1844.] 



THE CIVIL E^fGrNEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



437 



the teetli and ah'eolar process fall away, the jaw rises up, the lips douhle in, 

 and the external shape, in consequence, is one of the greatest characteristics 

 of age and feehleness, and more mortifying to human nature than any other 

 that happens to it, in its progress to the grave : there is nothing so pros- 

 trates human vanity. There is a story told of Opie : he was painting an old 

 bean of fashion ! Whenever he thought Opie was touching the mouth, he 

 screwed it up in a most ridiculous manner. Opie, who was a blunt man, 

 said very quietly, " Sir, if you want the mouth left out, I will do it with 

 pleasure." 



And wbile on the subject of pictorial effect, we may sketcli tlie fol- 

 lowing— 



A critic has no more right to find fault with a picture where the effect of 

 smoothness is given by roughness, than a lover has because the softest face 

 of a beautiful woman is not as soft apparently, however soft in reality, on 

 close inspection, as where it can be best seen. 



I remember an old lady being astonished at the Duke of Wellington's 

 Velasquez, and expressing great delight, and then looking close in, and say- 

 ing in disgust, " Why, it is painted for the distance I see." 



The following it is very clear applies to Brougham — 



For thirty years I have urged the point of public encouragement, inde- 

 pendent of academic influence, and all our greatest men seemed absolutely 

 abroad on the subject. Even Canning was not at all aware of the connexion 

 of art and manufacture, or the moral importance of High Art as a comme- 

 morative power. They shewed the best dispositions ; they took it up always 

 with enthusiasm, because their common sense was appealed to ; they then 

 proceeded to inquire of the official academician. He replied, the nation had 

 no taste, the artists did not require it ; and the minister, astonished at such 

 remarks, received me the next time like a distempered madman. Lord 

 Brougham, Ijord Durham, Lord Farnborough, Lord Colborne, all took up the 

 cause and dropped it in a fright. Wonder no longer at the fate of history, 

 at Hussey's persecution, Barry's struggles, or my prostration of fortune. 



Would you believe that a noble Lord, known to you all, to whom we all 

 owe obligations, actually said to me, when laying before hiiu my plan to 

 adorn the House of Lords, in 1823, " Do you think the people will ever have 

 any taste?" Suppose I had said to him, when he was founding a university, 

 Do you, my Lord, think the people will ever have any knowledge .' No, he 

 would have replied, unless you give them schools and books, and open their 

 understandings ; and so I say of art. How can they have taste if you found 

 not schools of design, or shew them tine works ? Of all the ministers with 

 whom I have bad the honour of communication, none paid so much atten- 

 tion as the Duke of Wellington ; he replied at once, gave bis opinion, and 

 received mine with the frankness of his character; he entered into the ques- 

 tion, allowed me to argue it, and to prove him wrong if I could. I got 

 no cold otScial sophistry from him, his mind is a mind not to be talked 

 over by an academician ; he saw the value to the country of public support 

 to art, he lamented its dreadful condition, and I believe in my conscience he 

 would have remedied its defects. I know he has said so since, but not to 

 me. 



Coleridge is one of the personages of tlie next extract. 



Coleridge, with all his wild dreams, was always selecting for the artist ; 

 and I never in my life remember one of his subjects which had a single qua- 

 lification. Coleridge was seldom intelligible, with the subtle distinctions of 

 words, much less likely was it in art, which requires gross palpability, he 

 could make himself understood. 



I have seen the finest scenes in the world between Coleridge and Sir 

 George Beaumont. Sir George's adoration of Sir Joshua was sincere. Cole- 

 ridge would often attack him ; the agony of Sir George between his enthu- 

 siasm for the genius of Coleridge and his awe for his departed friend are not 

 to be done justice to. 



The mania of Reynolds for colour is thus characterized — 



The imitators of Reynolds endeavoured to get this beauty in their pictures 

 by all sorts of solid materials, never considering it was not the solidity of the 

 vehicle, but the manner of using the vehicle. The richest and most solid 

 impasta can be got by taking the colour half dry and touching into it, thus 

 half dragging up what was put on before, and embodying both in one rich 

 gummy surface ; this requires that rare quality — genius. The contimial out- 

 cry of imbecility is, that the Italians had better reds, better yellows, better 

 oils, and better brushes, than the moderns : this is a great delusion. Titian 

 got his colours from the colour shops in the Kialto, as we get ours from 

 Brown's ; and depend on it, if Apelles or Titian were living now, they would 

 paint just as good works with our brushes and colours as with their own. 

 Sir Humphry Davy says, that the finest works of the Greeks and Italians 

 were executed in the ochres, reds, blacks, whites, and blues, we all now use. 

 Reynolds, from a craving for superior excellence, was at the mercy of every 

 new freak — fancying one day, one material was the thing, and the next, try- 

 ing a new one ; to show you his extreme readiness to try every thing, Mr. 

 Prince Hoare told me he once carried him a colour in a shell from India, a 

 beautiful purple — he was glazing those three angels embracing each other, 

 — he dipped a brush at once into it, and used it; the next day it had all 

 tjown. in reality, the Old Masters had by no means so many advantages as 

 ourselves ; Titian painted often on table-cloths ; Rubens's pictures are often 

 seamed ; canvass was then narrow and coarse. 



And it must nut be said that H.iydou depreciates Reynolds, though 

 he contests with apparent justice many of the ductrines in his lectures. 

 He says — 



In the dignity of portrait, no heads exceed Reynolds', though Titian's and 

 Vandyke's are more delicate in execution. He was a great man, but cer- 

 tainly a light thinker; and yet, considering his incessant practice in indi- 

 vidual resemblance, it is extraordinary he wrote as he did. He first brought 

 the principles of art into something like consistency ; and, though greatly 

 indebted to Coypcl, he first rescued it from the trash of De Piles, the com- 

 mon-place recipes of Lionardo, great man as he was, and all the old bewil- 

 dered theorists; and, in his immortal notes on Du Fresnoy, he has settled ou 

 a basis, never to be shaken, the leading rules of effect, light and shadow, and 

 colour. Here be was truly great ; it was only where his previous education 

 and previous habits had not been deep enough that he wandered in his theory 

 of beauty and form, which nothing but dissection of the brute and man can 

 ever illustrate clearly. His eye for colour was so exquisite that I do not 

 think there is a single instance in all his works of a heated tint which is 

 called foxy. This cannot be said of Rubens or Rembrandt; and I believe in 

 my conscience it can only be said of Reynolds and Titian. 



And Sir George Beaumont's merits are also enumerated. 



One of his dearest friends was Sir George Beaumont — he was one of those 

 links between people of fashion and artists, who placed artists at tbuir table 

 with all who were distinguished iu poetry, philosophy, oratory, rank or 

 fashion. 



There was a school in High Life of this description, which was formed by 

 Sir Joshua, they looked up to him as a god, listened to him like an oracle, 

 and believed a great painter to be the greatest of mortal beings. 



On them Sir Joshua left his mantle, and they were principally instrumental 

 in founding the British Gallery, and keeping alive in the fashionable world 

 the taste for pictures. The loss of Sir George nothing has compensnted us 

 for,- — his taste and genius were exquisite. Had be not been born in hiRli 

 life, in my opinion, he would have been our greatest landscape painter — he 

 talked of art, he dreamed of art, and seemed to think nothing else on earth 

 worthy consideration. 



The moment he came to town, he set the whole world in an uproar, and 

 made it an evidence and a necessity for any one of any pretensions of fashion 

 to meet artists at his table, and to visit their painting-rooms, and buy their 

 pictures. 



He it was who laid the foundation of our National Gallery; he was the 

 friend of Wordsworth, when the world denied his genius; and though be 

 was capricious, and laid the foundation of all my distresses, as well as others, 

 yet as painters we felt his loss bitterly in the art — a loss that never has been 

 repaired, and probably never will ; and when his admirable letters on art are 

 hereafter published, it will be found his pretensions have not been over- 

 rated. 



It was his decided opinion, and uo one had greater right to hold one, that 

 breadth and essential detail were the true excellence, and ought to be united ; 

 he knew the materials of art and the splendour of nature, and he knew nature 

 could not be approached but by the most judicious artifice ; and when painters 

 painted all light, in hopes of getting brilliancy, or all dark, in hopes of getting 

 depth, they entirely missed their object. 



I have beard many artists complain of the disposition of people of fashion 

 to bring forward young men — after having had the full advantage of such 

 disposition themselves, — tlie more young men brought forward the better for 

 the art ; if the young men have not talent to keep the stations in which men 

 of rank from the kindest feelings are disposed to place them, surely you are 

 not to blame the patron for his good wishes. 



Lawrence is also in our mind fairly appreciated. Haydon says — 



Lawrence drew better than Reynolds, but Reynolds was never guilty of 

 many ignorances of composition and design that Lawrence was guilty of 

 every day. 



In invention there is no comparison. Reynolds was a genius, and so he 

 was in colour: whereas Lawrence had no eye, and I rememljer but one head 

 of exquisite colour that might bear comparison with Reynolds — a head of 

 Lord Bathurst ; Gonsalvi, and the Emperor of Austria, per/iajjs, may be added. 

 In composition, Lawrence was a child, and Reynolds a great master. Rey- 

 nolds, from his knowledge of perspective, always planted his men on their 

 feet ; while all Lawrence's nobility stand upon their tip. toes, and will do so 

 whilst the canvass lasts. Reynolds appeared, as Burke said, to descend to 

 portrait from a higher style, while portrait and portrait only seemed to be 

 the extent of Lawrence's understanding. Reynolds was the philosopher of 

 art, Lawrence the gentleman, with a tendency to dandyism. 



Lawrence's great power was seeing, transferring, and identifying the bap. 

 piest expression of a sitter; and no man can bear testimony to this power 

 more than myself, I had several under my own eye of the nobiUty he bad 

 painted ; for the first half hour I saw no resemblance ; at last, some lucky 

 remark lighted up their features, and iu these few moments I witnessed 

 Lawrence's choice. 



Before Lawrence went to Italy, which sobered his meretrieiousness, Fuseli 

 used to say, and truly, that iiis pictures in effect were sweepings of a tinshop ; 

 but through all bis works there rcigus a .'ense of beauty, whicli if it had been 

 tempered and eorreeted by a reverence for the great names of the ait, in- 

 stead of being pampered by medals, with other young gentlemen and ladies 



39 



