1826.] Painters— Painting. 151 
_ Bowman.—I speak of these artists, my dear P., because they have 
been received in England, or in other parts of the old world. Mr. B. 
is another head-maker; ,of great industry and much cleverness—but 
ignorant of drawing. His notions of colour, too, are horrible: and yet 
I have seen a picture by him (at Mr. Pettigrew’s) of Mr. Taylor, the 
Platonist, which had the look of an old master’s. It was rude, strong, 
vigorous and peculiar, though caricatured “a few.” Why do young 
painters caricature? Because they see only that which is most obvious. 
- If ja mouth be very small, it strikes them with especial force, and they 
make it still smaller: if a nose be too large, they endeavour to express 
that fact, as a body may say, with emphasis, and make it larger. So 
with) colours: it is very easy to exaggerate—not easy to avoid exagge- 
ration., There never lived a flesh painter with courage enough to paint 
flesh as he saw it. If you disbelieve me, get a friend to poke his head 
through a hole in the canvas, and you will see what I mean. The 
head will, or it may, if he keeps quiet, pass for a painting—-but such a 
painting! It will appear frightful, so unlike will it be to the painted 
faces—the standard by which natural faces are tried. Let me be well 
understood: I say that no painter dares to\represent flesh (or feature, I 
might say) as he sees it ; and I say, that when we see a picture painted, 
instead of comparing, the flesh of the portrait with the flesh of the 
living hegd from which it was painted, we compare it with, and try it 
by, the*flesh of some other portrait—the work of Reubens, or Van- 
dyke, or Titian, or Reynolds, or Rembrandt.* Guido is nearest na- 
ture in the tone of the flesh, and Vandyke next. As for Titian, 
he never saw, nor will any other man ever see, what is regarded 
as perfect flesh in his work. People degin with pure colours. If you 
peep into the drawing-books and watch-papers that are done at school 
by little bread-and-butter ladies, you find all the cherubs and cupids 
with blue eyes, red lips, and yellow hair—ultra-marine, pure ; carmine, 
pure ; and gamboge, ditto ditto. As they grow older, they learn to 
mix and qualify. Painters being aware of this, and aware too that, 
every day, people who are on the search are able to see new colours in 
every familiar object—colours which they were never able to see in it 
before—learning to see, as another who studies music learns to hear— 
that is, to separate and distinguish—they, the painters aforesaid, soon 
get into a habit of mixing colours, and making short work of whatever 
puzzles them, by producing what is quite sure to puzzle every body 
else. Wherefore, the bad colouring—the unnatural, though rich colour- 
ing of the old masters. Look at the colouring of Wilkie. Being 
puzzled, he puzzles. The reader must apply the remark. 
Enough. I could mention to you some five or six hundred other por- 
trait-painters of America; but I forbear. They have no engravers, none, 
worth a fig; no sculptors; and hardly such a thing as an architect: 
(nor have. you, I am afraid, if one is to judge by Carlton-house and 
Regent-street, or the pavilion at Brighton.) 
P.S. Ihave omitted two or three names which I might as well give 
now ; for, if I take up the subject again, I shall give you a thundering 
epistle on the art, I see plainly. So, here goes, for two or three more, 
in the words of a correspondent, a capital judge of the art :—“ I saw 
_»* Just as a new actor, when he does a mad scene, is compared, not with the mad- 
men of this or that hospital, the madmen of nature; but with the madman of this or 
that house, with Mr. Young or Kean, or Macready—the madmen of the stage. —4. B.C. 
