ON THE GENIUS OF JOHN MARTIN. 35 



of the subjects which he employs for his pictures, and that the 

 greatness of their extent is not present to his mind, but as he 

 paints column after column, and dome upon dome, in the picture. 

 We take leave to differ, in toto, from so hasty and crude a con- 

 clusion . We believe that the artist has the whole picture sketched 

 upon the retina of his mind, before he embodies it in actual co- 

 lours before him upon the canvass. On this point we are ready 

 only to concede, that upon carefully going over every part of his 

 picture, an artist may find many points which might be heightened 

 in effect and beauty, many dispositions of figure which it would 

 be well to alter; and many effects of light and shade which might 

 be increased or softened down : and in this latter opinon we are 

 purposely borne out by the fact, that the artist himself, whose 

 works we are now considering, did alter and amend the disposition 

 of some of the figures in the engraving from what they were in 

 the painting of the Fall of Nineveh. 



No one can look upon and admire the pictures of this artist, 

 without being struck with the true and apparent fact, that in 

 painting one picture he paints a thousand, and that the faults, 

 with which he has been charged by some, of minuteness of detail, 

 and of heightening up every part of a picture to such an exquisite 

 degree of finish as almost to dazzle the spectator, may rather be 

 considered as errors on the right side. Every column, every temple, 

 and every vase of gold, is a separate study in itself; and, if one 

 large picture were to be cut up and divided into smaller ones, 

 they would each form a most exquisite and beautiful bit of art : 

 and, if our memory serves us aright upon this subject, such an 

 idea as this was at one time contemplated. Every picture which 

 he paints is as a whole: there is nothing left out which would 

 militate against the general effect that the spectator is to have of 

 the scene represented : all the detail and design serve to one 

 grand end. We will remark a little upon some of his pictures 

 in corroboration of this fact. In his Belshazzar's Feast there 

 was represented a magnificent hall, in which there were a thou- 

 sand guests revelling at a banquet-feast; but this was not all, 

 " the vessels of silver and of gold," in which the feast was served, 

 had been desecrated from the service of the Almighty for that 

 very impious purpose, and accordingly, the artist has displayed 

 an immense variety of these in all parts of the hall, as serving to 

 illustrate more particularly the character of the feast : and this is 

 still made out in a more mysterious and wonderful manner, by 

 the mystic letters written with a pen of lightning upon the wall 



