spirit of hint and analogy. 
 
 Turner when young worked with Girtin, and shared with him in 
 the first advances of water-colour painting. But he seems to have 
 felt from the beginning that thorough knowledge of drawing and of 
 form was the only safe foundation for the art : and as no man had 
 ever more of that unwearied and humble-minded industry which is 
 the surest sign of genius, he gave much time to pen and pencil 
 sketching from Nature. His earliest works are executed in the gray 
 and brown tints alone, but already show that perception of space 
 and power in arranging masses which were to mark him during 
 sixty years of continuous industry. This style is exemplified by the 
 Clyde (1014), — interesting also as the first thought afterwards worked 
 out in the ‘ Liber Studiorum ’ print ; the Reiclienbach and Abbey (1070 
 and 1027) ; Chepstoiv (1041) and Canterbury Gate (992) : whilst in 
 the solemn gorgeousness of the Easby (1006) we see the most perfect 
 example which the Exhibition affords of our first Water-Colour 
 manner, just about to pass from unity and breadth of tone to truth 
 in local tint. This should be compared with the analogous drawings 
 in the First room. 
 
 ‘ Gradually and cautiously,’ Mr. Ruskin states, in his excellent 
 summary of Turner’s career, ‘ the blues became mingled with deli- 
 cate green, and then with gold; the browns in the foreground 
 became first more positive, and then were slightly mingled with 
 other local colours ; while the touch grew more and more refined 
 and expressive, until it lost itself in a method of execution often too 
 delicate for the eye to follow, rendering, with a precision before 
 unexampled, both the texture and the form of every object. This 
 
 
 
 
 
7 ° 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 style may be considered as perfectly formed about the year 1800, 
 and it remained unchanged for twenty years.’ Turner appears 
 to have followed it with this constancy because it gave perfect 
 freedom to make Form, Space, and Size the predominant features of 
 his work : although, meanwhile, in his, smaller drawings, the play, 
 of colour ’ begins to show itself. And under this simple system, he 
 set himself to master every variety of landscape form : treating no 
 subject as too high or too low for him : and gaining from this 
 universality of interest the subtle power of expression which, enabled 
 him to transfer, we had almost said, Nature in her universality, to 
 paper. ‘ Throughout this whole period ’ (represented here by the 
 great Surrey and South Coast series in Sir A. A. Hood’s possession), 
 ‘ Turner appears as a man of sympathy absolutely infinite — a sym- 
 pathy so all-embracing, that I know nothing but that of Shakspeare 
 comparable with it. Nothing can be so mean as that it will not 
 interest his whole mind, and carry away his whole heart ; nothing 
 so great and solemn but that he can raise himself into harmony with 
 it.’ 
 
 The full proof of this prodigal variety must be sought in the 
 painter’s own Gallery at Trafalgar Square, or in his ‘ Liber.’ Of the 
 South Coast specimens, the Vales of Heathfield and Asliburnham (1032 
 and 1021) appear the most remarkable, from their extraordinary ren- 
 dering of surface-undulation and distance ; observe how the anatomy 
 of the ground is followed and varied, like the figure by its drapery in 
 the work of a few first-rate sculptors, by the wavy sea of copsewood. 
 The Pevensey Bay (1024), with the exquisite Brook-scene (994) are 
 marvellous pieces of Turner’s work in trees, seen against the sky, 
 or excluding it by its green abysses : compare the absolute draw- 
 ing of the forms with such work as Lee’s and Cattermole’s, the 
 illimitable mystery and clear confusion of lines and colours with the 
 false precision of Dvce, or "the baby dots and pin-pointing of Birket 
 Foster. The manner in which Turner has conveyed the sense of the 
 Down-country into the park foreground of the Bay should be also 
 noticed, with the mighty sweep of the whole composition : the 
 boulders in the Brook are in the same grand manner. 
 
 This ‘ grand manner,’ however, forsook Turner, great as he was, 
 when he quitted himself and Nature to follow what the idle theorists 
 of the day chose to call such. The Composition (1033) though a 
 richer work than the similar subject in the Oil-Colour gallery, and 
 put together Avith astonishing dexterity from Tivoli and Monte 
 
 4 
 
WATER-COLOURS 
 
 71 
 
 Pincio material, makes no appeal to us as a whole, and misses the 
 beauty and force of the real scene in its gorgeous and idle accumula- 
 tion. This picture, with the Hurstmonceux (1020), has suffered in 
 the colour, which like that of the Ghryses (1044), has now almost 
 advanced to complete realization. But it must be remembered that 
 these divisions of style, although founded on strict truth and con- 
 venient in our study of Turner, must not be pressed far : they are 
 deduced from his work, not the result of his theory : and a man of 
 so adventurous and creative a spirit would, no doubt, sometimes out- 
 run his general style, or repeat an earlier manner if the subject 
 seemed to require it. 
 
 However these things may be, Milton and Shelley, when they 
 wrote the ‘ Penseroso ’ and the ‘Alastor,’ did not close their youthful 
 manner, or announce their coming splendour, with more sweetness 
 of touch or plenitude of poetry than Turner, when in his Ghryses he 
 gave a scene from Homer with a glory which even in the art of 
 Athens or the Islands was never dreamt of. His real subject is 
 here the first cause of that Wrath which brought the ten thousand 
 sorrows of the Iliad upon the army besieging Troy : — for the prayer 
 of Chryses the priest, robbed of his daughter by Agamemnon, is heard 
 at once by Apollo the Sun-god, who ‘ came from the mountain-peaks 
 of Olympus, indignant, going like the Night, and afar from the ships 
 let fly the arrow’ which brought nine-days’ plague on the camp. 
 With what skill has Turner indicated the points of the story in his 
 storm-threatening summer sunset, and arrow-like flight of torn cloud 
 landwards, in the angry curl and flash of the rising waves, preceded 
 by the screaming petrel, — with how profound a sympathy !— This 
 is truly to illustrate a great poet, .... but more ; — it is to be a 
 great poet oneself. 
 
 Having now mastered Form, Colour was pursued with the same 
 resolute industry, the same natural quickness of eye ; the subtlety of 
 handling, learned in his long patient pursuit of Form, enabled him 
 to lay his tints with a rapid and delicate decision, of which all who 
 have ever tried one faithful study from Nature will know the enor- 
 mous difficulty. It was not only that he now added colour to his 
 drawings — essentially the painter’s quality, when once understood, 
 it can never take a second place — his designs were henceforth pri- 
 miraly conceived in colour. Hence a change of subject became 
 necessary. Turner from this time selected often the natural scenes 
 richest in tone — sunrise and sunset, lakes trembling in mid-day 
 
ENGLISH 
 
 7 2 
 
 light, or where the moon of summer bathes river-side crags and 
 ruins with hazy silver. And from the same date, finding that the 
 earlier landscape painters, whom he had hitherto frequently followed 
 in their form and arrangement, could teach him nothing in colour 
 
 nay, that, on the system of Poussin or Yandevelde, truth and 
 
 vivacity in colour were impossible — he worked in a manner ex- 
 clusively his own. This second style may be briefly characterized 
 as showing ‘ delicate deliberation of handling, cheerful moods of 
 mind, brilliant colour, defiance of precedent, and effort at ideal com- 
 position,’ gradually passing, till within a few years of his death, into 
 1 swiftness of handling, tenderness and pensiveness of mind, exquisite 
 harmony of colour, and perpetual reference to Nature only.’ I will 
 try to point out the special points of mastery in the most conspicuous 
 examples here exhibited, — premising that all show the essential 
 feature in Turner’s treatment of colour,^ — ceaseless gradation, united 
 with its corresponding feature in Form, — infinite subtlety of curved 
 line and undulating surface. They illustrate also his method of 
 execution — delicate and decisive, little aided by the mechanical 
 expedients of ‘sponging’ or ‘rubbing,’ but relying mainly on pure 
 colour laid in once for all, with absolute determination of its effect. 
 Like the star described by the poet, Turner’s hand seems to have 
 moved ‘ without hurrying and without staying ; ’ and although some 
 ingenious aids to the art are ascribed to his invention, yet his general 
 practice in water-colours was of that simple and direct kind with 
 which perfect knowledge is always satisfied. 
 
 As we closed the first great period of his work with a Sunset, we 
 may begin the second with a Sunrise (101G), also over the sea. 
 Perhaps the whole collection Iras nothing of a more absolute and 
 glowing serenity : it is precisely the most attractive and the most 
 difficult moment for art, when the brightness of the day, almost com- 
 pleted, has also taken into itself the transient gold and crimson of the 
 dawning. Yet it will be found that Turner has reached this trying- 
 effect with the utmost positive truth of painting, without more than a 
 point or so of pure force in his reds and yellows ; all that less power 
 and knowledge would have vainly attempted by blots or splashes,’ he 
 has gained lay exquisiteness of gradation. Other aspects of the sea 
 follow; the half-landlocked tossing and azure greenness of waves be- 
 neath a fresh English breeze in the Plymcmths (1057 and 1074) : — 
 contrasted with the spent yet unbroken fury of the tortured Atlantic in 
 the Land's End (1015), — forcing itself on in fountains of shattered 
 
WATER-COLOURS 
 
 73 
 
 spray over the eternal granite, like the desperate charge of cavalry 
 against some impregnable redoubt. After work so magnificent as 
 this, any one’s else seems child’s-play : and with what a simplicity, 
 yet what subdued richness of colour, it is carried out ! — But it is a 
 peculiarity of this great Magician that he not only distances all other 
 men in execution, but in ceaseless variety of effect. Whilst many 
 artists are satisfied to repeat one scene with fifty slight deviations, 
 and more to remain for life within a small circle of Nature, like her, 
 he gives us always some new thing, and every picture is but one 
 paragraph, as it were, in his vast connected Poem of Creation, richer 
 and more exhaustive than even that Epic on the Sum of Things which 
 the old Roman has left us. Thus he now passes on from the ocean in 
 its fury to the azure calm and liquid level of the Dead Sea (1003), or 
 gives the gleaming flats of the ebb, retiring into infinite yet trans- 
 parent darkness in the Mount (993), or the long winding coast-line 
 seen from on high, with its rolling surges, in the Lebanon (1040). 
 In this little work we should note also the gleams of stormy light on 
 the horizon clouds, throwing down their rain with southern violence 
 — whilst in the Mount we have a whole mountain-range in the sky, 
 built up through every line and wreath with absolute truth and deci- 
 sion, and all brought into sublime unity by the vast crossing shadow 
 where the moonlight is interrupted. Again, the Dead Sea and the 
 Iloreb (1047) display like mastery in mountain-drawing ; the whole 
 chain of the hills of Moab in the first is given with the subtlest ana- 
 tomy, and the miles of valley in the Iloreb are all gathered within 
 the space a child’s hand would cover ; yet it will almost fatigue the 
 eye that attempts to follow its innumerable gradations of retire- 
 ment. 
 
 From these let us return to English scenes, — amongst which the 
 Stamford (1023) and Malvern (1030), appear on the whole less satis- 
 factory specimens of Turner : he is always struggling and fighting 
 on and upwards, and here the wish to conquer extreme effects of 
 intense difficulty has led him here into violent oppositions of colour. 
 The Kilcliurn (1034) and Dartmouth (1031) partly seem to me to fail 
 from a different cause, — over-abundance of material ; although the 
 Kilcliurn is full of masterly level and hill-side drawing, and the 
 water-reflections and covering copsewood of the central promontory 
 in the other are of a truth and tenderness which even Turner has 
 rarely equalled. The trees in the Rievaulx (1018) and the exquisite 
 vignette to Scott (1017) are in his greatest manner ; the Lancaster 
 
74 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 (1022), perhaps, the most perfect of the specimens for balanced full- 
 ness and infinity of detail, as broad as it is delicate. Lastly, the two 
 lovely Castle Scenes (1073 and 248) may be referred to for poetry 
 and picturesqueness hi the treatment of the ruin ; each giving the glory 
 of sunlight on water, with that marvellous blending of the cool and the 
 warm tones which one might signalize as Turner’s most peculiar gift, 
 
 were it possible to give any one the crown, where all are so 
 
 consummate. 
 
 The latest style of the artist is here represented by one specimen 
 only, the Heidelbe7'g (1045). 
 
 I can hardly hope from this alone to prove the peculiar excellence 
 of painting so unlike that of any other man. But those familiar with 
 his work will easily recognize here the Master in his fullest power, 
 aiming less at positive truth of effect than at relative approach to the 
 confused and living multitudinous of Nature in colour not less than 
 form, — giving a myriad suggestions, as it were, for the thousand details 
 of his earlier work, adding further tenderness to tenderness, and 
 deeper truth to truth, blending the whole into a poetry beyond 
 words, and creating the landscape anew with a power, august and 
 plenary as that of Nature. 
 
 Can there indeed be so much, and worthy of so high praise, I hear 
 the reader, — fair and unfair, — ask, in these little squares of tender 
 colouring ? — What there is, is truly so far more, that all the writer 
 can feel, must be the total inadequacy of his words to do justice to 
 them : ‘ Turner’s art in water-colours,’ as Fielding once remarked to 
 him, ‘ appears to me as different from w'hat I or other men can reach, 
 as water-colour painting itself from oil-painting.’ To speak of him is 
 like speaking of Shakspeare ; the poet’s supremacy within his art is not 
 more supreme than the painter’s. And as in Shakspeare what we most 
 feel is what Coleridge felicitously called his ‘ myriad-mindedness,’ so 
 it is with Turner. Each has created, whilst he described, a world of 
 infinite variety ; and each has identified himself with his work with 
 a self-forgetfuhiess and abandonment so absolute, that he seems lost 
 in the circle of his own creations. Like the necromancer of the 
 legend, these men are overmastered by the spirits they have called 
 up, and we can hardly think of them as creatures of individual 
 existence, or try to put into words the charm of the enchanted 
 visions, which an art more magical than magic itself has summoned 
 forth around us. 
 
 There is, however, room in art for many degrees of excellence ; 
 
WATER-COLOURS 
 
 75 
 
 these stars differ in glory, but we have still some who may be called 
 so to notice, before we descend to common earth again. The poetry of 
 David Cox, within its peculiar range, and whenever he chose to express 
 it, is pure and perfect : his feeling for certain aspects of English 
 landscape has all the strange irresistible force of true passion. When 
 a man views his art in this spirit, it must be left to tell its own story 
 to those who share the emotions which animated it. Such will re- 
 cognize in the specimens here shown, the intense imagination which 
 penetrates his work; what majesty he saw in the common field or 
 cottage ; with what an inner eye of sympathy he watched the 
 wreathings of the stream beneath the gloom of forest greenery, the 
 visionary sadness of wide horizons and dreary heaths, or the last red 
 gleam that ebbed away from the heights of Craig-y-Dinas. In the 
 Walsh Funeral (977), Bolsover (997), Beeston (998), Fern-gatherers 
 (1011), Wye (1164), and many of the smaller scenes- in Frames 975 
 and 976, these high qualities are especially shown. They belong 
 peculiarly to the artist’s later style, in which his often blurred and 
 imperfectly realized execution is a severe lesson to the lovers of the 
 neat and the conventional. Yet this seemingly slight and hasty touch 
 conceals a thoughtfulness and a delicacy in handling which is more 
 like Turner’s than any other man’s Avork : the views in 176 are 
 examples : — the sweet gradation of colour and beauty of form in 
 the breaking wave of the Beaumaris (1010) seem to me of unsur- 
 passed excellence. 
 
 There is a Avild feeling, one hardly knows whether more poetical 
 or insane, in Dadd’s Encampment (1137) ; where, however, the artist 
 is not responsible for the awkwardly placed Moon. The trees in his 
 Valley { 1105) and in Linnell’s Prophet (1103) are admirably felt. For 
 criticism on the S chaff hausen (1380) of Harding, full of beautiful detail, 
 the interesting Wreck, Dogana (1377) and Rotterdam (1091) of Stan- 
 field and Cooke, and the Spanish views of Roberts (1374 to 1376), 
 — with Mulready’s excellent sketches in the Fourth room, — I must 
 be content to refer readers aaTo care to my earlier notice of these distin- 
 guished men. And it will be enough here to add, that Herbert in his 
 false and feeble figure-scenes (note the sky in the Venice (1160) and 
 the heads in the Faliero (1106) for special reprobation), Cope in his 
 historical design (1383), Lewis in his Desert (1 1 14 and 1133), preserve 
 respectively the rank which they hold in oil-painting. LeA\ds’ Pilgrims 
 and Convent (1100) are less absolutely satisfying in colour, but there 
 is nothing like them here for masterly composition, or for their intense 
 
ENGLISH 
 
 76 
 
 truth to Roman life, so generally and so wearisomely chosen by artists 
 as a field for costume-painting and superficial picturesqueness. In 
 contrast with these men, V. Cole and Branwhite appear to reach their 
 greatest success in water-colours : the brave attempt at the full green of 
 the trees, and the drawing of the sky, in the Clover Field (1102), are 
 particularly praiseworthy. Cole’s middle distance in this picture is also 
 very sweet and firm. His Beech Avenue (llOl)glows with emerald and 
 golden light and true summer feeling; it maybe instructively compared 
 with E. Warren’s work, to be presently noticed. The frank colour of 
 Palmer’s Ballad (1116), with its striking general arrangement, are 
 very attractive : it must be regretted that the spirit and the faults of 
 manufacture show themselves a little in his too close adherence to 
 one aspect of Nature. But there is some virtue in Palmer’s careful 
 work, — not a trace of which can the writer discover in the freezing 
 smoothness and china-like elaboration of T. S. Cooper’s animal-scenes 
 (1085 and 1086) ; where, as in the oil-paintings by the same hand, 
 what slight effect there is depends almost entirely on sacrificing air and 
 sky and landscape to the foreground figures. They should be com- 
 pared with Linnell’s charming scene (1001), as truthful in its delinea- 
 tion of the sheep, as it is poetical in its suggestion of the subject by 
 the ‘ fairy fleeces ’ of the wind-sw r ept sky above them. Ifodgsoil’s 
 II addon Hall Terrace (1098) is prettily fancied and coloured; — 
 like his Ferry (1276), it is in a true manner, though incompletely 
 carried out. The architectural views of L. Haglie and Nash, with 
 their followers, hardly seem to rank as art, — at least if Prout was an 
 artist, — but as something midw'ay between an ornament and an eleva- 
 tion they have much merit, with which the mannered and unreal 
 groups too often interfere. ITaghe’s Roman Letter-writer (1113) 
 appears to me painting of a much higher order ; the colour and 
 drawing good, the character truly given. 
 
 Gastineau’s work (Glenarm; 1084) has something of Harding’s 
 delicacy in colour, but is more artificial. His St. Gothard (1322) 
 perhaps attempts too much ; yet we can hardly dwell on this defect, 
 when such good honest drawing as the sky and central hill with the 
 church display is before us. G. Eripp gives two views in the vale of 
 Nantfrancjon (1058 and 1298), both eminently unaffected and honestly 
 worked out, and very pleasing in their expression of the subdued 
 light within a mountain-glen. That with the snowy summits (in 
 Room third), whitened by the cloud which only reached the valley- 
 meadows in shower, is particularly fine in its luminous breadth and 
 
WATER-COLOURS 
 
 77 
 
 sweetness. The torrent- drawing in the Fall (1297) is less successful : 
 but the Glen Ogiven (1865), again, with the tender haze of Eastbourne 
 Marshes (989), bring us back to the artist’s happiest manner. W. 
 Turner’s Quiraingin Skye (1096) is beautifully true in feeling to the 
 solemn purple flush of the Northern summer, and imaginative in its 
 rendering of the desolate world of mountain-peaks, seen over ‘ leagues 
 on leagues’ of mysterious sea. 
 
 These, with others not requiring special notice, are mostly 1 good 
 men and true,’ doing their work with care and pleasure, and wisely 
 restrained within the boimds set by Nature. I turn with much re- 
 gret to work of another kind, which, though not less careful and 
 studied, appears to me yet so utterly false in aim and manner, and so 
 influential against real Art, that — that the truth must be spoken 
 about it. The baby dots and spots and pin-pointing of Birket 
 Foster have been already alluded to. His landscapes have that idle 
 microscopic elaboration which deceives uninformed spectators into 
 astonishment ; although one wash of colour laid-in with the thought 
 and feeling of Cox or Turner involves labour beside which (as all 
 artists know), square yards of this indolent mechanical multiplication 
 are a very little thing. True likeness to Nature, so broad and un- 
 fatigued in her repose, could never be built up by this petty ‘ stip- 
 pling,’ were it founded on the best knowledge of form and sense of 
 colour; — but in these works the colour is palpably dead, purply, 
 and morbid, and the trees are imagined as clouds of vague spotti- 
 ness, through which a few random and unconnected boughs occa- 
 sionally force their way ; whilst the play of light on the water- 
 surface, so varied and exquisite in reality, are rendered by lines 
 scrawled across the paper, with the delicacy and feeling of a child’s 
 first exercise. The artist has shown in his familiar woodcuts a 
 certain sense for gentle grace in landscape ; one must regret that, 
 by these unfortunate works, he has at once forced on our attention 
 his general want of thoroughness in drawing (the clouds in Holmwood 
 Common , 1206, are however more satisfactory in this point), and 
 wasted a facility of hand which, if trained, might have given us book- 
 illustrations of real value. — E. Warren’s style is equally alien from real 
 art ; his tree-stems in the Shade and the Rest (1108 and 1285) show 
 more idea of design, but are curved and set with grim rigidity against 
 the crude whiteness of his sky, and the shadows violently forced, with all 
 the effect of a bad photograph, to bring out the morbid touches of 
 theatrical sunlight. The foliage repeats the spotty manner of Foster on 
 
ENGLISH 
 
 78 
 
 a larger scale. The Dean Forest (1350) does not seem to me truer in 
 method, but the less-exaggerated pitch of tone allows the artist to show 
 his power in drawing with more effect. Let us hope he will return to 
 the ways of tenderness, — for such only are the ways of truth. — It is 
 pleasant to turn from so much wasted care and study to Harding’s beau- 
 tiful Par^ (1016), — full of air, and flicker, and living leaf, and graceful 
 freedom in hues and handling. This is head-work, and heart-work too, 
 as old Bunyan expresses it : we wish evidence of the latter quality were 
 more frequent in the sketchiness and the elaboration of our present 
 School. 
 
 One more artist, however, remains for notice, whose marvellous 
 feeling for colour and originality of execution could not exist, how- 
 ever limited his range of subject, without the companionship of true 
 imagination. If Lewis must on the -whole be judged our greatest 
 master of tint in water-colours, this will only be in virtue of the far 
 more arduous character of his aim : — within what he attempts, the 
 supremacy of William Hunt is absolute. In both, as we saw with 
 Turner, an admirable eye for colour has led them straight to an admir- 
 ably simple and decisive method of painting ; whilst that sense of the 
 large relations of light and shade which always marks a great, as 
 opposed to a brilliant or a pretty colourist, has kept their work 
 broad in its refinement and magnificent in its minuteness. Here, 
 also, we find that division of labour and of subject which has only 
 been possible to modern art in the Locomotive age. Whilst Lewis 
 has brought the life of Italy and Egypt home, with equal insight 
 and power of rendering, Hunt has glorified our own fruits and 
 flowers for us with a mastery almost unknown to any former painter. 
 Their respective scales of colour are adapted with equal skill to 
 their subjects — treated with pervading tenderness by the one, by 
 the other with suffused glow. It might be said that we see the 
 iridescence of the opal in Lewis, the fire of the carbuncle in Hunt. 
 The Wood Pigeon (1063), the Primroses (1052), and th q Peacock 
 (1059) are marvels of art : — but I need not specify pictures which 
 all will examine, though the vast difficulty of producing what looks 
 so simple an imitation of nature may be felt by few. 
 
 Hunt’s figure-subjects are far less happy ; he here even misses 
 occasionally the free unlaboured touch of his authentic manner, and 
 his drawing wants life and completeness. Yet these works take high 
 rank amongst our similar modern water,-colours by the quality which 
 We shall here find the very rarest, — umiffectedness, This often gives 
 
 X 
 
WATER-COLOURS 79 
 
 admirable life and humour to his ragged country boys, and in the 
 Three Children (1064) rises to true and tender feeling. 
 
 In painful contrast to such work stands what we must confess, whilst 
 we condemn, the art of Corbould and Burton ; most careful and com- 
 plete, but false in every touch to the characters represented ; often mere- 
 tricious in its appeal ; always in its execution. Take the scenes from 
 the novel (1124 and 1125) or the play (1123), and, if you have 
 admired William Hunt here, or Reynolds and Mulready elsewhere, 
 consider whether the truth of country life and circumstance is in this 
 smoothness, and millinery, and tame grimace of affectation; — whether 
 the passionate simplicity of the great Poet’s Margaret be less given 
 by the swelling vanity of Corbould’s, or the simpering shyness of 
 Burton’s. Art, though her. end be noble pleasure, may unhappily 
 pursue coarse emotion; and I hardly see how not to couple this 
 epithet with these works; or others in a similar vein, — as Tidey’s 
 scene from Moore (1261), and that bad ballet-group which usurps 
 and degrades the name of Tennyson’s Vision (305). Where these 
 artists venture on Scripture-subjects, as Corbould in (336) and H. 
 Warren in (1283), they are safe, — criticism cannot follow them with 
 the censure due to this degree of rashness : but one must regret 
 bitterly that such painting as the drowsy-faced elaboration of the 
 Peri (1293), the firework and transparency sublimities of the Mab 
 (1228), the sentimental distortion of the Mother and Child (12145), 
 the maudlin moonlight of the First Letter (1262) — with a few other 
 works in a similar vein — should be thus conspicuously displayed, 
 not to the edification of the nations. 
 
 Burton’s Franconian Widow (1211), Ironside (1069), and Bamberg 
 (1370: Fourth room), may, however, be excepted from the blame 
 only too well justified by such choice of subjects as that exposed 
 above : the last has considerable effect in the theatrically-pic- 
 turesque manner. The feebly-elaborate compositions near it by 
 Wehnert and Werner are further warnings that this cannot be the 
 true direction for water-colour Figure-drawing. The designs by 
 Farmer, Gillies, Corbaux, Jenkins, and others, are very pretty in 
 their way, and often pleasing in their sentiment. Yet in all we 
 cannot but trace the same superfine method, which, as in even the 
 best of our modern china-ware, never fails to hamper the artist’s 
 hand, and prevent his giving the touch of nature, either to the 
 texture or the expression. 
 
 If the style now noticed fails from overcare, the style of Catter- 
 

 mole, Taylor, aild their followers must (I fear) be held to fall short 
 
 seems as if some evil 
 
 genius 
 
 overshadowed our water-colour School in figure-subjects : as if 
 those who will not reduce the human face to waxwork, must be 
 generally satisfied to represent it by blots. Or are we, who look 
 on, to blame for encouraging Corbould to spend his ability on 
 elaboration, and Cattermole on sketchiness ? Perhaps otherwise we 
 might have received truer art from such practised hands : and, — ac- 
 cepting it as a facile conventionalism, — we must still admire the dash 
 and energy of the Contest, (1120), — the life and freedom of the Bach- 
 hounds (1195). Tayler’s work has a genuine freshness about it ; we 
 feel that he thinks of his picture in 1 the open,’ though he must blot 
 it down in the study. His work gives the sense, not of reserved 
 strength, but of strength never realized. Probably this may be true 
 of Cattermole also ; whose manner is, however, more conventional. 
 The Cellini (1127) appears the best worked out of his sketches ; but 
 the Haworth (1129) and Biorn (1151) are good specimens of pic- 
 turesqueness, never indeed penetrating to the warrior through the' 
 mail, yet too genuine to be called only superficial. 
 
 A. Fripp carries the same style into common and country life, 
 with sufficient grace and invention to make us regret that he does 
 not work out what he washes-in so happily. Yet on the whole I think 
 he is one of the very few who can be placed near Hunt in under- 
 standing the true method and aim of water-colour figure-painting. 
 There is a frank air in his work (see the Feat-gatherers , 1232), which 
 we miss in the artificially subdued tones and rather affected grace of 
 W. Goodall’s Mirror (1222) : — it reflects real prettiness, but it is not 
 held up to nature in her full sincerity. Under the same head we 
 may class Ab Solon : the Boulogne (1079) is pleasingly coloured and 
 less operatic than his Italian scenes. Mole’s figure-landscapes range 
 with Absolon’s. As a foundation for finished w r ork, Oakley’s colour 
 in the Hospitality (1197) is very good; it is laid-in with freshness' 
 and simplicity : the sentiment of this little picture is also pleasingly 
 unaffected. TophaiU has attempted more ambitious matter. There 
 is true character in his Zouaves (1220), and picturesqueness in his 
 Feasants (1188) : yet one feels (as noticed in regard to our painters 
 of Italian fife), that love of foreign attractiveness has here led many 
 artists into perilous ground, whence few bring back what can be 
 regarded as more than the traveller’s hasty superficial impression. 
 ’Hence, probably, when on native ground, as in the very pretty Mill- 
 
 
WATEB-COLOUBS 8 1 
 
 stream and Loiterers (1381 and 1268) Topliam is more successful, in 
 what we might call a kind of artificial naturalism. 
 
 Two artists in the figure-style remain, by each of whom we have 
 one drawing of real merit. Riviere’s Irish Children (1224) seems 
 to me an uncommonly happy specimen of grace and humour : it is 
 not complete in all points, and perhaps the contrast between the 
 faces is a little too pointed : yet in a certain modesty of Nature 
 and delicacy of outline it resembles the admirably-felt studies of E. 
 Frere. Setchell’s Jessie and Colin (1264) has much greater evidence 
 of power : we wish the drawing were more thorough, and the light 
 less conventionally managed: — but taken all in all, it is a true 
 illustration of Crabbe’s fine story ; and this is no slight or common 
 merit. Jessie, wearied of the services required of her by a wealthy 
 patroness, has just returned to a humbler happiness : 
 
 Here was a lover fond, a friend sincere, 
 
 Here was content and joy, for She was here ! 
 
 — When we compare a design like this with many of those above- 
 noticed, it inclines one to quote again the motto which the poet has 
 prefixed to his tale; ‘For aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit 
 with too much, as they that starve with nothing : it is no mean 
 happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean.’ — Next after Hunt 
 and Lewis, we should be inclined to place Haag in figure-drawing. 
 We cannot indeed feel so direct an interest in his foreign subjects 
 as in the English children of Hunt, and Lewis, it must be allowed, 
 brings Eastern life far more closely to us than Haag: — but the 
 spirit and grace of his Arab Rehearsal (1423), and Italian Shep- 
 herd Boy (1357) are excellent, and his colour has unusual depth 
 and sweetness. Haag’s execution appears to hold a due course 
 between the over and under finish which our figure-painters find it 
 so difficult to steer between. 
 
 Returning to landscape, we see the modern tendency to the use of 
 body or untransparent colour, as if in partial rivalry with the effect 
 of oils, exemplified in some fine works. Whilst it will, I think, be 
 confessed that hitherto the greatest success has been reached by the 
 older method, it would be rash to conclude hence against the new, or 
 limit the freedom of our artists. The issues of the style are mean- 
 while undecided ; it may hold sway for a time, as a fashion, or lead 
 to the establishment of another school of art, like that which of old 
 was practised under the name of Tempera , and applied with eminent 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 success iii England to miniatures, in the Seventeenth century. 
 Branwhite’s Autumn (1279) belongs to this style; with many other 
 body-colour pictures, it rather lacks the translucent air tones to which 
 the earlier practice has accustomed us, and its effect is partly due to 
 coarse touches, but the scene is picturesquely treated, and the huddled 
 natural wild-wood, — so unlike what man plants, — drawn with true 
 feeling. A. Newton’s Winter (1190) gives the Highlands under an as- 
 pect never to be forgotten by those who have seen it. This picture 
 seems to leave nothing to be wished for in its mountain forms ; the 
 solemn size and sense of weight which he has conveyed into these 
 long desolate lines of hill-top,— so independent for their effect on 
 the common forms of Alpine sublimity, may be specially noted. 
 Newton’s other work seems to me less satisfactory: the Glencoe 
 (1409) is rather lurid and unpleasing ; the Mentone (1308), rather 
 mechanical. 
 
 [Redgrave's honest portraiture of English landscape (A Surrey 
 Goornbe, 1223), Bennett’s steadily worked out Greta and Tees (1187), 
 and Davidson’s very charming and tender Rick Cutting (1201) take 
 us back to the transparent style of strict water-colours. To the same 
 school belongs the interesting series of Sea- views by Duncan: — excel- 
 lent pieces of genuine work, in which we honour the care and courage 
 of the artist, whilst we feel that subjects of difficulty so intense and 
 material so abundant have not been grasped with entire satisfactoriness. 
 In the Life-boat (1347) the touch of iris on the bursting spray is most 
 delicate in tints and truthful in drawing : the Morning after the Gale 
 (1263) is perhaps the most happily arranged and best coloured as a 
 whole ; but all deserve study. In the Harvest Moon (1200) we find 
 the same sterling qualities of work : as a moonlight scene it yields, 
 however, to E. Goodall’s beautiful Venice (1212), which, so far as its 
 position permits of judgment, appears one of the very best pieces in 
 its way exhibited. Goodall’s Assisi (1192) may also be ranked as true 
 ar t, especially when compared with the elaborate and rather pro- 
 
 saic picturesqueness of Rayner’s Haddon (1379), where none of the 
 main tints are exactly true. 
 
 In the Fourth room we find examples of the peculiarly modern 
 style, which aims at picturesqueness and effect, and is at once the 
 result and the cause of what has, on the whole, been an excellent 
 feature in England during the last thirty years, — the diffusion of 
 water-colour painting as a part of ordinary education. This has not 
 only given strength and animation to that love of Nature for her own 
 
WATER-COLOURS 
 
 83 
 
 sake which, more than most pursuits or passions, can calm the soul 
 amidst the 1 fretful stir and the fever of the world,’ — with pleasant 
 after -remembrances of what we have seen with delight, — but has 
 done much to spread through the country the interest in art and en- 
 joyment of it, which is the one sole form of national encouragement 
 that has any real power to call it forth. Imperial commissions and 
 learned theories, be they never so liberal and logical, are of no vital 
 use here : Art is a thing given only when a nation asks it. Yet while 
 most sincerely grateful for these results, we must acknowledge that 
 this form of art is under a special risk of falling into showy ease and 
 tricks of picturesque effectiveness. It is no disrespect to the bold, 
 clever, and dexterous work of Kowbotham, Kichardson, C. Smith, 
 S. and W. Evans, Bennett, M’Kewan and others, to say that it does 
 not reach, — perhaps does not aim at reaching, — that peculiarly 
 poetical spirit which is in the landscapes of our earlier School ; that 
 amongst our present masters there are few who seem to share 1 the 
 longing for intense tranquillity ’ of scene, the solemn simple purpose, 
 which so distinguish artists like Bobson, Girtin, and Yarley. Naffcel’s 
 very careful and interesting landscapes Loch Lomond , Marina (1329 
 and 1349), appear especially to want this charm of repose; whilst in 
 the strange Aurora and tempestuous Giant's Causeway of Nesfield 
 (1326 and 1325) ingenuity and hazardous experiment have carried the 
 artist (as it seems to me) too far from the legitimate aim of noble 
 pleasure. Yet there is a power here in unusual effects of light, which, 
 like Kowbotham’ s skill in even gradation of tone over vast spaces, 
 might be available for truer work : — such, for instance, as the 
 sky on the right of his little North Foreland (1132). The Lago- 
 Maggiore (1233) is however pleasing and skilful in the picturesque 
 manner; we have a sense of sunlight and air and vast mountain 
 ranges, if not their veritable image and presence : the effect is, 
 perhaps, if we may risk the phrase, too panoramic. The same 
 term might be applied to Vacher’s meritorious Adorning (1420) and 
 Sorrento (1336) : but these works are less mechanical in execution. 
 They show a truly refined feeling for colour and for the expression of 
 vast vaporous haze ; the strange visionary character of the Italian 
 landscape late or early in the day is in them. 
 
 The works of C. Gr. Smith, and Kichardson fall under the class of 
 brilliant effect above noticed: every ingenious experiment has been 
 tried, and in the Glencoe (1421) we have an excellent piece of moun- 
 tain-drawing in the central mass, with careful passages of sky and cloud 
 
 G 2 
 
ENGLISH WATEll-COLOUKS 
 
 84 
 
 around; — -but we do not feel for a moment alone with Nature. 
 Bennett’s sketches (they are hardly more) are in the older and simpler 
 picturesque style: the Heaven's Gate (1324) shows a scene almost 
 worthy of the name : but the cool gray sky contradicts the sunlight 
 on the 1 myriad depth of forest,’ as the old poet called it, beneath. 
 Philp’s Sea-pieces (1344 and 1422), again, are pleasingly felt and 
 coloured ; if we do not find the force of the ocean in them, it should 
 be remembered that in no subject is the step greater between the 
 sketch and the picture.— The clouds in Whymper’s Rock (1265) are 
 painted with skilful perspective and recession ; we find here, perhaps, 
 some evidence of that imaginative feeling from which our recent surrey 
 has removed us. This precious quality has been rather overlaid by 
 the steady body-colour work of Jackson’s Cornish views (1333 and 
 1353) but reappears in his fine Cumberland Tarn (1352). Here 
 the lines of cloud which half blend with the mountain lines on the 
 far horizon are well managed, and the subdued glow of grass rmder 
 twilight excellently expressed in the slope on the right. Fahey’s 
 Whitbeck Fell (1369) is another piece of honest work in genuine 
 English scenery : the sketching of the foreground ferns, the quiet 
 sky, the plain Avhich slowly merges in the sea-level, appear to me 
 especially commendable. 
 
 The beautifully delicate colour, and picturesque management of 
 Roberts’ Inin (1374) takes us back to the old pure style of water- 
 colours. But his work, with that by artists represented elsewhere, 
 has already received notice : — Landseer’s magnificently powerful 
 Highland sketches require none. 
 
 
85 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 Why is it that Sculpture, generally confessed the noblest of the 
 Fine Arts, has no real hold on the thousands who are interested by 
 Painting ? Why will these pages be less looked at than the rest of 
 the book? — The answer is not difficult, but so much unpleasant 
 matter must come out in making it, that the writer enters on his 
 task with the most real reluctance. Sculpture was first misdirected, 
 then degraded, until the art fell to its present forlorn state, divided, 
 for the most part, between mythology, sentimentalism, smoothness, 
 and slovenliness. What it might be, even what it has been, are 
 questions rarely asked. There seems no standard and no aim about 
 it, in the minds of artists or spectators ; no one compares a statue 
 with nature, or asks if her fine lines and surfaces have been slurred 
 or rendered; the sculptor works, — not like the painter, for the sym- 
 pathy and interest of thousands, — but for the personal fancy of a 
 patron, or the conventional orders of a Committee ; turning out an 
 Angel or a Cupid, with equal facility, and ready with a monument 
 which might be the study of a life at a moment’s notice. If Sculp- 
 ture appeals at all to popular sympathies, they are the sympathies of 
 ignorance for mechanical trick or mechanical grandeur, for sensual 
 polish or spasmodic distortion, for ‘picturesque’ sculpture, or the 
 facetious, or ‘ sweetly pretty’ style, — everything, in short, which the Art 
 should shun, — not for deep or tender feeling, truth to nature, freshness of 
 invention, refinement in handling, loftiness in aim, — for those quali- 
 ties, in a word, without which the block in the mountain side is far 
 more living than the statue. That so few look for such work, or will 
 take the pains to understand it, is another grievous obstacle. And 
 the writer hence wishes it to be remembered, in regard to some 
 remarks which he will have to make, how strongly Sculpture has 
 been depressed by these powerful causes from without; — dulling the 
 invention and staying the hand of naturally-gifted men, and filling 
 the ranks with many who cannot rise beyond the manufacturer, or 
 gain a success ruinous to their Art by greedy haste or charlatan 
 cleverness. 
 
86 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 It is hoped that the matter can be made clear by a very brief 
 sketch ; and simple justice to the artists requires that I should notice 
 under what general influences the art has been thus lowered. It 
 cannot be that modern life has no place or desire for Sculpture. The 
 races into whose religion it enters are far more populous and extended 
 than during the Roman empire or the middle ages : even amongst 
 those who do not thus employ it, Sculpture is largely required for 
 architecture and for portrait. There is no proof that true genius for 
 the art (always very rare) has been lost from the inheritance of 
 European nations. We must look elsewhere for an explanation. 
 The first and widest cause of decay seems to lie in the very 
 nature of the work. The materials for the modelling-tool and 
 the chisel, by their essential quality requiring and befitting only 
 largeness, grandeur, delicacy in expression, and vital handling 
 of detail — Simple Earnestness, to put it in brief, — at once greatly 
 restrict the sphere of the sculptor in subject and in execution, and 
 expose his art to suffer first and with most injury any decline in 
 national taste. Whilst this, as in what may be properly called the 
 mediaeval days of Greece and of Christendom, retains a healthy sim- 
 plicity and directness in its aim, Sculpture flourishes. But, by a circle 
 often repeated, men’s minds turn gradually from loftier qualities to the 
 elaborate, the ingenious, and the sentimental — to meretricious pet- 
 tiness and analytic detail. They will no longer be satisfied with 
 simple earnestness in higher Sculpture, or pure severity of ornament 
 in its more architectural branches. This altered taste cuts away 
 together the proper subjects from the art, and the legitimate modes of 
 handling them. Poetry and Painting — arts more truly plastic than 
 that which bears the name — accommodate themselves to the change, 
 and, taking the better elements in the altered taste, or turning to 
 new fields altogether, produce admirable works : — Giotto and 
 Leonardo are followed by Tintoret and Rubens; Wordsworth and 
 Shelley replace Shalcspeare and his successors : or perhaps some 
 solitary genius lets the present take its way, and is content to 
 influence the years to come by ‘ Paradise Lost.’ But Sculpture has 
 not this facility of transformation. For a time she may rival painting 
 in finish and ornament, and fill the churches of Venice or of Toledo 
 Avith work which seems to pass the limits of human patience and 
 ingenuity ; appeal to ignorant interest by the mechanical effects of 
 deceptive imitation or spasmodic vigour ; to vulgar wealth by size 
 or costliness of material ; to personal patronage, in her last struggles, 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 87 
 
 by flattery or self-assertion ; — but these efforts gradually fail, and 
 the art, losing all sight of its purpose, whilst the spectators lose all 
 idea of judging it by the test of truth and nature, sinks into slovenli- 
 ness and nonentity. 
 
 This fashion of decay was exhibited fully under the falling empires 
 of Eome and Spain. But in Italy and France another and not less 
 fatal cause was concurrently awakened, — the direct result of that 
 intellectual movement of the Sixteenth century, to which we owe so 
 much of the deepest moment to modern life. Sculpture in those 
 countries — and in England, when the art was here revived — did 
 not sink into fancifulness and ornamentalism only : subjects suitable 
 to the essential conditions of marble were retained — were, indeed, 
 held, as before, the true field of the art. Simplicity, tenderness, gran- 
 deur, thought, were still required of the sculptor, at least in the higher 
 branches of his work ; but, by a perversity rare even in the annals 
 of human perverseness, at the moment when these qualities were re- 
 quired, they were rendered absolutely unattainable by the subjects 
 prescribed to him. Like the tyrant of the great Eoman epic, the 
 false taste of that age chained a living art to a dead mythology, and 
 the sculptors of Christendom were compelled to reproduce the pan- 
 theon of Paganism. To state this is surely sufficient: such an attempt 
 at the very best could end only as it has ended — in three cen- 
 turies of abortive endeavour. But the attempt itself, owing to the 
 imperfect scholarship and corrupt ideals of the Eenaissance period in 
 France and Italy, was made under the least favourable conditions ; 
 for the mythology and the legends which pedantry and fashion gave 
 as the sole legitimate subjects for sculpture, were — not the once 
 vital and always poetical belief of Athens, Ionia, or Achaia, the 
 personified Powers of nature and of the soul, — but those misunder- 
 stood and perverted repetitions with which a race, below the Greek 
 as much in morality as in intellect, had amused itself under imperial 
 despotism. It was the Eoman Eenaissance, the tales of Ovid, the 
 legends of Apuleius, the travestied heroes of Livy or of Lucan, which 
 supplied an existence, false and shallow as its sources, to modern 
 sculpture : crushing many a noble artist by the dead weight of themes 
 which he could not vivify, paralyzing his hand by compelling him to 
 study, not from nature, but from the museum ; and, at the same time, 
 ruining the taste of whole nations, by placing before them works 
 which they could neither understand, nor enjoy, nor compare with 
 any real standard. People at large often accept this so-called Clas- 
 
88 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 sical and Allegorical Art on trust ; dimly conscious that what are 
 paraded as masterpieces cannot be of that excellence which once 
 made a statue the ransom of a city, they confess that sculpture to 
 them is only weariness, but are ashamed not to echo the praises, 
 which seem to come, from some upper world of taste and knowledge 
 beyond their cognizance. There is little reason for this shame. The 
 proofs cannot be given here, but the writer has no hesitation in saying 
 that the classical learning on which this galvanized mythology rests is, 
 for the most part, of the old uncritical kind, and that any true scholar 
 must look with scornful disgust on the school-exercises in marble, 
 which in France, Italy, and England have sensualized into idiocy the 
 Love unconquered and Immortal Aphrodite of Sappho and Sophocles. 
 A shallow pedantry has been the foundation for a perverted art. 
 This modern work stands in the same relation to Homer’s Zeus and 
 Pallas, as a boy’s modem Latin verse to Virgil’s : — 
 
 0 how frail 
 
 To that large utterance of the early Gods ! 
 
 —In fancy one might see the great Venus of the Louvre, or the 
 Dionysus* of the Parthenon, tossing their proud heads in contempt 
 for the puny new Pantheon, — or asking under what possible pre- 
 text these impostors have usurped their names in the Nineteenth 
 century of Christendom. 
 
 Whilst protesting against this folly, I would not deny that here 
 and there a sculptor may be born, who, by intense imagination and 
 feeling, will, as it were, throw his life back two thousand years, and 
 to whose eyes, as to those of Goethe or Keats, 1 the spiritual power 
 of the Gods may appear, and the serenity of their dwelling-place ; ’ — 
 only that to do this with any success the artist must not only ‘ be a 
 Greek himself,’ as Shelley said of the young Adonais, but his audience 
 must be Greeks also. Is not the bare statement of this, again, enough ? 
 Of those who will visit this Exhibition, could Flaxman, or Banks, 
 expect that one in a thousand will be a scholar sufficiently trained 
 to sympathize with the Consolations of Thetis, or comprehend the 
 Fury of Athamas ? Perhaps in all modern art there is not a 
 more lovely design than the Mercury and Pandora : no angel by 
 Michael Angelo, — no bird in the heavens, to take the better standard, 
 
 * Identified with the statue wrongly named Theseus by the fine research 
 of Mr. Watkiss Lloyd. 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 8 9 
 
 could move with more absolute grace, or give the effect of more 
 entire self-supportiveness. Over his Shield of Achilles , again, 
 Flaxman has poured an affluence of invention worthy of Homer : — 
 Watson has treated his Sarpedon bas-relief in a very fine style ; — 
 but are we to come with Lexicon and Lempriere to translate these 
 wonders of poetical modelling into English ? 
 
 One must own, that to a man who has truly studied and felt the 
 literature of the glorious Hellas, there will be at times an impulse, 
 when stirred ‘ through all his nature ’ by the living lines of Homer 
 or Sophocles, or some immortal fragment of lyric song, — stately as 
 the Memnon of Thebes, and delicate as the Fates of Phidias, — to 
 wish to clothe in form what has so deeply moved his fancy. But 
 grant this be done with the poetry of Flaxman, or the scholarship of 
 Thorvaldsen, must not a further thought strike him, and reduce the 
 Olympus Regained of mythological art to a splendid absurdity ? The 
 more he has penetrated the mind of the Greeks, the more will he feel the 
 vast difference that lies between studying an ancient creed, and holding 
 it. The very best modern-antique bears its sentence in the simple 
 fact, that it is modern-antique. That art which neither springs from 
 real belief nor appeals to real belief, it matters little whose work it 
 be, must be a learned mockery ; — I do not see how the word can be 
 avoided, a Nonsense Sculpture. Or look at it in another way ; can 
 we imagine Phidias carving the gods of Egypt or Syria ? Should 
 Shakspeare have written Hamlet in Latin? * 
 
 Serious as the subject claims to be, I confess it is difficult to think 
 of Nollekens’ Venus, Canova’s Venus, Gibson’s Venus, everybody’s 
 V enus, with due decorum, — one fancies one healthy modern laugh 
 would clear the air of these idle images, — one agrees with the 
 honest old woman in the play who ‘ preferred a roast duck to all the 
 birds in the Heathen Mythology.’ 
 
 But very far too much would be granted if we should expect to 
 find intensely poetical power and insight frequent in this class of sub- 
 ject. Even Flaxman, gifted thus beyond any modern Sculptor, has 
 left many more models in a genuine style than in the false antique ; see 
 his charming Christian bas-reliefs, the admirably imaginative and 
 powerful group of the Struggle between Good and Evil in particular. 
 But when minor men touch the Gods of Greece, the result justifies 
 that utter weariness which the unsophisticated spectator inevitably 
 feels, as he yawns before the white spectres of the Gallery. If their 
 classical studies had led them so far, there is a proverb that should 
 
9 ° 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 have warned many a sculptor from his Venus and his Mercury. 
 
 ‘ It is not every one who can bend the bow of Odysseus’ — and truth 
 compels the unpleasant question, which of the suitors for success in 
 the Antique has bent it. Has Canova, with his waxen work and 
 frivolous sentiment, — his Parisian airs, and ballet-girl Graces ? Has 
 Gibson, his too-faithful follower, in these fair forms, in which ninety- 
 nine of every hundred spectators will only find — and in the writer’s 
 judgment, must find only, masterpieces of — lifeless labour and careful 
 coldness ? What a waste of patient toil and elaborate study is 
 here! What a regret to see the distinguished artist misled by too 
 much learning into the attempt to stain into life the faces to which 
 even his refined taste and practised hands could give no vitality ! 
 Or think of Thorvaldsen, his whole life one long indefatigable 
 anachronism, sacrificed with such zeal to studying and designing in 
 the dead language of Greek and Roman mythology, that he could 
 never take time to master his noble art, but was dependent on others’ 
 hands for the execution of his own figures. Nor has the canker 
 of this imitative manner been limited to the suggestion of unreal 
 and impossible subjects. What from living in a cloud-land of learned 
 theories, and imi tating the second-rate Roman sculpture which crowds 
 the Vatican, these celebrated artists (as in their draperies) seem 
 to have lost the keen sense of common truth when they touch the 
 borders of actual life. Even their portrait-statues — the Consalvi 
 here, with Thorvaldsen’s Byron and Gibson’s Peel elsewhere — 
 display more of the ghosts and echoes of a Roman style, than the 
 power and real presence of the living originals. — Think once again 
 of all this lost ability, — remember that to anyone who has really 
 felt what Athens Avas in her living glory, one fragment from Phidias 
 Avould out- value waggon-loads of the sham-antique, — and then 
 measure the depth of that memorable debt of three centuries, which 
 Sculpture owes to the pride of schoolboy learning, and the preten- 
 tiousness of idle patronage. 
 
 After so frank a confession — not of Faith — the Avriter may hold 
 himself excused from detailed criticism on the numerous heathen 
 or quasi-heathen population of the Gallery. When Art has (in his 
 judgment at least) a radically false direction, there is little use in 
 pointing out the care, or censuring the commonplace, which different 
 men have thrown into their ungracious task. Those, however, who 
 find an interest here, should not pass over the conscientious elabora- 
 tion and beautiful lines of Wyatt’s groups and Foley’s I no ; the 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 91 
 
 exquisite grace of Behnes’ Cupid , the severity of Kessels, the 
 freedom of Lequesne : — beside the works by the earlier artists in 
 this style already mentioned. 
 
 The taste for modern Paganism has indeed for some time been 
 diminishing ; but Sculpture lies yet under the spell cast over it by 
 three centuries of falsehood. Of all arts the least merely ornamental 
 by its own nature, it remains in great measure what the pride of the 
 Eenaissance age made it, — the favourite child of private display. 
 Phidias worked with the ‘eye of Greece’ to judge him; the me- 
 diaeval sculptors lavished their fine finish and tender thought on the 
 church front or the town-hall ; — but Canova could only be appreciated 
 within the palace, and studied in the saloon. Even when employed 
 on public monuments, the same evil genius has palsied Sculpture ; 
 it neither allies itself to the architecture of which it should naturally 
 lorm a part, nor seems able to throw off the dead weight of Allegory 
 which it inherited from the classical mania. All this has been so 
 often said, that I am half ashamed to repeat it ; but it has remained 
 hitherto little more than a barren confession. Efforts have not been 
 wanting to raise the art ; now it is to be revived by national com- 
 missions, now by choice of native subjects; or from the over-ideal 
 men fly to the over-natural, or try to reproduce in marble the effects 
 of the painter. But Sculpture still remains the forlorn hope of 
 modern art. It has never again taken the position which Painting 
 holds ; it makes no appeal to the popular taste. In lieu of speaking to 
 men’s hearts, it has sunk to be the job of competition, the toy of the 
 patron, or the wonder of the parish-clerk : the statue which in old 
 days would have kindled the faith or patriotism of a city, now 
 decorates the boudoir, or disfigures the cathedral. Meanwhile, no 
 longer tested by Truth and Nature, even the technical qualities of 
 the art begin to fail ; character is not aimed at in the features, or 
 reality in the dress ; blunt cutting (as in England), or smart cutting 
 (as in France), or hard cutting (as in Italy), take the place of tender- 
 ness and finish : whilst the empty extravagance of work such as 
 Marochetti’s, or the dead dullness of such as Noble’s (to take two 
 sadly-familiar instances out of many), is defended by all those idle 
 ingenious theories on the Picturesque style, the Idealized style, and 
 the like, which are even more rife in Sculpture than any other art. 
 
 I appeal with confidence to the majority of my readers whether 
 all this be not so. Can any of them honestly say that he has received 
 from modern Sculpture that unforced, untheoretical, spontaneous 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 9 2 
 
 pleasure which the art of Landseer or Mulready or Hook has given 
 him ? When he wishes for a memorial of wife or father does he 
 turn naturally to the bust, or to the picture ? Does he not confess, 
 by languid looks of conventional attention, that these cold white 
 sepulchres of what should be living art are a weariness and a per- 
 plexity ? It cannot be otherwise ; for the decline of Sculpture has 
 necessarily uneducated the public taste. No longer trained by models 
 of excellence, what Sculpture can do in her glory is soon forgotten, 
 with hardly less completeness than if she were numbered amongst the 
 arts confessedly lost from the fields of human achievement. Neither 
 energy in the figure nor meaning in the group, neither vitality in 
 the surface nor truth in the drapery, are longer looked for or 
 missed : the dulled perception, and uneducated apathetic eye, would 
 hardly recognize them if present. The true artist, fallen on alien 
 days, labours on unfelt and unregarded ; for his works are judged or 
 neglected by those who refer neither to nature nor to previous achieved 
 success as standards. His example is thus lost, and the art pursues 
 its forlorn career, fed by idle praise, or frozen by general incredulity. 
 It falls into manufacturing hands : the so-called sculptor follows 
 the fashion by which his labour and his gains are so much facilitated ; 
 and soon a barbarous slovenliness, varied from time to time by some 
 new phase of false elaboration, or meretricious prettiness, sets in, whilst 
 the quack or the tradesman waste the bronze or murder the marble 
 with results which, in the interest of Truth and Sculpture, I shall 
 presently have the pain of specifying. 
 
 Yet this Exhibition shows that there is no lack of endeavour at 
 least to try new ways, or to work out the old with skill and patience ; 
 and — an inevitable result from the condition of things — good and 
 bad are jumbled together with embarrassing profusion. No art can 
 less endure mediocrity than this : yet no art has so large a proportion of 
 it. Beside the various attempts in the portrait-style (reserved for 
 the end of this section), we find an honourable ambition to treat 
 Religious subjects, to embody in marble the idea of some familiar 
 hero of romance or poetry, or to personify some elementary passion 
 or idea. With these, which (it will probably be allowed) are legiti- 
 mate objects for the art, we find others which appear to me danger- 
 ous or mistaken, as illustrations of literature, where the difficulty 
 not to fall below the subject is even greater than in Painting ; or 
 what has been called the picturesque style, in which the conditions 
 imposed by the material are everywhere violated, and the artist has 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 93 
 
 recourse to idle ornament, or spasmodic tricks, in hope to win a 
 showy effect, by means which are to real Sculpture what the trans- 
 parencies of an illumination are to Titian. And with it (to pass by 
 the veiled .sensuality of works which need not be named, or the 
 coarseness of such common-place jocosity as the Crying Child of 
 the last English Exhibition, and the Blind Bear of this) may be 
 classed the sculpture of mere deceptive and most easy trick ; the 
 veiled face, or the bough and bird’s nest, so literal that, as the phrase 
 is, one could ‘ take them up,’ — we wish some one would ! — Senti- 
 mentalism, lastly, supplies innumerable subjects, — passing from art 
 in which there is real feeling into mere pursuit of prettiness, Girls 
 with the dove, Children with the dog, Nymphs at the bath, and so 
 on, — ending at last in feeble imitations of the Book of Beauty in 
 stone, or the mere idle repetitions of a model, dignified with a 
 poetical name to supply a reason for carving it. 
 
 It is most disheartening to give this long catalogue of endeavour, 
 and yet to feel how little thorough good work has come of it : still 
 more disheartening, to feel that much of the fallen state of Sculpture 
 is due to these great general causes, and that many whose labour 
 cannot be unreservedly praised would, under better influences and 
 if working for intelligent spectators, have shown their ability or care 
 in more truly valuable and vital results. These valid excuses should 
 be constantly kept in mind : yet who, without straining himself to 
 admire what bears the name of Ideal Art, will find much serious 
 satisfaction in imaginative sculpture ? Look at these endless in- 
 expressive regular faces, Baily’s Nymph, Macdowell’s Psyche, 
 Marshall’s Sabrina, Westmacott’s Peri, — with their hundred 
 foreign sisters, and ask if the force and vast variety of nature 
 Ire truly in them. They show often most creditable care and 
 study ; each is beautiful in itself; they seem creatures of another 
 and a fairer world than this ; but they come and they depart like 
 shadows from our memory. Nor, in the high essential sense, are 
 our imaginative statues embodiments of the character represented. 
 Take Baily’s celebrated Eve, and when admiring its grace and 
 skillful lines, ask whether in its beauty there is anything of the 
 Mother of all Living, as she appeared to the inspired visions of 
 Milton ? Might we not almost as well name it a Girl Bathing, with 
 Wyatt’s equally charming work ? Marshall’s Ophelia, again, 
 though not carried out with the same completeness of model- 
 ling and execution, is beautiful, — the bosom especially so : yet if 
 
94 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 judged with the strictness which is due to imaginative art, can we 
 honestly say that it embodies exclusively the one Ophelia we all 
 know ? These are favourable specimens, by men who have proved 
 themselves genuine artists; and visitors will .find a few more to 
 which the same general remarks more or less apply ; but move to a 
 lower grade, and we can only regret the time and labour wasted on 
 the clumsy classicality of Comus, and Hermione, the feeble flatness 
 and sprain-distorted fingers of Oenone, the idle Book-of-Beautyism 
 of Sabrina , the dew-lap neck of the Paolo , or the unshapely form 
 and empty simper into which a coarse chisel has here metamorphosed 
 the sweetness and the laughter of the delightful Poet’s mistress. 
 
 Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo ! 
 
 But it was hardly thus (one should think) that Horace pictured her. 
 — And there are lower depths yet : — but I reserve them for more 
 serious consideration. 
 
 I need not say that these remarks are mad-e with much reluctance, 
 and with the constant sense of those general unhappy influences which 
 paralyze Sculpture with the dead weight of three centuries: — pre- 
 venting our skillful men from doing justice to themselves, and en- 
 couraging those who are not skilful to attempt what only genius and 
 knowledge and labour could accomplish. I trust I need not further 
 say, that the writer wishes the subject were in abler hands, and that 
 he can only urge as his justification much attention to Sculpture, and 
 a hearty desire to promote, so far as he can, the interests of the noble 
 art and of her faithful votaries. But, in the present state of things, 
 there is no hope for improvement without downright plain-speaking, 
 and I shall therefore not apologize further for a criticism which can 
 be tested at once by every reader . . . whether for assent or con- 
 demnation, I only hope he will so test it . . . Meanwhile, — turning 
 with pleasure from work which, in a healthy time of Sculpture, would 
 never have received the name, — one general source of false direction 
 in this sphere, in justice to the true artists, should be mentioned, 
 which I think likely to be found correct. Patrons, under whom 
 Sculpture in its present state is unavoidably bound, have no doubt 
 often been responsible for requiring subjects of this quality. Yet 
 there seems a too-frequent forgetfulness that the power which, wisely 
 directed, might lead to genuine success, may be insufficient for 
 greater things.. When a boy has a turn for verses, he generally 
 begins an Epic Poem : but he does so, because he is a boy. A few 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 95 
 
 years teach him that Milton or Dante are not born in every street, 
 and he is well satisfied if he can live to posterity in a ballad, or be 
 famous in a song. However little the truth may be practically 
 recognized, it is not otherwise with Imaginative Sculpture. 
 
 Moving gradually towards Portrait-sculpture, we may now take 
 works which, although inventions, aim generally at less arduous 
 subjects than mythology or dramatic character. Here we inevitably 
 find the art exposed to all the risks which Poetry brings with it, 
 when not handled by first-rate genius. The half-poetical and only pretty 
 have so great an attraction to many, and the taste for these qualities 
 in art and literature does so much harm by dulling our minds to the 
 real thing, that I must here point out how greatly Sculpture has 
 suffered by sentimentalism. The sacred bas-relief by Davis, the 
 Maidenhood of Hancock, — the Mignon of Cauer, — works not without 
 charm and carefulness, — are examples ; they are respectively like prints 
 from Overbeck and Scheffer in marble. This imitation by one art 
 of the manner of another will always lead astray ; but one does not 
 see why, if freed from this, the sculptors named should not do them- 
 selves better justice. There are pleasing points about many statues 
 in this ornamental manner ; as Fontana’s Venus , and Fuller’s 
 Rhodope : indeed, it requires something to atone for his green 
 Godivci in the Nave : — and, so far as I am at present able to judge, 
 much of the foreign sculpture exhibited falls under this class, the 
 Italian especially. Their work by its sharpness and dexterity bears 
 witness to the long traditional practice of Sculpture in the South, but 
 it appears too uniformly and coldly monotonous ; it is clean, hard, 
 and smooth — qualities which may suffice for ornamental work, but 
 cannot express the varied play of natural surface. Bottinelli, 
 Cardwell, and G-atley, are careful artists in this manner : the 
 gracefully constructed forms they give are not so much the forms of 
 real life, as the improved ideal of the later antique ; their work wants 
 force and freshness : — the critic must, however, decline the ungallant 
 task of specifying the systematic deviations from Nature in such 
 figures as Diana about to bathe, or Eve studying her well-polished 
 limbs in actual looking-glass. Spence has a rather higher aim, but 
 lacks force to work out his conception : his Jeanie Deans shows a 
 meritorious attempt at truthfulness, but hardly realizes more than a 
 compromise between the pictorial and the pseudo-classical manners. 
 Power carries this conventional modelling and execution to a point 
 perilously near wax-work : the rough cutting of the old Lombard 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 96 
 
 sculptors is art of a better quality than the false and heartless finish' 
 of his Proserpine and California. 
 
 The wide difference between the style here criticized and vital 
 work will, I believe, be felt at once by comparing these figures with 
 Behnes’ little Cupid : one of the most precious pieces of carving 
 in the Exhibition. Contrast the conventional hair of Cardwell’s 
 Diana , for instance, with the delicately-felt curls of the child ; the 
 tone and variety of surface in the flesh with the smooth monotony 
 and textureless undulations of the truly meretricious Bliodope : the 
 fine firm limbs with the coarser forms so commonly given from 
 imitation of the type introduced by Eaphael. — I think the spectator 
 will also learn from such an examination that taste in judging 
 Sculpture, as in Painting also, is only the simple thing I have here 
 throughout contended for, — reference to Nature : — and will soon 
 learn to value as it deserves the hazy cloud-land of ‘ generalization ’ 
 under which indolence or want of eye are apt to shelter their 
 inefficiency. — The panther in Geiss’ tame animal-group in the Nave 
 exhibits another form of the same mistaken principle. 
 
 Gatley’s immense relief — showing considerable spirit and in- 
 finite pains of a rather mechanical kind — belongs to so strange a 
 mode of art that one can only judge it by reference to artificial 
 standards. It is a cross between the ancient Greek style of the 
 Aeginetan marbles, and the Assyrian slabs, with intervening remem- 
 brances of Gibson’s horses ; whilst the treatment hesitates between 
 relief in stone and in bronze, — having neither the sharpness of the 
 metal, nor the tenderness of the marble. Here and there a figure or 
 a limb is touched with some life, and the attempt to conceive the 
 scene as it may have really looked is very creditable : but we must 
 regret that so much patient labour has been thrown away, in any 
 high sense, by lifeless monotony of surface and our old unfortunate 
 enemy, ‘ idealized ’ or 1 conventionalized ’ execution. 
 
 Works such as these may be accepted with pleasure, when the 
 artist shows knowledge of his art, and skill in his execution. To 
 these points I must now give a few words, — premising that first-rate 
 excellence in execution is probably not more often found in Sculpture, 
 without the presence of excellence in thought and invention, than in 
 the other Fine Arts, — and that the great aim and difficulty of 
 Sculpture, when the figure has been mastered, is to arrange the lines 
 with grace and dignity; to express the difference of firm muscle 
 and yielding flesh” by truthful rendering of the surface ; and to manage 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 97 
 
 the drapery so that it shall express the forms, without losing the 
 natural air and folds of the material. I think it will *be felt that 
 English Sculpture is here, as a whole, inferior to Continental. There 
 is indeed little in marble which equals the truth and delicacy of such 
 work as . Woolner’s hi the Arthur and Constance , whether in the 
 ceaseless variety of tension and softness in the flesh, or the accuracy 
 with which the linen dresses fulfil the conditions just stated, — and 
 this all pure work with the chisel, not with the sand and the stick; — 
 but on the whole German Sculpture must be acknowledged beyond 
 ours in conscientious care, Italian in dexterous handling, French in far 
 greater mastery of form. An almost universal untruth in the drapery 
 infects this art ; those utterly idle theories on ‘ generalization of cos- 
 tume ’ and the like, already mentioned to weariness, combined with 
 constant reference to the third-rate antique, have led almost every 
 one to rest content with meaningless dresses and impossible lines. 
 What happily ignorant person who looks at modern Sculpture, but 
 is at a loss to understand these Christians in Roman dress, or dress 
 of no earthly fashion, — these coarse huddlings of drapery, or plaited 
 clinging folds ? Here the art seems almost hopelessly entangled in 
 conventional unreality, except where Ave find the worse errors of the 
 Picturesque School, Avith their elaborate imitations of lace-Avork and 
 embroidery, or the sham chain-armour of the Coeur de Lion. 
 
 On this point, Europe must Avait till the better day conies, and 
 men begin at last to look to truth, and perceive that Phidias was 
 great through simply following her. But it is to be feared that our 
 foreign visitors Avill find a general vagueness of treatment in the Eng- 
 lish work ; a feebleness of discrimination between the firm and the 
 yielding, — • a want of tone, so to speak, in the surface. There can 
 be no doubt but that in a truly living and popularly-enjoyed Sculp- 
 ture, many of our sculptors Avould reach a more thorough execu- 
 tion; — they Avould not be satisfied to work beloAV themselves. 
 Meantime, the Ioav standard prevalent Avhere Nature is so little 
 referred to has opened a Avay to an evil hardly less harmful to the 
 art ; — the admission of Avork by those Avhose ignorance or slovenli- 
 ness should exclude them from the honourable name, Artist. If it 
 has been a most unpleasant task to the Avriter to notice Avhat he 
 thinks misdirected aim or feeble ambition in conscientious Sculptors, 
 it is (he must oato) more unpleasant still to acknoAvledge the coun- 
 terfeit wares Avhich, — through causes, sometimes, A\ r hich he forbears 
 ■to specify, — have found their way into a temporary acceptance. I 
 
 II 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 98 
 
 would willingly consign all names to merited silence, if tile increasing 
 quantity of bad work were not an eyesore in our galleries, and a 
 stumblingblock in the way of honest art. Except for reasons so 
 weighty for the cause of Sculpture, and the duty to be honest, this 
 criticism should have been here omitted : but 
 
 Truth is truth, 
 
 Even to the end of utterance. 
 
 Let us take a few specimens from this ungracious series, and have 
 done with it. — When subjects more or less imaginative fall into 
 feebler hands than those we have been considering, we find a class 
 of work which deserves specific condemnation from the influence it 
 must have in prolonging the public distaste for Sculpture. No one 
 can see Poetry degraded without injury to his taste, and annoyance 
 to his feelings. We might pass by the total emptiness of Brodie’s 
 Highland Mary and Dante, Durham’s Child and Dog , Gibson’s 
 Nymph , Lawler’s Titania and Allegra , Thrupp’s toppling and 
 proportionless Hamadryads and Nymph ; but such poetical coun- 
 terfeits as Munro’s Child's Play and Shell, Bell’s Dorothea, and 
 Theed’s Bard must, with regret, be exempted from silence 
 by their positive and prominent failure. The Bard at once 
 proclaims its origin: it is simply a bad copy of the familiar 
 frontispiece to the poem, — itself imitated from Michael Angelo. 
 Yet even the print, exaggerated as it is, does not equal the 
 foolish flutter of Theed’s drapery ; — common-place as it is, it 
 does not suggest the absurdity of a wind which blows North and 
 South at once, and takes the hair and robe in opposite direc- 
 tions. This is truly the tale ‘ full of sound and fury, and signifying 
 no thing ,’ — at least nothing honourable to the taste or feeling of its 
 author. 
 
 Contrast with this another example of that too-rare subject in 
 modern Sculpture, Manhood in its maturity. In the Caractacus, 
 one of the best English motives we know of has been treated 
 by' Eoley with the adfhirable conscientiousness and knowledge of 
 form in which, so far as we know, his work is never wanting. It 
 would not be just to claim for it high imaginative character, or com- 
 plete freedom from conventional execution : — but so far as the 
 accomplished artist has carried it, * his Caractacus is an excellent 
 embodiment of stalwart strength, and patriotic devotion. We wish 
 that the Sardanapalus could honestly be placed in the same 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 99 
 
 rank: — but this is a subject which would have required the full 
 force of a Michael Angelo. — The Achilles of Banks is also in a 
 grand manner, although it may hardly reach the height of the 
 Homeric standard. 
 
 Theed’s Bard is in the dull spasmodic style : his other fancy- 
 subjects, Rebecca , &c. belong to the sentimental. But (at least in 
 the writer’s judgement) they do not make the least nearer approach 
 to truth: with the strangely corded legs, gouged-out drapery, and 
 rudely blocked surfaces of Bell’s Dorothea , they cannot rank in the 
 same Art which has given us Behnes’ Cupid, or Foley’s Ino. 
 
 If it is unpleasant thus to criticize works that have no redeeming 
 quality, I find it, perhaps, more so when we see traces of a little 
 natural gift, which might have done us service if educated by study 
 and directed by truth. But of what use is a feeling for prettiness, when 
 wasted on such result as Munro’s Child's Play, Maternal Joy, 
 Child Asleep, and the like? — in which there is no limb physically 
 possible, no surface rendered with any real modelling, the draperies 
 obstinately untrue, the sentiment that of the Book of Beauty in 
 marble ? There is but one standard for Sculpture, — the look of the 
 real thing. Think of a child’s lithe limbs, — so delicate and yet so 
 firm, — so mobile and so well balanced, — look at the Child's Play 
 or the Sound of the Shell, — and it will not need much examination 
 to feel that these vague writhing forms have not even a good doll’s 
 likeness to human children. In the natural history of Sculpture, we 
 must class them under Mollusca, not Vertebrata. I wish the de- 
 tails redeemed the misfortune of the design ; but here again, beside 
 the petty finery of ornament and foolish parade of flowers, every- 
 thing has, I know not whether to be learned, or to be unlearned, — ■ 
 so systematically are hands, eyes, lips, and feet slurred and misrepre- 
 sented. Gaps, scratches, lumps, and swellings here stand, alas ! for 
 the masterpieces of Nature’s modelling; the eyes are squinting 
 cavities, the toes inarticulate knobs ; whilst the very dresses of the 
 poor children, — in reality so full of charm and prettiness, — become 
 clinging cerements of no nameable texture, and thrown into no pos- 
 sible folds. We should not have thought it worth while to scruti- 
 nize work of an ignorance so grotesque and babyish as all that we 
 have ever seen by Munro with any detail, if it did not appeal in sub- 
 ject to popular interests, or if we had not some faint hope that, — 
 arduous as are the steps from Child's Play in marble to art, — the 
 author of these works may retrieve himself by recommencing his 
 
100 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 art before it is too late ; meanwhile, as in case of the figures named 
 before, one would think with Hamlet, that ‘ some of nature' s journey- 
 men had made men , and not made them well , they imitate humanity so 
 abominably.' 
 
 The Morn by Lough, and the sacred subject rashly touched 
 by Adams, take rank under the same motto : but, as we have suffered 
 more serious ill-treatment at their hands in Monumental Sculpture, 
 the notes on their style are willingly postponed for a few pages. Work 
 such as that of the artists criticized above, has long drawn on us, as 
 our true sculptors know but too well, the ridicule or the contemptuous 
 neglect of foreign judges. Certainly in Germany, France, and the 
 North, the careful study required from sculptors would shame them 
 from this slovenliness, which can only flourish under public apathy, 
 unreasoning patronage, and the bad system of competition. The 
 foreign galleries afford many works which, in this respect, may 
 be a lesson to us, whether artists or spectators. Rietschel’s Times 
 of the Day are admirable ; with much charm, and life, and 
 modelled in a true and fine style : points in which they seem to me 
 superior to the similar subjects by Thorvaldsen. Molin’s bronze 
 group of Norse Quarrellers in the Nave is a most spirited poem, — 
 for with such clearness and power is the story told, that it deserves 
 the name. It is exaggerated, no doubt, in some points ; but this is 
 the exaggeration of recognized truth, not of spasmodic ignorance : — 
 a contrast which will be felt at once, if the little bas-reliefs are com- 
 pared with those of Marochetti round the Carlo Alberto. We have 
 not much of this excellence, although R. Wyatt’s Bather has 
 the grace and serious quality which this worthy follower of Flaxman 
 put into his work, and Woolner’s Love , with a charm and 
 individuality of character rarely given in statues of this class, shows 
 the artist’s perfect mastery over truth of surface and sweetness of 
 line. The execution also is uncommonly tender and conscientious. 
 
 Several pretty figures are exhibited by the Thorneycrofts, whose 
 oroup of Royal portraits has been dramatized with happy fancy : and 
 a word of praise is fairly due to Macdowell’s unaffected Leader , 
 and Pap worth’s Young Shrimper for originality and grace. The 
 features of the Egeria have less of that impersonal look, already 
 noticed as too common in works of this class, and the action is 
 pleasingly seized. 
 
 There is much to like in this province of the art, although com- 
 petent judges would probably not hold that even here, where no 
 mythological difficulties occur, and where the dress may be treated 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 XOI 
 
 with a certain freedom, the modern work could fairly challenge the 
 ancient. Yet it should also be remembered that this comparison is 
 generally made between picked specimens from the old world, — in 
 which high genius for Sculpture was always an uncommon thing. It 
 may be more to the purpose to point out, that the art, even in Fancy 
 subj ects, lies still very much under the deathly spell of Imitation. Though 
 a few instances may be found (as the Love and Cupid already noticed) 
 in which reality has been the artist’s standard, yet the criticism 
 made at the outset applies in general. Until these bonds of copyism 
 are thrown off, and we are content to follow the glorious artists of 
 Greece in modelling what we see with their accuracy and finish, — . 
 and except thus, we do not follow them at all, — the noble art will 
 never regain her only essential qualities, simple earnestness in the 
 thought, and vitality in the execution. 
 
 One branch of sculpture, however, remains, which has always 
 maintained more or less of life ; and to this, with the recovery of a 
 more vital manner in architecture, and the reunion of the arts so 
 long divorced, we may fairly look with hope for the future. For 
 Portraiture, since mastery in it was first reached (hardly before the 
 age of Alexander), has remained, and must always remain, the 
 foundation of excellence in sculpture, as it will finally be recognized 
 in regard to painting. The corrupting influences of popular taste, 
 already described, act with less immediate force on the bust than on 
 the statue. Men are here a little less unwilling to compare the 
 semblance with the reality, and wanderings from nature are more 
 easily traced, or censured with greater freedom. It is true that here 
 also the general false position of the art appears. Without leaving 
 our own country to mark out the recent inanities of the Uffizj or the 
 extravagances of the Louvre, — how few public or monumental 
 statues can be named which do not fail, often utterly, from the 
 conventional classical style, bringing with it feebleness in modelling 
 and tameness in outline, — from meretricious trick, or shallow 
 artifice, — from vacuousness and slovenly execution ! Conspicuously 
 placed as they are, how few have any interest or influence over the 
 thousands who would be ‘ moved as by a trumpet ’ by the real effigy 
 of a Coeur de Lion, a Wellington, a Newton, a Peel, a Franklin, — 
 of the Sovereigns in their succession, or men of local mark and 
 position ! But the course of our public statues is generally much 
 alike ; they are ordered by a committee, officially praised by a neat 
 newspaper paragraph on the day after they are ‘ unveiled,’ detected 
 
102 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 as counterfeit art by the week’s end, and followed next year by a 
 brazen brother of the same family. 
 
 Wiry all this is so, can be explained with fatal facility. Genius in 
 this range of Sculpture is not more frequent than elsewhere, and it is 
 a proud thing for any country if she possesses one man of such stamp as 
 (let us say) Verrocchio. If none such, we may at least have honest care- 
 ful art of lower order : — but when the occasion imperatively requires 
 genius, and none exists, common sense dictates that our monument 
 should wait more favourable days. High art is like Poetry, and comes 
 by laws we neither comprehend nor control. England, however, does 
 not appear in so denuded a state. It will be seen presently that the 
 writer considers we have two portrait-sculptors whom he would rank 
 as really great : it is much that it should be so : — but the common 
 belief of the promoters, — supposing that the plan has not been 
 organized simply as a predetermined piece of patronage, — seems to 
 expect that we have many men of this rank, to any one of whom 
 the order may be ‘ safely confided.’ Who would act thus in any 
 Fine Art but this ? Who would expect to obtain a first-rate Land- 
 scape, or a first-rate Ode, by inviting sketches, or advertising a 
 competition ? But our general procedure is amply accounted for by 
 the general indifference to sculpture, already commented on. For 
 the continual necessity that monumental statues should be provided, 
 united with the hopeless indifference of the public, naturally gene- 
 rates a succession of what, in reference to art, must be named 
 counterfeit wares ; — which passing undetected for the moment, and 
 bringing such large profit, may be manufactured without any 
 troublesome study or toil, — nay, it is said, in some instances, almost 
 without the supervision of the nominal artist. What must follow 
 this position of the art ? — Of course there are most honourable 
 exceptions; but too frequently the tradesmanlike order (who can 
 wonder ?) is carried out in a spirit which it would be flagrant injustice 
 to commerce to call tradesmanlike. The work is executed with a 
 shameful slovenliness, or a spasmodic affectation ; truth and nature 
 murdered in every line and surface ; in a word, for in a cause like 
 this, it would be base not to speak out, we have statues in the style 
 of those already named. Thus a great country pillories her heroes ! 
 , — unless a too-patient public be roused to outcries of irrepressible 
 disgust, till the black monster, chased and hooted from the square or 
 the cathedral, perches at last on the top of an arch, or takes refuge 
 in a patron’s garden. 
 
SCULPTUEE 
 
 103 
 
 Work of this character is unhappily not absent : but before 
 specifying it, a few words may be given to the Busts. Here, if any- 
 where, one might hope to find a good style prevalent. A portrait in 
 stone is both a comparatively simple thing, and can at any rate be 
 tested by reference to the original. Yet nowhere is our manufactur- 
 ing spirit more painfully visible. I have noticed the evil influence 
 of Lawrence’s art over portrait-painting. Very similar has been 
 the influence of Chantrey. Before his time truth to the real features, 
 variety in the surface, careful completeness of detail, were at least 
 required in a bust. Of course without the penetrative imagination 
 these elements will not yield a first-rate likeness : yet in the hands 
 of N ollekens they gave us many admirable heads of lasting interest : 
 {Sterne, Pitt and others). Chantrey was gifted with a fine eye 
 for the picturesque in sculpture, and a particular power over the 
 light and shade of masses. These qualities, combined with a happy 
 ease in seizing, — not character, over which I have never seen one 
 bust by him that gave the clear sense of mastery, — but the air 
 and look of life, might have given him a really high and enduring 
 place amongst our artists. But he sacrificed all to manufacturing- 
 temptations; quick returns, and easy profits: and the slovenly 
 showiness, the false effect and mechanical flattery which mar most 
 of his works, may be referred to as a lesson how widely apart are 
 the paths of serious art and clever cupidity. No surer proofs that a 
 man is no real artist, then when, (as with Chantrey,) only his earliest 
 work shows care, and when he presumes to remodel the faces of 
 great men to suit his conventional idea of their qualities. Words- 
 worth’s features were strong and rugged : — those in the bust are 
 smooth and characterless : his face expressed intense meditative 
 self-concentration, — this, an uncontrolled feebleness. Even the 
 chin has been brought forward an inch, as the sculptor’s homage to 
 the Apollo Belvedere and what he fancied poetical inspiration ! If 
 Chantrey’s work be so false in a head known to the writer, how should 
 he trust the artist when he represented men who lived before the 
 photograph ? Almost all his busts show the same method of work ; 
 we can see that the features must have been cleverly manipulated, 
 ■for they are not natural forms ; the hair left rough, and the towel 
 over the shoulders, are expedients to make the smoothed bosses or 
 coarse facetting which enlivened by a few drill-holes, uniformly 
 stand for surface, look less incomplete. Gods, as Homer might have 
 said, call this, 1 ideal treatment ; ’ but men must give it a much less 
 Olympian epithet. 
 
104 
 
 Sculpture 
 
 Work such as this is bad work, even had Chantrey’s better 
 qualities been tenfold multiplied : — but how shall we speak, when 
 we turn from the master to the school which his example founded ? 
 Large allowance must indeed be made for the tyranny of fashion and 
 the carelessness of spectators, which, no doubt, have stayed the pro- 
 gress of some who have not had strength enough to disregard all for 
 truth. But truth does not appear to me to admit such excuses for 
 the portrait and monumental sculpture of Noble, Theed, and Adams. 
 So far as my observation has extended, it gives an indescribable 
 impression of sheer, hopeless, incurable inefficiency. It is not 
 simple ignorance of form or indolence of execution that their busts 
 and monuments display ; it is not imperfect sense of character, or 
 absence of grace and imagination : — but work so blunt, coarse, and 
 mindless, that I know not how to bring it within the common terms 
 of criticism. It is as difficult to describe it as it is to analyze 
 nonentity itself. Where we are unfamiliar with the man thus 
 misrepresented, we can at least refer to common nature, and this will 
 tell us that the human face, — that masterpiece of divine art, — has 
 more in it than the careless lumps and heavy furrows of Noble’s 
 work, the cold apathetic vacuity of Theed’s, the intense and unheroic 
 vulgarity and ungainly shapelessness of Adams.’ On the same bad 
 eminence we must rank the Cromwell of Bell, and the IT. Lawrence 
 of Lough ; figures so ungainly and commonplace, so false and feeble, 
 that I should be ashamed to mention them in a criticism on serious art, 
 if they did not force themselves on our eyes, with Brodie’s frightful 
 Architecture by their huge obtrusiveness. And the building contains 
 two or three other colossal figures, more conspicuously placed, which 
 must have been named with these, if affectionate respect for their 
 subjects did not restrain us. When the words grace, imagination, 
 or truth to character are used, tacit reference is made to that more 
 exercised taste which should properly be called judgement : on these 
 points I appeal to the true artists of the day, in whose interest I 
 write, for confirmation ‘ of my remarks: — but on simpler points it 
 will, I think, be enough to ask spectators to ‘ look and pass on ’ 
 before the works now censured. Is there here any trace whatever 
 of that variety in surface, alternately tense and soft, which the tex- 
 ture of every human face presents, and without which the sculptor 
 can give his labours no life ? — life so full of detail, of mobility, of 
 infinite subtleties, of the soul, in a word, by some ineffable magic 
 stamping dust with the seal of immortality? Where the main 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 105 
 
 point in a portrait is missed so utterly, we can hardly expect truth 
 elsewhere; — the drapery of these artists must seem false and im- 
 possible to the least- educated eye, whilst the forms over which it is 
 hung are those not of the life, but the lay-figure. 
 
 Whether or not the writer’s judgement on these works command 
 assent, he thinks that a few words will suffice to justify the tone of his 
 censure. To portrait- sculptors is committed a high task, and a serious 
 responsibility. The nation trusts her great men to them ; they are 
 charged to carry down through the ages the actual likeness of those 
 who will be to the future what Milton or Bacon are to us. We all 
 know how brilliant and attractive are the written portraits of such 
 men, when drawn by some vivid master. Yet there is always a void 
 felt, — a sense of blankness and as of the shadows of the grave, — if 
 we cannot complete the Book by the Picture. Without this, our 
 heroes were like acquaintances known only by letter: with what 
 penetrative genius in portrait can give, they become familiar friends. 
 And we may often most thankfully accept work less excellent, if the 
 likeness be honestly set forth : — but such false images as Adams’ 
 Wellington and Burdett, Noble’s Barrow and Lyons , Munro’s 
 Armstrong , Theed’s Hallam and Lawrence, are a disgrace to English 
 art now, and an outrage on remote generations. 
 
 The Monuments of one more artist must be classed, on rather 
 different grounds, in this series of what seems to me absolutely false 
 and mischievous. But before giving decisive proofs of this state- 
 ment, I must turn to the sounder art here exhibited : — noting briefly, 
 that the foreign specimens do not afford materials for fully ascer- 
 taining how the style stands abroad. The model from Rauch’s 
 elaborate Frederick will hardly give those who do not know the 
 original a fair idea of the monument. It misses the imposing 
 impression, and cannot render the carefulness and completion of the 
 whole ; — nor, on the other hand, does it convey the unfortunate and 
 confusing effect produced by the mixture of life-size and colossal 
 figures, the unconnectedness of the groups, much increased by the 
 management of the corner horsemen, — or, I may add, on much 
 better authority than my own observation, the want of vitality and 
 character in the head of Frederick. The highest series of basreliefs 
 has great beauty. 
 
 In the more modern English school the Lyndhurst and Clarkson 
 of Behnes are samples of splendid modelling, and the head of 
 his Babington is full of life, although Ave cannot extend the same 
 
io6 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 praise to the drapery. Foley’s work ( Selden ), as usual, takes 
 high rank by its seriousness and conscientious, completion. The 
 Goldsmith , although less happy in seizing character, deserves 
 much honour for its adherence to real dress : it is a proof, — strange 
 that proof is required ! — that when the figure is unaffectedly treated, 
 we no more dwell on rvhat the tailor did for the man, than if the "Poet 
 of the Village were himself before us. The busts by Butler, E. Foley, 
 Bailey, and J. S. Westmaeott, show that they are the creations of 
 art, — though of an art which through general want of taste and in- 
 terest is satisfied with too little. Many more are the productions of 
 steady manufacture : they suffer under the blight that rests on sculp- 
 ture, and will only make way for better work — when patrons and 
 spectators insist upon it. 
 
 We have one more sculptor, to whose busts the Englishmen of 
 far-off centuries will look with confidence that here they may see 
 the authentic likeness of some who, even at that distance, are 
 not likely to be forgotten. No one, probably, who now sees the 
 Tennyson and Brooke with their companion works, will not feel that 
 portraits, so full of life, expression, and variety, — individual to every 
 line of the hair, dress, and attitude, — have so much true vitality 
 that they can hardly fail of faithfulness. It must be so that they 
 dressed, and bore themselves, — so that they smiled in animation, or 
 meditated in repose. But the likeness does not end here. — Reverting 
 for an instant to what 1 said on the historical function of the Portrait- 
 Sculptor, it would not require the power of Macaulay or Carlyle to 
 deduce from Woollier’ s busts the characters of the men in their real 
 inner essence : — the chivalrous energy of the Colonizer, the strength 
 and inventiveness of the Engineer, the 'well-known humour and 
 rugged force of the Geologist, the majestic calm and profound feeling 
 to which we owe the Idylls and In Memoriam. So again with the 
 Lord Bacon , where we have not only a Monumental figure of the 
 true kind, as simple and dignified in the main lines as refined and 
 truthful in the details, — but a ‘ vera effigies’ of the philosopher as he 
 may have stood, when, as the action of his hands suggests, he was 
 demonstrating to some theorist of the day the necessity of a founda- 
 tion for science in the reality of things: — laying great bases, we 
 might fancy, for that triumph of Man over Nature of which these 
 halls contain trophies, such as the mind of Bacon was alone able 
 to anticipate. These works, by force of the life that is in them, 
 
SCULPTURE 107 
 
 have carried us, as if digressively, to other regions than art : — 
 but Art fulfils her office only when she does so. 
 
 How a great artist learns the secret of his conception and his 
 handling, as was remarked in the instance of Turner, could not be 
 put into words, even if it -were not in itself a mystery. But, looking at 
 what he reveals by his practice, we can see that the means by which 
 this excellence has been here attained are those common to all such 
 art, — perfect truth and consummate tenderness. What I noted 
 before on the union of executive completeness with imaginative 
 power holds as strictly true with Woolner’s work as with that of 
 the Elgin figures: it is finish in the true, rare sense, infinite and 
 mysterious, and as full of thought as of delicacy. How difficult to 
 have given this, and yet not sacrificed breadth and repose ! yet 
 without these qualities in even balance we have no first-rate 
 sculpture. 
 
 The Constance and Arthur has allowed the fullest scope to 
 the artist’s imaginative genius. Here we have a little history 
 told or suggested; the natural deficiency in hearing and speech 
 serving, by one of the holy compensations of Nature, to bind two 
 children together with ties of more than common tenderness. This 
 is shown in the beautiful lines of their attitude, where though the 
 girl takes the part of protection due to her age, yet few will fail to 
 recognize in the look of both a pathetic air of appeal to each other’s 
 sympathy ; 
 
 A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 
 
 To praise the execution of this lovely work would be only to repeat 
 what has been said above in regard to the artist’s other performances : 
 but, with special reference to the frequent remarks I have made upon 
 vitality of action and surface, I would request the reader’s careful 
 attention to the difference, so subtly and yet so simply given between 
 the tense and the yielding, in the limbs of the boy and in what can 
 be seen of the girl’s right shoulder, — and to the balanced action of 
 the group. It is stationary, indeed, for a group can rarely dispense 
 with this quality : yet we see, by the slight pressure given in 
 one foot of each, that they feel each, other’s weight, whilst the boy, 
 by the grasp of the left hand on the right, and that again on the 
 knee, and the tension of his body forward, is guarding himself from 
 the heavy thrust with which, if asleep or helpless, he would lean 
 against his sister. Whilst in all these main features the work is thus 
 
io8 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 thorough, the drapery is raised to an almost equal degree of value and 
 interest by the same one and only method, — truth to nature. Here 
 ■we have no ‘ conventional ’ or 1 generalized ’ fashions of shuffling 
 over labour and difficulty ; the essential character of the material 
 is given, without imitative pettiness : the form and action of the 
 figure within preserved with such airy and vital accuracy that (as 
 always in real life) it animates the dress : the folds, with a fidelity so 
 uncommon that I know not where to look around for an equal 'example, 
 give the actual amount of substance, neither arbitrarily following, 
 nor coldly concealing, the child’s person : — whilst the sculptor has 
 been rewarded for this devoted truthfulness and loyalty to nature by 
 a harmony and charm of line which might have moved the envy of * 
 Raphael or Leonardo. 
 
 Art like this is great Art, in the high immortal sense : always rare 
 in Sculpture, in her present condition it is inevitably rarer yet: — I 
 have therefore dwelt on these examples of it with some minuteness, as 
 standards by which visitors may judge for themselves how far the 
 conditions of vital excellence are observed in modern work.* The 
 man who can do this would assuredly carry these gifts of truth and 
 tenderness with more majestic display into monumental Sculpture: — 
 nor can any region of the art more imperatively demand them. 
 Meanwhile, and before I pass to sculpture which stands in a contrast 
 with Woolner’s hardly more shameful than diverting, I will suppose 
 that the reader, in his passage to the Horticultural Gardens, stops 
 awhile amongst the wonders of the Nave to examine Foley’s eques- 
 trian group of Lord Hardinge. 
 
 He will do so wisely : for of the hundred trophies within that hall 
 which demonstrate the successful advance of ‘ much-labouring man,’ 
 there is no other such triumph of Art, no, nor any near it. I need 
 not speak of it in detail : — for the bronze of this work, when tem- 
 porarily exhibited in England, drew forth from all the Sculptors of 
 the day a unanimous verdict, that as an equestrian figure it ranked 
 
 * Such art is so scarce, that I trust I may he allowed to mention the Animal 
 designs by Julius Haehnel of Sehmiedeberg in Prussia : — an artist, I believe, 
 not represented in this Exhibition. Widely different as they are in subject, 
 they have a greatness and a grace, an intensity of vital character and a 
 completeness in the execution, which place them in the rank of the best works 
 in serious Sculpture. France has some very clever modellers in this sphere, 
 but I have seen no bronzes by them which could stand before the sterling ex- 
 cellence of Julius Haehnel’ s. 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 IO9 
 
 alone in excellence amongst those which this country has produced in 
 that most arduous style. It stands now in Calcutta, and there, when 
 evening allows men to wander into the open square, the Arab dealers 
 come together, and comparing Foley’s Horse with the points of the 
 best blood of the Nejed or the Hejaz, they are said to pronounce his 
 work ‘ the work of the Genii ; ’—for none else could have moulded 
 the surfaces with such truth, or infused vitality with such power. 
 
 It was the writer’s first intention, when he learned that the model 
 of Baron Marochetti’s Turin group was to be exhibited in 
 Gardens, to have given it that serious criticism which so imposing 
 a mass naturally seems to demand. Careful examination of much 
 else by the same hand, for many years, could not, indeed, lead him 
 to anticipate sterling merit here ; for the study which began with a 
 belief in the excellence of Marochetti’s work, had led, gradually and 
 surely, to a conviction of its baseness : if the Carlo Alberto proved 
 own brother to the artist’s other Invertebrata , — the Coeur de Lion , 
 the Scutari monument, the Glasgow Wellington , the Apsley House 
 Angel , the Clive , the P ee/, the ^Melbourne ; he was prepared to own 
 it with unsurprized regret ; — \ et who would not hope that so very 
 clever a sculptor might at last have done justice to a subject which, if 
 
 any, must call forth all his finish, spirit, and conscientiousness ? But 
 
 it is due to any readers I may have, to confess that these intentions 
 have fairly broken down before this crowning — I should think, this 
 final masterpiece of colossal clumsiness. It is simply impossible to use 
 the same forms of speech in reference to sculpture such as that of the 
 artists last criticized, and to such absolute, ineffable scorn or igno- 
 rance of all its requirements as the Baron here exalts before us, in a 
 pyramid which may vie, for taste and beauty of composition, with 
 the best centre-pieces of the confectioner: — it is like passing from 
 Davy or Faraday to the art of the mountebank, or the science of the 
 spirit-rapper. 
 
 I will beg the spectator to recall what was before said on the re- 
 sponsible function of the Monumental Sculptor, and with that to 
 think of the profound interest which, — only less in England than in 
 Italy, — belongs to a monument commemorative of the first steps and 
 one of the first martyrs in the glorious Deliverance. Italian readers, 
 
 should I have the fortune to find such — will require no such appeal 
 either to their native taste, or to their sympathy with the Boyal patriot 
 here misrepresented. And then, as in all other cases, I would only 
 ask spectators to use them own eyes, and they will (I think), find that 
 
no 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 few qualifying or regretful phrases need alloy this condemnation. It is 
 only difficult to specify details, because criticism can hardly take hold 
 of work so ingeniously and spiritedly negative. Addison somewhere 
 justly praises the impregnability of Nonsense. Nonsense, he says , 4 stands 
 upon its own basis like a rock of adamant, secured by its natural situa- 
 tion against all conquests or attacks. If it affirms anything, you cannot 
 lay hold of it ; or if it denies, you cannot confute it. In a word, 
 there are greater depths and obscurities, in an elaborate and well- 
 written piece of Nonsense, than in the most abstruse and profound 
 tract of school-divinity/ Thus it is with the Carlo Alberto. Those who 
 cannot at once see through the effect of size and specious audacity, 
 and discover that this is nothing but an amateur’s worthless 
 sketch magnified into Memnonian proportions, will not be convinced, 
 even by a right arm which goes straight out from the trunk without 
 a crease in the dress, or a trace of muscular motion, swaying its 
 ignorant curves like a branch in the wind, and with the left, (which 
 in its turn hangs at the shoulder like a dislocated doll’s,) is covered 
 with furrows, intended possibly for a coarse model of stratification : — 
 by a face constructed out of a lump of chin and a dab of moustache : 
 
 by the ‘ padded shape ’ which far more resembles a round of brawn 
 
 with three cord-marks round the middle of it, than a human body : 
 — by legs, (please inspect the left) as round and rigid as water-pipes ; 
 — and all this, and much more of the same quality, set bolt upright, 
 like a child’s toy -rider, astride on that too-celebrated animal, 
 with the forequarters of one charger and the rear-parts of another, — 
 which does duty already in Westminster. Then descend (it is hardly 
 the right word) to the remaining work — -take the basreliefs, crowded 
 by figures drawn with all the accuracy and finish of the prints in the 
 Penny Novelist, — admire the grace of the Zouave on the NW., the 
 well-known ‘ Sydenham Pantaloon ’ on the diagonal corner, the 
 modelling in the lower parts of his neighbour, where— — so far from 
 the least suggestion that they cover human limbs — the breeches are 
 the very image of those which J ack hangs out upon the fore'castle, 
 when he has washed and starched them in the Atlantic. 
 
 Such is the fashion in which a countryman of Verrocchio and 
 Ghiberti, Giotto and Michael Angelo, honours the first Italian king 
 who drew his sword for a united Italy ! A feebler parody of his 
 feeble conception of the triumphant Richard is his offering to the 
 memory of the broken-hearted Charles Albert ! — If this be so, most 
 justly will it be asked, how could such hands be entrusted with work 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 III 
 
 of such importance ? I hope what I have said at the outset of my 
 criticism on Portrait-sculpture will supply the answer. Meanwhile, 
 lest the reader should fancy me alone in a judgement supported by 
 such patent proofs, I will quote a few words from the long verdict of 
 contemptuous exposure which was passed on a similar equestrian 
 group, by the recognized leader amongst the French critics on Art. 
 Gustave Planche, in 1845, thus wrote of Maroehetti’s Duke of 
 Orleans .* After noticing, in language more forcible than mine, the 
 lifeless features, ill-arranged lines, foolish horse, and vague attempts 
 at the ‘picturesque’ style, he says: ‘This sham spiritedness is 
 simple puerility, and scarcely worth discussion. M. Marochetti’s 
 
 work is not monumental art; it is at the best a sketch in bronze 
 
 a child’s toy seen through a magnifier; but this enlargement adds no 
 value to the work. The horseman he shows us is badly seated, badly 
 covered, swallowed up in his uniform, holds his sword awkwardly, 
 and his face is devoid of any definable expression.’ I wish space allowed 
 me to add the great critic s admirable remarks on the right treatment 
 of the Basrelief. ‘ These conditions,’ he adds, ‘ are so elementary, 
 that I am at a perfect loss to comprehend how M. Marochetti has 
 neglected them. There are soldiers here like the leaden playthings 
 of the nursery : it is almost impossible to guess whether there is a 
 body beneath the dress. W e have here no question of style, not even 
 of grammar — it is nothing beyond mere matter of the Alphabet of art. 
 To break these conditions is the same as to be ignorant of spelling.’ + 
 
 Such work deserves no further severe criticism ; whilst giving it, in- 
 deed, one cannot help thinking the Carlo Alberto has been placed here in 
 a spirit of fun, and recalling the anecdote of a good-natured author, 
 who laughed as he heard the pit hiss his play from the stage, and said, 
 Have they found me out at last ? — We, at least, wish to part from Baron 
 Marochetti in this humour ; we spare him examination of his other 
 works ; and, with reference to them, will only hint at that law of 
 nature which confines even the humblest success to those who make 
 the very utmost of the single talent. His busts sometimes show a 
 vivacity and cleverness of handling which — adding of course know- 
 
 * This group was removed from the Court of the Louvre in 1848, and 
 replaced by a figure of Francis I, of which it is enough to say that its style is 
 in perfect harmony with the coarse and mindless sensuality of its subject. 
 The writer thinks it must be worse than the d’ Orleans , but is unable to state 
 the artist’s name. 
 
 f Bevue des deux Mondes, Aouti 1845. 
 
1 1 2 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 ledge of real form, with delicacy, care, and truthfulness in execution 
 — might produce something which could be classed as serious Art. 
 But it is a very long step from the heads we have hitherto seen by 
 him, — and the sublime of monumental sculpture. If invited, as a 
 few years ago the artist publicly invited us, to consider his claims in 
 this sphere, we cannot accept the works brought in proof, as higher 
 art than magnified statuettes, or rank them appreciably above the 
 amateur figures of that other hour’s idol of fashion, our almost-for- 
 gotten Count d’Orsay. It is the old old story with Marochetti, as it 
 is with other sculptors of similar pretensions, here and elsewhere — 
 the Frog trying to blow himself out to Bull dimensions. He may 
 puff' and be puffed — but' he will never do it. 
 
Through the delay which has occurred in hanging the foreign pic- 
 tures, it has been found impossible to complete this section in time 
 for the first edition. The blanks hence arising, with some in the 
 sculpture, will be shortly filled up. Meanwhile, the little historical 
 sketch from the General Catalogue has been here reprinted by per- 
 mission. 
 
 FOKEIGN SCHOOLS OF FAINTING 
 FRANCE 
 
 Fair France, a country rich in so many glorious memories, had 
 given birth before this century to several distinguished Painters, 
 whose influence over the style of their successors has never died out. 
 But that great change which confers on French history so conspicuous 
 a place in the modern history of Europe, moved the whole land with 
 an impulse so mighty that we may accept the Revolution as a starting- 
 point not less for the Literature and the Fine Arts of France than for 
 her Politics. Under Lewis XIV, Painting, with much else, had fallen 
 into a hollow and lifeless pomp; and though two men of original 
 genius, Watteau (1684 — 1721) and Greuze (1725 — 1805), illustrated 
 the following reigns, yet the courtly grace of the first and the senti- 
 mental grace of the latter only reflected the prevalent fashions of the 
 day, and were insufficient elements to create a living School, able in 
 any real sense to speak to the nation at large. Watteau and Greuze, 
 with their contemporaries, appear to have worked for Paris alone, 
 and its little coteries of luxurious or cultivated citizens : an unhealthy 
 position, and in the last degree remote from the conditions under 
 which art flourished in Athens or Florence or mediaeval France her- 
 self. David (1748 — 1825), in the opinion of his countrymen, restored 
 Painting to the national sympathies by means at first sight the most 
 alien from such result : — by infusing what was thought a Greek 
 severity alike in the subjects, design, and execution of his pictures. 
 This style, however, harmonized with the false Classicalism of the 
 Revolution before the predominance of its ‘ First Consul : ’ when that 
 
 I 
 
FOKEIGrN SCHOOLS 
 
 114 
 
 stage was passed, and the vision of Roman Liberty melted into the 
 reality of Roman Imperialism, the art of David became in part 
 distasteful, in part was transfigured into the modern School of 
 France. 
 
 It would be presumptuous to attempt in this summary a full 
 review of recent Foreign art ; but the general course of its develop- 
 ment may, it is hoped, be sketched here without impropriety. 
 Speaking thus, it may be said that French Painting appears obviously 
 to differ from English in three main points ; the subjects are far 
 oftener 1 Historical : ’ the drawing is more generally correct : the 
 colour and execution less varied and less brilliant. These qualities 
 are strongly exhibited by David’s work : in which, indeed, Historical 
 Painting is too commonly taken only in that infelicitous sense which 
 limits it to scenes from long-past and pictorially-irrecoverable history. 
 Few, indeed, are the subjects of ancient times which can be, or which 
 have been, successfully rendered : unless treated (as in the naif Middle 
 Ages both by Painters and Poets) in the style of the day, or unless 
 in themselves of very wide and vitally enduring interest (as scenes 
 from Scripture), they may rouse a transient enthusiasm, but, like 
 the mythology of Sculpture, have no real hold on common sym- 
 pathies. It cannot be enforced and remembered too clearly, that the 
 Present is the true reign of all high Historical Art. This was felt in 
 France even by David’s pupil Gros, but it is to the pupil of David’s 
 own closest follower Guerin, — Gericault (1791 — 1824) — a man who 
 fulfilled much and promised more — that the liberation of Painting- 
 in France from the Classicalism of David is ascribed. Henceforward 
 men felt free to choose their own style and subject ; Schools of modern 
 life, of landscape, and of romantic tales and fancy sprung up : and 
 the art, as in England, became again a representation, more or less 
 complete, of the general tendencies of the century. 
 
 Every age is, however, wont to overestimate its own originality. 
 Far more of the Past survives in the Present than men easily recog- 
 nize : and what appear the conspicuous qualities of earlier French 
 art are yet conspicuous in the latest. The careful design and the 
 historical direction of the great Poussin and of Le Sueur reappear 
 in David : and the best qualities of David, united with a lofty tone of 
 poetry and an ineffable tenderness of outline and expression, in 
 Ingres. Every truly great Historical Painter is a master in Portrait : 
 and the portraits of Ingres deserve the careful study of all who feel 
 how little of the human face, God’s masterwork on earth, is commonly 
 
OF PAINTING 
 
 115 
 
 rendered by Painting or Sculpture. With. Ingres may be classed 
 (subject to that diffidence which should never be absent from foreign 
 attempts at classification) Delaroche and Leopold Robert, although by 
 them Historical art is taken in an increasingly wider, and hence more 
 truthful and more popular, sense. Delaroche has dealt mainly with 
 famous scenes from later European history, Robert with Italian life 
 in the points most characteristic of the provinces of the country. 
 Horace Vernet presents this School in its most rigorously modern 
 aspect, choosing its subjects from the many wars ot France during 
 this century. The power, the dramatic vivacity, and generally 
 conscientious design of these artists are familiar to us : — the courage 
 with which they have ventured on vast or crowded compositions, on 
 canvass and in fresco, is a characteristic not less worthy admiration. 
 
 Watteau is the only colourist for whom high rank is claimed in the 
 earlier French School, which in this great quality for two hundred 
 years suffered under the shadow and the chill cast from the later 
 Bolognese Painters. But this tradition also was happily broken in 
 modern times, and the value and charm of Colour have been illus- 
 trated conspicuously — one wonders they ever needed illustration — 
 in the works of Delacroix and Decamps : — the former a copious and 
 inventive artist in large works which, like Etty s, range over several 
 Styles, but are in all subordinate to the exhibition of that gift which 
 '(as most distinctively and emphatically the Painter’s gift), where it 
 exists in force, always makes itself predominant. French critics, who 
 have seen Rubens in Delacroix, have compared Decamps to Rem- 
 brandt. He has the same love of Eastern scenes, the same love of 
 rich colour contrasted with abundance of shade : but Decamps’ re- 
 sidence in Egypt permitted him to penetrate oriental life and land- 
 scape more closely than was possible to the illustrious Hollander. 
 Decamps did not, however, confine himself to such subjects; but, in 
 whatever he touched, he has displayed a peculiar charm of tint and 
 a decided originality. 
 
 Several of the artists hitherto named, by a decision which all 
 visitors will regret, are not represented in this Exhibition ; but some 
 idea of their work is essential to a just understanding of the school 
 as it exists. The bent, however, of the living oil painters in France, 
 appears in general away from historical subjects, and turned towards 
 the regions most popular Avith us, — -familiar incident and landscape. 
 Yet the national taste does not fail to make itself felt throughout. 
 French colouring is still comparatively subdued i a low tone, accom- 
 
 1 2 
 
FOREIGN SCHOOLS 
 
 116 
 
 panied by an indistinct or blurred outline, is frequently aimed aU 
 This manner is not that gradation of individual tints and loss of 
 outline from flush of colour which Titian or Turner practised ; it 
 appears rather a reaction from the severity of the school of David, 
 combined with a general aim at delicacy of effect, and it has hence 
 naturally found its way into pictures of familiar incident. The sub- 
 jects are selected with greater point, freedom, and variety, than in 
 England : the scene is not so commonly domestic. Yet it is worth 
 note that in this last region of art (so conspicuously English), Eng- 
 land possesses no painter equal in truth and tenderness of feeling to 
 Edouard Frere. His works with those of Plassan, Trayer, Troyon, 
 and others, display another excellent national quality ; tact and ease 
 in telling the story, and a determination not to exceed the limits of 
 the style adopted by the artist. The aim may not always or often 
 be high — but it is rarely not attained. The picture — and the re- 
 mark might obviously be extended much beyond Art, in France— 
 is almost always definite, hardly ever widely suggestive. But it 
 must be enough here to indicate that sympathy between painting 
 and the national mind in other respects, which stamps all art, when 
 genuine and vital. 
 
 This quality is, hoAvever, less consonant to landscape than to figure- 
 subjects. Human action is a clear-cut thing, a limited region, if 
 compared with the boundless mystery of Nature. Many pictures 
 here show that France is rising to power in landscape : the works of 
 Watelet, Jeanron, Corot, Ziem, with those of Decamps and Marilhat, 
 exemplify the Variety of range attempted : yet, on the whole, we feel 
 that the mirror which French art holds up by preference is less to 
 Nature than to Human Nature. Even when Man is less prominent, 
 living inhabitants, — as in the animal pieces of Troyon and the 
 Bonheurs, — are not only introduced as accessories, but form a main 
 feature in the design. 
 
 It may lastly be noticed that the same dominant interest in human life 
 has led to much vigorous rendering of foreign manners, or incidents 
 from the earlier world of Europe, treated in a more romantic or vivid 
 manner than by the elder historical school, by Marilhat, Couture, 
 (Jerome, and others. Here, too, we find what should not be passed 
 over, as a frequent and honourable characteristic of the higher French 
 art : definite and well-considered Thought. When this quality is an 
 artist’s aim, there is always risk of loss in the special aim of Painting 
 — pleasure conveyed through form and colour — yet, when the work 
 
OF PAINTING 
 
 117 
 
 is in the hands of a Gefome, the result will be one of those triumphs 
 rare in the annals of any art, — pictures which, from the least to the 
 most cultivated spectator, leave a remembrance not to be wiped out. 
 It is not in his own country alone that the career of this painter is 
 watched with hope and appreciation. From the splendid drawing, 
 firm rendering, vivid characterization, and thoughtful choice of subject 
 shown in the 1 Augurs,’ the 1 Gladiators,’ and the ‘ Phryne,’ Europe 
 may fairly expect what — within the peculiar range which Gerome 
 has chosen, — can hardly fail to be masterpieces, 
 
 GERMANY 
 
 Of the German school it is more difficult to speak than of the 
 French. Truly reflecting one noble side of the national mind, it has 
 thereby passed under influences with which foreigners cannot easily 
 or completely sympathize. Speculative thought and theory have here 
 held sway over Art not less powerful than elsewhere has been often 
 exercised by Fashion; prescribing to the painter the subjects and 
 style of his work, and taming the wild Teutonic imagination to 
 academic or ascetic discipline. The works of the great schools of 
 modern Germany appear strange to those who are accustomed to 
 think of true art as something closely identified with freedom ; to 
 look for nature, exhibited in actual life or in landscape, and to expect 
 skill, force, and sweetness in the management of oil colours. Yet 
 the direction of German taste has been strictly controlled by those 
 large underlying laws which may be traced everywhere in the history 
 of art, and can alone furnish just explanations of its development. 
 Painting, with literature, had, during the last century, fallen in Ger- 
 many under French influences : here and there some national feeling 
 was shown, and a solitary and neglected artist, Asmus Carstens, of 
 Holstein, practised a severer style ; but in the main it appears to 
 have rarely exceeded the limits of decoration. There was abundance 
 of imitative work, and what may be called furniture painting, but 
 nothing which answered to the life and power which, towards the 
 close of the period, the great writers Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Richter, 
 and many more, threw into the literature. These men, though not 
 artists, occupied themselves much with the abstract theory of art, 
 and a philosophy of Painting and Sculpture was formed amongst the 
 many philosophies to which that age gave birth. Then followed the 
 invasions from France : the national spirit was roused, and it became 
 
1 1 8 
 
 FOREIGN SCHOOLS 
 
 a natural feeling that the style which was least French would be most 
 genuinely German. A definite plan was settled by the painters 
 studying in Kome in 1810, and laws laid down for the subjects, aim, 
 and execution of the art of the future. 
 
 Hence arose the two principal schools between which painting is 
 yet chiefly divided from Dusseldorff to Vienna. Mediaeval religion 
 has been the main theme of Overbeck, Steinle, and Deger : mediaeval 
 and ancient history of Cornelius, Schnorr, and Kaufbach. The 
 artists of the first school have worked most at Eome : those of the 
 historical or epic at Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Bonn, and elsewhere. 
 Between the styles of these men, with their numerous scholars, 
 great differences of course exist : Cornelius and Kaulbach display 
 much boldness and variety of invention, suitable to the vast wall- 
 paintings with which they have covered the churches and palaces of 
 Germany: — the religious painters have worked more frequently on 
 a smaller scale and in oil colours, and their pictures, like those of 
 the early artists whose style they have followed, aim rather at sweet- 
 ness and repose than energetic action. And besides these two main 
 schools, modern Germany has produced numerous painters of inci- 
 dent, amongst whom the Dusseldorff artists, Schadow, Bendemann, 
 Sohn, Kohler, and Hildebrandt, are the most celebrated : — with 
 Lessing, Achenbach, Koch, and others, who have pursued landscape. 
 
 It has not here been thought necessary to map out minutely the 
 many German centres of painting, or fill the page with names un- 
 familiar in England. It will be seen, however, even from this brief 
 sketch, that the scheme of a complete national school has been carried 
 out, and the various fields in the fair realm of art all attempted in 
 Germany. Yet through all ramifications and divergencies, a strong 
 general similarity exists, derived from what has been already noticed 
 as the starting-point of the school. What German art as a whole 
 seems to want, is Life. Everywhere an English spectator will be 
 reminded that the foundations of the modern style were laid in a 
 complete and erudite theory : that its first masters were of opinion 
 that ‘ reference to nature may easily interfere with the ideal character 
 of a composition,’ and that ‘ power of colouring and facility of hand 
 are unfavourable to high art.’ This is that profitless theorizing to 
 which I have already called frequent, — I think not too frequent, — 
 attention ; and this Exhibition contains many proofs of the result. 
 Yet we may see many proofs of a lofty and serious Endeavour, of a 
 predominant Thoughtfulness, of a careful study of approved ancient 
 
OF PAINTING 
 
 II 9 
 
 masters. But the main efforts have been laid out on large mural 
 paintings; and hence, of all modern schools, the German is least 
 completely represented in any Collection. A man must visit Munich 
 or Berlin to see those vast philosophical histories and epics by Kaul- 
 bach and Cornelius, which read, we might almost say, like so many 
 pages from Herder or Hegel. In these the Idea is everywhere domi- 
 nant : but from them, to the smallest scene of common life or land- 
 scape, the national characteristics here indicated will rarely be found 
 absent. 
 
 HOLLAND AND BELGIUM 
 
 The course of modern art has been dissimilar in these contiguous 
 countries. That intensely powerful national spirit which so dis- 
 tinguishes the Dutch, has hitherto mainly kept their school from 
 that close approximation to the French which has occurred in 
 Belgium. Scenes of common life, landscapes, cattle, and inani- 
 mate things, treated often with admirable skill, were of old the glory 
 of Holland. The same choice of subject still prevails. Schotel 
 and Schelfhout have gained distinction in landscape : Yan Os and 
 Van Stry, Ommeganck, and Meissonier of France, with other native 
 Hollanders, present more or less of the qualities which are admired 
 in the cattle and figure painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. 
 
 In Belgium all trace of the art of Rubens and Vandyke had long 
 since faded and been replaced during the first thirty years of the 
 century by the style of David, whose influence over Flemish paint- 
 ing outlived his influence over French. Meanwhile in David’s 
 native land Painting had taken a new and more animated life, 
 which in due time was felt in Flanders. Wappers in 1830 began 
 against the dead false classical style a reaction which— by more than 
 mere coincidence, we may believe — coincided with the birth of the 
 Belgian kingdom. He was rapidly followed by Leys. These men 
 have been both mainly devoted to historical subjects of national 
 interest, but their art does not deviate into those more poetical 
 and primitive regions which have found so much favour in Germany . 
 It has been the distinction of Wappers that he made the first great 
 step towards a living style ; but the colour of Leys and the insight 
 he shows into character deserve special notice. 
 
 Rather later in the same direction has followed Gallait, whose 
 
120 
 
 FOREIGN SCHOOLS OF FAINTING 
 
 Historical art has a tone of pensive sentiment. He has also at- 
 tempted subjects from romance and poetry, and thus forms a link 
 between the school just noticed and the school of common life and 
 incident. This style, with the landscape work of De Marneffe and 
 others, has, however, as yet hardly received the development which 
 was so rapidly reached by Leys and Wappers, who, by natural 
 instinct, turned at once to that branch of the art which, from Van 
 Eyck to Rubens, was the characteristic of Flemish painting. 
 
 The Schools hitherto noticed are either known in England by 
 many examples or belong to countries with which Englishmen are 
 familiar. Yet in regard to them, the criticism of a foreigner must 
 be given with diffidence ; and even if the main lines have been here 
 correctly laid in, it cannot but be that natives of Germany or France 
 will find the details or points of view require a forbearance which 
 (it is hoped) will be exercised. But from the specimens of remoter 
 or less developed Schools which we are now allowed to study, it 
 might be rash and unsafe to attempt even a sketch of Painting in 
 the Russia and Scandinavia of to-day (although here Calame in Swit- 
 zerland, Tidemand in Norway, Lindegriin in Sweden, may be specially 
 noted), — still less in countries which, like Spain, Italy, and America, 
 appeal so decidedly to the Future. Artists of ability have not been 
 wanting here during this century, yet it is probable that in none 
 of these states has Art yet taken a form which fully represents the 
 nation as it is, — certainly none that answers to what is anticipated 
 by those which in a certain sense we may call the more settled 
 nations of Europe. Englishmen at least will not fail in such 
 sympathetic anticipation : they will welcome with warmth the proofs 
 which other countries give that Art, with vigorous Peace and manly 
 Liberty, Free Thought and Free Action, has entered also on the 
 ways of life : — convinced that Painting, advancing always at even 
 pace with the national mind, will become everywhere more indi- 
 vidual at once and more universal, and in confident hope that the 
 fair promise of many lands will ere long be followed by fairer fulfil- 
 ment. 
 
 
121 
 
 ENGRAVING 
 
 This, of all the Fine Arts of design the most popular and the most 
 generally diffused, appears to be at the same time that of which the 
 technical processes are least familiar. It is, therefore, thought that 
 a few words mainly on this point will be the most useful introduction 
 to the masterpieces of modem work here collected. 
 
 The three forms of Engraving which include almost the whole art 
 employ respectively the surfaces of Wood, Stone, and Metal to give 
 the impression. In the first, the ink is laid on projecting portions: 
 in the second, on portions of plane surface chemically prepared to 
 receive it : in the third, within hollows sunk below the surface, whence 
 it is removed by wiping. In Wood Engraving what the artist cuts 
 away, forms the light ; what he leaves, the lines. In Lithography, — 
 whether plain or in colours, — what he lays on with ink or chalk is 
 repeated upon the paper. It is Metal only that reproduces by the 
 printing -ink the lines he cuts in. This latter art is therefore En- 
 graving in the strict sense, and the one which bears the name by 
 custom. It is also by its nature capable of the greatest variety in 
 style, and of the most powerful or the most delicate effects in execu- 
 tion. The texture of wood does not carry cuttings of the freedom 
 and complexity possible in metal, and strokes cannot be laid over 
 strokes to strengthen and gradate the effect. Nor can the surface 
 lines of lithography in its different forms, drawn with ink or chalk, 
 approach the united force and tenderness of the lines which may be 
 sunk into the steel or the copper. Engraving on Metal thus holds 
 the first rank, and may claim precedence in our brief notice. 
 
 Of the three principal forms of Engraving on Metal that in which 
 the design is entirely expressed by Lines is the most powerful, 
 durable, and difficult. Line Engraving is, therefore, confined to 
 important works, or those executed with sufficient care to be capable 
 of bearing complete reproduction. In its first form it was thus 
 employed by Raphael’s Engraver, Marc-Antonio Raimondi, to 
 multiply his master’s designs, and by the great German painter, 
 Diirer, to publish his own. These early works aim exactly at the 
 effect of fine and finished drawings: small in size, simple in handling, 
 
122 
 
 ENGRAVING 
 
 and never rendering either the texture of objects or the effects of 
 sky and air in landscape, — they are, however, of unequalled grace 
 and power in Form and Expression. As the Sixteenth century ad- 
 vanced and Painting degenerated, these qualities were lost from the 
 companion Art : and before long Engraving took a new direction, 
 attempting to reproduce not DraAvings, but Pictures. This attempt 
 required larger size, greater complexity and care in the set of the 
 lines, more attention to the texture of objects and to landscape 
 details ; — above all, the preservation of the tone and light and shade 
 of the original. Thus the modern style was gradually formed ; aim- 
 ing at translating Colours, whilst the old style facsimilarized Designs. 
 To trace the development of this Art would be to sketch the progress 
 of Oil Painting, to Avhich it was subservient : it must suffice here to 
 add that it was hardly before this century that Line Engraving fulfilled 
 its object by reproducing the complete general effect of Pictures (so 
 far as that effect does not essentially depend on Colour) — whether 
 figure-scenes or landscapes. 
 
 France, where Line Engraving has long flourished, prepared the 
 way by many admirable works ; but the artists who probably con- 
 tributed most to the final advance in Line Engraving are our country- 
 men, Strange, Sharp, and Woollett, who towards the middle of 
 the Eighteenth century were among the first to take definitely suc- 
 cessful steps in this larger manner. Strange is not always faithful 
 to the expression of his originals, but in a blended tenderness and 
 brilliancy of effect he is yet unequalled, and to his invention is due 
 that curious network of lines by which modern Engravers aim at 
 representing every surface, however varied. The Charles I (after 
 Vandyke), the Sleeping Child and Angel (Guido), are amongst 
 Strange’s masterpieces. Sharpe’s work has more severity and 
 meaning : his John Hunter (Reynolds) is of the highest merit. 
 YVoollett’s prints from Wilson and Claude exhibit the beginning of that 
 Art which within fifty years became capable of rendering the infinite 
 sweetness and magnificence of Turner. Line Engraving was then 
 carried on and refined by Morghen of Rome and F. Muller in Ger- 
 many. The Last Supper (da Vinci), the Transfiguration and Virgin 
 with the Goldfinch (Raphael), the Aurora (Guido), by Morghen : 
 the Madonna di San Sisto (Raphael) of Muller are amongst their 
 best pieces. At the same period lived Longhi of Milan, whose en- 
 gravings, — the Madonna of the Lake (da Vinci), the Magdalene 
 (Correggio), above all the Marriage of the Virgin (Raphael), are, 
 
I 
 
 ENGRAVING 1 23 
 
 perhaps, the best masterpieces of this art for truth and tenderness. 
 Desnoyers in France produced works of more vigour and brilliancy, 
 but less faithful and delicate. His Belle Jardiniere and Virgin of 
 the Rocks are rather spirited translations than reproductions of what 
 Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci painted. Amongst later Line 
 Engravers, Garavaglia, Toschi, Jesi, in Italy : in France, Calamatta, 
 Dupont, and Forster; in Germany, Mandel, and Keller; with the 
 English C. Turner, Miller, Cooke, Willmore, Finden, the Heaths, 
 Raimbach, and Burnet, deserve respectful enumeration. 
 
 In the French, Bridoux’s Holy Family and Lefevre’s Antiope 
 are brilliant pieces of work : but the majority exhibited belong 
 to the more subdued and accurate style of H. Dupont. This 
 style runs the risk of flatness in effect and too -mechanical exe- 
 cution : perhaps even Dupont’s Hemi-cycle and Holy Family are 
 not free from these qualities. Francois and Flameng supply 
 excellent examples in The Fountain and the General Bonaparte. 
 
 German Line Engraving is partially represented by Mandel, 
 Parthey, and Keller, whose Theologia from Raphael’s fresco is an 
 admirable specimen of fidelity to the style and expression of the 
 painter. 
 
 Our own School appears here in force : we find a long series from 
 Hogarth, inimitable in vigour and feeling : often rude and some- 
 times mechanical in handling, these are preeminently curious as 
 the only finished works in which one of our greatest painters has 
 expressed himself. Here, too, are Strange’s Charles I : Woollett’s 
 famous Wolfe, La Hogue, and Niohe ; Sharp’s admirable John 
 Hunter. Of later men, J. Heath’s graceful work from Stothard ; 
 Raimbach’s great series from Wilkie ; with many pleasing figure- 
 subjects by C. Heath, Finden, and Robinson. 
 
 Comparison of the prints by Doo with those by Dupont and his 
 School shows that we are now less successful in the severe style. 
 But the Landscapes by Miller, Allen, Cooke, and Willmore are 
 amongst the finest works in this class yet engraved : — although here 
 that united force and freedom which Etchings reach may be often 
 desiderated. 
 
 Much as we owe to an art which has placed so much of beauty 
 and nobleness within the world’s reach, it must, however, be owned 
 that Line Engraving rarely has succeeded in a complete conquest over 
 its besetting sin, — the sacrifice of the sweet largeness and repose 
 which mark all good Painting, to the display of mechanical dexterity 
 
124 
 
 ENGRAVING 
 
 in the conduct of the lines. The single Line Engraver who appears 
 to have given his style variety and vitality sufficient to render not 
 only the design, but the very touch and manner of the original, is 
 Schiavone of Venice. His two prints from Titian’s Assumption and 
 Entombment are alone in the art for painterlike qualities, and show 
 the breadth, freedom, and tenderness to which true feeling may 
 carry it. 
 
 Those qualities, however, which Line Engraving so rarely shows, 
 are in part supplied by the second great division of Metal Engraving : 
 Mezzotint. In this art (invented about 1640, probably by the Ger- 
 man Siegen, and carried out by Rupert, nephew of Charles I.), the 
 plate, in place of showing a polished surface, is first evenly roughened. 
 This roughness which, by retaining the ink, would produce, if un- 
 touched, a square of absolute blackness on the paper, — the artist 
 scrapes away and polishes, more or less in proportion to the depth of 
 tint required. Where he most polishes the plate, the printer’s hand, 
 removing the ink, leaves the whitest space : — the darkest lines are 
 often cut in with a graver. Could this be done always or often with 
 success, Mezzotint, — uniting the breadth of Painting with the sharp- 
 ness of Line Engraving, — would be the most perfect style. But 
 except in a few instances, — perhaps most notably by Turner in the 
 prints from his own design, — this frequently attempted coalition 
 appears to have foiled skilful hands by its deep inherent difficulty. 
 
 Mezzotint is one of those branches of art which for the last hundred 
 years have flourished most in England. Lupton and C. Turner in 
 pure mezzotint, C. Landseer and Cousens in a mixed style are our 
 most conspicuous recent masters : but even their excellent works do 
 not appear to equal that great series, mainly from the paintings of 
 Sir J. Reynolds, which was produced in the eighteenth century by 
 S. Reynolds, M’Ardell, J. R. Smith, Watson, and others. Few of 
 these prints fail in the fine artist-like qualities of breadth and trans- 
 parency : some (the Duchess of Devonshire, Miss Bunbury , Collina , 
 are delightful examples) possess a charm and tenderness which will 
 one day place them amongst the most treasured treasures of art. 
 This style is so well represented, that I need not do more than 
 refer readers to the walls. 
 
 In the two forms of Line Engraving hitherto noticed, the incisions 
 are mainly produced by tools. In the third, Etching, the lines are 
 mainly produced by acids. These lines are sketched with a fine point 
 through a very thin acid-resisting coat of wax, laid first over the 
 
ENGRAVING 
 
 125 
 
 'copper or steel plate : the acid then cuts through the exposed surface 
 to a depth regulated by its strength and the time allowed for its 
 operation. Hence Etching, of all modes of Engraving, unites the 
 greatest freedom with force ; and as the process is not essentially 
 different from that of Drawing, it has been followed by many Painters. 
 Etchings have thus a value essentially their own : they are the actual 
 work of the original designer, free from the coldness or errors of 
 translation through another hand. Every European nation in turn 
 has been successful in this art. The etchings of the School of Over- 
 beck in Germany, of Goya in Spain, Pinelli in Italy, are more or less 
 known and appreciated. But in our own days the brilliancy of the 
 French and the delicacy of English artists have carried the method 
 to an excellence which, except by Rembrandt of old, has never been 
 equalled. Nor has even he surpassed the spirit, variety, and pic- 
 turesqueness of Cruikshank, — since Hogarth our greatest Humourist 
 in Etching. No one should pass over the specimens by these men, 
 or Turner’s outline- work for his Liber Studiorum. — Whistler’s are 
 effective plates in the modern French manner. They aim only at 
 picturesqueness; — and reach it so decidedly, that they miss most 
 other qualities. 
 
 Of the many forms of what, from the Stone employed at first as the 
 plate, has been called Lithography, detailed notice will not be appro- 
 priate here, as the processes belong more to mechanical agency than 
 to pure art. In all, the principle is the same : a drawing on a flat 
 surface receives the ink, whether of uniform or varied tints; which 
 by chemical means is kept from adhesion to the untouched portion 
 of the surface. The rapid progress of this, the most easy and inex- 
 pensive of all modes of Engraving, during the forty years since its 
 invention, especially in the reproduction of coloured designs (Chromo- 
 tint) has been of service, where brightness of effect and absolute 
 finish of drawing are not required. But until more keenness can be 
 'given to the lines, more depth to the shadows, more transparency to 
 the general texture, the art will not take an equal place with Metal 
 or Wood Engraving. 
 
 The Woodcut was the earliest method by which designs were re- 
 produced, and has a long and curious history before the eighteenth 
 century. By that time it had so greatly declined as hardly to rank 
 amongst Fine Arts. From this date Wood Engraving was raised at 
 'once to excellence by the almost unaided skill of Bewick of North- 
 umberland (1753 — 1817). It was, perhaps, happy that a man so 
 
126 
 
 ENGRAVING 
 
 gifted should have found the field empty and have been thus able to 
 begin the art anew. The older woodcuts had rarely attempted more 
 than to reproduce drawings. Bewick added an effectiveness in light 
 and shade, a delicacy and variety to Jiis work which gave woodcuts 
 henceforth an independent existence in pictorial expression. This 
 
 great change, — one of the most decided in the history of art, he 
 
 effected by his unusual good sense, truth to nature, and tenderness in 
 feeling. His mode of engraving was to bring out the design, where 
 possible, by white lines laid on black : to build, as it were, from dark- 
 ness upwards to fight. He thus followed, it will be readily seen, the 
 natural treatment or law of his material : for the lines cut into the wood- 
 cut form the whites, as those cut by the line-engraver form the darks, 
 of the impression : and the proper direction of each art is indicated by 
 this difference. Bewick’s other gifts are shown in the exquisite 
 simplicity, truth, and invention of his well-known woodcuts. An 
 excellent selection fills one of the Frames. These cannot be too carefully- 
 studied : they have a directness in reaching their point, a breadth and 
 largeness in style exactly analogous to the qualities of Velasquez. 
 So little are perfection and greatness in Art dependent on size or 
 material. Bewick’s pupils, Clennell, Kesbit, and Harvey retain 
 more or less of his fine manner. 
 
 If Bewick’s peculiar excellence has not been since equalled, Wood 
 Engraving has been both in France and England carried of late to a 
 wonderful height in finish and brilliancy. The aim has, perhaps, 
 lain too decidedly in this direction, as if in competition with etching : 
 
 - a vain struggle, which risks loss in the natural treatment and 
 natural effects ot the woodcut, already indicated. By a return within 
 the strict limits fixed by the material, by moderation and study from 
 nature, the admirable skill which a multitude of artists have attained 
 will, no doubt, be able to bring Wood Engraving before long to 
 further perfection. The series by the Dalziels from Millais’ very 
 remarkable P arables form one example of what I venture to call the 
 truer manner. 
 
12 7 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Architecture — that art which literally comes home to every one, 
 and of all the Fine Arts is the most directly practical — by a singular 
 fate, is probably less a subject of popular thought and care than any 
 other. Most persons have a certain interest in pictures : even if not 
 much versed in painting, they contend for the right to please them- 
 selves. But when a building is in question, we hear with alacrity 
 the reply, ‘ I know nothing of architecture.' A brief sketch of the 
 elements which compose the modern schools will, it is hoped, at once 
 supply the main facts of the history, and explain the causes of an 
 indifference so fatal to the progress of the art. 
 
 This story must begin far back, for in Architecture, from its 
 essential nature and from the similarity of the wants which it provides 
 for, practical experience has been the source of the changes generally 
 made, and established types have always held a strong hand over 
 free imagination. Nothing is more curious than to watch the slow 
 steps by which men learned the simplest expedients, and the persis- 
 tency of a few forms through every age between Nebuchadnezzar and 
 the Nineteenth century. We are indebted here, as for the elements 
 of almost all human knowledge, to ancient Greece. The Greek style 
 was itself, indeed, founded on the earlier practice of Assyria and 
 Egypt, but it was only by the reduction of African or Asiatic 
 architecture to European ideas and climate in Greece, Italy, and 
 Sicily, that it was able to influence later races. The mode by 
 which spaces are covered is the simplest rule under which styles can 
 be classed, as on this ultimately depends the greatest portion of 
 those ornamental features which render Architecture a fine art, as 
 distinguished from Building. The Greeks, for this purpose, con- 
 fined themselves --the simplest expedient — to single stones laid flat 
 from pier to pier. Their architecture was hence of the rudest 
 quality in science ; but for this they compensated by a delicacy in 
 design, a completeness and exquisiteness in finish, never since 
 equalled for a moment, — whilst its simplicity was set off by the con- 
 trasting elaboration of the sculpture for which their best buildings 
 furnished little more than the plain frame. So few remains exist, 
 
128 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 that it is hardly known how the Greeks applied their style except 
 in religious buildings; but in these they perfected or invented 
 various forms of ornament corresponding to varieties in the proportion 
 adopted, from the strong severity of the Doric to the palm-like 
 elegance of the Corinthian. And even from the scanty fragments of 
 Attica and Sicily, it is clear that nothing could be less Hellenic than 
 the coldness and monotony which has frozen imitated Greek archi- 
 tecture from the Romans downward. It is doubtful whether even 
 the variety and picturesque arrangement of the pointed style sur- 
 passed what a pure Grecian city presented between the ages of 
 Pericles and Alexander; and it is certain that an Athenian would 
 have smiled at the ignorant and tasteless pedantry with which Roman 
 professors chained the free forms of his architecture under the limits 
 of the ‘ five orders.’ 
 
 Prom the 1 mother of arts ’ this style passed to Rome. Here the 
 architecture of the Lintel found the architecture of the Round Arch , 
 which the Romans in early times had learned from Etruria. By the 
 union of what was good in these styles, a style more complete than 
 either might, under favourable conditions, probably have been de- 
 veloped ; but the Romans, never highly gifted in the finer qualities 
 of the mind, were now the corrupt and degenerating inhabitants of a 
 cosmopolitan capital, where fantasy and luxury ran riot in every 
 extravagance of taste and puerility of imitation. Hence in those 
 buildings where art is most essential, the Romans matured but one 
 structural Form of permanent value, the dome , — but one Type of 
 structure, the basilica. The vast influence of their style belongs not to 
 art but to politics. Throughout those wide provinces which were held 
 almost identical with the world, Roman architecture, as displayed in 
 buildings of civic utility — the bridge, the aqueduct, the city gate, 
 and theatre — shared in the dominant influence of the ‘ masters of all,’ 
 and covered the Empire, in length and breadth, with trophies of colossal 
 common-place. The characteristics of the style may be summed up 
 under solid and clearly-exhibited construction ; round arches freely 
 used for entrances and passage-ways, and, on a larger scale, for vaults ; 
 whilst the Greek style is felt in the ornaments and supports, — the 
 latter either single circular columns or massy piers, but in each case 
 confined to a single story, above which, if further height was required, 
 the column and arches, with the flat cornice above them, were re- 
 peated. The style of ornament, from Syria to Spain, from Treves to 
 Tunis, exhibits no radical change from that of the Greeks, except a 
 
ARCHITECTURE 
 
 129 
 
 gradual descent through Acridity to coarseness; no vital feature 
 whatever, so far as appears, was invented or developed. Looked at 
 as art, the Roman style throughout — but most conspicuously in its 
 ornamental or religious buildings — is an imperfect and generally 
 awkward attempt to blend the two opposed styles which that unin- 
 ventive race borrowed from their nearest neighbours in Southern 
 Italy and Tuscany. It is a round-arched construction veneered with 
 the pillared orders of a rectangular style. The Colosseum or Trium- 
 phal Arch of Constantine furnish familiar examples. It was a natural, 
 an inevitable result of this mechanical and lifeless effort, that not only 
 the beauty which these forms originally possessed, but their con- 
 structive utility should be sacrificed : that we should see pillars which 
 give no support, and roof cornices which carry no roofing; whilst the 
 arches which do the work lose the loveliness of their curve, through 
 the huge unmeaning keystones by which they try to force themselves 
 into the prominence usurped by the idle pilasters. A sense of Power, 
 an emanation from the Majesty of the empire, given by vast masses 
 and a construction of weighty simplicity, is the one redeeming quality 
 of the Roman style. The Romans, commanding the resources of the 
 world, were able to build huger piles than any other nation, and, in 
 so doing, a great amount of constructive ingenuity was brought into 
 play ; but this cannot blind us to the fact, that their imperial archi- 
 tecture is barbarous in the true sense — a bastard and tasteless style, 
 without even the merit of such originality as may be found in Japan 
 or Mexico. Sense and feeling alike would set one fragment from 
 the Parthenon of Athens before all the palaces which Nero roofed 
 with gold, or the halls within which Diocletian gathered the popula- 
 tion of the whole world’s capital. 
 
 The altered state of society during the later years of the Roman 
 Empire at Rome gave, however, a new impulse to Building, and 
 constructive necessities produced forms which became of great value 
 to Art. In place of Temples, with their externally decorated style, 
 vast covered Halls of Justice (Basilicas) and Baths were now re- 
 quired. In these, attention was concentrated on internal effect and 
 construction ; and although it cannot be said that much taste was 
 here shown, yet, as no precedents existed, and the builders had to 
 think their work out unaided, common sense and the great mechani- 
 cal skill of the Romans led them to inventions of vast importance in 
 later times. They now boldly threw arches from pillar to pillar 
 uniting thus the main features of the Greek and Tuscan styles ; 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 they rooted vast spaces with plain circular vaults ; when the slender 
 columns were unable to bear the weight, they united them with 
 solid piers of masonry ; when beauty or convenience required, they 
 crowned the building with a dome, or closed it in a semi-circular 
 apse. The Pantheon presents many of these discoveries. The cir- 
 cular form (originally derived from Etruria) became frequent for 
 tombs and temples; and by the time of Diocletian, we find it 
 covered with a bold octagonal dome, and surrounded, no longer 
 with pillars as heretofore, but with an arcade — a form which proved 
 of immense value. 
 
 No sooner had these changes taken place, than the Empire, divided 
 between Rome and Constantinople, entered on its rapid fall. This — 
 felt less visibly on the Hellespont than on the Tiber — would have 
 checked all progress in architecture, if, meanwhile, that mysterious 
 new life which had lurked hitherto in caves and catacombs, or shown 
 itself in the martyrdoms of the arena, had not penetrated the 
 * purple chambers ’ of the palace, and mounted the imperial throne 
 with Constantine. Christianity, proclaimed the religion of the 
 Empire, first took possession of the vast Basilicas, which formed 
 halls suitable for the assembling of the people, or the deliberations 
 of the hierarchy. In cities where these were not found, or when 
 destroyed by the invading tribes from the north, churches were built 
 on the same plan, except that the vardted roof was replaced by a 
 roof of timber. For celebrating the mysteries of religion, — for 
 baptism at least, and for burial — the circular temples or tombs 
 supplied models ; these round churches being often placed near the 
 west-end of the Basilica. As Christianity spread, the Roman style 
 underwent a gradual change ; each province taking it up, and under 
 the new influences of religion, interfusing a deeper sense in the de- 
 corations, and a greater variety in the plan. Separate towers were 
 sparingly added, in a fashion to which (carried far west by early 
 missionaries and surviving there) we may, with the greatest pro- 
 bability, trace those which are so peculiar a feature of Ireland. The 
 circular plan was generally given up ; the front removed to the 
 west-end of the oblong Basilica, and the entrance-doors richly de- 
 corated with carving or mosaic. External decoration (not sought in 
 the original Basilica) reappeared, and the walls were relieved by 
 flat pilasters and arcades. Except, however, in these points, no 
 essential modification was introduced, and it is hence convenient to 
 call the altered Roman style, practised in all Western Europe, by 
 
ARCHITECTURE 
 
 * 3 * 
 
 the name Romanesque. No precise limits can be fixed for its dura- 
 tion, and the dark ages of war and invasion render its genealogy 
 indistinct in many countries between 500 and 900 . 
 
 Meantime, in Eastern Europe, the greater wealth and quiet of the 
 Empire, conjoining with the finer taste of the Greek races, and with 
 influences which, as of old, reached them from Asia, produced in 
 Constantinople and its neighbourhood that version of Koman style, 
 which (in opposition to the Western Romanesque) is named Byzan- 
 tine. Here, however, no essential new idea appears ; the dome, 
 which, on a large scale, became rare in the west, was carried out 
 with splendid effect in St. Sophia ; the arts of decoration in coloured 
 marble and mosaic were employed with prodigality, and sculptured 
 ornament, gradually forbidden the human form by theological feel- 
 ings, took a tenderness and delicacy of invention, to which Rome 
 afforded no parallel. But in so brief a sketch as this, Byzantine 
 architecture cannot be considered with any fullness, and except in a 
 few cases where East and West met, notably within Venice, it has 
 hardly held influence beyond the limits of the Greek communion. 
 We return to Europe proper. 
 
 Now came that mighty change for which the work of Rome had 
 been the preparation. She had taught the world how nations might 
 be ruled by the spirit of Law : the tribes of the north now showed 
 how they might be animated by the spirit of Liberty. The long- 
 struggle to unite these frequently antagonist forces is the history of 
 modern Europe. We have here to note the manner in which Archi- 
 tecture was affected by it. The characteristic of this art is, that 
 none other comes so directly home to man, and every phase of the 
 human mind, as it developed itself through ten centuries, is written 
 on the buildings of the middle ages. It is in tins capacity (it has 
 been well observed) that £ Architecture is to be regarded by us 
 with the most serious thought. We may live without her, and 
 worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How 
 cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which 
 the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears ! how 
 many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few 
 stones left one upon another ! The ambition of the old Babel 
 builders was well directed for this world ; there are but two strong- 
 conquerors of the forgetfulness of man, Poetry and Architecture, 
 and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in 
 its reality.’ — Hoav then did the nature of the great Teutonic 
 
 k 2 
 
ARCHITECTURE 
 
 132 
 
 *1 n vat! 1 n g races express itself in tlie art "vve are lieie concerned 
 with ? 
 
 A few words will sum up this : they created the only genuine 
 style of modern Europe. Hitherto, it should he noted, we have 
 found hut one such — the Greek. The Roman, Romanesque, and 
 Byzantine styles are transitional from this ; the principal elements 
 in all, blending with the vigour and freedom of the north, took life 
 again in the Gothic. Under this name, in accordance with the sug- 
 gestion of Mr. Fergus son's admirable history, the whole architecture 
 framed in Western Europe by the immigrant conquerors between 
 800 and 1500 will be here included, although from about 1150 
 onwards that Pointed form, to which the name has been restricted, 
 began almost everywhere to supersede the Round-arched. As, 
 however, the pointed architecture, though the most important and 
 original development made in any style, is essentially only a de- 
 velopment of the circular Gothic, it seems most correct to class them 
 under the one name which points to the Teutonic origin of both ; 
 although the long centuries of ruin and renovation have rendered it 
 impossible to ascertain what portion the race of Theodoric itself held 
 in revitalizing the decayed civilization of Spain and Italy. 
 
 The first clear existing specimens, in fact, of the Gothic, appear 
 due to the successors of the Goths in the valley of the Po. In the- 
 earliest Lombard buildings we find the plan and the details based on 
 the Romanesque : but from the beginning, vaults are an essential 
 feature. As that rich supply of single shaft columns which Roman 
 buildings gave had been chiefly exhausted during the Romanesque 
 period, and as the weight of vault required additional supports, 
 columns were coupled together or united with piers of masonry . 
 and presently by a change recommended alike by its effect and its 
 constructive advantage, these shafts, in place of breaking off at the 
 first story — as in the Basilica — were prolonged to the base ol the 
 roof-line. This point once reached, ribs were carried from them 
 over the intersections of the vault : and the Gothic system ot inter- 
 nal construction was complete in its main features. Externally, the 
 weight of the roof was relieved by an invention for which the 
 Roman plan of massive walls (as exemplified in the Pantheon) was 
 a clumsy substitute : the invention of the Buttress. This, in the 
 round Gothic, is always kept flat, and thus in some degree repeats 
 the form of the merely ornamental Roman pilaster. Where the 
 inner arches (as in Italy) were ordinarily of wide span, domes were 
 
ARCHITECTURE 1 33 
 
 often employed as a form of vault : and this style was widely dif- 
 fused thence through central and south-western France and the 
 Rhine valley. In the doors, the plain lintel entrance which had 
 almost exclusively prevailed from the Greek to the Romanesque 
 styles, was abandoned, and they were treated as many-pillared 
 recesses, on which the best efforts of the sculptor were more and 
 more concentrated. As the Gothic thus advanced, through a thou- 
 sand attempts, to harmony and vital union of features, a new and 
 most attractive feature was, for the first time in architecture, added 
 to the design. Hitherto, speaking in a broad sense, mass in length, 
 not mass in height, had characterized the art from the Rhine to the 
 Euphrates. But Towers were now incorporated in all the larger 
 public buildings : and soon, under the general impulse to build 
 higher, the lofty angular roof already placed (in part for protection 
 against northern winters) over the tower or the church, shot itself 
 upwards into the fiame-like aspiration of the Spire. Flow much do 
 we owe to an invention apparently so simple ! Let the reader think 
 what he would lose, not only of charm in effect and of picturesque- 
 ness in outline, but even of high and peaceful thought, were these 
 features wanting from the view when at the close of the day’s 
 journey our road turns and before us over the level line of blue 
 waters a lnm dred towers burn in the last light of sunset, and we know 
 it is Venice : — or where over the massy orbs of forest and the quiet 
 roofs gathered round it as if for familiar protection, some solitary 
 spire goes darkly up, painted in purple haze upon the amethyst and 
 sapphire sky, and announces the unknown village which is to be our 
 resting-place. — And when the hours of happy research return, the 
 Gothic charm which so allured us in the general aspect of twilight 
 does not fail on nearer examination. What looked so fair in outline 
 will be found complete and lavish in loveliness of detail. For the 
 wild northern intensity which acquiesced at first in the Romanesque 
 plan, has thrown all its life into the ornament, and covered doorways 
 and capitals with the beasts and birds of chase, huntsmen and war- 
 riors, labourers and knights, or enwreathed them with stranger 
 fancies, the dragons and wolves of the old mythology, the Rtmic 
 knots of Fate, and the Serpent by which the world is to be de- 
 voured. 
 
 Whilst the round Gothic worked onward thus in the great 
 southern river-valley of Charlemagne’s empire to the perfection 
 conspicuously exhibited in Verona, the style, carried northwards, 
 
i34 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 took other forms in the great cities that edge the Rhine. Here, 
 between 1000 and 1200, the magnificent groups of domes and 
 minaret-like towers were built which still adorn Cologne : churches, 
 which in grand arrangement and balance of the parts, and in the 
 admirable contrast kept between fight and shade by the plain and 
 the recessed portions, show that this form of architecture, if fully 
 developed, would display qualities inferior to none ever practised. 
 Other modifications of the same manner appear in Switzerland, 
 Spain, and France ; each varied with a fife and freedom of which 
 the very idea appears to have vanished from the modern world : 
 the latest phase being that worked out by the Normans in their 
 duchy. This followed their conquests to Sicily and England, and 
 has preserved their name among us. 
 
 Then followed the last great change in living architecture : pre- 
 pared, indeed, in all essential points by the work of the preceding 
 centuries, and in many details known long before ; yet, by its own- 
 intrinsic beauty, seeming like a new creation. It is certain that no 
 style has ever excelled the Pointed Gothic in picturesque and lavish 
 beauty of plan and of ornament, in the poetry of its fines, in the ro- 
 mance with which our own associations invest it. Yet the Gothic 
 builders themselves, Suger of S. Denis, William of Canterbury, or 
 Marc d’ Argent of S. Ouen, would have been unconscious of that halo 
 which Time, the beautifier, has cast over their masterpieces. Every 
 essential feature of the pointed style, except the tracery of the windows, 
 the glass that filled them, and the arched flying buttresses that sus- 
 tained them, had been before practised ; the same exquisite archi- 
 tecture which so moves us in the cathedral was familiar to them in 
 the street ; the only wonder of those inventive centuries, could they 
 have foreseen it, would have been that their descendants should 
 submit to the long unloveliness of Wimpole street, or admire the stone 
 confectionaiy and frittered pettiness of the Rue Rivoli. It must not, 
 however, be imagined that the pointed Gothic, on the whole, — though 
 with large allowance for the sublimity of Egypt, the variety of India, 
 the grace of Athens, and the vitality of its own immediate predecessor, 
 — the most consummate architecture which the world has seen, rose 
 from the ground 1 like an exhalation.’ Both in construction and in de- 
 coration it obeyed the spirit of the time. In the ornament we may 
 trace the gradual softening and purification of the rugged northern 
 mind which, gradually turning from those subjects of violence or 
 fantasy already noticed — war and wild creatures, and visions of 
 
ARCHITECTUKE 
 
 spectral superstition, now sought its pleasure in the sculpture of sweet 
 human forms, or enwreathed arch or capital, base and niche, with the 
 herb of the field, or the leafage of the forest; festooning the level 
 length of cornice with the hawthorn or the lily, and budding forth 
 from the spue in crowns of floral 'loveliness. Whilst these are the 
 essential characteristics of the detail, the construction is based on the 
 passion for loftier and slenderer forms than the circular style appeared 
 able to provide. And as the previous styles from their mode of 
 covering spaces might be classed under the Lintel and the Arch, so 
 the pointed Gothic might be named the architecture of the Gable, 
 whether angular or curved. The latter form, commonly called the 
 pointed arch, is obviously capable of greater height than the semi- 
 circle ; it had been long known in many countries, France included, 
 as an occasional expedient ; it now quickly became the law for all 
 larger apertiues. Two external causes aided the rapid growth of the 
 style ; the first, that the eleventh and twelfth centuries were the great 
 age of mediaeval building and monastic institution ; the other, the 
 discovery of that stained glass which clothed the churches of the time 
 with a glory surpassing any internal decoration hitherto practised. 
 To contain this, the windows were enlarged ; to frame it, the bars of 
 wreathed masonry, known as tracery, were invented. Soon the am- 
 bition of skilful masons, revelling in the radiance of blazoned saints 
 and gem-like arabesques, raised the ribbed roof to a dizzy height, and 
 placed it on piers divided by walls of coloured crystal. The real wall 
 was planted without the building in forests of detached buttresses, — 
 the sculptor peopled with Scripture Histories every vacant space and 
 4 coign of vantage,’ — and the Cathedral of the middle ages was created; 
 an embodiment in stone and glass and woodwork of all that was most 
 lovely and most daring in the minds of men ; a concentration of all 
 they admired here, or hoped for hereafter. 
 
 To the builders of Central Northern France the clearest evidence 
 proves that this invention is due ; nor, except in France and England, 
 whither it was carried so soon that the style there went through a 
 living and original development, was it truly understood during 
 the Middle Ages. Space, however, fails to trace a course, which, 
 after two centuries, through many causes, though none inevitably in- 
 herent in the pointed style itself, led to a gradual decline, even in 
 France and England; whilst in Spain, Italy, and Germany, the style 
 was never really understood, or exhibited in its force and purity. In 
 Venice, indeed, Gothic forms, uniting with the Romanesque of Con- 
 
 
 
J 3 6 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 stantinople, produced a manner of extraordinary grace and indi- 
 viduality, and one so directly adapted to modern city requirements, 
 that only the modern indifference to architecture can have prevented 
 its introduction. But Ave must pass to its later phases. That mighty 
 change in the human mind, which gave birth to the Reformation and 
 to the revival of ancient literature, fell precisely at the time when 
 the perfection of tne Italian art in painting and sculpture, with other 
 causes, rendered Italy omnipotent over European taste. And there 
 a pedantry, which to us seems incredible in its puerile absurdity, led 
 men to the conviction that tne art of the Romans — a race at no time 
 capable of any spontaneous or real Fine Art — Avas the one rule and 
 laAv for the Christendom of 1500 years later. Incredible to us, Ave 
 have said ... in all matters but in Architecture. For in Archi- 
 tecture, that imitation of Roman work, best known through the name 
 of Palladio, reigns in every capital and city of Europe. No one 
 would deny that great genius and inordinate expense have given us 
 a few buildings in which the Italian style has been led to graceful or 
 noble results, when in the exceptionally-gifted hands of San Micheli 
 or Scamozzi, Wren or Chambers, of the architects of the original 
 Louvre or the original Whitehall. But no one can possibly assert 
 that the style which has filled London with the dead monotony of 
 Gower or Harley Streets, or the pale commonplace of Belgravia, 
 Tyburnia, and Kensington — Avhich has pierced Paris and Madrid 
 with the feeble frivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada de Toledo — 
 which has in ten thousand towns substituted baldness and bareness 
 and blackness for the colour and charm and life of Gothic, the square 
 hole for the traceried window or clustered doorway, the square out- 
 line for the pinnacled shrine, — unable to employ the commonest 
 material, and costly, beyond the reach of all but the very rich, when 
 
 employing the finer In a practical country, and an age which has 
 
 renewed the popular love for art, is it needful to waste words on the 
 conclusion ? 
 
 To state the plain facts should be sufficient : we have seen that 
 the Roman style is a heterogeneous and mechanical formation, put 
 together from foreign styles by a tasteless race, by which they Avere 
 misunderstood, and arrested by political causes before it had reached 
 that stage of unity Avhich alone gives a soul to art. This style, re- 
 stored in part from ruins, in part from the treatises of Roman theo- 
 rizers, Avas applied in later times, Avhen society Avas altered, to the 
 palaces and churches of Italy and France, during a century of the 
 
ARCHITECTURE 
 
 137 
 
 deepest social degradation, — to minister to the luxury of Francis or 
 Borgia, or supply temples for the infidel superstitions of Leo and 
 Julius. It was never treated as suitable for ordinary life : it cannot 
 be rendered suitable for it. Unable to condescend to a cottage, it 
 triumphs as the decoration of the stage. Palladian, Renaissance, 
 Italian, Louis Quatorze, Louis Quinze, whatever name it bears, it is 
 still but the copy of a copied architecture — a galvanized pedantry. 
 
 Architecture such as this can have no hold on men’s hearts ; vulgar 
 pride or learned connoisseurship are the only tastes it appeals to. 
 And from its fatal domination lias arisen an evil worse than the frozen 
 formality it fosters ; wherever this Palladianism has spread, with it 
 spreads like a canker that dead indifference to the art, which will 
 never be cured whilst men live in houses and meet in buildings which 
 can give them no real pleasure. But when once a practical, intelli- 
 gible, and beautiful style arises, the natural delight in Architecture 
 our race has always taken, in healthy days of taste, will arise with 
 it, and the cold arrogant spectres of the bastard Roman pass beyond 
 the reach of contempt itself. Nor should it be fancied, that to return 
 to former excellence involves that copied art which will nev er be 
 other than lifeless. Gothic, fair as it was, never reached its full de- 
 velopment; we have but to take up the thread which the dilettante 
 dropped, and carry out, with far greater means, the style invented 
 for us by our neighbours and our countrymen. 
 
 The examples before quoted have been mostly selected from 
 churches, — buildings which both invited the greatest skill and have 
 survived most frequently to modern days. But the peculiar glory of 
 Gothic in all its phases is, that it is equally adapted to every archi- 
 tectural requirement of human life. No other style is at once so 
 high, and so humble ; so rigid in obedience to its purpose, or so free 
 in arrangement and detail. What was done of old in the minster, 
 was done in the street; the style of the Country was the style of the 
 Town. This was not an architecture, as those of Egypt and of Greece, 
 reserved in its purity for religion ; not as that of Rome, incapable of 
 descending without loss of essential character to pm ate dwellings, 
 but like the 1 common sun, the air, the skies, suitable at once to the 
 church and the palace, the factory and the town hall, cottage and 
 castle ; taking each material and carrying to the utmost its capabilities, 
 from the marble in its snowy slab, or purple-veined tablet, to the earth 
 of the field, or the rubble of the quarry ; at home no less m shops 
 and alleys, than where the manor-house lights up the landscape with 
 
138 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 its gray or russet gables, or the valley-side chapel stands like a chased 
 tabernacle of precious workmanship, amongst rude rocks and the 
 frowning mountain walls of nature. And it should specially be 
 noted, that Gothic alone has been able to beautify the dwellings of 
 the Poor. These are no idle phrases ; they are strictly exemplified 
 during all the centuries of the round and pointed Gothic ; nor, so far 
 as we know, has any other style been equal to the same universality 
 of service. It is not on remote or elaborate or antiquarian reasons 
 that its excellence rests : Gothic is simply the one style which, by the 
 circumstances of its development, has united in itself all the best 
 constructive and the best ornamental forms of the world’s inventions 
 in Architecture. From the lowliest offices of use to the loftiest ma- 
 jesty of loveliness, this noble art has shown herself equal to the occa- 
 sion ; unrestricted by varieties of climate, nay, finding in them only 
 additional opportunities for beauty and for convenience ; at once the 
 most economical in means, the most varied in adaptabilities, the most 
 intelligible and exquisite in results. It is no fine figure to say, that 
 by ten thousand proofs Gothic has stamped itself on the fair face of 
 Europe as the Architecture of Heaven, and the Architecture of Home. 
 Man’s requirements in the province of building do not substantially 
 vary ; they are amongst the things ‘ that have been, and will be again.’ 
 In this matter, then, on which side is Common Sense ? Why seek 
 impossible new forms, or repeat styles which are bastard, or lifeless, 
 or unpractical, — whilst men of like passions and blood with ourselves 
 have solved the problem once, perfectly, and for ever ?