Of arrogance, ....
If, having walked with Nature,
Aiul ofl'ereil, far as frailty would allow,
My heart a daily sacrifice to Truth,
1 now ailirm of Nature and of Truth,
Whom I have served, that their Divinity
Revolts, oftVmded at the ways of men,
Philosophers, who, though the human soul
lie of a thousand faculties composed.
And twice ten thousand interests, do yet prize
Tiiis soul, and the transcendent universe,
No more than as a mirror that reflects
To proud Self-love her own intclllBcnce."

The work now laid before tlie public originated in indignation at the
shallow and false criticisms of the periodicals of the day on the works
of the great living artist to whom it principally refers. It was
intended to be a short pamphlet, reprobating the matter and style of
those critiques, and pointing out their perilous tendency, as guides of
public feeling. But, as point after point presented itself for demon-
stration, I found myself compelled to amplify what was at first a letter
to the editor of a Review, into something very like a treatise on art,
to which I was obliged to give the more consistency and completeness,
because it advocated opinions which, to the ordinary connoisseur, will
sound heretical. I now scarcely know whether I should announce it
as an Essay on Landscape Painting, and apologize for its frequent
reference to the Avorks of a particular master; or, announcing it as a
critique on particular works, apologize for its lengthy discussion of
general principles. But of whatever character the work may be con-
sidered, the motives which led me to undertake it must not be mistaken.
No zeal for the reputation of any individual, no personal feeling of any
kind, has the slightest weight or influence with me. The reputation
of the great artist to whose works I have chiefly referred, is established
on too legitimate grounds among all whose admiration is honourable, to
be in any way affected by the ignorant sarcasms of pretension and
affectation. But when public taste seems plunging deeper and deeper
into degradation day by day, and when the press universally exerts

such power as it possesses to direct the feeling of the nation more com-
pletely to all that is theatrical, affected, and false in art; while it vents
its ribaldry on the most exalted truth, and the highest ideal of landscape
that this or any other age has ever witnessed, it becomes the imperative
duty of all who have any perception or knowledge of what is really
great in art, and any desire for its advancement in England, to come
fearlessly forward, regardless of such individual interests as are likely to
be injured by the knowledge of what is good and right, to declare and
demonstrate, wherever they exist, the essence and the authority of the
Beautiful and the True.

Whatever may seem invidious or partial in the execution of my task
is dependent not so much on the tenour of the work, as on its incom-
pleteness. I have not entered into systematic criticism of all the painters
of the present day; but I have illustrated each particular excellence and
truth of art by the works in -which it exists in the highest degree,
resting satisfied that if it be once rightly felt and enjoyed in these,
it will be discovered and appreciated wherever it exists in others.
And although I have never suppressed any conviction of the superiority
of one artist over another, which I believed to be grounded on truth,
and necessary to the understanding of truth, I have been cautious
never to undermine positive rank, while I disputed relative rank.
My uniform desire and aim have been, not that the present favourite
should be admired less, but that the neglected master should be
admired more. And I know that an increased perception and sense
of truth and beauty, though it may interfere with our estimate of
the comparative rank of painters, will invariably tend to increase our
admiration of all who are really great; and he who now places
Stanfield and Callcott above Turner, will admire Stanfield and Callcott
more than he does now, when he has learned to place Turner far
above them both.

In three instances only have I spoken in direct depreciation of the
woi'ks of living artists, and these are all cases in wliich the reputa-
tion is so firm and extended, as to suffer little injury from the opinion
of an individual, and where the blame has been warranted and deserved
by the desecration of tlie highest powers.

Of the old masters I have spoken with far greater freedom; but let
it be remembered that only a portion of the work is now presented to
the public, and it must not be supposed, because in that particular
portion, and with reference to particular excellences, I have spoken in
constant depreciation, that I have no feeling of other excellences of which
cognizance can only be taken in future parts of the work. Let me not
be understood to mean more than I have said, nor be made responsible
for conclusions when I have only stated facts. I have said that the old
masters did not give the truth of nature; if the reader chooses, thence,
to infer that they were not masters at all, it is his conclusion, not mine.

Whatever I have asserted throughout the work, I have endeavoured
to ground altogether on demonstrations whicli must stand or fall by
their own strength, and which ought to involve no more reference to
authority or character than a demonstration in Euclid. Yet it is proper
for the public to know that the writer is no mere theorist, but has been
devoted from his youth to the laborious study of practical art.

Whatever has been generally affirmed of the old schools of landscape
painting is founded on familiar acquaintance with every important work
:- of art, from Antwerp to Naples. But it would be useless, wliere close

and immediate comparison with works in our own Academy is desirable,
to refer to the details of pictures at Rome or Munich; and it would be
1 impossible to speak at once with just feeling, as regarded the possessor,

and just freedom, as regarded the public, of pictures in private galleries.
Whatever particular references have been made for illustration have
been therefore confined, as far as was in my power, to works in the
National and Dulwich Galleries.

Finally, I have to apologize for the imperfection of a work which 1
4 could have wished not to have executed but with years of reflection aiJd

revisal. It is owing to my sense of the necessity of such revisal, that
i only a portion of the work is now presented to the public; but that

the crying evil which called for instant remedy. Whether I ever com-
pletely fulfil my intention will partly depend upon the spirit in which
i the present volume is received. If it be attributed to an invidious spirit,

or a desire for the advancement of individual interests, I could hope to
effect little good by farther effort. If, on the contrary, its real feeling
and intention be understood, I shall shrink from no labour in the execu-
tion of a task which may tend, however feebly, to the advancement of
the cause of real art in England, and to the honour of those great living
Masters whom we now neglect or malign, to pour our flattery into the
ear of Death, and exalt, with vain acclamation, the names of those who
neither demand our praise, nor regard our gratitude.

It is allowed by the most able writers on naval and military tactics,
that although the attack by successive divisions absolutely requires in
the attacking party such an inherent superiority, in quality of force,
and such consciousness of that superiority, as may enable his front
columns, or his leading ships, to support themselves for a considerable
period against overwhelming numbers; it yet insures, if maintained
with constancy, the most total ruin of the opposing force. Convinced
of the truth, and therefore assured of the ultimate prevalence and
victory of the principles which I have advocated, and equally confident
that the strength of the cause must give weight to the strokes of
even the weakest of its defenders, I permitted myself to yield to a
somewhat hasty and hot-headed desire of being, at whatever risk, in
the thick of the fire, and began the contest with a part, and that the
weakest and least considerable part, of the forces at my disposal. And
I now find the volume thus boldly laid before the public in a position
much resembling that of the Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar, receiving,
unsupported, the broadsides of half the enemy's fleet; while unforeseen
circumstances have hitherto prevented, and must yet for a time
prevent, my heavier ships of the line from taking any part in the
action. I watched the first moments of the struggle with some anxiety
for the solitary vessel, an anxiety which I have now ceased to feel;
for the flag of truth waves brightly through the smoke of the battle,
and my antagonists, wholly intent on the destruction of the leading

ship, have lost their position, and exposed themselves in defenceless
disorder to the attack of the following columns.

If, however, I have had no reason to regret my hasty advance, as
far as regards the ultimate issue of the struggle, I have yet found it
to occasion much misconception of the character, and some diminution
of the influence, of the present essay. For though the work has been
received as only in sanguine moments I had ventured to hope, though
I have had the pleasure of knowing that in many instances its princi-
ples have carried with them a strength of conviction amounting to a
demonstration of their truth, and that, even where it has had no other
influence, it has excited interest, suggested inquiry, and prompted to
a just and frank comparison of art with nature; yet this effect would
have been greater still, had not the work been supposed, as it seems
to have been by many readers, a completed treatise, containing a
systematized statement of the whole of my views on the subject of
modern art. Considered as such, it surprises me that the book should
have received the slightest attention. For what respect could be due
to a writer who pretended to criticise and classify the works of the
great painters of landscape, witliout developing, or even alluding to,
one single principle of the beautiful or sublime? So far from being
a completed essay, it is little more than the introduction to the mass
of evidence and illustration which I have yet to bring forward; it
treats of nothing but the initiatory steps of art, states nothing but the
elementary rules of criticism, touches only on merits attainable by
accuracy of eye and fidelity of hand, and leaves for future consideration
every one of the eclectic qualities of pictures, all of good that is
prompted by feeling, and of great that is guided by judgment; and its
function and scope should the less have been mistaken, because I have
not only most carefully arranged the subject in its commencement,
but have given frequent references throughout to the essays by which
it is intended to be succeeded, in which I sliall endeavour to point out
the signification and the value of those phenomena of external nature
which I liave been hitherto compelled to describe without reference
either to their inherent beauty, or to the lessons which may be derived
from them.

Yet, to prevent such misconception in future, I may perhaps bo
excused for occupying the reader's time with a fuller statement of the

feelings with wliieli the work was undertaken, of its general plan,
and of the conclusions and positions which I hope to be able finally
to deduce and maintain.

Nothing, perhaps, bears on the face of it more appearance of folly,
ignorance, and impertinence, than any attempt to diminish the honour
of those to whom the assent of many generations has assigned a throne;
for the truly great of later times have, almost without exception, fostered
in others the veneration of departed power which they felt themselves;
satisfied in all humility to take their seat at the feet of those whose
honour is brightened by the hoarincss of time, and to wait for the period
when the lustre of many departed days may accumulate on their own
heads, in the radiance which culminates as it recedes. The envious
and incompetent have usually been the leaders of attack, content if, like
the foulness of the earth, they may attract to themselves notice by
their noisomeness, or, like its insects, exalt themselves by virulence into
visibility. While, however, the envy of the vicious, and the insolence
of the ignorant, are occasionally shown in their nakedness by futile
efforts to degrade the dead, it is worthy of consideration whether they
may not more frequently escape detection in successful efforts to degrade
the living; whether the very same malicc may not be gratified, the
very same incompetence demonstrated, in the unjust lowering of present
greatness, and the unjust exaltation of a perished power, as, if exerted
and manifested in a less safe direction, would have classed the critic
with Nero and Caligula, with Zoilus and PeiTault, Be it remembered,
that the spirit of detraction is detected only when unsuccessful, and
receives least punishment where it effects the greatest injury; and it
cannot but be felt that there is as much danger that the rising of new
stars should be concealed by the mists which are unseen, as that those
throned in heaven should be darkened by the clouds which are visible.

There is, I fear, so much malice in the hearts of most men, that they
are chiefly jealous of that praise which can give the greatest pleasure,
and are then most liberal of eulogium when it can no longer be enjoyed.
They grudge not the whiteness of the sepulchre, because by no honour
they can bestow upon it can the senseless corpse be rendered an object
of envy; but they are niggardly of the reputation which contributes to
happiness, or advances to fortune. They are glad to obtain credit for
generosity and humility by exalting those who are beyond the reacli of

praise, and thus to escape the more painful necessity of doing homage
to a living rival. They are rejoiced to set up a standard of imaginary
excellence, which may enable them, by insisting on the inferiority of a
contemporary work to the things that have been, to withdraw the atten-
tion from its superiority to the things that are. The same under-current
of jealousy operates in our reception of animadversion. Men have
commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that
which is innocuous ; and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks
hearts and ruins fortunes, than of that which falls impotently on the
grave.

And thus well says the good and deep-minded Richard Hooker:
" To the best and wisest, while they live, the world is continually a
froward opposite; and a curious observer of their defects and imper-
fections, their virtues afterwards it as much admireth. And for this
cause, many times that which deserveth admiration would hardly be
able to find favour, if they which propose it were not content to profess
themselves therein scholars and followers of the ancient. For the world
will not endure to hear that we are wiser than any have been which
went before."—Book v. ch. vii. 3. He therefore who would maintain
the cause of contemporary excellence against that of elder time, must
have almost every class of men arrayed against him. The generous,
because they would not find matter of accusation against established
dignities; the envious, because they like not the sound of a living man's
praise: the wise, because they prefer the opinion of centuries to that of
days; and the foolish, because they are incapable of forming an opinion
of their own. Obloquy so universal is not lightly to be risked, and
the few who make an effort to stem the torrent, as it is made commonly
in favour of their own works, deserve the contempt which is their only
reward. Nor is this to be regretted, in its influence on the progress
and preservation of things technical and communicable. Respect for the
ancients is the salvation of art, though it sometimes bhnds us to its
ends. It increases the power of the painter, though it diminishes his
liberty; and if it be sometimes an incumbrance to the essays of inven-
tion, it is oftener a protection from the consequences of audacity. The
whole system and discipline of art, the collected results of the experience
of ages, might, but for the fixed authority of antiquity, be swept away by
the rage of fashion, or lost in the glare of novelty; and the knowledge

which it had taken centuries to accumulate, the principles which mighty-
minds had arrived at only in dying, might be overthrown by the phrensy
of a faction, and abandoned in the insolence of an hour.

Neither, in its general application, is the persuasion of the supe-
riority of former works less just than useful. The greater number of
them are, and must be, immeasurably nobler than any of the results
of present effort, because that which is the best of the productions of
four thousand years must necessarily be in its accumulation, beyond all
rivalry from the w^orks of any given generation; but it should always
be remembered that it is improbable that many, and impossible that all,
of such works, though the greatest yet produced, should approach
abstract perfection; that there is certainly something left for us to
carry farther, or complete; that any given generation has just the same
chance of producing some individual mind of first-rate calibi'e, as any of
its predecessors; and that if such a mind should arise, the chances are,
that, with the assistance of experience and example, it would, in its
particular and chosen path, do greater things than had been before
done.

We must therefore be cautious not to lose sight of the real use of
what has been left us by antiquity, nor to take that for a model of
perfection which is, in many cases, only a guide to it. The picture
which is looked to for an interpretation of nature is invaluable, but the
picture which is taken as a substitute for nature had better be burned :
and the young artist, while he should shrink with horror from the
iconoclast who would tear from him every landmark and light which
have been bequeathed him by the ancients, and leave him in a liberated
childhood, may be equally certain of being betrayed by those who
would give him the power and the knowledge of past time, and then
fetter his strength from all advance, and bend his eyes backward on a
beaten path; who would thrust canvass between him and the sky, and
tradition between him and God.

And such conventional teaching is the more to be dreaded, because
all that is highest in art, all that is creative and imaginative, is formed
and created by every great master for himself, and cannot be repeated
or imitated by others. We judge of the excellence of a rising writer,
not so much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done
before, as by their difference from it; and while we advise him, in his

first trials of strength, to set certain models before him with respect to
inferior points,—one for versification, another for arrangement, another
for treatment,— we yet admit not his greatness until he has broken away
from all his models, and struck forth versification, arrangement, and
treatment of his own.

Three points, therefore, I would especially insist upon as necessary to
be kept in mind in all criticism of modern art. First, that there are
few, very few, of even the best productions of antiquity, which are not
visibly and palpably imperfect in some kind or way, and conceivably
improvable by farther study; that every nation, perhaps every generation,
has in all probability some peculiar gift, some particular character of
mind, enabling it to do something different from, or something in some
sort better than, what has been before done; and that therefore, unless
art be a trick or a manufacture of which the secrets are lost, the greatest
minds of existing nations, if exerted with the same industry, passion, and
honest aim as those of past time, have a chance in their particular walk
of doing something as great, or, taking the advantage of former example
into account, even greater and better. It is difficidt to conceive by
what laws of logic some of the reviewers of the following Essay have
construed its first sentezice into a denial of this principle, a denial such
as their own conventional and shallow criticism of modern works invari-
ably implies. I have said that "nothing has been for centuries con-
secrated by public admiration without possessing in a high degree some
species of sterling excellence." Does it thence follow that it possesses in
the highest degree every species of sterling excellence? "Yet thus,"
says the sapient reviewer, he admits the fact against which he mainly
argues, namely, the superiority of these time-honoured productions."
As if the possession of an abstract excellence of some kind necessarily
implied the possession of an incomparable excellence of every kind.
There are few works of man so perfect as to admit of no conception of
their being excelled; there are thousands which have been for cen-
turies, and will be for centuries more, consecrated by public admiration,
which are yet imperfect in many respects, and have been excelled, and
may be excelled again. Do my opponents mean to assert that nothing
good can ever be bettered, and that what is best of past time is neces-
sarily best of all time ? Perugino, I suppose, possessed some species of
sterling excellence, but Perugino was excelled by RafFaelle; and so

Claude possesses some species of sterling excellence, but it follows not
that he may not be excelled bj Turner.

The second point on which I would insist is, that, if a mind loere to
arise of such power as to be capable of equalling or excelling some of
the greater works of past ages, the productions of such a mind woidd,
in all probability, be totally different in manner and matter from all
former productions; for the more powerful the intellect, the less will its
works resemble those of other men, whether predecessors or contempo-
raries. Instead of reasoning, therefore, as we commonly do, in matters
of art, that because such and such a work does not resemble that
which has hitherto been a canon, therefore it must be inferior and wrong
in principle ; let us rather admit that there is in its very dissimilarity an
increased chance of its being itself a new, and perliaps a higher, canon.
If any production of modern art can be shown to have the authority of
nature on its side, and to be based on eternal truths, it is all so much
more in its favour, so much farther proof of its power, that it is totally
different from all that have been before seen.^

The third point on which I would insist is, that, if such a mind were
to arise, it would at once divide the world of criticism into two
factions: the one, necessarily the larger and louder, composed of men
incapable of judging except by precedent, ignorant of general truth, and
acquainted only with such particular truths as may have been illustrated
or pointed out to them by former works; which class would of course
be violent in vituperation, and increase in animosity as the master
departed fartlier from their particular and preconceived canons of right,
thus wounding their vanity by impugning their judgment; the other,
necessarily narrow of number, composed of men of general knowledge
and unbiased habits of thought, who would recognize in the work of
the daring innovator a record and illustration of facts before unseized;
who would justly and candidly estimate the value of the truths so

' This principle is dangerous, but not the less true, and ncccssary to be kept in mind.
There is scarcely any truth which docs not admit of being wrested to purposes of evil; and
we must not deny the desirableness of originality, because men may err in seeking for it,
or because a pretence to it may be made, by presumption, a cloak for its incompetence.
■Nevertheless, originality is never to be sought for its own sake, otherwise it will be mere
abemition ; it should arise naturally out of hard, independent study of nature : and it should
be remembered that in many things technical it is impossible to alter without being inferior,
for therein, says Spenser, " Truth is one, and right is ever one;" but wrongs arc various
and multitudinous.

rendered, and would increase in fervour of admiration as the master
strode farther and deeper, and more daringly into dominions before
unsearched or unknown; yet diminishing in multitude as they increased
in enthusiasm. For by how much their leader became more impatient in
his step, more impetuous in his success, more exalted in his research,
by so much must the number capable of following him become nar-
rower ; until at last, supposing him never to pause in his advance, he
might be left in the very culminating moment of his consummate
achievement, with but a faithful few by his side, his former disciples
fallen away, his former enemies doubled in numbers and virulence, and
the evidence of his supremacy only to be wrought out by the devotion
of men's lives to the earnest study of the new truths he had discovered
and recorded.

Such a mind has arisen in onr days. It has gone on from strength
to strength, laying open fields of conquest peculiar to itself. It has occa-
sioned such schism in the schools of criticism as was beforehand to be
expected, and it is now at the zenith of its power, and, consequently, in
the last phase of declining popularity.

This I know, and can prove. No man, says Southey, was ever yet
convinced of any momentous truth, without feeling in himself the power
as Avell as the desire of communicating it. In asserting and demonstrat-
ing the supremacy of this great master, I shall both do immediate service
to the cause of right art, and shall be able to illustrate many principles
of landscape painting which are of general application, and have hitherto
been unacknowledged.

For anything like immediate effect on the public mind I do not hope.
" We mistake men's diseases," says Richard Baxter, " when we think
there needeth nothing to cure them of their errors but the evidence of
truth. Alas ! there are many distempers of mind to be removed before
they receive that evidence." Nevertheless, when it is fully laid before
them my duty will be done. Conviction will follow in due time.

I do not consider myself as in any way addressing, or having to do
with, the ordinary critics of the press. Their writings are not the guide,
but the expression, of public opinion. A writer for a newspaper naturally
and necessarily endeavours to meet, as nearly as he can, the feelings
of the majority of his readers; his bread depends on his doing so.
Precluded by the nature of his occupations from gaining any knowledge

of art, lie is sure that he can gain credit for it by expressing the opinions
of his readers. He mocks the picture which the public pass, and
bespatters with praise the canvass which a crowd concealed from him.

Writers like the present critic of Blackwood's Magazine ^ deserve
more respect; the respect due to honest, hopeless, helpless imbecility.
There is something exalted in the innocence of their feeblemindedness:
one cannot suspect them of partiality, for it implies feeling; nor of
prejudice, for it implies some previous acquaintance with their subject.
I do not know that, even in this age of charlatanry, I could point to a
more barefaced instance of imposture on the simplicity of the public,
than the insertion of these pieces of criticism in a respectable periodical.
We are not insulted with opinions on music from jjersons ignorant of
its notes; nor with treatises on philology by persons unacquainted with
the alphabet; but here is page after page of criticism, which one may
read from end to end, looking for something which the writer knows,
and finding nothing. Not his own language, for he has to look in his
^ dictionary, by his own confession, for a word ^ occurring in one of the

most important chapters of his Bible; not the commonest traditions
of the schools, for he does not know why Poussin was called " learned;" ®
not the most simple canons of art, for he prefers Lee to Gainsborough'';

' It is with regret that, in a work of this nature, I take notice of criticisms which,
after all, are merely intended to amuse the careless reader, and be forgotten as soon as
read ; but I do so in compliance with wishes expressed to me since the publication of
this work, by persons who have the interests of art deeply at heart, and who, I find,
attach more importance to the matter than I sliould have been disposed to do. I have,
tlicrefore, marked two or three passages which may enable the public to judge for them-
selves of the quality of these critiques ; and this I think a matter of justice to those who
might otherwise have been led astray by them, more than this I cannot consent to do. I should
have but a hound's office if I had to tear the tabard from every Rouge Sanglier of the arts,
Avith bell and bauble to back him.
2 Chiysoprase. Vide No. for October, 1842, p. 502.

' Every schoolboy knows that this epithet was given to Poussin in allusion to the pro-
found classical knowledge of the painter. The reviewer, however, (Sept. 1841) informs us
that the expression refers to his skill in " composition."

Critique on Royal Academy, 1842, — "He (Mr. Lee) often reminds us of Gains-
borough's best manner; but he is superior to him always in subjcct, composition, and va-
riety." Shade of Gainsborough! deep-thoughted, solemn Gainsborough, forgive us for
re-writing this sentence ; wc do so to gibbet its perpetrator for ever, and leave him swing-
ing in the winds of the Fool's Paradise. It is with great pain that I ever speak with
severity of the works of living masters, especially when, like Mr. Lee's, they are well
intentioned, simple, free from affectation or imitation, and evidently painted with con-
stant reference to nature. But I believe that these qualities will always secure him that
admiration which he deseiTcs, that there will be many unsophisticated and honest minds

not the most ordinary facts of nature, for we find him puzzled by the
epithet " silver," as applied to the orange blossom, evidently never
having seen anything silvery about an orange in his life, except a spoon.
Nay, he leaves us not to conjecture his calibre from internal evidence ;
he candidly tells us (Oct. 1842) that he has been studying trees only
for the last week, and bases his critical remarks chiefly on his practical
experience of birch. More disinterested than our friend Sancho, he
would disenchant the public from the magic of Turner by virtue of his
own flagellation; Xanthias-like, he would rob his master of immortality
by his own powers of endurance. What is Christopher North about ?
Does he receive his critiques from Eton or Harrow, based on the
experience of a week's bird's-nesting and its consequences? In all
kindness to Maga, I warn her, that, though the nature of this work

always ready to follow his giiidance, and answer liis efforts with delight; and, therefore,
tliat I need not fear to point out in him the want of those technical qualities which
are more especially the object of an artist's admiration. Gainsborough's power of coloxir
(it is mentioned by Sir Joshua as his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside
tliat of liubens ; he is the purest colourist. Sir Joshua himself not excepted, of the whole
English school; with liim, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not
now in Europe. Evidence enough will be seen in the following pages of my devoted admi-
ration of Turner; but I hesitate not to say, that in management and quality of single and
particular tint, in tlie purely technical part of painting. Turner is a child to Gainsborough.
Now, Mr. I.ee never aims at colour ; he does not make it his object in the slightest degree,
the spring green of vegetation is all that he desires ; and it would be about as rational to
compare his works with studied pieces of colouring, as the modulation of the Calabrian
pipe with the harmony of a full orchestra. Gainsborough's hand is as light as the sweep of a
cloud, as swift as the flash of a sunbeam ; lice's execution is feeble and spotty. Gains-
borough's masses arc as broad as the first division in heaven of light from darkness; Lee's
(perhaps necessarily, considering the effects of flickering sunlight at which he aims) are as
fragmentary as liis leaves, and as numerous. Gainsborough's forms are grand, simple, and
ideal ; Lee's are small, confused, and unselected. Gainsborough never loses sight of his
picture as a whole ; Lee is but too apt to be shackled by its parts. In a word, Gainsborough
is an immortal painter; and liCe, though on the right road, is yet in the early stages of
his art; and the man who could imagine any resemblance or point of comparison between
them, is not only a novice in art, but lias not capacity ever to be anything more. He
may be pardoned for not comprehending Turner, for long preparation and discipline are
necessary before the abstract and profound pliilosophy of that artist can be met; but Gains-
borough's excellence is based on principles of art long acknowledged, and facts of nature uni-
versally apparent; and I insist more particularly on the revie^vcr's want of feeling for his works,
because it proves a truth of which the public ought especially to be assured, that those who
lavish abuse on the great men of modern times ai'e equally incapable of perceiving the real
excellence of established canons, are ignorant of the commonest and most acknowledged princi-
pia of the art, blind to the most palpable and comprehensible of its beauties, incapable of
distinguishing, if lefl to themselves, a master's work from the vilest school-copy, and founding
their applause of those great works which they praise, cither in pure liypocrisy, or in admira-
tion of their defects.

precludes me from devoting space to the exposure, there may come
a tmie when the public shall be themselves able to distinguish ribaldry
from reasoning; and may require some better and higher qualifications
in their critics of art, than the experience of a schoolboy, and the
capacities of a buffoon.

It is not, however, merely to vindicate the reputation of those whom
writers like these defame, which would but be to anticipate by a few
years the natural and inevitable reaction of the public mind, that I am
devoting years of labour to the developement of the principles on which
the great productions of recent art are based. I have a higher end in
view, one which may, I think, justify me, not only in the sacrifice of
my own time, but in calling on my readers to follow me through an
investigation far more laborious than could be adequately rewarded by
mere insight into the merits of a particular master, or the spirit of
a particular age.

It is a question which, in spite of the claims of Painting to be called
the sister of Poetry, appears to me to admit of considerable doubt,
whether art has ever, except in its earliest and rudest stages, possessed
anything like efficient moral influence on mankind. Better the state of
Rome when " magnorum artificum frangebat pocula miles, ut phaleris
gauderet equus," than when her walls flashed with the marble and the
gold, " nec cessabat luxuria id agere, ut quam plurimum incendiis per-
dat." Better the state of religion in Italy, before Giotto had broken on
one barbarism of the Byzantine schools, than when the painter of the
Last Judgment, and the sculptor of the Perseus, sat revelling side by
side. It appears to me that a rude symbol is oftener more efficient
than a refined one in touching the heart; and that as pictures rise in
rank as works of art, they are regarded with less devotion and more
curiosity.

But, however this may be, and whatever influence we may be disposed
to admit in the great works of sacred art, no doubt can, I think, be
reasonably entertained as to the utter inutility of all that has been
hitherto accomplished by the painters of landscape. No moral end
has been answered, no permanent good effected, by any of their works.
They may have amused the intellect, or exercised the ingenuity, but
they never have spoken to the heart. Landscape art has never taught
us one deep or holy lesson; it has not recorded that which is fleeting,

nor penetrated that which was hidden^ nor interpreted that which was
obscure; it has never made us feel the wonder, nor the power, nor the
glory, of the universe; it has not prompted to devotion, nor touched
Avith awe; its power to move and exalt the heart has been fatally abused,
and perished in the abusing. That which ought to have been a witness
to the omnipotence of God, has become an exhibition of the dexterity
of man; and that which should have lifted our thoughts to the throne
of the Deity, has encumbered them with the inventions of his creatures.

If we stand for a little time before any of the more celebrated works
of landscape, listening to the comments of the passers by, we shall hear
numberless expressions relating to the skill of the artist, but very few
relating to the perfection of nature. Hundreds will be voluble in admi-
ration, for one who will be silent in delight. Multitudes will laud the
composition, and depart with the praise of Claude on their lips; not
one will feel as if it were no composition, and depart with the praise of
God in his heart.

These are the signs of a debased, mistaken, and false school of paint-
ing. The skill of the artist, and the perfection of his art, are never
proved until both are forgotten. The artist has done nothing till he
lias concealed himself; the art is imperfect which is visible; the
feelings are but feebly touched, if they permit us to reason on the
methods of their excitement. In the reading of a great poem, in the
hearing of a noble oration, it is the subject of the writer, and not his
skill, his passion, not his power, on which oxir minds are fixed. We
see as he sees, but we see not him. We become part of him, feel with
him, judge, behold with him; but we think of him as little as of our-
selves. Do we think of iEschylus, while we wait on the silence of
Cassandra ^; or of Shakspeare, while we listen to the wailing of Lear ?

' There is a line touch in the Frogs of Aristophanes, aUuding probably to this part of the
Agamemnon;

*Eydij 5' exttipoy rp criouTrp, Kal /xe tout' irepir^v
ovx VTtov ^ vvv ol AaXowres.
The same remark might be -well applied to the seemingly vacant or incomprehensible portions
of Turner's canvass. In their mysterious and intense fire, there is much coiTcspondence be-
tween the mind of iEschylus and that of our great painter. They share at least one thing in
common, impopularity.

Not so. The power of the masters is sliown by their self-annihilation.
It is commensurate with the degree in which they themselves appear not
in their work. The harp of the minstrel is untruly touched, if his own
glory is all that it records. Every great writer may be at once known
by his guiding the mind far from himself, to the beauty which is not of
his creation, and the knowledge which is past his finding out.

And must it ever be otherwise with painting ? for otherwise it has ever
been. Her subjects have been regarded as mere themes on which the
artist's power is to be displayed; and that power, be it of imitation,
composition, idealization, or of whatever other kind, is the chief object
of the spectator's observation. It is man and his fancies, man and
his trickeries, man and his inventions, poor, paltry, weak, self-sighted
man, which the connoisseur for ever seeks and worships. Among pot-
sherds and dunghills, among drunken boors and withered beldames,
through every scene of debauchery and degradation, we follow the
erring artist, not to receive one wholesome lesson, not to be touched
with pity, nor moved with indignation, but to watch the dexterity of the
pencil, and gloat over the glittering of the hue.

I speak not only of the works of the Flemish school, I wage no war
with their admirers; they may be left in peace to count the spicula of
haystacks and the hairs of donkeys; it is also of works of real mind
that I speak, works in which there are evidences of genius and workings
of power, works which have been held up as containing all of the
beautiful that art can reach or man conceive. And I assert with sorroAV,
that all hitherto done in landscape, by those commonly conceived its
masters, has never prompted one holy thought in the minds of nations.
It has begun and ended in exhibiting the dexterities of individuals, and
conventionalities of systems. Filling the world with the honour of
Claude and Salvator, it has never once tended to the honour of God.

Does the reader start in reading these last words, as if they \A^ere
those of wild enthusiasm, as if I were lowering the dignity of religion
by supposing that its cause could be advanced by such means? His
surprise proves my position. It does sound like wild, like absurd
enthusiasm, to expect any definite moral agency in the painters of land-
scape ; but ought it so to sound ? Are the gorgeousness of the visible
hue, the glory of the realized form, instruments in the artist's hand
so ineffective, that they can answer no nobler purpose than the amusc-

ment of curiosity, or the engagement of idleness? Must it not be owing
to gross neglect or misapplication of the means at his command, that
while words and tones (means of representing nature surelj less power-
ful than lines and colours) can kindle and purify the very inmost souls
of men, the painter can only hope to entertain by his efforts at expression,
and must remain for ever brooding over his incommunicable thoughts ?

The cause of the evil lies, I believe, deep-seated in the system of
ancient landscape art; it consists, in a word, in the painter's taking
upon him to modify God's works at his pleasiTre, casting the shadow of
himself on all he sees, constituting himself arbiter where it is honour
to be a disciple, and exhibiting his ingenuity by the attainment of com-
binations whose highest praise is that they are impossible. We shall
not pass through a single gallery of old art, without hearing this topic
of praise confidently advanced. The sense of artificialness, the absence
of all appearance of reality, the clumsiness of combination by which the
meddling of man is made evident, and the feebleness of his hand
branded on the inorganization of his monstrous creature, are advanced
as a proof of inventive j)ower, as an evidence of abstracted conception;
nay, the violation of specific form, the utter abandonment of all
organic and individual character of object (numberless examples of
which from the works of the old masters are given in the following
pages), is constantly held up by the unthinking critic as the foundation
of the grand or historical style, and the first step to the attainment of
a pure ideal. Now, there is but one grand style, in the treatment of
all subjects whatsoever, and that style is based on the perfect knowledge,
and consists in the simple unencumbered rendering, of the specific
characters of the given object, be it man, beast, or flower. Every
change, caricature, or abandonment of such specific character is as
destructive of grandeur as it is of truth, of beauty as of propriety.
Every alteration of the features of nature has its origin either in power-
less indolence or blind audacity; in the folly which forgets, or the
insolence which desecrates, works which it is the pride of angels to
know, and their privilege to love.

We sometimes hear such infringement of universal laws justified on
the plea, that the frequent introduction of mythological abstractions
into ancient landscape requires an imaginary character of form in the
material objects with which they are associated. Something of this khid
is hinted in Reynolds's fourteenth Discourse; but nothing can be more

false tlian such reasoning. If there be any truth or beauty in the
original conception of the spiritual being so introduced, there must be a
true and real connection between that abstract idea ^ and the features of
nature as she was and is. The woods and Avaters which were peopled
by the Greek with typical life were not different from those which now
wave and murmur by the ruins of his shrines. With their visible and
actual forms A^^as his imagination filled, and the beauty of its incarnate
creatures can only be understood among the pure realities which
originally modelled their conception. If divinity be stamped upon the
features, or apparent in the form, of the spiritual creature, the mind will
not be shocked by its appearing to ride upon the whirlwind, and tramf)le
on the storm; but if mortality, no violation of the characters of the
earth will forge one single link to bind it to the heaven.

Is there then no such thing as elevated ideal character of landscape ?
Undoubtedly; and Sir Joshua, with the great master of this character,
Nicolo Poussin, present to his thoughts, ought to have arrived at more
true conclusions respecting its essence, than, as we shall presently see,
are deduciblc from his works. The true ideal of landscape is precisely
the same as that of the human form; it is the expression of the specific
— not the individual, but the specific — characters of every object, in
their perfection. There is an ideal form of every herb, flower, and tree;
it is that form to which every individual of the species has a tendency to
arrive, freed from the influence of accident or disease. Every landscape
painter should know the specific characters of every object he has to
represent, rock, flower, or cloud; and in his highest ideal works all
their distinctions will be perfectly expressed, broadly or delicately,
slightly or completely, according to the nature of the subject, and the
degree of attention which is to be drawn to the particular object by the
part it plays in the composition. Where the sublime is aimed at, such

' I do not know any passage in ancient literature in which this connection is more exqui-
sitely illustrated than in the lines, burlesque though they be, descriptive of the approach of
the chorus in the Clouds of Aristophanes; a writer, by the by, who, I believe, knew and felt
more of the noble landscape character of his country than any whose works have come down
to us, except Homer. The individuality and distinctness of conccption, the visible cloud
character which every word of this particular passage brings out into more dewy and bright
^ existence, arc to me as refreshing as the real breathing of mountain winds. The line " Sicfc tcbv

Kot\aiv Ka\ Tuv ^aasoiv avraX irXdyiat," could have been written by none but an ardent lover of
^ hill scenery, one who had watched, hour after hour, the peculiar oblique sidelong action of

!| descending clouds, as they form along the hollows and ravines of the hills. There are no

lumpish solidities, no pillowy protuberances here. All is melting, drifting, evanesccnt; full of
air, and light, and dew.

distinctions will be indicated with severe simplicity, as the muscular
markings in a colossal statue; where beauty is the object, they must be
expressed with the utmost refinement of which the hand is capable.

This may sound like a contradiction of principles advanced by the
highest authorities; but it is only a contradiction of a particular and
most mistaken application of them. Much evil has been done to art by
the remarks of historical painters on landscape. Accustomed themselves
to treat their backgrounds slightly and boldly, and feeling (though, as I
shall presently show, only in consequence of their own deficient powers)
that any approach to completeness of detail therein injures their picture
by interfering with its principal subject, they naturally lose sight of the
peculiar and intrinsic beauties of things which to them are injurious,
unless subordinate. Hence the frequent advice given by Reynolds and
others, to neglect speciJiG form in landscape, and treat its materials in
large masses, aiming only at general truths : the flexibility of foliage,
but not its kind; the rigidity of rock, but not its mineral character. In
the passage more especially bearing on this subject (in the eleventh
Lecture of Sir J. Reynolds), we are told that the landscape painter
works not for the virtuoso or the naturalist, but for the general observer
of life and nature." This is true, in precisely the same sense that the
sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer
of life and nature. Yet the sculptor is not, for this reason, permitted
to be wanting either in knowledge or expression of anatomical detail;
and the more refined that expression can be rendered, the more perfect
is his work. That which to the anatomist is the end, is to the
sculptor the means. The former desires details for their own sake; the
latter, that by means of them he may kindle his work with life, and
stamp it with beauty. And so in landscape; botanical or geological
details are not to be given as matter of curiosity or subject of search,
but as the ultimate elements of every species of expression and order of
loveliness.

In his observation on the foreground of the San Pietro Martire, Sir
Joshua advances, as matter of praise, that the plants are discriminated
"just as much as was necessary for variety, and no more." Had this
foreground been occupied by a group of animals, we should have been
surprised to be told that the lion, the serpent, and the dove, or whatever
other creatures might have been introduced, were distinguished from
each other just as much as was necessary for variety, and no more.

Yet is it to be supposed that the distinctions of the vegetable world are
less complete, less essential, or less divine in origin, than those of the
animal? If the distinctive forms of animal life are meant for our
reverent observance, is it likely that those of vegetable life are made
merely to be swept away ? The latter are indeed less obvious and less
obtrusive; for which very reason there is less excuse for omitting them,
because there is less danger of their disturbing the attention or engaging
the fancy.

But Sir Joshua is as inaccurate in fact, as false in principle. He
himself furnishes a most singular instance of the very error of which he
accuses Yasari,—the seeing what he expects; or, rather, in the present
case, not seeing what he does not expect. The great masters of Italy,
almost without exception, and Titian perhaps more than any (for he had
the highest knowledge of landscape), are in the constant habit of ren-
dering every detail of their foregrounds with the most laborious botanical
fidelity: witness the " Bacchus and Ariadne," in which the foreground
is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose ^;
every stamen of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of
the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the
most exquisite accuracy. The foregrounds of RaflPaelle's two cartoons,
" The Miraculous Draught of Fishes" and " The Charge to Peter,"
are covered with plants of the common sea colewort (^Cramhe maritima),
of which the siuuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have ex-
hausted the patience of any other artist; but have appeared worthy of
prolonged and thoughtful labour to the great mind of llafFaelle.

' A mistake, of which the reader will find the coiTection in the following letter, for which I
sincerely thank the writer, and which I think it right to publish, as it is no less confirmatory
of the principal assertions in the text, which it is my great object to establish, than con-
demnatory of my carelessness in mistaking the plant in question.

" Mr. Newton, of the Department of Antiquities, mentioned to me your name, and I then told
him of a slight (but important to the naturalist) unintentional inaccuracy into which you had
fallen at p. xxvii. of the ' Preface to the Second Edition,' (I quote ed. 3. London, 1846,) in
which, speaking of the ' Bacchus and Ai-iadne,' a picture which, like you, I have absolutely
mentally and ocularly * swallowed^ many a time, you speak of ''the wild rose, eveiy stamen,'
&c.; now as you afterwards I'efer botanically to the Crambe maritima, allow me to say that the
plant you call a wild rose is an admirable study from a common Italian and Greek plant,
figured in Sibthorp's ' Flora Graca,' and called Capparis spinosa. By calling some day,
when you are in the Museum direction, I can show you this-, or should you be near the
Linnajan Society's house, Soho Square (in the corner), and should ask for Mr. Kippist, the
librarian, he will show you Sibthorp's figure.—Adam White. Zoological Department, British
Museum, March 13. 1849."

of all authority, that thorough knowledge of the lowest details is
necessarj and full expression of them right, even in the highest class of
historical painting; that it will not take away from, nor interfere with,
the interest of the figures, but, rightly managed, must add to and
elucidate it; and, if further proof be wanting, I would desire the reader
to compare the background of Sir Joshua's " Holy Family," in the
National Gallery, with that of Nicolo Poussin's " Nursing of Jupiter," in
the Dulwich Gallery. The first, owing to the utter neglect of all
botanical detail, has lost every atom of ideal character, and reminds us
of nothing but an English fashionable flower-garden; the formal
pedestal adding considerably to the effect. Poussin's, in which every
vine leaf is drawn with consummate skill and untiring diligence, pro-
duces not only a tree group of the most perfect grace and beauty, but
one which, in its pure and simple truth, belongs to every age of nature,
and adapts itself to the history of all time. If then, such entire render-
ing of specific character be necessary to the historical painter, in cases
where these lower details are entirely subordinate to his human subject,
how much more must it be necessary in landscape, where they them-
selves constitute the subject, and where the undivided attention is to be
drawn to them I

There is a singular sense in which the child may peculiarly be said to
be father of the man. In many arts and attainments, the first and last
stages of progress, the infancy and the consummation, have many
features in common; while the intermediate stages are wdiolly unlike
either, and are farthest from the right. Thus it is in the progress of a
painter's handling. We see the perfect child, the absolute beginner,
using of necessity a broken, imperfect, inadequate line, which, as he
advances, becomes gradually firm, severe, and decided. Yet before he
becomes a perfect artist, this severity and decision will again be ex-
changed for a light and careless stroke, which in many points will far
more resemble that of his childhood than of his middle age, differing
from it only by the consummate effect wrought out by the apparently
inadequate means. So it is in many matters of opinion. Our first and
last coincide, though on different grounds; it is the middle stage which
is farthest from the truth. Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble
fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, which it is the
pride of utmost age to recover.

form upon the subject of detail in works of art. Infants in judgment,
we look for specific character, and complete finish; we delight in the
faithful plumage of the well known bird, in the finely drawn leafage of
the discriminated flower. As we advance in judgment, we scorn such
detail altogether; we look for impetuosity of execution, and breadth of
effect. But, perfected in judgment, we return in a great measure to our
early feelings, and thank Raffaelle for the shells upon his sacred beach,
and for the delicate stamens of the herbage beside his inspired St.
Catharine. ^

Of those who take interest in art, nay, even of artists themselves,
there are a hundred in the middle stage of judgment, for one who is in
the last: and this, not because they are destitute of the power to dis-
cover, or the sensibility to enjoy, the truth, but because the truth bears
so much semblance of error, the last stage of the journey to the first,
that every feeling which guides to it is checked in its origin. The
rapid and powerful artist necessarily looks with such contempt on those
who seek minutias of detail rather than grandeur of impression, that it is
almost impossible for him to conceive of the great last step in art, by
which both become compatible. He has so often to dash the delicacy
out of the pupil's work, and to blot the details from his encumbered
canvass; so frequently to lament the loss of breadth and unity, and so
seldom to reprehend the imperfection of minutiEe, that he necessarily
looks upon complete parts as the very sign of error, weakness, and
ignorance. Thus, frequently to the latest period of his life, he separates,
like Sir Joshua, as chief enemies, the details and the whole, which an
artist cannot be great unless he reconciles; and because details alone,
and unreferred to a final purpose, are the sign of a tyro's work, he loses
sight of the remoter truth, that details perfect in unity, and contributing
to a final purpose, are the sign of the production of a consummate
master;

It is not, therefore, detail sought for its own sake, not the calculable
bricks of the Dutch house-painters, nor the numbered hairs and mapped
wrinkles of Denner, which constitute great art, they are the lowest
and most contemptible art; but it is detail referred to a great end,
sought for the sake of the inestimable beauty which exists in the

' Let not this principle be confused with Fuseli's " love for what is called deception in
painting marks either the infancy or decrepitude of a nation's taste," Realization to the mind
necessitates not deception to the eye.

slightest and least of God's works^ and treated in a manly, broad, and
impressive manner. There may be as much greatness of mind, as much
nobility of manner, in a master's treatment of the smallest features, as in
his management of the most vast; and this greatness of manner chiefly
consists in seizing the specific character of the object, together with all
the great qualities of beauty which it has in common with higher orders
of existence while he utterly rejects the meaner beauties which are
accidentally peculiar to the object, and yet not specifically characteristic
of it. I cannot give a better instance than the painting of the flowers in
Titian's picture above mentioned. While every stamen of the rose is
given, because this was necessary to mark the flower, and while the
curves and large characters of the leaves are rendered with exquisite
fidelity, there is no vestige of particular texture, of moss, bloom,
moisture, or any otlier accident, no dewdrops, nor flies, nor trickeries
of any kind; nothing beyond the simple forms and hues of the flowers,
even those hues themselves being simplified and broadly rendered.
The varieties of Aquilegia have, in reality, a greyish and uncertain
tone of colour; and, I believe, never attain the intense purity of blue
with which Titian has gifted his flower. But the master does not aim
at the particular colour of individual blossoms; he seizes the type of all,
and gives it with the utmost purity and simplicity of which colour is
capable.

These laws being observed, it will not only be in the power, it will be
the duty, the imperative duty, of the landscape painter, to descend
to the lowest details with undiminished attention. Every herb and
flower of the field has its specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; it has its
peculiar habitation, expression, and function. The highest art is that
which seizes this specific character, which developes and illustrates it,
which assigns to it its proper position in the landscape, and which, by
means of it, enhances and enforces the great impression which the
picture is intended to convey. Nor is it of herbs and flowers alone that
such scientific representation is required. Every class of rock, every
kind of earth, every form of cloud, must be studied with equal indus-
try, and rendered with equal precision. And thus we find ourselves
unavoidably led to a 1 conclusion directly opposed to that constantly

' I shall show, in a future portion of the work, that there are principles of universal beauty
common to all the creatures of God; and that it is by the greater or less share of tlicse that
one form becomes nobler or meaner than anotlier.

enunciated dogma of the parrot-critic, tliat the features of nature must
be " generalized; " a dogma whose inherent and broad absurdity would
long ago have been detected, if it had not contained in its convenient
falsehood an apology for indolence, and a disguise for incapacity.
Generalized! As if it were possible to generalize things generically
different. Of such common cant of criticism I extract a characteristic
passage from one of the reviews of this work, that in this year's
Athenaeum for February 10th: — " He (the author) would have geologic
" landscape painters, dendrologic, meteorologic, and doubtless entomo-
" logic, ichthyologic, every kind of physiologic painter united in the
" same person; yet, alas for true poetic art among all these learned
" Thebans ! No; landscape painting must not be reduced to mere por-
" traiture of inanimate substances, Denner-like portraiture of the earth's

" view of their art; they neglected particular traits, and gave only
general features. Thus they attained mass and force, harmonious
union and simple effect, elements of grandeur and beauty."

To all such criticism as this (and I notice it only because it expresses
the feelings into which many sensible and thoughtful minds have been
fashioned by infection), the answer is simple and straightforward. It is
just as impossible to generalize granite and slate, as it is to generalize a
man and a cow. An animal must be either one animal or another ani-
mal ; it cannot be a general animal, or it is no animal: and so a rock
must be either one rock or another rock; it cannot be a general rock,
or it is no rock. If there were a creature in the foreground of a picture,
of which he could not decide whether it were a pony or a pig, the Athe-
najum critic would perhaps affirm it to be a generalization of pony and
pig, and consequently a high example of " harmonious union and simple
effect." But I should call it simple bad drawing. And so when there
are things in the foreground of Salvator of which I cannot pronounce
whether they be granite, or slate, or tufa, I affirm that there is in them
neither harmonious union, nor simple eflPect, but simple monstrosity.
There is no grandeur, no beauty of any sort or kind; nothing but de-
struction, disorganization, and ruin; to be obtained by the violation of
natural distinctions. The elements of brutes can only mix in corruption,
the elements of inorganic nature only in annihilation. We may, if we
choose, put together centaur monsters; but they must still be half man
half horse; they cannot be both man and horse, nor either man or horse.

And so, if landscape painters choose, they may give us rocks which shall
be half granite and half slate; but they cannot give us rocks which
shall be either granite or slate, nor which shall be both granite and
slate. Every attempt to produce that which shall be any rock, ends in
the production of that which is no rock.

It is true that the distinctions of rocks and plants and clouds are less
conspicuous, and less constantly subjects of observation, than those of the
animal creation; but the difficulty of observing them proves not the
merit of overlooking them. It only accounts for the singular fact, that
the world has never yet seen anything like a perfect school of landscape.
For just as the highest historical painting is based on perfect knowledge
of the workings of the human form and human mind, so must the
highest landscape painting be based on perfect cognizance of the form,
functions, and system of every organic or definitely structured existence
which it has to represent. This proposition is self-evident to every
thinking mind; and every principle which appears to contradict it is
either misstated or misunderstood. For instance, the Athenaium critic
calls the right statement of generic difference " Denner-\\ke. portraiture."
If he can find anything like Denner in what I have advanced as the
utmost perfection of landscape art, the recent works of Turner, he is
welcome to his discovery and his theory. No ; Denner-like portraiture
would be the endeavour to paint the separate crystals of quartz and
felspar in the granite, and the separate flakes of mica in the mica slate;
an attempt just as far removed from what I assert to be great art (the
bold rendering of the generic characters of form in both rocks), as
modern sculpture of lace and button-holes is from the Elgin marbles.
Martin has attempted this Denner-like portraiture of sea foam with the
assistance of an acre of canvass; with what ;success, I believe the
critics of his last year's Canute had, for once, sense enough to decide.

Again, it does not follow that, because such accurate knowledge is
necessary to the painter, it should constitute the painter; nor that such
knowledge is valuable in itself, and without reference to high ends.
Every kind of knowledge may be sought from ignoble motives, and for
ignoble ends; and in those who so possess it, it is ignoble knowledge;
while the very same knowledge is in another mind an attainment of the
highest dignity, and conveying the greatest blessing. This is the dif-
ference between the mere botanist's knowledge of plants, and the great

poet's or painter's knowledge of them. The one notes their distinctions
for the sake of swelling his herbarium, the other, that he may render
them vehicles of expression and emotion. The one counts the stamens,
and affixes a name, and is content; the other observes every character
of the plant's colour and form; considering each of its attributes as an
element of expression, he seizes on its lines of grace or energy, rigidity
or repose; notes the feebleness or the vigour, the serenity or tremulous-
ness of its hues; observes its local habits, its love or fear of peculiar
places, its nourishment or destruction by particular influences; he asso-
ciates it in his mind with all the features of the situations it inhabits,
and the ministering agencies necessary to its support. Thenceforward
the flower is to him a living creature, with histories written on its leaves,
and passions breathing in its motion. Its occurrence in his picture is no
mere point of colour, no meaningless spark of light. It is a voice rising
from the earth, a new chord of the mind's music, a necessary note in
the harmony of his picture, contributing alike to its tenderness and its
dignity, nor less to its loveliness than its truth.

The particularization of flowers by Shakspeare and Shelley affords
us the most frequent examples of the exalted use of these inferior details.
It is true that the painter has not the same power of expressing the thoughts
with which his symbols are connected; he is dependent in some degree
on the knowledge and feeling of the spectator; but, by the destruction
of such details, his foreground is not rendered more intelligible to the
ignorant, although it ceases to have interest with the informed. It is
no excuse for illegible writing, that there are j)ersons who could not have
read it had it been plain.

I repeat then, generalization, as the word is commonly understood, is,
the act of a vulgar, incapable, and unthinking mind. To see in all
mountains nothing but similar heaps of earth; in all rocks, nothing but
similar concretions of solid matter; in all trees, nothing but similar
accumulations of leaves, is no sign of high feeling or extended thought.^
The more we know, and the more we feel, the more we separate; we
separate to obtain a more perfect unity. Stones, in the thoughts of the
peasant, lie as they do on his field; one is like another, and there is no
connection between any of them. The geologist distinguishes, and in
distinguishing connects them. Each becomes different from his fellow,
but in differing from, assumes a relation to, his fellow; they are no more

each the repetition of the other, they are parts of a system; and each
implies and is connected with the existence of the rest. That generali-
zation then is right, true, and noble, which is based on the knowledge of
the distinctions and observance of the relations of individual kinds.
That generalization is wrong, false, and contemptible, which is based on
ignorance of the one, and disturbance of the other. It is indeed no
generalization, but confusion and chaos; it is the generalization of a/
defeated army into undistinguishable impotence, the generalization of
the elements of a dead carcass into dust.

Let us, then, without farther notice of the dogmata of the schools of
art, follow forth those conclusions to which we are led by observance of
the laws of nature.

I have just said that every class of rock, earth, and cloud, must be
known by the painter, with geologic and meteorologic accuracy.^ Nor
is this merely for the sake of obtaining the character of these minor
features themselves, but more especially for the sake of reaching that
simple, earnest, and consistent character which is visible in the whole
effect of every natural landscape. Every geological formation has
features entirely peculiar to itself; definite lines of fracture, giving rise
to fixed resultant forms of rock and earth; peculiar vegetable products,
among which still farther distinctions are wrought out by variations of
climate and elevation. From such modifying circumstances arise the
infinite varieties of the orders of landscape, of which each one shows
perfect harmony among its several features, and possesses an ideal
beauty of its own; a beauty not distinguished merely by such peculiarities
as are wrought on the human form by change of climate, but by generic
differences the most marked and essential; so that its classes cannot be
generalized or amalgamated by any expedients whatsoever. The level

' Is not this, it may be asked, demanding more from him than life can accomplish ?
Not one whit. Nothing more than knowledge of external characteristics is absolutely re-
quired ; and even if, which were more desirable, thorough scientific knowledge had to be
attained, the time which our artists spend in multiplying crude sketches, or finishing their un-
intelligent embryos of the study, would render them masters of every science that modern
investigations have organized, and familiar with every form that nature manifests. Martin,
if the time which he must have spent on the abortive bubbles of his " Canute " had been passed
in walking on the sea-shore, might have learned enough to enable him to produce, with a
few strokes, a picture which would have smote, like the sound of the sea, upon men's hearts
for ever.

marshes and rich meadows of the tertiary, the rounded swells and short
pastures of the chalk, the square-built cliffs and cloven dells of the lower
limestone, the soaring peaks and ridgy precipices of the primaries, have
nothing in common among them, nothing which is not distinctive and
incommunicable. Their very atmospheres are different, their clouds
are different, their humours of storm and sunshine are different, their
flowers, animals, and forests are different. By each order of landscape,
and its orders, I repeat, are infinite in number, corresponding not only
to the several species of rock, but to tlie particular circumstances of the
rock's deposition or after-treatment, and to the incalculable varieties of
climate, aspect,, and human interference; by each order of landscape,
I say, peculiar lessons are intended to be taught, and distinct plea-
sures to be conveyed; and it is as utterly futile to talk of generalizing
their impressions into an ideal landscape, as to talk of amalgamating all
nourishment into one ideal food, gathering all music into one ideal
movement, or confounding all thought into one ideal idea.

There is, however, such a thing as composition of different orders of
landscape, though there can be no generalization of them. Nature herself
perpetually brings together elements of various expression. Her barren
rocks stoop through wooded promontories to the plain; and the wreaths
of the vine show through their green shadows the wan light of unperish-
ing snow.

The painter, therefore, has the choice of either working out the
isolated character of some one distinct class of scene, or of bringing
together a multitude of different elements, which may adorn each other
by contrast.

I believe that the simple and uncombined landscape, if wrought out
with due attention to the ideal beauty of the features it includes, will
always be the most powerful in its appeal to the heart. Contrast
increases the splendour of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds
to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. On this subject I shall
have much to say hereafter; at present I merely wish to suggest the
possibility, that the single-minded painter, who is working out, on
broad and simple principles, a piece of unbroken harmonious landscape
character, may be reaching an end in art quite as high as the more am-
bitious student who is always " within five minutes' walk of everywhere,"

making tlie ends of the earth contribute to his pictorial guazzetto and
the certainty, that unless the composition of the latter be regulated by
severe judgment, and its members connected by natural links, it must
become more contemptible in its motley, than an honest study of road-
side weeds.

Let me, at the risk of tediously repeating what is universally known,
refer to the common principles of historical composition, in order that I
may show their application to that of landscape. The merest tyro in art
knows that every figure which is unnecessary to his picture is an en-
cumbrance to it, and that every figure which does not sympathize with
the action interrupts it. He that gathereth not with me scattereth,
is, or ought to be, the ruling principle of his plan; and the power and
grandeur of his result will be exactly proportioned to the unity of feeling
manifested in its several parts, and to the propriety and simplicity of the
relations in which they stand to each other.

All this is equally applicable to the materials of inanimate nature.
Impressiveness is destroyed by a multitude of contradictory facts, and
the accumulation which is not harmonious is discordant. He who en-
deavours to unite simplicity with magnificence, to guide from solitude to
festivity, and to contrast melancholy with mirth, must end by the pro-
duction of confused inanity. There is a peculiar spirit possessed by every
kind of scene; and although a point of contrast may sometimes enhance
and exhibit this particular feeling more intensely, it must be only a point,
not an equalized opposition. Every introduction of new and different
feeling weakens the force of what has already been impressed, and the
mingling of all emotions must conclude in apathy, as the mingling of all
colours in white.

Let us test by these simple rules one of the " ideal" landscape com-
positions of Claude, that known to the Italians as II Mulino.

The foreground is a piece of very lovely and perfect forest scenery,
with a dance of peasants by a brook side; quite enough subject to form,
in the hands of a master, an impressive and complete picture. On the

' " A green field is a sight which makes us pardon
The absence of that more sublime construction
, Which mixes up vines, olives, precipices, '

other side of the brook, however, we have a piece of pastoral life; a man
with some bulls and goats tumbling headforemost into the water, owing
to some sudden paralytic affection of all their legs. Even this group is
one too many; the shepherd had no business to drive his flock so near
the dancers, and the dancers will certainty frighten the cattle. But when
we look farther into the picture, our feelings receive a sudden and violent
shock, by the unexpected appearance, amidst things pastoral and musical,
of the military; a number of Roman soldiers riding in on hobby-horses,
with a leader on foot, apparently encouraging them to make an immediate
and decisive charge on the musicians. Beyond the soldiers is a circular
temple, in exceedingly bad repair; and close beside it, built against its
very walls, a neat watermill in full work. By the mill flows a large
river with a weir all across it. The Aveir has not been made for the mill
(for that receives its water from the hills by a trough carried over the
temple), but it is particularly ugly and monotonous in its line of fall,
and the water below forms a dead-looking pond, on which some people
are fishing in punts. The banks of this river resemble in contour the
later geological formations around London, constituted chiefly of broken
pots and oyster-shells. At an inconvenient distance from the water-side
stands a city, composed of twenty-five round towers and a pyramid.
Beyond the city is a handsome bridge; beyond the bridge, part of the
Campagna, with fragments of aqueducts; beyond the Campagna, the
chain of the Alps; on the left, the cascades of Tivoli.

This is, I believe, a fair example of what is commonly called an
" ideal" landscape; i. e. a group of the artist's studies from nature, indi-
vidually spoiled, selected with such opposition of character as may
insure their neutralising each other's effect, and united with sufficient
unnatviralness and violence of association to insure their producing a
general sensation of the impossible. Let us analyze the separate subjects
a little in thjs ideal work of Claude's.

Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary
extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the reader
imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and motion of
the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain.
The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly,
for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty wreck of

the bones of men.^ The long knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in
the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along
the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the sunlight. Hillocks of
mouldering earth heave around him, as if the dead beneath were
struggling in their sleep; scattered blocks of black stone, four-square,
remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon another, lie upon them to
keep them down. A dull purple poisonous haze stretches level along the
desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red
light rests, like dying fire on defiled altars. The blue ridge of the Alban
Mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky.
Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories
of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains, the shattered
aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, like shadowy and
countless troops of funeral mourners, passing from a nation's grave.

Let us, with Claude, make a few " ideal" alterations in this landscape.
First, we will reduce the multitudinous precipices of the Apennines to
four sugar-loaves. Secondly, we will remove the Alban Mount, and put
a large dust-heap in its stead. Next, we will knock down the greater
part of the aqueducts, and leave only an arch or two, that their infinity
of length may no longer be painful from its monotony. For the purple
mist and declining sun, we will substitute a bright blue sky, with round
white clouds. Finally, we will get rid of the unpleasant ruins in the
foreground; we will plant some handsome trees therein, we will send for
some fiddlers, and get up a dance, and a pic-nic party.

It will be found, throughout the picture, that the same species of
improvement is made on the materials which Claude had ready to his
hand. The descending slopes of the city of Rome, towards the pyramid
of Caius Cestius, supply not only lines of the most exquisite variety and
beauty, but matter for contemplation and reflection in every fragment of
their buildings. This passage has been idealized by Claude into a set of
similar round tow^ers, respecting which no idea can be formed but that
they are uninhabitable, and to which no interest can be attached, beyond
the difficulty of conjecturing what they could have been built for. The
ruins of the temple are rendered unimpressive by the juxtaposition of the

' The vegetable soil of the Campagna is chiefly formed by decoinposed lavas, and under
it lies a bed of white pumicc, exactly resembling remnants of bones.

■watermill, and inexplicable by the introduction of the Roman soldiers.
The glide of the muddy streams of the melancholy Tiber and Anio
through the Campagna is impressive in itself, but altogether ceases to
be so, when we disturb their stillness of motion by a weir, adorn their
neglected flow with a handsome bridge, and cover their solitary surface
with punts, nets, and fishermen.

It cannot, I think, be expected, that landscapes like this should have
any eifect on the human heart, except to harden or to degrade it; to lead
it from the love of what is simple, earnest, and pure, to what is as so-
phisticated and corrupt in arrangement, as erring and imperfect in detail.
So long as such works are held up for imitation, landscape painting must
be a manufacture, its productions must be toys, and its patrons must be
children.

My purpose then, in the present work, is to demonstrate the utter
falseness both of the facts and principles; the imperfection of material,
and error of arrangement, on which works such as these are based; and
to insist on the necessity, as well as the dignity, of an earnest, faithful,
loving study of nature as she is, rejecting with abhorrence all that man
has done to alter and modify her. And the praise which, in this first
portion of the work, is given to many English artists, would be justifiable
on this ground only; that, although frequently with little power and with
desultory effort, they have yet, in an honest and good heart, received the
word of God from clouds, and leaves, and waves, and kept it'; and

' The feelings of Constable with respect to his art might be almost a model for the young
student, were it not that they err a little on the other side, and arc perhaps in need of chastening
and guiding from the works of his fcllow>mcn. Wo should use pictui-es not as authorities, but
as comments on nature, just as we use divines not as authorities, but as comments on the Bible.
Constable, in his dread of saint-worship, deprives himself of much instruction from the Scripture
to which he holds, because he will not accept aid in the reading of it from the learning of
otlier men. Sir George Beaumont, on the contrary, furnishes, in the anecdotcs given of him in
Constable's life, a melancholy instance of the degradation into which the Imman mind may
fall, when it suffers human woi-ks to interfere between it and its Master. The recommend-
ation of the colour of an old Cremona fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything, and the
vapid inquiiy of the conventionalist, "Where do you put your brown tree?" show a pros-
tration of intellect at once so ludicrous and so lamentable, that we believe the student of the
gallery can receive no sterner warning than it conveys. Art so followed is the most servile in-
dolence in wliich life can be wasted. There are then two dangerous extremes to be shunned:
forgetfulness of the Scripture, and scorn of the divine ; slavery on the one hand, and free-
thinking on the other. The mean is nearly as difficult to determine or keep in art as in
religion, but the great danger is on the side of superstition. He who walks humbly with
Nature will seldom be in danger of losing sight of Art. He will commonly find in all that

endeavoured in humility to render to the world that purity of impression
Avhich can alone render the result of art an instrument of good, or its
labour deserving of gratitude.

If, however, I shall have frequent occasion to insist on the necessity
of this heartfelt love of, and unqualified submission to, the teaching of
nature, it will be no less incumbent upon me to reprobate the careless
rendering of casual impression, and mechanical copyism of unimportant
subject, which are too frequ.ently visible in our modern school.^ Their
lightness and desultoriness of intention, their meaningless multiplication
of unstudied composition, and their want of definiteness and loftiness of
aim, bring discredit on their whole system of study, and encourage in the
critic the unhappy prejudice that the field and hill-side are less fit
places of study than the gallery and the garret. Not every casual idea
caught from the flight of a shower or the fall of a sunbeam, not every
glowing fragment of harvest light, nor every flickering dream of copse-

is truly great of matt's AVorks something of their original, for which he will regard them
with gratitude^ and sometimes follow them with respect; while he who takes Art for his
authority may entirely lose sight of all that it interprets, and sink at once into the sin of an
idolater, and the degradation of a slave.

' I should have insisted more on this fault (for it is a fatal one) in the following Essay,
but the cause of it rests rather with the public than with the artist, and in the necessities
of the pubhc as much as in their will. Such pictures as artists themselves would wish to
paint could not be executed under very high prices ; and it must always be easier, in the pre-
sent state of society, to find ten purchasers for ten-guinea sfcetchesj than one purchaser for a
hundred-guinea picture. Still, I have been often both surprised and grieved to see that any
effort on the part of our artists to rise above manufacture, any struggle to something like
completed conceptionj was left by the public to be its own reward. In the Water-Colour
Exhibition of last yeai- there was a noble work of David Cox's^ ideal in the right sense; a
forest hollow with a few sheep crushing doWn Jhrough its deep fern, and a solemn opening
of evening sky above its dark masses of distance. It was worth all his little bits on the walls
put together. Yet the public picked up all the little bits, blots and splashes, ducks, chick-
weed, ears of donij all that was clever and petite j and the real picture, the full developement
of the artist's mind, was left on his hands. How can I, or any one else with a conscience,
advise him after this to aim at anything more than may be struck out by the cleverness of a
quarter of an hour ? Cattermole^ I believe, is earthed and shackled in the same manner. He
began his career with finished and studied pictures, which, I believe, never paid him ; he
now prostitutes his fine talent to the superficialness of public taste, and blots his way to emo-
lument and oblivion. There is commonly, however, fault on both sides, in the artist for ex-
hibiting his dexterity by mountebank tricks of the brush, until chaste finish, requiring ten times
the knowledge and labour, appears insipid to the diseased taste which he has himself formed
in his patrons, as the roaring and ranting of a common actor will oftentimes render appa-
rently vapid the finished touches of perfect nature; and in the public, for taking less real
pains to become acquainted with, and discriminate, the various powers of a great artist, than
they would to estimate the excellence of a cook, or develope the dexterity of a dancer.

wood coolness, is to be given to the world as it came, unconsidered, in-
complete, and forgotten bj the artist as soon as it has left his easel.
That only should be considered a picture, in which the spirit^ not the
materials, observe, but the animating emotion, of many such studies i3
concentrated, and exhibited by the aid of long studied, painfully chosen
forms; idealized in the right sense of the word, not by audacious liberty
of that faculty of degrading God's works which man calls his " imagi-
nation," but by perfect assertion of entire knowledge of every part and
character and function of the object, and in wliich the details are com-
pleted to the last line compatible with the dignity and simplicity of the
whole, wrought out with that noblest industry which concentrates pro-
fusion into point, and transforms accumulation into structure. Neither
must this labour be bestowed on every subject which appears to afford
a capability of good, but on chosen subjects in which nature has prepared
to the artist's hand the purest sources of the impression he would convey.
These may be humble in their order, but they must be perfect of their
kind. There is a perfection of the hedgerow and cottage, as well as of
the forest and the palace; and more ideality in a great artist's selection
and treatment of roadside weeds and brook-worn pebbles, than in all the
struggling caricature of the meaner mind, which heaps its foreground
with colossal columns, and heaves impossible mountains into the encum-
bered sky. Finally, these chosen subjects must not be in any way repe-
titions of one another, but each founded on a new idea, and developing a
totally distinct train of thought: so that the work of the artist's life should
form a consistent series of essays, rising through the scale of creation from
the humblest scenery to the most exalted; each picture being a necessary
link in the chain, based on what preceded, introducing to what is to
follow, and all, in their lovely system, exhibiting and drawing closer the
bonds of nature to the human heart.

Since, then, I shall have to reprobate the absence of study in the
moderns nearly as much as its false direction in the ancients, my task
will naturally divide itself into three portions. In the first, I shall
endeavour to investigate and arrange the facts of nature with scientific
accuracy; showing as I proceed, by what total neglect of the very first
base and groundwork of their art the idealities of some among the old
masters are produced. This foundation once securely laid, I shall
proceed, in the second portion of the work, to analyze and demonstrate

the nature of the emotions of the Beautiful and Sublime; to examine
the particular characters of every kind of scenery; and to bring to light,
as far as may be in my power, that faultless, ceaseless, inconceivable,
inexhaustible loveliness, which God has stamped upon all things, if man
will only receive them as He gives them. Finally, I shall endeavour
to trace the operation of all this on the hearts and minds of men; to
exhibit the moral function and end of art; to prove the share which it
ought to have in the thoughts, and influence on the lives, of all of us; to
attach to the artist the responsibility of a preacher, and to kindle in the
general mind that regard which such an office must demand.

It must be evident that the first portion of this task, which is all that
I have yet been enabled to offer to the reader, cannot but be the least
interesting and the most laborious; especially because it is necessary
that it should be executed without reference to any principles of beauty
or influences of emotion. It is the hard straightforward classification
of material things, not the study of thought or passion; and therefore
let me not be accused of want of the feelings which I choose to repress.
The consideration of the high qualities of art must not be interrupted by
the work of the hammer and the eudiometer.

Again, I would request that the frequent passages of reference to the
great masters of the Italian school may not be looked upon as mere
modes of conventional expression. I think there is enough in the
following pages to prove that I am not likely to be carried away by
the celebrity of a name; and therefore that the devoted love which I
profess for the works of the great historical and sacred painters is
sincere and well-grounded. And indeed every principle of art which
I may advocate, I shall be able to illustrate by reference to the works
of men universally allowed to be the masters of masters; and the public,
so long as my teaching leads them to higher understanding and love
of the works of Buonaroti, Leonardo, Ratfaelle, Titian, and Cagliari,
may surely concede to me, without fear, the right of striking such blows
as I may deem necessary to the establishment of my principles, at
Gaspar Poussin or Vandevelde.

Indeed, I believe there is nearly as much occasion, at the present day,
for advocacy of Michael Angelo against the pettiness of the moderns, as
there is for support of Turner against the conventionalities of the
ancients. For, though the names of the fathers of sacred art are on all

our lips, our faith in tliem is much like that of the great world in its
religion—nominal, but dead. In vain our lecturers sound the name of
RafFaelle in the ears of their pupils, while their own works are visibly at
variance with every principle deducible from his. In vain is the young
student compelled to produce a certain number of school copies of
Michael Angelo, when his bread must depend on the number of
gewgaws he can crowd into his canvass. And I could with as much
zeal exert myself against the modern system of English historical art,
as I have in favour of our school of landscape, but that it is an un-
grateful and painful task to attack the works of living painters,
struggling with adverse circumstances of every kind, and especially
with the false taste of a nation which regards matters of art either with
the ticklishness of an infant, or the stolidity of a megatherium.

I have been accused, in the execution of this first portion of my work,
of irreverent and scurrile expression towards the works which I have
depreciated. Possibly I may have been in some degree infected by
reading those criticisms of our periodicals which consist of nothing else:
but I believe, in general, that my words will be found to have sufficient
truth in them to excuse their familiarity; and that no other weapons
could have been used to pierce the superstitious prejudice with which
the works of certain painters are shielded from the attacks of reason.
My answer is that given long ago to a similar complaint, uttered under
the same circumstances by the foiled sophist: — Tis 5' sariv o
avOpwiros, «y airaihsvTos tls, os ovtco (f)avXa ovofiara 6vofj,d^siv rokfia iv
ae/jLVM TrpdryfiaTi; Toiovtos tls, w 'iTriTLa, ovSsv aX\o (ppovrl^av ^ to
aXijOh.

It is with more surprise that I have heard myself accused of thought-
less severity with respect to the works of contemporary painters, for I
fully believe that whenever I attack them, I give myself far more pain
than I can possibly inflict; and, in many instances, I have withheld
reprobation which I considered necessary to the full understanding of
my work, in the fear of grieving or injuring men of whose feelings and
circumstances I was ignorant. Indeed, the apparently false and
exaggerated bias of the whole book in favour of modern art is, in great
degree, dependent on my withholding the animadversions which would
have given it balance, and keeping silence where I cannot praise. But
I would rather be a year or two longer in effecting my purposes, than

reach them by trampling on men's hearts and hearths; and I have
permitted myself to express unfavourable opinions only where the
popularity and favour of the artist are so great as to render the opinion
of an individual a matter of indifference to him.

And now, but one word more. Tor many a year we have heard
nothing with respect to the works of Turner but accusations of their
want of fruiL To every observation on their power, sublimity, or
beauty, there has been but one reply: They are not like nature. I
therefore took my opponents on their own ground, and demonstrated, by
thorough investigation of actual facts, that Turner is like nature, and
paints more of nature than any man who ever lived. I expected this
proposition (the foundation of all my future efforts) would have been
disputed with desperate struggles, and that I should have had to fight
my way to my position inch by inch. Not at all. My opponents
yield me the field at once. One (the writer for the Athenaeum) has
no other resource than the assertion, that " he disapproves the natural
style in painting. If people want to see nature, let them go and look at
herself. Why should they see her at second-hand on a piece of
canvass?" The other (Blackwood), still more utterly discomfited, is
reduced to a still more remarkable line of defence. " It is not," he says,
what things in all respects really are, but how they are convertible by
the mind into what they are not, that we have to consider." (October,
1843, p. 485.) I leave therefore the reader to choose whether, with
Blackwood and his fellows, he will proceed to consider how things are
convertible by the mind into what they are not; or whether, with me,
he will undergo the harder, but perhaps on the whole more useful,
labour of ascertaining what they are.

Chapter I. — Of Ideas of Truth in tlieir connection with those
of Beauty and Relation.

Chapter II.—That the Truth of Nature is not to be dis-
cerned by the uneducated Senses.

Chapter III. — Of tlie Relative Importance of Truths:—
First, that Particular Truths are more important
than General Ones.

I 1. Necessity of deterinining the relative importance of truths 57
§ 2 Misapplication of the aphorism " General truths are more important

§ 5. And consequently totally false in relation of middle tints to darkness... 139

§ 15. Falsehoods by which Titian attains the appearance of quality in light 145

§	1.
§	2.
§	3.
§	4,
§	5,
§	6,
§	7.
§	8.
§	9.
§	10,
§	11.
§	12.
§	13,
§	14.
§	15.
§	16.
§	17.
§	18.
§	19.
§	20.

Chapter IY. — Of Truth of Space:—First, as dependent on
the Focus of the Eye.

§ 6. But modern artists have succeeded in fully carrying out this principle 184

CuArTER v. — Of Truth of Space: — Secondly, as its Appear-
ance is dependent on the Power of the Eye.

§ 17. Swift execution best secures perfection of details........................... 199

§ 18. Finish is far more necessary in landscape than in historical subjects... 199
§ 19, Recapitulation of the section ................................................... 200

§ 16. The ray which appears in the dazzled eye should not be represented... 209
§ 17. The practice of Turner. His keen perception of the more delicate

Chapter III. — Of Truth of Clouds: —Secondly, of the Cen-
tral Cloud Region.

§ 2. Its characteristic clouds, requiring no attention nor thought for their
representation, are, therefore favourite sulgects with the old

§ 5. Value, to the painter, of the rain-cloud....................................... 243

§ 21i Success of our water-colour artists in its rendering. Use of it by Turner 253

§26. General system of landscape engraving ...................................,. 255

§ 1. Reasons for merely, at present, naming, without examining, the par-
ticular effects of light rendered by Turner................................. 261

§ 2. Hopes of the author for assistance in the future investigation of them... 261

§ 1. First laws of the organization of the earth, and their importElrtee in art 263,
§ 2. The slight attention ordinarily paid to them. Their careful study by

§ 4. Mountains come out from underneath the plains» and are their Support 267
§ 5. Structure of the plains themiselves. Their perfetSt level, -when depo'

§ 2. Their arrangements in pyramids or wedges, divided by vertical fissureS 270

§ 4, The faithful statement of these facts by Turner in his Alps at Daybreak 271

§ 6. Necessary distance, and consequent aerial effect on all such mountains 272

§ 8. Character of the representations of Alps in the distances of Claude.... 273

§ 4. Variety and seeming uncertainty under -which these laws are manifested 286

§ 18. The rarity among secondary hills of steep slopes or high precipices... 296

§ 23. The same moderation of slope in the contours of his higher hills....,., 299
§ 21. The peculiar difficulty of investigating the more essential truths of hill

§ 1, What rocks were the chief components of ancient landscape foreground 304
§ 2, Salvator's limestones. The real characters of the rock. Its fractures,

Various parts whose history is told us by the details of the drawing... 315
Beautiful instance of an exception to general rules in the Llanthony... 316

§	3.
§	4.
§	0.
§	6.
§	7.
§	8.
§	9.
§	10.
§	11.
§	12.
§	13.
§	14.
§	15.
§	16.
§	17.
§	18.
§	19.
§	20.
§	21.
§	22.
§	23.
§	24.
§	25.
§	26.
§	27.
§	28.
§	29.
§	30.

§
§
§
§

§ 10.
§11.
§ 12.

§ 13.
§14.

§ 15-
§ 16.

§17.
§ 18.
§ 19.
§20.
§21.

§22.

§23.
§24.
§25.
§26.

§27.
§28.
§29.
§30.
§31.
§32.
§33.
§34,
§35.
§36.

§37.
§38,
§39,

§40,

If it be true, and it can scarcely be disputed, that nothing has been § i. Public
for centuries consecrated by public admiration, without possessing terion" "excei-
if in a high degree some kind of sterling excellence, it is not because aft'eTlong^^'^

I the average intellect and feeling of the majority of the public are periods of timej

competent in any way to distinguish what is really excellent, but
because all erroneous opinion is inconsistent, and all ungrounded
^ opinion transitory; so that, while the fancies and feelings which

I deny deserved honour, and award what is undue, have neither root
i nor strength sufficient to maintain consistent testimony for a length
f; of time, the opinions formed on right grounds by those few who
• I are in reality competent judges, being necessarily stable, commu-

II nicate themselves gradually from mind to mind, descending lower
' r as they extend wider, until they leaven the whole lump, and rule

great in either to suppose that it in any way addresses itself to
mean or uncultivated faculties. It is a matter of the simplest
demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his
equal or superior. His inferior may over-estimate him, in enthu-
siasm ; or, as is more commonly the case, degrade him, in igno-
rance ; but he cannot form a grounded and just estimate. With-
out proving this, however, which would take more space to do
than I can spare, it is sufficiently evident that there is no process
of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually, can
become right merely by their multitude.^ If I stand by a picture
in the Academy, and hear twenty persons in succession admiring
some paltry piece of mechanism or imitation, in the lining of a
cloak, or the satin of a slipper, it is absurd to tell me that they
reprobate collectively what they admire individually: or, if they
pass with apathy by a piece of the most noble conception or
most perfect truth, because it has in it no tricks of the brush nor
grimace of expression, it is absurd to tell me that they collectively
respect what they separately scorn, or that the feelings and know-
ledge of such judges, by any length of time or comparison of ideas,
could come to any right conclusion with respect to what is really
high in art. The question is not decided by them, but for
them; — decided at first by few: by fewer in proportion as
the mei'its of the work are of a higher order. From these few
the decision is communicated to the number next below them in
rank of mind, and by these again to a wider and lower circle;
each rank being so far cognizant of the superiority of that above
it, as to receive its decision with respect; until, in process of
time, the right and consistent opinion is communicated to all, and
held by all as a matter of faith, the more positively in proportion
as the grounds of it are less perceived.^

' The opinion of a majority is right only when it is more probable, with each indi-
vidual, that he should be right than that he should be wrong, as in the case of a jury.
Where it is more pi'obable, with respect to each individual, that he should be wrong
than right, the opinion of the minority is the true one. Thus it is in art,

" There are, however, a thousand modifying circumstances which render this process
sometimes unnecessary,—sometimes rapid and certain, — sometimes impossible. It is
unnecessary in rhetoric and the drama, because the multitude is the only proper judge
of those arts whose end is to move the multitude (though more is necessary to a fine
play than is essentially dramatic, and it is only of the dramatic part that the nmltitude

But when this process has taken place, and the work has become § 2. And there-
sanctified by time in the minds of men, it is impossible that any ^^en m
new work of equal merit can be impartially compared with it, formed.

arc cognizant). It is unnecessary, when, united with the higher qualities of a work,
there are appeals to universal passion, to all the faculties and feelings which are general
in man as an animal. The popularity is then as sudden as it is well grounded,—it is
hearty and honest in every mind, but it is based in every mind on a different species of
excellence. Such will often be the ease with the noblest works of literature. Take Don
Quixote for example. The lowest mind would find in it perpetual and brutal amusement
in the misfortunes of the knight, and pei-petual pleasure in sympathy with the squire.
A mind of average feeling would perceive the satirical meaning and force of the book,
would appreciate its wit, its elegaTice, and its truth. But only elevated and peculiar
minds discovei', in addition to all this, the full moral beauty of the love and truth which
are the constant associates of all that is even most weak and ening in the character of
its hero, and pass over the rude adventure and scunile jest in haste —perhaps in pain, to
penetrate beneath the rusty coi'slct, and catch from the wandering glance, the evidence
and expression of fortitude, self-devotion, and universal love. So again, with the works
of Scott and Byron : popularity was as instant as it was deserved, because there is in
them an appeal to those passions which are universal in all men, as well as an expression
of such thoughts as can be received only by the few. But they are admired by the
majority of their advocates for the weakest parts of their works, as a popular preacher
by the majority of his congregation for the worst part of his sei-mon.

The process is rapid and certain, when, though there may be little to catch the multi-
tude at once, there is much which they can enjoy when their attention is authoritatively
directed to it. So rests the reputation of Shakspeare. No ordinary mind can compre-
hend wherein his undisputed superiority consists, but there is yet quite as much to
amuse, thrill, or excite, — quite as much of what is in the sti-ict sense of the word,
dramatic, in his works as in any one's else. They were received, therefore, when first
written, with average approval, as works of common merit; but when the high decision
was made, and the circle spread, the public took up the hue and cry conscientiously
enough. Let them have daggers, ghosts, clowns, and kings, and, with such real and
definite sources of enjoyment, they will take the additional trouble to learn half a dozen
quotations, without understanding them, and admit the superiority of Shakspeare
without further demur. Nothing, perhaps, can more completely demonstrate the total
ignorance of the public of all that is great or valuable in Shakspeare than their universal
admiration of Maclise's Hamlet.

The process is impossible where there is in the work nothing to attract and something
to disgust the vulgar mind. Neither their intrinsic excellence, nor the authority of those
who can judge of it, will ever make the poems of Wordsworth or George Herbert
popular, in the sense in which Scott and Byron are popular, because it is to the vulgar
a labour instead of a pleasure to read them; and there are parts in them which to such
judges cannot but be vapid or lidiculous. Most works of the highest art, — those of
Raffaelle, M. Angelo, or Da Vinci, — stand as Shakspeare does, — that which is common-
place and feeble in their excellence being taken for its essence by the uneducated,
imagination assisting the impression (for we readily fancy that we feci, when feeling is
a matter of pride or conscience), and affectation and pretension increasing the noise
of the rapture, if not its degree. Giotto, Orgagna, Angelico, Peragino, stand, like
George Herbert, only with the few. Wilkie becomes popular, like Scott, because he
touches passions which all feel, and expresses truths which all can recognise.

except by minds not only educated and generally capable of ap-
preciating merit, but strong enough to shake off the weight of
prejudice and association, which invariably incline them to the
older favourite. It is much easier, says Barry, to repeat the
character recorded of Phidias, than to investigate the merits of
Agasias. And when, as peculiarly in the case of painting, much
knowledge of what is technical and practical is necessary to a right
judgment, so that those alone are competent to pronounce a true
verdict who are themselves the persons to be judged, and who
therefore can give no opinion, centuries may elapse before fair
comparison can be made between two artists of different ages:
while the patriarchal excellence exercises during the interval a
tyrannical, perhaps even a blighting, influence over the minds,
both of the public and of those to whom, properly understood,
it should serve for a guide and example. In no city of Europe
where art is a subject of attention, are its prospects so hopeless, or
its pursuit so resultless, as in Rome; because there, among all
students, the authority of their predecessors in art is supreme and
without appeal, and the mindless copyist studies Raffaelle, but not
what Raffaelle studied. It thus becomes the duty of every one
capable of demonstrating any definite points of superiority in
modern art, and who is in a position in which his doing so will not
be ungraceful, to encounter without hesitation whatever opprobrium
may fall upon him from the necessary prejudice even of the most
candid minds, and from the far more virulent opposition of those
who have no hope of maintaining their own reputation for discern-
ment but in the support of that kind of consecrated merit which
may be applauded without an inconvenient necessity for reasons.
It is my purpose, therefore, believing that there are certain points
of superiority in modern artists, and especially in one or two of
their number, which have not yet been fully understood, except by
those who are scarcely in a position admitting the declaration of
their conviction, to institute a close comparison between the great
works of ancient and modern landscape art, to raise, as far as
possible, the deceptive veil of imaginary light through which we
are accustomed to gaze upon the patriarchal work, and to show
the real relations, whether favourable or otherwise, subsisting
between it and our own. I am fully aware that this is not to be

done lightly or raslilj; that it is the part of every one proposing
to undertake such a task, strictly to examine, with prolonged
doubt and severe trial, every opinion in any way contrary to the
sacred verdict of time, and to advance nothing which does not, at
least in his own conviction, rest on surer ground than mere feeling
or taste. I have accordingly advanced nothing in the following § 4. But only
pages but with accompanying demonstration, which may indeed be pabiTof de^"
true or false ^—complete or conditional, but which can only be met monstration.
on its own grounds, and can in no way be borne down or affected
by mere authority of great names. Yet even thus I should scarcely
have ventured to speak so decidedly as I have, but for my full
conviction that we ought not to class the historical painters of the
fifteenth, and landscape painters of the seventeenth, centuries
together, under the general title of " old masters," as if they
possessed anything like corresponding rank in their respective
walks of art. I feel assured that the principles on which they
worked are totally opposed, and that the landscape painters have
been honoured only because they exhibited in mechanical and
technical qualities, some semblance of the manner of the nobler
historical painters, whose principles of conception and composition
they entirely reversed. The course of study which has led me
reverently to the feet of Michael Angelo and Da Vinci, has
alienated me gradually from Claude and Gaspar; I cannot, at
the same time, do homage to power and pettiness — to the truth of
consummate science, and the mannerism of undisciplined imagi-
nation. And let it be understood that whenever hereafter I speak
depreciatingly of the old masters as a body, I refer to none of the
historical painters, for whom I entertain a veneration which, though
I hope reasonable in its grounds, is almost superstitious in degree.
Neither, unless he be particularly mentioned, do I intend to include
Nicholas Poussin, whose landscapes have a separate and elevated
character, which renders it necessary to consider them apart from
all others. Speaking generally of the elder masters, I refer only
to Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both,
Euysdael, Hobbima, Teniers (in his landscapes), P. Potter, Cana-
letto, and the various Van somethings, and Back somethings, more
especially and malignantly those who have libelled the sea.

It Avill of course be necessary for me in tlie commencement of
the work to state briefly those principles on which I conceive all
right judgment of art must be founded. These introductory chap-
ters I should wish to be read carefully, because all criticism must
be useless when the terms or grounds of it are in any degree am-
biguous ; and the ordinary language of connoisseurs and critics,
granting that they understand it themselves, is usually mere jargon
to others, from their custom of using technical terms, by which
everything is meant and nothing is expressed.

And if, in the application of these principles, in spite of my
endeavour to render it impartial, the feeling and fondness which I
have for some works of modern art escape me sometimes where
they should not, let it be pardoned as little more than a fair
counterbalance to that peculiar veneration with which the work
of the older master, associated as it has ever been in our ears with
the expression of whatever is great or perfect, must be usuall}'
regarded by the reader. I do not say that this veneration is
wrong, nor that we should be less attentive to the repeated words
of time; but let us not forget, that if honour be for the dead,
gratitude can only be for the living. He who has once stood
beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has
been for ever closed, feeling how impotent, therey are the wild love,
and the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless
heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the
hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to
the heart, which can only be discharged to the dust. But the
lesson which men receive as individuals, they do not learn as
nations. Again and again they have seen their noblest descend
into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the tomb-
stone when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay the honour
to the ashes which they had denied to the spirit. Let it not
displease them that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and the
dazzle of their busy life, to listen for the few voices, and watch
for the few lamps, which God has toned and lighted to charm and
to guide them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their
silence, nor their light by their decay.

In tlie 15tli Lecture of Sir Joshua Reynolds, incidental notice is
taken of the distinction between those excellences in the painter
which belong to him as such) and those which belong to him in
common with all men of intellect, the general and exalted powers
of which art is the evidence and expression, not the subject. But
the distinction is not there dwelt upon as it should be, for it is
owing to the slight attention ordinarily paid to it, that criticism
is open to every form of coxcombry, and liable to every phase of
error. It is a distinction on which depend all sound judgment of
the rank of the artist, and all just appreciation of the dignity
of art.

Painting, or art generally, as such, with all its technicalities,
difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing but a noble and exjjres-
sive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself
nothing. He who has learned what is commonly considered the
whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural
object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his
thoughts are to be expressed. He has done just as much towards
being that which we ought to respect as a great painter, as a man
who has learned how to express himself grammatically and melo-
diously has towards being a great poet. The language is, indeed,
more difficult of acquirement in the one case than in the other, and
possesses more power of delighting the sense, while it speaks to the
intellect; but it is, nevertheless, nothing more than language, and
all those excellences which are peculiar to the painter as such, are

merely what rhythm, melody, precision, and force are in the words
of the orator and the poet, necessary to their greatness, but not the
tests of their greatness. It is not by the mode of representing and
saying, but by what is represented and said, that the respective
greatness either of the painter or the writer is to be finally deter-
mined.

§ 3. «Painter," Speaking with strict propriety, therefore, we should call a man
B tcrni corrc-

spending to a great painter only as he excelled in precision and force in the
" ' language of lines, and a great versifier, as he excelled in precision

and force in the language of words. A great poet would then be a
term strictly, and in precisely the same sense applicable to both, if
warranted by the character of the images or thoughts which each
in their respective languages conveyed.
§ 4. Example Take, for instance, one of the most perfect poems or pictures (I
E. words as synonymous) which modern times have seen:—

the " Old Shepherd's Chief-mourner." Here the exquisite execu-
tion of the glossy and crisp hair of the dog, the bright sharp touch-
ing of the green bough beside it, the clear painting of the wood of
the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are language—language
clear and expressive in the highest degree. But the close pressure
of the dog's breast against the wood, the convulsive clinging of the
paws, which has dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total
powerlessness of the head laid, close and motionless, upon its folds,
the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the
rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion nor
change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the
coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles
marking the place where the Bible was last closed, indicating how
lonely has been the life—how unwatched the departure, of him who
is now laid solitary in his sleep;—these are all thoughts—thoughts
by which the picture is separated at once from hundreds of equal
merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which it ranks as a work of
high art, and stamps its author, not as the neat imitator of the
texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the Man of
Mind.

§ 6. Difficulty It is not, howevcr, always easy, either in painting or literature,
exact limit be- to determine where the influence of language stops, and where that

of thought begins. Many thoughts are so dependent upon the
language in which they are clothed, that they would lose half their
beauty if otherwise expressed. But the highest thoughts are those
which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any
composition, and praise to which it is entitled, are in exact propor-
tion to its independency of language or expression. A composition
is indeed usually most perfect, when to such intrinsic dignity is
added all that expression can do to attract and adorn; but in every
case of supreme excellence this all becomes as nothing. We are
more gratified by the simplest lines or words which can suggest
the idea in its own naked beauty, than by the robe and the gem
which conceal while they decorate; we are better pleased to feel
by their absence how little they could bestow, than by their
presence how much they can destroy.

There is therefore a distinction to be made between what is
ornamental in language and what is expressive. That part of it
which is necessary to the embodying and conveying of the thought
is worthy of respect and attention as necessary to excellence, though
not the test of it. But that part of it which is decorative has little
more to do with the intrinsic excellence of the picture than the
frame or the varnishing of it. And this caution in distinguishing
between the ornamental and the expressive is peculiarly necessary
in painting; for in the language of words it is nearly impossible
for that which is not expressive to be beautiful, excej^t by mere
rhythm or melody, any sacrifice to which is immediately stigma-
tised as error. But the beauty of mere language in painting is not
only very attractive and entertaining to the spectator, but requires
for its attainment no small exertion of mind and devotion of time
by the artist. Hence, in art, men have frequently fancied that
they were becoming rhetoricians and poets when they were only
learning to speak melodiously, and the judge has over and over
again advanced to the honour of authors those who were never
more than ornamental writing masters.

Most pictures of the Dutch school, for instance, excepting
always those of Rubens, Vandyke, and Rembrandt, are ostenta-
tious exhibitions of the artist's power of speech, the clear and
vigorous elocution of useless and senseless words; while the early

efforts of Cimabue and Giotto are tlie burning messages of
prophecy, delivered by the stammering lips of infants. It is not
by ranking the former as more than mechanics, or the latter as less
than artists, that the taste of the multitude, always awake to the
lowest pleasures which art can bestow, and blunt to the highest, is
to be formed or elevated. It must be the part of the judicious
critic carefully to distinguish what is language, and what is
thought, and to rank and praise pictures chiefly for the latter,
considering the former as a totally inferior excellence, and one
which cannot be compared with nor weighed against thought in
any way, or in any degree whatsoever. The picture which has
the nobler and more numerous ideas, however awkwardly ex-
pressed, is a greater and a better picture than that which has the
less noble and less numerous ideas, however beautifully expressed.
No weight, nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one
grain or fragment of thought. Three penstrokes of Raffaelle
are a greater and a better picture than the most finished work
that ever Carlo Dolci polished into inanity. A finished work
of a great artist is only better than its sketch, if the sources of
pleasure belonging to colour and realisation—valuable in them-
selves—are so employed as to increase the impressiveness of the
thought. But if one atom of thought has vanished, all colour, all
finish, all execution, all ornament, are too dearly bought. Nothing
but thought can pay for thought, and the instant that the increas-
ing refinement or finish of the picture begins to be paid for by the
loss of the faintest shadow of an idea, that instant all refinement or
finish is an excrescence and a deformity.
§ 8. Yet there Yet although in all our speculations on art, language is thus
idearbdonging ^o be distinguished from, and held subordinate to, that which it
conveys, we must still remember that there are certain ideas
inherent in language itself, and that strictly speaking, every
pleasure connected with art has in it some reference to the in-
tellect. The mere sensual pleasure of the eye, received from the
most brilliant piece of colouring, is as nothing to that which it
receives from a crystal prism, except as it depends on our per-
ception of a certain meaning and intended arrangement of colour,
whicn has been the subject of intellect. Nay, the term idea,

the eye. So that, if I say that the greatest picture is that which § 9. The defi-

If this then be the definition of great art, that of a great artist
naturally follows. He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in
the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

The definition of art which I have just given requires me to de-
termine what kinds of ideas can be received from w^orks of art,
and which of these are the greatest, before proceeding to any
practical application of the test.

I think that all the sources of pleasure, or of any other good,
to be derived from works of art, may be referred to five distinct
heads.

I. Ideas of Power. — The perception or conception of the mental
or bodily powers by which the work has been produced.

II. Ideas of Imitation.—The perception that the thing produced
resembles something else.
III. Ideas of Truth.—The perception of faithfulness in a state-
ment of facts by the thing produced.
lY. Ideas of Beauty. — The perception of beauty, either in the
thing produced, or in what it suggests or resembles.

Y. Ideas of Relation.—The perception of intellectual relations
in the thing produced, or in what it suggests or resembles.

I shall briefly distinguish the nature and effects of each of these
classes of ideas.

I. Ideas of Power.—These are the simple perception of the
mental or bodily powers exerted in the production of any work of
art. According to the dignity and degree of the power perceived
is the dignity of the idea; but the whole class of ideas is received
by the intellect, and they excite the best of the moral feelings,
veneration, and the desire of exertion. As a species, therefore,
they are one of the noblest connected with art; but the differences

in degree of dignity among themselves are infinite, being corre-
spondent with every order of power,—from that of the fingers to
that of the most exalted intellect. Thus, when we see an Indian's
paddle carved from the handle to the blade, we have a conception
of prolonged manual labour, and are gratified in proportion to the
supposed expenditure of time and exertion. These are, indeed,
powers of a low order, yet the pleasure arising from the concep-
tion of them enters verj' largely into our admiration of all elabo-
rate ornament, architectural decoration, &c. The delight with
which we look on the fretted front of Rouen Cathedral depends in
no small degree on the simple perception of time employed and
labour expended in its production. ^ But it is a right, that is, an
ennobling pleasure, even in this its lowest phase; and even the
pleasure felt by those persons who praise a drawing for its
"finish" or its "work," which is one precisely of the same kind,
would be right, if it did not imply a want of perception of the
higher powers which render work unnecessary. If to the evidence
of labour be added that of strength or dexterity, the sensation of
power is yet increased; if to strength and dexterity be added that of
ingenuity and judgment, it is multiplied tenfold; and so on, through
all the subjects of action of body or mind, we receive the more
exalted pleasure from the more exalted power.

So far the nature and effects of ideas of power cannot but be § 3. But are
admitted by all. But the circumstance which I wish especially to whateve/haT
insist upon, with respect to them, is one which may not, perhaps, f'^power"
be so readily allowed, namely, that they are independent of the The meaning
nature or worthiness of the object from which they are received;
and that whatever has been the subject of a great power, whether
there be intrinsic and apparent worthiness in itself or not, bears
with it the evidence of having been so, and is capable of giving
the ideas of power, and the consequent pleasures in their full
degree. For observe, that a thing is not properly said to have
been the result of a great power, on which only some part of that
power has been expended. A nut may be cracked by a steam-
engine, but it has not, in being so, been the subject of the power

of the engine. And thus it is falsely said of great men, that they
waste their lofty powers on unworthy objects: the object may be
dangerous or useless, but, as far as the phrase has reference to
difficulty of performance, it cannot be unworthy of the power
which it brings into exertion, because nothing can become a
subject of action to a greater power which can be accomplished by
a less, any more than bodily strength can be exerted where there
is nothing to resist it.

So then, men may let their great powers lie dormant, while they
employ their mean and petty powers on mean and petty objects;
but it is physically impossible to employ a great power, except on
a great object. Consequently, wherever power of any kind or
degree has been exerted, the marks and evidence of it are stamped
upon its results : it is impossible that it should be lost or wasted,
or without record, even in the " estimation of a hair;" and there-
fore, whatever has been the subject of a great power bears about
with it the image of that which created it, and is what is com-
monly called " excellent." And this is the true meaning of the
word Excellent, as distinguished from the terms, "beautiful,"
" useful," " good," &c.; and we shall always, in future, use the
word excellent, as signifying that the thing to which it is applied
required a great power for its production. ^

The faculty of perceiving what powers are required for the pro-
duction of a thing, is the faculty of perceiving excellence. It is
this faculty in which men, even of the most cultivated taste, must
always be wanting, unless they have added practice to reflection;
because none can estimate the power manifested in victory, unless
they have personally measured the strength to be overcome.

' Of course the word "excellent" is primarily a mere synonyme with "surpassing,"
and when applied to persons, has the general meaning given by Johnson—"the state
of abounding in any good quality." But when applied to things it has always reference
to the power by which they are produced. We talk of excellent music or poetry, because
it is difficult to compose or m-ite such, but never of excellent flowers, because all flowers
being the result of the same power, must be equally excellent. We distinguish them
only as beautiful or useful, and therefore, as there is no other one word to signify
that quality of a thing produced by which it pleases us merely as the result of power,
and as the term "excellent" is more frequently used in this sense than in any other,
I choose to limit it at once to this sense, and I wish it, when I use it in future, to be so
understood.

Though, therefore, it is possible, by the cultivation of sensibility
and judgment, to become capable of distinguishing what is beau-
tiful, it is totally impossible, without practice and knowledge,
to distinguish or feel what is excellent. The beauty or the truth
of Titian's flesh-tint may be appreciated by all; but it is only to the
artist, whose multiplied hours of toil have not reached the slight-
est resemblance of one of its tones, that its excellence is manifest.

Wherever, then, difficulty has been overcome, there is excel- § 5. The piea-
lence : and therefore, in order to prove a work excellent, we have on conquering
only to prove the difficulty of its production : whether it be useful
or beautiful is another question; its excellence depends on its
difficulty alone. Nor is it a false or diseased taste which looks for
the overcoming of difficulties, and has pleasure in it, even without
any view to resultant good. It has been made part of our moral
nature that we should have a pleasure in encountering and con-
quering opposition, for the sake of the struggle and the victory, not
for the sake of any after result: and not only our own victory, but
the perception of that of another, is in all cases the source of pure
and ennobling pleasure. And if we often hear it said, and truly
said, that an artist has erred by seeking rather to show his skill in
overcoming technical difficulties, than to reach a great end, be it
observed that he is only blamed because he has sought to conquer
an inferior difficulty rather than a great one; for it is much easier
to overcome technical difficulties than to reach a great end.
Whenever the visible victory over difficulties is found painful or
in false taste, it is owing to the preference of an inferior to a great
difficulty, or to the false estimate of what is difficult and what is
not. It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated;
far more difficult to sacrifice skill and cease exertion in the proper
place, than to expend both indiscriminately. We shall find, in the
course of our investigation, that beauty and difficulty go together ;
and that they are only mean and paltry difficulties which it is
wrong or contemptible to wrestle with. Be it remembered then —
Power is never wasted. Whatever power has been employed,
produces excellence in proportion to its own dignity and exertion;
and the faculty of perceiving this exertion, and appreciating this
dignity, is the faculty of perceiving excellence.

§ I. False use FusELi, in his Lectures, and many other persons of equally just
"imitation" by and accurate habits of thought (among others, S. T. Coleridge),
ra art^''^^'^ make a distinction between imitation and copying, representing the
first as the legitimate function of art—the latter as its corruption;
but as such a distinction is by no means warranted, or explained
by the common meaning of the words themselves, it is not easy to
comprehend exactly in what sense they are used by those writers.
And though, reasoning from the context, I can understand what
ideas those words stand for in their minds, I cannot allow the terms
to be properly used as symbols of those ideas, which (especially in
the case of the word Imitation) are exceedingly complex, and totally
different from what most people would understand by the term.
And by men of less accurate thought, the word is used still more
vaguely or falsely. For instance. Burke (Treatise on the Sublime,
part i. sect. 16.) says: " When the object represented in poetry or
painting is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality,
then we may be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing
to the power of imitation" In which case the real pleasure may
be in what we have been just speaking of, the dexterity of the
artist's hand; or it may be in a beautiful or singular arrangement
of colours, or a thoughtful chiaroscuro, or in the pure beauty of
certain forms which art forces on our notice, though we should not
have observed them in the reality; and I conceive that none of
these sources of pleasure are in any way expressed or intimated by
the term " imitation."

But there is one source of pleasure in works of art totally-
different from all these, which I conceive to be properly and
accurately expressed by the word " imitation :" one which, though
constantly confused in reasoning, because it is always associated
in fact, Avith other means of pleasure, is totally separated from
them in its nature, and is the real basis of whatever complicated
or various meaning may be afterwards attached to the word in
the minds of men.

I wish to point out this distinct source of pleasure clearly at
once, and only to use the word " imitation" in reference to it.

Whenever anything looks like what it is not, the resemblance § 2. Real mean-
being so great as neai^ly to deceive, we feel a kind of pleasurable
surprise, an agreeable excitement of mind, exactly the same in its
nature as that which we receive from juggling. Whenever we
perceive this in something produced by art, that is to say,
whenever the work is seen to resemble something which we know
it is not, we receive what I call an idea of imitation. Why such
ideas are pleasing, it would be out of our present purpose to in-
quii'e; we only know that there is no man who does not feel
pleasure in his animal nature from gentle surprise, and that such
surprise can be excited in no more distinct manner than by the
evidence that a thing is not what it appears to be. ^ Now two § 3. what is
things are requisite to our complete and most pleasurable perception sense^of imita °
of this: first, that the resemblance be so perfect as to amount to a
deception; secondly, that there be some means of proving at the
same moment that it is a deception. The most perfect ideas and
pleasures of imitation are, therefore, when one sense is contradicted
by another, both bearing as positive evidence on the subject as each
is capable of alone ; as when the eye says a thing is round, and the
finger says it is flat: they are, therefore, never felt in so high a
degree as in painting, where appearance of projection, roughness,
hair, velvet, &c., are given with a smooth surface, or in waxwork,
where the first evidence of the senses is perpetually contradicted by
their experience. But the moment we come to marble, our de-
finition checks us, for a marble figure does not look like what it is

not: it looks like marble, and like the form of a man, but then it is
marble, and it is the form of a man. It does not look like a man,
which it is not, but like the form of a man, which it is. Form is
form, bond fide and actual, whether in marble or in flesh—not an
imitation or resemblance of form, but real form. The chalk outline
of the bough of a tree on paper, is not an imitation; it looks like
chalk and paper — not like wood, and that which it suggests to the
mind is not properly said to be like the form of a bough, it is the
form of a bough. Now, then, we sec the limits of an idea of
imitation; it extends only to the sensation of trickery and deception
occasioned by a thing's intentionally seeming different from what it
is; and the degree of the pleasure depends on the degree of differ-
ence and the perfection of the resemblance, not on the nature of
the thing resembled. The simple pleasure in the imitation would
be precisely of the same degree (if the accuracy could be equal),
whether the subject of it were the hero or his horse. There are
other collateral sources of pleasure which are necessarily associated
with this, but that part of the pleasure which depends on the
imitation is the same in both.

Ideas of imitation, then, act by producing the simple pleasure of
surprise, and that not of surprise in its higher sense and function,
but of the mean and paltry surprise which is felt in jugglery.
These ideas and pleasures are the most contemptible which can be
received from art. First, because it is necessary to their enjoyment
that the mind should reject the impression and address of the thing
represented, and fix itself only upon the reflection that it is not
what it seems to be. All high or noble emotion or thought is thus
rendered physically impossible, while the mind exults in what is
■very like a strictly sensual pleasure. We may consider tears as
a result of agony or of art, whichever we please, but not of both
at the same moment. If we are surprised by them as an attain-
ment of the one, it is impossible we can be moved by tliem as a
sign of the other.

Ideas of imitation are contemptible in the second place, because
not only do they preclude the spectator from enjoying inherent
jbeauty in the subject, but they can only be received from mean
and paltry subjects, because it is impossible to imitate anything

really great. We can " paint a cat or a fiddle, so tliat they look
as if we could take them up ;" but we cannot imitate the ocean, or
the Alps. We can imitate fruit, but not a tree ; flowers, but not a
pasture; cut-glass, but not the rainbow. All pictures in which
deceptive powers of imitation are displayed are therefore either
of contemptible subjects, or have the imitation shown in con-
temptible parts of them, bits of dress, jewels, furniture, &c.

Thirdly, these ideas are contemptible, because no ideas of power § 6. imitation
are associated with them. To the ignorant, imitation, indeed, seems
difficult, and its success praiseworthy, but even they can by no
l^ossibility see more in the artist than they do in a juggler, who
arrives at a strange end by means with which they are unac-
quainted. To the instructed, the juggler is by far the more
respectable artist of the two, for they know sleight of hand to "be
an art of an immensely more difficult acquirement, and to imply
more ingenuity in the artist than a power of deceptive imitation in
painting, which requires nothing more for its attainment than a
true eye, a steady hand, and moderate industry—qualities which
in no degree separate the imitative artist from a watchmaker, pin-
maker, or any other neat-handed artificer. These remarks do not
apply to the art of the diorama, or the stage, where the pleasure
is not dependent on the imitation, but it is the same which we
should receive from nature herself, only far inferior in degree. It
is a noble pleasure; but we shall see in the course of our investi-
gation, both that it is inferior to that which we receive when there
is no deception at all, and why it is so.

Whenever then in future, I speak of ideas of imitation, I wish § 7, Recaiiitu-
to be understood to mean the immediate and present perception
that something produced by art is not what it seems to be. I
prefer saying " that it is not what it seems to be," to saying that
it seems to be what it is not," because we perceive at once what it
seems to be, and the idea of imitation, and the consequent pleasure,
result from the subsequent perception of its being something else—
flat, for instance, when we thought it was round.

The word Truth, as applied to art, signifies the faithful statement,
either to the mind or senses, of any fact of nature.

We receive an idea of truth, then, when we perceive the faith-
fulness of such a statement.

The difference between ideas of trutli and of imitation lies
chiefly in the following points :

First, — Imitation can only be of something material, but truth
has reference to statements both of the qualities of material things,
and of emotions, impressions, and thoughts. There is a moral as
well as material truth, — a truth of impression as well as of form,
— of thought as well as of matter; and the truth of impression and
thought is a thousand times the more important of the two.
Hcnce, truth is a term of universal application, but imitation is
limited to that narrow field of art which takes cognizance only of
material things.

Secondly,—Truth may be stated by any signs or symbols which
have a definite signification in the minds of those to whom they are
addressed, although sitcli signs be themselves no image nor likeness
of anything. Whatever can excite in the mind the conception of
certain facts, can give ideas of truth, though it be in no degree the
imitation or resemblance of those facts. If there be — we do not
say there is,—but if there be in painting anything which operates,
as words do, not by resembling anything, but by being taken as
a symbol and substitute for it, and thus inducing the effect of it.

tlieii this channel of communication can convey uncorrupted truth,
though it do not in any degree resemble the facts whose conception
it induces. But ideas of imitation, of course, require the likeness
of the object. They speak to the perceptive faculties only: truth
to the conceptive.

Thirdly, and in consequence of what is above stated, an idea of § 4. Third dif-
truth exists in the statement of otie attribute of anything, but an
idea of imitation requires the resemblance of as many attributes as
we are usually cognizant of in its real presence. A pencil outline
of the bough of a tree on white paper is a statement of a certain
number of facts of form. It does not yet amount to the imitation
of anything. The idea of that form is not given in nature by
lines at all, still less by black lines with a white space between
them. But those lines convey to the mind a distinct impression
of a certain number of facts, which it recognizes as agreeable with
its previous impressions of the bough of a tree; and it receives,
therefore, an idea of truth. If, instead of two lines, we give a
dark form with the brush, we convey information of a certain
relation of shade between the bough and sky, recognizable for
another idea of truth; but we have still no imitation, for the white
paper is not the least like air, nor the black shadow like wood. It
is not until after a certain number of ideas of truth have been col-
lected together, that Ave arrive at an idea of imitation.

Hence it might at first sight appear, that an idea of imitation, § 5. No accu-
inasmuch as several ideas of truth are united in it, is nobler ntces'sary^L
than a simple idea of truth. And .jf it were necessary that the '"Citation,
ideas of truth should be perfect, or should be subjects of contem-
plation as such, it would be so. But, observe, we require to pro-
duce the effect of imitation only so many and such ideas of truth
as the senses are usually cognizant of. Now the senses are not
usually, nor unless they be especially devoted to the service, cog-
nizant, with accuracy, of any truths but those of space and projec-
tion. It requires long study and attention before they give certain
evidence of even the simplest truths of form. For instance, the
quay on wliich the figure is sitting, with his hand at his eyes, in
Claude's " Seaport," No. 14. in the National Gallery, is egregiously
out of perspective. The eye of this artist, with all his study, had

tlius not acquired the power of taking cognizance of the apparent
form even of a simple parallelopiped: how much less of the com-
plicated forms of boughs, leaves, or limbs ? Although, therefore,
something resembling the real form is necessary to deception, this
something is not to be called a h^uth of form; for, strictly speaking,
there are no degrees of truth, there are only degrees of approach
to it; and an approach to it, whose feebleness and imperfection
would instantly offend and give pain to a mind really capable of
distinguishing truth, is yet quite sufficient for all the purposes of
deceptive imitation. It is the same with regard to colour. If we
were to paint a tree sky-blue, or a dog rose-pink, the discernment
of the public would be keen enough to discover the falsehood; but,
so that there be just so much approach to truth of colour as may
come up to the common idea of it in men's minds, that is to say,
if the trees be all bright green, and flesh unbroken buff, and ground
unbroken brown, though all the real and refined truths of colour
be wholly omitted, or rather defied and contradicted, there is yet
quite enough for all purposes of imitation. The only facts then,
which we are usually and certainly cognizant of, are those of
distance and projection; and if these be tolerably given, with
something like truth of form and colour to assist them, the idea of
imitation is complete. I would undertake to paint an arm, with
every muscle out of its place, and every bone of false form and
dislocated articulation, and yet to observe certain coarse and broad
resemblances of true outline, which, with careful shading, would
induce deception, and draw down the praise and delight of the
discerning public. The other day at Bruges, while I was endea-
vouring to set down in my note-book something of the ineffable
expression of the Madonna in the cathedral, a French amateur came
up to me, to inquire if I had seen the modern French pictures in a
neighbouring church. I had not, but felt little inclined to leave
my marble for all the canvass that ever suffered from French
brushes. My apathy was attacked with gradually increasing
energy of praise. Rubens never executed—Titian never coloured
anything like them. I thought this highly probable, and still sat
quiet. The voice continued at my ear. " Parbleu, Monsieur,
Michel Ange n'a rien produit de plus beau! " " De plus beau ? "

repeated I, wishing to know what particular excellences of Michael
Angelo were to be intimated bj this expression. " Monsieur, on
ne peut plus — c'est un tableau admirable—inconcevable; Mon-
sieur," said the Frenchman, lifting up his hands to heaven, as he
concentrated in one conclusive and overwhelming proposition the
qualities which were to outshine Rubens and overpower Buonaroti,
—" Monsieur, IL SOET ! "

This gentleman could only perceive two truths—flesh colour
and projection. These constituted his notion of the perfection of
painting; because they unite all that is necessary for deception.
He was not therefore cognizant of many ideas of truth, though
perfectly cognizant of ideas of imitation.

We shall see, in the course of our investigation of ideas of truth, § 6. ideas of
that ideas of imitation not only do not imply their presence, but comisa'iVwith
even are inconsistent with it; and that pictures which imitate so as [f®^®
to deceive, are never true. But this is not the place for the proof
of this ; at present we have only to insist on the last and greatest
distinction between ideas of truth and of imitation — that the mind,
in receiving one of the former, dwells upon its own conception of
the fact, or form, or feeling stated, and is occupied only with the
qualities and character of that fact or form, considering it as real
and existing, being all the while totally regardless of the signs or
symbols by which the notion of it has been conveyed. These signs
have no pretence, nor hypocrisy, nor legerdemain about them ; —
there is nothing to be found out, or sifted, or surprised in them ;
—they bear their message simply and clearly, and it is that mes-
sage which the mind takes from them and dwells upon, regardless
of the language in which it is delivered. But the mind, in re-
ceiving an idea of imitation, is wholly occupied in finding out that
what has been suggested to it is not what it appears to be : it does
not dwell on the suggestion, but on the perception that it is a false
suggestion: it derives its pleasure, not from the contemplation of a
truth, but from the discovery of a falsehood. So that the moment
ideas of truth are gi'ouped together, so as to give rise to an idea
of imitation, they change their very nature—lose their essence as
ideas of truth — and are corrupted and degraded, so as to share in
the treachery of what they have produced. Hence, finally, ideas

of trutli are the foundation, and ideas of imitation, the destruction, of
all art. We shall be better able to appreciate their relative dignity
after the investigation which we propose of the functions of the
former; but we may as well now express the conclusion to which
we shall then be led — that no picture can be good which deceives
by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful
which is not true.

Any material object wliicli can give us pleasure in the simple con- § j. Definition
templation of its outward qualities without any direct and definite ?/beauUfur'
exertion of the intellect, I call in some way, or in some degree,
beautiful. Why we receive pleasure from some forms and colours,
and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered than why
we like sugar and dislike wormwood. The utmost subtlety of in-
vestigation will only lead us to ultimate instincts and principles of
human nature, for which no farther reason can be given than the
simple will of the Deity that we should be so created. "We may
indeed perceive, as far as we are acquainted with His nature, that
we have been so constructed as, when in a healthy and cultivated
state of mind, to derive pleasure from whatever things are illus-
trative of that nature ; but we do not receive pleasure from them
because they are illustrative of it, nor from any perception that they
are illustrative of it, but instinctively and necessarily, as we derive
sensual pleasure from the scent of a rose. On these primary prin-
ciples of our nature, education and accident operate to an unlimited
extent; they may be cultivated or checked, directed or diverted,
gifted by right guidance with the most acute and faultless sense,
or subjected by neglect to every phase of error and disease. He
who has followed up these natural laws of aversion and desire,
rendering them more and more authoritative by constant obedience,
so as to derive pleasure always from that which God originally
intended should give him pleasure, and who derives the greatest
possible sum of pleasure from any given object, is a man of taste.

This, then, is the real meaning of this disputed word. Perfect
taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from
those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in
its puritj and perfection. He who receives little pleasure from
these sources, wants taste; he who receives pleasure from any
other sources, has false or bad taste.

And it is thus that the term " taste " is to be distinguished from
that of "judgment," with which it is constantly confounded. Judg-
ment is a general term, expressing definite action of the intellect,
and applicable to every kind of subject which can be submitted to
it. There may be judgment of congruity, judgment of truth,
judgment of justice, and judgment of difficulty and excellence.
But all these exertions of the intellect are totally distinct from
taste, properly so called, which is the instinctive and instant pre-
ferring of one material object to another without any obvious
reason, except that it is proper to human nature in its perfection
so to do.

Observe, however, I do not mean by excluding direct exertion
of the intellect from ideas of beauty, to assert that beauty has no
effect upon, nor connection with the intellect. All our moral feel-
ings are so interwoven with our intellectual powers, that we cannot
affect the one without in some degree addressing the other; and in
all high ideas of beauty, it is more than probable that much of the
pleasure depends on delicate and untraceable perceptions of fitness,
propriety, and relation, which are purely intellectual, and through
which we arrive at our noblest ideas of what is commonly and
rightly called "intellectual beauty." But there is yet no imme-
diate exertion of the intellect; that is to say, if a person receiving
even the noblest ideas of simple beauty be asked loliy he likes the
object exciting them, he will not be able to give any distinct
reason, nor to trace in his mind any formed thought, to which he
can appeal as a source of pleasure. He will say that the thing
gratifies, fills, hallows, exalts his mind, but he will not be able to
say why, or how. If he can, and if he can show that he perceives
in the object any expression of distinct thought, he has received
more than an idea of beauty—it is an idea of relation.

the human mind, invariably exalting and purifying it according to rank and func-
their degree; and it would appear that we are intended by the beauty.
Deity to be constantly under their influence, because there is not
one single object in nature which is not capable of conveying them,
and which, to the rightly perceiving mind, does not present an in-
calculably greater number of beautiful than of deformed parts;
there being in fact scarcely anything, in pure undiseased nature,
like positive deformity, but only degrees of beauty, or such slight
and rare points of permitted contrast as may render all around
them more valuable by their opposition—spots of blackness in
creation, to make its colours felt.

But although everything in nature is more or less beautiful, § 6. Meaning
every species of object has its own kind and degree of beauty; <. jdeai beauty."
some being in their own nature more beautiful than others, and
few, if any, individuals possessing the utmost degree of beauty of
which the species is capable. This utmost degree of specific beauty,
necessarily coexistent with the utmost perfection of the object in
other respects, is the ideal of the object.

Ideas of beauty, then, be it remembered, are the subjects of
moral, but not of intellectual perception. By the investigation of
them we shall be led to the knowledge of the ideal subjects of art.

I USE this term ratliei' as one of convenience than as adequately-
expressive of the vast class of ideas which I wish to be compre-
hended under it, namely, all those conveyable by art, which are
the subjects of distinct intellectual perception and action, and which
are therefore worthy of the name of thoughts. But as every
thought, or definite exertion of intellect, implies two subjects, and
some connection or relation inferred between them, the term " ideas
of relation " is not incorrect, though it is inexpressive.

Under this head must be arranged everything productive of ex-
pression, sentiment, and character, whether in figures or landscapes,
(for there may be as much definite expression and marked carry-
ing out of particular thoughts in the treatment of inanimate as of
animate nature,) everything relating to the conception of the sub-
ject and to the congruity and relation of its parts; not as they
enhance each other's beauty by known and constant laws of com-
position, but as they give each other expression and meaning, by
particular application, requiring distinct thought to discover or to
enjoy; the choice, for instance, of a particular lurid or appalling
light, to illustrate an incident in itself terrible, or of a particular
tone of pure colour to prepare the mind for the expression of refined
and delicate feeling; and, in a still higher sense, the invention of
such incidents and thoughts as can be expressed in words as well as
on canvass, and are totally independent of any means of art but such
as may serve for the bare suggestion of them. The principal object

in the foreground of Turner's "Building of Carthage" is a group
of children sailing toy boats. The exquisite choice of this incident,
as expressive of the ruling passion which was to be the source of
future greatness, in preference to the tumult of busy stonemasons
or arming soldiers, is quite as appreciable when it is told as when
it is seen, — it has nothing to do witli the technicalities of painting ;
a scratch of the pen would have conveyed the idea and spoken to
the intellect as much as the elaborate realizations of colour. Such
a thought as this is something far above all art; it is epic poetry
of the highest order. Clajade, in subjects of the same kind, com-
monly introduces people carrying red trunks with iron locks about,
and dwells, with infantine delight, on the lustre of the leather
and the ornaments of the iron. The intellect can have no occu-
pation here; we must look to the imitation or to nothing. Conse-
quently, Turner rises above Claude in the very first instant of the
conception of his picture, and acquires an intellectual superiority
which no powers of the draughtsman or the artist (supposing that
such existed in his antagonist) could ever wrest from him.

Such are the function and force of ideas of relation. They are § 3. The ex-
what I have asserted in the second chapter of this section to be 0^630 ideas?^
the noblest subjects of art. Dependent upon it only for ex-
pression, they cause all the rest of its complicated sources of
pleasure to take, in comparison with them, the place of mere
language or decoration; nay, even the noblest ideas of beauty sink
at once beside these into subordination and subjection. It would
add little to the influence of Landseer's picture above instanced.
Chap. II. § 4. that the form of the dog should be conceived with
every perfection of curve and colour which its nature was capable
of, and that the ideal lines should be carried out with the science of a
Praxiteles; nay, the instant that the beauty so obtained interfered
with the impression of agony and desolation, and drew the mind
away from the feeling of the animal to its outward form, that
instant would the picture become monstrous and degraded. The
utmost glory of the human body is a mean subject of contem-
plation, compared to the emotion, exertion, and character of that
which animates it; the lustre of the limbs of the Aphrodite is faint
beside that of the brow of the Madonna; and the divine form of

the Greek god, except as it is the incarnation and expression of
divine mind, is degraded beside the passion and the prophecy of
the vaults of the Sistine.

Ideas of relation are of course, with respect to art generally, the
most extensive as the most important source of pleasure; and if we
proposed entering upon the criticism of historical works, it would
be absurd to attempt to do so without farther subdivision and
arrangement. But the old landscape painters got over so much
canvass without either exercise of, or appeal to, the intellect, that
we shall be little troubled with the subject as far as they are con-
cerned ; and whatever subdivision we may adopt, as it will there-
fore have particular reference to the works of modern artists, will
be better understood when we have obtained some knowledge of
them in less important points.

By the term "ideas of relation," then, I mean in future to
express all those sources of pleasure, which involve and require, at
the instant of their perception, active exertion of the intellectual
powers.

We have seen in the last section, what classes of ideas may be § i. No ncccs-
conveyed by art, and we have been able so far to appreciate their study of ideas
relative worth as to see, that from the list, as it is to be applied to ^"litatiou,
the purposes of legitimate criticism, we may at once throw out the
ideas of imitation; first, because, as we have shown, they are un-
worthy the pursuit of the artist; and secondly, because they are
nothing more than the result of a particular association of ideas of
truth. In examining the truth of art, therefore, we shall be com-
pelled to take notice of those particular truths whose association
gives rise to the ideas of imitation. We shall then see more
clearly the meanness of those truths, and we shall find ourselves
able to use them as tests of vice in art, saying of a picture,—"It
■ deceives, therefore it must be bad."

Ideas of power, in the same way, cannot be completely viewed § 2. Nor for
, , , • , , sepjirate study

as a separate class; not because they are mean or unnnportant, of ideas of
but because they are almost always associated with, or dependent
upon, some of the higher ideas of truth, beauty, or relation,
rendered with decision or velocity. That power which delights

US in the chalk sketch of a great painter is not like that of
the writing-master, mere dexterity of hand. It is the accuracy
and certainty of the knowledge, rendered evident by its rapid
and fearless expression, which is the real source of pleasure;
and so upon each difficulty of art, whether it be to know, or to
relate, or to invent, the sensation of power is attendant, when we
see that difficulty totally and swiftly vanquished. Hence, as we
determine what is otherwise desirable in art, we shall gradually
develope the sources of the ideas of power; and if there be anything
difficult which is not otherwise desirable, it must be afterwards
considered separately.

But it will be necessary at present to notice a particular form
of the ideas of power, which is partially independent of knowledge
of truth, or difficulty, and which is apt to corrupt the judgment
of the critic, and debase the work of the artist. It is evident
that the conception of power wdiich we receive from a calculation
of unseen difficulty, and an estimate of unseen strength, can never
be so impressive as that which we receive from the present sensa-
tion or sight of the one resisting, and the other overwhelming.
In the one case the power is imagined, and in the other felt.

There are thus tAvo modes in which we receive the conception of
power; one, the more just, when by a perfect knowledge of the
difficulty to be overcome, and the means employed, we form a
right estimate of the faculties exerted; the other, when without
possessing such intimate and accurate knowledge, we are impressed
by a sensation of power in visible action. If these two modes of
receiving the impression agree in the result, and if the sensation be
equal to the estimate, we receive the utmost possible idea of power.
But this is the case perhaps with the works of only one man out of
the whole circle of the fathers of art—of him to whom we have
just referred, Michael Angelo. In others the estimate and the
sensation are constantly unequal, and often contradictory.

The first reason of this inconsistency is, that in order to receive
a sensation of power, we must see it in operation. Its victory,
therefore, must not be achieved, but achieving, and therefore im-
perfect. Thus we receive a greater sensation of power from the
half-hewn limbs of the Twilight, or the Day, of the Cappella de'

Medici, than even from the divine inebriety of the Bacchus in the
gallery,— greater from the life dashed out along the friezes of the
Parthenon, than from the polished limbs of the Apollo,—greater
from the ink sketch of the head of RaflPaelle's St. Catherine, than
from the perfection of its realization.

Another reason of the inconsistency is, that the sensation of § 6. Second
power is in proportion to the apparent inadequacy of the means to inconsistency,
the end; so that the impression is much greater from a partial
success attained with slight effort, than from perfect success attained
with greater proportional effort. Now, in all art, every touch or
effort does individually less in proportion as the work approaches
perfection. The first five chalk touches bring a head into ex-
istence out of nothing. No five touches in the whole course of the
work will ever do so much as these, and the difference made by
each touch is more and more imperceptible as the work approaches
completion. Consequently, the ratio between the means em-
ployed and the effect produced is constantly decreasing, and there-
fore the least sensation of power is received from the most perfect
work.

It is thus evident that there are sensations of power about im- § 7. The sensa-
perfect art, so that it be right art as far as it goes, which must ought noHr
always be wanting in its perfection; and that there are sources of Jj^pg^jl^j
pleasure in the hasty sketch and the rough-hewn block, which are
partially wanting in the tinted canvass and the polished marble.
But it is nevertheless wrong to prefer the sensation of power to the
intellectual perception of it. There is in reality greater power in
the completion than in the commencement; and though it be not so
manifest to the senses, it ought to have higher influence on the
mind; and therefore in praising pictures for the ideas of power
they convey, we must not look to the keenest sensation, but to the
highest estimate, accompanied with as much of the sensation as is
compatible with it; and thus we shall consider those pictures as
conveying the highest ideas of power which attain the most perfect
end with the slightest possible means; not, observe, those in which,
though much has been done with little, all has not been done, but
from the picture, in which all has been done, and yet not a touch
thrown away. The quantity of work in the sketch is necessarily
VOL. I. D

less in proportion to tlie effect obtained than in tlie picture;
but yet the picture involves the greater power, if, out of all the
additional labour bestowed on it, not a touch has been lost.

For instance, there are few drawings of the present day that in-
volve greater sensations of power than those of Frederick Tayler.
Every dash tells, and the quantity of effect obtained is enormous,
in proportion to the apparent means. But the effect obtained is
not complete. Brilliant, beautiful, and right, as a sketch, the
work is still far from perfection, as a drawing. On the contrary,
there are few drawings of the present day that bear evidence of
more labour bestowed, or more complicated means employed, than
those of John Lewis. The result does not, at first, so much convey
an impression of inherent power as of prolonged exertion; but the
result is complete. Water-colour drawing can be carried no
farther; nothing has been left unfinished or untold. And on ex-
amination of the means employed, it is found and felt that not one
touch out of the thousands employed has been thrown away;—that
not one dot nor dash could be spared without loss of effect; — and
that the exertion has been as swift as it has been prolonged—as
bold as it has been persevering. The power involved in such a
picture is of the highest order, and the pleasure following on the
estimate of it pure, and enduring.

But there is still farther ground for caution in pursuing the sen-
sation of power, connected with the particular characters and
modes of execution. This we shall be better able to understand
by briefly reviewing the various excellences which may belong to
execution, and give pleasure in it; though the full determination
of what is desirable in it, and the critical examination of the execu-
tion of different artists, must be deferred, as will be immediately
seen, until we are more fully acquainted with the principles of
truth.

By the term Execution, I understand the right mechanical use § i. Meaning
of the means of art to produce a given end. «^exMut^."

All qualities of execution, properly so called, are influenced by, § 2. The first
and in a great degree dependent on, a far higher power than that cutiorfis^trutii.
of mere execution,—knowledge of truth. For exactly in propor-
tion as an artist is certain of his end, will he be swift and simple in
his means; and as he is accurate and deep in his knowledge, will
he be refined and precise in his touch. The first merit of manipu-
lation, then, is that delicate and ceaseless expression of refined
truth which is carried out to the last touch, and shadow of a touch,
and which makes every hair's-breadth of importance, and every
gradation full of meaning. It is not, properly speaking, execution;
but it is the only source of difference between the execution of a
commonplace and that of a perfect artist. The lowest draughts-
man, if he have spent the same time in handling the brush, may be
equal to the highest in the other qualities of execution (in swift-
ness, simplicity, and decision); but not in truth. It is in the
perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to
immortality is laid. If this truth of truths be present, all the other
qualities of execution may well be spared; and to those artists who
wish to excuse their ignorance and inaccuracy by a species of ex-
ecution which is a perpetual proclamation, qu'ils n'ont demeure
qu'un quart d'heure ^ le faire," we may reply with the truthful
Alceste, " Monsieur, le temps ne fait rien ^ I'affaire."

§3. The second, The second quality of execution is simplicity. The more unpre-
Simplidty. ^ . ^ , . . , 1 . . T .

in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most
inexplicable. That execution which is least comprehensible, and
which therefore defies imitation (other qualities being supposed
alike), is the best.

§ 6. The fourth, The fourth is inadequacy. The less sufficient the means appear
and'the^flfth ^^ greater (as has been already noticed) will be the

The fifth is decision: the appearance, that is, that whatever is
done, has been done fearlessly and at once; because this gives us
the impression that both the fact to be represented, and the means
necessary to its representation, were perfectly known.
§ 6. The sixth, The sixth is velocity. Not only is velocity, or the appearance
velocity. ^^ agreeable as decision is, because it gives ideas of power and

knowledge; but of two touches, as nearly as possible the same in
other respects, the quickest will invariably be the best. Truth
being supposed equally present in the shape and direction of both,
there will be more evenness, grace, and variety, in the quick one,
than in the slow one. It will be more agreeable to the eye as a
touch or line, and will possess more of the qualities of the lines of
nature—gradation, uncertainty, and unity.
§ 7. strange- These six qualities are the only perfectly legitimate sources of
mateTourcrof" pl^^^ure in execution, but I might have added a seventh —
pleasure in strangeness, which in many cases is productive of a pleasure not
altogether mean or degrading, though scarcely right. Supposing
the other higher qualities first secured, it adds in no small degree
to our impression of the artist's knowledge, if the means used be
such as we should never have thought of, or should have thought
adapted to a contrary effect. Let us, for instance, compare the
execution of the bull's head in the left hand lowest corner of the
Adoration of the Magi, in the Museum at Antwerp, with that in

Bergliem's landscape. No. 132. in the Dulwich Gallery. Rubens
first scratches horizontally over his canvass a thin greyish brown,
transparent and even, very much the colour of light wainscot; the
horizontal strokes of the bristles being left so evident, that the
whole might be taken for an imitation of wood, were it not for its
transparency. On this ground the eye, nostril, and outline of the
cheek are given with two or three rude brown touches (about
three or four minutes' work in all), though the head is colossal.
The back-ground is then laid in with thick, solid, warm white,
actually projecting all round the head, leaving it in dark intaglio.
Finally, five thin and scratchy strokes of very cold bluish white
are struck for the high light on the forehead and nose, and the
head is complete. Seen within a yard of the canvass, it looks
actually transparent — a flimsy, meaningless, distant shadow; while
the back-ground looks solid, projecting, and near. From the right
distance (ten or twelve yards off, whence alone the whole of the
picture can be seen), it is a complete, rich, substantial, and living
realization of the projecting head of the animal; while the back-
ground falls far behind. Now there is no slight nor mean pleasure
in perceiving such a result attained by means so strange. By
Berghem, on the other hand, a dark back-ground is first laid in
with exquisite delicacy and transparency, and on this the cow's head
is actually modelled in luminous white, the separate locks of hair
projecting from the canvass. No surprise, nor much pleasure of any
kind, would be attendant on this execution, even were the result
equally successful; and what little pleasure we have in it vanishes,
when on retiring from the picture, we find the head shining like a
distant lantern, instead of seeming substantial or near. Yet strange-
ness is not to be considered as a legitimate source of pleasure. That
means which is most conducive to the end, should always be the
most pleasurable; and that which is most conducive to the end,
can be strange only to the ignorance of the spectator. This kind
of pleasure is illegitimate, therefore, because it implies and requires,
in those who feel it, ignorance of art.

The legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are therefore § 8. Yet even
truth, simplicity, mystery, inadequacy, decision, and velocity. But gourcTs'of^'^'''
of these, be it observed, some are so far inconsistent with others^ pleasure in

§ 9. And fond- fix itself on the conception. Hence the danger of too great fond-

to the adoption j^st three qualities of execution: for although it is most desirable
of the lowest. ^ . . ,

' I have here noticed only noble vices, the sacrifices of one excellence to another
legitimate, but inferior one. There are, on the other hand, qualities of execution
which ai-e often sought for, and praised, though scarcely by the class of persons
for whom I am wi-iting, in which everything is sacrificed to illegitimate and con-
temptible sources of pleasure, and these are vice throughout, and have no redeeming
quality nor excusing aim. Such is that which is often thought so desirable in the
drawing-master, under the title of boldness, meaning that no touch is ever to be made
less than the tenth of an inch broad ; such, on the other hand, the softness and smooth-
ness wMch are the great attraction,! of Carlo Dolci, and such the exhibition of particular
powers and tricks of the hand, and fingers, in total forgetfulness of any end whatsoever
to be attained thereby, which is especially characteristic of modem engra\ing. Compare
Pai-t n. Sect. n. Chap. II. § 21. (note.)

Such are the principal modes in which the ideas of power may §11. Eccain-
become a dangerous attraction to the artist—a false test to the
critic. But in all cases where they lead us astray, it will be found
that the error is caused by our preferring victory over a small
apparent difficulty to victory over a great, but concealed one; and
so that we keep this distinction constantly in view, (whether with
reference to execution or to any other quality of art,) between the
sensation and the intellectual estimate of power, we shall always
find the ideas of power a just and high source of pleasure in every
kind and grade of art.

It may perhaps be wondered that, in the division we have made
of our subject, we have taken no notice of the sublime in art, and'
that, in our explanation of that division, we have not once used the
word.

The fact is, that sublimity is not a specific term,—not a term
descriptive of the effect of a particular class of ideas. Anything
which elevates the mind is sublime, and elevation of mind is pro-
duced by the contemplation of greatness of any kind; but chiefly,
of course, by the greatness of the noblest things. Sublimity is,
therefore, only another word for the effect of greatness upon the'
feelings ; — greatness, whether of matter, space, power, virtue,
or beauty: and there is perhaps no desirable quality of a work
of art, which, in its perfection, is not, in some way or degree,
sublime.

I am fully prepared to allow of much ingenuity in Burke's
theory of the sublime, as connected with self-preservation. There
are few things so great as death; and there is perhaps nothing
which banishes all littleness of thought and feeling in an equal
degree with its contemplation. Everything, therefore, which in any
way points to it, and, therefore, most dangers and powers over
which we have little control, are in some degree sublime. But it
is not the fear, observe, but the contemplation of death; not the
instinctive shudder and struggle of self-preservation, but the delibe-
rate measurement of the doom, which is really great or sublime
in feeling. It is not while we shrink, but while we defy, that we

receive or convey tlie higliest conceptions of the fate. There is no
sublimity in the agony of terror. Whether do we trace it most in
the cry to the mountains, " Fall on us," and to the hills, " Cover
us," or in the calmness of the prophecy—" And though after my
skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God"?
A little reflection will easily convince any one, that so far from § 3. Danger is
the feelings of self-preservation being necessary to the sublime, their not^t^eVm-^
greatest action is totally destructive of it; and that there are few it.
feelings less capable of its perception than those of a coward. But
the simple conception or idea of greatness of suffering or extent of
destruction is sublime, whether there be any connection of that idea
with ourselves or not. If we were placed beyond the reach of all
peril or pain, the perception of these agencies in their influence on
others would not be less sublime; not because peril and pain are
sublime in their own nature, but because their contemplation,
exciting compassion or fortitude, elevates the mind, and renders
meanness of thought impossible. Beauty is not so often felt to be § 4. The
sublime; because, in many kinds of purely material beauty there fs subiim""*^^
is some truth in Burke's assertion, that "littleness" is one of its
elements. But he who has not felt that there may be beauty
without littleness, and that such beauty is a source of the sublime,
is yet ignorant of the meaning of the ideal in art. I do not mean, § 5. And gene-
in ti'acing the source of the sublime to greatness, to hamper myself eWatcs^thr'*^'^
with any fine-spun theory. I take the widest possible ground of
investigation, that sublimity is found wherever anything elevates
the mind; that is, wherever it contemplates anything above itself,
and perceives it to be so. This is the simple philological signifi-
cation of the word derived from sublimis; and will serve us much
more easily, and be a far clearer and more evident ground of argu-
ment than any mere metaphysical or more limited definition; while
the proof of its justness will be naturally developed by its application
to the different branches of art.

As, therefore, the sublime is not distinct from what is beautiful, § 6. The former
nor from other sources of pleasure in art, but is only a particular suiyreHs ^
mode and manifestation of them, my subject will divide itself into fl^^eS"*^^
the investigation of ideas of truth, beauty, and relation ; and to each
of these classes of ideas I destine a separate part of the work.

The investigation of ideas of truth will enable us to determine
the relative rank of artists as followers and historians of nature:

That of ideas of beauty will lead us to compare them in their
attainment, first of what is agreeable in technical matters; then in
colour and composition; finally and chiefly, in the purity of their
conceptions of the ideal:

And that of ideas of relation will lead us to compare them as
originators of just thought.

It cannot but be evident from the above division of the ideas § i. The two
conveyable by art, that the landscape painter must always have fand^ape^
two ffreat and distinct ends : the first, to induce in the spectator's Pointing are

mind the faithful conception of any natural objects whatsoever; the tion of facts
second, to guide the spectator's mind to those objects most worthy thoughts,
of its contemplation, and to inform him of the thoughts and feelings
with which these were regarded by the artist himself.

In attaining the first end the painter only places the spectator
where he stands himself; he sets him before the landscape and
leaves him. The spectator is alone. He may follow out his own
thoughts as he would in the natural solitude; or he may remain
untouched, unreflecting and regardless, as his disposition may
incline him : but he has nothing of thought given to him; no new
ideas, no unknown feelings, forced on his attention or his heart.
The artist is his conveyance, not his companion,—his horse, not his
friend. But in attaining the second end, the artist not only places

the spectator, but talks to him; makes him a sharer in his own
strong feelings and quick thoughts; hurries him away in his own
enthusiasm; guides him to all that is beautiful; snatches him from
all that is base; and leaves him more than delighted, — ennobled
and instructed, under the sense of having not only beheld a new
scene, but of having held communion with a new mind, and having
been endowed for a time with the keen perception and the im-
petuous emotion of a nobler and more penetrating intelligence.

Each of these different aims of art will necessitate a different
system of choice of objects to be represented. The first does not
indeed imply choice at all, but it is usually united with the selec-
tion of such objects as may be naturally and constantly pleasing
to all men, at all times; and this selection, when perfect and
careful, leads to the attainment of the pure ideal. But the artist
aiming at the second end, selects his objects for their meaning and
character, rather than for their beauty; and uses them rather to
throw light upon the particular thought he wishes to convey, than
as in themselves objects of unconnected admiration.

Now, although the first mode of selection, when guided by deep
reflection, may rise to the production of works possessing a noble
and ceaseless influence on the human mind, it is likely to degene-
rate into, or rather, in nine cases out of ten, it never goes beyond,
a mere appeal to such parts of our animal nature as are constant
and common,—shared by all, and perpetual in all; such, for in-
stance, as the pleasure of the eye in the opposition of a cold and
warm colour, or of a massy form with a delicate one. It also
tends to induce constant repetition of the same ideas, and refe-
rence to the same principles; it gives rise to those rules of art
which properly excited Reynolds's indignation when applied to its
higher efforts .; it is the source of, and the apology for, that host
of technicalities and absurdities which in all ages have been the
curse of art and the crown of the connoisseur.

But art, in its second and highest aim, is not an appeal to con-
stant animal feelings, but an expression and awakening of indi-
vidual thought: it is therefore as various and as extended in its
efforts as the compass and grasp of the directing mind; and we
feel, in each of its results, that we are looking, not at a specimen

of a tradesman's wares, of which he is ready to make us a dozen
to match, but at one coruscation of a perpetually active mind,
like which there has not been, and will not be another.

Hence, although there can be no doubt which of these branches § 5. Yet the
of art is the higher, it is equally evident that the first will be the m to^iL
more generally felt and appreciated. For the simple statement of
the truths of nature must in itself be pleasing to every order of
mind; because every truth of nature is more or less beautiful: and
if there be just and right selection of the more important of these
truths —based, as above explained, on feelings and desires common
to all mankind,—the facts so selected must, in some degree, be
delightful to all, and their value appreciable by all; more or less,
indeed, as their senses and instinct have been rendered more or less
acute and accm'ate by use and study ; but in some degree by all,
and in the same way by all. But the highest art, being based on § 6. The second
sensations of peculiar minds, sensations occurring to them only at
particular times, and to a plurality of mankind perhaps never, and
being expressive of thoughts which could only rise out of a mass of
the most extended knowledge, and of dispositions modified in a
thousand ways by peculiarity of intellect, can only be met and
understood by persons having some sort of sympathy with the high
and solitary minds which produced it—sympathy only to be felt
by minds in some degree high and solitary themselves. He alone
can appreciate the art, who could comprehend the conversation of
the painter, and share in his emotion, in moments of his most fiery
passion and most original thought. And whereas the true meaning
and end of his art mu.st thus be sealed to thousands, or misunder-
stood by them; so also, as he is sometimes obliged, in working out
his own peculiar end, to set at defiance those constant laws which
have arisen out of our lower and changeless desires, that whose pur-
pose is unseen is frequently in its means and parts displeasing.

But this want of extended influence in high art, be it especially § 7. The first
observed, proceeds from no want of truth in the art itself, but from "hrgecrad?
a want of sympathy in the spectator with those feelings in the
artist which prompt him to the utterance of one truth rather than
of another. For (and this is what I wish at present especially to
insist upon) although it is possible to reach what I have stated to

be the first end of art, the representation of facts, without reaching
the second, the representation of thoughts, yet it is altogether im-
possible to reach the second without having previously reached the
first. I do not say that a man cannot think, having false basis and
material for thought; but that a false thought is worse than the
want of thought, and therefore is not art. And this is the reason
why, though I consider the second as the real and only important
end of all art, I call the representation of facts the first end ; be-
cause it is necessary to the other and must be attained before it.
It is the foundation of all art; like real foundations, it may be little
thought of when a brilliant fabric is raised on it; but it must be
there. And as few buildings are beautiful unless every line and
column of their mass have reference to their foundation, and be
suggestive of its existence and strength, so nothing can be beautiful
in art which does not in all its parts suggest and guide to the
foundation, even where no undecorated portion of it is visible; while
the noblest edifices of art are built of such pure and fine crystal
that the foundation may all be seen through them : and then many,
while they do not see what is built upon that first story, yet much
admire the solidity of its brickwork, thinking they understand all
that is to be understood of the matter; while others stand beside
them, looking not at the low story, but up into the heaven at that
building of crystal in which the builder's spirit is dwelling. And
thus, though we want the thoughts and feelings of the artist as
well as the truth, yet they must be thoughts arising out of the
knowledge of truth, and feelings arising out of the contemplation of
truth. We do not want his mind to be like a badly blown glass,
that distorts what we see through it; but like a glass of sweet
and strange colour, that gives new tones to what we see through
it; and a glass of rare strength and clearness too, to let us see
more than we could ourselves, and bring nature up to us and near
§ 8. The ex- to us.^ Nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most
Zlfof iuth^*^' imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling

(supposing that feeling could be pure and false at the same time) ;
not the most exalted conception, nor tlie most comprehensive grasp

of intellect, can make amends for the want of truth, and that for
two reasons: first, because falsehood is in itself revolting and de-
grading ; and secondly, because nature is so immeasurably superior
to all that the human mind can conceive, that every departure from
her is a fall beneath her, so that there can be no such thing as an
ornamental falsehood. All falsehood must be a blot as well as a
sin, an injury as well as a deception.

We shall, in consequence, find that no artist can be graceful, § 9. Coldness
imaginative, or original, unless he be truthful; and that the pursuit bLut" no^sSgn
of beauty, instead of leading us away from truth, increases the of truth,
desire for it and the necessity of it tenfold; so that those artists who
are really great in imaginative power, will be found to have based
their boldness of conception on a mass of knowledge far exceeding
that possessed by those who pride themselves on its accumulation
without regarding its use. Coldness and want of passion in a
picture are not signs of the accuracy, but of the paucity of its
statements: true vigour and brilliancy are not signs of audacity,
but of knowledge.

Hence it follows that it is in the power of all, with care and § lo. How
time, to form something like a just judgment of the relative merits consid^ed a
of artists; for although with respect to the feeling and passion of^^i^'^rt"*'"
of pictures, it is often as impossible to criticise as to appreciate,
except to such as are in some degree equal in powers of mind, and
in some respects the same in modes of mind, with those whose
works they judge; yet, with respect to the representation of facts,
it is possible for all, by attention, to form a right judgment of the
respective powers and attainments of every artist. Truth is a bar
of comparison at which they may all be examined, and according
to the rank they take in this examination will almost invariably be
that which, if capable of appreciating them in every respect, we
should be just in assigning them; so strict is the connection, so con-
stant the relation, between the sum of knowledge and the extent of
thought, between accuracy of perception and vividness of idea.

I shall endeavour, therefore, in the present portion of the work,
to enter with care and impartiality into the investigation of the
claims of the schools of ancient and modern landscape to faith-
fulness in representing nature. I shall pay no regard whatsoever

to what may be thought beautiful, or sublime, or imaginative. I
shall look only for truth; bare, clear, downright statement of
facts; showing in each particular, as far as I am able, what the
truth of nature is, and then seeking for the plain expression of it,
and for that alone. And I shall thus endeavour, totally regardless
of fervour of imagination or brilliancy of effect, or any other of
their more captivating qualities, to examine and to judge the works
of the great living painter, who is, I believe, imagined by the
majority of the public, to paint more falsehood and less fact than
any other known master. We shall see with what reason.

reason, why I think it necessary to devote a separate portion oi the deception of

Now I have just said that it is possible for all men, by care and
attention, to form a just judgment of the fidelity of artists to nature.
To do this no peculiar powers of mind are required, no sympathy
with particular feelings, nothing which every man of ordinary
intellect does not in some degree possess,—powers, namely, of
observation and intelligence, which by cultivation may be brought
to a high degree of perfection and acuteness. But until this cultiva-
tion has been bestowed, and until the instrument thereby perfected
lias been employed in a consistent series of careful observation, it
is as absurd as it is audacious to pretend to form any judgment
whatsoever respecting the truth of art: and my first business,
before going a step farther, must be to combat the nearly universal
error of belief among the thoughtless and unreflecting, that they know
either what nature is, or what is like her; that they can discover
truth by instinct, and that their minds are such pure Venice glass as
to be shocked by all treachery. I have to prove to them that there
are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their
philosophy, and that the truth of nature is a part of the truth of
vol, i. e

God; to him who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to him
who does, infinity.

The first great mistake that people make in the matter, is the
supposition that they must see a thing if it be before their eyes.
They forget the great truth told them by Locke, book ii. chap. 9. § 3.
—" This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body,
if they reach not the mind, whatever impressions are made on the
outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no per-
ception. Fire may burn our bodies, with no other effect than it does
a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the
sense of heat or idea of pain be produced in the mind, wherein con-
sists actual perception. How often may a man observe in himself,
that whilst his mind is intently employed in the contemplation of
some subjects and curiously surveying some ideas that are there, it
takes no notice of impressions of sounding bodies, made upon the
organ of hearing, with the same attention that uses to be for the
producing the ideas of sound. A sufficient impulse there may be
on the organ, but it not reaching the observation of the mind, there
follows no perception, and though the motion that uses to produce
the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound is heard." And
what is here said, which all must feel by their own experience to
be true, is more remarkably and necessarily the case with sight
than with any other of the senses, for this reason, that the ear is
not accustomed to exercise constantly its functions of hearing; it is
accustomed to stillness, and the occurrence of a sound of any kind
whatsoever is apt to awake attention, and be followed with percep-
tion, in proportion to the degree of sound; but the eye during our
waking hours, exercises constantly its function of seeing; it is its
constant habit; we always, as far as the bodily organ is concerned,
see something, and we always see in the same degree; so that the
occurrence of sight, as such, to the eye, is only the continuance or
its necessary state of action, and awakes no attention whatsoever,
except by the particular nature and quality of the sight. And
thus, unless the minds of men are particularly directed to the im-
pressions of sight, objects pass perpetually before the eyes without
conveying any impression to the brain at all; and so pass actually
unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in the full clear sense of the

word unseen. And numbers of men being preoccupied with
business or care of some description, totally unconnected with the
impressions of sight, such is actually the case with them; they re-
ceiving from nature only the inevitable sensations of blueness,
redness, darkness, light, &c., and except at particular and rare
moments, no more whatsoever.

The degree of ignorance of external nature in which men may § 3. But more
thus remain depends, therefore, partly on the number and character porUmTo'^^eir
of the subjects with which their minds may be otherwise occupied, "^turai sensi-

and partly on a natuiral want of sensibility to the power of beauty is beauUfuj.
of form, and the other attributes of external objects, I do not
think that there is ever such absolute incapacity in the eye for dis-
tinguishing and receiving pleasure from certain forms and colours,
as there is in persons who are technically said to have no ear for
distinguishing notes; but there is naturally every degree of blunt-
ness and acuteness, both for perceiving the truth of form, and for
receiving pleasure from it when perceived. And although I believe
even the lowest degree of these faculties can be expanded almost
unlimitedly by cultivation, the pleasure received rewards not the
labour necessary, and the pursuit is abandoned. So that while in
those whose sensations are naturally acute and vivid, the call of
external nature is so strong that it must be obeyed, and is ever
heard louder as the approach to her is nearer,—in those whose
sensations are naturally blunt, the call is overpowered at once by
other thoughts, and their faculties of perception, weak originally,
die of disuse. With this kind of bodily sensibility to colour and § 4. Connected
form is intimately connected that higher sensibility which we ^^^ o/nior^'
revere as one of the chief attributes of all noble minds, and as the feeling,
chief spring of real poetry. I believe this kind of sensibility may
be entirely resolved into the acuteness of bodily sense of which 1
have been speaking, associated with love, love I mean in its infinite
and holy functions, as it embraces divine and human and brutal
intelligences, and hallows the physical perception of external objects
by association, gratitude, veneration, and other pure feelings of our
moral nature. And although the discovery of truth is in itself
altogether intellectual, and dependent merely on our powers of
physical perception and abstract intellect, wholly independent of

our moral nature, yet these instruments (perception and judgment)
are so sharpened and brightened, and so far more swiftly and
effectively used, when they have the energy and passion of our
moral nature to bring them into action—perception is so quickened
by love, and judgment so tempered by veneration, that, practically,
a man of deadened moral sensation is always dull in his perception
of truth; and thousands of the highest and most divine truths of
nature are wholly concealed from him, however constant and inde-
fatigable may be his intellectual search. Thus then, the farther
we look, the more w^e are limited in the number of those to whom
we should choose to appeal as judges of truth, and the more we
perceive how great a number of mankind may be partially incapa-
citated from either discovering or feeling it.

Next to sensibility, which is necessary for the perception of facts,
come reflection and memory, which are necessary for the retention
of them, and recognition of their resemblances. For a man may
receive impression after impression, and that vividly and with
delight, and yet, if he take no care to reason upon those impres-
sions and trace them to their sources, he may remain totally
ignorant of the facts that produced them ; nay, may attribute them
to facts with which they have no connection, or may coin causes for
them that have no existence at all. And the more sensibility and
imagination a man possesses, the more likely will he be to fall into
error; for then he will see whatever he expects, and admire and
judge with his heart, and not with his eyes. How many people are
misled, by what has been said and sung of the serenity of Italian
skies, to suppose they must be more blue than the skies of the north,
and think that they see them so; whereas the sky of Italy is far
more dull and grey in colour than the skies of the north, and is
distinguished only by its intense repose of light. And this is con-
firmed by Benvenuto Cellini, who, on his first entering France,
is especially struck with the clearness of the sky, as contrasted
with the mist of Italy. And what is more strange still, when
people see in a painting what they suppose to have been the
source of their impressions, they will affirm it to be truthful, though
they feel no such impression resulting from it. Thus, though day
after day they may have been impressed by the tone and warmth

of an Italian sky, yet not having traced the feeling to its sonrceji
and supposing themselves impressed by its blueness, they will affirm
a blue sky in a painting to be truthful, and reject the most faithful
rendering of all the real attributes of Italy as cold or dull. And § 6. How sight
this influence of the imagination over the senses, is peculiarly previous
observable in the perpetual disposition of mankind to suppose that ^«nowiedge.
they see what they know, and vice versa in their not seeing what
they do not know. Thus, if a child be asked to draw the corner
of a house, he will lay down something in the form of the letter
T. He has no conception that the two lines of the roof, which
he knows to be level, produce on his eye the impression of a slope.
It requires repeated and close attention before he detects this fact,
or can be made to feel that the lines on his paper are false. And
the Chinese, children in all things, suppose a good perspective
drawing to be as false as we feel their plate patterns to be, or
wonder at the strange buildings which come to a point at the end.
And all the early works, whether of nations or of men, show, by
their want of shade, how little the eye, without knowledge, is to be
depended upon to discover truth. The eye of a red Indian, keen
enough to find the trace of his enemy or his prey, even in the
unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the impressions
of shade, that Mr. Catlin mentions his once having been in great
danger from having painted a portrait with the face in half light,
which the untutored observers imagined and affirmed to be the
painting of half a face. Barry, in his sixth Lecture, takes notice of
the same want of actual sight in the early painters of Italy. " The
imitations," he says, " of early art are like those of children,—
nothing is seen in the spectacle before us, imless it be previously
known and sought for; and numberless observable differences be-
tween the age of ignorance and that of knowledge, show how much
the contraction or extension of our sphere of vision depends upon
other considerations • than the mere returns of our natural optics."
And the deception which takes place so broadly in cases like these,
has infinitely greater influence over our judgment of the more intri-
cate and less tangible truths of nature. We are constantly supposing
that we see what experience only has shown us, or can show us,
to have existence, constantly missing the sight of what we do not

know beforehand to be visible: and painters, to the last hour of
their liveSj are apt to fall in some degree into the error of painting
what exists, rather than what thej can see, I shall prove the
extent of this error more completely hereafter.

Bo it also observed^ that all these difficulties would lie in the
way, even if the truths of nature were always the same, constantly
repeated and brought before us. But the truths of nature are one
eternal change—one infinite variety^ There is no bush on the face
of the globe exactly like another bush ;—there are no two trees in
the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, iior two leaves
on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor
two waves in the sea exactly alike. And out of this mass of various,
yet agreeing beauty, it is by long attention only that the conception
of the constant character—the ideal form—hinted at by all, yet
assumed by none, is fixed upon the imagination for its standard of
truth.

It is not singular, therefore, nor in any way disgraceful, that the
majority of spectators are totally incapable of appreciating the truth
of nature, when fully set before them; but it is both singular and
disgraceful that it is so difficult to convince them of their own
incapability. Ask a connoisseur who has scampered over all Europe,
the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety to one
that he cannot tell you; and yet he will be A^oluble of criticism on
every painted landscape from Dresden to Madrid, and pretend to
tell you whether they are like nature or not. Ask an enthusiastic
chatterer in the Sistine Chapel how many ribs he has, and you
get no answer; but it is odds that you do not get out of the door
without his informing you that he considers such and such a figure
badly drawn,

A few such interrogations as these might indeed convict, if not
convince the mass of spectators of incapability, were it not for the
universal reply, that they can recognize what they cannot describe,
and feel what is truthful, though they do not know what is truth.
And this is, to a certain degree, true. A man may recognize the
portrait of his friend, though he cannot, if you ask him apart, tell
you the shape of kis nos6, or the height of his forehead : and every
one could tell nature herself from an imitation; why not then, it

will be asked, what is like her from what is not ? For this simple
reason; that we constantly recognize things by their least important
attributes, and by help of very few of those : and if these attributes
exist not in the imitation, though there may be thousands of
others far higher and more valuable, yet if those be wanting, or
imperfectly rendered, by which we are accustomed to recognize the
object, we deny the likeness; while if these be given, though all
the great and valuable and important attributes may be wanting, we
affirm the likeness. Recognition is no proof of real and intrinsic
resemblance. We recognize our books by their bindings, though
the true and essential characteristics lie inside. A man is known to
his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by
the smile: each of these Icnows him, but how little, or how much,
depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly
and indeed characteristic of the man, is known only to God. One
portrait of a man may possess exact accuracy of feature, and no
atom of expression; it may be, to use the ordinary terms of admi-
ration bestowed on such portraits by those whom they please, " as
like as it can stare." Everybody, down to his cat, would know
this. Another portrait may have neglected or misrepresented the
features, but may have given the flash of the eye, and the peculiar
radiance of the lip, seen on him only in his hours of highest mental
excitement. None but his friends would know this. Anotlier may
have given none of his ordinary expressions, but one which he
wore in the most excited instant of his life, when all his secret
passions and all his highest powers were brought into play at once.
None but those who had then seen him might recognize this as
like. But which would be the most truthful portrait of the man ?
The first gives the accidents of body—the sport of climate, and
food, and time,—which corruption inhabits, and the worm waits for.
The second gives the stamp of the soul upon the flesh; but it is
the soul seen in the emotions which it shares with many, wliich
may not be characteristic of its essence—the results of habit, and
education, and accident,—a gloze, whether purposely worn or uncon-
sciously assumed, perhaps totally contrary to all that is rooted and
real in the mind which it conceals. The third has caught the trace
of all that was most hidden and most mighty, when all hypocrisy,

and all habit, and all petty and passing emotion,—the ice, and
the bank, and the foam of the immortal river,—were shivered, and
broken, and swallowed up in the awakening of its inward strength ;
when the call and claim of some divine motive had brought into
visible being those latent forces and feelings which the spirit's own
volition could not summon, nor its consciousness comprehend, which
God only knew, and God only could awaken,—the depth and the
mystery of its peculiar and separating attributes. And so it is
with external nature: she has a body and a soul like man; but
her soul is the Deity. It is possible to represent the body without
the spirit; and this shall be like, to those whose senses are only
cognizant of body. It is possible to represent the spirit in its
ordinary and inferior manifestations ; and this shall be like, to those
who have not watched for its moments of power. It is possible
to represent the spirit in its secret and high operations; and this
shall be like, only to those to whose watching they have been
revealed. All these are -truth; but according to the dignity of the
truths he can represent or feel, is the power of the painter,—the
justice of the judge.

OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS:—FIRST, THAT
PARTICULAR TRUTHS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GENERAL
ONES.

I HAVE ill the last chapter affirmed that we usually recognize § i. Necessity
objects by £heir least essential characteristics. This very naturally tL'^rdative^"^
excites the inquiry, what I consider their important characteristics, importance of
and why I call one truth more important than another. And this
question must be immediately determined, because it is evident,
that in judging of the truth of painters, we shall have to consider
not only the accuracy with which individual truths are given, but
the relative importance of the truths themselves; for as it constantly
happens that the powers of art are unable to render all truths,
that artist must be considered the most truthful who has preserved
the most important at the expense of the most trifling.

Now, if we are to begin our investigation in Aristotle's way, § 2. Misappii.
and look at the (patvofxsva of the subject, we shall immediately ap^^oris^^^^
stumble over a maxim which is in everybody's mouth, and which, " csenerai
as it is understood in practice, is true and useful, as it is usually important tiian
applied in argument, false and misleading. " General truths are
more important than particular ones." Often, when in conversation,
I have been praising Turner for his perpetual variety, and for giving
so particular and separate a character to each of his compositions,
that the mind of the painter can only be estimated by seeing all
that he has ever done, and that nothing can be prophesied of a
picture coming into existence on his easel, but that it will be totally
different in idea from all that he has ever done before; and when

I have opposed this inexhaustible knowledge or imagination, which-
ever it may be, to the perpetual repetition of some half-dozen con-
ceptions bj Claude and Poussin, I have been met by the formidable
objection, enunciated with much dignity and self-satisfaction on the
part of my antagonist,—" That is not painting general truths, that
is painting particular truths." Now there must be something
wrong in that application of a principle which would make the
variety and abundance which we look for as the greatest sign of
intellect in the writer, the greatest sign of error in the painter;
and we shall accordingly see, by an application of it to other
matters, that taken without limitation, the whole proposition is
utterly false. For instance, Mrs. Jameson somewhere mentions the
exclamation of a lady of her acquaintance, more desirous to fill a
pause in conversation than abundant in sources of observation,—
'' What an excellent book the Bible is!" This was a very general
truth indeed; a truth predicable of the Bible in common with many
other books, but it certainly is neither striking nor important. Had
the lady exclaimed, — "How evidently is the Bible a divine revela-
tion I" she would have expressed a particular truth, one predicable
of the Bible only; but certainly far more interesting and important.
Had she, on the contrary, informed us that the Bible was a book,
she would have been still more general, and still less entertaining.
If I ask any one who somebody else is, and receive for answer that
he is a man, I get little satisfaction for my pains; but if I am told
that he is Sir Isaac Newton, I immediately thank my neighbour for
§ 4. Generality his information. The fact is, and the above instances may serve at
the^Seet^ prove it if it be not self-evident, that generality gives

particularity in importance to the subject, and limitation or particularity to ihe pre-
dicate. If I say that such and such a man in China is an opium
eater, I say nothing very interesting, because my subject (such a
man) is particular. If I say that all men in China are opium
eaters, I say something interesting, because my subject (all men) is
general. If I say that all men in China eat, I say nothing inter-
esting, because my predicate (eat) is general. If I say that all men
in China eat opium, I say something interesting, because my pre-
dicate (eat opium) is particular.

a painter has to ask himself whetlier he shall represent or not, is a
predicate. Hence in art, particular truths are usually more im-
portant than general ones.

How is it then that anything so plain as this should be contra-
dicted by one of the most universally received aphorisms respecting
art ? A little reflection will show us under what limitations this
maxim may be true in practice.

It is self-evident that when we are painting or describing any- § s. The im-
thing, those truths must be the most important which are most truths of species
characteristic of what is to be told or represented. Now that
which is first and most broadly characteristic of a thing is that generality,
which distinguishes its genus, or which makes it what it is. For
instance, that which makes drapery he drapery, is not its being
made of silk, or worsted, or flax, for things are made of all these
which are not drapery, but the ideas peculiar to drapery; the
properties which, when inherent in a thing, make it drapery, are
extension, non-elastic flexibility, unity, and comparative thinness.
Everything which has these properties, a waterfall, for instance, if
united and extended, or a net of weeds over a wall, is drapery, as
much as silk or woollen stuff is. So that these ideas separate
drapery in our minds from everything else; they are peculiarly
characteristic of it, and therefore are the most important group of
ideas connected with it; and so with everything else, that which
makes the thing what it is, is the most important idea, or group
of ideas, connected with the thing. But as this idea must neces-
sarily be common to all individuals of the species it belongs to, it
is a general idea with respect to that species; while other ideas,
which are not characteristic of the species, and are therefore in
reality general (as black and white are terms applicable to more
things than drapery), are yet particular with respect to that species,
being predicable only of certain individuals of it. Hence it is care-
lessly and falsely said that general ideas are more important than
particular ones; carelessly and falsely, I say, because the so-called
general idea is important, not because it is common to all the
individuals of that species, but because it separates that species
from everything else. It is the distinctiveness, not the universality
of the truth, which renders it important. And the so-called par-

ticular idea is unimportant, not because it is not predicable of the
whole species, but because it is predicable of things out of that
species. It is not its individuality, but its generality, which renders
§ 6. All truths it unimportant. So then truths are important just in proportion
they are ^^ they are characteristic; and are valuable, primarily, as they

characteristic, separate the species from all other created things; secondarily, as
they separate the individuals of that species from one another.
Thus " silken" and " woollen" are imimportant ideas with respect
to drapery, because they neither separate the species from other
things, nor even the individuals of that species from one another,
since, though not common to the whole of it, they are common to
indefinite numbers of it; but the particular folds into which any
piece of drapery may happen to fall, being different in many par-
ticulars from those into which any other piece of drapery will fall,
are expressive not only of the characters of the species (flexibility,
non-elasticity, &c.), but of individuality and definite character in
the case immediately observed, and are consequently most important
and necessary ideas. So in a man, to be short-legged or long-nosed,
or anything else of accidental quality, does not distinguish him from
other short-legged or long-nosed animals; but the important truths
respecting a man are, first, the marked development of that dis-
tinctive organization which separates him as man from other ani-
mals, and secondly, that group of qualities which distinguishes the
individual from all other men, which makes him Paul or Judas,
Newton or Shakspeare.

Such are the real sources of importance in truths, as far as they
are considered with reference merely to their being general or
particular; but there are other sources of importance which give
farther weight to the ordinary opinion of the greater value of those
which are general, and which render this opinion right in practice;
I mean the intrinsic beauty of the truths themselves, a quality
which it is not here the place to investigate, but which must just
be noticed, as invariably adding value to truths of species rather
than to those of individuality. The qualities and properties which
characterize man or any other animal as a species, are the perfection
of his or its form and mind, almost all individual differences arising
from imperfections; hence a truth of species is the I more valuable

to art, because it must always be a beauty, while a truth of indi-
viduals is commonly, in some sort of way, a defect.

Again, a truth which may be of great interest when an object § 8. And many
is viewed by itself, may be objectionable when it is viewed in l^ie^if sepa-"
relation to other objects. Thus if we were painting a piece of
drapery as our whole subject, it would be proper to give in it in connection
every source of entertainment which particular truths could supply otheis.
—to give it varied colour and delicate texture; but if we paint this

same piece of drapery as part of the dress of a Madonna, all these
ideas of richness or texture become thoroughly contemptible, and
unfit to occupy the mind at the same moment with the idea of
the Virgin. The conception of drapery is then to be suggested
by the simplest and slightest means possible, and all notions of
texture and detail are to be rejected with utter reprobation; but
this, observe, is not because they are particular or general or any-
thing else, with respect to the drapery itself, but because they draw
the attention to the dress instead of the saint, and disturb and
degrade the imagination and the feelings; hence we ought to give
the conception of the drapery in the most unobtrusive way possible,
by rendering those essential qualities distinctly, which are necessary
to the very existence of drapery, and not one more.

With these last two sources of the importance of truths we
have nothing to do at present, as they are dependent upon ideas
of beauty and relation : I merely allude to them now, to show that
all that is alleged by Sir J. Reynolds and other scientific writers,
respecting the kind of truths proper to be represented by the painter
or sculptor, is perfectly just and right; while yet the principle on
which they base their selection (that general truths are more im-
portant than particular ones) is altogether false. Canova's Perseus
in the Vatican is entirely spoiled by an unlucky tassel in the folds
of the mantle (which the next admirer of Canova who passes would
do well to knock off); but it is spoiled, not because this is a par-
ticular truth, but because it is a contemptible, unnecessary, and ugly
truth. The button which fastens the vest of the Sistine Daniel is
as much a particular truth as this, but it is a necessary one, and
the idea of it is given by the simplest possible means; hence it is
right and beautiful.

Finally, then, it is to be remembered that all truths, as far as
their being particular or general affects their value at all, are valu-
able in proportion as they are particular, and valueless in proportion
as they are general; or to express the proposition in simpler terms,
every truth is valuable in proportion as it is characteristic of the
thing of which it is affirmed.

It will be necessary next for us to determine how far frequency or § i. No acci-

Now the whole determination of this question depends upon
whether the unusual fact be a violation of nature's general prin-
ciples, or the application of some of those principles in a peculiar
and striking way. Nature sometimes, though very rarely, violates
her own principles; it is her principle to make everything beautiful,
but now and then for an instant, she permits what, compared with
the rest of her works, might be called ugly: it is true that even
these rare blemishes are permitted, as I have above said, for a good
purpose (Part I. Sec. I. Chap. Y.); they are valuable in nature, and
used as she uses them, are equally valuable (as instantaneous dis-
cords) in art; but the artist who should seek after these exclusively,
and paint nothing else, though he might be able to point to some-
thing in nature as the original of every one of his uglinesses,
would yet be, in the strict sense of the word, false,—false to na-
ture, and disobedient to her laws. For instance, it is the practice
of nature to give character to the outlines of her clouds by perpe-
tual angles and right lines. Perhaps once in a month, by diligent
watching, we might be able to see a cloud altogether rounded and
made up of curves; but the artist who paints nothing but curved
clouds must yet be considered thoroughly and inexcusably false.

But the case is widely different, wlien instead of a principle vio-
lated, we have one extraordinarily carried out or manifested under
unusual circumstances. Though nature is constantly beautiful, she
does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then
they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to
their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest
touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect
passages of beauty are the most evanescent. She is constantly
doing something beautiful for us, but it is something which she has
not done before and will not do again; some exhibition of her
general powers in particular circumstances, which, if we do not catch
at the instant it is passing, will not be repeated for us. Now they
are these evanescent passages of perfected beauty, these perpe-
tually varied examples of utmost power, which the artist ought
to seek for and arrest. No supposition can be more absurd than
that effects or truths frequently exhibited are more characteristic
of nature than those which are equally necessary by her law^s, though
rarer in occurrence. Both the frequent and the rare are parts of
the same great system; to give either exclusively is imperfect truth,
and to repeat the same effect or thought in two pictures is wasted
life. Wliat should we think of a poet who should keep all his life
repeating the same thought in different words ? and why should we
be more lenient to the parrot painter, who has learned one lesson
from the page of nature, and keeps stammering it out in eternal
repetition, without turning the leaf ? Is it less tautology to describe
a thing over and over again with lines, than it is with words ?
The teaching of nature is as varied and infinite as it is constant;
and the duty of the painter is to watch for every one of her lessons,
and to give (for human life will admit of nothing more) those in
which she has manifested each of her principles in the most pecu-
liar and striking way. The deeper his research and the rarer the
phenomena he has noted, the more valuable will his works be; to
repeat himself, even in a single instance, is treachery to nature, for
a thousand human lives would not be enough to give one instance
of the perfect manifestation of each of her powers; and as for
combining or classifying them, as well might a preacher expect in
one sermon to express and explain every divine truth which can be

gathered out of God's revelation, as a painter expect in one compo-
sition to express and illustrate every lesson wliicli can be received
from God's creation. Both are commentators on infinity, and the § 5. The duty
duty of both is to take for each discourse one essential truth, if t^e simitfas
seeking particularly and insisting especially on those which are less
palpable to ordinary observation, and more likely to escape an in-
dolent research; and to impress that, and that alone, upon those
whom they address, with every illustration that can be furnished
by their knowledge, and every adornment attainable by their power.
And the real truthfulness of the painter is in proportion to tlie
number and variety of the facts he has so illustrated; those facts
being always, as above observed, the realization, not the violation of
a general principle. The quantity of truth is in proportion to the
nimiber of such facts, and its value and instructiveness in propor-
tion to their rarity. All really great pictures, therefore, exhibit
the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare,
and beautiful way.

OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OP TRUTHS : - - THIRDLY, THAT
TRUTHS OF COLOUR ARE THE LEAST IMPORTANT OF ALL
TRUTHS.

In the last two chapters, we have pointed out general tests of the
importance of all truths, which will be sufficient at once to distin-
guish certain classes of properties in bodies as more necessary to
be told than others, because more characteristic, either of the par-
ticular thing to be represented, or of the principles of nature.

According to Locke, book ii. chap. 8., there are three sorts of
qualities in bodies: first, the " bulk, figure, number, situation, and
motion or rest of their solid parts: those that are in them, whether
we perceive them or not." These he calls primary qualities.
Secondly, " the power that is in any body to operate after a peculiar
manner on any of our senses " (sensible qualities). And thirdly,
" the power that is in any body to make such a change in another
body as that it shall operate on our senses differently from what it
did before: these last being usually called poivers.''

Hence he proceeds to prove that those which he calls primary
qualities are indeed part of the essence of the body, and charac-
teristic of it; but that the two other kinds of qualities which
together he calls secondary, are neither of them more than powers
of producing on other objects, or in us, certain effects and sensations.
Now a power of influence is always equally characteristic of two
objects—the active and passive; for it is as much necessary that
there should be a power in the object suffering to receive the im-
pression, as in the object acting, to give the impression. (Compare
Locke, book ii. chap. 2,1. sect. 2.) For supposing two people.

as is frequently the case, perceive different scents in the same
flower, it is evident that the power in the flower to give this or that
depends on the nature of their nerves, as well as on that of its own
particles ; and that we are as correct in saying it is a power in us
to perceive, as in the object to impress. Every power, therefore,
being characteristic of the nature of two bodies, is imperfectly and
incompletely characteristic of either separately; but the primary
qualities being characteristic only of the body in which they are
inherent, are the most important truths coimected with it. For
the question what the thing is, must precede, and be of more im-
portance than the question, what it can do.

Now, by Locke's definition above given, only bulk, figure, situ- § 3. Coiom- is
ation, and motion or rest of solid parts, are primary qualities. Hence quaUtr^thLe-
all truths of colour sink at once into the second rank. He, there-

fore, who has neglected a truth of form for a truth of colour has form,
neglected a greater truth for a less one.

And that colour is indeed a most unimportant characteristic of
objects, will be farther evident on the slightest consideration. The
colour of plants is constantly changing with the season, and of
everything with the quality of light falling on it; but the nature
and essence of the thing are independent of these changes. An oak
is an oak, whether green with spring or red with winter; a dahlia
is a dahlia, whether it be yellow or crimson ; and if some monster-
hunting florist should ever frighten the flower blue, still it will be
a dahlia; but not so if the same arbitrary changes could be
effected in its form. Let the roughness of the bark and the angles
of the boughs be smoothed or dnninished, and the oak ceases to be
an oak; but let it retain its inward structure and outward form,
and though its leaves grew white, or pink, or blue, or tricolor, it
would be a white oak, or a pink oak, or a republican oak, but
an oak still. Again, colour is hardly ever even a possible dis- § 4. colour no
tinction between two objects of the same species. Two trees, of tlveeirobjcot'r
the same kind, at the same season, and of the same age, are of tije same
absolutely the same colour; but they are not of the same form,
nor anything like it. There can be no difference in the colour of
two pieces of rock broken from the same place; but it is im-
possible they should be of the same form. So that form is not

only the cliief characteristic of species, but the only characteristic
of individuals of a species.

Again, a colour, in association with other colours, is different
from the same colour seen by itself. It has a distinct and peculiar
power upon the retina dependent on its association. Consequently,
the colour of any object is not more dependent upon the nature of
the object itself, and the eye beholding it, than on the colour
of the objects near it; in this respect also, therefore, it is no
characteristic.

And so great is the uncertainty with respect to those qualities or
powers which depend as much on the nature of tlie object svtflFering
as of the object acting, that it is totally impossible to prove that
one man sees in the same thing the same colour that another does,
though he may use the same name for it. One man may see
yellow where another sees blue, but as the eflFect is constant, they
agree in the term to be used for it, and both call it blue, or both
yellow, having yet totally different ideas attached to the term.
And yet neither can be said to see falsely, because the colour is not
in the thing, but in the thing and them together. But if they see
forms differently, one must see falsely, because the form is positive
in the object. My friend may see boars blue for anything I know,
but it is impossible he should see them with paws instead of hoofs,
unless his eyes or brain be diseased. (Compare Locke, book ii.
chap, xxxii. § 15.) But I do not speak of this uncertainty as
capable of having any effect on art, because, though perhaps Land-
seer sees dogs of the colour which I should call blue, yet the colour
he puts on the canvass, being in the same way blue to him, will
still be brown or dog-colour to me; and so we may argvie on points
of colour just as if all men saw alike, as indeed in all probability
they do; but I merely mention this uncertainty to show farther
the vagueness and unimportance of colour as a characteristic of
bodies.

Before going farther, however, I must explain the sense in which
I have used the word " form," because painters have a most inac-
curate and careless habit of confining this term to the outline of
bodies, whereas it necessarily implies light and shade. It is true
that the outline and the chiaroscuro must be separate subjects of

investigation with the student; but no form whatsoever can be
known to the eye in the slightest degree without its chiaroscuro;
and, therefore, in speaking of form generally as an element of land-
scape, I mean that perfect and harmonious unity of outline with
light and shade, by which all the parts and projections and propor-
tions of a body are fully explained to the eye; being nevertheless
perfectly independent of sight or power in other objects, the pre-
sence of light upon a body being a positive existence, whether we
are aware of it or not, and in no degree dependent upon our
senses. This being understood, the most convincing proof of the § 8 import-
unimportance of colour lies in the accurate observation of the way aiirshade in

in which any material object impresses itself on the mind. If we ^''Pi'^ssing the

look at nature carefully, we shall find that her colours are in a bodies, and
state of perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her forms, as of raiour!^"*^^
told by light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking.
The stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from
the boughs above; the bushes receive greys and yellows from the
ground; every hair's breadth of polished surface gives a little bit
of the blue of the sky, or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the
local colour; this local colour, changeful and uncertain in itself, is
again disguised and modified by the hue of the light, or quenched
in the grey of the shadow ; and the confusion and blending of tint
are altogether so great, that were we left to find out what objects
were by their colours only, we could scarcely in places distinguish
the boughs of a tree from the air beyond them, or the ground
beneath them. I know that people unpractised in art will not
believe this at first; but if they have accurate powers of observa-
tion, they may soon ascertain it for themselves; they will find that,
while they can scarcely ever determine the emct hue of anything,
except when it occurs in large masses, as in a green field or the blue
sky, the form, as told by light and shade, is always decided and
evident, and the source of the chief character of every object.
Light and shade indeed so completely conquer the distinctions of
local colour, that the difference in hue between the illumined
parts of a white and of a black object is not so great as the differ-
ence (in sunshine) between the illumined and dark side of either
separately.

We shall see hereafter, in considering ideas of beautj, that
colour, even as a source of pleasure, is feeble compared with form:
but this we cannot insist upon at present; we have only to do with
simple truth, and the observations we have made are sufficient to
prove that the artist who sacrifices or forgets a truth of form in the
pursuit of a truth of colour, sacrifices what is definite to what is
uncertain, and what is essential to what is accidental.

It ought farther to be observed respecting truths in general, that
those are always most valuable which are most historical; that is,
which tell us must about the past and future states of the object to
which thej belong. In a tree, for instance, it is more important
to give the appearance of energy and elasticity in the limbs which
is indicative of growth and life, than any particular character of
leaf, or texture of bough. It is more important that we should
feel that the uppermost sprays are creeping higher and higher into
the sky, and be impressed with the current of life and motion
which is animating every fibre, than that we should know the exact
pitch of relief with which those fibres are thrown out against the
sky. For the first truths tell us talcs about the tree, about what
it has been, and will be, while the last are characteristic of it only
in its present state, and are in no way talkative about themselves.
Talkative facts are always more interesting and more important
than silent ones. So again the lines in a ci'ag which mark its
stratification, and how it has been washed and rounded by water,
or twisted and drawn out in fire, are more important, because they
tell more than the stains of the lichens which change year by year,
and the accidental fissures of frost or decomposition; not but that
both of these are historical, but historical in a less distinct manner,
and for shorter periods.

Hence in general the truths of specific form are the first and
most important of all; and next to them, those truths of chiaroscuro
which are necessary to make us understand every quality and part
of forms, and the relative distances of objects among each other,
and in consequence their relative bulks. Altogether lower than

tliese^ as truths, tliougli often most important as beauties, stand all
effects of chiaroscuro which are productive merely of imitations of
light and tone, and all effects of colour. To make us understand
the space of the sky, is an end worthy of the artist's highest powers
to hit its particular blue or gold is an end to be thought of when
we have accomplished the first, and not till then.

Finally, far below all these come those particular accuracies or
tricks of chiaroscuro which cause objects to look projecting from
the canvass, not worthy of the name of truths, because they require
for their attainment the sacrifice of all others; for not having at
our disposal the same intensity of light by which nature illustrates
her objects, we are obliged, if we would have perfect deception in
one, to destroy its relation to the rest. (Compare Sect. II. Chap. V.)
And thus he who throws one object out of his picture, never lets
the spectator into it. Michael Angelo bids you follow his phan-
toms into the abyss of heaven, but a modern French painter drops
his hero out of the picture frame.

This solidity or projection, then, is the very lowest truth that art
can give; it is the painting of mere matter, giving that as food
for the eye which is properly only the subject of touch; it can
neither instruct nor exalt; nor can it please, except as jngglery; it
addresses no sense of beauty nor of power; and wherever it cha-
racterizes the general aim of a picture, it is the sign and the
evidence of the vilest and lowest mechanism which art can be
insulted by giving name to.

We liave seen, in the preceding chapters, some proof of what was
before asserted, that the truths necessary for deceptive imitation are
not only few, but of the very lowest order. We thus find painters
ranging themselves into two great classes: one aiming at the de-
velopment of the exquisite truths of specific form, refined colour,
and ethereal space, and content with the clear and impressive sug-
gestion of any of these, by whatsoever means obtained; and the
other casting all these aside, to attain those particular truths of
tone and chiaroscuro, which may trick the spectator into a belief
of reality. The first class, if they have to paint a tree, are intent
upon giving the exquisite designs of intersecting undulation in its
boughs, the grace of its leafage, the intricacy of its organization,
and all those qualities which make it lovely or affecting of its kind.
The second endeavour only to make you believe that you are
looking at wood. They are totally regardless of truths or beauties
of form ; a stump is as good as a trunk for all their purposes,
so that they can only deceive the eye into the supposition that it is
a stump and not canvass.

To which of these classes the great body of the old landscape
painters belonged, may be partly gathered from the kind of praise
which is bestowed upon them by those who admire them most,
which either refers to technical matters, dexterity of touch, clever
oppositions of colour, &c., or is bestowed on the power of the painter
to deceive, M. de Marmontel, going into a connoisseur's gallery,
pretends to mistake a fine Berghem for a window. This, he says,
was affirmed by its possessor to be the greatest praise the picture
had ever received. Such is indeed the notion of art which is at

the bottom of the veneration usually felt for the old landscape
painters; it is of course the palpable, first idea of ignorance; it
is the onlj notion which people unacquainted with art can by any
possibility have of its ends; the only test by which people unac-
quainted with nature can pretend to form anything like judgment
of art. It is strange, that, with the great historical painters of Italy
before them, who had broken so boldly and indignantly from the
trammels of this notion, and shaken the very dust of it from their
feet, the succeeding landscape painters should have wasted their
lives in jugglery: but so it is, and so it will be felt, the more we
look into their works, that the deception of the senses was the
great and first end of all their art. To attain this they paid deep
and serious attention to effects of light and tone, and to the exact
degree of relief which material objects take against light and atmo-
sphere ; and sacrificing every other truth to these, not necessarily,
but because they required no others for deception, they succeeded
in rendering these particular facts with a fidelity and force which,
in the pictures that have come down to us uninjured, are as yet
unequalled, and never can be surpassed. They painted their
foregrounds with laborious industry, covering them with details so
as to render them deceptive to the ordinary eye, regardless of
beauty or truth in the details themselves; they painted their trees
with careful attention to their pitch of shade against the sky, utterly
regardless of all that is beautiful or essential in the anatomy of
their foliage and boughs; they painted their distances with ex-
quisite use of transparent colour and aerial tone, totally neglectful
of all facts and forms which nature uses such colour and tone to
relieve and adorn. They had neither love of nature, nor feeling of
her beauty; they looked for her coldest and most commonplace
effects, because they were easiest to imitate; and for her most
vulgar forms, because they were most easily to be recognized by
the untaught eyes of those whom alone they could hope to please;
they did it, like the Pharisee of old, to be seen of men, and they
had their reward. They do deceive and delight the unpractised
eye. They will to all ages, as long as their colours endure, be the
standards of excellence with all who, ignorant of nature, claim to
be thought learned in art ; and they will to all ages be, to those

who have thorough love and knowledge of the creation which they
libel, instructive proofs of the limited number and low character of
the truths which are necessary, and the accumulated multitude of
pure, broad, bold falsehoods which are admissible, in pictures meant
only to deceive.

There is, of course, more or less accuracy of knowledge and
execution combined with this aim at eflPect, according to the in-
dustry and precision of eye possessed by the master, and more or
less of beauty in the forms selected, according to his natural taste;
but both the beauty and truth are sacrificed unhesitatingly where
they interfere with the great effort at deception. Claude had, if it
had been cultivated, a fine feeling for beauty of form, and is seldom
ungraceful in his foliage; but his picture, when examined with
reference to essential truth, is one mass of error from beginning
to end. Cuyp, on the other hand, could paint close truth of every-
thing, except ground and water, with decision and success, but he
had no sense of beauty. Gaspar Poussin, more igiiorant of truth
than Claude, and almost as dead to beauty as Cuyp, has yet a per-
ception of the feeling and moral truth of nature, which often
redeems the picture ; but yet in all of them, everything that they
can do is done for deception, and nothing for the sake or love of
what they are painting.

Modern landscape painters have looked at nature with totally § 4. The prin-
different eyes, seeking not for what is easiest to imitate, but for «oi^adoptc'r'
what is most important to tell. Rejecting at once all idea of bond i>y modern
fide imitation, they think only of conveying the impression of nature
into the mind of the spectator. And there is, in consequence, a
greater sum of valuable, essential, and impressive truth in the works
of two or three of our leading modern landscape painters, than
in those of all the old masters put together, and of truth too, nearly
unmixed with definite or avoidable falsehood; while the unimpor-
tant and feeble truths of the old masters are choked with a mass of
perpetual defiance of the most authoritative laws of nature.

I do not expect this assertion to be believed at present; it must § 5. General
rest for demonstration on the examination we are about to enter i

truths, it appears strange to me, that any one familiar with nature, contrasted with

the freedom and fond of her, should not grow weary and sick at heart among the
nature. melancholj and monotonous transcripts of her which alone can be

received from the old school of art. A man accustomed to the
broad wild sea-shore, with its bright breakers, and free winds, and
sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless power, can
scarcely but be angered when Claude bids him stand still on some
paltry chipped and chiselled quay, with porters and wheelbarrows
running against him, to watch a weak, rippling, bound and bar-
riered water, that has not strength enough in one of its waves to
upset the flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of spray
over the confining stone. A man accustomed to the strength and
glory of God's mountains, with their soaring and radiant pin-
nacles, and surging sweeps of measureless distance, kingdoms in
their valleys, and climates upon their crests, can scarcely but be
angered when Salvator bids him stand still under some contempt-
ible fragment of splintery crag, which an Alpine snow-wreath
would smother in its first swell, with a stunted bush or two grow-
ing out of it, and a volume of manufactory smoke for a sky. A
man accustomed to the grace and infinity of nature's foliage, with
every vista a cathedral, and every bough a revelation, can scarcely
but be angered when Poussin mocks him with a black round mass
of impenetrable paint, diverging into feathers instead of leaves, and
supported on a stick instead of a trunk. The fact is, there is one
thing wanting in all the doing of these men, and that is the very
virtue by which the work of human mind chiefly rises above that
of the daguerreotye or calotype or any other mechanical means
that ever have been or may be invented. Love. There is no evi-
dence of their ever having gone to nature with any thirst, or
received from her such emotion as could make them, even for
an instant, lose sight of themselves; there is in them neither ear-
nestness nor humility; there is no simple or honest record of any
single truth; none of the plain words or straight efforts that men
speak and make when they once feel.
§ 6. Inadequacy Nor is it only by the professed landscape painters that the great
8cape^ot^™ian Verities of the material world are betrayed. Grand as are the
and Tintoret. motives' of landscape in the works of the earlier and mightier men,

' I suppose this word is now generally received, with respect to both painting and
music, as meaning the leading idea of a composition, whether wrought out or not.

there is yet in tliem nothing approaching to a general view or
complete rendering of natural phenomena; not that they are to be
blamed for this; for they took out of nature that which was fit for
their purpose, and their mission was to do no more; but we must
be cautious to distinguish that imaginative abstraction of landscape
which alone we find in them, from the entire statement of truth
which has been attempted by the moderns. I have said in the
chapter on Symmetry in the second volume, that all landscape
grandeur vanishes before that of Titian and Tintoret; and this is
true of whatever these two giants touched; —but they touched little.
A few level flakes of chestnut foliage; a blue abstraction of hill
forms from Cadore or the Euganeans; a grand mass or two of
glowing ground and mighty herbage, and a few burning fields of
quiet cloud, were all they needed; there is evidence of Tintoret's
having felt more than this, but it occurs only in secondary frag-
ments of rock, cloud, or pine, hardly noticed among the accumu-
lated interest of his human subject. From the window of Titian's
house at Yenice, the chain of the Tyrolese Alps is seen lifted in
spectral power above the tufted plain of Treviso; every dawn that
reddens the towers of Murano lights also a line of pyramidal fires
along that colossal ridge; but there is, so far as I know, no evi-
dence in any of the master's works of his ever having beheld, much
less felt, the majesty of their burning. The dark firmament and
saddened twilight of Tintoret are sufficient for their end: but the
sun never plunges behind San Giorgio in Aliga without such
retinue of radiant cloud, such rest of zoned light on the green
lagoon, as never received image from his hand. More than this, of
that which they loved and rendered much is rendered convention-
ally ; by noble conventionalities indeed, but such nevertheless as
would be inexcusable if the landscape became the principal subject
instead of an accompaniment. I will instance only the San Pietro
Martire, which, if not the most perfect, is at least the most popular
of Titian's landscapes ; in which, to obtain light on the flesh of the
near figures, the sky is made as dark as deep sea, the mountains are
laid in with violent and impossible blue, except one of them on the
left, which, to connect the distant light with the foreground, is
thrown into light relief, unexplained by its materials, unlikely in its
position, and in its degree impossible under any circumstances.

§ 7. Causes of I do iiot instance these as faults in the picture: there are no
influence on works of verj powerful colour which are free from conventionality
schoX*^"*^ concentrated or diifused, daring or disguised; but as the conven-
tionality of this whole picture is mainly thrown into the landscape,
it is necessary, while we acknowledge the virtue of this distance as
a part of the great composition, to be on oar guard against the
license it assumes and the attractiveness of its overcharged colour.
Fragments of far purer truth occur in the works of Tintoret; and
in the drawing of foliage, whether rapid or elaborate, of masses or
details, the Venetian painters, taken as a body, may be considered
almost faultless models. But the whole field of what they have
done is so narrow, and therein is so much of what is only rela-
tively right, and in itself false or imperfect, that the young and
inexperienced painter could run no greater risk than the too early
taking them for teachers; and to the general spectator their land-
scape is valuable rather as a means of peculiar and solemn emotion,
than as ministering to or inspiring the universal love of nature.
Hence while men of serious mind, especially those whose pursuits
have brought them into continued relations with the peopled rather
than the lonely world, will always look to the Venetian painters
as having touched those simple chords of landscape harmony which
are most in unison with earnest and melancholy feeling; those
whose philosophy is more cheerful and more extended, as having
been trained and coloured among simple and solitary nature, will
seek for a wider and more systematic circle of teaching: they may
grant that the barred horizontal gloom of the Titian sky, and the
massy leaves of the Titian forest, are among the most sublime of
the conceivable forms of material things; but they know that the
virtue of these very forms is to be learned only by right com-
parison of them with the cheerfulness, fulness, and comparative un-
quietness of other hours and scenes; that they ai'e not intended for
the continual food, but the occasional soothing of the human heart;
that there is a lesson of not less value in its place, though of less
concluding and sealing authority, in every one of the more humble
phases of material things; and that there are some lessons of equal
or greater authority which these masters neither taught nor received.
And until the school of modern landscape arose. Art had never

noted the links of this mighty chain; it mattered not that a frag-
ment lay here and there, no heavenly lightning could descend by
it; the landscape of the Venetians was without effect on any con-
temporary or subsequent schools; it still remains on the continent
as useless as if it had never existed ; and at this moment German
and Italian landscapes, of which no words are scornful enough to
befit the utter degradation, hang in the Venetian Academy in the
next room to the Desert of Titian and the Paradise of Tintoret.^

That then which I would have the reader inquire repecting § 8. The value
every work of art of undetermined merit submitted to his judgment, works of art,
is, not whether it be a work of especial grandeur, importance, or
power, but whether it have any virtue or substance as a link in
this chain of truth; whether it have recorded or interpreted any-
thing before unknown; whether it have added one single stone to
our heaven-pointing pyramid, cut away one dark bough, or levelled
one rugged hillock in our path. This, if it be an honest work of
art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked honestly with-
out giving some such help to his race. God appoints to every one
of His creatures a separate mission, and if they discharge it honour-
ably, if they quit themselves like men and faithfully follow that
light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching
influence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its
appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of
service constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there must
always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, liowever seemingly
trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used will be a
gift also to his race for ever —
" Fool not," says George Herbert,

If, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved,
if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be

an envious or powerless imitation of other men's labours, if it be
a display of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacture, or if
in any other mode it show itself as having its origin in vanity,—
Cast it out. It matters not what powers of mind may have been
concerned or corrupted in it, all have lost their savour, it is worse
than worthless—perilous, — Cast it out.

Works of art are indeed always of mixed kind, their honesty
being more or less corrupted by the various weaknesses of the
painter, by his vanity, his idleness, or his cowardice. The fear of
doing right has far more influence on art than is commonly thought.
That only is altogether to be rejected which is altogether vain, idle,
and cowardly; of the rest the rank is to be estimated rather by
the purity of their metal than the coined value of it.

Keeping these principles in view, let us endeavour to obtain
something like a general view of the assistance which has been ren-
dered to our study of nature by the various occurrences of land-
scape in elder art, and by the more exclusively directed labours of
modern schools.

To the ideal landscape of the early religious painters of Italy I
have alluded in the concluding chapter of the second volume. It
is absolutely right and beautiful in its peculiar application; but its
grasp of nature is narrow, and its treatment in most respects too
severe and conventional to form a profitable example when the
landscape is to be alone the subject of thought. The great virtue
of it is its entire, exquisite, and humble realization of those objects
it selects; in this respect differing from such German imitations of
it as I have met with, that there is no effort at any fanciful or
ornamental modifications, but loving fidelity to the thing studied.
The foreground plants are usually neither exaggerated nor stiffened;
they do not form arches or frames or borders; their grace is
unconfined, their simplicity undestroyed. Cima da Conegliano, in
his picture in the church of the Madonna dell' Orto at Venice,
has given us the oak, the fig, the beautiful "Erba della Madonna"
on the wall, precisely such a bunch of it as may be seen growing
at this day on the marble steps of that very church; ivy and other
creepers, and a strawberry plant in the foreground, with a blossom,
and a berry just set, and one half ripe and one ripe, all patiently

and innocently painted from the real thing, and therefore most
divine. Fra Angelico's use of the Oxalis Acetosella is as faithful in
representation as touching in feeling.^ The ferns that grow on the
walls of Fiesole may be seen in their simple verity on the architec-
ture of Ghirlandajo. The rose, the myrtle, and the lily, the olive
and orange, pomegranate and vine, have received their fairest
portraiture where they bear a sacred character; even the common
plantains and mallows of the waysides are touched with deep
reverence by Raffaelle; and indeed for the perfect treatment of
details of this kind, treatment as delicate and affectionate as it is
elevated and manly, it is to the works of these schools alone that
we can refer. And on this their peculiar excellence I should the
more earnestly insist, because it is of a kind altogether neglected
by the English school, and Avith most unfortunate result; many of
our best painters missing their deserved rank solely from the want
of it, as Gainsborough; and all being more or less checked in their
progress or vulgarized in their aim.

It is a misfortune for all honest critics, that hardly any quality § lo. Finish,
of art is independently to be praised, and without reference to rigM—^

the motive from which it resulted, and the place in which it and how wrong,
appears; so that no principle can be simply enforced but it shall
seem to countenance a vice: while qualification and explanation
both weaken the force of what is said, and are not always
likely to be with patience received; so also those who desire to
misunderstand or to oppose have it always in their power to be-
come obtuse listeners, or specious opponents. Thus I hardly dare
insist upon the virtue of completion, lest I should be supposed a
defender of Wouvermans or Gerard Dow; neither can I adequately
praise the power of Tintoret, without fearing to be thought adverse
to Iloltein or Perugino. The fact is, that both finish and Impetu-

' Tlic triple leaf of this plant, and white flower, stained purple, probably gave
it strange typical interest among the Christian painters. Angelico, in using its leaves
mixed with daisies in the foreground of his Crucifixion, was perhaps thinking of its
peculiar power of quenching thirst. " I rather imagine that his thouglits, if he had any
thought beyond the mystic form of the leaf, were with its Italian name ' Alleluia,' as if
tlie very flowers around the cross were giving glory to God." (TVbte by tlie Printer.') I
was not aware of this Italian name : in the valleys of Dauphine it is called " Pain du
Bon Dieu," and indeed it whitens the grass and rocks of the hill crests like manna.

osity, specific minuteness and large abstraction, may be the signs of
passion, or of its reverse; may result from affection or indifference,
intellect or dulness. Some men finish from intense love of the
beautiful in the smallest parts of what they do; others in pure in-
capability of comprehending anything but parts; others to show
their dexterity with the brush, and prove expenditure of time.
Some are impetuous and bold in their handling, from having great
thoughts to express which are independent of detail; others because
they have bad taste or have been badly taught; others from vanity,
and others from indolence. (Compare Vol. II. page 77.) Now
both the finish and incompletion are right where they are the signs
of passion or of thought, and both are wrong, and I think the
finish the more contemptible of the two, when they cease to be
so. The modern Italians will paint every leaf of a laurel or
rose-bush, without the slightest feeling of their beauty or character;
and without showing one spark of intellect or affection from begin-
ning to end. Anything is better than this; and yet the very
highest schools do the same thing, or nearly so, but with totally
different motives and perceptions, and the result is divine. On the
whole, I conceive that the extremes of good and evil lie with the
finishers, and that whatever glorious power we may admit in
men like Tintoret, whatever attractiveness of method in Rubens,
Rembrandt, or, though in far less degree, our own Reynolds, still
the thoroughly great men are those who have done everything
thoroughly, and who, in a word, have never despised anything,
however small, of God's making. And this is the chief fault of our
English landscapists, that they have not the intense all-observing
penetration of well-balanced mind; they have not, except in one
or two instances, anything of that feeling which Wordsworth shows
in the following lines : —

" So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive; —
Would that the little liowers were born to live
Conscious of half the pleasure whicli they give.
That to this mountain daisy's self were knoivn
The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown
On the smooth surface of this naked stone."

That is a little bit of good, downright, foreground painting—no
mistake about it; daisy, and shadow, and stone texture and all.
Our painters must come to this before they have done their duty;

and yet, on the other hand, let them beware of finishing, for the
sake of finish, all over their picture. The ground is not to be all
over daisies, nor is every daisy to have its star-shaped shadow; there
is as much finish in the right concealment of things as in the right
exhibition of them; and while I demand this amount of specific
character where nature shows it, I demand equal fidelity to her
where she conceals it. To paint mist rightly, space rightly,
and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else
rightly, but the rule is simple for all that; if the artist is painting
something that he knows and loves, as he knows it, because he
loves it, whether it be the fair strawberry of Cima, or the clear sky
of Francia, or the blazing incomprehensible mist of Turner, he is
all right; but the moment he does anything as he thinks it ought
to be, because he does not care about it, he is all wrong. He has
only to ask himself whether he cares for anything except himself;
so far as he does, he will make a good picture; so far as he thinks
of himself, a vile one. This is the root of the viciousness of the
whole French school. Industry they have, learning they have,
power they have, feeling they have, yet not so much feeling as ever
to force them to forget themselves even for a moment; the ruling
motive is invariably vanity, and the picture therefore an abortion.

Returning to the pictures of the religious schools, we find that
their open skies are also of the highest value. Their preciousness
is such that no subsequent schools can by comparison be said to
have painted sky at all, but only clouds, or mist, or blue canopies.
The golden sky of Marco Basaiti in the Academy of Venice alto-
gether overpowers and renders valueless that of Titian beside it.
Those of Francia in the gallery of Bologna are even more wonderful,
because cooler in tone and behind figures in full light. The touches
of white light in the horizon of Angelico's Last Judgment are felt
and wrought with equal truth. The dignified and simple forms of
cloud in repose are often by these painters sublimely expressed, but
of changeful cloud form they show no examples. The architecture,
mountains, and water of these distances are commonly conventional;
motives are to be found in them of the highest beauty, and espe-
cially remarkable for quantity and meaning of incident; but they
can only be studied or accepted in the particular feeling that

produced tliem. It may generally be observed that whatever lias
been tlie result of strong emotion is ill seen unless through the
medium of such emotion, and will lead to conclusions utterly false
and perilous, if it be made a subject of cold-hearted observance,
or an object of systematic imitation. One piece of genuine moun-
tain drawing, however, occurs in the landscape of Masaccio's
Tribute Money. It is impossible to say what strange results might
have taken place in this particular field of art, or how suddenly a
great school of landscape might have arisen, had the life of this
great painter been pi'olonged. Of this particular fresco I shall have
much to say hereafter. The two brothers Bellini gave a marked
and vigorous impulse to the landscape of Venice; of Gentile's
architecture I shall speak presently. Giovanni's, though in style
less interesting and in place less prominent, occurring chiefly
as a kind of frame to his pictures, connecting them with the ar-
chitecture of the churches for which they were intended, is in
refinement of realization, I suppose, quite unrivalled, especially in
passages requiring pure gradation, as the hollows of vaultings.
That of Veronese would look ghostly beside it; that of Titian
lightless. His landscape is occasionally quaint and strange like
Giorgione's, and as fine in colour as that behind the Madonna in the
Brera gallery at Milan; but a more truthful fragment occurs in
the picture in San Francesco della Vigna at Venice; and in the
picture of St. Jerome in the church of San Grisostomo, the landscape
is as perfect and beautiful as any background may legitimately be,
and, as far as it goes, finer than anything of Titian's. It is remark-
able for the absolute truth of its sky, whose blue, clear as crystal,
and, though deep in tone, bright as the open air, is gradated to the
horizon with a cautiousness and finish almost inconceivable; and
to obtain light at the horizon without contradicting the system of
chiaroscuro adopted in the figures, which are lighted from the right
hand, it is barred across with some glowing white cirri, which, in
their turn, are opposed by a single dark horizontal line of lower
cloud; and to throw the whole further back, there is a wreath of
rain cloud of warmer colour floating above the mountains, lighted
on its under edge, whose faitlifulness to nature, both in hue, and in
its irregular and shattering form, is altogether exemplary. The wan-
dering of the light among the hills is equally studied, and the whole

is croAvned bj the grand realization of the leaves of the fig-tree
alluded to at page 207. of the second volume, as well as of the
herbage upon the rocks. Considering that with all this care and
completeness in the background, there is nothing that is not of
meaning and necessity in reference to the figures, and that in the
figures themselves the dignity and heavenliness of the highest re-
ligious painters are combined with a force and purity of colour,
greater I think than Titian's, it is a work which may be set before
the young artist as in every respect a nearly faultless guide.
Giorgione's landscape is inventive and solemn, but owing to the
rarity even of his nominal works I dare not speak of it in general
terms. It is certainly conventional, and is rather, I imagine, to be
studied for its colour and its motives than its details.

Of Titian and Tintoret I have spoken already. The latter is § 12. Land-
every way the greater master, never indulging in the exaggerated amfT^ntoret!
colour of Titian, and attaining far more perfect light: his grasp of
nature is more extensive, and his view of her more imaginative
(incidental notices of his landscape will be found in the chapter on
Imagination penetrative, of the second volume), but his impatience
usually prevents him from carrying out his thoughts as clearly, or
realizing with as much substantiality as Titian. In the St. Jerome
of the latter in the gallery of the Brera, there is a superb example
of the modes in which the objects of landscape may be either
suggested or elaborated according to their place and claim. The
larger features of the ground, foliage, and drapery, as well as the
lion in the lower angle, are executed with a slightness Avhich admits
not of close examination, and which, if not in shade, would be
offensive to the generality of observers. But on the rock above the
lion, where it turns towards the light, and where the eye is intended
to dwell, there is a wreath of ivy, of which every leaf is separately
drawn with the greatest accuracy and care, and beside it a lizard,
studied with equal earnestness, yet always with that right grandeur
of manner to which I have alluded in the preface. Tintoret seldom
reaches or attempts the elaboration in substance and colour of these
objects, but he is even more truth-telling and certain in his ren-
dering of all the great characters of specific form ; and as the painter
of Space he stands altogether alone among dead masters; being

the first who introduced the slightness and confusion of touch
which are expressive of the effects of luminous objects seen through
large spaces of air, and the principles of aerial colour which have
been since carried out in other fields by Turner. I conceive him
to be the most powerful painter whom the world has seen, and that
he was prevented from being also the most perfect, partly by unto-
ward circumstances in his position and education, partly by the
very fulness and impetuosity of his own mind, partly by the want
of religious feeling and its accompanying perception of beauty ; for
his noble treatment of religious subjects, of which I shall give
several examples in the third part, appears to be the result only of
that grasp which a great and well-toned intellect necessarily takes
of any subject submitted to it, and is wanting in the signs of the
more withdi-awn and sacred sympathies.^

But whatever advances were made by Tintoret in modes of artis-
tical treatment, he cannot be considered as having enlarged the
sphere of landscape conception. He took no cognizance even of the
materials and motives, so singularly rich in colour, which were for
ever around him in his own Venice. All portions of Venetian
scenery introduced by him are treated conventionally and carelessly
the architectural characters lost altogether, the sea distinguished
from the sky only by a darker green, while of the sky itself only
those forms were employed by him which had been repeated again
and again for centuries, though in less tangibility and completion.
Of mountain scenery he has left, I believe, no example so far car-
ried as that of John Bellini above instanced.

The Florentine and Umbrian schools supply us with no examples
of landscape, except that introdiiced by their earliest masters,
gradually overwhelmed under Renaissance architecture.

Leonardo's landscape has been of unfortunate effect on art, so far
as it has had effect at all. In realization of detail he verges on
the ornamental; in his rock outlines he has all the deficiencies and
little of the feeling of the earlier men. Behind the " Sacrifice for
the Friends " of Giotto at Pisa, there is a sweet piece of rock in-
cident ; a little fountain breaking out at the mountain foot, and
trickling away, its course marked by branches of reeds, the latter
formal enough certainly, and always in triplets, but still with a

sense of nature pervading the whole which is utterly wanting to
the rocks of Leonardo in the Holy Family in the Louvre. The
latter are grotesque without being ideal, and extraordinary without
being impressive. The sketch in the Uffizii of Florence has some
jfine foliage, and there is of course a certain virtue in all the work
of a man like Leonardo which I would not depreciate, but our ad-
miration of it in this particular field must be qualified, and our
following cautious.

No advances were made in landscape, so far as I know, after the
time of Tintoret; the power of art ebbed gradually away from the
derivative schools; various degrees of cleverness or feeling being
manifested in more or less brilliant conventionalism. I once sup-
posed there was some life in the landscape of Domenichino, but
in this I must have been wrong. The man who painted the
Madonna del Rosario and Martyrdom of St. Agnes in the gallery
of Bologna, is palpably incapable of doing anything good, great, or
right, in any field, way, or kind, whatsoever.^

Though, however, at this period the general grasp of the schools § 14. Claude,
was perpetually contracting, a gift was given to the world by fhe^poussins^
Claude, for which we are perhaps hardly enough grateful, owing to
the very frequency of our after enjoyment of it. He set the sun
in heaven, and was, I suppose, the first who attempted anything

' This is no rash method of judgment, sweeping and hasty as it may appear. From
the weaknesses of an artist, or failures, however numerous, we have no right to con-
jecture his total inability ; a time may come wlien he may rise into sudden strength, or
an instance occur when his efforts shall he successful. But there are some pictures
which rank not under the head of failures, but of perpetrations or commissions ; some
things which a man cannot do or say without scaling for ever his character and capacity.
The angel holding the cross with his linger in his eye, the roaring red-faced children
about the crown of thorns, the blasphemous (I speak deliberately and determinedly)
head of Christ upon the handkerchief, and the mode in which the martyrdom of the
saint is exhibited (I do not choose to use the expressions which alone could characterize
it), are perfect, sufficient, incontrovertible proofs that whatever appears good in any of
the doings of such a painter must be deceptive, and that we may be assured that our
taste is corrupted and false whenever we feel disposed to admire him, I am prepared
to support this position, however uncharitable it may seem ; a man may be tempted into
a gross sin by passion and forgiven, and yet there are some kinds of sins into which only
men of a certain kind can be tempted and which cannot be forgiven. It should be
added, however, that the artistical qualities of these pictures are in every way worthy of
the conceptions they realize; I do not recollect any instance of colour or execution so
coarse and feelingless.

like the realization of actual sunshine in mistj air. He gives the
first example of the stiidy of nature for her own sake, and allow-
ing for the unfortunate circumstances of his education, and for his
evident inferiority of intellect, more could hardly have been ex-
pected from him. His false taste, forced composition, and ignorant
rendering of detail have perliaps been of more detriment to art
than the gift he gave was of advantage. The character of his
own mind is singular; I know of no other instance of a man's
working from nature continually with the desire of being true, and
never attaining the power of drawing so much as a bough of a tree
rightly. Salvator, a man originally endowed with far higher
power of mind than Claude, was altogether unfaithful to his mission,
and has left us, I believe, no gift. Everything that he did is
evidently for the sake of exhibiting his own dexterity; there is no
love of any kind for any thing; his choice of landscape features is
dictated by no delight in the sublime, but by mere animal restless-
ness or ferocity, guided by an imaginative power of which he could
not altogether deprive himself. He lias done nothing which others
have not done better, or which it would not have been better not to
have done; in nature, he mistakes distortion for energy, and savage-
ness for sublimity; in man, mendicity for sanctity, and conspiracy
for heroism.

The landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows much power, and is
usually composed and elaborated on right princi])les (compare pre-
face to second edition), but I am aware of nothing that it has
attained of new or peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of
qualities to be found in other masters in higher degrees. In finish
it is inferior to Leonardo's, in invention to Giorgione's, in truth to
Titian's, in grace to Raffaelle's. The landscapes of Gaspar have
serious feeling and often valuable and solemn colour; virtueless
otherwise, they are full of the most degraded mannerism, and I
believe the admiration of them to have been productive of extensive
evil among recent schools.
§ 15. German The development of landscape north of the Alps, presents us
with the same general phases, under modifications dependent partly
on less intensity of feeling, partly on diminished availableness of
landscape material. That of the religious painters is treated with

the same affectionate completion; but exuberance of fancy some-
times diminishes the influence of the imagination, and the absence
of the Italian force of passion admits of more patient and somewhat
less intellectual elaboration. A morbid habit of mind is evident in
many, seeming to lose sight of the balance and relations of things,
so as to become intense in trifles, gloomily minute, as in Albert
Durer; and this mingled with a feverish operation of the fancy,
which appears to result from certain habitual conditions of bodily
health rather than of mental culture, and of which the sickness,
without the power, is eminently characteristic of the modern
Germans; but with all this there are virtues of the very highest
order in those schools, and I regret that my knowledge is insuffi-
cient to admit of my giving any detailed account of them.

In the landscape of Rembrandt and Rubens, we have the northern
parallel to the power of the Venetians. Among the etchings and
drawings of Rembrandt, landscape thoughts may be found not un-
worthy of Titian, and studies from nature of sublime fidelity; but
his system of chiaroscuro was inconsistent with the gladness, and
his peculiar modes of feeling with the grace, of nature: nor, from
my present knowledge, can I name any work on canvass in which
he has carried out the dignity of his etched conceptions, or ex-
hibited any perceptiveness of new truths.

Not so Rubens, who perhaps furnishes us with the first instances
of complete, unconventional, unaffected landscape. His treatment
is healthy, manly, and rational, not very affectionate, yet often con-
descending to minute and multitudinous detail; always, as far as
it goes, pure, forcible, and refreshing, consummate in composition,
and marvellous in colour. In the Pitti palace, the best of its two
Rubens' landscapes has been placed near a characteristic and highly
finished Titian, the Marriage of St. Catherine. Were it not for
the grandeur of line and solemn feeling in the flock of sheep and
the figures of the latter A\'ork, I doubt if all its glow and depth of
tone could support its overcharged green and blue against the open
breezy sunshine of the Fleming. I do not mean to rank tlie
art of Rubens with that of Titian; but it is always to be re-
membered that Titian hardly ever paints sunshine, ljut a certain
opalescent twilight which has as much of human emotion as of

imitative truth in it and that art of this kind must always be
liable to some appearance of failure when compared with a less
pathetic statement of facts.

It is to be noted, however, that the licenses taken by Rubens in
particular instances are as bold as his general statements are sincere.
In the landscape just instanced the horizon is an oblique line; in
the Sunset of our own gallery many of the shadows fall at right
angles to the light; in a picture in the Dulwich Gallery a rainbow
is seen by the spectator at the side of the sun; and in one in the
Louvre, the sunbeams come from one part of the sky, and the sun
appears in another.

These bold and frank licenses are not to be considered as de-
tracting from the rank of the painter; they are usually characteristic
of those minds whose grasp of nature is so certain and extensive as
to enable them fearlessly to sacrifice a truth of actuality to a truth
of feeling. Yet the young artist must keep in mind that the painter's
greatness consists not in his taking, but in his atoning for them.

Among the professed landscapists of the Dutch school, we find
much dexterous imitation of certain kinds of nature, remarkable
usually for its persevering rejection of whatever is great, valuable,
or affecting in the object studied. Where, howeA^'er, they show real
desire to paint what they saw as far as they saw it, there is of course
much in them that is instructive, as in Cuyp and in the etchings
of Waterloo, which have even very sweet and genuine feeling; and
so in some of their architectural painters. But the object of the
great body of them is merely to display manual dexterities of one
kind or another; and their effect on the public mind is so totally
for evil, that though I do not deny the advantage an artist of real
judgment may derive from the study of some of them, I conceive
the best patronage that any monarch could possibly bestow upon
the arts, would be to collect the whole body of them into one
gallery and burn it to the ground.

Passing to the English school, we find a connecting link between
them and the Italians formed by Richard Wilson. Had this artist
studied under favourable circumstances, there is evidence of his

' ^" The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
TJiat hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."

having possessed power enough to produce an original picture; but,
corrupted by study of the Poussins, and gathering his materials
chiefly in their field, the district about Rome—a district especially
unfavourable, as exhibiting no pure or healthy nature, but a diseased
and overgrown flora, among half-developed volcanic rocks, loose
calcareous concretions, and mouldering wrecks of buildings, and
whose spirit I conceive to be especially opposed to the natural
tone of the English mind, — his originality was altogether over-
powered; and, though he paints in a manly way and occasionally
reaches exquisite tones of colour, as in the small and very precious
picture belonging to Mr. Rogers, and sometimes manifests some
freshness of feeling, as in the Villa of Mascenas of our National
Gallery, yet his pictures are in general mere diluted adaptations
from Poussin and Salvator, without the dignity of the one, or the
fire of the other.

Not so Gainsborough; a great name his, whether of the English
or any other school. The greatest colourist since Rubens, and the
last, I think, of legitimate colourists; that is to say, of those who
were fully acquainted with the power of their material; pure in
his English feeling, profound in his seriousness, graceful in his
gaiety. There are nevertheless certain deductions to be made from
his worthiness which yet I dread to make, because my knowledge of
his landscape works is not extensive enough to justify me in speaking
of them decisively; but this is to be noted of all that I know, that
they are rather motives of feeling and colour than earnest studies;
that their execution is in some degree mannered, and always hasty ;
that they are altogether wanting in the affectionate detail of which
I have already spoken; and that their colour is in some measure
dependent on a bituminous brown and conventional green, which
have more of science than of truth in them. These faults may
be sufficiently noted in the magnificent picture presented by him
to the Royal Academy, and tested by a comparison of it with the

tively luminous or aerial than the distance of the Gainsborough,
nothing more bold or inventive than the forms of its crags and
the diffusion of the broad distant light upon them, where a vulgar
artist would have thrown them into dark contrast. But it will be

found that the light of the distance is brought out by a violent
exaggeration of the gloom in the valley; that the forms of the
green trees which bear the chief light are careless and ineffective ;
that the markings of the crags are equally hasty; and that no
object in tlie foreground has realization enough to enable the
eye to rest upon it. The Turner, a much feebler picture in its
first impression, and altogether inferior in the quality and value of
its individual hues, will yet be found in the end more forcible,
because unexaggerated; its gloom is moderate and aerial, its light
deep in tone, its colour entirely unconventional, and the forms of
its rocks studied with the most devoted care. With Gainsborough
terminates the series of painters connected with the elder schools.
By whom, among those yet living or lately lost, the impulse was
first given to modern landscape, I attempt not to decide. Such
questions are rather invidious than interesting; the particular tone
or direction of any school seems to me always to have resulted
rather from certain phases of national character, limited to par-
ticular periods, than from individual teaching, and, especially
among moderns, what has been good in each master has been
commonly original.

I have already alluded to the simplicity and earnestness of the
mind of Constable; to its vigorous rupture with school laws, and
to its unfortunate error on the opposite side. Unteachableness seems
to have been a main feature of his character, and there is corre-
sponding want of veneration in the way he approaches nature
herself. His early education and associations were also against him;
they induced in him a morbid preference of subjects of a low
order. I have never seen any v^ork of his in which there were
any signs of his being able to draw, and hence even the most
necessary details are painted by him inefficiently. His works are
also eminently wanting both in rest and refinement: and Fuseli's
jesting compliment is too true; for the showery weather in which
the artist delights, misses alike the majesty of storm and the loveli-
ness of calm weather; it is great-coat weather, and nothing more.
There is strange want of depth in the mind which has no pleasure
in sunbeams but when piercing painfully through clouds, nor in
foliage but when shaken by the wind, nor in light itself but when

flickering, glistening, restless, and feeble. Yet, with all these de-
ductions, his works are to be deeply respected, as thoroughly original,
tlioroughly honest, free from affectation, manly in manner, frequently
successful in cool colour, and realizing certain motives of English
scenery with perhaps as much affection as such scenery, unless
when regarded through media of feeling derived from higher
sources, is calculated to inspire.

On the works of Calcott, high as his reputation stands, I should
look with far less respect; I see not any preference or affection in
the artist; there is no tendency in him with which we can sympa-
thize, nor does there appear any sign of aspiration, effort or enjoy-
ment in any one of his works. He appears to have completed them
methodically, to have been content with them when completed, to
have thought them good, legitimate, regular pictures ; perhaps in
some respects better than nature. He painted everything tole-
rably, and nothing excellently; he has given us no gift, struck
for us no light, and though he has produced one or two valuable
works, of which the finest I know is the Marine in the possession
of Sir J. Swinburne, they will, I believe, in future have no place
among those considered representatives of the English school.

Throughout the range of elder art, it will be remembered we § Peculiar
have found no instance of the faithful painting of mountain scenery, recent land-
except in a faded background of Masaccio's; nothing more than
rocky eminences, undulating hills, or fantastic crags, and even these
treated altogether under typical forms. The more sjoecific study of
mountains seems to have coincided with the more dexterous practice
of water-colour; but it admits of doubt whether the choice of sub-
ject has been directed by the vehicle, or whether, as I rather think,
the tendency of national feeling has not been followed in the use
of the most appropriate means. Something is to be attributed to the
increased demand for slighter works of art, and much to the sense
of the quality of objects now called picturesque, which appears to
be exclusively of modern origin. From what feeling the character
of middle-age architecture and costume arose, or with what kind
of affection their forms were regarded by the inventors, I am utterly
unable to guess; but of this I think we may be assured, that the
natural instinct and childlike wisdom of those days were altogether

different from the modern feeling wliicli appears to have taken its
origin in the absence of such objects, and to be based rather on the
strangeness of their occurrence than on any real affection for them;
and which is certainly so shallow and ineffective as to be instantly
and always sacrificed by the majority to fashion, comfort, or economy.
Yet I trust that there is a healthy though feeble love of nature
mingled with it; nature pure, separate, felicitous, which is also
peculiar to the moderns; and as signs of this feeling, or ministers
to it, I look with veneration upon many works, which, in a tech-
nical point of view, are of minor importance.

I have been myself indebted for much teaching and more delight
to those of the late G. Robson. Weaknesses there are in them
manifold, much bad drawing, much forced colour, much over finish,
little of what artists call composition; but there is thorough affec-
tion for the thing drawn ; they are serious and quiet in the highest
degree, certain qualities of atmosphere and texture in them have
never been excelled, and certain facts of mountain scenery neA^er
but by them expressed; as, for instance, the stillness and depth of
the mountain tarns, with the reversed imagery of their darkness
signed across by the soft lines of faintly touching winds ; the solemn
flush of the brown fern and glowing heath under evening light;
the purple mass of mountains far removed, seen against clear still
twilight. With equal gratitude I look to the drawings of David
Cox, which, in spite of their loose and seemingly careless execution,
are not less serious in their meaning, nor less important in their
truth. I must, however, in reviewing those modern works in which
certain modes of execution are particularly manifested, insist espe-
cially on this general principle, applicable to all times of art; that
what is usually called the style or manner of an artist is, in all good
art, nothing but the best means of getting at the particular truth
which the artist Avanted; it is not a mode peculiar to himself of
getting at the same truths as other men, but the only mode of
getting the particular facts he desires, and which mode, if others
had desired to express those facts, they also must have adopted.
All habits of execution persisted in under no such necessity, but
because the artist has invented them, or desires to show his dex-
terity in them, are utterly base; for every good painter finds so

much difficulty in reacliing tlie end lie sees and desires, that he
has no time nor power left for playing tricks on the road to it;
he catches at the easiest and best means lie can get; it is possible
that such means may be singular, and then it will be said that
his style is strange; but it is not a style at all, it is the saying of
a particular thing in the only way in which it possibly can be said.
Thus the reed pen outline and peculiar touch of Prout, which are
frequently considered as mere manner, are in fact the only means
of expressing the crumbling character of stone which the artist
loves and desires. That character never has been expressed except
by him, nor will it ever be expressed except by his means. And
it is of the greatest importance to distinguish this kind of necessary
and virtuous manner from the conventional manners very frequent
in derivative schools, and always utterly to be contemned, wherein
an artist, desiring nothing and feeling nothing, executes everything
in his own particular mode, and teaches emulous scholars how to
do with difficulty what might have been done with ease. It is true
that there are sometimes instances in which great masters have
employed different means of getting at the same end, but in these
cases their choice has been always of those which to them appeared
the shortest and most complete: their practice has never been pre-
scribed by affectation or continued from habit, except so far as must
be expected from such weakness as is common to all men; from
hands that necessarily do most readily what they are most accus-
tomed to do, and minds always liable to prescribe to the hands that
which they can do most readily.

The recollection of this will keep us from being offended with
the loose and blotted handling of David Cox. There is no other
means by which his object could be attained; the looseness, cool-
ness, and moisture of his herbage, the rustling crumpled freshness
of his broad-leaved weeds, the play of pleasant light across his
deep heathered moor or plashing sand, the melting of fragments of
white mist into the dropping blue above; all this has not been
fully recorded except by him, and what there is of accidental in his
mode of reaching it, answers gracefully to the accidental part of
nature herself. Yet he is capable of more than this, and if he
suffers himself uniformly to paint beneath his capability, that which

began in feeling must necessarily end in manner. He paints too
many small pictures, and perhaps lias of late permitted his peculiar
execution to be more manifest than is necessary. Of this, he is
himself the best judge. For almost all faults of this kind the public
are answerable, not the painter. I have alluded to one of his
grander works—such as I should wish always to see him paint—
in the preface ; another, I think still finer, a red Sunset on distant
hills, almost unequalled for truth and power of colour, was painted
by him several years ago, and remains, I believe, in his own pos-
session.

The deserved popularity of Copley i'ielding has rendered it less
necessary for me to allude frequently to his works in the following
pages than it would otherwise have been; more especially as my
own sympathies and enjoyments are so entirely directed in the clian-
nel which his art has taken, that I am afraid of trusting them too
far. Yet I may, perhaps, be permitted to speak of myself so far as
I suppose my own feelings to be representative of tliose of a class;
and I suppose that there are many who, like myself, at some period
of their life have derived more intense and healthy pleasure from
the works of this painter than of any other whatsoever; healthy,
because always based on his faithful and simple rendering of nature,
and that of very lovely and impressive nature, altogether freed from
coarseness, violence, or vulgarity. Various references to that which
he has attained will be found subsequently: what I am now about
to say respecting what he has not attained, is not in depreciation of
what he has accomplished, but in regret at his suffering powers of
a high order to remain in any measure dormant.

He indulges himself too much in the use of crude colour. Pure
cobalt, violent rose, and purple, are of frequent occurrence in his
distances; pure siennas and other browns in his foregrounds, and
that not as expressive of lighted but of local colour. The reader
will find in the following chapters that I am no advocate for sub-
dued colouring; but crude colour is not bright colour, and there
was never a noble or brilliant work of colour yet produced, whose
real power did not depend on the subduing of its tints rather than
the elevation of them.

that the warm colours of distance, even the most glowing, are sub-
dued by the air so as in no wise to resemble the same colour seen
on a foreground object; so that the rose of sunset on clouds or
mountains has a grey in it which distinguishes it from the rose
colour of the leaf of a flower; and the mingling of this grey of
distance without in the slightest degree taking away the expression
of the intense and perfect purity of the colour in and by itself, is
perhaps the last attainment of the great landscape colourist. In the
same way the blue of distance, however intense, is not the blue
of a bright blue flower; and it is not distinguished from it by
different texture merely, but by a certain intermixture and under
current of warm colour, which are altogether wanting in many of
the blues of Fielding's distances; and so of every bright distant
colour; while in foreground, where colours may be, and ought
to be, pure, they yet become expressive of light only where there
is the accurate fitting of them to their relative shadows which
we find in the works of Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, Veronese,
Turner, and all other great colourists. Of this fitting of light
to shadow Fielding is altogether regardless, so that his fore-
grounds are constantly assuming the aspect of overcharged local
colour instead of sunshine, and his figures and cattle look trans-
parent.

Again, the finishing of Fielding's foregrounds, as regards their § 22. Beauty
,, . . I.T ., of mountain

Neither of these virtues is to be found in Fielding's. Its features,
tliough grouped with feeling, are yet scattered and unessential.
Any one of them might be altered in many ways without doing
harm; there is no proportioned, necessary, unalterable relation
among them; no evidence of invention or of careful thought; while
on the other hand there is no botanical or geological accuracy, nor
any point on which the eye may rest with thorough contentment in
its realization.

It seems strange that to an artist of so quick feeling the details
of a mountain foreground should not prove irresistibly attractive,
and entice him to greater accuracy of stxidy. There is not a frag-
ment of its living rock, nor a tuft of its heathery herbage, that has
not adorable manifestations of God's working thereupon. The
harmonies of colour among the native lichens are better than
Titian's ; the interwoven bells of campanula and heather are better
than all the arabesques of the Vatican; they need no improvement,
arrangement, nor alteration, nothing but love ; and every combina-
tion of them is different from every other, so that a painter need
never repeat himself if he will only be true. Yet all these sources
of power have been of late entirely neglected by Fielding. There
is evidence through all his foregrounds of their being mere home
inventions, and, like all home inventions, they exhibit perpetual
resemblances and repetitions ; the painter is evidently embai'rassed
without his rutted road in the middle, and his boggy pool at the side,
which pool he has of late painted in hard lines of violent blue;
there is not a stone, even of the nearest and most important,
which has its real lichens upon it, or a studied form, or anything
more to occupy the mind than certain variations of dark and light
browns. The same faults must be found with his present painting
of foliage, neither the stems nor leafage being ever studied from
nature ; and this is the more to be regretted, because in the earlier
works of the artist there was much admirable drawing, and even
yet his power is occasionally developed in his larger works, as in
a Bolton Abbey on canvass, which was—I cannot say, exhibited,—
but was in the rooms of the Royal Academy in 1843.^ I should

' It appears not to be sufficiently understood by those artists who complain acri-
moniously of their position on the Academy walls, that the Academicians have in their

have made tlie preceding remarks witli more hesitation and diffi-
dence^ but that, from a comparison of works of this kind with the
shghter ornaments of the water-colour rooms, it seems evident that
the painter is not unaware of the deficiencies of these latter, and
concedes something of what he would himself desire to what he has
found to he the feeling of a majority of his admirers. This is a dan-
gerous modesty, and especially so in these days when the judgment
of the many is palpably as artificial as their feeling is cold.

There is much that is instructive and deserving of high praise in § 23. De Wint.
the sketches of De Wint. Yet it is to be remembered that even
the pursuit of truth, however determined, will have results limited
and imperfect when its chief motive is the pride of being true;
and I fear that these works testify more accuracy of eye and ex-
perience of colour than exercise of thought. Their truth of effect
is often purchased at too great an expense by the loss of all beauty
of form, and of the higher refinements of colour; deficiencies, how-
ever, on which I shall not insist, since the value of the sketches, as
far as they go, is great: they have done good service and set good
example, and whatever their failings may be, there is evidence in
them that the painter has always done what he believed to be
right. .

own rooms a riglit to tlie line and the best placcs near it; in their taking this position
there is no abuse nor injustice; but the Acadcmicians sliould remember that with
tlieir rights they have their duties, and their duty is to determine among the works
of artists not belonging to their body, those which are most likely to advance public
knowledge and judgment, and to give these the best placcs next tlieir own ; neither
would it detract from their dignity if they occasionally ceded a square even of tlicir
own territory, as they did gracefully and rightly, and I am sorry to add, disinterestedly,
to the picture of Paul de la lloche in 1844. Now the Academicians know perfectly
well that the mass of portrait which encumbers their walls at half height is Avorse
than useless, seriously harmful to the public taste ; and it was highly criminal (I use the
word advisedly) that the valuable and interesting work of Fielding, of which I have
above spoken, should have been placcd where it was, above three rows of eye-glasses
and waistcoats. A very beautiful work of Harding's was treated, either in the same
or the following exhibition, with still greater injustice. Fielding's was merely put
out of sight; Harding's where its faults were conspicuous and its virtues lost. It
Avas an Alpine scene, of which the foreground, rocks, and ton'cnts were painted
with unrivalled fidelity and precision ; the foliage was dexterous, the aerial gradations
of the mountains tender and multitudinous, their forms carefully studied and very
grand. The blemish of the picture was a buff-coloured tower with a red roof; singularly
meagre in detail, and conventionally relieved from a mass of gloom. The picture was
placed where nothing but this tower could be seen.

The influence of the masters of whom we have hitherto spoken is
confined to those who have access to their actual works, since the
particular qualities in which they excel are in no wise to be ren-
dered by the engraver. Those of whom we have next to speak are
known to the public in a great measure by help of the engraver ;
and while their influence is thus very far extended, their modes of
working are perhaps, in some degree, modified by the habitual refe-
rence to the future translation into light and shade; reference which
is indeed beneficial in the care it induces respecting the arrange-
ment of the chiaroscuro and the explanation of tlie forms, but
which is harmful, so far as it involves a dependence rather on
quantity of picturesque material than on substantial colour or
simple treatment, and as it admits of indolent diminution of size
and slightness of execution.

We should not be just to the present works of J. D. Harding,
unless we took this influence into account. Some years back
none of our artists realized more laboriously, or obtained more
substantial colour and texture; but partly from the habit of making
slight and small drawings for engravers, and partly also, I ima-
gine, from an overstrained seeking after appearances of dexterity
in execution, his drawings have of late years become both less solid
and less complete; not, however, without attaining certain brilliant
qualities in exchange which are very valuable in the treatment of
some of the looser portions of subject. Of the extended knowledge
and various powers of this painter, frequent instances will be noted
in the following pages. Neither, perhaps, are rightly estimated
among artists, owing to a certain coldness of sentiment in his choice
of subject, and a continual preference of the picturesque to the im-
pressive; proved perhaps in nothing so distinctly as in the little
interest usually atta,ched to his skies, which, if aerial and expressive
of space and movement, content him, though destitute of story,
power, or character: an exception must be made in favour of the
very grand Sunrise on the Swiss Alps, exhibited in 1844, wherein
the artist's real power was in some measure displayed, though I am
convinced he is still capable of doing far greater things. So also in
his foliage he is apt to sacrifice the dignity of his trees to their wild-
ness, and lose the forest in the copse; neither is he at all accurate

enough in his expression of species or realization of near portions.
These are deficiencies, be it observed, of sentiment, not of percep-
tion, as there are few who equal him in rapidity of seizure of
material truth.

belonging to his treatment of architectural subiects which it does architecture,
^ _ '' ^ how deficient

not come within the sphere of the following chapters to examine, I
shall endeavour to note the more important of them here.

Let us glance back for a moment to the architectural drawing of
earlier times. Before the time of the Bellinis at Venice, and of
Ghirlandajo at Florence, I believe there are no examples of anj-
thing beyond conventional representation of architecture; often
rich, quaint, and full of interest, as Memmi's abstract of the Duomo
at Florence at S'''. Maria Novella, but not to be classed with any
genuine efforts at representation. It is much to be regretted that
the power and custom of introducing well-drawn architecture should
have taken place only when architectural taste had been itself
corrupted, and that the architecture introduced by Bellini, Ghir-
landajo, Francia, and the other patient and powerful workmen of
the fifteenth century, is exclusively of the Renaissance styles; while
their drawing of it furnishes little that is of much interest to the
architectural draughtsman as such, being always governed by a
reference to its subordinate position; so that all forceful shadow
and play of colour are (most justly) surrendered for quiet and
uniform hues of grey, and chiaroscuro of extreme simplicity. What-
ever they chose to do they did with consummate grandeur; note
especially the chiaroscuro of the square window of Ghirlandajo's,
which so much delighted Vasari in Maria Novella; and the
daring management of a piece of the perspective in the Salutation,
opposite; where he has painted a flight of stairs, descending in
front, though the picture is twelve feet above the eye. And yet
this grandeur, in all these men, results rather from the general
power obtained in their drawing of the figure, than from any
definite knowledge respecting the things introduced in these ac-
cessory parts ; so that while in some points it is impossible for any
painter to equal these accessories, unless he were in all respects as

great as Gliirlandajo or Bellini, in others it is possible for him, with
far inferior powers, to attain a representation both more accurate
and more interesting.

In order to arrive at the knowledge of these, we must briefly
take note of a few of the modes in which architecture itself is
agreeable to the mind, especially of the influence upon the character
of the building which is to be attributed to the signs of age.
§ 20. Effects of It is evident, first, that if the design of the building be originally
^n'VTiX'far virtue it can ever possess will be in signs of antiquity,

is to be reverenced, and all those circumstances enlarge it which
strengthen our memory or quicken our conception of the dead.
Hence it is no light sin to destroy anything that is old; more
especially because, even with the aid of all obtainable records of
the past, we, the living, occupy a space of too large importance
and interest in our own eyes; we look upon the Avorld too much
as our own, too much as if we had possessed it and should
possess it for ever, and forget that it is a mere hostelry, of
which we occupy the apartments for a time, which others better
than we have sojourned in before, who are now Avhere we should
desire to be with them. Fortunately for mankind, as some counter-
balance to that wretched love of novelty which originates in selfish-
ness, shallowness, and conceit, and which especially characterizes all
vulgar minds, there is set in the deeper places of the heart such
affection for the signs of age that the eye is delighted even by
injuries which are the work of time; not but that there is also
real and absolute beauty in the forms and colours so obtained, for
which the original lines of the architecture, unless they have been
very grand indeed, are well exchanged; so that there is hardly any
building so ugly but that it may be made an agreeable object
by such appearances. It would not be easy, for instance, to find a
less pleasing piece of architecture than the portion of the front of
Queen's College, Oxford, which has just been restored; yet I be-
lieve that few persons could have looked with total indifference on
the mouldering and shattered surface of the oolite limestone, previous
to its restoration. If, however, the character of the building consists
in minute detail or multitudinous lines, the evil or good effect of

age upon it must depend in great measure on the kind of art, the
material, and the climate. The Parthenon, for instance, would be
injured by any markings which interfered with the contours of its
sculptures; and any lines of extreme purity, or colours of original
harmony and perfection, are liable to injury, and are ill exchanged
for mouldering edges or brown weatherstains.

But as all architecture is, or ought to be, meant to be durable,
and to derive part of its glory from its antiquity, all art that is
liable to mortal injury from effects of time is therein out of place,
and this is another reason for the principle I have asserted in the
second section of this part, page 197. I do not at this moment
recollect a single instance of any very fine building which is not
improved, up to a certain period, by all its signs of age, after
which period, like all other human works, it necessarily declines;
its decline being, in almost all ages and countries, accelerated by
neglect and abuse in its time of beauty, and alteration or restoration
in its time of age.

Thus I conceive that all buildings dependent on colour, whether
of mosaic or painting, have their effect improved by the richness of
the subsequent tones of age; for there are few arrangements of
colour so perfect but that they are capable of improvement by
some softening and blending of this kind: with mosaic, the im-
provement may be considered as proceeding almost so long as the
design can be distinctly seen; with painting, so long as the colours
do not change or chip off.

Again, upon all forms of sculptural ornament, the effect of time
is such, that if the design be poor, it will enrich it; if overcharged,
simplify it; if harsh and violent, soften it; if smooth and obscure,
exhibit it; whatever faults it may have are rapidly disguised, what-
ever virtue it has still shines and steals out in the mellow light;
and this to such an extent, that the artist is always liable to be
tempted to the drawing of details in old buildings as of extreme
beauty, which look cold and hard in their architectural lines; and I
have never yet seen any restoration or cleaned portion of a building
whose effect was not inferior to the weathered parts, even to those
of which the design had in some parts almost disappeared. On
the front of the church of San Michele at Lucca, the mosaics have

fallen out of half the columns, and lie in weedy ruin beneath;
in many, the frost has torn large masses of the entire coating
away, leaving a scarred unsightly surface. Two of the shafts of
the upper star window are eaten entirely away by the sea wind,
the rest have lost their proportions; the edges of the arches are
hacked into deep hollows, and cast indented shadows on the weed-
grown wall. The process has gone too far, and yet I doubt not
but that this building is seen to greater advantage now than when
first built, always with exception of one circumstance; that the
French shattered the lower wheel window, and set up in front of it
an escutcheon with " Libertas" upon it, which abomination of deso-
lation the Lucchese have not yet had human-heartedness enough
to pull down.

Putting therefore the application of architecture as an accessory
out of the question, and supposing our object to be the exhibition
of the most impressive qualities of the building itself, it is evi-
dently the duty of the draughtsman to represent it under those
conditions, and with that amount of age-mark upon it which may
best exalt and harmonize the sources of its beauty. This is no
pursuit of mere picturesqueness; it is true following out of the ideal
character of the building. Nay, far greater dilapidation than this
may in portions be exhibited; for there are beauties of other kinds,
not otherwise attainable, brought out by advanced dilapidation: but
when the artist suffers the mere love of ruinousness to interfere
with his perception of the art of the building, and substitutes rude
fractures and blotting stains for all its fine chiselling and deter-
mined colour, he has lost the end of his own art.

So far of aging; next of effects of light and colour. It is, I
believe, hardly enough observed among architects, that the same
decorations are of totally different effect according to their position
and the time of day. A moulding which is of value on a building
facing south, where it takes dark shadows from steep sun, may be
utterly ineffective if placed west or east; and a moulding which is
chaste and intelligible in shade on a north side, may be grotesque,
vulgar, or confused when it takes black shadows on the south.
Farther, there is a time of day in which every architectural deco-
ration is seen to best advantage, and certain times in which its

peculiar force and character are best explained. Of these niceties
the architect takes little cognizance, as he must in some sort
calculate on the effect of ornament at all times: but to the
artist they are of infinite importance, and especially for this reason;
that there is always much detail on buildings which cannot be drawn
as such, which is too far off, or too minute, and which must con-
sequently be set down in short-hand of some kind or another;
and, as it were, an abstract, more or less philosophical, made of
its general heads. Of the style of this abstract, of the lightness,
confusion, and mystery necessary in it, I have spoken elsewhere;
at present I insist only on the arrangement and matter of it. All
good ornament and all good architecture are capable of being put
into short-hand; that is, each has a perfect system of parts principal
and subordinate, of which, even when the complemental details
vanish in distance, the system and anatomy yet remain visible, so
long as anything is visible; so that the divisions of a beautiful spire
shall be known as beautiful even till their last line vanishes in blue
mist; and the effect of a well-designed moulding shall be visibly
disciplined, harmonious, and inventive, as long as it is seen to be
a moulding at all. Now the power of the artist of marking this
character depends not on his complete knowledge of the design,
but on his experimental knowledge of its salient and bearing parts,
and of the effects of light and shadow, by which their saliency is
best told. He must therefore be prepared, according to his sub-
ject, to use light steep or level, intense or feeble, and out of the
resulting chiaroscuro select those peculiar and hinging points on
which the rest are based, and by which all else that is essential
may be explained.

The thoughtful command of all these circumstances constitutes
the real architectural draughtsman ; the habits of executing every-
thing either under one kind of effect or in one manner, or of using
unintelligible and meaningless abstracts of beautiful designs, are
those which most commonly take the place of it and are the most
extensively esteemed.^

' I have not given any examples in this place, bccause it is diiBcult to explain such
circumstances of effect without diagrams; I purpose entering into fuller discussion cf
the subject with the aid of illustration.

Let US now proceed with our review of those artists who have
devoted themselves more pecuharlj to architectural subject.

Foremost among them stand Gentile Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio,
to whom we are indebted for the only existing faithful statements
of the architecture of Old Venice; and who are the only authorities
to whom we can trust in conjecturing the former beauty of those
few desecrated fragments, the last of which are now being rapidly
swept away by the idiocy of modern Venetians.

Nothing can be more careful, nothing more delicately finished, or
more dignified in feeling than the works of both these men; and
as architectural evidence they are the best we could have had, all
the gilded parts being gilt in the picture, so that there can be
no mistake or confusion of them with yellow colour or light, and
all the frescoes or mosaics given with the most absolute precision
and fidelity. At the same time they are by no means examples of
perfect architectural drawing; there is little light and shade in
them of any kind, and none whatever of the thoughtful observance
of temporary effect of which we have just been speaking; so that,
in rendering the character of the relieved parts, their solidity, depth,
or gloom, the representation fails altogether, and it is moreover life-
less from its very completion, both the signs of age and the effects
of use and habitation being utterly rejected; rightly so, indeed, in
these instances (all the architecture of these painters being in back-
ground to religious subject), but wrongly so, if we look to the
architecture alone. Neither is there anything like aerial perspective
attempted; the employment of actual gold in the decoration of all
the distances, and the entire realization of their details, as far as
is possible on the scale compelled by perspective, being alone
sufficient to prevent this, except in the hands of painters far
more practised in effect than either Gentile or Carpaccio. But
with all these discrepancies. Gentile Bellini's church of St. Mark's
is the best church of St. Mark's that has ever been painted, so far
as I know; and I believe the reconciliation of true aerial per-
spective and chiaroscui'o with the splendour and dignity obtained
by the real gilding and elaborate detail, is a problem yet to be
accomplished. With the help of the daguerreotype, and the lessons
of colour given by the later Venetians, we ought now to be able

to accomplish it; more especially as the right use of gold has been
shown us by the greatest master of effect whom Venice herself
produced, TinDoret; who has employed it with infinite grace on
the steps ascended by the young Madonna, in his large picture
in the church of the Madonna dell' Orto. Perugino uses it also
with singular grace, often employing it for golden light on distant
trees, and continually on the high light of hair, and that without
losing relative distance.

The great group of Venetian painters who brought landscape art, § 29. And of
for that time, to its culminating point, have left, as we have already geLlaiiy!'*^"^
seen, little that is instructive in architectural painting. The causes
of tliis I cannot comprehend, for neither Titian nor Tintoret aj)pears
to despise anything that affords either variety of form or of
colour, the latter especially condescending to very trivial details,—
as in the magnificent carpet painting of the picture of the doge
Mocenigo; so that it might have been expected that in the rich
colours of St. Mark's, and the magnificent and fantastic masses of
the Byzantine palaces, they would have found whereupon to dwell
with delighted elaboration. This is, however, never the case ; and
although frequently compelled to introduce portions of Venetian
locality in their backgrounds, such portions are always treated in a
most hasty and faithless manner, missing frequently all character of
the building, and never advanced to realization. In Titian's picture
of Faith, the view of Venice below is laid in so rapidly and slightly,
the houses all leaning this way and that, and of no colour, the sea
a dead grey green, and the ship-sails mere dashes of the brush,
that the most obscure of Turner's Venices would look substantial
beside it; while Tintoret, in the very picture in which he has
dwelt so elaborately on the carpet, has substituted a piece of
ordinary Renaissance composition for St. Mark's; and in the back-
ground has chosen the Sansovino side of the Piazzetta, treating
even that so carelessly as to lose all the proportion and beauty of
its design, and so fiimsily that the line of the distant sea which
has been first laid in, is seen through all the columns. Evidences
of magnificent power of course exist in whatever he touches, but
his full power is never turned in this direction. More space is
allowed to his architecture by Paul Veronese, but it is still entirely

suggestive, and would be utterly false except as a frame or back-
ground for figures. The same may be said with respect to RafFaelle
and the Roman school.

If, however, these men laid architecture little under contribution
to their own art, they made their own art a glorious gift to archi-
tecture ; and the walls of Venice which, before, I believe, had
received colour only in arabesque patterns, were lighted with human
life by Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, Of the works of
Tintoret and Titian, nothing now, I believe, remains. Two figures
of Giorgione's are still traceable on the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, one
of which, singularly uninjured, is seen from far above and below
the Rialto, flaming like the reflection of a sunset. Two figures of
Veronese were also traceable till lately; the head and arms of one
still remain, and some glorious olive branches which were beside
the other; the figure having been entirely effaced by an inscription
in large black letters on a whitewash tablet, which we owe to the
somewhat inopportunely expressed enthusiasm of the inhabitants of
the district in favour of their new pastor.^ Judging, however, from
the rate at which destruction is at present advancing, and seeing
that in about seven or eight years more Venice will have utterly
lost every external claim to interest, except that which attaches to
the group of buildings immediately around St. Mark's Place, and
to the larger churches, it may be conjectured that the greater part
of her present degradation has taken place, at any rate, within the
last forty years. Let the reader, with such scraps of evidence as

1 The inscription is to the following effect,—a pleasant thing to see upon the walls,
were it but more innocently placed : —

DIG
CONSERVI A NOI
LUNGAMENTE
LO ZELANTIS. E IlEVERENDIS.
1). LUIGI PICCINI
NOSTRO
NOVELLO PIEVANO.

may still be gleaned from mider the stucco and paint of tlie Italian
committees of taste, and from among the drawingroom innovations
of English and German residents, restore Venice in his imagination
to some resemblance of what she must have been before her fall.
Let him, looking from Lido or Fusina, replace, in the forest of
towers, those of the hundred and sixty-six churches which the
French threw down; let him sheet her walls with purple and
scarlet, overlay her minarets with gold^, cleanse from their pollution
those choked canals which are now the drains of hovels, where they
were once vestibules of palaces, and fill them with gilded barges
and bannered ships; finally, let him withdraw from this scene,
already so brilliant, such sadness and stain as had been set upon it
by the declining energies of more than half a century, and he will see
Venice as it was seen by Canaletto; whose miserable, virtueless,
heartless mechanism, accepted as the representation of such various
glory, is, both in its existence and acceptance, among the most
striking signs of the lost sensation and deadened intellect of the
nation at that time; a numbness and darkness more without hope
than that of the Grave itself, holding and wearing yet the sceptre
and the crown, like the corpses of the Etruscan kings, ready to sink
into ashes at the first unbarring of the door of the sepulchre.

The mannerism of Canaletto is the most degraded that I know in
the whole range of art. Professing the most servile and mindless
imitation, it imitates nothing but the blackness of the shadows ; it
gives no single architectural ornament, however near, so much
form as might enable us even to guess at its actual one; and this
I say not rashly, for I shall prove it by placing portions of detail
accm-ately copied from Canaletto side by side with engravings from
the daguerreotype : it gives the buildings neither their architectural
beauty nor their ancestral dignity, for there is no texture of stone
nor character of age in Canaletto's touch; which is invariably a
violent, black, sharp, ruled penmanlike line, as far removed from

' The quantity of gold with which the decorations of Venice were oncc covered
could not now be traced or credited without I'efcrence to the authority of Gentile
Bellini. The greater part of the marble mouldings have been touched with it in
lines and points, the minarets of St. Mark's, and all the florid carving of the arches
entirely sheeted. The Casa d'Oro retained it on its lions until the recent commence-
ment of its restoration.

the grace of nature as from her faintness and transparency: and
for his truth of colour, let the single fact of his having omitted
all record whatsoever of the frescoes whose wrecks are still to be
found at least on one half of the unrestored palaces, and, with still
less excusableness, all record of the magnificent coloured marbles
of many whose greens and purples are still undimmed upon the
Casa Dario, Casa Trevisan, and multitudes besides, speak for him
in this respect.

Let it be observed that I find no fault with Canaletto for his
want of poetrj, of feeling, of artistical thoughtfulness in treatment,
or of the various other virtues which he does not so much as pro-
fess. He professes nothing but coloured daguerreotjpeism. Let
us have it; most precious and to be revered it would be: let us
have fresco where fresco was, and that copied faithfully; let us have
carving where carving is, and that architecturally true. I have
seen daguerreotypes in which every figure and rosette, and crack
and stain, and fissure is given on a scale of an inch to Canaletto's
three feet. What excuse is there to be offered for his omitting, on
that scale, as I shall hereafter show, all statement of such ornament
whatever? Among the Flemish schools, exquisite imitations of ar-
chitecture are found constantly, and that not with Canaletto's vulgar
black exaggeration of shadow, but in the most pure and silvery
and luminous greys. I have little pleasure in such pictures; but I
blame not those who have more; they are what they profess to be,
and they are wonderful and instructive, and often graceful, and
even affecting: but Canaletto possesses no virtue except that of
dexterous imitation of commonplace light and shade; and perhaps,
with the exception of Salvator, no artist has ever fettered his unfor-
tunate admirers more securely from all healthy or vigorous percep-
tion of truth, or been of more general detriment to all subsequent
schools.

Neither, however, by the Flemings nor by any other of the elder
schools, was the effect of age or of human life upon architecture
ever adequately expressed. What ruins they drew looked as if
broken down on purpose; what weeds they put on seemed put on
for ornament. Their domestic buildings had never any domesticity;
the people looked out of their windows evidently to be drawn, or

came into tlie street only to stand there for ever. A peculiar
studiousness infected all accident; bricks fell out methodically, win-
dows opened and shut by rule; stones were chipped at regular
intervals ; everything that happened seemed to have been expected
before; and above all, the street had been washed and the houses
dusted expressly to be painted in their best. We owe to Prout, I
believe, the first perception, and certainly the only existing expres-
sion, of precisely the characters which were wanting to old art; of
that feeling which results from the influence, among the noble lines
of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and
the weed, and from the writing upon the pages of ancient walls of
the confused hieroglyphics of human history. I suppose, from the
deserved popularity of the artist, that the strange pleasure which I
find myself in tlie deciphering of these is common to many. The
feeling has been rashly and thoughtlessly contemned as mere love
of the picturesque; there is, as I have above shown, a deeper moral
in it, and we owe much, I am not prepared to say how much, to the
artist by whom preeminently it has been excited: for, numerous
as have been his imitators, extended as his influence, and simple as
his means and manner, there has yet appeared nothing at all to
equal him; there is no stone drawing, no vitality of architecture
like Front's. I say not this rashly; I remember Mackenzie, and
Haghe, and many other capital imitators; and I have carefully re-
viewed the architectural work of the Academicians, often most ac-
curate and elaborate. I repeat there is nothing but the work of Prout
which is true, living, or right, in its general impression, and nothing,
tlierefore, so inexhaustibly agreeable. Faults he has, manifold, easily
detected, and much declaimed against by second-rate artists; but
his excellence no one has ever approached, and his lithographic
work (Sketches in Flanders and Germany), which was, I believe,
the first of the kind, still remains the most valuable of all, ntimerous
and elaborate as its various successors have been. The second
series (in Italy and Switzerland) was of less value; the drawings
seemed more laborious, and had less of the life of the original
sketches, being also for the most part of subjects less adapted for the
development of the artist's peculiar powers: but both are fine ; and
the Brussels, Louvain, Cologne, and Nuremberg subjects of the one

together with the Tours, Amboise, Geneva, and Sion of the other,
exhibit substantial qualities of stone and wood drawing, together
with an ideal appreciation of the present active and vital being of the
cities, such as nothing else has ever approached. Their value is
much increased by the circumstance of their being drawn by the
artist's own hand upon the stone, and by the consequent manly
recklessness of subordinate parts (in works of this kind, be it
remembered, much is subordinate), which is of all characters of
execution the most refreshing. Note the scrawled middle tint of
the wall behind the Gothic well at Ratisbonne, and compare this
manly piece of work with the wretched smoothness of recent litho-
graphy. Let it not be thought that there is any inconsistency
between what I say here and what I have said respecting finish.
This piece of dead wall is as much finished in relation to its function,
as the masonries of Ghirlandajo or Leonardo in relation to theirs ; and
the refreshing quality is the same in both, and manifest in all great
masters, without exception,— that of the utter regardlessness of the
means so that their end be reached. The same kind of scrawling
occurs often in tlie shade of RafFaelle.
§ 32. His ex- It is not, liowever, only by his peculiar stone touch, nor by his per-
pci'itio^n^and ception of human character, that he is distinguished. He is the most
colour. dexterous of all our artists in a certain kind of composition. No one

can place figures as he can, except Turner, It is one thing to know
where a piece of blue or Mdiite is wanted, and another to make the
wearer of the blue apron or white cap come there, and not look as
if it were against her will. Front's streets are the only streets that
are accidentally crowded; his markets the only markets where
one feels inclined to get out of the way. With others we feel the
figures so right where they are, that we have no expectation of their
going anywhere else; and approve of the iposition of the man with
the wheelbarrow, without the slightest fear of his running it against
our legs. One other merit he has, far less generally acknowledged
than it should be; he is among our most sunny and substantial
colourists. Much conventional colour occurs in his inferior pic-
tures (for he is very unequal), and some in all; but portions are
always of quality so luminous and pure, that I have found these
works the only ones capable of bearing juxtaposition with Turner

and Hunt, who invariably destroy everything else that comes
within range of them. His most beautiful tones occur in those
drawings in which there is prevalent and powerful Avarm grey ; his
most failing ones in those of sandy red. On his deficiencies 1 shall
not insist, because I am not prepared to say how far it is possible
for him to avoid them. We have never seen the reconciliation of
the peculiar characters he has obtained, with the accurate following
out of architectural detail. With his present modes of execution,
farther fidelity is impossible, nor has any other mode of execution
yet obtained the same results ; and though much is unaccomplished
by him m certain subjects, and something of over-mannerism may be
traced in his treatment of others, as especially in his mode of ex-
pressing the decorative parts of Greek or Roman architecture, yet
in his own peculiar Gothic territory, where the spirit of the subject
itself is somewhat rude and grotesque, his abstract of decoration has
more of the spirit of the reality than far more laborious imitation.'
The spirit of the Flemish Hotel de Ville and decorated street
architecture has never been, even in the slightest degree, felt or
conveyed except by him, and by him, to my mind, faultlessly and
absolutely ; and though his interpretation of architecture that con-
tains more refined art in its details is far less satisfactory, still it
is impossible, while walking on his favourite angle of the Piazza
at Venice, either to think of any other artist than Prout or not to
think of Mm.

said, that they draw hats, faces, cloaks, and caps much better than generally,
-r» 1 /• nil! 111.1 Cattermole.

Prout, but figures not so well: that they draw walls and windows,
but not cities; mouldings and buttresses, but not cathedrals. Joseph
Nash's work on the Architecture of the Middle Ages is, however,
valuable, and I suppose that Haghe's works may be depended on
for fidelity. But it appears very strange that a workman capable
of producing the clever drawings he has, from time to time, sent to
the New Society of Painters in Water Colours, should publish
lithographs so conventional, forced, and lifeless.

It is not without hesitation, that I mention a name respectmg
which the reader may ah-eadj have been surprised at my silence,
that of G. Cattermole. There are signs in his works of very pecu-
liar gifts, and perhaps also of powerful genius ; their deficiencies I
should willingly attribute to the advice of ill-judging friends, and to
the applause of a public satisfied with shallow efforts, if brilliant;
yet I cannot but think it one necessary characteristic of all true
genius to be misled by no such false fires. The antiquarian feel-
ing of Cattermole is pure, earnest, and natural; and I think his
imagination originally vigorous, certainly his fancy; his grasp of
momentary passion considerable, his sense of action in the human
body vivid and ready. But no original talent, however brilliant,
can sustain its energy when the demands upon it are constant, and
all legitimate support and food withdrawn. I do not recollect in
any, even of the most important of Cattermole's works, so much as
a fold of drapery studied out from nature. Violent conventionalism
of light and shade, sketchy forms continually less and less developed,
the walls and the faces drawn with the same stucco colour, alike
opaque, and all the shades on flesh, dress, or stone, laid in with the
same arbitrary brown, for ever tell the same tale of a mind
wasting its strength and substance in the production of emptiness,
and seeking, by more and more blindly hazarded handling, to con-
ceal the weakness which the attempt at finish would betray.

This tendency has of late been painfully visible in his architec-
ture. Some drawings made several years ago for an Annual, illus-
trative of Scott's works, were, for the most part, pure and finely felt,
—though irrelevant to our present subject, a fall of the Clyde
should be noticed, admirable for breadth and grace of foliage, and
for the bold sweeping of the water; and another subject of which
I regret that I can only judge by the engraving, Glendearg at
twilight (the monk Eustace chased by Christie of the Clint hill),
which I think must have been one of the sweetest pieces of simple
Border hill feeling ever painted; — and about that time, his archi-
tecture, though always conventionally brown in the shadows, was
generally well drawn, and always powerfully conceived.

Since then, he has been tending gradually through exaggeration
to caricature, and vainly endeavouring to attain, by inordinate bulk

of decorated parts, that dignity which is only to be reached by
purity of proportion and majesty of line.

It has pained me deeply, to see an artist of so great original § 34. The
power indulging in childish fantasticism and exaggeration, and sub- archajoiogicai
stituting for the serious and subdued work of legitimate imagination jfjljisappi^^'
monster machicolations, and colossal cusps and crockets. While invention, in
there is so much beautiful architecture daily in process of destruc- suiyect
tion around us, I cannot but think it treason to imagine anything;
at least, if we must have composition, let the design of the artist be
such as the architect would applaud. But it is surely very grievous,
that while our idle artists are helping their vain inventions by the
fall of sponges on soiled paper, glorious buildings with the whole
intellect and history of centuries concentrated in them are suffered
to fall into unrecorded ruin. A day does not now pass in Italy
without the destruction of some mighty monument; the streets of
all her cities echo to the hammer; half of her fair buildings lie
in separate stones about the places of their foundation: would not
time be better spent in telling us the truth about these perishing
remnants of majestic thought, than in perpetuating the ill-digested
fancies of idle hours ? It is, I repeat, treason to the cause of art,
for any man to invent, unless he invents something better than
has been invented before, or something differing in kind. There is
room enough for invention in the pictorial treatment of what exists.
There is no more honourable exhibition of imaginative power, than
in the selection of such place, choice of such treatment, introduction
of such incident, as may produce a noble picture without deviation
from one line of the actual truth : and such I believe to be, indeed,
in the end the most advantageous, as well as the most modest
direction of the invention; for I recollect no single instance of
architectural composition by any men except such as Leonardo or
Veronese, who could design their architecture thoroughly before
they painted it, which has not a look of inanity and absurdity. The
best landscapes and the best architectural studies have been views;
and I would have the artist take shame to himself in the exact
degree in which he finds himself obliged in the production of his
picture to lose any, even of the smallest parts or most trivial hues
which bear a part in the great impression made by the reality. The

difference between tlie drawing of the architect and artist^ ought
never to be, as it now commonlj is, the difference between lifeless
formality and witless license; it ought to be between giving the
mere lines and measures of a building, and giving those lines and
measures with the impression and soul of it besides. All artists
should be ashamed of themselves when they find thej have not
the power of being true; the right wit of drawing is like the
right wit of conversation, not hyperbole, not violence, not frivolity,
only well expressed, laconic truth.

Among the members of the Academy, we have at present only
one professedly architectural draughtsman of note, David Roberts;
whose reputation is probably farther extended on the continent
than that of any other of our artists, except Landseer. I am not
certain, however, that I have any reason to congratulate either of
my countrymen upon this their European estimation; for I think
it exceedingly probable that in both instances it is exclusively
based on their defects; and in the case of Mr. Roberts, in par-
ticular, there has of late appeared more ground for it than is
altogether desirable, in a smoothness and over-finish of texture
which bear dangerous fellowship with the work of our Gallic
neighbours.

The fidelity of intention and honesty of system of Roberts have,
however, always been meritorious; his drawing of architecture is
dependent on no unintelligible lines or blots, or substituted types;
the main lines of the real design are always there, and its
hollowness and undercuttings given with exquisite feeling; his
sense of solidity of form is very peculiar, leading him to dwell
with great delight on the roundings of edges and angles; his
execution is dexterous and delicate, singularly so in oil, and his
sense of chiaroscuro refined. But he has never done himself
justice, and suffers his pictures to fall below the rank they should
assume, by the presence of several marring characters, which I shall
name, because it is perfectly in his power to avoid them. In
looking over the valuable series of drawings of the Holy Land,
which we owe to Mr. Roberts, we cannot but be amazed to find

' Indeed there should be no such difFerenco at all. Every architect ought to be an
artist; every very great artist is necessarily an architect.

how frequeiitlj it has happened that there was something very-
white immediately in the foreground, and something very black
exactly behind it. The same thing happens perpetually with Mr.
Roberts's pictures; a white column is always coming out of a blue
mist, or a white stone out of a green pool, or a white monument
out of a brown recess, and the artifice is not always concealed with
dexterity. This is unworthy of so skilful a composer, and it has
destroyed the impressiveness as well as the colour of some of his
finest works. It shows a poverty of conception, which appears to
me to arise from a deficient habit of study. It will be remembered
that of the sketches for this work, several times exhibited in
London, every one was executed in the same manner, and with
about the same degree of completion; being all of them accurate
records of the main architectural lines, the shapes of the shadows,
and the remnants of artificial colour, obtained by means of the
same greys throughout, and of the same yellow (a singularly false
and cold though convenient colour) touched upon the lights. As fiir
as they went, nothing could be more valuable than these sketches ;
and the public, glancing rapidly at their general and graceful effects,
could hardly form anything like an estimate of the endurance and
determination which must have been necessary in such a climate
to obtain records so patient, entire, and clear, of details so multi-
tudinous as, especially, the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian temples ;
an endurance which perhaps only artists can estimate, and for
which we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Roberts, most difficult
to discharge. But if these sketches were all that the artist
brought home, whatever value is to be attached to them as
statements of fact, they are altogether insufficient for the pro-
ducing of pictures. I saw among them no single instance of a
downright study ; of a study in which the real hues and shades of
sky and earth had been honestly realized or attempted; nor were
there, on the other hand, any of those invaluable blotted five-minutes'
works which record the unity of some single and magnificent
impressions. Hence the pictures which have been painted from
these sketches have been as much alike in their want of impres-
siveness as the sketches themselves, and have never borne the living
aspect of the Egyptian light; it has always been impossible to say

whether the red in them (not a pleasant one) was meant for hot
sunshine or for red sandstone: their power has been farther
destroyed by the necessity the artist seems to feel himself under
of eking out their effect by points of bright foreground colour;
and thus we have been encumbered with caftans, pipes, scimitars,
and black hair, when all that we wanted was a lizard, or an ibis.
It is perhaps owing to this want of earnestness in study rather than
to deficiency of perception, that the colouring of this artist is
commonly untrue. Some time ago when he was painting Spanish
subjects, his habit was to bring out his whites in relief from
transparent bituminous browns, which though not exactly right in
colour, were at any rate warm and agreeable; but of late his
colour has become cold, waxy, and opaque, and in his deep shades
he sometimes permits himself the use of a violent black which is
altogether unjustifiable. A picture of Roslin Chapel, exhibited in
1844, showed this defect in the recess to which the stairs descend,
in an extravagant degree; and another, exhibited in the British
Institution, instead of showing the exquisite crumbling and lichenous
texture of the lioslin stone, was polished to as vapid smoothness as
ever French historical picture. The general feebleness of the effect
is increased by the insertion of the figures as violent pieces of
local colour unaffected by the light and imblended with the hues
around tliem, and bearing evidence of having been painted from
models or draperies in the dead light of a room instead of sunshine.
On these deficiencies I should not have remarked, but that by
honest and determined painting from and of nature, it is perfectly
in the power of the artist to supply them; and it is bitterly to
be regretted that the accuracy and elegance of his work should
not be aided by that genuineness of hue and effect which can
only be given by the uncompromising effort to paint, not a fine
picture, but an impressive and known verity.

The two artists whose works it remains for us to review, are men
who have presented us with examples of the treatment of every
kind of subject, and among the rest with portions of architecture
which the best of our exclusively architectural draughtsmen could
not excel.

throughout the subsequent pages render it less necessary for me to
speak of him here at any length. He is the leader of the English
Realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable of his charac-
teristics is the look of common sense and rationality which his
compositions will always bear, when opposed to any kind of
affectation. He appears to think of no other artist. What he has
learned, has been from his own acquaintance with, and affection
for, the steep hills and the deep sea; and his modes of treatment
are alike removed from sketchiness or incompletion, and from
exaggeration or effort. The somewhat over-prosaic tone of his
subjects is rather a condescension to what he supposes to be
public feeling, than a sign of want of feeling in himself; for, in
some of his sketches from nature or fix^m fancy, I have seen
powers and perceptions manifested of a far higher order than any
that are traceable in his Academy works, powers which I think him
much to be blamed for checking. The portion of his pictures
usually most defective in this respect is the sky, which is apt to
be cold and uninventive, always well drawn, but with a kind of
hesitation in the clouds whether it is to be fair or foul weather;
they having neither the joyfulness of rest, nor the majesty of storm.
Their colour is apt also to verge on a morbid purple, as was
eminently the case in the large picture of the wreck on the coast
of Holland exhibited in 1844 ; a work in which both his powers
and faults were prominently manifested, the picture being full of
good painting, but wanting in its entire appeal. There was no
feeling of wreck about it; and, but for the damage about her bow-
sprit, it would have been impossible for a landsman to say whether
the hull was meant for a wreck or a guardship. Nevertheless, it is
always to be recollected, that in subjects of this kind it is probable
that much escapes us in consequence of our want of knowledge,
and that to the eye of the seaman much may be of interest and
value which to us appears cold. At all events, this healthy and
rational regard of things is incomparably preferable to the dramatic
absurdities which weaker artists commit in matters marine; and
from copper-coloured sunsets on green waves sixty feet high, with
cauliflower breakers, and ninepin rocks ; from drowning on planks,
and starving on rafts, and lying naked on beaches, it is really

refreshing to turn to a surge of Stanfield's true salt, serviceable,
unsentimental sea. It Avould be well, however, if he would some-
times take a higher flight. The Castle of Ischia gave him a grand
subject, and a little more invention in the sky, a little less mud-
diness in the rocks, and a little more savageness in the sea, would
have made it an impressive picture ; it just misses the sublime, yet
is a fine work, and better engraved than usual by the Art Union.

One fault we cannot but venture to find, even in our own
extreme ignorance, with Mr. Stanfield's boats; they never look
weatherbeaten. There is something peculiarly precious in the rusty,
dusty, tar-trickled, fishy, phosphorescent brown of an old boat; and
when this has just dipped under a wave, and rises to the sunshine,
it is enough to drive Giorgione to despair. I have never seen any
effort at this by Stanfield; his boats always look newly painted and
clean; witness especially the one before the ship, in the wreck
picture above noticed; and there is some such absence of a right
sense of colour in other portions of his subject; even his fishermen
have always clean jackets and unsoiled caps, and his very rocks are
lichenless. And, by the by, this ought to be noted respecting
modern painters in general, that they have not a proper sense of
the value of Dirt; cottage children never appear but in freshly got-
up caps and aprons, and white-handed beggars excite compassion
in unexceptionable rags. In reality, almost all the colours of things
associated with human life derive something of their expression and
value from the tones of impui'ity, and so enhance the value of
the entirely pure tints of nature herself. Of Stanfield's rock and
mountain drawing enough will be said hereafter. His foliage is
inferior; his architecture admirably drawn, but commonly wanting
in colour. His picture of the Doge's Palace at Venice was quite
clay-cold and untrue. Of late he has shown a marvellous predi-
lection for the realization, even to actually relieved texture, of old
worm-eaten wood; we trust he will not allow such fancies to carry
him too far.

The name I have last to mention is that of J. M. W". Turner.
I do not intend to speak of this artist at present in general terms,
because my constant practice throughout this work is to say, when
I speak of an artist at all, the very truth of what I believe and

feel respecting him; and the trath of what I believe and feel
respecting Turner would appear in this place, unsupported by any
proof, mere rhapsody.' I shall therefore here confine myself to a
rapid glance at the relations of his past and present works, and to
some notice of what he has failed of accomplishing: the greater
part of the subsequent chapters will be exclusively devoted to the
examination of the new fields over which he has extended the range
of landscape art.

It is a fact more universally acknowledged than enforced or acted
upon, that all great painters, of whatever school, have been great
only in their rendering of what they had seen and felt from early
childhood; and that the greatest among them have been the most
frank in acknowledging this their inability to treat anything suc-
cessfully but that with which they had been familiar. The Madonna
of RafPaelle was born on the Urbino mountains, Ghirlandajo's is a
Florentine, Bellini's a Venetian; there is not the slightest effort
on the part of any one of these great men to paint her as a
Jewess. It is not the place here to insist farther on a point so simple
and so universally demonstrable. Expression, character, types of
countenance, costume, colour, and accessaries are, with all great
painters whatsoever, those of their native land; and that frankly
and entirely, without the slightest attempt at modification; and I
assert fearlessly that it is impossible that it should ever be otherwise,
and that no man ever painted or ever will paint, well, anything but
what he has early and long seen, early and long felt, and early and
long loved. How far it is possible for the mind of one nation or
generation to be healthily modified and taught by the work of
another, I presume not to determine; but it depends upon whether
the energy of the mind which receives the instruction be sufficient,
while it takes out of what it feeds upon that which is universal and
common to all nature, to resist all warping from national or tempo-
rary peculiarities. Nicolo Pisano got nothing but good, the modern
French nothing but evil, from the study of the antique; but Nicolo
Pisano had a God and a character. All artists who have attempted
to assume, or in their weakness have been affected by, the national

peculiarities of other times and countries, have instantly, whatever
their original power, fallen to third-rate rank, or fallen altogether;
and have invariably lost their birthright and blessing, lost their
power over the human heart, lost all capability of teaching or
benefiting others. Compare the hybrid classicalism of Wilson with
the rich English purity of Gainsborough; compare the recent ex-
hibition of middle-age cartoons for the Houses of Parliament with
the works of Hogarth; compare the sickly modern German imita-
tions of the great Italians with Albert Durer and Holbein; compare
the vile classicality of Canova and the modern Italians with Mino
da Fiesole, Luca della Robbia, and Andrea del Verrocchio. The
manner of Nicolo Poussin is said to be Greek—it may be so; this
only I know, that it is heartless and profitless. The severity of the
rule, however, extends not in full force to the nationality, but only
to the visibility, of things; for it is very possible for an artist of
powerful mind to throw himself well into the feeling of foreign
nations of his own time; thus John Lewis has been eminently
successful in his seizing of Spanish character. Yet it may be
doubted if the seizure be such as Spaniards themselves would ac-
knowledge ; it is probably of the habits of the people more than
their hearts; continued efforts of this kind, especially if their sub-
jects be varied, assuredly end in failure. Lewis, who seemed so
eminently penetrative in Spain, sent nothing from Italy but com-
plexions and costumes, and I expect no good from his stay in
Egypt. English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in
Italy; but for this there are collateral causes which it is not here
the place to examine. Be this as it may, and whatever success may
be attained in pictures of slight and unpretending aim, of genre, as
they are called, in the rendering of foreign character, of this I am
certain, that whatever is to be truly great and affecting must have
on it the strong stamp of the native land. Not a law this, but a
necessity, from the intense hold on their country of the affections
of all truly great men. All classicality, all middle-age patent-re-
viving, is utterly vain and absurd; if we are now to do anything
great, good, awful, religious, it must be got out of our own little
island, and out iof these very times, railroads and all: if a British
painter, I say this in earnest seriousness, cannot make historical

characters out of the British House of Peers^ he cannot paint
history; and if he cannot make a Madonna of a British girl of the
nineteenth century, he cannot paint one at all.

The rule, of course, holds in landscape; yet so far less authori- § 38. influence
tatively, that the material nature of all countries and times is in ofi^th'e choice
many points actually, and in all, in principle, the same; so that g^^^
feelings educated in Cumberland may find their food in Switzer-
land, and impressions first received amongst the rocks of Cornwall
be recalled upon the precipices of Genoa. Add to this actual same-
ness, the power of every great mind to possess itself of the spirit of
things once presented to it, and it is evident, that little limitation
can be set to the landscape painter as to the choice of his field;
and that the law of nationality will hold with him only so far as
a certain joyfulness and completion will be by preference found in
those parts of his subject which remind him of his own land.
But if he attempt to impress on his landscapes any other spirit
than that he has felt, and to make them landscapes of other times,
it is all over with him, at least, in the degree in which such
reflected moonshine takes place of the genuine light of the present
day.

The reader will at once perceive how much trouble this simple
principle will save both the painter and the critic; it at once sets
aside the whole school of common composition, and exonerates us
from the labour of minutely examining any landscape which has
nymphs or philosophers in it.

It is hardly necessary for us to illustrate this principle by any
reference to the works of early landscape painters, as I suppose it
is universally acknowledged with respect to them; Titian being the
most remarkable instance of the influence of the native air on a
strong mind, and Claude of that of the classical poison on a weak
one; but it is very necessary to keep it in mind in reviewing the
works of our great modern landscape painter.

I do not know in what district of England Turner first or § 39. its pocu-
longest studied, but the scenery whose influence I can trace most tionTn"Turntr
definitely throughout his works, varied as they are, is that of
Yorkshire. Of all his drawings, I think, those of the Yorkshire
series have the most heart in them, the most affectionate, simple,

unwearied, serious finisliing of truth. There is in them little seek-
ing after effect, but a strong love of place; little exhibition of the
artist's own powers or peculiarities, but intense appreciation of the
smallest local minutias. These drawings have unfortunately changed
hands frequently, and have been abused and ill-treated by picture
dealers and cleaners; the greater number of them are now mere
wrecks. I name them not as instances, but as proofs, of the artist's
study in this district; for the affection to which they owe their
excellence must have been grounded long years before. It is to be
traced, not only in these drawings of the places themselves, but in
the peculiar love of the painter for rounded forms of hills; not but
that he is right in this on general principles, for I doubt not,
that with his peculiar feeling for beauty of line, his hills would
have been rounded still, even if he had studied first among the
peaks of Cadore; but rounded to the same extent, and with the
same delight in their roundness, they would not have been. It is,
I believe, to those broad wooded steeps and swells of the York-
shire downs that we in part owe the singular massiveness that
prevails in Turner's mountain drawing, and gives it one of its chief
elements of grandeur. Let the reader open the Liber Studiorum,
and compare the painter's enjoyment of the lines in the Ben
Arthur, with his comparative uncomfortableness among those of
the aiguilles about the Mer de Glace. Great as he is, those peaks
would have been touched very differently by a Savoyard as great
as he.

I am in the habit of looking to the Yorkshire drawings, as
indicating one of the culminating points in Turner's career. In
these he attained the highest degree of what he had up to that
time attempted, namely, finish and quantity of form united with
expression of atmosphere, and light without colour. His early
drawings are singularly instructive in this definiteness and simplicity
of aim. No complicated or brilliant colour is ever thought of in
them; they are little more than exquisite studies in light and shade,
very green blues being used for the shadows, and golden browns
for the lights. The difficulty and treachery of colour being thus
avoided, the artist was able to bend his whole mind upon the
drawing, and thus to attain such decision, delicacy, and complete-

ness as have never in any wise been equalled, and as miglit serve
him for a secure foundation in all after experiments. Of the quan-
tity and precision of his details, the drawings made for Hakewell's
Italy are singular examples, as Avell as some of the drawings of
Swiss scenery in the possession of F. H. Fawkes, Esq., of Farnley.

About the time of their production, the artist seems to have felt
that he had done either all that could be done, or all that was
necessary, in that manner, and began to reach after sometliing
beyond it. The element of colour begins to mingle with his
work, and in the first efforts to reconcile his intense feeling for
it with his careful form, several anomalies begin to be visible,
and some unfortunate or uninteresting works necessarily belong to
the period. The England drawings, which are very characteristic
of it, are exceedingly unequal, — some, as the Oakhampton, Kil-
garren, Alnwick, and Llanthony, being among his finest works ;
others, as the Windsor from Eton, the Eton College, and the
Bedford, showing coarseness, and conventionality.

I do not know at what time the painter first went abroad, but § 40. The do-
some of the Swiss drawings above named were made in 1804 or 1806 ; ^^the^Liilcr*^
and among the earliest of the series of tlie Liber Studiorum (dates studiorum.
1808, 1809), occur the magnificent Mont St. Gothard, and Little
Devil's Bridge. Now it is remarkable that after his acquaintance
with this scenery, so congenial in almost all respects with the
energy of his mind, and suj)plying him with materials of which
in these two subjects, and in the Chartreuse, and several others
afterwards, he showed both his entire appreciation and command,
the proportion of English to foreign subjects should in the rest
of the work be more than two to one; and that those English
subjects should be, many of them, of a kind peculiarly simple,
and of every-day occurrence; such as the Pembury Mill, the Farm-
Yard composition with the white horse, that with the cocks
and pigs. Hedging and Ditching, Watercress Gatherers (scene at
Twickenham), and the beautiful and solemn rustic subject called " a
Watermill:" and that the architectural subjects, instead of being
taken, as might have been expected of an artist so fond of treating
effects of extended space, from some of the enormous continental
masses, are almost exclusively British; llivaulx, Holy Island,

Dumblain, Dunstanborougli, Chepstow, St. Katlierine's, Green-
j wich Hospital, an Englisli Parish Church, a Saxon ruin, and an

exquisite reminiscence of the English lowland castle in the pastoral
J with the brook, wooden bridge, and wild duck ; to all of which we

have nothing foreign to oppose but three slight, ill-considered, and
unsatisfactory subjects, from Basle, Lauffenbourg, and Thun : and,
' farther, not only is the preponderance of subject British, but of

affection also; for it is strange with what fulness and completion
the home subjects are treated in comparison with the greater part
of the foreign ones. Compare the figures and sheep in the Hedging
and Ditching, and the East Gate, "Winchelsea, together with the
near leafage, with the puzzled foreground and inappropriate figures
[!l of the Lake of Thun; or the cattle and road of the St. Catherine's

with the sheaf of corn in the Watermill, with the vintagers of the
'l Grenoble subject.

mingle even with the heroic foliage of the Jisacus and Hesperie,
1 and the Cephalus; into the pine, whether of Switzerland or the

glorious Stone, he cannot enter, or enters at his peril, like Ariel.
Those of the Yalley of Chamounix are fine masses, better pines than
other people's, but not a bit like pines for all that; he feels his
weakness, and tears them off the distant mountains with the mer-
cilessness of an avalanche. The Stone pines of the two Italian
compositions are fine in their arrangement, but they are very pitiful
pines; the glory of the Alpine rose he never touches; he mounches
chestnuts with no relish; never has learned to like olives ; and,
in the foreground of the Grenoble Alps, is, like many other great
men, overthrown by the vine.

I adduce these evidences of Turner's nationality (and innumerable
others might be given if need were), not as proofs of weakness, but
of power; not so much as testifying want of perception in foreign
lands, as strong hold on his own; for I am sure that no artist who
has not this hold upon his own will ever get good out of any other.
Keeping this principle in mind, it is instructive to observe the depth
^ and solemnity which Turner's feeling acquired from the scenery of

the continent, tlie keen appreciation up to a certain point of all that
is loeallj characteristic, and the ready seizure for future use of all
valuable material.

Of all foreign countries he has most entirely entered into the § 41. Turner's
spirit of France: partly because here he found more fellowship of prench^nd
scene with his own England; partly because an amount of tliought Swiss land-
which will miss of Italy or Switzerland will fathom France; partljr lattTr deficient,
because there is in the French foliage and forms of ground much
that is especially congenial with his own peculiar choice of form.
To what cause it is owing I cannot tell, nor is it generally allowed
or felt; but of the fact I am certain, that for grace of stem and
perfection of form in their transparent foliage, the Frencli trees are
altogether unmatched; and their modes of grouping and massing
are so perfectly and constantly beautiful, that I think, of all countries
for educating an artist to the perception of grace, France bears the
bell; and that not romantic nor mountainous France, not the Vosges,
nor Auvergne, nor Provence, but lowland France, Picardy and
Normandy, the valleys of the Loire and Seine, and even the district,
so thoughtlessly and mindlessly abused by English travellers as
uninteresting, traversed between Calais and Dijon ; of which there
is not a single valley but is full of the most lovely pictures, nor a
mile from which the artist may not receive instruction; the district
immediately about Sens being perhaps the most valuable, from the
grandeur of its lines of poplars, and the unimaginable finish and
beauty of the tree forms in the two great avenues without the walls.
Of this kind of beauty Turner was the first to take cognizance,
and he still remains the only, but in himself the sufficient, painter
of French landscape. One of the most beautiful examples is the
drawing of trees engraved for the Keepsake, now in the possession
of B. G. Windus, Esq.; the drawings made to illustrate the scenery
of the Rivers of France supply instances of the most varied
character.

The artist appears, until very lately, rather to have taken from
Switzerland thoughts and general conceptions of size and of grand
form and effect to be used in his after compositions, than to have
attempted the seizing of its local character. This was beforehand
to be expected from the utter physical impossibility of rendering

ccrtain effects of Swiss scenery, and the monotony and unmanage-
ableness of others. Of the drawings above alluded to in the
possession of F. H. Fawkes, Esq., I shall give account hereafter;
they are not altogether sticcessful, but the manner of their de-
ficiency cannot be described in my present space. The Hannibal
passing the Alps, in its present state, exhibits nothing but a
heavy shower, and a crowd of people getting wet; another picture
in the artist's gallery, of a Berg fall, is most masterly and in-
teresting, but more daring than agreeable. The " Snow-storm,
avalanche, and inundation," is one of his mightiest works, but the
amount of mountain drawing in it is less than of cloud and eflFect;
the subjects in the Liber Studiorum are on the whole the most
intensely felt, and next to them the vignettes to Rogers's Poems,
and Italy. Of some recent drawings of Swiss subjects I shall speak
presently.

The effect of Italy upon his mind is very puzzling. On the one
hand it gave him the solemnity and power which are manifested in
the historical compositions of the Liber Studiorum, more especially
the Rizpah, the Cephalus, the scene from the Fairy Queen, and the
iEsacus and Hesperie; on the other, he seems never to have
entered thoroughly into the spirit of Italy, and the materials he
obtained there were afterwards but awkwardly introduced in his
large compositions.

Of these there are very few at all worthy of him; none but the
Liber Studiorum subjects are thoroughly great, and these are great
because there is in them the seriousness, without the materials, of
other countries and times. There is nothing particularly indicative
of Palestine in the Barley Harvest of the Rizpah, nor in those
round and awful trees ; only the solemnity of the south in the
lifting of the near burning moon. The rocks of the Jason may
be seen in any quarry of Warwickshire sandstone. Jason himself
has not a bit of Greek about him; he is a simple warrior of no
period in particular, nay, I think there is something of the nine-
teenth century about his legs. When local character of this
classical kind is attempted, the painter is visibly cramped; awk-
ward resemblances to Claude testify the want of his usual forceful
originality: in the Tenth Plague of Egypt, he makes us think

of Belzoni rather than of Moses; the Fifth is a total failure;
the pyramids look like brick-kilns, and the fire running along
the ground like the burning of manure. The realization of the
Tenth Plague, now in his gallery, is finer than the study, but
still uninteresting; and of the large compositions which have
much of Italy in them, the greater part are overwhelmed with
quantity, and deficient in emotion. The Crossing the Brook is
one of the best of these hybrid pictures; incomparable in its
tree drawing, it yet leaves us doubtful where we are to look
and what we are to feel; it is northern in its colour, southern
in its foliage, Italy in its details, and England in its sensations,
without the grandeur of the one or the cheerfulness of the other.

The two Cartilages are mere rationalizations of Claude; one of
them excessively bad in colour, the other a grand thought, and yet
one of the kind which does no one any good, because everything
in it is reciprocally sacrificed; the foliage is sacrificed to the archi-
tecture, the architecture to the water, the water is neither sea, nor
river, nor lake, nor brook, nor canal, and savours of Regent's Park;
the foreground is uncomfortable ground,—let on building leases.
So, the Caligula's Bridge, Temple of Jupiter, Departure of liegulus.
Ancient Italy, Cicero's Villa, and such others, come they from whose
hand they may, I class under the general head of " nonsense pic-
tures." There never can be any wholesome feeling develojDed in
these preposterous accumulations, and where the artist's feeling fails,
his art follows; so that the worst possible examples of Turner's colour
are found in pictures of this class. In one or two instances he has
broken through the conventional rules, and then is always fine, as
in the Hero and Leander: but in general the picture rises in value
as it approaches to a view, as the Fountain of Fallacy, a piece of
rich Northern Italy, with some fairy waterworks; this picture was
unrivalled in colour once, but is now a mere wreck. So also the Rape
of Proserpine, though it is singular that in his Academy pictures
even his simplicity fails of reaching ideality: in this picture of Pro-
serpine the nature is not the grand nature of all time, it is indubi-
tably modern^, and we are perfectly electrified at anybody's being

' This passage seems at variance with what has been said of the necessity of painting
VOL. I. K

carried away in the corner except by people with spiky hats and
carabines. This is traceable to several causes; partly to the want
of any grand specific form, partly to the too evident middle-age
character of the ruins crowning the hills, and to a multiplicity of
minor causes which we cannot at present enter into.

Neither in his actual views of Italy has Turner ever caught her
true spirit, except in the little vignettes to Rogers's Poems. The
Yilla of Galileo, the nameless composition with stone pines, the
several villa moonlights, and the convent compositions in the Voy-
age of Columbus, are altogether exquisite; but this is owing chiefly
to their simplicity, and perhaps in some measure to their smallness
of size. None of his large pictures at all equal them; the Bay of
Baiae is encumbered with material, it contains ten times as much
as is necessary to a good picture, and yet is so crude in colour as to
look unfinished. The Palestrina is full of raw white, and has a look
of Hampton Court about its long avenue; the Modern Italy is purely
English in its near foliage; it is composed from Tivoli material, en-
riched and arranged most dexterously, but it has the look of a rich
arrangement, and not the virtue of the real thing. The early Tivoli,
a large drawing taken from below the falls, was as little true, and
still less fortunate, the trees there being altogether affected and
artificial. The Florence, engraved in the Keepsake, is a glorious
drawing, as far as regards the passage with the bridge and sunlight
on the Arno, the Cascine foliage, and distant plain, and the towers
of the fortress on the left; but the details of the duomo and the city
are entirely missed, and with them the majesty of the whole scene.
The vines and melons of the foreground are disorderly, and its
cypresses conventional; in fact, I recollect no instance of Turner's
drawing a cypress except in general terms.

The chief reason of these failures I imagine to be the effort of the
artist to put joyousness and brilliancy of effect upon scenes eminently
pensive, to substitute radiance for serenity of light, and to force the
freedom and breadth of line which he learned to love on English

present times and objects. It is not so. A great painter makes out of that which he
finds before him something which is independent of all time. He can only do tliis out
of the materials ready to his hand, but that which he builds has the dignity of dateless
age. A little painter is annihilated by an anachronism, and is conventionally antique,
and involuntarily modern.

downs and Highland moors, out of a countrj dotted by campaniles
and square convents, bristled with cypresses, partitioned by walls,
and gone up and down by steps.

In one of the cities of Italy he had. no such difficulties to en-
counter. At Venice he found freedom of space, brilliancy of light,
variety of colour, massive simplicity of general form; and to Venice
we owe many of the motives in which his highest powers of colour
have been displayed, after that change in his system of which we
must now take note.

Among the earlier paintings of Turner, the culminating period, _§ 44. Changes
marked by the Yorkshire series in his drawings, is distinguished by him^in^the
great solemnity and simplicity of subject, prevalent gloom in chia- system

roscuro, and brown in the hue, the drawing manly but careful, the
minutige sometimes exquisitely delicate. All the finest works of
this period are, I believe, without exception, views, or quiet single
thoughts. The Calder Bridge, belonging to E. Bicknell, Esq.,
is a most pure and beautiful example. The Ivy Bridge I imagine
to be later, but its rock foreground is altogether unrivalled, and re-
markable for its delicacy of detail; a butterfly is seen settled on one
of the large brown stones in the midst of the torrent, a bird is about
to seize it, while its companion, crimson-winged, flits idly on the
surface of one of the pools of the stream, within half an inch of the
surface of the water, thus telling us its extreme stillness. Two
paintings of Bonneville, in Savoy, one in the possession of Abel
Allnutt, Esq., the other, and I think the finer, in a collection at
Birmingham, show more variety of colour than is usual with him
at the period, and are in every respect magnificent examples.^ Pic-
tures of this class are of peculiar value, for the larger compositions
of the same period are all poor in colour, and most of them much
damaged; but the smaller works have been far finer originally,
and their colour seems secure. There is nothing in the range of
landscape art equal to them in their way, but the full character and
capacity of the painter are not in them. Grand as they are in their

' The worst picture I ever saw of this period, " the Trosachs," has been for some
time exhibited at Mr. Grundy's in Regent Street; and it has been much praised by the
public press, on the ground, I suppose, that it exhibits so little of Turner's power or
manner as to be hardly recognisable for one of his works.

sobriety, tliey still leave much to be desired; tliere is great heaviness
in their shadows, the material is never thoroughly vanquished
(though this partly for a very noble reason, that the painter is always
thinking of and referring ,to nature, and indulges in no artistical
conventionalities), and sometimes the handling appears feeble. In
Avarmth, lightness, and transparency, they have no chance against
Gainsborough; in clear skies and air tone they are alike unfortunate
when they provoke comparison with Claude; and in force and
solemnity they can in no wise stand with the landscape of the
Venetians.

The painter evidently felt that he had farther powers, and pressed
forward into the field where alone they could be brought into play.
It was impossible for him, with all his keen and long-disciplined
perceptions, not to feel that the real colour of nature had never
been attempted by any school; and that though conventional repre-
sentations had been given by the Venetians of sunlight and twilight,
by invariably rendering the whites golden and the blues green, yet
of the actual, joyous, pure, roseate hues of the external world no
record had ever been given. He saw also that the finish and spe-
cific grandeur of nature had been given, but her fulness, space, and
mystery never; and he saw that the great landscape painters had
always sunk the lower middle tints of nature in extreme shade,
bringing the entii'e melody of colour as many degrees down as their
possible light was inferior to nature's ; and that in so doing a gloomy
principle had influenced them even in their choice of subject.

For the conventional colour he substituted a pure straightforward
rendering of fact, as far as was in his power; and that not of such
fact as had been before even suggested, but of all that is most
brilliant, beautiful, and inimitable; he went to the cataract for its
iris, to the conflagration for its flames, askedi of the sea its intensest
azure, of the sky its clearest gold. For the limited space and defined
forms of elder landscape he substituted the quantity and the mystery
of the vastest scenes of earth; and for the subdued chiaroscuro he
substituted first a balanced diminution of oppositions throughout the
scale, and afterwards, in one or two instances, attempted the reverse
of the old principle, taking the lowest portion of the scale truly, and
merging the upper part in high light.

vvithout corresponding peril: the difficulties tliat lay in liis way were manner.

time there has been no one system of colour generally approved;
every artist has his own method and his own vehicle; how to do
what Gainsborough did, we know not; much less what- Titian; to
invent a new system of colour can hardly be expected of those who
cannot recover the old. To obtain perfectly satisfactory results in
colour under the new conditions introduced by Turner would at
least have required the exertion of all his energies In that sole di-
rection. But colour has always been only his second object. The
effects of space and form^ in which he delights, often reqiiire the
employment of means and method totally at variance with those
necessary for the obtaining of pure colour. It is physically im-
possible, for instance, rightly to draw certain forms of the upper
clouds with the brush; nothing will do it but the pallet knife with
loaded white after the blue ground is prepared. Now it is impossible
that a cloud so drawn, however glazed afterwards, should have the
virtue of a thin warm tint of Titian's, showing the canvass through-
out. So it happens continually. Add to these difficulties, those
of the peculiar subjects attempted, and to these again, all that belong
to the altered system of chiaroscuro, and it is evident that we must
not be surjDrised at finding many deficiencies or faults in such works,
especially in the eaidier of them, nor even suffer ourselves to be
withdrawn by the pursuit of what seems censurable from our de-
votion to what is mighty.

Notwithstanding, in some chosen examples of pictures of this
kind (I will name three: Juliet and her nurse; the Old Tem^raire;
and the Slave Ship), I do not admit that there are at the time of
their first appearing on the walls of the Royal Academy, any
demonstrably avoidable faults; I do not deny that there may be,
nay, that it is likely there are: but there is no living artist in
Europe whose judgment might safely be taken on the subject, or
who could without arrogance affirm of any part of such a picture,
that it was wrotig. I am perfectly willing to allow, that the lemon
yellow is not properly representative of the yellow of the sky, that
the loading of the colour is in many places disagreeable, that

many of the details are drawn with a kind of imperfection different
from what they would have in nature, and that many of the parts
fail of imitation, especially to an uneducated eye. But no living
authority is of weight enough to prove that the virtues of the
picture could have been obtained at a less sacrifice, or that they are
not worth the sacrifice: and though it is perfectly possible that such
may be the case, and that what Turner has done may hereafter in
some respects be done better, I believe myself that these works are
at the time of their first appearing as perfect as those of Phidias
or Leonardo; that is to say, incapable, in their way, of any im-
provement conceivable by human mind.

Also, it is only by comparison with such that we are authorized
to afiirm definite faults in any of his others, for we should have
been bound to speak, at least for the present, with the same modesty
respecting even his worst pictures of this class, had not his more
noble efforts given us canons of criticism.

But, as was beforehand to be expected from the difficulties he
grappled with, Turner is exceedingly unequal; he appears always
as a champion in the thick of fight, sometimes with his foot on
his enemies' necks, sometimes staggered or struck to his knee ;
once or twice altogether down. He has failed most frequently, as
before noticed, in elaborate compositions, from redundant quantity;
sometimes, like most other men, from over care, as very signally
in a large and most laboured dx'awing of Bamborough ; sometimes,
unaccountably, his eye for colour seeming to fail him for a time, as
in a large painting of Rome from the Forum, and in the Cicero's
Villa, and Building of Carthage; and sometimes, I am sorry
to say, criminally, from taking licenses which he must know
to be illegitimate, or indulging in conventionalities which he does
not require.

§ 46. Reflection C)n sucli instances I shall not insist, for the finding fault with

on his very Tumer is not, I think, either decorous in myself or likely to be
•" rccGiit works

I I • One point, however, it is incumbent upon me to notice, being no question of ai-t but

I j of material. The reader Avill have observed that I strictly limited the perfection of

!' Turner's works to the time of their first appearing on the walls of the Eoyal Academy.

, It bitterly grieves me to have to do this, but the fact is indeed so. No picture of Turner's

place in the period of transition, wlien the artist was feeling for
the new qualities, and endeavouring to reconcile them with more
careful elaboration of form than was properly consistent with them.
Gradually his hand became more free, his perception and grasp of
the new truths more certain, and his choice of subject more adapted
to the exhibition of them. In the year 1842, he made some
drawings from recent sketches in Switzerland, peculiarly fine in
colour ; and among the Academy pictures of that period, examples
of the same power were not wanting, more especially in the
smaller Venetian subjects. The Sun of Venice; the San Be-
nedetto, looking towards Fusina; and a view of Murano, with
the cemetery, were all faultless: another of Venice, seen from

is seen in perfection a month after it is painted. The Walhalla cracked before it had
been eight days in the Academy rooms; the vermilions frequently lose lustre long before
the exhibition is over; and when all the colours begin to get hard a year or two after
the picture is painted, a painful deadness and opacity come over them, the whites
especially becoming lifeless, and many of the warmer passages settling into a hard
valueless brown, even if the paint remains perfectly firm, which is far from being always
the case. I believe that in some measure these results are unavoidable, the colours being
so peculiarly blended and mingled in Turner's present manner, as almost to necessitate
their irregular drying; but that they are not necessary to the extent in which they
sometimes take place, is proved by the comparative safety of some even of the more
brilliant works. Thus the Old TetnCn-aire is nearly safe in colour, and quite firm ; while
the Juliet and her Nurse is now the ghost of what it was; the Slaver shows no cracks,
though it is chilled in some of the darker passages, while the Walhalla and several of
the recent Venices cracked in the Royal Academy. It is true that the damage makes
no farther progress after the first year or two, and that even in its altered state the
picture is always valuable and records its intention ; but how arc we enough to regret
that so great a painter should not leave a single work by which in succeeding ages ho
might be entirely estimated ? The fact of his using means so imperfect, together with
that of his utter neglect of the pictures in his own gallery, are a phenomenon in human
mind which appears to me utterly inexplicable; and both are without excuse. If the
cfl^ects he desires cannot be to their full extent produced except by these treacherous
means, one picture only should be painted each year as an exhibition of immediate
power, and the rest should be carried out, whatever the expense of labour and time, in
safe materials, even at the risk of some deterioration of immediate effect. That which
is greatest in him is entirely independent of means ; much of what he now accomplishes
illegitimately might without doubt be attained in securer modes—what cannot, should
without hesitation be abandoned. Fortunately the drawings appear subject to no such
deterioration. Many of them are now almost destroyed, but this has been I think always
through ill treatment, or has been the case only with very early works. I have myself
known no instance of a drawing properly protected, and not rashly exposed to light,
suiFering the slightest change. The great foes of Turner, as of all other great colourists
especially, are the sun, the picture cleaner, and the mounter.

near Fusina^ with sunlight and moonlight mixed (1844), was, I
think, when I first saw it, the most perfectly beautiful piece of
colour of all that I have seen produced by human hands, by
any means, or at any period. Of the exhibition of 1845, I have
only seen a small Venice (still, I believe, in the artist's pos-
session), and the two whaling subjects. The Venice is a second-
rate work, and the two others altogether unworthy of him.

In conclusion of our present sketch of the course of landscape
art, it may be generally stated that Turner is the only painter, so
far as I know, who has ever drawn the sky, not the clear sky,
which we before saw belonged exclusively to the religious schools,
but the various forms and phenomena of the cloudy heavens ; all
previous artists having only represented it typically or partially,
but he absolutely and universally. He is the only painter who has
ever drawn a mountain, or a stone; no other man ever having
learned their organization, or possessed himself of their spirit, except
in part and obscurely (the one or two stones noted of Tintoret's, at
page 180. vol. ii., are perhaps hardly enough on which to found
an exception in his favour). He is the only painter who ever drew
the stem of a tree, Titian having come the nearest before him, and
excelling him in the muscular development of the larger trunks
(though sometimes losing the woody strength in a serpent-like
flaccidity), but missing the grace and character of the ramifications.
He is the only painter who has ever represented the surface of calm,
or the force of agitated water; who lias represented the effects of
space on distant objects, or who has rendered the abstract beauty
of natural colour. These assertions I make deliberately, after
careful weighing and consideration, in no spirit of dispute, or
momentary zeal; but from strong and convinced feeling, and with
the consciousness of being able to prove them.

This proof is only partially and incidentally attempted in the
present portion of this work, which was originally written, as before
explained, for a temporary purpose, and which, therefore, I should
have gladly cancelled, but that, relating as it does only to simple
matters of fact and not to those of feeling, it may still, perhaps, be
of service to some readers who would be unwilling to enter into
the more speculative fields with which the succeeding sections are

concerned. I leave, tlierefore, nearly as it was originally written, § 47. Difficulty

the following examination of the relative truthfulness of elder and «on^ta'such^'

I shall first take into consideration those general truths, common
to all the objects of nature, which are productive of what is
usually called "effect," that is to say, truths of tone, general
colour, space, and light. I shall then investigate the truths of
specific form and colour, in the four great component parts of
landscape—sky, earth, water, and vegetation.

As I liave already allowed, that in effects of tone, the old masters
have never yet been equalled; and as this is the first, and nearly
the last, concession I shall have to make to them, I wish it at once
to be thoroughly understood how far it extends.

I understand two things by the word Tone: first, the exact
relief and relation of objects against and to each other in substance
and darkness, as they are nearer or more distant, and the perfect
relation of the shades of all of them to the chief light of the picture,
whether that be sky, water, or anything else: secondly, the exact
relation of the colours of the shadows to the colours of the lights, so
that they may be at once felt to be merely different degrees of the
same light; and the accurate relation among the illuminated parts
themselves, with respect to the degree in which they are influenced
by the colour of the light itself, whether warm or cold; so that the
whole of the picture (or, where several tones are united, those parts
of it which are under each) may be felt to be in one climate, under
one kind of light, and in one kind of atmosphere; this being chiefly
dependent on that peculiar and inexplicable quality of each colour
laid on, which makes the eye feel both what is the actual colour of
the object represented, and that it is raised to its apparent pitch by
illumination. A very bright brown, for instance, out of sunshine.

may be precisely of the same shade of colour as a very dead or cold
brown in sunshine, but it will be totally different in quality; and
that quality by which the illuminated dead colour would be felt in
nature different from the unilluminated bright one, is what artists
are perpetually aiming at, and connoisseurs talking nonsense about,
under the name of " tone." The want of tone in pictures is caused
by objects looking bright in their own positive hue, and not by illu-
mination, and by the consequent want of sensation of the raising of
their hues by light.

The first of these meanings of the word Tone is liable to be
confounded with what is commonly called " aerial perspective."
But aerial perspective is the expression of space by any means what-
soever, sharpness of edge, vividness of colour, &c., assisted by
greater pitch of shadow, and requires only that objects should be
detached from each other, by degrees of intensity in proportion to
their distance, without requiring that the difference between the
farthest and nearest should be in positive quantity the same that
nature has put. But what I have called " tone" requires that there
should be the same sum of difference, as well as the same division
of differences.

Now the finely toned pictures of the old masters are, in this
respect, some of the notes of nature played two or three octaves
below her key; the dark objects in the middle distance having pre-
cisely the same relation to the light of the sky which they have in
natui'e, but the light being necessarily infinitely lowered, and the
mass of the shadow deepened in the same degree. I have often
been struck, when looking at the image in a camera-obscura on a dark
day, with the exact resemblance it bore to one of the finest pictures
of the old masters; all the foliage coming dark against the sky, and
nothing being seen in its mass but here and there the isolated light
of a silvery stem or an unusually illumined cluster of leafage.

Now if this could be done consistently, and all the notes of nature
given in this way an octave or two down, it woukUbe right and
necessary so to do: but be it observed, not only does nature surpass
us in power of obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses white
paper, but she also infinitely surpasses us in her power of shade.
Her deepest shades are void spaces from which no light whatever

is reflected to the eye; ours are black surfaces from which, paint as
black as we may, a great deal of light is still reflected, and which,
placed against one of nature's deep bits of gloom, Avould tell as
distinct light. Here we are then, with white paper for our highest
light, and visible illumined surface for our deepest shadow, set to
run the gauntlet against nature, with the sun for her light, and
vacuity for her gloom. It is evident that she can well afford to
throw her material objects dark against the brilliant aerial tone of
her sky, and yet give in those objects themselves a thousand
intermediate distances and tones before she comes to black, or to
anything like it—all the illumined surfaces of her objects being
as distinctly and vividly brighter than her nearest and darkest
shadows, as the sky is brighter than those illumined surfaces. But
if we, against our poor dull obscurity of yellow paint, instead of
sky, insist on having the same relation of shade in material objects,
we go down to the bottom of our scale at once; and what in the
world are we to do then ? Where are all our intermediate distances
to come from?—how are we to express the aerial relations among
the parts themselves; for instance, of foliage, whose most distant
boughs are already almost black?—how are we to come up from
this to the foreground; and when we have done so, how are we to
express the distinction between its solid parts, already as dark as
we can make them, and its vacant hollows, Avhich nature has marked
sharp and clear and black, among its lighted surfaces ? It cannot
but be evident at a glance, that if to any one of the steps from one
distance to another, we give the same quantity of difference in
pitch of shade which nature does, we must pay for this expenditure
of our means by totally missing half a dozen distances, not a whit
less important or marked, and so sacrifice a multitude of truths, to
obtain one. And this accordingly was the means by which the old
masters obtained their truth (?) of tone. They chose those steps of
distance which are the most conspicuous and noticeable, that for
instance from sky to foliage, or from clouds to hills ; and they gave
these their precise pitch of difference in shade with exquisite accu-
racy of imitation. Their means were then exhausted, and they
were obliged to leave their trees flat masses of mere fllled-up
outline, and to omit the truths of space in every individual part of

tlieir picture by the thousand. But this they did not care for; it
saved them trouble; they reached their grand end, imitative effect;
they thrust home just at the places where the common and careless
eye looks for imitation, and they attained the broadest and most
faithful appearance of truth of tone which art can exhibit.

But they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals in art; they lavish § 6. General
their whole means to get one truth, and leave themselves powerless such a system,
when they should seize a thousand. And is it indeed worthy of
being called a truth, when we have a vast history given us to
relate, to the fulness of which neither our limits nor our language
are adequate, instead of giving all its parts abridged in the order
of their importance, to omit or deny the greater part of them, that
we may dwell with verbal fidelity on two or three ? Nay, the very
truth to which the rest are sacrificed, is rendered falsehood by
their absence; the relation of the tree to the sky is marked as an
impossibility by the want of relation of its parts to each other.

Turner starts from the beginning with a totally different principle. § 1. The prin-
He boldly takes pure white (and justly, for it is the sign of the in^this^rlspecr
most intense sunbeams) for his highest light, and lampblack for his
deepest shade ; and between these he makes every degree of shade
indicative of a separate degree of distance', giving each step of
approach, not the exact difference in pitch which it would have in
nature, but a difference bearing the same proportion to that which
his sum of possible shade bears to the sum of nature's shade; so
that an object half way between his horizon and his foreground,
will be exactly in half tint of force, and every minute division of
intermediate space will have just its proportionate share of the lesser
sum, and no more. Hence where the old masters expressed one dis-
tance, he expresses a hundred, and where they said furlongs, he says
leagues. Which of these modes of procedure be the more agreeable
with truth, I think I may safely leave the reader to decide for
himself. He will see in this very first instance, one proof of what
we above asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature is incon-

' Of course I ani not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro, but of that quantity
of depth of shade by which, cceteris paribus, a near object will exceed a distant one.
For the truth of the systems of Turner and the old masters, as regards chiaroscuro, vide
Chapter III. of this Section, § 8.

sistent with real truth; for the very means by which the old
masters attained the apparent accuracy of tone which is so satisfying
to the eye, compelled them to give up all idea of real relations of
retirement, and to represent a few successive and marked stages of
distance, like the scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible,
multitudinous, symmetrical retirement of nature, who is not more
careful to separate her nearest bush from her farthest one, than to
separate the nearest bough of that bush from the one next to it.

Take, for instance, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art
has produced—the work of a really great and intellectual mind, the
quiet Nicholas Poussin in our own National Gallery, with the tra-
veller washing his feet. The first idea we receive from this picture
is that it is evening, and all the light coming from the horizon.
Not so. It is full noon, the light coming steep from the left, as
is shown by the shadow of the stick on the right-hand pedestal;
for if the sun were not very high, that shadow could not lose
itself half-way down, and if it were not lateral, the shadow would
slope, instead of being vertical. Now, ask yourself, and answer
candidly, if those black masses of foliage, in which scarcely any
form is seen but the outline, be a true representation of trees under
noon-day sunlight, sloping from the left, bringing out, as it neces-
sarily would do, their masses into golden green, and marking every
leaf and bough with sharp shadow and sparkling light. The only
truth in the picture is the exact pitch of relief against the sky of
both trees and hills; and to this the organization of the hills, the
intricacy of the foliage, and everything indicative either of the nature
of the light, or the character of the objects, are unhesitatingly
sacrificed. So much falsehood does it cost to obtain two apparent
truths of tone! Or take, as a still more glaring instance, No. 260.
in the Dulwich Gallery, where the trunks of the trees, even of
those farthest oflF, on the left, are as black as paint can make
them; and there is not, and cannot be, the slightest increase of
force, or any marking whatsoever of distance, by colour, or any
other means, between them and the foreground.

Compare with these. Turner's treatment of his materials in the
Mercury and Argus. He has here his light actually coming from
the distance, the sun being nearly in the centre of the picture, and

a violent relief of objects against it would be far more justifiable
than in Poussin's case. But this dark relief is used in its full
force only with the nearest leaves of the nearest group of foliage
overhanging the foreground from the left; and between these and
the more distant members of the same group, though only three
or four yards separate, distinct aerial perspective and intervening
mist and light are shown ; while the large tree in the centre, though
very dark, as being very near, compared with all the distance, is
much diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest group of
leaves, and is faint compared with all the foreground. It is true
that this tree has not, in consequence, the actual pitch of shade
against the sky which it would have in nature; but it has precisely
as much as it possibly can have, to leave it the same proportionate
relation to the objects near at hand. And it cannot but be evident
to the thoughtful reader, that whatever trickery or deception may
be the result of a contrary mode of treatment, this is the only
scientific or essentially truthful system, and that what it loses in
tone it gains in aerial perspective.

Compare again the last vignette in Rogers's Poems, the " Datur § lo. And with
Hora Quieti," where everything, even the darkest parts of the „

trees, is kept pale and full of gradation; even the bridge, where
it crosses the descending stream of sunshine, rather lost in the light
than relieved against it, until we come up to the foreground, and
then the vigorous local black of the plough throws the whole picture
into distance and sunshine. I do not know anything in art which
can for a moment be set beside this drawing, for united intensity of
light and repose.

Observe, I am not at present speaking of the beauty or desirable-
ness of the system of the old masters ; it may be sublime, and
affecting, and ideal, and intellectual, and a great deal more; but all
I am concerned with at present is, that it is not true; while Turner's
is the closest and most studied approach to truth of which the
materials of art admit.

It was not, therefore, with reference to this division of the subject §11, The
that I admitted inferiority in our great modern master to Claude ^onhe^md
or Poussin; but with reference to the second and more usual "
meaning of the word Tone, — the exact relation and fitness of

shadow and light, and of the hues of all objects under them; and
more especially that precious quality of each colour laid on, which
makes it appear a quiet colour illuminated, not a bright colour
in shade. But I allow this inferiority only with respect to the
paintings of Turner, not to his drawings. I could select from
among the works named in Chap. VI. of this section, pieces of
tone absolutely faultless and perfect, from the coolest greys of
wintry dawn to the intense fire of summer noon. And the differ-
ence between the prevailing character of these and that of nearly
all the paintings (for the early oil pictures of Turner are far less
perfect in tone than the most recent), it is difficult to account
for, but on the supposition that there is something in the material
which modern artists in general are incapable of mastering, and
which compels Turner himself to think less of tone in oil colour
than of other and more important qualities. The total failures of
Callcott, whose struggles after tone ended so invariably in shivering
winter or brown paint, the misfortune of Landseer with his evening-
sky in 1842, the frigidity of Stanfield, and the earthiness and
opacity which all the magnificent power and admirable science of
Etty are unable entirely to conquer, are too fatal and convincing
proofs of the want of knowledge of means, rather than of the
absence of aim, in modern artists as a body. Yet, with respect
to Turner, however much the want of tone in his early paintings
(the Fall of Carthage, for instance, and others painted at a
time when he was producing the most exquisite hues of light in
water-colour) might seem to favour such a supposition, there are
passages in his recent works (such, for instance, as the sunlight
along the sea, in the Slaver) which directly contradict it, and
which prove to us that where he now errs in tone (as in the
Cicero's Villa), it is less owing to want of power to reach
it, than to the pursuit of some different and nobler end. I shall
therefore glance at the particular modes in which Turner manages
his tone in his present Academy pictures ; the early ones must
be given up at once. Place a genuine untouched Claude beside
the Crossing the Brook, and the difference in value and tender-
ness of tone will be felt in an instant, and felt the more pain-
fully because all the cool and transparent qualities of Claude would

have been here desirable, and in their place, and appear to have
been aimed at. The foreground of the Building of Carthage, and
the greater part of the architecture of the Fall, are equally heavy
and evidently paint, if we compare them with genuine passages of
Claude's sunshine. There is a very grand and simple piece of tone
in the possession of J. Allnutt, Esq., a Sunset behind willows; but
even this is wanting in refinement of shadow, and is crude in its
extreme distance. Not so with the recent Academy pictures ; many
of their passages are absolutely faultless ; all are refined and mar-
vellous, and with the exception of the Cicero's Villa, we shall find
few pictures painted within the last ten years which do not either
present us with perfect tone, or with some higher beauty to which
it is necessarily sacrificed. If we glance at the requirements of
nature, and her superiority of means to ours, we shall see why
and how it is sacrificed.

Light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects, is either § 14. The iwo
to be considered as neutral and white, bringing out local colours ties'of Hghfto
with fidelity ; or coloured, and consequently modifying these local considered,
tints with its own. But the power of pure white light to exhibit
local colour is strangely variable. The morning light of about nine
or ten is usually very pure; but the difference of its effect on
different days, independently of mere brilliancy, is as inconceivable
as inexplicable. Every one knows how capriciously the colours of
a fine opal vaxy from day to day, and how rare the lights are
which bring them fully out. Now the expression of the strange,
penetrating, deep, neutral light, which, while it alters no colour,
brings every colour up to the highest possible pitch and key of
pure harmonious intensity, is the chief attribute of finely toned
pictures by the great colourists, as opposed to pictures of equally
high tone, by masters who, careless of colour, are content, like
Cuyp, to lose local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing light.

Falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called, is a matter § la. Taise-

far more of feehng than of proof, for any colour is possible under Titian attains

with tlieir richness and solemnity of colour. In the Bacchus and
Ariadne of Titian, it is difficult to imagine anything more mag-
nificently impossible than the blue of the distant landscape;
impossible, not from its vividness, but because it is not faint and
aerial enough to account for its purity of colour; it is too dark
and blue at the same time; and there is indeed so total a want of
atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it would be
impossible to tell the mountains intended to be ten miles off, from
the robe of Ariadne close to the spectator. Yet make this blue
faint, aerial, and distant; make it in the slightest degree to re-
semble the truth of nature's colour; and all the tone of the picture,
all its intensity and splendour, will vanish on the instant. So again,
in the exquisite and inimitable little bit of colour, the Europa in
I' the Dulwich Gallery; the blue of the dark promontory on the left

is thoroughly absurd and impossible, and the warm tones of the
clouds equally so, unless it were sunset; but the blue especially,
because it is nearer than several points of land which are equally
in shadow, and yet are rendered in warm grey. But the whole
value and tone of the picture would be destroyed if this blue were
altered.

§ 16. Turner Now, as mucli of this kind of richness of tone is always given
rucii^nisml ^y Turner as is compatible with truth of aerial effect; but he will
not sacrifice the higher truths of his landscape to mere pitch of
colour, as Titian does. He infinitely prefers having the power of
giving extension of space, and fulness of form, to that of giving deep
melodies of tone; he feels too much the incapacity of art, with its
feeble means of light, to give the abundance of nature's gradations;
and therefore it is, that taking pure white for his highest expression
of light, that even pure yellow may give him one more step in
the scale of shade, he becomes necessarily inferior in richness of
effect to the old masters of tone who always used a golden highest
§ 17. But gains light, but gains by the sacrifice a thousand more essential truths,
truth by the For, though we all know how much more like light, in the abstract,
sacnficc, ^ finely toned warm hue will be to the feelings than white, yet it

is utterly impossible to mark the same number of gradations between
such a sobered high light and the deepest shadow, which we can
between this and white; and as these gradations are absolutely

necessary to give the facts of form and distance, whicli, as we have
above shown, are more important than any truths of tone'. Turner
sacrifices the richness of his picture to its completeness, the
manner of the statement to its matter. And not only is he right
in doing this for the sake of space, hut he is right also in the
abstract question of colour; for as we observed above (§ 14.),
it is only the white light, the perfect unmodified group of rays,
which will bring out local colour perfectly; and if the picture,
therefore, is to be complete in its system of colour, that is, if
it is to have each of the three primitives in their purity, it must
have white for its highest light, otherwise the purity of one of
them at least will be impossible. And this leads us to notice the § I8. The
second and more frequent quality of light (which is assumed if oHight!'"'^"^^
we make our highest representation of it yellow), the positive hue,
namely, which it may itself possess, of course modifying whatever
local tints it exhibits, and thereby rendering certain colours neces-
sary, and certain colours impossible. Under the direct yellow light
of a descending sun, for instance, pure white and pure blue are
both impossible; because the purest whites and blues that nature
could produce would be turned in some degree into gold or green
by it; and when the sxm is witliin half a degree of the horizon, if
the sky be clear, a rose light supersedes the golden one, still more
overwhelming in its effect on local colour. I have seen the pale
fresh green of spring vegetation in the gardens of Venice, on the
Lido side, turned pure russet, or between that and crimson, by
a vivid sunset of this kind, every particle of green colour being
absolutely annihilated. And so under all coloured lights (and
there are few, from dawn to twilight, which are not sliglitly tinted
by some accident of atmosphere,) there is a change of local colour,
wliich, when in a picture it is so exactly proportioned that we
feel at once both what the local colours are in themselves, and what
are the colour and strength of the light upon them, gives us truth
of tone.

For expression of effects of yellow sunlight, parts might be chosen § 19. The per-

' More iinpoi'tant, observe, as matters of truth or fact. It may often chance that, as
a matter of feeling, the tone is the more important of the two; but with this we have
here no concern.

faction of Cuyp out of tlie good pictures of Cuypj which have never been equalled
in art. But I much doubt if there be a single hriglit Cuyp in
the world, which, taken as a whole, does not present many glaring
solecisms in tone. I have not seen many fine pictures of his,
which were not utterly spoiled by the vermilion dress of some
principal figure, a vermilion totally unaffected and unwarmed by
the golden hue of the rest of the picture; and, what is worse, with
little distinction between its own illumined and shaded parts, so
that it appears altogether out of sunshine, the colour of a bright
vermilion in dead cold daylight. It is possible that the original
colour may have gone down in all cases, or that these parts may
have been villanously repainted ; but I am the rather disposed to
believe them genuine, because even throughout the best of his
pictures there are evident recurrences of the same kind of solecism
in other colours ; greens for instance, as in the steep bank on the
right of the largest picture in the Dulwich Gallery; and browns,
as in the lying cow in the same picture, which is in most visible
and painful contrast with the one standing beside it; the flank of
the standing one being bathed in breathing sunshine, and the
reposing one laid in with as dead, opaque, and lifeless brown as
ever came raw from a novice's pallet. And again, in that marked
83, while the figures on the right are walking in the most precious
light, and those just beyond them in the distance leave a furlong
or two of pure visible sunbeams between us and them, the cows
in the centre are entirely deprived, poor things, of both light and
And these failing parts, though they often escape the eye

when we are near the picture and able to dwell upon what is
beautifid in it, yet so injure its whole effect, that I question if
there be many Cuyps in which vivid colours occur, which will not
lose their efix3ct and become cold and flat at a distance of ten or
twelve paces, retaining their influence only when the eye is close
enough to rest on the right parts without including the whole.
Take, for instance, the large one in our National Gallery, seen
from the opposite door, where the black cow appears a great
deal nearer than the dogs, and the golden tones of the distance
look like a sepia drawing rather than Hke sunshine, owing chiefly
to the utter want of aerial greys indicated through them.

Now, there is no instance in the works of Turner of anjthnig § 20. Turner Is
so faitlifiil and imitative of sunshine as the best parts of Cuyp; parts—^far
but, at the same time, there is not a single vestige of the same

kind of solecism. It is true, that in his fondness for colour. Turner
is in the habit of allowing excessively cold fragments in his warmest
pictures; but these are never, observe, warm colours with no light
upon them, useless as contrasts, while they are discords in the tone;
but they are bits of the very coolest tints, partially removed from
the general influence, and exquisitely A^aluable as colour, thougli,
with all deference be it spoken, I think them sometimes slightly
destructive of what would otherwise be perfect tone. For instance,
the two blue and white stripes on the drifting flag of the Skive
Ship, are, I think, the least degree too purely cool, I think both
the blue and white would be impossible under such a light; and
in the same way the white parts of the dress of the Napoleon
interfere by their coolness with the perfectly managed warmth of
all the rest of the picture. But both these lights are reflexes, and
it is nearly impossible to say what tones may be assumed even by
the warmest light reflected from a cool surface; so that we cannot
actually convict these parts of falsehood, and though we should have
liked the tone of the picture better had they been slightly warmer,
we cannot but like the colour of the picture better with them as
they are; while Cuyp's failing portions are not only evidently and
demonstrably false, being in direct light, but are as disagreeable in
colour as false in tone, and injurious to everything near them. And
the best proof of the grammatical accuracy of the tones of Turner
is in the perfect and unchanging influence of all his pictures at any
distance. We approach only to follow the sunshine into every
cranny of the leafage, and retire only to feel it diffused over the
scene, the whole picture glowing like a sun or star at whatever
distance we stand, and lighting the air between us and it; while
many even of the best pictures of Claude must be looked close into
to be felt, and lose light every foot that we retire. The smallest
of the three sea-ports in the National Gallery is valuable and right
in tone when we are close to it; but ten yards off, it is all brick-
dust, offensively and evidently false in its whole hue.

ber ot tones. passages of the modern master which do not at first appeal to our
ordinary notions of truth, owing to his habit of uniting two, three,
or even more separate tones in the same composition. In this also
he strictly follows nature, for wherever climate changes, tone
changes, and the climate changes with every 200 feet of elevation,
so that the upper clouds are always different in tone from the lower
ones; these from the rest of the landscape, and in all probability,
some part of the horizon from the rest. And when nature allows
this in a liigh degree, as in her most gorgeous effects she always
will, she does not herself impress at once with intensity of tone, as
in the deep and quiet yellows of a July evening, but rather with
the magnificence and variety of associated colour, in which, if we
give time and attention to it, we shall gradually find the solemnity
and the depth of twenty tones instead of one. Now, in Turner's
power of associating cold with Avarm light no one has ever ap-
proached, or even ventured into the same field with him. The old
masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its unity all the
exquisite gradations and varied touches of relief and change by
which nature unites her hours with each other. They gave the
warmth of the sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its gold, but
they did not give those grey passages about the horizon where,
seen through its dying light, the cool and the gloom of night
gather themselves for their victory. Whether it was in them impo-
tence or judgment, it is not for me to decide. I have only to point
to the daring of Turner in this respect as something to which art
affords no matter of comparison, as that in which the mere attempt
is, in itself, superiority. Take the evening effect with the Teme-
raire. That picture will not, at the first glance, deceive as a piece
of actual sunlight; but this is because there is in it more than sun-
] iglit, because under the blazing veil of vaulted fire which lights the
vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of
darkness, out of which you can hear the voice of the night wind,
and the dull boom of the disturbed sea; because the cold deadly
shadows of the twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and
moment by moment as you look, you will fancy some new film and

And if, in effects of this kind, time be taken to dwell upon the § 22. Kecapi-
individual tones, and to study the laws of their reconcilement, there
will he found, in the recent Academy pictures of this great artist, a
mass of various truth to which nothing can be brought for com-
parison ; which stands not only unrivalled, but uncontended with,
and which, when in carrying out it may he inferior to some of
the picked passages of the old masters, is so through deliberate
choice rather to suggest a multitude of truths than to imitate one,
and through a strife with difficulties of effect of which art can
afford no parallel example. Nay, in the next chapter, respecting
colour, we shall see farther reason for doubting the truth of Claude,
Cuyp, and Poussin, in tone,—reason so palpable that if these were
all that were to be contended with, I should scarcely have allowed
any inferiority in Turner whatsoever ^; but I allow it, not so much
with reference to the deceptive imitations of sunlight, wrought out
with desperate exaggerations of shade of the professed landscape
painters, as with reference to the glory of Rubens, the glow of
Titian, the silver tenderness of Cagliari, and perhaps more than all
to the precious and pure passages of intense feeling and heavenly
light, holy and undefiled, and glorious with the changeless passion
of eternity, which sanctify with their shadeless peace tlie deep and
noble conceptions of the early school of Italy,—of Fra Bartolomeo,
Perugino, and the early mind of Kaffaelle.

' We must not leave the subject of tone without alluding to the works of the late
George Barrett, which afford glorious and exalted passages of light; and of John
Varley, who, though less truthful in his aim, was frequently deep in his feeling. Some
of the sketches of De Wint arc also admirable in this respect. As for our oil pictures,
the less that is said about them the better. Callcott had the truest aim; but not having
any eye fur colour, it was impossible for him to succeed in tone.

There is, in the first room of tlie National Gallery, a landscape
attributed to Gaspar Poussin, called sometimes Aricia, sometimes
Le or La Riccia, according to the fancy of catalogue printers.
Whether it can be supposed to resemble the ancient Aricia, now
La Riccia, close to Albano, I will not take upon me to determine,
seeing that most of the towns of these old masters are quite as
like one place as another; but, at any rate, it is a town on a hill,
wooded with two and thirty bushes, of very uniform size, and pos-
sessing about the same number of leaves each. These bushes are
all painted in with one dull opaque brown, becoming very slightly
greenish towards the lights, and discover in one place a bit of rock,
which of course would in nature have been cool and grey beside
the lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being moreover
completely in shade, is consistently and scientifically painted of a
very clear, pretty, and positive brick red, the only thing like colour
in the picture. The foreground is a piece of road, which, in order
to make allowance for its greater nearness, for its being completely
in light, and, it may be presumed, for the .quantity of vegetation
usually present on carriage-roads, is given in a very cool green
grey; and the truth of the picture is completed by a number of dots
in the sky on the right, with a stalk to them, of a sober and similar
brown.

Not long ago, I was slowly descending this very bit of carriage-
road, the first turn after you leave Albano, not a little impeded by

tlie worthy successors of the ancient prototypes of Veiento.^ It had
been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the Campagna
the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder
or twoj and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian aqueduct,
lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. But
as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm swept
finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of Albano,
and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure streaks of
alternate blue and amber; the upper sky gradually flushing through
the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure, half a3ther
and half dew. The noon-day sun came slanting down the rocky
slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage,
whose autvimnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand
evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it
colour, it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like
the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the
valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoy-
ant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the
sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the
recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of
mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers
dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray
tossed into the air around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock
into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as
the weak wind lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned
like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the
foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a
cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock—dark though
flushed with scarlet lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its
restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its marble
hollow with blue mist and fitful sound ; and over all, the multitu-
dinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no dark-
ness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals
between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing

to lose themselves in the last, white, blindmg lustre of the measure-
less line where the Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.

Tell me who is likest this, Poussin or Turner ? Not in his most
daring and dazzling efforts could Turner himself come near it; but
you could not at the time have thought of or remembered the
work of any other man as having the remotest hue or resemblance
of what you saw. Nor am I speaking of what is uncommon or
unnatural; there is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in
which nature does not exhibit colour which no mortal effort can
imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even
when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside
her living colour; the green of a growing leaf, the scarlet of a fresh
flower, no art nor expedient can reach; but in addition to this,
nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which
trebles their brilliancy ; while the painter, deprived of this splendid
aid, works still with what is actually a grey shadow compared with
the force of nature's colour. Take a blade of grass and a scarlet
flower, and place them so as to receive sunlight beside the brightest
canvass that ever left Turner's easel, and the picture will be extin-
guished. So far from outfacing nature, he does not, as far as mere
vividness of colour goes, one half reach her. But does he use this
brilliancy of colour on objects to which it does not properly belong?
Let us compare his works in this respect with a few instances from
the old masters.

There is, on the left-hand side of Salvator's Mercury and the
Woodman in our National Gallery, something without doubt
intended for a rocky mountain, in the middle distance, near enough
for all its fissures and crags to be distinctly visible, or, rather, for a
great many awkward scratches of the brush over it to be visible,
which, though not particularly representative either of one thing
or another, are without doubt intended to be symbolical of rocks.
Now no mountain in full light, and near enough for its details of
crag to be seen, is without great variety of delicate colour. Sal-
vator has painted it throughout wdthout one instant of variation;
but this, I suppose is simplicity and generalization; — let it pass:
but what is the colour ? Pure shy blue, wdthout one grain of grey,
or any modifying hue whatsoever; the same brush which had

just given the Wuest parts of tlie sky lias been more loaded at the
same part of the pallet, and the whole mountain thrown in with
unmitigated ultramarine. Now mountains only can become pure
blue when there is so much air between us and them that they
become mere flat dark shades, every detail being totally lost: they
become blue when they become air, and not till then. Con-
sequently this part of Salvator's painting, being of hills perfectly
clear and near, with all their details visible, is, as far as colour
is concerned, broad bold falsehood, the direct assertion of direct
impossibility.

In the whole range of Turner's works, recent or of old date, you
will not find an instance of anything near enough to have details
visible, painted in sky blue. Wherever Turner gives blue, there
he gives atmosphere; it is air, not object. Blue he gives to his
sea ; so does nature ;—blue he gives, sapphire-deep, to his extreme
distance; so does nature; —blue he gives to the misty shadows
and hollows of his hills; so does nature: but blue he gives not,
where detail and illumined surface are visible; as he comes into
light and character, so he breaks into warmth and varied hue; nor
is there in one of his works, and I speak of the Academy pictures
especially, one touch of cold colour which is not to be accounted
for, and proved right and full of meaning.

I do not say that Salvator's distance is not artist-like; both in
that, and in the yet more glaringly false distances of Titian above
alluded to, and in hundreds of others of equal boldness of exaggera-
tion, I can take delight, and perhaps should be sorry to see them
other than they are; but it is somewhat singular to hear people
talking of Turner's exquisite care and watchfulness in colour as
false, while they receive such cases of preposterous and audacious
fiction with the most generous and simple credulity.

Again, in the upper sky of the picture of Nicholas Poussin, § 5. Poussin,
before noticed, the clouds are of a very fine clear olive-green, about
the same tint as the brightest parts of the trees beneath them.
They cannot have altered (or else the trees must have been painted
in grey), for the hue is harmonious and well united with the rest of
the picture, and the blue and white in the centre of the sky are
still fresh and pure. Noav a green sky in open and illumined

distance is very frequent^ and very beautiful; but rich olive-green
clouds, as far as I am acquainted with nature, are a piece of colour
in which she is not apt to indulge. You will be puzzled to show
me such a thing in the recent works of Turner. ^ Again, take any
important group of trees, I do not care whose—Claude's, Salvator's,
or Poussin's—with lateral light (that in the marriage of Isaac and
llebecca, or Gaspar's Sacrifice of Isaac, for instance) : can it be
seriously supposed that those murky browns and melancholy greens
are representative of the tints of leaves under fall noonday sun?
I know that you cannot help looking upon all these pictures as
pieces of dark relief against a light wholly proceeding from the
distances ; but they are nothing of the kind, they are noon and
morning effects with full lateral liglit. Be so kind as to match the
colour of a leaf in the sun (the darkest you like) as nearly as you
can, and bring your matched colour and set it beside one of these
groups of trees, and take a blade of common grass, and set it beside
any part of the fullest light of their foregrounds, and then talk
about the truth of colour of the old masters !

And let not arguments respecting the sublimity or fidelity of
impression be brought forward here. I have nothing whatever to
do with this at present. I am not talking about what is sublime,
but about what is true. People attack Turner on this ground;
they never speak of beauty or sublimity with respect to him, but of
nature and truth, and let them support their own favourite masters
on the same grounds. Perhaps I may have the very deepest
veneration for the feeling of the old masters ; but I must not let it
influence me now,—my business is to match colours, not to talk
sentiment. Neither let it be said that I am going too much into
details, and that general truth may be obtained by local falsehood.
Truth is only to be measured by close comparison of actual facts ;

' There is perliaps nothing more cliaracteristic of a great colourist than his power of
using greens in strange pkices witliout tlieir being felt as such, or at least than a constant
preference of green grey to purple grey. And this hue of Poussin's clouds would have
been perfectly agreeable and allowable, had there been gold or crimson enough in the
rest of the picture to have thrown it into grey. It is only because the lower clouds are
pure white and blue, and because the trees are of the same colour as the clouds, that the
cloud coloin- becomes false. There is a line instance of a sky, green in itself, but turned
grey by the opposition of warm colour, in Turner's Devonport with the Dockyards. ^

we may talk for ever about it in generals, and prove nothing. We
cannot tell what effect falsehood may produce on this or that
person, but we can very well tell what is false and what is not; and
if it produce on our senses the effect of truth, that only demon-
strates their imperfection and inaccuracy, and need of cultivation.
Turner's colour is glaring to one person's sensations, and beautiful
to another's. This proves nothing. Poussin's colour is right to
one, soot to another. This proves nothing. There is no means of
arriving at any conclusion but by close comparison of both with
the known and demonstrable hues of nature, and this comparison
will invariably turn Claude or Poussin into blackness, and even
Turner into grey.

Whatever depth of gloom may seem to invest the objects of a
real landscape, yet a window with that landscape seen through it,
will invariably appear a broad space of light as compared with the
shade of the room walls; and this single circumstance may prove
to us both the intensity and the diffusion of daylight in open air,
and the necessity, if a picture is to be truthful in efJect of colour,
that it should tell as a broad space of graduated illumination,—
not, as do those of the old masters, as a patchwork of black shades.
Their works are nature in mourning weeds,— ouS' iv 'qXUo KaOapS
TsOpa/JifiEvoL, dX\' viro avfxfjbcysi aKia,

It is true that there are, here and there, in the Academy pictures, § 6. Turner's
passages in which Turner has translated the unattainable intensity of cotoure!'""
one tone of colour, into the attainable pitch of a higher one: the
golden green, for instance, of intense sunshine on verdure, into pure
yellow, because he knows it to be impossible, with any mixture of
blue whatsoever, to give faithfully its relative intensity of light; and
Turner always will have his light and shade right, whatever it costs
him in colour. But he does this in rare cases, and even then over
very small spaces; and I should be obliged to his critics if they
would go out to some warm mossy green bank in full summer
sunshine, and try to reach its tone; and when they find, as find
they will, Indian yellow and chrome look dark beside it, let them
tell me candidly which is nearer truth,—the gold of Turner, or
the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens in
which Claude, with the industry and intelligence of a Sevres china

But it is singular enough that the chief attacks on Turner for
overcharged brilliancj are made, not when there could by any
possibility be any chance of his outstepping nature, but when he
has taken subjects which no colours of earth could ever vie with
or reach, such, for instance, as his sunsets among the high clouds.
When I come to speak of skies, I shall point out what divisions,
proportioned to their elevation, exist in the character of clouds.
It is the highest region, that exclusively characterized by white,
filmy, multitudinous, and quiet clouds, arranged in bars, or streaks,
or flakes, of which I speak at present; a region which no landscape
painters have ever made one effort to represent, except Rubens and
Turner, the latter taking it for his most favourite and frequent
study. Now we have been speaking hitherto of what is constant
and necessary in nature, of the ordinary effects of dayliglit on or-
dinary colours, and we repeat again, that no gorgeousness of the
pallet can reach even tliese. But it is a widely different thing when
nature herself takes a colouring fit, and does something extraor-
dinary, something I'eally to exhibit her power. She has a thousand
ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the noblest
manifestations of her capability of colour are in these sunsets among
the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before the sun
sinks, when his light turns pure rose-colour, and when this light
falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of incon-
ceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapour, which would in
common daylight be pure snow-white, and which give therefore
fair field to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the mul-
titude, and no check to the intensity, of the hues assumed. The
whole sky from the zenith to the horizon' becomes one molten
mantling sea of colour and fire; every black bar turns into massy
gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied shadowless crimson, and
purple, and scarlet, and colours for which there are no words in
language, and no ideas in the mind, — things which can only be
conceived while they are visible; the intense hollow blue of the
upper sky melting through it all, showing here deep, and pure,
and lightless; there, modulated by the filmy formless body of the

transparent vapour, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and
gold. Now there is no connexion, no one link of association or
resemblance, between those skies and the work of any mortal hand
but Turner's. He alone has followed nature in these her highest
efforts; he follows her faithfully, but far behind; follows at such a
distance below her intensity that the Napoleon of last year's exhi-
bition, and the Temeraire of the year before, would look colourless
and cold if the eye came upon them after one of nature's sun-
sets among the high clouds. But there are a thousand reasons § 8. Reasons
why this should not be believed. The concurrence of circumstances incredulity of

necessary to produce the sunsets of which I speak does not take place the observer
^ ^ ^ with reispect to

above five or six times in a summer, and then only for a space of their represen-
from five to ten minutes, just as the sun reaches the liorizon. Con-
sidering how seldom people think of looking for a sunset at all, and
how seldom, if they do, they are in a position from Mdiicli it can be
fully seen, the chances that their attention should be awake, and
their position favourable, during these few flying instants of the
year, are almost as nothing. What can the citizen, who can see
only the red light on the canvass of the waggon at the end of the
street, and the crimson colour of the bricks of his neighbour's chim-
ney, know of the flood of fire which deluges the sky from the
horizon to the zenith ? What can even the quiet inhabitant of the
English lowlands, whose scene for the manifestation of the fire of
heaven is limited to the tops of hayricks, and the rooks' nests in
the old elm trees, know of the mighty passages of splendour which
are tossed from Alp to Alp over the azure of a thousand miles of
champaign? Even granting the constant vigour of observation,
and supposing the possession of such impossible knowledge, it needs
but a moment's reflection to prove how incapable the memory is of
retaining for any time the distinct image of the sources even of
its most vivid impressions. What recollection have we of the sun-
sets which delighted us last year ? We may know that they were
magnificent, or glowing, but no distinct image of colour or form is
retained—nothing of whose degree (for the great difficulty with the
memory is to retain, not facts, but degrees of fact) we could be so
certain as to say of anything now presented to us, that it is like it.
If we did say so, we should be wrong; for we may be quite certain

that the energy of an impression fades from the memory, and be-
comes more and more indistinct every day; and thus we compare
a faded and indistinct image with the decision and certainty of one
present to the senses. How constantly do we affirm that the thun-
derstorm of last week was the most terrible one we ever saw in our
lives, bccause we compare it, not with the thunderstorm of last year,
but with the faded and feeble recollection of it. And so, when we
enter an exhibition, as we have no definite standard of truth before
us, our feelings are toned down and subdued to the quietness of
colour, which is all that human power can ordinarily attain to; and
when we turn to a piece of higher and closer truth, approaching the
pitch of the colour of nature, but to which we are not guided, as
we should be in nature, by corresponding gradations of light every-
where around us, but which is isolated and cut off suddenly by a
frame and a wall, and surrounded by darkness and coldness, what
can we expect but that it should surprise and shock the feelings ?
Suppose, where the " Napoleon" hung in the Academy, there
could have been left, instead, an opening in the wall, and through
that opening, in the midst of the obscurity of the dim room and
the smoke-laden atmosphere, there could suddenly have been poured
the full glory of a tropical sunset, reverberated from the sea; how
would you have shrunk, blinded, from its scarlet and intolerable
lightnings ! What picture in the room would not have been black-
ness after it ? And why then do you blame Turner because he
dazzles you ? Does not the falsehood rest with those who do not ?
There was not one hue in this whole picture which was not far
below what nature would have used in the same circumstances,
nor was there one inharmonious or at variance with the rest. The
stormy blood-red of the horizon, the scarlet of the breaking sun-
light, the rich crimson browns of the wet and illumined sea-weed,
the pure gold and purple of the upper sky, and, shed through it
all, the deep passage of solemn blue, where the cold moonlight fell
on one pensive spot of the limitless shore, — all were given with har-
mony as perfect as their colour Avas intense; and if, instead of passing,
as I doubt not you did, in the hurry of your unreflecting prejudice,
you had paused but so much as one quarter of an hour before the
picture, you would have found the sense of air and space blended

with every line, and breathing in every cloud, and every colour
instinct and radiant with visible, glowing, absorbing light.

It is to be observed, however, in general, that wherever in
brilliant effects of this kind, we approach to anything like a true
statement of nature's colour, there must yet be a distinct difference
in the impression we convey, because we cannot approach her light.
All such hues are usually given by her with an accompanying
intensity of simbeams which dazzles and overpowers the eye, so that
it cannot rest on the actual colours, nor understand what they are;
and hence in art, in rendering all effects of this kind, there must be
a want of the ideas of imitation, which are the great source of
enjoyment to the ordinary observer; because we can only give one
series of truths, those of colour, and are unable to give the accom-
panying truths of light; so that the more true we are in colour,
the greater, ordinarily, will be the discrepancy felt between the
intensity of hue and the feebleness of light. But the painter who
really loves nature will not, on this account, give you a faded and
feeble image, which indeed may appear to you to be right, because
your feelings can detect no discrepancy in its parts, but which he
knows to derive its apparent truth from a systematized falsehood.
No; he will make you understand and feel that art cannot imitate
nature; that where it appears to do so, it must malign her and
mock ]ier. He will give you, or state to you, such truths as are in
his power, completely and perfectly; and those which he cannot
give, he will leave to your imagination. If you are acquainted
with nature, you will know all he has given to be true, and you
will supply from your memory and from your heart that light
which he cannot give. If you are unacquainted with nature, seek
elsewhere for whatever may happen to satisfy your feelings; but
do not ask for the truth which you would not acknowledge and
could not enjoy.

Nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must always be
to do away with this discrepancy as far as the powers of art admit,
not by lowering his colour, but by increasing his light. And it is
indeed by this that the works of Turner are peculiarly distinguished
from those of all other colourists, by the dazzling intensity, namely,
of the light which he sheds through every hue, and which, far

more than their brilliant colour, is the real source of their over-
powering effect upon the eje, an eifect so reasonably made the
subject of perpetual animadversion; as if the sun which they
represent were quite a quiet, and subdued, and gentle, and manage-
able luminary, and never dazzled anybody, under any circum-
stances whatsoever. I am fond of standing by a bright Turner in
the Academy, to listen to the unintentional compliments of the
crowd—"What a glaring thing!" "I declare I can't look at
it!" " Don't it hurt your eyes?"—expressed as if they were in
the constant habit of looking the sun full in the face with the most
§ ] 2. Its great perfect comfort and entire facility of vision. It is curious after
hearing people malign some of Turner's noble passages of light, to
pass to some really ungrammatical and false picture of the old
masters, in which we have colour given without light. Take, for
instance, the landscape attributed to Eubens, No. 175., in the
Dulwich Gallery. I never have spoken, and I never will speak of
Rubens but with the most reverential feeling; and whatever
imperfections in his art may have resulted from his unfortunate
want of seriousness and incapability of true passion, his calibre
of mind was originally such that I believe the world may see an-
other Titian and another Raffaelle, before it sees another Rubens.
But I have before alluded to the violent license he occasionally
assumes ; and there is an instance of it in this picture apposite to
the immediate question. The sudden streak and circle of yellow
and crimson in the middle of the sky of that picture, being the
occurrence of a fragment of a sunset colour in pure daylight, and
in perfect isolation, while at the same time it is rather darker, when
translated into light and shade, than brighter than the rest of the
sky, is a case of such bold absurdity, come from whose pencil it
may, that if every error which Turner has fidlen into in the whole
course of his life were concentrated into one, that one would not
equal it; and as our connoisseurs gaze vq)on this with never-ending
approbation, we must not be surprised that the accurate perceptions
which thus take delight in pure fiction, should consistently be
disgusted by Turner's fidelity and truth.

Hitherto, however, we have been speaking of vividness of pure
colour, and showing that it is used by Turner only where nature
uses it, and in less degree. But we have hitherto, therefore, been

speaking of a most limited and uncharacteristic portion of his
works; for Turner, like all great colourists, is distinguished not more
for his power of dazzling and overwhelming the eye with intensity
of effect, than for his power of doing so by the use of subdued and
gentle means. There is no man living more cautious and sparing
in the use of pure colour than Turner. To say that he never per-
petrates anything like the blue excrescences of foreground, or hills
shot like a housekeeper's best silk gown, with blue and red, which
certain of our celebrated artists consider the essence of the sublime,
would be but a poor compliment; I might as well praise the
portraits of Titian because they have not the grimace and paint of
a clown in a pantomime; but I do say, and say with confidence,
that there is scarcely a landscape artist of the present day, however
sober and lightless their effects may look, Avho does not employ
more pure and raw colour than Turner; and that the ordinary
tinsel and trash, or rather vicious and perilous stuff, according to
the power of the mind producing it, with which the walls of our
Academy are half covered, disgracing in weak hands, or in more
powerful degrading and corrupting, our whole school of art, is
based on a system of colour beside which Turner's is as Vesta to
Cotytto — the chastity of fire to the foulness of earth. Every
picture of this great colourist has, in one or two parts of it (key-
notes of the whole), points Avhere the system of each individual
colour is concentrated by a single stroke, as pure as it cau come
from the pallet; but throughout the great space and extent of even
the most brilliant of his works, there will not be found a raw
colour ; that is to say, there is no warmth which has not grey in it,
and no blue which has not warmth in it; and the tints in Avhich he
most excels and distances all other men, the most cherished and
inimitable portions of his colour, are, as with all perfect colourists
they must be, his greys.

It is instructive in this respect, to compare the sky of the
Mercury and Argus with the various illustrations of the serenity,
space, and sublimity naturally inherent in blue and pink, of which
every year's Exhibition brings forward enough, and to spare. In
the Mercury and Argus, the pale and vaporous blue of the heated
sky is broken with grey and pearly white, the gold colour of the

light warming it more or less as it approaclies or retires from the
sun; but, throughout, there is not a grain of pure blue; all is
subdued and warmed at the same time by the mingling grey and
gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking through the flaky
mist, the transparent and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a
single crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, and
every part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space.
The reader can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works,
in contradistinction to this, with great names attached to them
in which the sky is a sheer piece of plumber's and glazier's work,
and should be valued per yard, with heavy extra charge for ultra-
marine.

Throughout the works of Turner, the same truthful principle of
delicate and subdued colour is carried out with a care and labour
of which it is difficult to form a conception. He gives a dash of pure
white for his highest light; but all the other whites of his picture
are pearled down with grey or gold. He gives a fold of pure
crimson to the drapery of his nearest figure, but all his other
crimsons will be deepened with black, or warmed with yellow. In
one deep reflection of his distant sea, we catch a trace of the purest
blue, but all the rest is palpitating with a varied and delicate
gradation of harmonized tint, which indeeds looks vivid blue as a
mass, but is only so by opposition. It is the most difficult, the
most rare thing, to find in his works a definite space, however
small, of unconnected colour; that is, either of a blue which has
nothing to connect it with the warmth, or of a warm colour, which
has nothing to connect it with the greys of the whole; and the
result is, that there is a general system and under-current of grey
pervading the whole of his colour, out of which his highest lights,
and those local touches of pure colour, which are, as I said before,
the key-notes of the picture, flash with the peculiar brilliancy and
intensity in which he stands alone.

Intimately associated with this toning down and connexion of
the colours actually used, is his inimitable power of varying and
blending them, so as never to give a quarter of an inch of canvass
without a change'in it, a melody as well as a harmony of one kind
or another. Observe, I am not at present speaking of this as

artistical or desirable in itself, not as a characteristic of the great
colourist, but as tlie aim of the simple follower of nature. For it
is strange to see how marvellously nature varies the most general
and simple of her tones, A mass of mountain seen against the
light, may at first appear all of one blue; and so it is, blue as a
whole, by comparison with other parts of the landscape. But look
how that blue is made up. There are black shadows in it under
the crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there are grey
half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmtli
and cautious light along their edges; every bush, every stone,
every tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins with in-
dividual character in the universal will. Who is there who can do
this as Turner will ? The old masters would have settled the
matter at once with a transparent, agreeable, but monotonous grey.
Many among the moderns would probably be equally monotonous
with absurd and false colours. Turner only would give the uncer-
tainty ; the palpitating, perpetual change; the subjection of all to
a great influence, without one part or portion being lost or merged
in it; the unity of action with infinity of agent. And I wish to § 16. Follow-
insist on this the more particularly, because it is one of the eternal and unap-'^"''''

principles of nature, that she will not have one line or colour, nor proachabie
. . , . . variety of

perpetually melting and appearing again, — sharp liere, vague there,
—now lost altogether, now just hinted and still confused among
each other; and so for ever in a state and necessity of change.
Hence, wlierever in a painting we have unvaried colour extended
even over a small space, there is falsehood. Nothing can be natural
which is monotonous; nothing true which only tells one story.
The brown foreground and rocks of Claude's Sinon before Priam
are as false as colour can be: first, because there never was such a
brown under sunlight, for even the sand and cinders (volcanic tufa)
about Naples, granting that he had studied from these ugliest of all
formations, are, where they are fresh fractured, golden and lustrous
in full light, compared to these ideals of crag, and become, like all
other rocks, quiet and grey when weathered; and secondly, because
no rock that ever nature stained is without its countless breaking
tints of varied vegetation. And even Stanfield, master as he is of
rock form, is apt in the same way to give us here and there a little
bit of mud, instead of stone.

What I am next about to say with respect to Turner's colour,
I should wish to be received with caution, as it admits of dispute.
I think that the first approach to viciousness of colour in any
master is commonly indicated chiefly by a prevalence of purple, and
an absence of yellow. I think nature mixes yellow with almost
every one of her hues, never, or very rarely, using red without it,
but frequently using yellow with scarcely any red; and I believe
it will be in consequence found that her favourite opposition, that
which generally characterizes and gives tone to her colour, is yellow
and black, passing, as it retires, into white and blue. It is beyond
dispute that the great fundamental opposition of Rubens is yellow
and black; and, that on this, concentrated |in one part of the
picture, and modified in various greys throughout, chiefly depend
the tones of all his finest works. And in Titian, though there is
a far greater tendency to the purple than in Rubens, I believe no
red is ever mixed with the pure blue, or glazed over it, which
has not in it a modifying quantity of yellow. At all events, I am
nearly certain that whatever rich and pure purples are introduced
locally, by the great colourists, nothing is so destructive of all fiiie
colour as the slightest tendency to purple in general tone; and I

am equally certain that Turner is distinguished from all the vicious
colourists of the present day, by the foundation of all his tones
being black, yellow, and the intermediate greys, while the tendency
of our common glare-seekers is invariably to pure, cold, impossible
purples. So fond indeed is Turner of black and yellow, that he has
given us more than one composition, both drawings and paintings,
based on these two colours alone, of which the magnificent Quille-
boeuf, which I consider one of the most perfect pieces of simple
colour existing, is a most striking example; and I think that where,
as in some of the late Venices, there has been something like a
marked appearance of purple tones, even though exquisitely cor-
rected by vivid orange and warm green in the foreground, the
general colour has not been so perfect or truthful: my own feelings
would always guide me rather to the warm greys of such pictures
as the Snow-storm, or the gloAving scarlet and gold of the Napoleon
and Slave-ship. But I do not insist at present on this part of the
subject, as being perhaps more proper for future examination, when
we are considering the ideal of colour.

The above remarks have been made entirely with reference to § is. His early
the recent Academy pictures, which have been chiefly attacked for i^^cdour^
their colour. I by no means intend them to apply to the early
works of Turner, those which the enlightened newspaper critics are
perpetually talking about as characteristic of a time when Turner was
" really great." He is, and was, really great, from the time when
he first could hold a brush, but he never was so great as he is now.
The Crossing the Brook, glorious as it is as a composition, and
perfect in all that is most desirable and most ennobling in art, is
scarcely to be looked upon as a piece of colour; it is an agreeable,
cool, grey rendering of space and form, but it is not colour; if it
be regarded as such, it is thoroughly false and vapid, and very far
inferior to the tones of the same kind given by Claude. The
reddish brown in the foreground of the Fall of Carthage is, as
far as I am competent to judge, crude, sunless, and in every way
wrong; and both this picture, and the Building of Carthage,
though this latter is far the finer of the two, are quite unworthy
of Turner as a colourist.

Not so with the drawings; these, countless as they are, from the § 19. ms draw-

earliest to the latest, tliougli presenting an unbroken chain of
increasing difficulty overcome and truth illustrated, are all, according
to their aim, equally faultless as to colour. Whatever we have
hitherto said, applies to them in its fullest extent; though each,
being generally the realization of some effect actually seen, and
realized but once, requires almost a separate essay. As a class,
they are far quieter and chaster than the Academy pictures, and,
were they better known, might enable our connoisseurs to form a
somewhat more accurate judgment of the intense study of nature
on which all Turner's colour is based.

One point only remains to be noted respecting his system of
colour generally—its entire subordination to light and shade; a
subordination which there is no need to prove here, as every
engraving from his works (and few are unengraved) is sufficient
demonstration of it. I have before shown the inferiority and un-
importance in nature of colour, as a truth, compared with light and
shade. That inferiority is maintained and asserted by all really
great works of colour; but most by Turner's, as their colour is
most intense. Whatever brilliancy he may choose to assume, is
subjected to an inviolable law of chiaroscuro, from which there is
no appeal. No richness nor depth of tint is considered of value
enough to atone for the loss of one particle of arranged light. No
brilliancy of hue is permitted to interfere with the depth of a
determined shadow. And hence it is, that while engravings from
works far less splendid in colour are often vapid and cold, because
the little colour employed has not been rightly based on light and
shade, an engraving from Turner is always beautiful and forcible
in proportion as the colour of the original has been intense, and
never in a single instance has failed to express the picture as a
perfect composition.' Powerful and captivating and faithful as his

' This is saying too much ; for it not unfrequently happens that the light and shade
of the original is lost in the engraving, the effect of which is afterwards partially
recovered, with the aid of the artist himself, by introductions of new features. Some-
times, when a drawing depends chiefly on colour, the engraver gets unavoidably em-
barrassed, and must be assisted by some change or exaggei'ation of the effect: but the
more frequent case is, that the engi-aver's difficulties result merely from his inattention
to, or wilful deviations from, his original; and that the artist is obliged to assist him by
such expedients as the error itself suggests.

Not unfrequently in reviewing a plate, as very constantly in reviewing a picture after

colour is, it is tlie least important of all liis excellences, because it
is the least important feature of nature. Were it necessary, rather
than lose one line of his forms, or one ray of his sunshine, he would,

some time has elapsed since its completion, even the painter is liable to make unnecessary
or hurtful changes. In the plate of the Old Temeraire, lately published in Findeti's
Gallery, I do not know whether it was Turner or the engraver Avho broke up the water
into sparkling ripple, but it was a grievous mistake, and has destroyed the whole dignity
and value of the conception. The flash of lightning in the Winchelsea of tlic England
series does not exist in the original; it is put in to withdraw the attention of the spec-
tator from the sky, which the engi-aver destroyed.

There is an unfortunate persuasion among modern engravers that colour can be ex-
pressed by particular characters of line, and in the endeavour to distinguish by difierent
lines, different colours of equal depth, they frequently lose the whole system of liglit and
shade. It will hardly be credited that the piece of foreground on the loft of Turner's
Modern Italy, represented in the Art Union engraving as nearly coal black, is, in the
original, of a pale warm gi'ey, hardly darker than the sky. All attempt to record colour
in engraving is heraldry out of its place; the engraver has no power beyoiid tliat of
expressing transparency or opacity by greater or less openness of lino, for the same
depth of tint is producible by lines with very different intervals.

Texture of surface is only in a measure in the power of the steel, and ought not to be
laboriously sought after ; nature's surfaces are distinguished more by form than texture ;
a stone is often smoother than a leaf; but if texture is to be given, lot the engraver at
least be sure that he knows what the texture of the object actually is, and how to
represent it. The leaves in the foreground of the engraved Mercury and Argus have
all of them three or four black lines across them. What sort of leaf texture is supposed
to be represented by these ? The stones in the foreground of Turner's Llanthony re-
ceived from the artist the powdery texture of sandstone; the engraver covered them
with contorted lines and turned them into old timber.

A still more fatal cause of failure is the practice of making out or finishing what tlie
artist left incomplete. In the England plate of Dudley, there are two offensive blank
windows in the large building with the chimney on the left. These are engraver's im-
provements ; in the original they are barely traceable, their lines being excessively faint
and tremulous as with the movement of heated air between them and the spectator:
their vulgarity is thus taken away, and the whole building left in one grand unbroken
mass. It is almost impossible to break engravers of this unfortunate habit. I have even
heard of their taking journeys of some distance in order to obtain knowledge of the
details which the artist intentionally omitted ; and the evil will necessarily continue until
they receive something like legitimate artistical education. In one or tM-o instances,
however, particularly in small plates, they have shown great feeling ; the plates of Miller
(especially those of the Turner illustrations to Scott) arc in most instances perfect and
beautiful interpretations of the originals; so those of Goodall in Rogers's works, and
Cousens's in the Rivers of France ; those of the Yorkshire series are also very valuable,
though singularly inferior to the drawings. But none, even of these men, appear capable
of producing a large plate. They have no knowledge of the means of rendering their
lines vital or valuable; cross-hatching stands for everything; and inexcusably, for
though we cannot expect every engraver to etch like Rembrandt or Albert Durer, or
every wood-cutter to draw like Titian, .at least something of the system and power of
the grand works of those men might be preserved, and some mind and meaning stolen
into the reticulation of the restless modern lines.

I appreliend, be content to paint in black and wliite to the end of
his life. It is by mistaking the shadow for the substance, and
aiming at the brilliancy and the fire, without perceiving of what
deep-studied shade and inimitable form it is at once the result and
the illustration, that the host of his imitators sink into deserved
disgrace. With him, the hue is a beautiful auxiliary in working
out the great impression to be conveyed, but is not the chief source
of that impression ; it is little more than a visible melody, given to
raise and assist the mind in the reception of nobler ideas,—as
sacred passages of sweet sound, to prepare the feelings for the
reading of the mysteries of God.

It is not my intention to enter, in tlie present portion of the work, § i. We are

upon anj examination of Turner's particular effects of liglit. We to exam[nrpL.
must know something about what is beautiful before we speak of ^^

At present I wish only to insist upon two great principles of
chiaroscuro, which are observed throughout the works of the great
modern master, and set at defiance by the ancients; great general
laws, which may, or may not, be sources of beauty, but whose
observance is indisputably necessary to truth.

Go out some bright sunny day in winter, and look for a tree
with a broad trunk, having rather delicate boughs hanging down on
the sunny side, near the trunk. Stand four or five yards from it,
with your back to the sun. You will find that the boughs between
you and the trunk of the tree are very indistinct, that you confound
them in places with the trunk itself, and cannot possibly trace one
of them from its insertion to its extremity. But the shadows which
they cast upon the trunk, you will find clear, dark, and distinct,
perfectly traceable through their whole course, except when they
are interrupted by the crossing boughs. And if you retire back-
Wards, you will come to a point where you cannot see the intervening
boughs at all, or only a fragment of them here and there, but can
still see their shadows perfectly plain. Now, this may serve to
show you the immense prominence and importance of shadows
where there is anything like bright light. They are, in fact, com-
monly far more conspicuous than the thing which casts them; for
being as large as the casting object, and altogether made up of a
blackness deeper than the darkest part of the casting object, while

that object is also broken up witli positive and reflected lights^ tlieir
large, broad, unbroken spaces tell strongly on tlie eye, especially as
all form is rendered partially, often totally, invisible within them,
and as they are suddenly terminated by the sharpest lines which
nature ever shows. For no outline of objects whatsoever is so
sharp as the edge of a close shadow. Put your finger over a piece
of white paper in the sun, and observe the difference between the
softness of the outline of the finger itself and the decision of the
edge of the shadow. And note also the excessive gloom of the
latter. A piece of black cloth, laid in the light, will not attain one
fourth of the blackness of the paper under the shadow.

Hence shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most
conspicuous things in a landscape, next to the highest lights. All
forms are understood and explained chiefly by their agency: the
roughness of the bark of a tree, for instance, is not seen in the
light, nor in the shade; it is only seen between the two, where the
shadows of the ridges explain it. And hence, if we have to express
vivid light, our very first aim must be to get the shadows sharp
and visible; and this is not to be done by blackness (though
indeed chalk on white paper is the only thing which comes up to
the intensity of real shadows), but by keeping them perfectly flat,
keen, and even. A very pale shadow, if it be quite flat, if it
conceal the details of the objects it crosses, if it be grey and cold
compared with their colour, and very sharp-edged, will be far more
conspicuous, and make everything out of it look a great deal more
like sunlight, than a shadow ten times its depth, shaded off* at the
edge, and confounded with the colour of the objects on which it
falls. Now the old masters of the Italian school, in almost all
their works, directly reverse this principle; they blacken their
shadows till the picture becomes quite appalling, and everything
in it invisible; but they make a point of losing their edges, and
carrj'ing them off by gradation, in consequence utterly destroying
every appearance of sunlight. All their shadows are the faint,
secondary darkness of mere daylight; the sun lias nothing whatever
to do with them. The shadow between the pages of the book which
you hold in your hand is distinct and visible enough, though you
are, I suppose, reading it by the ordinary daylight of your room,

out of the sun; and this weak and secondary shadow is all that we
ever find in the Italian masters, as indicative of sunshine. Even § 4. And par-
Cuyp and Berghem, though they know thoroughly well what they [^g DutciT
are about in their foregrounds, forget the principle in their dis-
tances ; and though in Claude's seaports, where he has plain archi-
tecture to deal with, he gives us something like real shadows along
the stones, the moment we come to ground and foliage with lateral
light, away go the shadows and the sun together. In the Marriage
of Isaac and Rebecca, in our own gallery, the trunks of the trees
between the water-wheel and the white figure in the middle dis-
tance, are dark and visible; but their shadows are scarcely dis-
cernible on the ground, and are quite vague and lost in the
building. In nature, every bit of the shadow, both on the ground
and building, would have been defined and conspicuous; while the
trunks themselves would have been faint, confused, and indis-
tinguishable, in their illumined parts, from the grass or distance.
So in Poussin's Phocion, the shadow of the stick on the stone in
the right-hand corner, is shaded oiF and lost, while you sec the
stick plainly all the way. In nature's sunlight it would have been
the direct reverse: you would have seen the shadow black and
sharp all the way down; but you would have had to look for the
stick, which in all probability would in several places have been
confused with the stone behind it.

And so throughout the works of Claude, Poussin, and Salvator,
we shall find, especially in their conventional foliage, and un-
articulated barbarisms of rock, that their whole sum and substance
of chiaroscuro are merely the gradation and variation which nature
gives in the body of her shadows, and that all which they do to express
sunshine, she does to vary shade. They take only one step, while
she always takes two; marking, in the first place, with violent
decision, the great transition from sun to shade, and then varying
the shade itself with a thousand gentle gradations and double
shadows, in themselves equivalent, and more than equivalent, to
all that the old masters did for their entire chiaroscuro.

Now if there be one principle or secret more than another, on § 6, The
which Turner depends for attaining brilliancy of light, it is his SiteSVorka
clear and exquisite drawing of the shadoim. Whatever is obscure, respect.

misty, or undefined, in his objects or liis atmosphere, he takes care
that the shadows he sharp and clear; and then he knows that the
light will take care of itself, and he makes them clear, not by black-
ness, but by excessive evenness, unity, and sharpness of edge. He
will keep them clear and distinct, and make them felt as shadows,
though they are so faint, that, but for their decisive forms, we
should not have observed them for darkness at all. He will throw
them one after another like transparent veils, along the earth and
upon the air, till the whole picture palpitates with them, and yet
the darkest of them will be a faint grey, imbued and penetrated
with light. The pavement on the left of the Hero and Leander, is
about the most thorough piece of this kind of sorcery that I re-
member in art; but of the general principle, not one of his works is
without constant evidence. Take the vignette of the garden oppo-
site the titlepage of Rogers's Poems, and note the drawing of the
nearest balustrade on the right. The balusters themselves are faint
and misty, and the light through them feeble; but the shadows of
them are sharp and dark, and the intervening light as intense as
it can be left. And see how much more distinct the shadow of the
running figure is on the pavement, than the chequers of the pave-
ment itself. Observe the shadows on the trunk of the tree at page
91., how they conquer all the details of the trunk itself, and become
darker and more conspicuous than any part of the boughs or limbs,
and so in the vignette to Campbell's Beech-tree's Petition. Take
the beautiful concentration of all that is most characteristic of Italy
as she is, at page 168. of Rogers's Italy, where we have the long
shadows of the trunks made by far the most conspicuous thing
in the whole foregrotind, and hear how Wordsworth, the keenest-
eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in nature,
illustrates Turner here, as we shall find him doing in all other
points: —

" At the root
Of that tall pine, the shadow of avIiosc bare
And slender stem, while here I sit at eve,
Oft stretches tow'rds me, like a long straight path.
Traced faintly in the greenswai-d."

as those I have above given. Words are not accurate enough, nor § 6. The eflFect

delicate enough to express or trace the constant, all-pervading in- upon^^e^i^ght

I need scarcely insist farther on the marked distinction between § 7. The dis-
the works of the old masters and those of the great modern land- go"o?bptween'
scape painters in this respect. It is one which the reader can

perfectly well work out for himself, by the slightest systematic
attention; one which he will find existing, not merely between
this work and that, but throughout the whole body of their pro-
ductions, and down to every leaf and line. And a little careful
watching of nature, especially in her foliage and foregrounds, and
comparison of her with Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator, will
soon show him that those artists worked entirely on conventional
principles, not representing what they saw, but what they thought
would make a handsome picture; and even when they went to
nature, which I believe to have been a very much rarer practice
with them than their biographers would have us suppose, they copied
her like children, drawing what they knew to be there, but not what
they saw there. ^ I believe you may search the foregrounds of
Claude, from one end of Europe to another, and you will not find
the shadow of one leaf cast upon another. You will find leaf after
leaf painted more or less boldly or brightly out of the black ground,
and you will find dark leaves defined in perfect form upon the light;
but you will not find the form of a single leaf disguised or inter-
rupted by the shadow of another. And Poussin and Salvator are
still farther from anything like genuine truth. There is nothing
in their pictures which might not be manufactured in their painting-
room, with a branch or two of brambles and a bunch or two of
weeds before them, to give them the form of the leaves. And it
is refreshing to turn from their ignorant and impotent repetitions
of childish conception, to the clear, close, genuine studies of modern
artists; for it is not Turner only (though here, as in all other
points, the first), who is remarkable for fine and expressive de-
cision of chiaroscuro. Some passages by J. D. Harding are tho-
roughly admirable in this respect, though this master is getting a
little too much into a habit of general keen execution, which
prevents the parts which ought to be especially decisive from
being felt as such, and which makes his pictures, especially
the large ones, look a little thin. But some of his later pas-
sages of rock foreground have been very remarkable for the
exquisite forms and firm expressiveness of their shadows. And

tlie cliiaroscuro of Stanfield is equally deserving of the most
attentive study.

The second point to which I vrish at present to direct attention
has reference to the arrangement of light and shade. It is the con-
stant habit of nature to use both her highest lights and deepest
shadows in exceedingly small quantity; always in points, never in
masses. She will give a large mass of tender light in sky or water,
impressive by its quantity, and a large mass of tender shadow re-
lieved against it, in foliage, or hill, or building; but the light is
always subdued if it be extensive, the shadow always feeble if it be
broad. She will then fill up all the rest of her picture with middle
tints and pale greys of some sort or another, and on this quiet and
harmonious whole, she will touch her high lights in spots: the foam
of an isolated wave, the sail of a solitary vessel, the flash of the
sun from a wet roof, the gleam of a single white-washed cottage,
or some such sources of local brilliancy, she will use so vividly
and delicately as to throw everything else into definite shade by
comparison. And then taking up the gloom, she will use the black
hollows of some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some
shaded figure, or the deptli of some sunless chink of wall or
window, so sharply as to throw everything else into definite light
by comparison; thus reducing the whole mass of her picture to a
aelicate middle tint, approaching, of course, here to light, and there
to gloom; but yet sharply separated from the utmost degrees either
of the one or the other.

Now it is a curious thing that none of our writers on art seem
to have noticed the great principle of nature in this respect. They all
talk of deep shadow as a thing that may be given in quantity ; one
fourth of the picture, or, in certain effects, much more. Barry,
for instance, says that the practice of the great painters, who " best
understood the effects of chiaroscuro," was, for the most part, to
make the mass of middle tint larger than the light, and the mass of
dark larger than the masses of light and middle tint together, i. e.
occupying more than one half of the picture. Now I do not know
what we are to suppose is meant by " understanding chiaroscuro."
If it means being able to manufacture agreeable patterns in the
shape of pyramids, and crosses, and zigzags, into which arms and

legs are to be persuaded, and passion and motion arranged, for the
promotion and encouragement of the cant of criticism, such a prin-
ciple may be productive of the most advantageous results. But if
it means, being acquainted with the deep, perpetual, systematic,
unintrusive simplicity and unwearied variety of nature's chiaroscuro;
if it means the perception that blackness and sublimity are not
synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be coadjutors;
then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a principle,
is anything more than a novice, blunderer, and trickster in chiaro-
And my firm belief is, that though colour is inveighed

against by all artists, as the great Circe of art, the great trans-
former of mind into sensuality, no fondness for it, no study of it,
is half so great a peril and stumbling-block to the young student,
as the admiration he hears bestowed on such artificial, false, and
juggling chiaroscuro, and the instruction he receives, based on such
principles as that given us by Tuseli,—that "mere natural light
and shade, however separately or individually true, is not always
legitimate chiaroscuro in art." It may not always be agreeable to
a sophisticated, unfeeling, and perverted mind; but the student had
better throw up his art at once, than proceed on the conviction that
any other can ever be legitimate. I believe I shall be perfectly well
able to prove, in following parts of the work, that " mere natural
light and shade" is the only fit and faithful attendant of the
highest art; and that all tricks, all visible intended arrangement,
all extended shadows and narrow lights, everything, in fact, in the
least degree artificial, or tending to make the mind dwell upon light
and shade as such, is an injury, instead of an aid, to conceptions of
high ideal dignity. I believe I shall be able also to show, that
nature manages her chiaroscuro a great deal more neatly and
cleverly than people fancy; that " mere natural light and shade "
is a very much finer thing than most artists can put together, and
that none think they can improve upon it but those who never
understood it.

But however this may be, it is beyond dispute that every per-
mission given to the student to amuse himself with painting one
figure all black, and the next all white, and throwing them out
with a background of nothing, every permission given to him to

spoil his pocket-book with sixths of sunshine and sevenths of shade,
and other such fractional sublimities, is so much more difficulty
laid in the way of his ever becoming a master; and that none
are in the right road to real excellence, but those who are struggling
to render the simplicity, purity, and inexhaustible variety of nature's
own chiaroscuro in open cloudless daylight, giving the expanse of
harmonious light, the speaking decisive shadow, and the exquisite
grace, tenderness, and grandeur of aerial opposition of local colour
and equally illuminated lines. Ko chiaroscuro is so difficult as
this ; and none so noble, chaste, or impressive. On this part of
the subject, however, I must not enlarge at present. I wish now
only to speak of those great principles of chiaroscuro, which nature
observes, even when she is most working for effect; when she is
playing with thunderclouds and sunbeams, and throwing one thing
out and obscuring another, with the most marked artistical feeling
and intention: even then, she never forgets her great rule, to give
both the deepest shade and highest light in small quantities; points
of the one answering to points of the other, and both vividly
conspicuous, and separated from the rest of the landscape.

And it is most singular that this separation, which is the great § 12. The sharp
source of brilliancy in nature, should not only be unobserved, but natoe^-g^Ugifts

gradations. Now so surely as this is done, all sunshine is lost, for
imperceptible gradation from light to dark is the characteristic of
objects seen out of sunshine, in what is, in landscape, shadow.
Nature's principle of getting light is the direct reverse. She will
cover her whole landscape with middle tint, in which she will have
as many gradations as you please, and a great many more than you
can paint; but on this middle tint she touches her extreme lights,
and extreme darks, isolated and sharp, so that the eye goes to them
directly, and feels them to be key-notes of the whole composition.
And although the dark touches are less attractive than the light
ones, it is not because they are less distinct, but because they
exhibit nothing; while the bright touches are in parts where every-
thing is seen, and where in consequence the eye goes to rest. But

yet the high lights do not exhibit anything in themselves, they are
too bright and dazzle the eye; and having no shadows in them,
cannot exhibit form, for form can only be seen by shadow of some
kind or another. Hence the highest lights and dee]3est darks agree
in this, that nothing is seen in either of them ; that both are in
exceedingly small quantity, and both are marked and distinct from
the middle tones of the landscape, the one by their brilliancy, the
other by their sharp edges, even though many of the more energetic
middle tints may approach their intensity very closely.

I need scarcely do more than tell you to glance at any one of
the works of Turner, and you will perceive in a moment the
exquisite observation of all these principles; the sharpness, decision,
conspicuousness, and excessively small quantity, both of extreme
light and extreme shade, all the mass of the picture being graduated
and delicate middle tint. Take up the Rivers of France, for in-
stance, and turn over a few of the plates in succession.

1. Chateau Gaillard (vignette). — Black figures and boats, points
of shade; sun-touches on castle, and wake of boat, of light. See
how the eye rests on both, and observe how sharp and separate all
the lights are, falling in spots, edged by shadow, but not melting
off into it.

2. Orleans. — The crowded figures supply both points of shade
and light. Observe the delicate middle tint of both in the whole
mass of buildings, and compare this with the blackness of Canaletto's
shadows, against which neither figures nor anything else can ever
tell, as points of shade.

3. Blois. — White figures in boats, buttresses of bridge, dome of
church on the right, for light; woman on horseback, heads of boats,
for shadow. Note especially the isolation of the light on the church
dome.

4. Chateau de Blois. — Torches and white figiu-es for light, roof
of chapel and monks' dresses for shade,

5. Beaugency. — Sails and spire opposed to buoy and boats. An
exquisite instance of brilliant, sparkling, isolated touches of morning
light. '

reflections, needs no comment. Note the glancing lights under
the bridge. This is a very glorious and perfect instance.

8. St. Julien, Tours.—Especially remarkable for its preservation
of deep points of gloom, because the whole picture is one of ex-
tended shade.

I need scarcely go on. The above instances are taken as they
happen to come, without selection. The reader can proceed for
himself. I may, however, name a few cases of chiaroscuro more
especially deserving of his study —Scene between Quilleboeuf and
Villequier, Honfleur, Light Towers of the Hdve, On the Seine
between Mantes and Vernon, The Lantern at St. Cloud, Con-
fluence of Seine and Marne, Troyes ; the first and last vignette,
and those at pages 36. 63. 95. 184. 192. 203. of Rogers's poems;
the first and second in Campbell; St. Maurice in the Italy, where
note the black stork; Brienne, Skiddaw, May burgh, Melrose,
Jedburgh, in the illustrations to Scott; and the vignettes to Milton;
— not because these are one whit superior to others of his works,
but because the laws of which we have been speaking are more
strikingly developed in them, and because they have been well
engraved. It is impossible to reason from the larger plates, in
which half the chiaroscuro is totally destroyed by the haggling,
blackening, and " making out" of the engravers.

In the first chapter of this section^ I noticed the distinction between
real aerial perspective, and that overcharged contrast of light and
shade bj which the old masters obtained their deceptive effect; and
I showed that, though inferior to them in the precise quality or
tone of aerial colour, our great modern master is altogether more
truthful in the expression of the proportionate relation of all his
distances to one another. I am now about to examine those modes
of expressing space, both in nature and art bj far the most
important, which are dependent, not on the relative hues of
objects, but on the draiving of them: by far the most important,
I say, because the most constant and certain; for nature herself
is not always aerial. Local effects are frequent which interrupt
and violate the laws of aerial tone, and induce strange deception
in our ideas of distance. I have often seen the summit of a
snowy mountain look nearer than its base, owing to the perfect
clearness of the upper air. But the drawing of objects, that is
to say, the degree in which their details and parts are distinct or
confused, is an unfailing and certain criterion of their distance;
and if this be rightly rendered in a painting, we shall have genuine

' I have left this chapter in its original place, becaiisc I am more than ever convinced
of the truth of the position advanced in the 8th paragraph; nor can I at present assign
any other cause, than that here given, for what is there asserted ; and yet I cannot but
think that I have allowed far too much influence to a change so slight as that which we
insensibly make in the focus of the eye; and that the real justification of Tumei-'s
practice, with respect to some of his foregi-ounds, is to be elsewhere sought. I leave the
subject, for the present, to the reader's consideration.

truth of space, in spite of manj errors in aerial tone ; while, if this
be neglected, all space will be destroyed, whatever dexterity of tint
may be employed to conceal the defective drawing.

First, then, it is to be noticed, that the eye, like any other lens,
must have its focus altered, in order to convey a distinct image of
objects at different distances ; so that it is totally impossible to see
distinctly, at the same moment, two objects, one of which is much
farther off than another. Of this, any one may convince himself in
an instant. Look at the bars of your window-frame, so as to get
a clear image of their lines and form, and you cannot, while your
eye is fixed on them, perceive anything but the most indistinct and
shadowy images of whatever objects may be visible beyond. But
fix your eyes on those objects, so as to see them clearly, and though
they are just beyond and apparently beside the window-frame, that
frame will only be felt or seen as a vague, flitting, obscure inter-
ruption to whatever is perceived beyond it. A little attention
directed to this fact will convince every one of its universality, and
prove beyond dispute that objects at unequal distances cannot be
seen together, not from the intervention of air or mist, but from
the impossibility of the rays proceeding from both converging to
the same focus, so that the whole impression, either of one or the
other, must necessarily be confused, indistinct, and inadequate.

But, be it observed (and I have only to request that whatever
I say may be tested by immediate experiment), the difference of
focus necessary is greatest within the first five hundred yards; and
therefore, though it is totally impossible to see an object ten yards
from the eye, and one a quarter of a mile beyond it, at the same
moment, it is perfectly possible to see one a quarter of a mile off,
and one five miles beyond it, at the same moment. The conse-
quence of this is, practically, that in a real landscape, we can see
the whole of what would be called the middle distance and distance
together, with facility and clearness ; but while we do so, we can
see nothing in the foreground beyond a vague and indistinct
arrangement of lines and colours; and that if, on the contrary, we
look at any foreground object, so as to receive a distinct impression
of it, the distance and middle distance become all disorder and
mystery.

And therefore, if in a painting our foreground is anything, our
distance must be nothing, and vice versa; for if we represent
our near and distant objects as giving both at once that distinct
image to the eye, which we receive in nature from each when we
look at them separately'; and if we distinguish them from each
other only by the air-tone and indistinctness dependent on positive
distance, we violate one of the most essential principles of nature;
-we represent that as seen at once which can only be seen by two
separate acts of seeing, and tell a falsehood as gross as if we had
represented four sides of a cubic object visible together.

Now, to this fact and principle, no landscape painter of the old
school, as far as I remember, ever paid the slightest attention.
Finishing their foregrounds clearly and sharply, and with vigorous
impression on the eye, giving even the leaves of their bushes and
grass with perfect edge and shape, they proceeded into the distance
with equal attention to what they could see of its details—they
gave all that the eye can perceive in a distance, when it is fully
and entirely devoted to it; and therefore, though masters of aerial
tone, though employing every expedient that art could supply to
conceal the intersection of lines, though caricaturing the force and
shadow of near objects to throw them close upon the eye, they never
succeeded in truly representing space. Turner introduced a new
era in landscape art, by showing that the foreground might be
sunk for the distance, and that it was possible to express immediate
proximity to the spectator, without giving anything like complete-

' This incapacity of the eye must not be confounded with its incapability to compre-
hend a large portion of lateral space at once. We indeed can see, at any one moment,
little more than one point, the objects beside it being confused and indistinct; but we
need pay no attention to this in art, because we can see just as little of the picture as we
can of the landscape without turning the eye ; and hence any'slurring or confusing of
one part of it, laterally, more than another, is not founded on any truth of nature, but
is an expedient of the artist—and often an excellent and desirable one—to make the
eye rest where he wishes it. Bat as the touch expressive of a distant object is as near
upon the canvass as that expressive of a near one, both are seen distinctly and with the
same focus of the eye ; and hcnce an immediate contradiction of nature results, unless
one or other be given with an artificial or increased indistinctness, expressive of the
appearance peculiar to the unadapted focus. On the other hand, it must be noted that
the greater part of the effect above described is consequent, not on variation of focus, but
on the different angle at which near objects are seen by each of the two eyes, when both
are directed towards the distance.

ness to the forms of the near objects. This, observe, is not done
by slurred or soft lines (always the sign of vice in art), but bj a
decisive imperfection, a firm, but partial assertion of form, which
the eye feels indeed to be close home to it, and yet cannot rest
upon, nor cling to, nor entirely understand, and from which it is
driven away of necessity to those parts of distance on which it is
intended to repose. And this principle, originated by Turner,
and fully carried out by him only, has yet been acted on with
judgment and success by several less powerful artists of the English
school. Some six years ago, the brown moorland foregrounds of
Copley Fielding were very instructive in this respect. Not a line
in them was made out, not a single object clearly distinguishable.
Wet broad sweeps of the brush, sparkling, careless, and accidental
as nature herself, always truthful as far as they went, implying
knowledge, though not expressing it, suggested everything, while
they represented nothing. But far off into the mountain distance
came the sharp edge and the delicate form; the whole intention
and execution of the picture being guided and exerted where the
great impression of space and size was to be given. The spectator
was compelled to go forward into the waste of hills; there, where
the sun broke wide upon the moor, he must walk and wander;
he could not stumble and hesitate over the near rocks, nor stop
to botanize on the first inches of his path.^ And the impression of
these pictures was always great and enduring, as it was simple and
truthful. I do not know anything in art which has expressed more
completely the force and feeling of nature in these particular scenes.
And it is a farther illustration^ of the principle we are insisting
upon, that where, as in some of his later works, he has bestowed
more labour on the foreground, the picture has lost both in space
and sublimity. And among artists in general, who are either not
aware of the principle, or fear to act upon it (for it requires no

' There is no inconsistency, observe, between this passage and what was before as-
serted respecting the necessity of botanical fidelity where the foreground is the object
of attention. Compare Part 11. Sect. I. Chap. VII. § 10 : — "To paint mist rightly,
space rightly, and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else rightly."

® Hardly. It would have been so only had the recently finished foregrounds been as
accurate in detail as they are abundant: they are painful, I believe, not from their
finish, but their falseness.

small courage as well as skill, to treat a foreground with that
indistinctness and mjsterj which they have been accustomed to
consider as characteristic of distance), the foreground is not only
felt, as every landscape painter will confess, to be the most em-
barrassing and unmanageable part of the picture, but, in ninety-
nine cases out of a hundred, will go near to destroy the effect of
the rest of the composition. Thus Gallcott's Trent is severely
injured by the harsh group of foreground figures; and Stanfield
very rarely gets through an Academy picture without destroying
much of its space, by too much determination of near form; while
Harding constantly sacrifices his distance, and compels the spectator
to dwell on the foreground altogether, though indeed, with such

§ 7. Especially foregrounds as he gives us, we are most happy so to do. But it is
in Turner only that we see a bold and decisive choice of the distance
and middle distance, as his great objects of attention; and by him
only that the foreground is united and adapted to it, not by any
want of drawing, or coarseness, or carelessness of execution, but by
the most precise and beautiful indication or suggestion of just so
much of even the minutest forms as the eye can see when its focus
is not adapted to them. And herein is another reason for the
vigour and wholeness of the effect of Turner's works at any dis-
tance ; while those of almost all other artists are sure to lose space
as soon as we lose sight of the details.

And now we see the reason for the singular, and to the ignorant
in art the offensive, execution of Turner's figures. I do not mean

(though in landscape it matters exceedingly little); but that there
are both reason and necessity for that wmit of drawing which gives
even the nearest figures round balls with four pink spots in them
instead of faces, and four dashes of the brush instead of hands and
feet; for it is totally impossible that if the eye be adapted to receive
the rays proceeding from the utmost distance, and some partial
impression from all the distances, it should be capable of perceiving
more of the forms and features of near figures than Turner gives.
And how absolutely necessary to the faithful representation of space
this indecision really is, might be proved with the utmost ease by
any one who had veneration enough for the artist to sacrifice one

of his pictures to his fame; who would take some one of his works
in which the figures were most incomplete, and have them painted
in by any of our delicate and first-rate figure painters, absolutely
preserving every colour and shade of Turner's group, so as not to
lose one atom of the composition, but giving eyes for the pink spots,
and feet for the white ones. Let the picture be so exhibited in
the Academy, and even novices in art would feel at a glance that
its truth of space was gone, that every one of its beauties and
harmonies had undergone decomposition, that it was now a gram-
matical solecism, a painting of impossibilities, a thing to torture the
eye, and ofFend the mind.

OF TRUTH OF SPACE: — SECONDLY, AS ITS APPEARANCE IS
DEPENDENT ON THE POWER OF THE EYE.

In the last chapter, we have seen how indistinctness of individual
distances becomes necessary in order to express the adaptation of
the eye to one or other of them; we have now to examine that
kind of indistinctness which is dependent on real retirement of the
object, even when the focus of the eye is fully concentrated upon it.
The first kind of indecision is that which belongs to all objects
which the eye is not adapted to, whether near or far off: the second
is that consequent upon the want of power in the eye to receive
a clear image of objects at a great distance from it, however atten-
tively it may regard them.

Draw on a piece of white paper a square and a circle, each
about a twelfth or eighth of an inch in diameter, and blacken them
so that their forms may be very distinct; place your paper against
the wall at the end of the room, and retire from it a greater or less
distance accordingly as you have drawn the figures larger or
smaller. You will come to a point where, though you can see both
the spots with perfect plainness, you cannot tell which is the square
and which the circle.

Now this takes place of course with every object in a landscape,
in proportion to its distance and size. The definite forms of the
leaves of a tree, however sharply and separately they may appear
to come against the sky, are quite indistinguishable at fifty yards
off, and the form of everything becomes confused before we finally
lose sight of it. Now if the character of an object, say the front of
a house, be explained by a variety of forms in it, as the shadows in

the tops of the windows, the lines of the architraves, the seams of
the masonry, &c.; these lesser details, as the object falls into
distance, become confused and undecided, each of them losing its
definite form, but all being perfectly visible as something, a white
or a dark spot or stroke, not lost sight of, observe, but yet so seen
that we cannot tell what they are. As the distance increases, the
confusion becomes greater, until at last the whole front of the house
becomes merely a flat pale space, in which, however, there is still
observable a kind of richness and chequering, caused by the details
in it, which, though totally merged and lost in the mass, have still
an influence on the texture of that mass; until at last the whole
house itself becomes a mere light or dark spot which we can plainly
see, but cannot tell what it is, nor distinguish it from a stone or any
other subject.

Now what I particularly wish to insist upon, is the state of § 3. instances
vision in which all the details of an object are seen, and yet seen "i^ects?"^
in such confusion and disorder that we cannot in the least tell what
they are, or what they mean. It is not mist between us and the
object, still less is it shade, still less is it want of character; it is
a confusion, a mystery, an interfering of undecided lines with each

trave and frieze, all are there: it is no cold and vacant mass, it
is full and rich and abundant, and yet you cannot see a single form
so as to know what it is. Observe your friend's face as he is
coming up to you. First it is nothing more than a white spot; now
it is a face, but you cannot see the two eyes, nor the mouth, even
as spots; you see a confusion of lines, a something which you
know from experience to be indicative of a face, and yet you cannot
tell how it is so. Now he is nearer, and you can see the spots for
the eyes and mouth, but they are not blank spots neither; there is
detail in them; you cannot see the lips, nor the teeth, nor the
brows, and yet you see more than mere spots; it is a mouth and
an eye, and there is light and sparkle and expression in them, but
nothing distinct. Now he is nearer still, and you can see that he
is like your friend, but you cannot tell whether he is or not; there
is a vagueness and indecision of line still. Now you are sure, but
even yet there are a thousand things in his face which have their

effect in inducing the recognition, but which you cannot see so as
to know what they are.

Changes hke these, and states of vision corresponding to them,
take place with each and all of the objects of nature, and two great
principles of truth are deducible from their observation. First,
place an object as close to the eye as you like, there is always
something in it which you cannot see, except in the hinted and
mysterious manner above described. You can see the texture of a
piece of dress, but you cannot see the individual threads which
compose it, though they are all felt, and have each of them
influence on the eye. Secondly, place an object as far from the
eye as you like, and until it becomes itself a mere spot, there is
always something in it which you can see, though only in the
hinted manner above described. Its shadows and lines and local
colours are not lost sight of as it retires; they get mixed and
indistinguishable, but they are still there, and there is a difference
always perceivable between an object possessing such details and a
flat or vacant space. The grass blades of a meadow a mile off, are
so far discernible that there will be a marked difference between its
appearance and that of a piece of wood painted green. And thus
nature is never distinct and never vacant, she is always mysterious,
but always abundant; you always see something, but you never
see all.

And thus arise that exquisite finish and fulness which God has
appointed to be the perpetual source of fresh pleasure to the cul-
tivated and observant eye; a finish which no distance can render
invisible, and no nearness comprehensible; which in every stone,
every bough, every cloud, and every wave is multiplied around us,
for ever presented, aud for ever exhaustless. And hence in art,
every space or touch in which we can see everything, or in which
we can see nothing, is false. Nothing can be true which is either
complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest
more than it represents, and every space is false which represents
nothing.

Now, I would not wish for any more illustrative or marked
examples of the total contradiction of these two great principles,
than the landscape works of the old masters, taken as a body;

tlie Dutch masters furnishing- the cases of seeing everything, and the old masters,
the Itahans of seeing nothing. The rule with both is indeed the ^therXtinct
same, differently applied — "You shall see the bricks in the wall, or vacant,
and be able to count them, or you shall see nothing but a dead
flat:" but the Dutch give you the bricks, and the Italians the flat.
Nature's rule being the precise reverse—" You shall never be able
to count the bricks, but you shall never see a dead space."

Take, for instance, the street in the centre of the really great § 6. instances
landscape of Poussin (great in feeling at least) marked 260. in the po^sinr^"^'^^
Dulwich Gallery. The houses are dead square masses with a light
side and a dark side, and black touches for windows. There is no
suggestion of anything in any of the spaces; the light M'^all is dead
grey, the dark wall dead grey, and the windows dead black. How
differently would nature have treated us ! She would have let us
see the Indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the
Virgin at the angles, and the sharp, broken, broad shadows of the
tiled eaves, and the deep-ribbed tiles with the doves upon them,
and the carved Roman capital built into the wall, and the white and
blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the
flapping corners of the mat blinds. All would have been there;
not as such, not like the corn, or blinds, or tiles, not to be com-
prehended or understood, but a confusion of yellow and black spots
and strokes, carried far too fine for the eye to follow, microscopic in
its minuteness, and filling every atom and part of space with mystery,
out of which would have arranged itself the general impression of
truth and life.

Again, take the distant city on the right bank of the river in § 7. From
Claude's Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, in the National Gallery.
I have seen many cities in my life, and drawn not a few; and I
have seen many fortifications, fancy ones included, which frequently
supply us with very new ideas indeed, especially in matters of pro-
portion ; but I do not remember ever having met with either a city
or a fortress entirely composed of round towers of various heights
and sizes, all facsimiles of each other, and absolutely agreeing in
the number of battlements. I have, indeed, some faint recollection
of having delineated such a one in the first page of a spelling-
book when I was four years old; but, somehow or other, the dignity

and perfection of the ideal were not appreciated, and the volume was
not considered to be increased in value by the frontispiece. Without,
however, venturing to doubt the entire sublimity of the same ideal
as it occurs in Claude, let us consider how nature, if she had been
fortunate enough to originate so perfect a conception, would have
managed it in its details. Claude has permitted us to see every
battlement, and the first impulse we feel upon looking at the picture
is to count how many there are. Nature would have given us a
peculiar confused roughness of the upper lines, a multitude of in-
tersections and spots, which we should have known from experience
was indicative of battlements, but which we might as well have
thought of creating as of counting. Claude has given you the
walls below in one dead void of uniform grey. There is nothing
to be seen, or felt, or guessed at in it; it is grey paint or grey
shade, whichever you may choose to call it, but it is nothing more.
Nature would have let you see, nay, would have compelled you to
see, thousands of spots and lines, not one to be absolutely under-
stood or accounted for, but yet all characteristic and different from
each other; breaking lights on shattered stones, vague shadows from
waving vegetation, irregular stains of time and weather, mouldering
hollows, sparkling casements; all would have been there; none,
indeed, seen as such, none comprehensible or like themselves, but
all visible; little shadows and sparkles, and scratches, making that
whole space of colour a transparent, palpitating, various infinity.

Or take one of Poussin's extreme distances, such as that in the
Sacrifice of Isaac. It is luminous, retiring, delicate and perfect
in tone, and is quite complete enough to deceive and delight the
careless eye to which all distances are alike; nay, it is perfect and
masterly, and absolutely right, if we consider it as a sketch,—as a
first plan of a distance, afterwards to be carried out in detail. But
we must remember that all these alternate spaces of grey and gold
are not the landscape itself, but the treatment of it; not its sub-
stance, but its light and shade. They are just what nature would
cast over it, and write upon it with every cloud, but which she
would cast in play, and without carefulness, as matters of the very
smallest possible importance. All her work and her attention would
be given to bring out from underneath this, and through this, the

forms and the material character wliich this can only be valuable
to illustrate, not to conceal. Every one of those broad spaces she
would linger over in protracted delight, teaching you fresh lessons
in every hair's breadth of it, and pouring her fulness of invention
into it, until the mind lost itself in following her : now fringing
the dark edge of the shadow with a tufted line of level forest;
now losing it for an instant in a breath of mist; tlien breaking it
with the white gleaming angle of a narrow brook ; then dwelling
upon it again in a gentle, mounded, melting undulation, over the
other side of which she would carry you down into a dusty space
of soft crowded light, with the hedges and the paths and the
sprinkled cottages and scattered trees mixed up and mingled to-
gether in one beautiful, delicate, impenetrable mystery, sparkling
and melting, and passing away into the sky, without one line of
distinctness, or one instant of vacancy.

Now it is, indeed, impossible for the painter to follow all this, § 9. The
he cannot come up to the same degree and order of infinity, but nece^stty^*!!!

leave no part of that space vacant and unprofitable. If nature
carries out her minutia3 over miles, he has no excuse for general-
izing in inches. And if he will only give us all he can, if he will
give us a fulness as complete and as mysterious as nature's, Ave will
pardon him for its being the fulness of a cup instead of an ocean.
But we will not pardon him, if, because he has not the mile to occupy,
he will not occupy the inch, and because he has fewer means at his
command, will leave half of those in his power unexerted. Still
less will we pardon him for mistaking the sport of nature for her
labour, and for following her only in her hour of rest, without ob-
serving how she has worked for it. After spending centuries in
raising the forest, and guiding the river, and modelling the moun-
tain, she exults over her work in buoyancy of spirit, with playful
sunbeam and flying cloud; but the painter must go through the
same labour, or he must not have the same recreation. Let him
chisel his rock faithfully, and tuft his forest delicately, and then
we Avill allow him his freaks of light and shade, and thank him for
them; but we will not be put off with the play before the lesson,

with the adjunct instead of the essence, with the illustration instead
of the fact.

the minds of most readers, especially of those who are partially
artistical, respecting " generalization," " breadth," " effect," &c. It
were to be wished that our writers on art would not dwell so fre-
quently on the necessity of breadth, without explaining what it
means; and that we had more constant reference made to the prin-
ciple which I can only remember having seen once clearly explained
and insisted on, that breadth is not vacancy. Generalization is
unity, not destruction of parts; and composition is not annihilation,
but arrangement of materials. The breadth which unites the truths
of nature with her harmonies is meritorious and beautiful; but the
breadth which annihilates those truths by the million is not painting
nature, but painting over her. And so the masses which result
from right concords and relations of details are sublime and im-
pressive ; but the masses which result from the eclipse of details
are contemptible and painful.' And we shall show, in following
parts of the work, that distances like those of Poussin are mere
meaningless tricks of clever execution, which, when once discovered,
the artist may repeat over and over again, with mechanical content-
ment and perfect satisfaction, both to himself and to his superficial
admirers, with no more exertion of intellect nor awakening of feeling
than any tradesman has in multiplying some ornamental pattern of
furniture. Be this as it may, however, (for we cannot enter upon
the discussion of the question here,) the falsity and imperfection of
such distances admit of no dispute. Beautiful and ideal they may
be; true they are not: and in the same way we might go through
every part and portion of the works of the old masters, showing
throughout, either that you have every leaf and blade of grass
staring defiance to the mystery of nature, or that you have dead
spaces of absolute vacuity, equally determined in their denial of

' Of course much depends upon the kind of detail so lost. An artist may generalize
the trunk of a tree, where he only loses lines of bark, and do us a kindness; but he
niust not generalize the details of a champaign, in which there is a history of creation.
The full discussion of tlie subject belongs to a future part of our investigation.

her fulness. And even if we ever find (as here and there, in their
better pictures, we do) changeful passages of agreeable playing
colour, or mellow and transparent modulations of mysterious at-
mosphere, even here the touches, though satisfactory to the eye,
are suggestive of nothing; they are characterless; they have
none of the peculiar expressiveness and meaning by which nature
maintains the variety and interest even of what she most conceals.
She always tells a story, however hintedly and vaguely; each of
her touches is different from all the others: and we feel with everv
one, that though we cannot tell what it is, it cannot be any thing;
while even the most dexterous distances of the old masters pretend
to secresy without having anything to conceal, and are ambiguous,
not from the concentration of meaning, but from the want of it.

And now, take up one of Turner's distances, it matters not which § n. The
or of what kind, drawing or painting, small or great, done thirty mystery^of
years ago or for last year's Academy, as you like; say that of the
Mercury and Argus; and look if every fact which I have just been
pointing out in nature be not carried out in it. Abundant beyond
the power of the eye to embrace or follow, vast and various beyond
the power of the mind to comprehend, there is yet not one atom
in its whole extent and mass which does not suggest more than it
represents; nor does it suggest vaguely, but in such a manner as
to prove that the conception of each individual inch of that distance
is absolutely clear and complete in the master's mind, a separate
picture fully worked out: but yet, clearly and fully as the idea is
formed, just so much of it is given, and no more, as nature would
have allowed us to feel or see; just so much as would enable a
spectator of experience and knowledge to understand almost every
minute fragment of separate detail, but appears, to the unpractised
and careless eye, just what a distance of nature's own would appear,
an unintelligible mass. Not one line out of the millions there is
without meaning, yet there is not one which is not affected and
disguised by the dazzle and indecision of distance. No form is
made out, and yet no form is unknown.

Perhaps the truth of this system of drawing is better to be § 12. Farther
understood by observing the distant character of rich architecture, architectural^'^
than of any other object. Go to the top of Highgate Hill on a drawing.

clear summer morning at five o'clock, and look at Westminster
Abbey. You will receive an impression of a building enriched with
multitudinous vertical lines. Try to distinguish one of those lines
all the way down from the one next to it: You cannot. Try to
count them: You cannot. Try to make out the beginning or end
of any one of them: You cannot. Look at it generally, and it is
all symmetry and arrangement. Look at it in its parts, and it is
all inextricable confusion. Am not I, at this moment, describing a
piece of Turner's drawing, with the same words by which I describe
nature ? And what would one of the old masters have done with
such a building as this in his distance? Either he would only
have given the shadows of the buttresses, and the light and dark
sides of the two towers, and two dots for the windows; or if,
more ignorant and more ambitious, he had attempted to render
some of the detail, it would have been done by distinct lines,
would have been broad caricature of the delicate building, felt at
once to be false, ridiculous, and offensive. His most successful
effort would only have given us, through his carefully toned
atmosphere, the effect of a colossal parish church, without one
line of carving on its economic sides. Turner, and Turner only,
would follow and render on the canvass that mystery of decided
line, that distinct, sharp, visible, but unintelligible and inextricable
richness, which, examined part by part, is to the eye nothing but
confusion and defeat, which, taken as a whole, is all unity, symmetry,
and truth. ^

Nor is this mode of representation true only with respect to dis-
tances. Every object, however near the eye, has something about
it which you cannot see, and which brings the mystery of distance
even into every part and portion of what we suppose ourselves to
see most distinctly. Stand in the Piazza di San Marco, at Venice,
as close to the church as you can, without losing sight of the top
of it. Look at the capitals of the columns on the second story.
You see that they are exquisitely rich, carved all over. Tell me

' Vide, for illustration,|Fontainbleau, in the Illustrations to Scott; Vignette at
opening of Human Life, in Rogers's Poems ; Venice, in the Italy ; Chateau de Blois ;
the Rouen, and Pont Neuf, Paiis, in the Rivers of France. The distances of all the
Academy pictures of Venice, especially the Shylock, are most instructive.

Canaletto's painting of this church, in the Palazzo Manfrini, taken of CunaMto.'^

Very different from this, but erring on the other side, is the
ordinary drawing of the architect, who gives the principal lines of
the design with delicate clearness and precision, but with no
uncertainty or mystery about them; whicli mystery being removed,
all space and size are destroyed with it, and we have a drawing of
a model, not of a building. But in the capital lying on the fore-
ground in Turner's Daphne hunting with Leucippus, we have tlie
perfect truth. Not one jag of the acanthus leaves is absolutely
visible, the lines are all disorder, but you feel in an instant that all
are there. And so it will invariably be found through every
portion of detail in his late and most perfect works.

more in the ceaseless and incomparable decoration of nature. The 'anfiscape fore-
grounds.

detail of a single weedy bank laughs the carving of ages to scorn.
Every leaf and stalk has a design and tracery upon it; every knot
of grass an intricacy of shade which the labour of years could
never imitate, and which, if such labour could follow it out even to
the last fibres of the leaflets, would yet be falsely represented, for,
as in all other cases brought forward, it is not clearly seen, but
confusedly and mysteriously. That which is nearness for the
bank, is distance for its details; and however near it may be, the
greater part of those details are still a beautiful incomprehen-
sibility.'

' It is to be remembered, however, that these truths present themselves in all proba-

Hence, throughout the picture, the expression of space and size
is dependent upon obscurity, united with, or rather resultant from,
exceeding fuhiess. We destroy both space and size, either by the
vacancy which affords us no measure of space, or by the distinct-
ness which gives us a false one. The distance of Poussin, having
no indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of any kind,
may be fifty miles off, or may be five: we cannot tell; we have no

bility imder very difFeicnt phases to individuals of different powers of vision. Many
artists who appear to generalize mdely or rashly are perhaps faithfully endeavouring to
render the appearance which nature bears to sight of limited range. Others may be led
by their singular keenness of sight into inexpedient detail. Works which are painted
for effect at a certain distance must be always seen at disadvantage by those whose sight
is of different range from the painter's. Another circumstance to which I ought above
to have alluded is the scale of the picture ; for there arc different degrees of generaliz-
ation, and different necessities of symbolism, belonging to every scale : the stipple of
the miniature painter would be offensive on features of the life size, and the leaves which
Tintorct may articulate on a canvass of sixty feet by twenty-five, must be generalized
by Turner on one of four by three. Another circumstance of some importance is the
assumed distance of the foreground; many landscape painters seem to think their
nearest foreground is always equally near, whereas its distance from the spectator varies
not a little, being always at least its own calculable breadth from side to side as estimated
by figures or any other object of known size at the nearest part of it. With Claude
almost always ; with Turner often, as in the Daphne and Leucippus, this breadth is
foi'ty or fifty yards ; and as the nearest foreground object must then be at least that
distance removed, and ma?/ be much more, it is evident that no completion of close detail
is in such cases allowable (sec here another pi-oof of Claude's erroneous practice); with
Titian and Tintorct, on the contrary, tlie foreground is rarely more than five or six
yards broad, and its objects therefore being only five or six yai'ds distant arc entirely
detailed.

None of these circumstances, however, in any wise affect the great principle, the
confusion of detail taking place sooner or later in all cases. I ought to have noted,
however, that many of the pictures of Turner in which the confused drawing has been
least understood, liave been limiinous twilights-, and tliat the uncertainty of twilight is
therefore added to that of general distance. In the evenings of the south it not luifre-
quently happens that objects touched with the reflected light of the western sky continue,
even for the space of half an hour after sunset, glowing, ruddy, and intense in colour,
and almost as bright as if they were still beneath actual sunshine, even till the moon
begins to cast a shadow : but, in spite of this brilliancy of colour, all the details become
ghostly and ill-defined. This is a favourite moment of Turner's, and he invariably
characterizes it, not by gloom, but by unceitainty of detail. I have never seen the effect
of clear twilight thorouglily rendered by art; tliat cffect in M'hicli all details are lost,
while intense clearness and light are still felt in the atmosphere, in which nothing is dis-
tinctly seen; and yet it is not darkness, far less mist, that is the cause of concealment.
Turner's efforts at rendering this effect (as the Wilderness of Engedi, Assos, Chateau
de Blois, Caer-laverock, and others innumerable) have always some slight appearance
of mistiness, owing to the indistinctness of details; but it remains to be shown that any
closer approximation to the effect is possible.

measure, and in consequence, no vivid impression. But a middle
distance of Hobbima's involves a contradiction in terms; it states
a distance by perspective, winch it contradicts by distinctness of
detail.

A single dusty roll of Turner's brush is more truly expressive of § 17. Swift
the infinity of foliage, than the niggling of Hobbima could have securcsTerfcc-
rendered his canvass, if he had worked on it till doomsday. What details.
Sir J. Reynolds says of the misplaced labour of his Roman ac-
quaintance on separate leaves of foliage, and the certainty he
expresses that a man who attended to general character would in
five minutes produce a more faithful representation of a tree, than
the unfortunate mechanist in as many years, is thus perfectly true
and well founded; but this is not because details are undesirable,
but because they are best given by swift execution, and because,
individually, they cannot be given at all. But it should be § is. Finish
observed (though we shall be better able to insist upon this point in . n^ceLaiy L

future) that much of harm and error has arisen from the supposition landscape than

and assertions of swift and brilliant historical painters, that the same sutyects.

principles of execution are entirely applicable to landscape, which
are right for the figure. The artist who falls into extreme detail in
drawing the human form, is apt to become disgusting rather than
pleasing. It is more agreeable that the general outline and soft
hues of flesh should alone be given, than its hairs, and veins, and
lines of intersection. And even the most rapid and generalizing
expression of the human body, if directed by perfect knowledge,
and rigidly faithful in drawing, will commonly omit very little of
what is agreeable or impressive. But the exclusively generalizing
landscape painter omits the whole of what is valuable in his subject;
omits thoughts, designs, and beauties by the million, every thing
indeed, which can furnish him with variety or expression. A
distance in Lincolnshire, or in Lombardy, might both be generalized
into such blue and yellow stripes as we see in Poussin; but what-
ever there is of beauty or character in either, depends altogether on
our understanding the details, and feeling the difference between
the morasses and ditches of the one, and the rolling sea of mulberry
trees of the other. And so in every part of the subject, I have no
hesitation in asserting that it is impossible to go too finely, or think

too much about details in landscape^ so that thej be rightly
arranged and rightly massed; but that it is equally impossible to
render any thing like the fulness or the space of nature, except by
that mystery and obscurity of execution which she herself uses, and
in which Turner only has followed her.

We have now rapidly glanced at such general truths of nature as
can be investigated without much knowledge of what is beautiful.
Questions of arrangement, massing, and generalization, I prefer
leaving untouched, until we know something about details, and
something about what is beautiful. All that is desirable, even in
tliese mere technical and artificial points, is based upon truths and
habits of nature; but we cannot understand those truths until we
are acquainted with the specific forms and minor details which they
affect, or out of which they arise. I shall, therefore, proceed to
examine the invaluable and essential truths of specific character and
form ; briefly and imperfectly, indeed, as needs must be, but yet at
length sufficient to enable the reader to pursue, if he will, the
subject for himself.

It is a strange thing liow little in general people know about the § i. The pecu-

he ceases to feel them if he be always with them: hut the sky is
for all; bright as it is, it is not

it is jfitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and
exalting of the heart, for soothing it and purifying it from its
dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, some-
times awful, never the same for two moments together; almost
human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost
divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as
distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is
mortal is essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make
it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensa-
tions ; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than
to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the
Supreme that we are to receive more from the covering vault than
the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the
worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident,
too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchful-
ness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness
and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its
phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has been wet; and
another, it has been windy; and another, it has been warm. Who,
among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the
precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the
horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that
came out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they
melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain ? Who saw the
dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night,
and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves ? All
has passed, unregretted as unseen ; or if the apathy be ever shaken
off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is
extraordinary; and yet it is not in tlie broad and fierce manifesta-
tions of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the
drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime
are developed. God is not in the earthquake, nor inithe fire, but
in the still, small voice. They are but the blunt and the low

faculties of our nature, which can only be addressed through lamp-
black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued passages of
unobstrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual;
that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is
understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and
yet vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated;
which are to be found always, yet each found but once; it is
through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and
the blessing of beauty given. These are what the artist of highest § 4. Many of
aim must study; it is these, by the combination of which his ideal sky altogether
is to be created; these, of which so little notice is ordinarily taken conventional,
by common observers, that I fully believe, little as people in general
are concerned with art, more of their ideas of sky are derived
from pictures than from reality; and that if we could examine the
conception formed in the minds of most educated persons when we
talk of clouds, it would frequently be found composed of fragments
of blue and white reminiscences of the old masters.

I shall enter upon the examination of what is true in sky at
greater length, because it is the only part of a picture of which all,
if they will, may be competent judges. What I may have to assert
respecting the rocks of Salvator, or the boughs of Claude, I can
scarcely prove, except to those whom I can immure for a month or
two in the fastnesses of the Apennines, or guide in their summer
walks again and again through the ravines of Sorrento. But what
I say of the sky can be brought to an immediate test by all, and I
write the more decisively, in the hope that it may be so.

Let us begin then with the simple open blue of the sky. This § 6. Nature
is of course the colour of the pure atmospheric air, not the aqueous quaime™of \he
vapour, but the pure azote and oxygen, and it is the total colour of
the whole mass of that air between us and the void of space. It is
modified by the varying quantity of aqueous vapour siispended in
it, whose colour, in its most imperfect and therefore most visible
state of solution, is pure white (as in steam); which receives, like
any other white, the warm hues of the rays of the sun, and,
according to its quantity and imperfect solution, makes the sky
paler, and at the same time more or less grey, by mixing warm
tones with its blue. This grey aqueous vapour, when very decided.

becomes mist, and when local, cloud. Hence tlie sky is to be
considered as a transparent blue liquid, in which, at various eleva-
tions, clouds are suspended, those clouds being themselves only
particular visible spaces of a substance with which the whole mass
of this liquid is more or less impregnated. Now, we all know this
perfectly well, and yet we so far forget it in practice, that we little
notice the constant connection kept up by nature between her blue
and her clouds; and we are not offended by the constant habit of
the old masters, of considering the blue sky as totally distinct in its
nature, and far separated from the vapours which float in it. With
them, cloud is cloud, and blue is blue, and no kind of connection
between them is ever hinted at. The sky is thought of as a clear,
high, material dome, the clouds as separate bodies suspended beneath
it; and in consequence, however delicate and exquisitely removed
in tone their skies may be, you always look at them, not through
them. Now if there be one characteristic of the sky more valuable
or necessary to be rendered than another, it is that which Words-
worth has given in the second book of the Excursion:

" The chasm of sky above my head
Is Heaven's profoundest azure. No domain
For fickle short-lived clouds, to occupy,
Or to pass through ;—but leather an abyss
In which the everlasting stai's abide,
And whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might tempt
The curious eye to look for them by day."

And, in his American Notes, I remember Dickens notices the same
truth, describing himself as lying drowsily on the barge deck,
looking not at, but through, the sky. And if you look intensely at
the pure blue of a serene sky, you will see that there is a variety
and fulness in its very repose. It is not flat dead colour, but a
deep, quivering, transparent body of penetrable air, in which you
trace or imagine short falling spots of deceiving light, and dim
shades, faint veiled vestiges of dark vapour; and it is this trem-
bling transparency which our great modern master has especially
aimed at and given. His blue is never laid on in smooth coats,
but in breaking, mingling, melting hues, a quarter of an inch of
which, cut off from all the rest of the picture, is still spacious,
still infinite and immeasurable in depth. It is a painting of the

air, something into which you can see, through the parts which are
near jou, into those which are far off; something which has no
surface, and through which we can plunge far and farther, and
without stay or end, into the profundity of space;—whereas, with
all the old landscape painters except Claude, you may indeed go
a long way before you come to the sky, but you will strike hard
against it at last. A perfectly genuine and untouched sky of Claude § 9. And by
is indeed most perfect, and beyond praise, in all qualities of air;
though even with him, I often feel rather that there is a great
deal of pleasant air between me and the firmament, than that the
firmament itself is only air. I do not mean, however, to say a word
against such skies as that of the Enchanted Castle, or that marked
30 in the National Gallery, or one or two which I remember at
Rome; but how little and by how few these fine passages of Claude
are appreciated, is sufficiently proved by the sufferance of such
villanous and unpalliated copies as we meet with all over Europe,
like the Marriage of Isaac, in our own Gallery, to remain under
his name. In fact, I do not remember above ten pictures of
Claude's, in which the skies, whether repainted or altogether copies,
or perhaps from Claude's hand, but carelessly laid in, like that
marked 241, Duhvich Gallery, were not fully as feelingless and
false as those of other masters; while, with the Poussins, there are
no favourable exceptions. Their skies are systematically wrong; § lo. Total
take, for instance, the sky of the Sacrifice of Isaac, It is here high them'in^^

colour IS the sky at the top oi the picture f Is it pale and grey with in his general

the whole sky is covered with dark clouds^ and only one open streak
of light left in the distance from which the whole light proceeds;
but with a clear open sky, and opposite the sun, at noon, such a
yellow horizon as this is physically impossible. Even supposing
that the upper part of the sky were pale and warm, and that the
transition from the one hue to the other were effected imperceptibly
and gradually, as is invariably the case in reality, instead of taking
place within a space of two or three degrees; even then, this gold
yellow would be altogether absurd: but as it is, we have in this
sky (and it is a fine picture, one of the best of Gaspar's that I
know) a notable example of the truth of the old masters, two
impossible colours impossibly united! Find such a colour in
Turner's noon-day zenith as the blue at the top, or such a colour at
a noon-day horizon as the yellow at the bottom, or such a connection
of any colours whatsoever as that in the centre, and then you may
talk about his being false to nature if you will. Nor is this a
solitary instance; it is Gaspar Poussin's favourite and characteristic
effect. I remember twenty such, most of them worse than this, in
the downright surface and opacity of blue. Again, look at the
large Cuyp in the Dulwich Gallery, which Mr. Hazlitt considers
the " finest in the world," and of which he very complimentarily
says, " The tender green of the valleys, the gleaming lake, the
purple light of the hills, have an effect like the down on an unripe
nectarine"! I ought to have apologised before now, for not having
studied sufficiently in Co vent Garden to be provided with terms of
correct and classical criticism. One of my friends begged me to
observe, the other day, that Claude was " pulpy;" another added
the yet more gratifying information that he was " juicy;" and it is
now happily discovered that Cuyp is " downy." Now I dare say
that the sky of this first-rate Cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine:
all that I have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a
sky. The blue remains unchanged and ungraduated over three
fourths of it, down to the horizon; while the sun, in the left-hand
corner, is surrounded with a halo, first of yellow, and then of
crude pink, both being separated from each other, and the last from
the blue, as sharply as the belts of a rainbow, and both together not
ascending ten degrees in the sky. Now it is difficult to conceive

liow any man calling himself a painter could impose sucli a thing on
tlie public, and still more how the public can receive it, as a repre-
sentation of that sunset purple which invariably extends its influence
to the zenith, so that there is no pure blue anywhere, but a purple
increasing in purity gradually down to its point of greatest intensity
(about forty-five degrees from the horizon), and then melting
imperceptibly into the gold, the three colours extending their
influence over the whole sky; so that throughout the whole sweep
of the heaven, there is no one spot where the colour is not in an
equal state of transition, passing from gold into orange, from that
into rose, from that into purple, from that into blue, witli absolute
equality of change, so that in no place can it be said, " Here it
changes," and in no place, " Here it is unchanging." This is
invariably the case. There is no such thing— there never was,
and never will be such a thing, while God's heaven remains as it
is made—as a serene, sunset sky, with its purple and rose in helis
about the sun.

Such bold broad examples of ignorance as these would soon set § The ex-
aside all the claims of the professed landscape painters to truth, of the skies
with wliatever delicacy of colour or manipulation they may be dis- i^Ji^jn^and

some introduced merely as backgrounds to the historical subjects times? niodem
of the older Italians, which there is no matching in modern times;
one would think angels had painted them, for all is now clay and
oil in comparison. It seems as if we had totally lost the art, for
surely otherwise, however little our painters might aim at it or feel
it, they would touch the chord sometimes by accident; but they
never do, and the mechanical incapacity is still more strongly evi-
denced by the muddy struggles of the unhappy Germans, who have
the feeling, partially strained, artificial, and diseased, indeed, but
still genuine enough to bring out the tone, if they had the mechanical
means and technical knowledge. But, however they were obtained,
the clear tones of tliis kind of the older Italians are glorious and
enviable in the highest degree; and we shall show, when we come
to spealc of the beautiful, that they are one of the most just grounds
of the fame of the old masters.

But tliere is a series of plienomena connected witli the open
blue of the sky, which we must take especial notice of, as it is
of constant occurrence in the works of Turner and Claude, the
effects, namely, of visible sunbeams. It will be necessary for us
thoroughly to understand the circumstances under which such
effects take place.

Aqueous vapour or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes
visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows
you not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but
you can see other objects through the dust without obscurity, the
air being thus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation
of light. Where a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust becomes
visible, and a palpable interruption to the sight; so that a transverse
sunbeam is a real obstacle to the vision, you cannot see things
clearly through it.

In the same way, wherever vapour is illuminated by transverse
rays, there it becomes visible as a wliiteness more or less affecting
the purity of the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to
the degree of illumination. But where vapour is in shade, it
has very little effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper
and greyer than it otherwise would be, but not itself, unless very
dense, distinguishable or felt as mist. \

The appearance of mist or whiteness in the blue of the sky is
thus a circumstance which more or less accompanies sunshine, and
which, supposing the quantity of vapour constant, is greatest in the
brightest sunlight. When there are no clouds in the sky, the
whiteness, as it affects the whole sky equally, is not particularly
noticeable. But when there are clouds between us and the sun,
the sun being low, those clouds cast shadows along and through the
mass of suspended vapour. Within the space of these shadows, the
vapour, as above stated, becomes transparent and invisible, and the
sky appears of a pure blue. But where the sunbeams strike, the
vapour becomes visible in the form of the beams, occasioning those
radiating shafts of light which, are one of the most valuable and
constant accompaniments of a low sun. The denser the mist, the
more distinct and sharp-edged will these rays be; when the air
is very clear, they are mere vague, flushing, gradated passages of

light; when it is very thick, they are keen-edged and decisive in
a high degree.

We see then, first, that a quantity of mist dispersed through the
whole space of the sky is necessary to this phenomenon; and
secondly, that what we usually think of as beams of greater bright-
ness than the rest of the sky are, in reality, only a part of that
sky in its natural state of illumination, cut off and rendered brilliant
by the shadows from the clouds, these shadows being in reality
the source of the appearance of beams, so that, therefore, no part
of the sky can present such an appearance, except when there are
broken clouds between it and the sun; and lastly, that the shadows
cast from such clouds are not necessarily grey or dark, but very
nearly of the natural pure blue of a sky destitute of vapour.

Now, as it has been proved that the appearance of beams can § 15. Erroneous
only take place in a part of the sky which has clouds between it repre^n^tah'on^*'
and the sun, it is evident that no appearance of beams can ever of such pheno-
begin from the orb itself, except when there is a cloud or solid old masters,
body of some kind between us and it; but that such appearances
will almost invariably begin on the dark side of some of the clouds
around it, the orb itself remaining the centre of a broad blaze of
united light. Wordsworth has given us, in two lines, the only cir-
cumstances under which rays can ever appear to originate in the
orb itself:

" But rays of light.
Now suddedy diverging from the orb
Ketired behind the mountain tops, or veiled
By the dense air, shot upwards."

And Turner has given us the effect magnificently in the Dartmouth
of the River Scenery. It is frequent among the old masters, and
constant in Claude ; though the latter, from drawing his beams
too fine, represents the effect upon the dazzled eye rather than the
light which actually exists, and approximates very closely to the
ideal which we see in the sign of the Rising Sun; nay, I am
nearly sure that I remember cases in which he has given us the
diverging beam, without any cloud or hill interfering Avith the orb.
It may, perhaps, be somewhat difficult to say how far it is allowable § 16. The ray
VOL. I. P

to represent that kind of ray which is seen by the dazzled eye. It
is very certain that we never look towards a bright sun without
seeing glancing rays issue from it; but it is equally certain that
those rays are no more real existences than the red and blue circles
which we see after having been so dazzled, and that if we are to
represent the rays we ought also to cover our sky with pink and
blue circles. I should on the whole consider it utterly false in
principle to represent the visionary beam, and that we ought only
to show that which has actual existence. Such w^e find to be the
constant practice of Turner. Even where, owing to interposed
clouds, he has beams appearing to issue fi.'om the orb itself, they
are broad bursts of light, not spiky rays; and his more usual prac-
tice is to keep all near the sun in one simple blaze of intense light,
and from the first clouds to throw Ijeams to the zenith, though he
often does not permit any appearance of rays until close to the
zenith itself. Open at the'^SOth page of the Illustrated edition of
Rogers's Poems. You have there a sky blazing with sunbeams;
but they all begin a long way from the sun, and they are accounted
for by a mass of dense clouds surrounding the orb itself. Turn to
the 7th page. Behind the old oak, where the sun is supposed to
be, you have only a blaze of undistinguished light; but up on the
left, over the edge of the cloud, on its dark side, the sunbeam.
Turn to page 192.,—blazing rays again, but all beginning wdiere
the clouds do, not one can you trace to the sun; and observe how
carefully the long shadow on the mountain is accounted for by the
dim dark promontory projecting out near the sun. I need not
multiply examples; you will find various modifications and uses of
these effects throughout his works. But you w^ill not find a single
trace of them in the old masters. They give you the rays issuing
from behind black clouds, because they are a coarse and common
effect wliich could not possibly escape their observation, and be-
cause they are easily imitated. They give you the spiky shafts
issuing from the orb itself, because these are partially symbolical
of light, and assist a tardy imagination, as two or three rays
scratched round the sun with a pen would, though they would be
rays of darkness instead of light.^ But of the most beautiful

' I have left this passage as it stood originally, because it is right as far as it goes;

phenomenon of all, the appearance of the delicate ray far in the
sky, threading its way among the thin, transparent clouds, while
all around the sun is unshadowed fire, there is no record nor
example whatsoever in their works. It was too delicate and
spiritual for them; probably their blunt and feelingless eyes never
perceived it in nature, and their untaught imaginations were not
likely to originate it in the study.

Little is to be said of the skies of our other landscape artists.
In paintings, they are commonly toneless, crude, and wanting in
depth and transparency ; but in drawings, some very perfect and
delicate examples have been produced by various members of tlie
old Water Colour Society, and one or two others: but with respect
to the qualities of which we are at present speaking, it is not right
to compare drawings with paintings, as the wash or spunging, or
other artifices peculiar to water colour, are capable of producing
an appearance of quality which it needs much higher art to produce
in oils.

Taken generally, the open skies of the moderns are inferior in
quality to picked and untouched skies of the greatest of the ancients,
but far superior to the average class of pictures which we have
every day fathered upon their reputation. Nine or ten skies of
Claude might be named which are not to be contended with in
their way, and as many of Cuyp. Teniers has given some very
wonderful passages, and the clearness of the early Italian and
Dutch schools is beyond all imitation. But the common blue daub-
ing which we hear every day in our best galleries attributed to
Claude and Cuyp, and the genuine skies of Salvator, and of both

yet it speaks with too little rcspcct of symbolism, which is often of the highest use in
religious art, and in some measure is allowable in all art. In the works of almost all
the greatest masters there are portions which are explanatory rather than representative,
and typical rather than imitative; nor could these be parted with but at infinite loss.
Note, with respect to the present question, the daring black sunbeams of Titian, in his
woodcut of St. Francis receiving tiie Stigmata; and compare here Part III. Sec. II.
Chap. IV. § 18., Chap. V. § 13. And though I believe that I am right in considering
all such symbolism as out of place in pure landscape, and in attributing that of Claude
to ignorance or inability, and not to feeling, yet I praise Turner not so much for his
absolute refusal to represent the spiky rays about the sun, as for his perceiving and
rendering that which Claude never perceived, the multitudinous presence of radiating
light in the upper sky, and on all its countless ranks of subtle cloud.

P 2

the Poussinsj are not to be compared for an instant with the best
works of modern times, even in quality and transparency; while in
all matters requiring delicate observation or accurate science,— in
all which was not attainable by technicalities of art, and which
depended upon the artist's knowledge and understanding of nature,
—all the works of the ancients are alike the productions of mere
children, sometimes manifesting great sensibility, but proving at
the same time feebly developed intelligence, and ill regulated
observation.

Our next subject of investigation must be the specific character of
clouds, a species of truth which is especially neglected b}^ artists;
first, because as it is within the limits of possibility that a cloud
may assume almost any form, it is difficult to point out, and not
always easy to feel, wherein error consists; and secondly, because
it is totally impossible to study the forms of clouds from nature with
care and accuracy, as a change in the subject takes place between
every touch of the following pencil, and parts of an outline sketched
at different instants cannot harmonize, nature never having in-
tended them to come together. Still if artists were more in the
habit of sketching clouds rapidly, and as accurately as possible in
the outline, from nature, instead of daubing down what they call
" efifects " with the brush, they would soon find there is more
beauty about their forms than can be arrived at by any random
felicity of invention, however brilliant, and more essential character
than can be violated without incurring the charge of falsehood,—
falsehood as direct and definite, though not as traceable, as error in
the less varied features of organic form.

The first and most important character of clouds is dependent
on the different altitudes at which they are formed. The atmo-
sphere may be conveniently considered as divided into three spaces,
each inhabited by clouds of specific character altogether different,
though, in reality, there is no distinct limit fixed between them by
nature, clouds being formed at every altitude, and partaking accord-

ing to their altitude, more or less of the characters of the upper or
lower regions. The scenery of the sky is thus formed of an in-
finitely graduated series of systematic forms of cloud, each of which
has its own region in which alone it is formed, and each of which
has specific characters which can only be properly determined by
comparing them as they are found clearly distinguished by intervals
of considerable space. I shall therefore consider the sky as divided
into three regions: the upper region, or region of the cirrus; the
central region, or region of the stratus; the lower region, or the
region of the rain-cloud.

The clouds which I wish to consider as included in the upper
region, never touch even the highest mountains of Europe, and
may therefore be looked upon as never formed below an elevation
of at least 15,000 feet; they are the motionless multitudinous
lines of delicate vapour with which the blue of the open sky is
commonly streaked or speckled after several days of fine weather.
I must be pardoned for giving a detailed description of their
specific characters, as they are of constant occurrence in the works
of modern artists, and I shall have occasion to speak frequently of
them in future parts of the work. Their chief characters are :

First, Symmetry. They are nearly always arranged in some
definite and evident order, commonly in long ranks reaching
sometimes from the zenith to the horizon, each rank composed
of an infinite number of transverse bars of about the same
length, each bar thickest in the middle, and terminating in a
traceless vaporous point at each side; the ranks are in the di-
rection of the wind, and the bars of course at right angles to it;
these latter are commonly slightly bent in the middle. Fre-
quently two systems of this kind, indicative of two currents of wind,
at different altitudes, intersect each other, forming a network.
Another frequent arrangement is in groups of excessively fine,
silky, parallel fibres, commonly radiating, or having a tendency to
radiate, from one of their extremities, and terminating in a plumy
sweep at the other; these are vulgarly known as " mares' tails."
The plumy and expanded extremity of these is often bent up-
wards, sometimes back and up again, giving an appearance of great
flexibility and unity at tlie same time; as if the clouds were tough,

and would hold together however bent. The narrow extremity is
invariably turned to the wind, and the fibres are parallel with its
direction. The upper clouds always fall into some modification of
one or other of these arrangements. They thus differ from all
other clouds, in having a plan and system; whereas other clouds,
tliough there are certain laws which they cannot break, have yet
perfect freedom from any thing like a relative and general system
of government. The upper clouds are to the lower, what soldiers
on parade are to a mixed multitude; no men walk on their heads
or their hands, and so there are certain laws which no clouds
violate; but there is nothing, except in the upper clouds, resembling
symmetrical discipline.

Secondly, Sharpness of Edge. The edges of the bars of the § 5. Their
upper clouds which are turned to the wind, are often the sharpest deUcac^^^
which the sky shows; no outline whatever of any other kind of
cloud, however marked and energetic, ever approaches the delicate
decision of these edges. The outline of a black thimder-cloud is
striking, from the great energy of the colour or shade of the
general mass; but as a line, it is soft and indistinct, compared with
the edge of the cirrus in a clear sky with a brisk breeze. On the
other hand, the edge of the bar turned away from the wind is
always soft, often imperceptible, melting into the blue interstice
between it and its next neighbour. Commonly, the sharper one
edge is, the softer is the other; and the clouds look flat, and as if
they slipped over each other like the scales of a fish. When both
edges are soft, as is always the case when the sky is clear and
windless, the cloud looks solid, round, and fleecy.

Thirdly, Multitude. The delicacy of these vapours is sometimes § 6. Their
carried into such an infinity of division, that no other sensation of
number that the earth or heaven can give is so impressive.
Number is always most felt when it is symmetrical (vide Burke
oh " Sublime," part ii. sect. 8.), and, therefore, no sea-waves nor
fresh leaves make their number so evident or so impressive as these
vapours. Nor is nature content with an infinity of bars or lines
alone; each bar is in its turn severed into a number of small
undulatory masses, more or less connected according to the violence
of the wind. When this division is merely effected by undulation,

the cloud exactly resembles sea-sand ribbed by the tide ; but when
the division amounts to real separation we have the mottled or
mackerel skies. Commonly, the greater the division of its bars,
the broader and more shapeless is the rank or field, so that in the
mottled sky it is lost altogether, and we have large irregular fields
of equal size, masses like flocks of sheep; such clouds are three or
four thousand feet below the legitimate cirrus. I have seen them
cast a shadow on Mont Blanc at sunset, so that they must descend
nearly to within fifteen thousand feet of the earth.

Fourthly, Purity of Colour. The nearest of these clouds,
those over the observer's head, being at least three miles above
him, and the greater number of those which enter the ordinary
sphere of vision, farther from him still, their dark sides are much
greyer and cooler than those of other clouds, owing to their
distance. They are composed of the purest aqueous vapour, free
from all foulness of earthy gases, and of this in the lightest and
most ethereal state in which it can be, to be visible. Farther,
they receive the light of the sun in a state of far greater intensity
than lower objects, the beams being transmitted to them through
atmospheric air far less dense, and wholly unaffected by mist,
smoke, or any other impurity. Hence their colours arc more pure
and vivid, and their white less sullied than those of any other
clouds.

Lastly, Variety. Variety is never so conspicuous, as when it is
united wdth symmetry. The perpetual change of form in other
clouds is monotonous in its very dissimilarity, nor is difference
striking where no connexion is implied; but if through a range of
barred clouds crossing half the heaven, all governed by the same
forces and falling into one general form, there be yet a marked and
evident dissimilarity between each member of the great mass,—one
more finely drawn, the next more delicately moulded, the next
more gracefully bent, each broken into differently modelled and
variously numbered groups,—the variety is doubly striking, because
contrasted with the perfect symmetry of which it forms a part.
Hence, the importance of the truth, that nature never lets one of
the members of even her most disciplined groups of cloud be like
another; but though each is adapted for the same function, and in

its great features resembles all the others, not one, out of the
millions with which the sky is chequered, is without a separate
beauty and character, appearing to have had distinct thought
occupied in its conception, and distinct forces in its production;
and in addition to this perpetual invention, visible in each member
of each system, we find systems of separate cloud intersecting each
other, the sweeping lines mingled and interwoven with the rigid
bars, these in their turn melting into banks of sand-like ripple and
flakes of drifted and irregular foam; under all, perhaps the massy
outline of some lower cloud moves heavily across the motionless
buoyancy of the upper lines, and indicates at once their elevation
and their repose.

Such are the great attributes of the upper cloud region; wliether § 9. Total
they are beautiful, valuable, or impressive, it is not our present thrsiigwLT^"
business to decide, nor to endeavour to discover the reason of the

somewhat remarkable fact, that the whole field of ancient landscape in ancient
art affords, as far as we remember, but one instance of any effort
whatever to represent the character of this cloud region. That one
instance is the landscape of Rubens in our own Gallery, in which
the mottled or fleecy sky is given with perfect truth and exquisite
beauty. To this should perhaps be added, some of the backgrounds
of the historical painters, where horizontal lines were required, and
a few level bars of white or warm colour cross the serenity of the
blue. These, as far as they go, are often very perfect, and the
elevation and repose of their effect might, we should have thought,
have pointed out to the landscape painters that there was some-
thing to be made out of the high clouds. Not one of them,
however, took the hint. To whom, among them all, can we look
for the slightest realization of the fine and faithful descriptive
passage of the Excursion, already alluded to ? —

" But rays of light,
Now suddenly diverging from the orb
Retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled
By tlie dense air, shot upwards to the croAvn
Of the blue firmament—aloft — and wide :
And multitudes of little floating clouds,
Ere we, who saw, of change were conscious, pierced
Through their ethei'eal texture, had become
Vivid as fire—clouds separately poised,

Innumerable multitude of forms
Scattered through half the circle of the sky ;
And giving back, and shedding each on each,
With prodigal communion, the bright hues
Whicli from the unapparent fount of glory
• They had imbibed, and ceased not to receive.

That which the heavens displayed the liquid deep
Repeated, but with unity sublime."

modification, and given its every phase and feature; at all hours,
in all seasons, he has followed its passions and its changes, and has
brought down and laid open to the world another apocalypse of
Heaven.

There is scarcely a painting of Turner's, in which serenity of
sky and intensity of light are aimed at together, in which these
clouds are not used, though there are not two cases in which they
are used altogether alike. Sometimes they are crowded together
in masses of mingling light, as in the Shylock; every part and
atom sympathizing in that continuous expression of slow movement
which Shelley has so beautifully touched:

" Underneath the young grey dawn
A multitude of dense, white, fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains.
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind"

At other times they are blended with tlie sky itself, felt only
here and there by a ray of light calling them into existence out of
its misty shade, as in the Mercury and Ai'gus; sometimes, where
great repose is to be given, they appear in a few detached, equal,
rounded flakes, which seem to hang motionless, each like the
shadow of the other, in the deep blue of the zenith, as in the
Acro-Corinth; sometimes they are scattered in fiery flying frag-
ments, each burning with separate energy, as in the Temeraire;
sometimes woven together with fine threads of intermediate dark-
ness, melting into the blue, as in the Napoleon. But in all cases
the exquisite manipulation of the master gives to pach atom of the

multitude its own character and expression. Though they be
countless as leaves, each has its portion of light, its shadow", its
reflex, its peculiar and separating form.

Take for instance the illustrated edition of Rogers's Poems and § ii. His vig-
open it at the 80th page, and observe how every attribute which I "iftL^Sea?^^
have pointed out in the upper sky is there rendered with the
faithfulness of a mirror ; the long lines of parallel bars, the delicate
curvature from the wind, which the inclination of the sail shows you
to be from the west; the excessive sharpness of every edge which is
turned to the wind, the faintness of every opposite one, the breaking
up of each bar into rounded masses ; and finally, the inconceivable
variety with which individual form has been given to every member
of the multitude, and not only individual form, but roundness and
substance even where there is scarcely a hair's breadth of cloud to
express them in. Observe, above everything, the varying indication
of space and depth in the whole, so that you may look through
and through from one cloud to another, feeling not merely how
they retire to the horizon, but how they melt back into the recesses
of the sky ; every interval being filled with absolute air, and all its
spaces so melting and fluctuating, and fraught with change as with
repose, that as you look, you will fancy that the rays shoot higher
and higher into the vault of light, and that the pale streak of
horizontal vapour is melting away from the cloud that it crosses.
Now watch for the next barred sunrise, and take this vignette to
the window, and test it by nature's own clouds, among which you
will find forms and passages, I do not say merely like, but
apparently the actual originals of parts of this very drawing. And
with whom will you do this, except with Turner? Will you do it
with Claude, and set that blank square yard of blue, with its
round, white, flat fixtures of similar cloud, beside the purple infinity
of nature, with her countless multitudes of shadowy lines, and flaky
waves, and folded veils of variable mist? Will you do it with
Poussin, and set those massy steps of unyielding solidity, with the

' I use this work frequentlv for illustration, because it is the only one I know in
which the engraver has worked with delicacy enough to give the real forms and touches
of Turner. I can reason from these plates (in question of form only) nearly as well as I
could from the drawings.

chariot and four driving up tliem, by the side of the delicate forms
which terminate in threads too fine for the eye to follow them,
and of texture so thin woven that the earliest stars shine through
them ? Will you do it with Salvator, and set that volume of violent
and restless manufactory smoke beside those calm and quiet bars,
which pause in the heaven as if they would never leave it more ?
§ 12. His use Now we have just seen how Turner uses the sharp-edged cirri,
elpriL^ng mist wlien he aims at giving great transparency of air. But it was
shown in the preceding chapter that sunbeams, or the appearance
of them, are always sharper in their edge in proportion as the air
is more misty, as they are most defined in a room where there is
most dust flying about in it. Consequently, in the vignette we have
been just noticing, where transparency is to be given, though there
is a blaze of light, its beams are never edged; a tendency to rays
is visible, but you cannot in any part find a single marked edge of
a rising sunbeam, the sky is merely more flushed in one place
than another. Now let us see what Turner does when he wants
mist. Turn to the Alps at Daybreak, page 193. in the same book.
Here we have the cirri used again, but now they have no sharp
edges; they are all fleecy and mingling with each other, though
every one of them has the most exquisite indication of individual
form, and they melt back, not till they are lost in exceeding light,
as in the other plate, but into a mysterious, fluctuating, shadowy
sky, of which, though the light penetrates through it all, you
perceive every part to be charged with vapour. Notice particularly
the half-indicated forms even where it is most serene, behind the
snowy mountains. And now, how are the siinbeams drawn ? No
longer indecisive, flushing, palpitating, every one is sharp and clear,
and terminated by definite shadow ; note especially the marked lines
on the upper clouds; finally, observe the difference in the mode of
indicating the figures, which are here misty and vindistinguishable,
telling only as shadows, thougli they are near and large, while
those in the former vignette came clear upon the eye, though they
Avere so far off* as to appear mere points.
§ 13. His con- Now is this perpetual consistency in all points, this concentration
every minor every fact wliich can possibly bear upon what we are to be told,

which fills eveiy part and space of the picture with coincidences of
witness, which come out upon us, as they would from the reality,
more fully and deeply in proportion to the knowledge we possess
and the attention we give, admirable or not? I could go on
writing page after page on every sky of Turner's, and pointing out
fresh truths in every one. In the Havre, for instance, of the Hi vers
of France, we have a new fact pointed out to vis with respect to
these cirri, namely, their being so faint and transparent as not to
be distinguishable from the blue of the sky (a frequent case),
except in the course of a sunbeam, which, however, does not
illumine their edges, they being not solid enough to reflect light,
but penetrates their whole substance, and renders them flat
luminous forms in its path, instantly and totally lost at its edge.
And thus a separate essay would be reqiiired by every picture, to
make fully understood the new phenomena which it treated and
illustrated. But after once showing what are the prevailing cha-
racteristics of these clouds, we can only leave it to the reader to
trace them wherever they occur. There are some fine and charac-
teristic passages of this kind of cloud given by Stanfield, though he
dares not use them in multitude, and is wanting in those refined
qualities of form which it is totally impossible to explain in words,
but which, perhaps, by simple outlines, on a large scale, selected
from the cloud forms of various artists, I may in following portions
of the work illustrate with the pencil.

Of the colours of these clouds I have spoken before (Sec. I. § u. The
Chap. II.); but though I then alluded to their purity and vivid- uppwdoids.
ness, I scarcely took proper notice of their variety ; there is hideed
in nature variety in all things, and it would be absurd to insist on
it in each case, yet the colours of these clouds are so marvellous in
their changefulness, that they require particular notice. If you
watch for the next sunset when there are a considerable number
of these cirri in the sky, you will see, especially at the zenith, that
the sky does not remain of the same colour for two inches together.
One cloud has a dark side of cold blue, and a fringe of milky
white; another, above it, has a dark side of purple and an edge of
red; another neai'er the sun, has an under side of orange and an
edge of gold : these you will find mingled with, and passing into.

tlie blue of the sky, which in places you will not be able to dis-
tinguish from the cool grey of the darker clouds, and which
will be itself full of gradation, now pure and deep, now faint and
feeble. And all this is done, not in large pieces, nor on a large scale,
but over and over again in every square yard, so that there is no
single part nor portion of the whole sky which has not in itself
variety of colour enough for a separate picture, and yet no
single part which is like another, or which has not some peculiar
source of beauty, and some peculiar arrangement of colour of its
own. Now instead of this you get in the old masters, — Cuyp, or
Claude, or whoever they may be, — a field of blue, delicately,
beautifully, and uniformly shaded down to the yellow sun, with a
certain number of similar clouds, each witli a dark side of the same
grey, and an edge of the same yellow. I do not say that nature
never does anything like this, but I say that her principle is to do
a great deal more ; and that what she does more than this,—what
I have above described, and what you may see in nine sunsets out
of ten,—has been observed, attempted, and rendered by Turner
only, and by him with a fidelity and force which present us with
more essential truth, and more clear expression and illustration of
natural laws, in every wreath of vapour, than composed the whole
stock of heavenly information which lasted Cuyp and Claude their
lives.

We close then our present consideration of the upper clouds, to
return to them when we know what is beautiful: we have at
present only to remember that of these clouds, and the truths con-
nected with tliem, none before Turner had taken any notice
whatsoever; that had they therefore been even feebly and im-
perfectly represented by him, they would yet have given him a
claim to be considered more extended and universal in his state-
ment of truths than any of his predecessors. How much more when
we find that deep fidelity in his studied and perfect skies which
opens new sources of delight to every advancement of our know-
ledge, and to every added moment of our contemplation !

We have next to investigate tlie diaracter of the Central Cloud
Region, which I consider as including all clouds which are the
usual cliaracteristic of ordinary serene weather, and which touch
and envelope the mountains of Switzerland, but never affect those
of our own island; they may therefore be considered as occupying
a space of air ten thousand feet in height, extending from five to
fifteen thousand feet above the sea.

These clouds, according to their elevation, appear with great
variety of form, often partaking of the streaked or mottled
character of the higher region, and as often, when the precursors
of storm, manifesting forms closely connected with the lowest rain-
clouds ; but the species especially characteristic of the central
region is a white, ragged, irregular, and scattered vapour, which
has little form and less colour, and of which a good example may
be seen in the largest landscape of Cuyp in the Dulwich Gallery.
When this vapour collects into masses, it is partially rounded,
clumsy, and ponderous, as if it would tumble out of the sky,
shaded with a dull grey, and totally devoid of any appearance of
energy or motion. Even in nature, these clouds are com-
paratively uninteresting, scarcely worth raising our heads to look
at; and, on canvass, valuable only as a means of introducing light,
and breaking the monotony of blue; yet they are, perhaps, beyond
all others the favourite clouds of the Dutch masters. Whether
they had any motive for the adoption of such materials, beyond the
extreme facility with which acres of canvass might thus be covered

without any troublesome exertion of thought; or any temptation
to such selections beyond the impossibility of error where nature
shows no form, and the impossibility of deficiency where she shows
no beauty, it is not here the place to determine. Such skies are
happily beyond the reach of criticism, for he who tells you nothing
cannot tell you a falsehood. A little flake-white, glazed with a
light brush over the carefully toned blue, permitted to fall into
whatever forms chance might determine, with the single precaution
that their edges should be tolerably irregular, supplied in hundreds
of instances a sky quite good enough for all ordinary purposes,
quite good enough for cattle to graze, or boors to play at nine-pins
under, and equally devoid of all that could gratify, inform, or
offend.

But although this kind of cloud is, as I have said, typical of the
central region, it is not one which nature is fond of. She scarcely
ever lets an hour pass without some manifestation of finer forms,
sometimes approaching the upper cirri, sometimes the lower
cumulus. And then, in the lower outlines, we have tlie nearest
approximation which nature ever presents to the clouds of Claude,
Salvator, and Poussin, to the characters of which I must request
especial attention, as it is here only that we shall have a fair op-
portunity of comparing their skies with those of the modern school.
I shall, as before, glance rapidly at the great laws of specific form,
and so put it in the power of the reader to judge for himself of the
truth of representation.

Clouds, it is to be remembered, are not so much local vapour,
as vapour rendered locally visible by a fall of temperature. Thus
a cloud, whose parts are in constant motion, will hover on a snowy
mountain, pursuing constantly the same track upon its flanks, and
yet remaining of the same size, the same form, and in the same
place, for half a day together. No matter how violent or how
capricious the wind may be, the instant it approaches the spot
where the chilly influence of the snow extends, the moisture it
carries becomes visible, and then and there the cloud forms on the
instant, apparently maintaining its form against the wind, though
the careful and keen eye can see all its parts in the most rapid'
motion across the mountain. The outlines of such a cloud are of

course not determined by the irregular impulses of the wind, but
by the fixed lines of radiant heat which regulate the temperature
of the atmosphere of the mountain. It is terminated, therefore,
not by changing curves, but by steady right lines of more or less
decision, often exactly correspondent with the outline of the moun-
tain on which it is formed, and falling therefore into grotesque
peaks and precipices. I have seen the marked and angular outline
of the Grandes Jorasses, at Chamonix, mimicked in its every jag
by a line of clouds above it. Another resultant phenomenon is the
formation of cloud in the calm air to leeward of a steep summit;
cloud whose edges are in rapid motion, where they are affected by
the current of the wind above, and stream from the peak like the
smoke of a volcano, yet always vanish at a certain distance from it
as steam issuing from a chimney. When wet weather of some
duration is approaching, a small white spot of cloud will sometimes
appear low on the hill flanks; it will not move, but will increase
gradually for some little time, then diminish, still without moving;
disappear altogether, reappear ten minutes afterwards, exactly in
the same spot; increase to a greater extent than before, again
disappear, again return, and at last permanently; other similar
spots of cloud forming simultaneously, with various fluctuations,
each in its own spot, and at the same level on the hill-side, until
all expand, join together, and form an unbroken veil of threatening
grey, which darkens gradually into storm. What in such cases
takes place palpably and remarkably, is more or less a law of
formation in all clouds whatsoever ; they being bounded rather by
lines expressive of changes of temperature in the atmosphere, than
by the impulses of the currents of wind in which those changes
take place. Even when in rapid and visible motion across the sky,
the variations which take place in their outlines are not so much
alterations of position and arrangement of parts, as they are the
alternate formation and disappearance of parts. There is, therefore, § 5. Their
usually a parallelism and consistency in their great outlines, which and"generai"*
give system to the smaller curves of which they are composed;
and if these great lines be taken, rejecting the minutiae of variation,
the resultant form will almost always be angular, and full of
character and decision. In the flock-like fields of equal masses,
VOL. T. Q

each individual mass lias the effect, not of an ellipse or circle, but
of a rhomboid; the sky is crossed and chequered, not honey-
combed; in the lower cumuli, even though the most rounded of
all clouds, the groups are not like balloons or bubbles, but like
towers or mountains. And the result of this arrangement in
masses more or less angular, varied with, and chiefly constructed
of, curves of the utmost freedom and beauty, is that appearance of
exhaustless and fantastic energy which gives every cloud a marked
character of its own, suggesting resemblances to the specific
outlines of organic objects. I do not say that such accidental
resemblances are a character to be imitated; but merely that they
bear witness to the originality and vigour of separate conception in
cloud forms, which give to the scenery of the sky a force and
variety no less delightful than that of the changes of mountain
outline in a hill district of great elevation; and that there is added
to this a spirit-like feeling, a capricious mocking imagery of
passion and life, totally different from any effects of inanimate
form that the earth can show.

The minor contours, out of which the larger outlines are com-
posed, are indeed beautifully curvilinear; but they are never
monotonous in their curves. First comes a concave line, then a
convex one, then an angular jag breaking oft' into spray, then a
downright straight line, then a curve again, then a deep gap, and
a place where all is lost and melted away, and so on; displaying
in every inch of the form renewed and ceaseless invention, setting
off grace with rigidity, and relieving flexibility with force, in a
manner scarcely less admirable, and far more changeful, than even
in the muscular forms of the human frame. Nay, such is the
exquisite composition of all this, that you may take any single
fragment of any cloud in the sky, and you will find it put together
as if there had been a year's thought over the plan of it, arranged
with the most studied inequality, with the most delicate symme-
try, with the most elaborate contrast, a picture in itself. You
may try every other piece of cloud in the heaven, and you will
find them every one as perfect, and yet not one in the least like
another.

proved, be liiglily expedient and proper, in art, that tliis variety, characters, as
individuality, and angular character should be changed into a mass rqs^^ ^^
of convex curves, each precisely like its neighbour in all respects,
and unbroken from beginning to end; it may be highly original,
masterly, bold, whatever you choose to call it; but it is fahe. I
do not take upon me to assert that the clouds which in ancient
Germany were more especially and peculiarly devoted to the
business of catching princesses off desert islands, and carrying
them to enchanted castles, might not have possessed something of
the pillowy organization which we may suppose best adapted for
functions of such delicEicy and despatch: but I do mean to say
that the clouds which Grod sends upon his earth as the ministers of
dew, and rain, and shade, and with which he adorns his heaven,
setting them in its vault for the thrones of his spirits, have not, in
one instant or atom of their existence, one feature in common with
such conceptions and creations. And there are, beyond dispute,
more direct and unmitigated falsehoods told, and more laws of
nature set at open defiance, in one of the " rolling " skies of Salvator,
such as that marked 159. in the Dulwich Gallery, than were ever
attributed, even by the ignorant and unfeeling, to all the wildest
flights of Turner put together.

And it is not as if the error were only occasional. It is sys- § 8. Monotony
tematic and constant in all the Italian masters of the seventeenth of t/e cituds^of
century, and in most of the Dutch. They looked at clouds, as at g^^o^f
everything else which did not particularly help them in their great generally,
end of deception, with utter carelessness and bluntness of feeling;
saw that there were a great many rounded passages in them;
found it much easier to sweep circles than to design beauties, and
sat down in their studies, contented with perpetual repetitions of
the same spherical conceptions, having about the same relation to
the clouds of nature, that a child's carving of a turnip has to the
head of the Apollo. Look at the round things about the sun in
the bricky Claude, the smallest of the three Sea-ports in the
National Gallery. They are a great deal more like half-crowns
than clouds. Take the ropy tough-looking wreath in the Sacrifice
of Isaac, and find one part of it, if you can, which is not the repe-
tition of every other part of it, all together being as round and

vapid as the brush could draw them; or take the two cauliflower-
like protuberances in No. 220. of the Dulwich Gallery, and admire
the studied similarity between them; you cannot tell which is
which; or take the so-called Nicholas Poussin, No. 212. Dulwich
Gallery, in which, from the brown trees to the right-hand side of
the pictux'e, there is not one line which is not physically impossible.
S 9. Vast, size But it is not the outline only which is thus systematically false,
masses^of^doud. The drawing of the solid form is worse still, for it is to be remem-
bered that although clouds of course arrange themselves more or
less into broad masses, with a light side and dark side, both their
light and shade are invariably composed of a series of divided
masses, each of whicli has in its outline as much variety and cha-
racter as the great outline of the cloud; presenting therefore, a
thousand times repeated, all that I have described as characteristic
of the general form. Nor are these multitudinous divisions a truth
of slight importance in the character of sky, for they are dependent
on, and illustrative of, a quality which is usually in a great degree
overlooked,—the enormous retiring spaces of solid clouds. Be-
tween the illumined edge of a heaped cloud, and that part of its
body which turns into shadow, there will generally be a clear
distance of several miles, more or less of course, according to the
general size of the cloud; but, in such large masses as in Poussin
and others of the old masters occupy the fourth or fifth of the
visible sky, the clear illumined breadth of vapour, from the edge
to the shadow, involves at least a distance of five or six miles. We
are little apt, in watching the changes of mountainous range of
cloud, to reflect that the masses of vapour which compose it are
huger and higher than any mountain range of the earth; and the
distances between mass and mass are not vards of air traversed in

an instant by the flying form, but valleys of changing atmosphere
leagues over; that the slow motion of ascending curves, which we
can scarcely trace, is a boiling energy of exulting vapour, rushing
into the heaven a thousand feet in a minute; and that the toppling
angle, whose sharp edge almost escapes notice in the multitudinous
forms around it, is a nodding precipice of storms 3000 feet from
base to sunnnit. It is not until we have actually compared the
forms of the sky with the hill ranges of the earth, and seen the

soax'ing Alp overtopped and buried in one surge of the sky, that
we begin to conceiye or appreciate the colossal scale of the phe-
nomena of the latter. But of this there can be no doubt in the mind
of any one accustomed to trace the forms of clouds among hill
ranges, as it is there a demonstrable and evident fact, that the
space of vapour visibly extended over an ordinarily clouded sky
is not less, from the point nearest to the observer to the horizon,
than twenty leagues; that the size of every mass of separate form,
if it be at all largely divided, is to be expressed in terms of miles ;
and that every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer sky
is an enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in height,
six or seven miles over in illuminated surface, furrowed by a
thousand colossal ravines, torn by local tempests into peaks and
promontories, and changing its features with the majestic velocity
of the volcano.

To those who have once convinced themselves of these propor- § ii. And
tions of the heaven, it will be immediately evident, that though we JiSm and
might, without much violation of truth, omit the minor divisions of varieties of

a cloud four yards over, it is the veriest audacity of falsehood to
omit those of masses where for yards we have to read miles; first,
because it is physically impossible that such a space should be
without many and vast divisions; secondly, because divisions at
such distances must be sharply and forcibly marked by aerial per-
spective, so that not only they must be there, but they must be
visible and evident to the eye; and thirdly, because these multi-
tudinous divisions are absolutely necessary, in order to express this
space and distance, which cannot but be fully and imperfectly felt,
even with every aid and evidence that art can give of it.

Now if an artist, taking for his subject a chain of vast mountains § 12. Not
several leagues long, were to unite all their varieties of ravine, o^'itted!''
crag, chasm, and precipice, into one solid unbroken mass, with one
light side and one dark side, looking like a white ball or parallel-
epiped two yards broad, the words " breadth," " boldness," " ge-
neralization," would scarcely be received as a sufiicient apology for
a proceeding so glaringly false, and so painfully degrading. But
when, instead of the really large and simple forms of mountains,
united, as they commonly are, by some great principle of common

organization, and so closely resembling each other as often to corre-
spond in line and join in effect; when, instead of this, we have to do
with spaces of cloud twice as vast, broken up into a multiplicity of
forms necessary to, and characteristic of, their very nature, those
forms subject to a thousand local changes, having no association with
each other, and rendered visible in a thousand places by their own
transparency or cavities, where the mountain forms would be lost in
shade; that this far greater space, and this far more complicated
arrangement, should be all summed up into one round mass, with
one swell of white, and one flat side of unbroken grey, is considered
an evidence of the sublimest powers in the artist of generalization
and breadth. Now it may be broad, it may be grand, it may be
beautiful, artistical, and in every way desirable. I don't say it is
not: I merely say it is a concentration of every kind of falsehood;
it is depriving heaven of its space, clouds of their buoyancy, winds
of their motion, and distance of its blue.

This is done, more or less, by all the old masters, without an ex-
ception.* Their idea of clouds was altogether similar; more or
less perfectly carried out, according to their power of hand and
accuracy of eye, but universally the same in conception. It Avas
the idea of a comparatively small, round, puffed-up white body, irre-
gularly associated with other round and puffed-up white bodies, each
with a white light side, and a grey dark side, and a soft reflected
light, floating a great way below a blue dome. Such is the idea of
a cloud formed by most people; it is the first, general, uncultivated
notion of what we see every day. People think of the clouds as
about as large as they look; forty yards over, perhaps: they see
generally that they are solid bodies subject to the same laws as
other solid bodies, roundish, whitish, and apparently suspended a
great way under a high blue concavity. So that these ideas be
tolerably given with smooth paint, they are content, and call it
nature. How different it is from anything that nature ever did, or
ever will do, I have endeavoured to show; but I cannot, and do
not, expect the contrast to be fully felt, unless the reader will
actually go out on days when, either before or after rain, the clouds

arrange themselves into vigorous masses, and, after arriving at some-
thing like a conception of their distance and size, from the mode in
which they retire over the horizon, will, for himself, trace and
watch their varieties of form and outline, as mass rises over mass
in their illuminated bodies. Let him climb from step to step over
their craggy and broken slopes, let him plunge into the long vistas
of immeasurable perspective, that guide back to the blue sky;
and when he finds his imagination lost in their immensity, and his
senses confused with their multitude, let him go to Claude, to Sal-
vator, or to Poussin, and ask them for a like space, or like infinity.

But perhaps the most grievous fault of all, in the clouds of these § Total
• 1 n -XT . 1 wantoftrans-

And be it remembered that all these faults and deficiencies are § is. Farther
to be found in their drawing merely of the separate masses of the

deficiency in solid cuinulus, the easiest drawn of all clouds. But nature scarcely
ever confines lierself to such masses; they form but the thousandth
part of her variety of effect. She builds up a pyramid of their
boiling volumes, bars this across like a mountain with the grey
cirrus^ envelopes it in black, ragged, drifting vapour, covers the
open part of the sky with mottled horizontal fields, breaks through
these with sudden and long sunbeams, tears up their edges with
local winds, scatters over the gaps of blue the infinity of multitude
of the high cirri, and melts even the unoccupied azure into palpi-
tating shades. And all this is done over and over again in every
quarter of a mile. Where Poussin or Claude have three similar
masses, nature has fifty pictures, made up each of millions of
minor thoughts; fifty aisles, penetrating through angelic chapels
to the Shechinah of the blue; fifty hollow ways among bewildered
hills, each with its own nodding rocks, and cloven precipices,
and radiant summits, and robing vapours, but all unlike each other,
except in beauty, all bearing witness to the unwearied, exhaustless
operation of the Infinite Mind. Now, in cases like these especially,
as we observed before of general nature, though it is altogether
hopeless to follow out in the space of any one picture this incal-
culable and inconceivable glory, yet the painter can at least see
that the space he has at his command, narrow and confined as it
is, is made complete use of, and that no part of it shall be without
entertainment and food for thought. If he could subdivide it by
millionths of inches, he could not reach the multitudinous majesty
of nature ; but it is at least incumbent upon him to make the most
of what he has, and not, by exaggerating the proportions, banishing
the variety, and repeating the forms of his clouds, to set at defiance
the eternal principles of the heavens—fitfulness and infinity.

§ 16. Instance -^.nd now let US, keeping in memory what we have seen of Poussin

of perfect truth ^^^ Salvator, take up one of Turner's skies, and see whether he is

not matter which we take; his sublime Babylon ^ is a fair example
for our present purpose. Ten miles away, down the Euphrates,
where it gleams last along the plain, he gives us a drift of dark

elongated vapour, melting beneath into a dim haze which embraces
the hills on the horizon. It is exhausted with its own motion, and
broken up by the wind in its own mass into numberless groups of
billowy and tossing fragments, which, beaten by the Aveight of storm
down to the earth, are just lifting themselves again on wearied
wings, and perishing in the effort. Above these, and far beyond
them, the eye goes back to a broad sea of white illuminated mist,
or rather cloud melted into rain, and absorbed again before that
rain has fallen, but penetrated throughout, whether it be vapour or
whether it be dew, with soft sunshine, turning it as Avhite as snow.
Gradually, as it rises, the rainy fusion ceases. You cannot tell
where the film of blue on the left begins, but it is deepening,
deepening still; and the cloud, with its edge first invisible, then
all but imaginary, then just felt when the eye is not fixed on it,
and lost when it is, at last rises, keen from excessive distance, but
soft and mantling in its body as a swan's bosom fretted by faint
wind; heaving fitfully against the delicate deep blue, with white
waves, whose forms are traced by the pale lines of opalescent
shadow, shade only because the light is within it, and not upon it,
and which break with tlieir own swiftness into a driven line of level
spray, winnowed into threads by the wind, and flung before the
following vapour like those swift shafts of arrowy water which a
great cataract shoots into the air beside it, trying to find the earth.
Beyond these, again, rises a colossal mountain of grey cumulus,
tlirough whose shadowed sides the sunbeams penetrate in dim,
sloping, rain-like shafts; and over which they fall in a broad burst
of streaming light, sinking to the earth, and showing through their
own visible radiancc the three successive ranges of hills which
connect its desolate plain with space. Above, the edgy summit of
the cumulus, broken into fragments, recedes into the sky, which is
peopled in its serenity with quiet multitudes of the white, soft,
silent cirrus; and, under these again, drift near the zenith dis-
turbed and impatient shadows of a darker spirit, seeking rest and
finding none.

compass of ancient art, in wliich I can pass from cloud to cloud,
from region to region, from first to second and third heaven, as I
can here, and you may talk of Turner's want of truth. Turn to
the Pools of Solomon, and walk through the passages of mist as
they melt on the one hand into those stormy fragments of fiery
cloud, or on the other into the cold solitary shadows that compass
the sweeping hill; and when you find an inch without air and
transparency, and a hair's breadth without changefulness and
thought; and when you can count the torn waves of tossing
radiance that gush from the sun, as you can count the fixed,
white, insipidities of Claude; or when you can measure the mo-
dulation and the depth of that hollow mist, as you can the flourishes
of the brush upon the canvass of Salvator, talk of Turner's want
of truth!

But let us take up simpler and less elaborate works, for there is
too much in these to admit of being analysed.

In the vignette of the Lake of Como, in Rogers's Italy, the space
is so small that the details have been partially lost by the engraver;
but enough remain to illustrate the great principles of cloud from,
which we have endeavoured to explain. Observe first the general
angular outline of the volumes on the left of the sun. If you
mark the points where the direction of their outline changes, and
connect those points by right lines, the cloud will touch, but will
not cut, those lines throughout. Yet its contour is as graceful as
it is full of character, toppling, ready to change, fragile as enor-
mous, evanescent as colossal. Observe how, where it crosses the
line of the sun, it becomes luminous, illustrating what has been
observed of the visibility of mist in sunlight. Observe, above all,
the multiplicity of its solid form, the depth of its shadows in per-
petual transition; it is not round and swelled, half light and half
dark, but full of breaking irregular shadow and transparency,
variable as the wind, and melting imperceptibly above into the
haziness of the sun-lighted atmosj^here, contrasted in all its vast
forms with the delicacy and the multitude of the brightly touched
cirri. Nothing can surpass the truth of this; the cloud is as
gigantic in its simplicity as the Alp which it opposes; but how
various, how transparent, how infinite in its organization!

I would draw especial attention, both liere and in all other works
of Turner, to the beautiful use of the low horizontal bars or fields
of cloud (cirrostratus), v^hich associate themselves so frequently,
more especially before storms, with the true cumulus, floating on
its flanks, or capping it, as if it were a mountain, and seldom
mingling with its substance, unless in the very formation of rain.
They supply us with one of those beautiful instances of natural
composition, by which the artist is superseded and excelled; for,
by the occurrence of these horizontal flakes, the rolling form of the
cumulus is both opposed in its principal lines, and gifted with an
apparent solidity and vastness which no other expedient could have
exhibited, and which far exceed in awfulness the impression of the
noblest mountains of the earth. I have seen in the evening light
of Italy, the Alps themselves out-towered by ranges of these mighty
clouds, alternately white in the starlight, and inhabited by fire.

Turn back to the first vignette in the Italy. The angular
outlines and variety of modulation in the clouds above the sail, and
the delicate atmosphere of morning into which they are dissolved
about the breathing hills, require no comment; but one part of this
vignette demands especial notice; it is the repetition of the outline
of the snowy moimtain by the light cloud above it. The cause of
this I have already explained (vide page 225.), and its occurrence
here is especially valuable as bearing witness to the thorough and
scientific knowledge thrown by Turner into his slightest works.
The thing cannot be seen once in six months; it would not have
been noticed, much less introduced by an ordinary artist, and to the
public it is a dead letter, or an offence. Ninety-nine persons in a
hundred would not have observed this pale wreath of parallel cloud
above the hill, and the hundredth in all probability says it is un-
natural. It requires the most intimate and accurate knowledge of
the Alps before such a piece of refined truth can be understood.

At the 216th page we have another and a new case, in which
clouds in perfect repose, unaffected by wind, or any influence but
that of their own elastic force, boil, rise, and melt in the heaven
with more approach to globular form than under any other circum-
stances is possible. I name this vignette, not only because it is
most remarkable for the buoyancy and elasticity of inward energy

indicated through the most ponderous forms, and affords us a
beautiful instance of the junction of the cirrostratus with the
cumulus, of which we have just been speaking (§ 19.), but because
it is a characteristic example of Turner's use of one of the facts of
nature not hitherto noticed, that the edge of a partially transparent
body is often darker than its central surface, because at the edge
the light penetrates and passes through, which from the centre is
reflected to the eye. The sharp cutting edge of a wave, if not
broken into foam, frequently appears for an instant almost black;
and the outlines of these massy clouds, where their projecting forms
rise in relief against the light of their bodies, are almost always
marked clearly and firmly by very dark edges. Hence we have
frequently, if not constantly, multitudinous forms indicated only by
outline, giving character and solidity to the great masses of light
without taking aAvay from their breadth. And Turner avails
himself of these boldly and constantly, outlining forms with the
brush of which no other indication is given. All the grace and
solidity of the white cloud on the right-hand side of the vignette
before us depends upon such outlines.

As I before observed of mere execution, that one of the best
tests of its excellence was the expression of infinity; so it may be
Turner's works, noticed witli respect to the painting of details generally, that more
almost an difference lies between one artist and another, in the attainment of
aSTruth quality, than in any other of the efforts of art; and that if we

wish, without reference to beauty of composition, or any other inter-
fering circumstances, to form a judgment of the truth of painting,
perhaps the very first thing we should look for, whether in one
thing or another, — foliage, or clouds, or waves, — should be the
expression of infinity always and everywhere, in all parts and
divisions of parts. For we may be quite sure that what is not
infinite cannot be true. It does not, indeed, follow that what is
infinite is always true, but it cannot be altogether false; for this
simple reason, that it is impossible for mortal mind to compose an
infinity of any kind for itself, or to form an idea of perpetual
variation, and to avoid all repetition, merely by its own combining
resources. The moment that we trust to ourselves, we repeat our-
selves, and therefore tlie moment we see in a work of any kind

whatsoever the expression of infinity, we may be certain that the
workman has gone to nature for it; while, on the other hand, the
moment we see repetition, or want of infinity, we may be certain
that the workman has not gone to nature for it.

For instance, in the picture of Salvator before noticed. No. 220.
in the Dulwich Gallery, as we see at once that the two masses of
cloud absolutely repeat each other in every one of their forms, and
that each is composed of about twelve white sweeps of the brush,
all forming the same curve, and all of the same length; and as
we can count these, and measure their common diameter, and, by
stating the same to anybody else, convey to him a full and perfect
idea and knowledge of that sky in all its j)arts and proportions,
as we can do this, we may be absolutely certain, without reference
to the real sky, or to any other part of nature, without even
knowing what the white things were intended for, that they
cannot possibly resemble anything; that whatever they were meant
for, they can be nothing but a violent contradiction of all nature's
principles and forms. When, on the other hand, we take up
such a sky as that of Turner's Rouen seen from St. Catherine's
Hill, in the Rivers of France, and find, in the first place, that he
has given us a distance over the hills in the horizon, into which
when we are tired of penetrating, we must turn and come back
again, there being not the remotest chance of getting to the end
of it; and when we see that from this measureless distance up to
the zenith, the whole sky is one ocean of alternate waves of cloud
and light, so blended together that the eye cannot rest on any
one without being guided to the next, and so to a hundred more,
till it is lost over and over again in every wreath; that if it divides
the sky into quarters of inches, and tries to count or comprehend
the component parts of any single one of those divisions, it is still
as utterly defied and defeated by the part as by the whole; that
there is not one line out of the millions there which repeats another,
not one which is unconnected with another, not one which does
not in itself convey histories of distance and space, and suggest
new and changeful form; then we may be all but certain, though
these forms are too mysterious and too delicate for us to analyze,
though all is so crowded and so connected that it is impossible

to test any single part by particular laws, yet without any such
tests we may be sure that this infinity can only be based on
truth, that it must be nature, because man could not have
originated it, and that every form must be faithful, because none
is like another. And therefore it is that I insist so constantly on
this great quality of landscape painting, as it appears in Turner;
because it is not merely a constant and most important truth in
itself, but it almost amounts to a demonstration of every other
truth. And it will be found a far rarer attainment in the works
of other men than is commonly supposed, and the sign, wherever
it is really found, of the very highest art. For we are apt to forget
that the greatest number is no nearer infinity than the least, if it
be definite number; and the vastest bulk is no nearer infinity than
the most minute, if it be definite bulk; so that a man may multiply
his objects for ever and ever, and be no nearer infinity than he had
reached with one, if he do not vary them and confuse them; and
a man may reach infinity in every touch and line, and part, and
unit, if in these he be truthfully various and obscure. And we shall
find, the more we examine the works of the old masters, that always,
and in all parts, they are totally wanting in every feeling of infinity,
and therefore in all truth: and even in the works of the moderns,
though the aim is far more just, we shall frequently perceive an
erroneous choice of means, and a substitution of mere number or
bulk for real infinity.

And, therefore, in concluding our notice of the central cloud
region, I should wish to dwell particularly on those skies of
Turner's in which we have the whole space of the heaven covered
with the delicate dim flakes of gathering vapour, which are the
intermediate link between the central region and that of the rain-
cloud, and which assemble and grow out of the air; shutting up
the heaven with a grey interwoven veil, before the approach of
storm, faint but universal, letting the light of the upper sky pass
pallidly through their body, but never rending a passage for the
ray. We have the first approach and gathering of this kind of
sky most gloriously given in the vignette at p. 115. of Rogers's
Italy, which is one of the most perfect pieces of feeling (if I may
transgress my usual rules for an instant) extant in art, owing to

tlie extreme grandeur and stern simplicity of the strange and
ominous forms of level cloud behind the building. In that at
page 223. there are passages of the same kind, of exceeding per-
fection. The sky through which the dawn is breaking in the
Voyage of Columbus, and that with the moonlight under the
Rialto in Rogers's Poems, the skies of the Bethlehem and the
Pyramids in Finden's Bible series, and among the Academy pictures
those of the Hero and Leander and the Flight into Egypt, are charac-
teristic and noble examples, as far as any individual works can be
characteristic of the universality of this mighty mind. I ought not
to forget the magnificent solemnity and fulness of the wreaths of
gathering darkness in the Folkestone.

We must not pass from the consideration of the central cloud § 27. The
region, without noticing the general high quality of the cloud- thrciouT-"^

refined; but his cloud form is firmly and fearlessly chiselled, with
perfect knowledge, though usually with some want of feeling. As
far as it goes, it is very grand and very tasteful, beautifully deve-
loped in the space of its solid parts and full of action. Next to
Turner, he is incomparably the noblest master of cloud-form of all
our artists; in fact, he is the only one among them who really can
draw a cloud. For it is a very different thing to rub out an ir- § 28. The
regular white space neatly with the handkerchief, or to leave a fng'^fthe*^"'''
bright little bit of paper in the middle of a wash, and to give the English school,
real anatomy of cloud-form with perfect articulation of chiaroscuro.
We have multitudes of painters who can throw a light bit of
straggling vapour across their sky, or leave in it delicate and tender
passages of breaking light; but this is a very different thing from
taking up each of those bits or passages, and giving it structure,
and parts, and solidity. The eye is satisfied with exceedingly little,
as an indication of cloud, and a few clever sweeps with the brush
on wet paper may give all that it requires; but this is not drawing
clouds; nor will it ever appeal fully and deeply to the mind, except
when it occurs only as a part of a higher system. And there is
not one of our modern artists, except Stanfield, who can do much
more than this. As soon as they attempt to lay detail upon their

cloudSj tliej appear to get bewildered, forget that tliey are dealing
with forms regulated by precisely the same simple laws of light
and shade as more substantial matter, overcharge their colour,
confuse their shadows and dark sides, and end in mere ragged con-
fusion. I believe the evil arises from their never attempting to
render clouds except with the brush; other objects, at some period
of study, they take up with the chalk or lead, and so learn some-
thing of their form; but they appear to consider clouds as altogether
dependent on cobalt and camel's hair, and so never understand
anything of their real anatomy. But, whatever the cause, I cannot
point to any central clouds of the moderns except those of Turner
and Stanfield, as really showing much knowledge of, or feeling for,
nature, though all are superior to the conventional and narrow
conceptions of the ancients. We are all right as far as we go; our
work may be incomplete, but it is not false; and it is far better,
far less injurious to the mind, that we should be little attracted
to the sky, and taught to be satisfied with a light suggestion of
truthful form, than that we should be drawn to it by violently
pronounced outline and intense colour, to find in its finished false-
hood everything to displease or to mislead, to hurt our feelings
if we have foundation for them, and corrupt them if we have none.

' I bad forgotten, or little observed, when I wrote this, the elaborate cumuli in many
of Linnell's best pictures; and I think that among our rising artists there may now
(1851) be traced signs of rapidly increasing care in studies of skies. There was a very
beautiful group of cirri in a picture by a Mr. Dawson, in the British Institution of this
year, a study on the Elver Trent at sunset.

The clouds which I wish to consider as characteristic of the lower,
or rainy region, differ not so much in their real nature from those
of the central and uppermost regions, as in appearance, owing to
their greater nearness. For the central clouds, and perhaps even
the high cirri, deposit moisture, if not distinctly rain, as is suffi-
ciently proved by the existence of snow on the highest peaks of the
Himalaya; and when, on any such mountains, we are brought into
close contact with the central clouds we find them little differing
from the ordinary rain-cloud of the plains, except by being slightly
less dense and dark. But the apparent differences, dependent on
proximity, are most marked and important.

In the first place, the clouds of the central region have, as has
been before observed, pure and aerial greys for their dark sides,
owing to their necessary distance from the observer; and as this
distance permits a multitude of local phenomena capable of in-
fluencing colour, such as accidental sunbeams, refractions, trans-
parencies, or local mists and showers, to be collected into a space
apparently small, the colours of these clouds are always changeful
and palpitating; and whatever degree of grey or of gloom may be

' I am unable to say to what height the real rain-cloud may extend ; perhaps there
are no mountains which rise altogether above storm. I have never been in a violent
storm at a greater height than between 8,000 and 9,000 feet above the level of the sea.
There the rain-cloud is exceedingly light, compared with the ponderous darkness of the
lower air.

mixed with them is invariably pure and aerial. But the nearness
of the rain-cloud rendering it impossible for a number of phenomena
to be at once visible, makes its hue of grey monotonous, and (by
losing the blue of distance) warm and brown compared with that
of the upper clouds. This is especially remarkable on any part of
it Avhich may happen to be illumined, such part being of a brown,
bricky, ochreous tone, never bright, always coming in dark outline
on the lights of the central clouds. But it is seldom that this takes
place, and when it does, never over large spaces, little being usu-
ally seen of the rain-cloud but its under and dark side. This,
when the cloud above is dense, becomes of an inky and cold grey,
and sulphurous and lurid if there be thunder in the air.

With these striking differences in colour, it presents no fewer
nor less important in form, chiefly from losing almost all definite-
ness of character and outline. It is sometimes nothing more than
a thin mist, whose outline cannot be traced, rendering the landscape
locally indistinct or dark; if its outline be visible, it is ragged and
torn, rather a spray of cloud, taken off its edge and sifted by the
wind, than an edge of the cloud itself. In fact, it rather partakes
of the nature, and assumes the appearance, of real water in the
state of spray, than of elastic vapour. This appearance is enhanced
by the usual presence of formed rain, carried along with it in a
columnar form, ordinarily of course reaching the ground like a
veil, but very often suspended with the cloud, and hanging from it
like a jagged fringe, or over it, in light, rain being always lighter
than the cloud it falls from. These columns or fringes of rain
are often waved and bent by the wind, or twisted, sometimes even
swept upwards from the cloud. The velocity of these vapours,
though not necessarily in reality greater than that of the central
clouds, appears greater, owing to their proximity, and, of course,
also to the usual presence of a more violent Avind. They are also
apparently much more in the power of the wind, having less elastic
§ 4. They are force in themselves; but they are precisely subject to the same
cisciy^ the Tame gi'cat lavvs of form which regulate the upper clouds. They are
great laws. g^jj^j bodies bome about with the wind, but they carry the

wind with them, and cause it. Every one knows, who has ever
been out in a storm, that the time when it rains heaviest is precisely

the time wlien lie cannot hold up his umbrella; that the wind is
carried with the cloud, and lulls when it has passed. Every one
who has ever seen rain in a hill country knows that a rain-cloud,
like any other, may have all its parts in rapid motion, and yet, as
a whole, remain in one spot. I remember once, when in crossing
the Tete Noire, I had turned up the valley towards Trient, I
noticed a rain-cloud forming on the Glacier de Trient. With a
west wind, it proceeded towards the Col de Balme, being followed
by a prolonged wreath of vapour, always forming exactly at the
same spot over the glacier. This long, serpent-like line of cloud
went on at a great rate till it reached the valley leading down from
the Col de Balme, under the slate rocks of the Croix de Fer.
There it turned sharp round, and came down this valley, at right
angles to its former progress, and finally directly contrary to it,
till it came down within five hundred feet of the village, where it
disappeared; the line behind always advancing, and always disap-
pearing, at the same spot. This continued for half an hour, the
long line describing the curve of a horse-shoe; always coming
into existence and always vanishing at exactly the same places;
traversing the space between with enormous swiftness. This cloud,
ten miles off, would have looked like a perfectly motionless wreath,
in the form of a horse-shoe, hanging over the hills.

To the region of the rain-cloud belong also all the ])henomena § 5. Value, to
of drifted smoke, heat-haze, local mists in the morning or evening, [jj^ min-doutf
in valleys or over water, mirage, white steaming vapour rising in
evaporation from moist and open surfaces, and everything which
visibly affects the condition of the atmosphere without actually
assuming the form of cloud. These phenomena are as perpetual in
all countries as they are beautiful, and afford by far the most
effective and valuable means which the painter possesses, for modi-
fication of the forms of fixed objects. The upper clouds are distinct
and comparatively opaque, they do not modify, but conceal; but,
through the rain-cloud and its accessory phenomena, all that is
beautiful may be made manifest, and all that is hurtful concealed;
what is paltry may be made to look vast, and what is ponderous,
aerial; mystery may be obtained without obscurity, and decoration

staiitly, as one of her chief means of most perfect effect; not in
one country, nor another, but wherever there is anything worth
calling landscape. I cannot answer for the desert of the Sahara,
but I know that there cannot be a greater mistake than sup-
posing that delicate and variable effects of mist and rain-cloud are
peculiar to northern climates. I have never seen, in any place
or country, effects of mist more perfect than in the Campagna of
Rome, and among the hills of Sorrento. It is therefore matter of
no little marvel to me, and I conceive that it can scarcely be
otherwise to any reflecting person, that throughout the whole
range of ancient landscape art there occurs no instance of the
painting of a real rain-cloud, still less of any of the more delicate
phenomena characteristic of the region. " Storms " indeed, as the
innocent public persist in calling such abuses of nature and abor-
tions of art as the two windy Gaspars in our National Gallery, are
common enough; massive concretions of ink and indigo, wrung
and twisted very hard, apparently in a vain effort to get some
moisture out of them; bearing up courageously and successfully
against a wind whose effects on the trees in the foreground can be
accounted for only on the supposition that they are all of the
Indian-rubber species. Enough of this, in all conscience, we have,
and to spare; but for the legitimate rain-cloud, with its ragged
and spray-like edge, its veily transparency, and its columnar
burden of blessing, neither it, nor anything like it or approaching
it, occurs in any painting of the old masters that I have ever seen;
and I have seen enough to warrant my affirming that if it occur
anywhere, it must be through accident rather than intention. Nor
is there stronger evidence of any perception, on the part of these
much respected artists, that there were such things in the world as
mists or vapours. If a cloud under their direction ever touches a
mountain, it does it effectually and as if it meant to do it. There
is no mystifying the matter; here is a cloud, and there is a hill;
if it is to come on at all, it comes on to some purpose, and there is
no hope of its eA^er going off again. We have, therefore, little to
say of the efforts of the old masters, in any scenes which might
naturally have been connected with the clouds of the lowest region,
except that the faults of form specified in considering the central

clouds are, by way of being energetic or sublime, more glaringly
and audaciously committed in their " storms;" and that what is a
wrong form among clouds possessing form, is there given witli
increased generosity of fiction to clouds which have no form at all.

Supposing that we had nothing to show in modern art, of the § 7. The great
region of the rain-cloud, but the dash of Cox, the blot of De Wint, modcnis In^
or even the ordinary stormy skies of the body of our inferior water- respect
colour painters, we might yet laugh all efforts of the old masters
to utter scorn. But one, among our water-colour artists, deserves
especial notice, before we ascend the steps of the solitary throne,
as having done in his peculiar walk, what for faithful and pure
truth, truth indeed of a limited range and unstudied application,
but yet most faithful and most pure, will remain unsurpassed if not
unrivalled,—Copley Fielding. We are well aware how much of § 8. Works
what he has done depends in a great degree upon particular tricks Fie^^ngf
of execution, or on a labour somewhat too mechanical to be meri-
torious ; that it is rather the texture than the jolan of his sky which
is to be admired, and that the greater part of what is pleasurable
in it will fall rather under the head of dexterous imitation than of
definite thought. But whatever detractions from his merit we may
be compelled to make on these grounds, in considering art as the
embodying of beauty, or the channel of mind, it is impossible, when
we are speaking of truth only, to pass by his dowfi scenes and moor-
land showers, of some years ago, in which he produced some of the
most perfect and faultless passages of mist and rain-cloud whicli
art has ever seen. Wet, transparent, formless, full of motion, felt § 9. His ppcu-
rather by their shadows on the hills than by their presence in the
sky, becoming dark only through increased depth of space, most
translucent where most sombre, and light only through increased
buoyancy of motion, letting the blue through their interstices, and
the sunlight through their chasms, with the irregular playfulness
and traceless gradation of nature herself, his skies will remain, as
long as their colours stand, among the most simple, unadulterated,
and complete transcripts of a particular nature which art can point
to. Had he painted five instead of five hundred such, and gone on
to other sources of beauty, he might, there can be little doubt,
have been one of our greatest artists. But it often grieves us to

see how his power is limited to a particular moment^ to that
easiest moment for imitation, when knowledge of form may be
superseded by management of the brush, and the judgment of the
colourist by the manufacture of a colour; the moment when all
form is melted down and drifted away in the descending veil of
rain, and when the variable and fitful colours of the heaven are lost
in the monotonous grey of its storm tones, ^ We can only account
for this by supposing that there is something radically wrong in his
method of study; for a man of his evident depth of feeling and
pure love of truth ought not to be, cannot be, except from some
strange error in his mode of out-of-door practice, thus limited in
his range, and liable to decline of power. We have little doubt
that almost all such failures ai'ise from the artist's neglecting the
use of the chalk, and supposing that either the power of drawing
forms, or the sense of their beauty, can be maintained unweakened
or unblunted, without constant and laborious studies in simple
light and shade, of form only. The brush is at once the artist's
greatest aid and enemy; it enables him to make his power available,
but at the same time, it undermines his power, and unless it be
constantly rejected for the pencil, never can be rightly used. But
whatever the obstacle be, we do not doubt that it is one which,
once seen, may be overcome or removed ; and we are in the con-
stant liope of seeing this finely minded artist shake off his lethargy,
break the shackles of habit, seek in extended and right study the
sources of real power, and become, what we have full faith in his
capability of being, one of the leading artists of his time.

In passing to the works of our greatest modern master, it must
be premised that the qualities which constitute a most essential part
of the truth of the rain-cloud are in no degree to be rendered by
engraving. Its indefiniteness of torn and transparent form is far

' I ouglit here, however, to have noted another cfiect of tlie rain-clouci, whlcli, so far
as I know, has been rendered only by Copley Eielding, It is seen ehiefly in clouds
gathering for rain, when the sky is entirely covered with a grey veil rippled or waved
with pendent swells of soft texture, but excessively hard and liny in their edges. I am
not sure that this is an agreeable or impressive form of the rain-cloud, but it is a
frequent one, and it is often most faithfully given by Fielding ; only in some cases the
edges becoming a little doubled and harsh have given a look of failure or misadventure
to some even of the best-studied passages; and something of the same hardness of line
is occasionally visible in his drawing of clouds by whose nature it is not warranted.

beyond the power of even our best engravers: I do not say beyond
tlieir possible power, if they would make themselves artists as well
as workmen, but far beyond the power they actually possess;
while the depth and delicacy of the greys which Turner employs
or produces, as well as the refinement of his execution, are, in the
nature of things, utterly beyond all imitation by the opaque and
lifeless darkness of the steel. What we say of his works, therefore,
must be understood as referring only to the original drawings;
though we may name one or two instances in Avhich the engraver
has, to a certain degree, succeeded in distantly following the inten-
tion of the master.

Jumieges, in the Rivers of France, ouglit perhaps, after what § 12. His ren-
we have said of Fielding, to be our first object of attention, because ing's particular
it is a rendering by Turner of Fielding's particular moment, and
the only one existing, for Turner never repeats himself. One
picture is allotted to one truth; the statement is perfectly and
gloriously made, and he passes on to speak of a fresh portion of
God's revelation. ' The haze of sunlit rain of this most magnificent
picture, the gradual retirement of the dark wood into its depth,
and the sparkling and evanescent light wliich sends its variable
flashes on the abbey, figures, foliage, and foam, require no comment;
they speak home at once.

From this picture we should j^ass to the Llantliony which is § 13. Moment
the rendering of the moment immediately following that given in theTiL-"^'"
the Jumieges. The shower is here half exhausted, half passed by, tiiony;
the last drops are rattling faintly through the glimmering hazel
boughs, the white torrent, swelled by the sudden storm, flings up
its hasty jets of springing spray to meet the returning light; and
these, as if the heaven regretted Avhat it had given, and were taking
it back, pass, as they leap, into vapour, and fall not again, but
vanish in the shafts of the sunlight ^; hurrying, fitful, wind-woven

® No conception can be formed of this picture from tlie engraving. It is perhaps
the most marvellous piece of execution and of grey colour existing, except perhaps the
drawing presently to be noticed, Land's End, Nothing else can be set beside it, even
of Turner's own works, much less of any other man's.

" I know no effect more strikingly characteristic of the departure of a storm than the
smoking of the mountain toiTents. The exhausted air is so thirsty of moisture, that

sunliglit, which glides through the thick leaves, and paces along
the pale rocks like rain; half conquering, half quenched by the
very mists which it summons itself from the lighted pastures as it
passes, and gathers out of the drooping herbage and from the
streaming crags; sending them with messages of peace to the far
summits of the yet unveiled mountains, whose silence is still broken
by the sound of the rushing rain.

With this noble work we should compare one of wliich we can
better judge by the engraving, the Loch Coriskin, in the illus-
trations to Scott, because it introduces us to another and a most
remarkable instance of the artist's vast and varied knowledge.
When rain falls on a mountain composed chiefly of barren rocks,
their surfaces, being violently heated by the sun, whose most
intense warmth always precedes rain, occasion sudden and violent
evaporation, actually converting the first shower into steam. Con-
sequently, upon all such hills, on the commencement of rain, white
volumes of vapour are instantaneously and universally formed,
which rise, are absorbed by the atmosphere, and again descend in
rain to rise in fresh volumes until the surfaces of the hills are
cooled. Where there is grass or vegetation, this eflFect is
diminished; where there is foliage it scarcely takes place at all.
Now this effect has evidently been especially chosen by Turner for
Loch Coriskin, not only because it enabled him to relieve its
jagged forms with veiling vapour, but to tell the tale which no
pencilling could, the story of its utter absolute barrenness of un-
lichened, dead, desolated rock:

" The wildest glen, but this, can show
Some touch of nature's genial glow,
On high Benmorc green mosses grow.
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencoc,
And copse on Cruchan Ben ;
But liere, above, around, below,
On mountain, or in glen,

every jot of spray is seized upon by it, and converted into vapour as it springs; and
this vapour rises so densely from the surface of the stream as to give it the exact
appearance of boiling water. I have seen the whole course of the Arve at Chamonix
one line of dense cloud, dissipating as soon as it had risen ten or twelve feet from the
surface, but entirely concealing the water from an observer placed above it.

Here, again, we see the absolute necessity of scientific and entire
acquaintance with nature, before this great artist can be understood.
That which, to the ignorant, is little more than an unnatural and
meaningless confusion of steam-like vapour, is to the experienced
such a full and perfect expression of the character of the spot, as
no means of art could have otherwise given.

In the Long Ships Lighthouse, Land's End, we have clouds § is. The
wdthout rain, at twilight, enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but transparent
concealing nothing, ever j outline being visible through their gloom; Land's End'^
and not only the outline, for it is easy to do this, but the surface.
The bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch,
felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud;
not by edges more and more defined, but by a surface more
and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not of a mere
transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose
increasing distance is marked and felt. But the great wonder of
the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in pure warm
grey, without either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom de-
pendent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than
on actvial pitch of colour ; distant by real drawing, without a grain
of blue ; dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness: and
with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character,
wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinite; full of the energy of
storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the
fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapour tossed up like
men's hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting
whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into the face of the coming
darkness, which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised
passion of the elements. It is this untraceable, unconnected, yet
perpetual form, this fulness of character absorbed in universal
energy, which distinguish nature and Turner from all their
imitators. To roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate

motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction,
is for tlie multitude; but to mark tlie independent passion, the
tumultuous separate existence, of every wreath of writhing vapour,
yet swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and
thus to bid us

" Be as a presence or a motion, one
Among the many there, while the mists
Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes
And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,
As fost as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument," —

The drawing of Coventry may be particularized as a farther
example of this fine suggestion of irregiilarity and fitfulness, through
very constant parallelism of direction, both in rain and clouds. The
great mass of cloud which traverses the whole picture is characterized
throughout by severe right lines, nearly parallel with each other,
into which every one of its wreaths has a tendency to range itself;
but no one of these right lines is actually and entirely parallel to
any other, though all have a certain tendency, more or less defined
in each, which impresses the mind with the most distinct idea of
parallelism. Neither are any of the lines actually straight and
unbroken; on the contrary, they are all made up of the most
exquisite and varied curves, and it is the imagined line which joins
the apices of these, a tangent to them all, which is in reality
straight,' They are suggested, not represented, right lines: but
the whole volume of cloud is visibly and totally bounded by them;
and, in consequence, its whole body is felt to be dragged out and
elongated by the force of the tempest which it carries with it, and
every one of its wreaths to be (as was before explained) not so
much something borne hefo^^e or hy the wind, as the visible form
and presence of the wind itself. We could not possibly point out
a more magnificent piece of drawing as a contrast to such works of
Salvator as that before alluded to (159. Dulwich Gallery). Both
are rolling masses of connected cloud; but in Turner's there is
not one curve that repeats another, nor one curve in itself monoto-
nous, or without character, and yet every part and portion of the

cloud is rigidly subjected to tlie same forward, fierce, inevitable
influence of storm. In Salvator's, every curve repeats its neigh-
bour, every curve is monotonous in itself, and yet the whole cloud
is curling about hither and thither, evidently without the slightest
notion where it is going to, and unregulated by any general influ-
ence whatsoever. I could not bring together two finer or more
instructive examples, the one of everything that is perfect, the
other of everything that is childish or abominable, in the repre-
sentation of the same facts.

But there is yet more to be noticed in this noble sky of Turner's.
Not only are the lines of the rolling cloud thus irregular in their
parallelism, but those of the falling rain are equally varied in their
direction, indicating the gusty changefulness of the wind, and yet
kept so straight and stern in their individual descent, that we are
not suffered to forget its strength. This impression is still farther
enhanced by the drawing of the smoke, which blows every way at
once, yet turning perpetvially in each of its swirls back in the
direction of the wind, but so suddenly and violently, as almost to
assume the angular lines of lightning. Farther, to complete the
impression, be it observed that all the cattle, both upon the near
and distant hill-side, have left off grazing, and are standing stock
still and stiflF, with their heads down and their backs to the wind;
and finally, that we may be told not only what the storm is, but
what it has been, the gutter at the side of the road is gushing in
a complete torrent, and particular attention is directed to it by the
full burst of light in the sky being brought just above it, so that
all its waves are bright with the reflection.

But I have not quite done with this noble picture yet. Im-
petuous clouds, twisted rain, flickering sunshine, fleeting shadow,
gushing water, and oppressed cattle, all speak the same story of
tumult, fitfulness, power, and velocity. Only one thing is wanted,
a passage of repose to contrast with it all; and it is given. High
and far above the dark volumes of the swift rain-cloud, are seen on
the left, through their opening, the quiet, horizontal, silent flakes of
the highest cirrus, resting in the repose of the deep sky. Of all
else that we have noticed in this drawing, some faint idea can be
formed from the engraving; but of the delicate and soft foi'ms of

these pausing vapours not the slightest, and still less of the ex-
quisite depth and palpitating tenderness of the blue with which
they are islanded. Engravers, indeed, invariably lose the effect of
all passages of cold colour, under the mistaken idea that it is to be
kept pale in order to indicate distance; whereas it ought commonly
to be darker than the rest of the sky.

To appreciate the full truth of this passage, we must understand
another effect peculiar to the rain-cloud, that its openings exhibit
the purest blue which the sky ever shows. For as we saw, in the
first chapter in this section, that aqueous vapour always turns the
sky more or less grey, it follows that we never can see the azure
so intense as when the greater part of this vapour has just fallen
in rain. Then, and then only, pure blue sky becomes visible in
the first openings, distinguished especially by the manner in which
the clouds melt into it; their edges passing off in faint white
threads and fringes, through which the blue shines more and more
intensely, till the last trace of vapour is lost in its perfect colour.
It is only the upper white clouds, however, which do this, or the
last fragments of rain-clouds becoming white as they disappear, so
that the blue is never corrupted by the cloud, but only paled and
broken with pure white, the purest white which the sky ever shows.
Thus we have a melting and palpitating colour, never the same
for two inches together, deepening and broadening here and there
into intensity of perfect azure, then drifted and dying away, through
every tone of pure pale sky, into the snow-white of the filmy
cloud. Over this roll the determined edges of the rain-clouds,
throwing it all far back, as a retired scene, into the upper sky.
Of this effect the old masters, as far as I remember, have taken
no cognizance whatsoever; all with them is, as we partially noticed
before, either white cloud or pure blue: they have no notion of
any double-dealing or middle measures. They bore a hole in the
sky, and let you up into a pool of deep stagnant blue, marked off by
the clear round edges of imperturbable impenetrable cloud on all
sides ; beautiful in positive colour, but totally destitute of that
exquisite gradation and change, that fleeting, panting, hesitating
effort, with which the first glance of the natural sky is shed through
the turbulence of the earth-storm.

They have some excusc;, however, for not attempting this, in the § 21. Success
nature of their material, as one accidental dash of the brush with colour artists in
water-colour, on a piece of wet or damp paper, will come nearer uL™f1t by^"
the truth and transparency of this rain-blue than the labour of a Turner,
day in oils; and the purity and felicity of some of the careless,
melting, water-colour skies of Cox and Tayler may well make us
fastidious in all eflFects of this kind. It is, however, only in the
drawings of Turner that we have this perfect transparency and
variation of blue given, in association with the perfection of con-
sidered form. In Tayler and Cox the forms are always partially
accidental and unconsidered, often essentially bad, and always in-
complete : in Turner the dash of the brush is as completely under
the rule of thought and feeling as its slowest line; all that it does
is perfect, and could not be altered even in a hair's breadth without
injury; in addition to this, peculiar management and execution are
used in obtaining quality in the colour itself, totally different from
the manipulation of any other artist; and none, who have ever
spent so much as one hour of their lives over his drawing, can
forget those dim passages of dreamy blue, barred and severed with a
thousand delicate and soft and snowy forms, which, gleaming in
their patience of hope between the troubled rushings of tlie racked
earth-cloud, melt farther and farther back into the height of
heaven, until the eye is bewildered and the heart lost in the in-
tensity of their peace. I do not say that this is beautiful, I do
not say it is ideal or refined, I only ask you to watch for the first
opening of the clouds after the next south rain, and tell me if it be
not true.

The Gosport affords us an instance more exquisite even than tlie § 22. Expres-
passage above named in the Coventry, of the use of this melting rain-cLudTn
and dewy blue, accompanied by two distances of rain-cloud; one ot'her'^'
towering over the horizon, seen blue with excessive distance works,
through crystal atmosphere; the other breaking overhead in the
warm sulphurous fragments of spray, whose loose and shattering
transparency, being the most essential characteristic of the near
rain-cloud, is precisely that which the old masters are sure to
contradict. Look, for instance, at the wreaths of cloud? in the
Dido and iEneas of Gaspar Poussin, with their unpleasant edges Gaspar Pous-

sin's rain-cloud cut as hard and solid and opaque and smootli as tliick black paint
and^nea". make them, rolled up over one another like a dirty sail badly

reefed. Or look at the agreeable transparency and variety of the
cloud-edge where it cuts the mountain in N. Poussin's Pliocion; and
compare this with the wreaths which float across the precipice in
the second vignette in Campbell, or which gather around the Ben
Lomond, the white rain gleaming beneath their dark transparent
shadows; or which drift up along the flanks of the wooded hills,
called from the river by the morning light, in the Oakhampton; or
which island the crags of Snowdon in the Llanberis, or melt along
the Cumberland hills, while Turner leads us across the sands of
Morecambe Bay. This last drawing deserves especial notice. It is
of an evening in spi'ing, when the south rain has ceased at sunset;
and, through the lulled and golden air, the confused and fantastic
mists float up along the hollows of the mountains, white and pure,
the resurrection in spirit of the newfallen rain, catching shadows
from the precipices, and mocking the dark peaks with their own
mountain-like but melting forms till the solid mountains seem in
motion like those waves of cloud, emerging and vanishing as the
weak wind passes by their summits ; while the blue level night
advances along the sea, and the surging breakers leap up to catch
the last light from the path of the sunset.

I need not, however, insist upon Turner's peculiar power of
rendering mist, and all those passages of confusion between earth
and air, when the mountain is melting into the cloud, or the
horizon into the twilight; because his supremacy in these points
is altogether undisputed, except by persons to whom it would be
impossible to prove anything which did not fall under the form of a
Rule of Three. Nothing is more natural than that the studied form
and colour of this great artist should be little understood, because
they require, for the full perception of their meaning and truth,
such knowledge and such time as not one in a thousand possesses,
or can bestow; but yet the truth of them for that very reason is
capable of demonstration, and there is hope of our being able to
make it in some degree felt and comprehended even by those to
whom it is now a dead letter, or an offence. But the aerial and
misty effects of landscape, being matters of Avhich the eye should

be simply cognizant, and without effort of thought, as it is of light,
must, where thej are exquisitely rendered, either be felt at once,
or prove that degree of blindness and bluntness in the feelings of
the observer which there is little hope of ever conquering. Of
course, for persons who have never seen in their lives a cloud
A'anishing on a mountain side, and whose conceptions of mist or
vapour are limited to ambiguous outlines of spectral hackney-
coaches and bodiless lamp-posts, discerned through a brown combi-
nation of sulphur, soot, and gas-light, there is yet some hope; we
cannot indeed tell them what the morning mist is like in mountain
air, but far be it from us to tell them that they are incapable of
feeling its beauty if they will seek it for themselves. But if you
have ever in your life had one opportunity, with your eyes and
heart open, of seeing the dew rise from a hill-pasture, or the storm
gather on a sea-cliff, and if you yet have no feeling for the glorious
passages of mingled earth and heaven which Turner calls up before
you into breathing tangible being, there is indeed no hope for
your apathy, art will never touch you, nor nature inform.

have hitherto been speaking only of the softer rain-clouds, asso- X-cts^of'tcni-

whirlwind. If there be any one point in which engravers disgrace engi-avers.
themselves more than in another, it is in their rendering of dark
and furious storm. It appears to be utterly impossible to force it
into their heads that an artist does not leave his colour with a sharp
edge and an angular form by accident, or in order that they may
have the pleasure of altering it and improving upon it; and equally
impossible to persuade them that energy and gloom may in some
circumstances be arrived at without any extraordinary expenditure
of ink. I am aware of no engraver of the present day whose ideas § 26, General
of a storm-cloud are not comprised under two heads, roundness and landscape
blackness; and, indeed, their general principles of translation (as engraving,
may be distinctly gathered from their larger works) are the follow-
ing:— 1. Where the drawing is grey, make the paper black.

3. Where the drawing has particularly tender tones, cross-hatch
them. 4. Where any outline is particularly angular, make it

round. 5. Where there are vertical reflections in water, express
them with very distinct horizontal lines. 6. Where there is a
passage of particular simplicity, treat it in sections. 7. Where
there is anything intentionally concealed, make it out. Yet, in
spite of the necessity which all engravers impose upon themselves
of rigidly observing this code of general laws, it is difficult to con-
ceive how such pieces of work as the plates of Stonehenge and
Winchelsea could ever have been presented to the public, as in any
way resembling, or possessing even the most fanciful relation to,
the Turner drawings of the same subjects. The original of the
Stonehenge is perhaps the standard of storm-drawing, both for the
overwhelming power and gigantic proportions and spaces of its
cloud forms, and for the tremendous qualities of lurid and sulphur-
ous colours which are gained in them. All its forms are marked
with violent angles, as if the whole muscular energy, so to speak,
of the cloud were writhing in every fold; and their fantastic and
fiery volumes have a peculiar horror, an awful life, shadowed
out in their strange, swift, fearful outlines, which oppress the mind
more than even the threatening of their gigantic gloom. The
white lightning, not as it is drawn by less observant or less capable
painters, in zigzag fortifications, but in its own dreadful irregu-
larity of streaming fire, is brought down, not merely over the dark
clouds, but through the full light of an illumined opening to the
blue, which yet cannot abate the brilliancy of its white line; and
the track of the last flash along the ground is fearfully marked by
the dog howling over the fallen shepherd, and the ewe pressing her
head upon the body of her dead lamb.

I have not space, however, to enter into examination of Turner's
storm-drawing; I can only warn the public against supposing that
its effect is ever rendered by engravers. The great principles of
Turner are, angular outline, vastness and energy of form, infinity
of gradation, and depth without blackness. The great principles of
the engravers (vide Pa3stum, in E-ogers's Italy, and tlie Stonehenge
above alluded to) are, rounded outline, no edges, want of character,
equality of strength, and blackness without depth.

I have scarcely, I see, on referring to what I have written, suffi-
ciently insisted on Turner's rendering of the rainy fnnge; whether

in distances, admitting or concealing more or less of tlie extended
plain, as in the Waterlop, and Richmond (with the girl and dog in
the foreground); or, as in the Dnnstaffnage, Glencoe, St. Michael's
Mount, and Slave-ship, not reaching the earth, but suspended in
waving and twisted lines from the darkness of the zenith. But I
have no time for farther development of particular points; I must
defer discussion of them until we take up each picture to be viewed
as a whole; for the division of the sky which I have been obliged
to make, in order to render fully understood the peculiarities of
character in the separate cloud regions, prevents my speaking of
any one work with justice to its concentration of various truth.
Be it always remembered that we pretend not, at present, to give
any account or idea of the sum of the works of any painter, much
less of the universality of Turner's; but only to explain hi what
real truth, as far as it is explicable, consists, and to illustrate it by
those pictures in which it most distinctly occurs, or from which it
is most visibly absent. And it will only be in the full and separate
discussion of individual works, when we are acquainted also with
what is beautiful, that we shall be completely able to prove or
disprove the presence of the truth of nature.

The conclusion, then, to which we are led by our present exami-
nation of the truth of clouds is, that the old masters attempted the
representation of only one among tlie thousands of tlieir systems of
scenery, and were altogether false in the little they attempted;
while we can find records in modern art of every form or pheno-
menon of the heavens, from the highest film that glorifies the aether
to the wildest vapour that darkens the dust, and in all these
records, we find the most clear language and close thought, firm
words and true message, unstinted fulness and unfailing faith.

And indeed it is difficult for us to conceive how, even without
such laborious investigation as we have gone through, any person
can go to nature for a single day or hour, when she is really at
work in any of her nobler spheres of action, and yet retain respect
for the old masters; finding, as find he will, that every scene
which rises, rests, or departs before him, bears with it a thousand
glories of which there is not one shadow, one image, one trace or
line, in any of their works; but which will illustrate to him, at

every new instant, some passage wliicli he had not before under-
§ 31. Morning stood in the high works of modern art. Stand upon the peak of
some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the night mists first rise
from off the plains, and Avatch their white and lake-like fields, as
they float in level bays and winding gulfs about the islanded
summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn,
colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of
midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver
channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes
away, and down under their depths the glittering city and green
pasture lie like Atlantis, between the white paths of winding rivers;
the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader among
the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above
them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten
their grey shadows upon the plain. Has Claude given this ? Wait
a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in
the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys,
till they couch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light
upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy
undulation will melt back and back into that robe of material light,
until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in
the serene heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible dream, founda-
tionless and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in the unsub-
stantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below,^ Has Claude
given this ? Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists
gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses along
the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every
instant higher and higher into the sky and casting longer shadows
athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you
will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed
vapourswhich will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their grey

' I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with the seven colours of
the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this phenomenon, for it talces plaec riot
Avhen we stand witli our backs to tlie sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, iiTcgularly
and over indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. The
colours are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic lustre upon them.

network, and take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which
will stop the singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves,
together; and then you will see horizontal bars of black shadow
forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you
know not how, along the shoulders of the hills; you never see
them form, but when you look back to a place wdiich was clear an
instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipices, as a
hawk pauses over his prey.^ Has Claude given this? And then
you will hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will
see those watch-towers of vapour swept away from their founda-
tions, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys,
swinging from the burdened clouds in j^lack bending fringes or
pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its surface
into foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you shall see § 33. Sunset in
the storm drift for an instant from olf the hills, leaving their rene midnight,
broad sides smoking, and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-
like rags of capricious vapour, now gone, now gathered again®;
while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like
a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could x'eacli it, plunges
through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with lieadlong fall,
as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with
blood.^ Has Claude given this? And then you shall hear the
fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall sec a
green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills brighter
—brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted
up among the barred clouds step by step, line by line; star after
star she quenches Avith her kindling light, setting in their stead an
army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give
light upon the earth, which move together, hand in hand, company
by company, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion,
that the wdiole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to
reel under them. Ask Claude, or his brethren, for that. And
then wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple

§ 34. And sun- and tlie heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like
nse on the ^aves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in tlie glory of its
burning: watcli the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about
the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire: watch the
columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by
chasm, each in itself a new morning; their long avalanches cast
down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his
tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the
rose-light of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them
and above them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines
of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes
by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is interwoven
with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as
with the drifted wings of many companies of angels: and then,
when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed
down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me
who has best delivered this His message unto men!

I HAVE before given my reasons (Sect. II. Chap. III.) for not
wishing at present to enter upon the discussion of particular effects
of light. Not only are we incapable of rightly viewing them, or
reasoning upon them, until we are acquainted with the principles
of the beautiful; but, as I distinctly limited myself, in the present
portion of the work, to the examination of general truths, it would
be out of place to take cognizance of the particular phases of light,
even if it were possible to do so, before we have some more definite
knowledge of the material objects which they illustrate. 1 shall
therefore, at present, merely set down a rough catalogue of the
ei^ects of light at different hours of the day, which Turner has
represented; naming a picture or two, as an example of each,
which we will hereafter take up one by one, and cojisider the
physical science and the feeling together. And I do this, in the
hope that in the mean time some admirer of the old masters Avill
be kind enough to select from the works of any one of tliem, a
series of examples of the same effects, and to give me a reference
to the pictures, so that I may be able to compare each with each;
for, as my limited knowledge of the works of Claude and Poussin
does not supply me with the requisite variety of effect, I shall be
grateful for assistance.

The following list, of course, does not name the hundredth part
of the effects of light given by Turner; it only names those which
are distinctly and markedly separate from each other, and repre-
sentative each of an entire class. Ten or twelve examples, often

many more, might be given of each; every one of which would
display the effects of the same hour and light, modified by different
circumstances of weather, situation, and character of objects sub-
jected to them, and especially by the management of the sky; but it
will be generally sufficient for our purposes to examine thoroughly
one good example of each.

The prefixed letters express the direction of the light. F. front
light, the sun in the centre, or near the top of the picture; L.
lateral light, the sun out of the picture, on the right or left of the
spectator; L. F. the light partly lateral, partly fronting the spec-
tator, as when he is looking south, with the sun in the south-west;
L. B. light partly lateral, partly behind the spectator, as when he
is looking north, with the sun in the south-west.

F..... An lioiir before sunrise. Serene sky, with light
clouds. Dawn in the distance.

L. F... Serene sky. Sun emerging from a bank of
cloud on horizon, a quarter of an hour risen,

NAMES OF nCTURES.
Lowestoft. Suffolk.

Vignette to Voyage of Co-
lumbus.
Fowey Harbour.

Vignette to Human Life.

Alps at Daybreak.

Castle Upnor.

Orford, Suffolk.

Skid daw.

Oakhtunpton.

Lake of Geneva.

Beaugency.
Kirkby Lonsdale.
Hohenlinden.

Buckfastleigh.

NAMES OF PICTURES.

Corinth.

Lantern at St. Cloud.

Shylock, and other Venices.

Richmond, Lliddlesex.
Warwick. Blenheim.

riacenza.

Caldron Snout Fall.

Malvern.

Wiuchelsca.

Llanberis, Coventry, &c.
Stonelienge, I'ajstum, &c.
Nottingham.

Bingcn,

Cai-ew Castle.
Saltash.

Mercury and Argus. Ober-
wcsel. Nemi.

Trematon Ciistle.
Lake Albano. Florence.

Datur Hora Quicti.

Durham.

Solomon's Pools. Slave-ship.

Temeraire. Napoleon. Va-
rious vignettes.
Kenilworth.
Amboise.
Troyes.

First vignette. Pleasures of
Memory.

By truth of earth, we mean the faithful representation of the facts § i. First laws
and forms of the bare ground, considered as entirely divested of zation of the
vegetation, through whatever disguise, or under whatever modi- i^mportanccTn''^
fication the clothing of the landscape may occasion. Ground is to art.
the landscape painter what the naked human body is to the
historical. The growth of vegetation, the action of water and
even of clouds upon it and around it, are so far subject and sub-
ordinate to its forms, as the folds of the dress and the fall of the
hair are to the modulation of the animal anatomy. Nor is this
anatomy always so concealed, but in all sublime compositions,
whether of nature or art,, it must be seen in its naked purity.
The laws of the organization of the earth are distinct and fixed as
those of the animal frame, simpler and broader, but equally author-
itative and inviolable. Their results may be arrived at without
knowledge of the interior mechanism; but for that very reason
ignorance of them is the more disgraceful, and violation of them
more unpardonable. They are in the landscape the foundation of
all other truths, the most necessary, therefore, even if they were

not in themselves attractive; but tliey are as beautiful as tliey are
essential, and every abandonment of them by the artist must end
in deformity as it begins in falsehood.

That such abandonment is constant and total in the works of
the old masters has escaped detection, only because, of persons
generally cognizant of art, few have spent time enough in hill
countries to perceive the certainty of the laws of hill anatomy;
and because few, even of those who possess such opportunities, ever
think of the common earth beneath their feet, as anything pos-
sessing specific form, or governed by steadfast principles. That
such abandonment should have taken place cannot be surprising,
after what we have seen of their fidelity to skies. Those artists
who, day after day, could so falsely represent what was for ever
before their eyes, when it was to be one of the most important and
attractive parts of their picture, can scarcely be expected to give
with truth what they could see only partially and at intervals, and
what was only to be in their picture a blue line in the horizon, or
a bright spot under the feet of their figures.

That such should be all the space allotted by the old landscape
painters to the most magnificent phenomena of nature; that the
only traces of those Apennines, which in Claude's walks along the
brow of the Pincian for ever bounded his horizon with their azure
wall, should, in his pictures, be a cold white outline in the extreme
of his tame distance; and that Salvator's sojourns among their
fastnesses should only have taught him to shelter his banditti with
such paltry morsels of crag as an Alpine stream would toss down
before it like a foam-globe; though it may indeed excite our
surprise, will, perhaps, when we have seen how these slight pas-
sages are executed, be rather a subject of congratulation than of
regret. It might, indeed, have shortened our labour in the inves-
tigation of mountain truth, had not modern artists been so vast,
comprehensive, and multitudinous in their mountain drawings, as
to compel us, in order to form the slightest estimate of their know-
ledge, to enter into some examination of every variety of hill
scenery. We shall first gain some general notion of the broad
organization of large masses, and then take those masses to pieces,
until we come down to the crumbling soil of the foreground.

Mountains are, to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent
muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons
of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and
convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the
plains and the lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion
of the frame, when its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath
the lines of its beauty, yet ruling those lines in their eveiy undu-
lation. This, then, is the first grand principle of the truth of
the earth. The spirit of the lulls is action, that of the lowlands
repose; and between these there is to be found every variety of
motion and of rest, from the inactive plain, sleeping like the firma-
ment, with cities for stai's, to the fiery peaks, which, with heaving
bosoms and exulting limbs, with the clouds drifting like liair from
their bright foreheads, lift up their Titan hands to Heaven, saying,
" I live for ever!"

But there is this difference between the action of the earth, and
that of a living creature; that, while the exerted limb marks its
bones and tendons through the flesh, the excited earth casts off the
flesh altogether, and its bones come out from beneath. Mountains
are the bones of the earth, their highest peaks are invariably those
parts of its anatomy which in the plains lie buried under five and
twenty thousand feet of solid thickness of superincumbent soil, and
which spring up in the mountain ranges in vast pyramids or
wedges, flinging their garment of earth away from them on each
side. The masses of the lower hills are laid over and against their
sides, like the masses of lateral masonry against the skeleton arch
of an unfinished bridge, except that they slope up to and lean
against the central ridge: and, finally, upon the slopes of these
lower hills are strewed the level beds of sprinkled gravel, sand,
and clay, which form the extent of the champaign. Here then is
another grand principle of the truth of earth, that the mountains
must come from under all, and be the support of all; and that
everything else must be laid in their arms, heap above heap, the
plains being the uppermost. Opposed to this truth is every ap-
pearance of the hills being laid upon the plains, or built upon them.
Nor is this a truth only of the earth on a large scale, for every
minor rock (in position) comes out from the soil about it as an

island out of the sea, lifting the earth near it like waves beating on
its sides.

Such being the structure of the framework of the earth, it is next
to be remembered that all soil whatsoever, whether it is accumulated
in greater quantity than is sufficient to nourish the moss or the
wallflower, has been so, either by the direct transporting agency of
water, or under the guiding influence and power of water. All
plains capable of cultivation are deposits from some kind of water;
some from swift and tremendous currents, leaving their soil in
sweeping banks and furrowed ridges; others, and this is in moun-
tain districts almost invariably the case, by slow deposit from a
quiet lake in the mountain hollow, which has been gradually filled
by the soil carried into it by streams, which soil is of course finally
left spread at the exact level of the surface of the former lake, as
level as the quiet water itself. Hence we constantly meet with
plains in hill districts which fill the hollows of the hills with as
perfect and faultless a level as water, and out of which the steep
rocks rise at the edge with as little previous disturbance, or in-
dication of their forms beneath, as they do from the margin of a
quiet lake. Every delta, and there is one at the head of every
lake in every hill district, supplies an instance of this. The rocks
at Altorf plunge beneath the plain which the lake has left, at as
sharp an angle as they do into the lake itself beside the chapel of
Tell. The plain of the Arve, at Sallenche, is terminated so sharply
by the hills to the south-east, that I have seen a man sleeping with
his back supported against the mountain, and his legs stretched
on the plain ; the slope which supported his back rising 5000 feet
above him, and the couch of his legs stretched for five miles before
him. In distant effect these champaigns lie like deep, blue, un-
disturbed water, while the mighty hills around them burst out
from beneath, raging and tossing like a tumultuous sea. The
valleys of Meyringen, Interlachen, Altorf, Sallenche, St. Jean de
Maurienne; the great plain of Lombardy itself, as seen from Milan
or Padua, under the Alps, the Euganeans, and the Apennines; and
the Campo Felice under Vesuvius, are a few, out of the thousand
instances which must occur at once to the mind of every traveller.

and look at the vignette wliicli heads it of the Battle of Marengo, by Turner's
It needs no comment. It cannot but carry with it, after what has
been said, the instant conviction that Turner is as much of a geo-
logist as he is of a painter. It is a summary of all we have been
saying, and a summary so distinct and clear, that without any such
explanation it must have forced upon the mind the impression of
such facts; of the plunging of the hills underneath the plain, of
the perfect level and repose of this latter laid in their arms, and of
the tumultuous action of the emergent summits.

We find, according to this its internal structure, which, I believe, § 7. General
with the assistance of Turner, can scarcely now be misunderstood, formation re-
that the earth may be considered as divided into three si'eat classes from

the rocks, which, though in position lower than all others, rise to
form the central peaks, or interior nuclei of all mountain ranges.
Secondary: the rocks Avhich are laid in beds above these, and
which form the greater proportion of all hill scenery. Tertiary:
the light beds of sand, gravel, and clay, which are strewed upon
the surface of all, forming plains and habitable territory for man.
We shall find it convenient, in examining the truth of art, to
adopt, with a little modification, the geological arrangement, con-
sidering, first, the formation and character of the highest or central
peaks ; next, the general structure of the lower mountains, including
in this division those composed of the various slates which a geologist
would call primary; and, lastly, the minutise and most delicate
characters of the beds of these hills, when they are so near as to
become foreground objects, and the structure of the common soil
which usually forms the greater space of an artist's foreground.
Hence our task will arrange itself into three divisions : the inves-
tigation of the central mountains, of the inferior mountains, and of
the foreground.

It does not always follow, because a mountain is the highest of its
group, that it is in reality one of the central range. The Jungfrau
is only surpassed in elevation, in the chain of which it is a
member, by the Schreckhorn and Finster-Aarhorn; but it is
entirely a secondary mountain. But the central peaks are usually
the highest, and may be considered as the chief components of all
mountain scenery in the snowy regions. Being composed of the
same rocks in all countries, their external character is tlie same
everywhere. Its chief essential points are the following :

Their summits are almost invariably either pyramids or wedges.
Domes may be formed by superincumbent snow, or appear to be
formed by the continuous outline of a sharp ridge seen trans-
versely, with its precipice to the spectator; but wherever a rock
appears, the uppermost termination of that rock will be a steep
edgy ridge, or a sharp point, very rarely presenting even a gentle
slope on any of its sides, but usually inaccessible unless encumbered
with snow.

These pyramids and wedges split vertically, or nearly so, giving
smooth faces of rock, either perpendicular or very steeply inclined,
which appear to be laid against the central wedge or peak, like
planks upright against a wall. The surfaces of these show close
parallelism; their fissures are vertical, and cut them smoothly,
like the edges of shaped planks. Often groups of these planks, if I
may so call them, rise higher than those between them and the
central ridge, forming detached ridges inclining towards the central

one. The planks are cut transversely, sometimes by graceful
curvilinear fissures; sometimes by straight fissures, which are
commonly parallel to the slope of one of the sides of the peak,
wliile the main direction of the planks or leaves is parallel to that
of its other side, or points directly to its summit. But the universal
law of fracture is, first, that it is clean and sharp, having a per-
fectly smooth surface, and a perfectly sharp edge to all the fissures;
secondly, that every fissure is steeply inclined, and that a hori-
zontal line, or one approaching to it, is an impossibility, except in
some turn of a curve.

Hence, however the light may fall, these peaks are seen marked
with sharp and defined shadows, indicating the square edges of the
planks of which they are made up; which shadows sometimes are
vertical, pointing to the summit, but are oftener parallel to one of
tlie sides of the peak, and intersected by a second series, parallel to
the other side. Where there has been much disintegration, the
peak is often surrounded with groups of lower ridges or pealcs, like
the leaves of an artichoke or a rose, all evidently part and parcel
of the great peak ; but falling back from it, as if it were a budding
flower, expanding its leaves one by one: and this last condition is
in most cases the indication of the true geological structure; most
of the central peaks being fanshaped in the arrangement of their
beds. But this singular organization is usually concealed by the
pyramidal cross-cleavages. It was discovered first, I believe, by
Dg Saussure, and has of late been carefully examined and verified,
though not accounted for, by the Swiss geologists.

Now, if I were lecturing on geology, and were searching for
some means of giving the most faithful idea possible of the ex-
ternal appearance caused by this structure of the primary hills, I
should throw my geological outlines aside, and take up Turner's
vignette of the Alps at Daybreak. After what has been said, a
single glance at it will be enough. Observe the exquisite decision
with which the edge of the uppermost plank of the great peak is
indicated by its clear dark side and sharp shadow; then the rise of
the second low ridge on its side, only to descend again precisely in
the same line; the two fissures of this peak, one pointing to its
summit, the other rigidly parallel to the great slope which descends

towards the sun; tlien tlie sharp white aiguille on the right, witli
the great fissure from its summit, rigidly and severely square, as
marked below, where another edge of rock is laid upon it. But
this is not all; the black rock in the foreground is equally a
member of the mass, its chief slope parallel with that of the moun-
tain, and all its fissures and lines inclined in the same direction;
and, to complete the mass of evidence more forcibly still, we have
the dark mass on the left articulated Avith absolute right lines, as
parallel as if they had been drawn with a rule, indicating the tops
of two of these huge plates or planks, pointing, with the universal
tendency, to the great ridge, and intersected by fissures parallel to
it. Throughout the extent of mountain, not one horizontal line,
nor an approach to it, is discernible. This cannot be chance, it
cannot be composition, it may not be beautiful: perhaps nature
is very wrong to be so parallel, and very disagreeable in being so
straight; but this is nature, whether we admire it or not.

Ill the vignette illustration to Jacqueline, we have another series
of peaks, whose structure is less developed, owing to their dis-
tance, but equally clear and faithful in all points, as far as it is
given. But the vignette of Aosta, in the Italy, is perhaps more
striking than any that could be named, for its rendering of the
perfect parallelism of the lower and smaller peaks with the great
lines of the mass they compose; and that of the Andes, the second
in Campbell, for its indication of the multitudes of the vertical and
plank-like beds arranged almost like the leaves of a flower. This
last especially, one of the very noblest, most faithful, most scientific
statements of mountain form which even Turner has ever made,
can leave little more to be said or doubted.

Now, whenever these vast peaks, rising from 12,000 to 24,000
feet above the sea, form part of anything like a landscape; that is
to say, whenever the spectator beholds them from the region of
vegetation, or even from any distance at which it is possible to get
something like a view of their whole mass, they must be at so
great a distance from him as to become aerial and faint in all their
details. Their summits, and all those higher masses of whose
character we have been speaking, can by no possibility be nearer
to him than twelve or fifteen miles ; to approach them nearer he

must climb, must leave the I'egion of vegetation, and must confine
liis view to a part, and that a, very limited one, of the mountain he
is ascending. Whenever, therefore, these mountains are seen over
anything like vegetation, or are seen in mass, they must be in the
far distance. Most artists Avould treat a horizon fifteen miles oft"
very much as if it were mere air; and though the greater clearness
of the upper air permits the high summits to be seen with extra-
ordinary distinctness, yet they never can by any possibility have
dark or deep shadows, or intense dark relief against a light. Clear
they may be, but faint they must be; and their great and pre-
vailing characteristic, as distinguished from other mountains, is
want of apparent solidity. They rise in the morning light rather
like sharp shades, cast up into the sky, than solid earth. Their
lights are pure, roseate, and cloudlike; their shadows transparent,
pale, and opalescent, and often undistinguishable from the air around
them, so that the mountain-top is seen in the heaven only by its
flakes of motionless fire.

Now, let me once more ask, though I am sufficiently tired of § 7. Total want
asking, what record have we of anything like this in the works of hig^of tiidr^^'
the old masters ? There is no vestige, in any existing picture, of
the slightest effort to represent the high hill-ranges; and as for
such drawing of their forms as we have found in Turner, we might
as well look for them among the Chinese. Very possibly it may
be all quite right; very probably these men showed the most
cultivated taste, the most unerring judgment, in filling their pic-
tures with mole-hills and sand-heaps. Very probably the withered
and poisonous banks of Avernus, and the sand and cinders of the
Campagna, are much more sublime things than the Alps; but still
what limited truth it is, if truth it be, when through the last fifty
pages we have been pointing out fact after fact, scene after scene,
in clouds and hills (and not individual facts or scenes, but great
and important classes of them), and still we have nothing to say
when we come to the old masters; but, " they are not here." Yet
this is what we hear so constantly called painting " general"
nature.

Although, however, there is no vestige among the old masters § 8. Character
of any effort to represent the attributes of the higher mountains ations of Alps

in the distances seen ill comparative proximity, we arc not altogether left without
oi Ckude. evidence of their having thought of them as sources of light in the
extreme distance; as for example, in that of the reputed Claude in
our National Gallery, called the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca.
I have not the slightest douLt of its being a most execrable copy;
for there is not one touch or line of even decent painting in the
whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a Claude, as
it has been put in our Gallery for a Claude, and as people admire
it every day for a Claude, I may at least presume it has those
qualities of Claude in it which are wont to excite the public
admiration, though it possesses none of those which sometimes give
him claim to it; and I have so reasoned, and shall continue to
reason upon it, especially with respect to facts of form, which can-
not have been much altered by the copyist. In the distance of
that picture (as well as in that of the Sinon before Priam, which I
have little doubt is at least partially original, and whose central
group of trees is a very noble piece of painting) is something
white, which I believe must be intended for a snowy mountain,
because I do not see that it can well be intended for anything else.
Now no mountain of elevation sufficient to be so sheeted with
perpetual snow, can by any possibility sink so low on the horizon
as this something of Claude's, unless it be at a distance of from
fifty to seventy miles. At such distances, though the outline is
invariably sharp and edgy to an excess, yet all the circumstances
of aerial perspective, faintness of shadow, and isolation of light,
which I have described as characteristic of the Alps fifteen miles
off, take place, of course, in a threefold degree : the mountains rise
from the horizon like transparent films, only distinguishable from
mist by their excessively keen edges, and their brilliant flashes of
sudden light; they are as unsubstantial as the air itself, and im-
press their enormous size by means of this aerialness, in a far
greater degree at these vast distances, than even when towering
above the spectator's head. Now, I ask of the candid observer, if
there be the smallest vestige of an effort to attain, if there be the
most miserable, the most contemptible, shadow of attainment of
such an effect by Claude. Does that white thing on the horizon
look seventy miles off? Is it faint, or fading, or to be looked for

Ill I II III lllllliwm» lil^ill I i III! Ill III II mw III ill II I "" T'"'-......11.111 II.. IIIIIWI" ..■miiuunm

by tlie eye before it can be found out ? Does it look high ? does
it look large ? does it look impressive ? You cannot but feel that
there is not a vestige of any kind or species of truth in that hori-
zon ; and that, however artistical it may be, as giving brilliancy
to the distance (though, as far as I have any feeling in the matter,
it only gives coldness), it is, in the very branch of art on which
Claude's reputation chiefly rests, aerial perspective, hurling de-
fiance to nature in her very teeth.

But there are worse failures yet in this unlucky distance. Aerial § lo. And
perspective is not a matter of paramount importance, because nature Jpeciiic"orm,
infringes its laws herself, and boldly, too, though never in a case
like this before us ; but there are some laws which nature never
violates, her laAvs of form. No mountain was ever raised to the
level of perpetual snow, without an infinite multiplicity of form.
Its foundation is built of a hundred minor mountains, and, from
these, great buttresses run in converging ridges to the central peak.
There is no exception to this rule; no mountain 15,000 feet high
is ever raised without such preparation and variety of outwork.
Consequently, in distant effect, when chains of such peaks are
visible at once, the multiplicity of form is absolutely oceanic; and
though it is possible in near scenes to find vast and simple masses
composed of lines which run unbroken for a thousand feet or more,
it is physically impossible when these masses are thrown seventy
miles back to have simple outlines, for then these large features
become mere jags and hillocks, and are heaped and huddled
together in endless confusion. To get a simple form seventy
miles away, mountain lines would be required unbroken for leagues;
and this, I repeat, is physically impossible. Hence these mountains
of Claude, having no indication of the steep vertical summits which
we have shown to be the characteristic of the central ridges, having
soft edges instead of decisive ones, simple forms (one line to the
plain on each side) instead of varied and broken ones, and being
painted with a crude raw white, having no transparency, nor filmi-
ness, nor air in it, instead of rising in the opalescent mystery whicli
invariably characterizes the distant snows, have the forms and the
colours of heaps of chalk in a lime-kiln, not of Alps. They are
destitute of energy, of height, of distance, of splendour, and of

variety, and are the work of a man, whether Claude or not, who
had neither feeling for nature, nor knowledge of art.

I should not, however, insist upon the faults of this j)icturc,
believing it to be a copy, if I had ever seen, even in his most
genuine works, an extreme distance of Claude with any of the
essential characters of nature. But although in his better pictures
we have always beautiful rendering of the air, which in the copy
before us is entirely wanting, the real features of the extreme
mountain distance are equally neglected or maligned in all. There
is, indeed, air between us and it; but ten miles, not seventy miles,
of S2:)ace. Let us observe a little more closely the practice of
nature in such cases.

The multiplicity of form which I have shown to be necessary in
the outline, is not less felt in the body of the mass. For, in all
extensive hill ranges, there are five or six lateral chains separated
by deep valleys, which rise between the spectator and the central
ridge, showing their tops one over another, wave beyond wave,
until the eye is carried back to the faintest and highest forms of
the principal chain. These successive ridges, and I speak now not
merely of the Alps, but of mountains generally, even as low as
3000 feet above the sea, show themselves, in extreme distance,
merely as vertical shades, with very sharp outlines, detached from
one another by greater intensity, according to their nearness. It is
with the utmost difficulty that the eye can discern any solidity or
roundness in them; the lights and shades of solid form are both
equally lost in the blue of the atmosphere, and the mountain tells
only as a flat sharp-edged film, of which multitudes intersect and
overtop each other, separated by the greater faintness of the
retiring masses. This is the most simple and easily imitated
arrangement possible, and yet, both in nature and art, it expresses
distance and size in a way otherwise quite unattainable. For thus,
the whole mass of one mountain being of one shade only, the
smallest possible difference in shade will serve completely to detach
it from another, and thus ten or twelve distances may be made
evident, when the darkest and nearest is an aerial grey as faint as
the sky; and the beauty of such arrangements carried out as nature
carries them, to their highest degree, is, perhaps, the most striking

feature connected with hill scenery. You will never, by any chance,
perceive in extreme distance anything like solid form or projection
of the hills. Each is a dead, flat, perpendicular film or shade, with
a sharj) edge darkest at the summit, and lost as it descends, and
about equally dark whether turned towards the light or from it.
And of these successive films of mountain you will probably have
half a dozen, one behind another, all showing with perfect clearness
their every chasm and peak in the outline, and not one of them
showing the slightest vestige of solidity; but, on the contrary,
looking so thoroughly transparent, that if it so happens, as I have
seen frequently, that a conical near hill meets with its summit the
separation of two distant ones, so that the right-hand slope of the
nearer hill forms an apparent continuation of the right-hand slope
of the left-hand farther hill, and vice versa, it is impossible to get
rid of the impression that one of the more distant peaks is seen
through the other.

I may point out, in illustration of these facts, the engravings of
two drawings of precisely the same chain of distant hills : Stan-
field's Borromean Islands, with the St. Gothard in the distance; and
Turner's Arona, also with the St. Gothard in the distance. Far be
it from me to indicate the former of these plates as in any way
exemplifying the power of Stanfield, or affecting his reputation; it
is an unlucky drawing, murdered by the engraver, and as far from
being characteristic of Stanfield as it is from being like nature : but
it is just what I want, to illustrate the particular error of which I
speak; and I prefer showing this error where it accidentally exists
in the works of a really great artist, standing there alone, to point-
ing it out where it is confused with other faults and falsehoods in
the works of inferior hands. The former of these plates is an
example of everything which a hill distance is not, and the latter
of everything which it is. In the former, we have the mountains
covered with patchy lights, which being of equal intensity, whether
near or distant, confuse all the distances together; while the eye,
perceiving that the light falls so as to give details of solid form,
yet finding nothing but insipid and formless spaces displayed by it,
is compelled to suppose that the whole body of the hills is equally
monotonous and devoid of character; and the effect upon it is not

one whit more impressive and agreeable than might be received
from a group of sand-heaps, washed into uniformity by recent rain.

Compare with tliis the distance of Turner in Arona. It is totally
impossible here to say which way the light falls on the distant
hills, except by the slightly increased decision of their edges turned
towards it, but the greatest attention is paid to get these edges
decisive, yet full of gradation, and perfectly true in character of
form. All the rest of the mountain is then undistinguishable haze;
and by the bringing of these edges more and more decisively over
one another, Turner has given us, between the right-hand side of
the picture and the snow, fifteen distinct distances, yet every one
of these distances in itself palpitating, changeful, and suggesting
subdivision into countless multitude. Something of this is traceable
even in the engraving, and all the essential characters are perfectly
well marked. I think even the least experienced eye can scarcely
but feel the truth of this distance as compared with Stanfield's. In
the latter, the eye gets something of the form, and so wonders it
sees no more ; the impression on it, therefore, is of hills within
distinctly visible distance, indiscernible through want of light or
dim atmosphere, and the effect is, of course, smallness of space,
with obscurity of light and thickness of air. In Turner's, the eye
gets nothing of the substance, and wonders it sees so much of the
outline; the impression is, therefore, of mountains too far off to be
ever distinctly seen, rendered clear by brilliancy of light and purity
of atmosphere; and the effect, consequently, vastness of space, with
intensity of light and crystalline transparency of air.

These truths are invariably given in every one of Turner's dis-
tances, that is to say, we have always in them two principal facts
forced on our notice : transparency, or filminess of mass, and
excessive sharpness of edge. And I wish particularly to insist
upon this sharpness of edge, because it is not a casual or changeful
habit of nature; it is the unfailing characteristic of all very great
distances. It is quite a mistake to suppose that slurred or melting
lines are characteristic of distant large objects : they may be so, as
before observed. Sec. II. Chap. TV. § 4., when the focus of the eye
is not adapted to them ; but, when the eye is really directed to the
distance, melting lines are characteristic only of thick mist and

vapour between us and the object, not of the removal of the
object. If a thing has character upon its outline, as a tree for
instance, or a mossy stone, the farther it is removed from us, the
sliarper the outline of the whole mass will become, though in doing
so the particular details which make up the character will become
confused in the manner described in the same chapter. A tree
fifty yards from us, taken as a mass, has a soft outline, because the
leaves and interstices have some effect on the eye ; but put it ten
miles off against the sky, and its outline will be so sharp that you
cannot tell it from a rock. So in a mountain five or six miles
off, bushes, and heather, and roughnesses of knotty ground, and
rock, have still some effect on the eye, and, by becoming con-
fused and mingled as before described, soften the outline. But
let the mountain be thirty miles off, and its edge will be as
sharp as a knife. Let it, as in the case of the Alps, be
seventy or eighty miles off, and though it has become so faint
that the morning mist is not so transparent, its outline will be
beyond all imitation for excessive sharpness. Thus, then, the
character of extreme distance is always excessive keenness of
edge. If you soften your outline, you either put mist between you
and the object, and in doing so diminish your distance, for it is
impossible you should see so far through mist as through clear air;
or, if you keep an impression of clear air, you bring the object
close to the observer, diminish its size in proportion, and if the
aerial colours, excessive blues, &c., be retained, represent an im-
possibility.

Take Claixde's distance, in No. 244. Dulwich Gallery', on the § 17. Want of
right of the picture. It is as pure blue as ever came from the ciaude*^^^^*^" ™
palette, laid on thick; you cannot see through it, there is not the
slightest vestige of transparency or filminess about it, and its edge
is soft and blunt. Hence, if it be meant for near hills, the blue is
impossible, and the want of details impossible, in the clear atmo-
sphere indicated through the whole picture. If it be meant for
extreme distance, the blunt edge is impossible, and the opacity is
impossible. I do not know a single distance of the Italian school

to which the same observation is not entirely applicable, except,
perhaps, one or two of Nicholas Poussin's. They always involve,
under any supposition whatsoever, at least two impossibilities.

I need scarcely mention in particular any more of the works of
Turner, because there is not one of his mountain distances in which
these facts are not fully exemplified. Look at the last vignette,
the Farewell, in Rogers's Italy; observe the excessive sharpness
of all the edges, almost amounting to lines, in the distance, while
there is scarcely one decisive edge in the foreground. Look at the
hills of the distance in the Dunstalfnage, Glencoe, and Loch Achray
(Illustrations to Scott), in the latter of which the left-hand side of
the Ben Venue is actually marked with a dark line. In fact.
Turner's usual mode of executing these passages is perfectly evident
in all his drawings; it is not often that we meet with a very broad
dash of wet colour in his finished works, but in these distances, as
we before saw of his shadows, all the effect has been evidently
given by a dash of very moist pale colour, the paper probably
being turned upside down, so that a very firm edge may be left at
the top of the mountain as the colour dries. And in the Battle of
]\'Iarengo we find the principle carried so far as to give nothing
more than actual outline for the representation of the extreme
distance, while all the other hills in the pictvire are distinctly
darkest at the edge. This plate, though coarsely executed, is yet
one of the noblest illustrations of mountain character and mag-
nitude existing.

Such, then, are the chief characteristics of the highest peaks
and extreme distances of all hills, as far as the forms of the rocks
themselves, and the aerial appearances especially belonging to them,
are alone concerned. There is, however, yet another point to be
considered, the modification of their form caused by incumbent
snow.

Pictures of winter scenery are nearly as common as moonlights,
and are usually executed by the same order of artists, that is to
say, the most incapable; it being remarkably easy to represent the
moon as a white wafer on a black ground, or to scratch out white
branches on a cloudy sky. Nevertheless, among Flemish paintings
several valuable representations of winter are to be found, and some

clever pieces of effect among the moderns, as Hunt's, for instance,
and De Wint's. But all sucli efforts end in effect alone, nor have
I ever in anj single instance seen a snow xoreatli, I do not say
thoroughly, but even decently, drawn. ^

In the range of inorganic nature, I doubt if any object can be
found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep, snow drift, seen
under warm light. ^ Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and
changefulness; its surface and transparency alike exquisite; its light
and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows
sharp, pale, and of heavenly colour, the reflected lights intense and
multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted
light. No mortal hand can approach the majesty or loveliness of
it, yet it is possible, by care and skill, at least to suggest the precious-
ness of its forms and intimate the nature of its light and shade:
but this has never been attempted; it could not be done except by
artists of a rank exceedingly high, and there is something about
the feeling of snow in ordinary scenery which such men do not
like. But when the same qualities are exhibited on a magnificent
Alpine scale, and in a position where they interfere with no feeling
of life, I see not why they should be neglected, as they have
hitherto been, unless that the difficulty of reconciling the brilliancy
of snow with a picturesque light and shade is so great that most
good artists disguise or avoid the greater part of upper Alpine
scenery, and hint at the glacier so slightly that they do not feel
tlie necessity of careful study of its forms. Habits of exaggeration
increase the evil. I have seen a sketch from nature, by one of the
most able of our landscape painters, in which a cloud had been
mistaken for a snowy summit, and the hint thus taken exaggerated,
as was likely, into an enormous mass of impossible height and un-
intelligible form, when the mountain itself for which the cloud had
been mistaken, though subtending an angle of about eighteen or
twenty degrees, instead of the fifty attributed to it, was of a form

' The best snow scenes (with tiiis only exception, that the wreaths are not di'awn,)
whicli I have ever seen are those of an almost unknown painter, Mr. Wallis (8. Cot-
tage Grove, West Lane, Walworth). I am obliged to give his address, for his works
have been again and again rejected from our exhibitions. In general, these rejections
are very just; but I have known several exceptions, and this is one of the most painful.

SO exquisite that it might have been a lesson to Phidias. Nothing
but failure can resTilt from such methods of sketching, nor have I
ever seen a single instance of an earnest study of snowy mountains
by any one. Hence, wherever they are introduced, their drawing
is utterly unintelligible, the forms being those of white rocks, or of
rocks lightly powdered with snow, showing sufficiently that not
only the painters have never studied the mountain carefully from
below, but that they have never climbed into the snowy region.
Harding's rendering of the high Alps (vide the engraving of Cha-
monix, and of the Wengern Alp, in the Illustrations to Byron) is
best; but even he shows no perception of the real anatomy. Turner
invariably avoids the difficulty, though he has shown himself capable
of grappling with it in the ice of the Liber Studiorum (Mer de
Glace), which is very cold and slippery; but of the crusts and
wreaths of the higher snow he has taken no cognizance. Even the
vignettes to Rogers's Poems fail in this respect. It would be vain
to attempt in this place to give any detailed account of the phe-
nomena of the upper snows; but it may be well to note those general
principles which every artist ought to keep in mind when he has
to paint an Alp.

Snow is modified by the under forms of the hill in some sort as
dress is by the anatomy of the human frame. And as no dress
can be well laid on without conceiving the body beneath, so no
Alp can be drawn unless its under form is conceived first, and its
snow laid on afterwards.

li]very high Alp has as much snoio upon it as it can carry. It is
not, observe, a mere coating of snow of given depth throughout,
but it is snow loaded on until the rocks can hold no more. The
surplus does not fall in the winter, because, fastened by continual
frost, the quantity of snow which an Alp can carry is greater than
each single winter can bestow; it falls in the first mild day of
spring in enormous avalanches. Afterwards the melting continues,
gradually removing from all the steep rocks the small quantity of
snow which was all they could hold, and leaving them black and
bare among the accumulated fields of unknown depth, which occupy
the capacious valleys and less inclined superficies of the mountain.

the actual forms of the rocks on which it lies, but it hangs from
peak to peak in unbroken and sweeping festoons, or covers whole
groups of peaks, which afford it sufficient hold, with vast and un-
broken domes: these festoons and domes being guided in their
curves, and modified in size, by the violence and prevalent direction
of the winter winds.

We have, therefore, everj variety of indication of the under
mountain form: first the mere coating which is soon to be with-
drawn, and Avhich shows as a mere sprinkling or powdering, after a
storm on the higher peaks; then the shallow incrustation on the
steep sides, glazed by the running down of its frequent meltings,
frozen again in the night; then the deeper snow, more or less
cramped or modified by sudden eminences of emergent rock, or
hanging in fractured festoons and huge blue irregular cliffs on the
mountain flanks, and over the edges and summits of their precipices
in nodding drifts, far overhanging, like a cornice (perilous things
to approach the edge of, from above); finally, the pure accumulation
of overwhelming depth, smootli, sweeping, and almost cleftless, and
modified only by its lines of drifting. Countless phenomena of
exquisite beauty belong to each of these conditions, not to speak of
tlie transition of the snow into ice at lower levels; but all on which
I shall at present insist is, that the artist should not think of his Alp
merely as a Avhite mountain, but conceive it as a group of peaks
loaded with an accumulation of snow, and that especially he should
avail himself of the exquisite curvatures, never failing, by which
the snow unites and opposes the harsh and broken lines of the rock.
I shall enter into farther detail on this subject hereafter; at present
it is useless to do so, as I have no examples to refer to, either in
ancient or modern art. No statement of these facts has hitherto
been made, nor any evidence given even of their observation,
except by the most inferior painters.'

Various works in green and white appear from time to time on § 21. Average
the walls of the Academy, like the Alps indeed, but so frightfully
like, that we shudder and sicken at the sight of them, as we do i^» spirit

' I hear of some study of Alpine scenery among the professors at Geneva; but all
foreign landscape that I have ever met with has been so utterly ignorant, that I hope
for nothing exccpt from our own painters.

when our best friend shows us into his dining-room, to see a portrait
of himself, which " every body thinks very like." We should be
glad to see fewer of these, for Switzerland is quite beyond the
power of any but first-rate men, and is exceedingly bad practice
for a rising artist: but let us express a hope that Alpine scenery will
not continue to be neglected as it has been, by those who alone are
capable of treating it. We love Italy, but we have had rather a
surfeit of it lately; too many peaked caps and flat-headed pines.
We should be very grateful to Harding and Stanfield if they would
refresh us a little among the snow, and give us, what we believe
them to be caj)able of giving us, a faithful expression of Alpine
ideal. We are well aware of the pain inflicted on an artist's mind by
the preponderance of black, and white, and green, over more avail-
able colours; but there is nevertheless, in generic Alpine scenery,
a fountain of feeling yet unopened, a chord of harmony yet un-
touched by art. It will be struck by the first man who can
separate what is national, in Switzerland, from what is ideal. We
do not want chalets and three-legged stools, cov/-bells and butter-
milk. We want the pure and holy hills, treated as a link between
heaven and earth.

We have next to investigate tlie character of those intermediate § i. The in-
masses wliich constitute the greater part of all hill scenery, forming tainTare°Ti's-
the outworks of the high ranges, and being almost the sole consti-
tuents of such lower groups as those of Cumberland, Scotland, or being divided
South Italy.

All mountains whatsoever, not composed of the granite or gneiss
rocks described in the preceding chapter, nor volcanic (these latter
being comparatively rare), are composed of beds, not of homo-
geneous, heaped materials, but of accumulated layers, whether of
rock or soil. It may be slate, sandstone, limestone, gravel, or
clay ; but whatever the substance, it is laid in layers, not in a mass.
These layers are scarcely ever horizontal, and may slope to any
degree, often occurring vertical, the boldness of the hill outline
commonly depending in a great degree on their inclination. In
consequence of this division into beds, every mountain will have
two great sets of lines more or less prevailing in its contours : one
indicative of the surfaces of the beds, where they come out from
under each other; and the other indicative of the extremities or
edges of the beds, where their continuity has been interrupted.
And these two great sets of lines will commonly be at right angles
to each other, or nearly so. If the surface of the bed approach
a horizontal line, its termination will approach the vertical, and
this is the most usual and ordinary way in which a precipice is
produced.

Farther, in almost all rocks there is a third division of substance,
which gives to their beds a tendency to split transversely in some
du'ections rather than others, giving rise to what geologists call
joints," and throwing the whole rock into blocks more or less
rhoniboidal; so that the beds are not terminated by torn or ragged
edges, but by faces comparatively smooth and even, usually in-
clined to each other at some definite angle. The whole arrange-
ment may be tolerably represented by the bricks of a wall, whose
tiers may be considered as strata, and whose sides and extremities
will represent the joints by which those strata are divided, varying,
however, their direction in different rocks, and in the same rock
under differing circumstances.

Finally, in the slates, grauwackes, and some calcareous beds, in
the greater number, indeed, of mountain rocks, we find another
most conspicuous feature of general structure, the lines of lamina-
tion, which divide the whole rock into an infinite number of
delicate plates or layers, sometimes parallel to the direction or
" strike " of the strata, oftener obliquely crossing it, and sometimes,
apparently, altogether independent of it, maintaining a consistent
and unvarying slope through a series of beds contorted and un-
dulating in every conceivable direction. These lines of lamination
extend their influence to the smallest fragment, causing it (as, for
example, common roofing slate) to break smooth in one direction,
and with a ragged edge in another, and marking the faces of the
beds and joints with distinct and numberless lines, commonly far
more conspicuous in a near view than the larger and more
important divisions.

Now, it cannot be too carefully held in mind, in examining the
principles of mountain structure, that nearly all the laws of nature
with respect to external form are rather universal tendencies, evi-
denced by a plurality of instances, than imperative necessities com-
plied with by all. For instance, it may be said to be a universal
law with respect to the boughs of all ti'ees, that they incline their
extremities more to the ground in proportion as tliey are lower on
the trunk, and that the higher their point of insertion is, the more
they share in the upward tendency of the trunk itself. But yet
there is not a single group of boughs in any one tree which does

not show exceptions to the rule, and present boughs lower in
insertion, and yet steeper in inclination, than their neighbours.
Nor is this defect or deformity, but the result of the constant habit
of nature to carry variety into her very principles, and make the
symmetry and beauty of her laws the more felt by the grace and
accidentalism with which they are carried out. No one familiar
with foliage could doubt for an instant of the necessity of giving
evidence of this downward tendency in the boughs ; but it would
be nearly as great an offence against truth to make the law hold
good Avith every individual branch, as not to exhibit its influence
on the majority. Now, though the laws of mountain form are
more rigid and constant than those of vegetation, they are subject
to the same species of exception in carrying out. Though every
mountain has these great tendencies in its lines, not one in a
thousand of those lines is absolutely consistent with, and obedient
to, this universal tendency. There are lines in every direction,
and of almost every kind, but the sum and aggregate of those lines
will invariably indicate the universal force and influence to which
they are all subjected; and of these lines there will, I repeat, be
two principal sets or classes, pretty nearly at right angles with
each other. When both are inclined, they give rise to peaks or
ridges; when one is iiearly horizontal and tlie other vertical, to
table-lands and precipices.

This then is the broad organization of all hills, modified after-
wards by time and weather, concealed by superincumbent soil and
vegetation, and ramified into minor and more delicate details in a
way presently to be considered, but nevertheless universal in its
great first influence, and giving to all mountains a particular cast
and inclination; like the exertion of voluntary power in a definite
direction, an internal spirit, manifesting itself in every crag, and
breathing in every slope, flinging and forcing the mighty mass
towards the heaven with an expression and an energy like that of
life.

Now, as in the case of the structure of the central peaks § s. The per-
described above, so also here, if I had to give a clear idea of this SlhemTn''""
organization of the lower hills, where it is seen in its greatest per-
fection, with a mere view to geological truth, I should not refer to

any geological drawings, but I should take the Lake Coriskin of
Turner. It has been admirably engraved, and for all pur-
poses of reasoning on form, is nearly as effective in the print
as in the drawing. Looking at any group of the multitudinous
lines which make up this mass of mountain, they appear to be
running anywhere and everywhere; there are none parallel to each
other, none resembling each other for a moment; yet the whole
mass is felt at once to be composed with the most rigid parallelism,
the surfaces of the beds towards the left, their edges or escarp-
ments towards the right. In the centre, near the top of the ridge,
the edge of a bed is beautifully defined, casting its shadow on the
surface of the one beneath it; this shadow marking, by three jags,
the chasms caused in the inferior one by three of its parallel joints.
Every peak in the distance is evidently subject to the same great
influence, and the evidence is completed by the flatness and even-
ness of the steep surfaces of the beds which rise out of the lake on
the extreme right, parallel with those in the centre.

Turn to Glencoe, in the same series (the Illustrations to Scott).
We have, in the mass of mountain on the left, the most beautiful
indication of vertical beds of a finely laminated rock, terminated by
even joints towards the precipice; while the whole sweep of the
landscape, as far as the most distant peaks, is evidently governed
by one great and simple tendency upwards to the left, those most
distant peaks themselves lying over one another in the same
direction. In the Daphne hunting with Leucippus, the mountains
on the left descend in two precipices to the plain, each of which
is formed by a vast escarpment of the beds whose upper surfaces
are shown between the two cliffs, sinking with an even slope from
the summit of the lowest to the base of the highest, under which
they evidently descend, being exposed in this manner for a length
of five or six miles. The same structure is shown, though with
more complicated developement, on the left of the Loch Katrine.
§ 7. Especially But perhaps the finest instance, or at least the most marked of all,
will be found in the exquisite Mount Lebanon, with the convent
of St. Antonio, engraved in Finden's Bible. There is not one
shade nor touch on the rock which is not indicative of the lines of
stratification; and every fracture is marked with a straightforward

simplicity which makes you feel that the artist has nothing in his
heart but a keen love of the pure unmodified truth. There is no
effort to disguise the repetition of forms, no apparent aim at artificial
arrangement or scientific grouping; the rocks are laid one above
another with unhesitating decision; every shade is understood in a
moment, felt as a dark side, or a shadow, or a fissure, and you may
step from one block or bed to another until you reach the moun-
tain summit. And yet, though there seems no effort to disguise
the repetition of forms, see how it is disguised, just as nature would
have done it, by the perpetual play and changefulness of the very
lines which appear so parallel; now bending a little up, or down,
or losing themselves, or running into each other, the old story over
and over again,—infinity. For here is still the great distinction
between Turner's work and that of a common artist. Hundreds
could have given the parallelism of blocks, but none but himself
could have done so without the actual repetition of a single line or
feature.

Now compare with this the second mountain from the left in tlie § 8. Compared
picture of Salvator, No. 220. in the Dulwich Gallery. The whole r/^iiv^Jr''
is first laid in with a very delicate and masterly grey, right in tone,
agreeable in colour, quite unobjectionable for a beginning. But
how is this made into rock ? On the light side Salvator gives us a
multitude of touches, all exactly like one another, and therefore, it
is to be hoped, quite patterns of perfection in rock drawing, since
they are too good to be even varied. Every touch is a dash of the
brush, as nearly as possible in the shape of a comma, round and
bright at the top, convex on its right side, concave on its left, and
melting olEf at the bottom into the grey. These are laid in con-
fusion one above another, some paler, some brighter, some scarcely
discernible, but all alike in shape. Now, I am not aware myself of
any particular object, either in earth or heaven, which these said
touches do at all resemble or portray. I do not, however, assert
that they may not resemble something; feathers, perhaps: but I
do say, and say with perfect confidence, that they may be Chinese
for rocks, or Sanscrit for rocks, or symbolical of rocks in some
mysterious and undeveloped character; but that they are no more
like rocks than the brush that made them. The dark sides appear

to embrace and overhang the lights; they cast no shadows, are
broken by no fissures, and furnish, as food for contemplation,
nothing but a series of concave curves.
§ 9. And of Yet if we go on to No. 269. we shall find something a great deal
worse. I can believe Gaspar Poussin capable of committing as
much sin against nature as most people; but I certainly do not
suspect him of having had any hand in this thing, at least after he
was ten years old. Nevertheless, it shows what he is supposed
capable of by his admirers, and will serve for a broad illustration
of all those absurdities which he himself in a less degree, and with
feeling and thought to atone for them, perpetually commits. Take
the white bit of rock on the opposite side of the river, just above
the right arm of the Niobe, and tell me of what the square green
daubs of the brush at its base can be conjectured to be typical.
There is no cast shadow, no appearance of reflected light, of
substance, or of character on the edge; nothing, in short, but pure,
staring green paint, scratched heavily on a white ground. Nor is
there a touch in the picture more expressive. All are the mere
dragging of the brush here and there and everywhere, without
meaning or intention; winding, twisting, zigzagging, doing anything
in fact which may serve to break up the light and destroy its
breadth, without bestowing in return one hint or shadow of any-
thing like form. This picture is, indeed, an extraordinary case,
but the Salvator above mentioned is a characteristic and exceed-
ingly favourable example of the usual mode of mountain drawing
among the old landscape painters. ^ Their admirers may be chal-
lenged to bring forward a single instance of their expressing, or
even appearing to have noted, the great laws of structure above
explained. Their hills are. without exception, irregular earthy
heaps, without energy or direction of any kind, marked with shape-
less shadows and meaningless lines; sometimes, indeed, where great
sublimity has been aimed at, approximating to the pure and exalted
ideal of rocks, which, in the most artistical specimens of China

' I have above exhausted all terms of vituperation, and probably disgusted the reader ;
and yet I have not spoken with enougli severity : I know not any terms of blame that
are bitter enough to chastise justly the mountain drawing of Salvator in the pictures of
the Pitti Palace.

cups and plates, we see suspended from aerial pagodas, or balanced
upon peacocks' tails, but never warranting even the wildest theorist
in the conjecture that their perpetrators had ever seen a mountain
in their lives. Let us, however, look farther into the modifications
of character by which nature conceals the regularity of her first
plan; for although all mountains are organized as we have seen,
their organization is always modified, and often nearly concealed,
by changes wrought upon them by external influence.

We ought, when speaking of their stratification, to have noticed § lo. Effects
another great law, which must, however, be understood Avith ^nfi^uencrL
greater latitude of application than any of the others, as very far mountain form,
from imperative or constant in particular cases, though universal in
its influence on the aggregate of all. It is that the lines by which
rocks are terminated, are always steeper and more inclined to the
vertical as we approach the summit of the mountain. Thousands
of cases are to be found in every group, of rocks and lines
horizontal at the top of the mountain and vertical at the bottom;
but they are still the exceptions, and the average out of a given
number of lines in any rock formation whatsoever will be found
increasing in perpendicularity as they rise. Consequently the great [ |f

skeleton lines of rock outline are always concave; that is to say, all
distant ranges of rocky mountain approximate more or less to a
series of concave curves, meeting in peaks, like a range of posts
with chains hanging between. I do not say that convex forms
will not perpetually occur, but that the tendency of the groups
will always be to fall into sweeping curved valleys, with angular
peaks; not rounded convex summits, with angular valleys. This
structure is admirably exemplified in the second vignette in Ro-
gers's Italy and in " Piacenza."

But although this is the primary form of all hills, and that § ii. The
which will always cut against the sky in every distant range, there vexity caused
are two great influences whose tendency is directly the reverse, and
which modify, to a great degree, both the evidences of stratification
and this external form. These are aqueous erosion and disintegra-
tion. The latter only is to be taken into consideration when we
have to do with minor features of crag: but the former is a force
in constant action, of the very utmost importance; a force to

which one half of the great outlines of all mountains is entirely
owing, and which has much influence upon every one of their
details.

Now the tendency of aqueous action over a large elevated surface
is ahoays to make that surface symmetrically and evenly convex
and dome-like, sloping gradually more and more as it descends,
until it reaches an inclination of about 40°, at which slope it Avill
descend perfectly straight to the valley; for at that slope the soil
washed from above will accumulate upon the hill-side, as it cannot
lie in steeper beds. This influence, then, is exercised more or less
on all mountains, with greater or less effect in proportion as the
rock is harder or softer, more or less liable to decomposition, more
or less recent in date of elevation, and more or less characteristic in
its original forms; but it universally induces, in the lower parts
of mountains, a series of the most exquisitely symmetrical convex
curves, terminating, as they descend to the valley, in uniform and
uninterrupted slopes; this symmetrical structure being perpetually
interrupted by cliffs and projecting masses, which give evidence of
the interior parallelism of the mountain anatomy, but which inter-
rupt the convex forms more frequently by rising out of them, than
by indentation.

There remains but one fact more to be noticed. All mountains,
in some degree, but especially those which are composed of soft or
decomposing substance, are delicately and symmetrically furrowed
by the descent of streams. The traces of their action commence at
the very summits, fine as threads, and multitudinous, like the
uppermost branches of a delicate tree. They unite in groups as
they descend, concentrating gradually into dark undulating ravines,
into which the body of the mountain descends on each side, at first
in a convex curve, but at the bottom with the same uniform slope
on each side which it assumes in its final descent to the plain,
unless the rock be very hard, when the stream will cut itself a
vertical chasm at the bottom of the curves, and there will be no
even slope. ^ If, on the other hand, the rock be very soft, the

' Some terrific cuts and chasms of this kind occur on the north side of the Valais,
between Sion and Brieg. The torrent from the great Aletsch glacier descends through
one of tliem. Elsewhere chasms may be found as nan-ow, but few so nari'ow and deep.

slopes will increase rapidly in lieiglit and depth from day to day;
washed away at the bottom and crumbling at the top, until, by
their reaching the summit of the masses of rock which separate the
active torrents, the whole mountain is divided into a series of pent-
house-like ridges, all guiding to its summit, and becoming steeper
and narrower as they ascend; these in their turn being divided by
similar but smaller ravines, caused in the same manner, into
the same kind of ridges; and these again by another series, the
arrangement being carried finer and farther according to the soft-
ness of the rock. The south side of Saddleback, in Cumberland,
is a characteristic example; and the Montague de Taconaz, in
Chamonix, a noble instance of one of these ridges or buttresses,
with all its subdivisions, on a colossal scale.

simplicity of mass, and the excessive complication of details, which cHy'o/co^our

produce in all mountain groups: because each individual part and
promontory, being compelled to assume the same symmetrical
curves as its neighbours, and to descend at precisely the same .slope
to the valley, falls in with their prevailing lines, and becomes a
part of a great and harmonious whole, instead of an unconnected
and discordant individual. It is true that each of these members
has its own touches of specific character, it own ])rojecting crags
and peculiar hollows; but by far the greater portion of its lines
will be such as unite with, though they do not repeat, those of its
neighbours, and carry out the evidence of one great influence and
spirit to the limits of the scene. Tliis effort is farther aided by the
original unity and connection of the rocks themselves, which,
though it often may be violently interrupted, is never Avithout
evidence of its existence; for the very interruption itself forces the
eye to feel that there is something to be interrupted, a sympathy
and similarity of lines and fractures, which, however full of variety
and change of direction, never lose the appearance of symmetry of
one kind or another. But, on the other hand, it is to be remem- § 14. And
bered that these great sympathizing masses are not one mountain, ferture.^^'*^^
but a thousand mountains; that they are originally composed of a
multitude of separate eminences, hewn and chiselled indeed into

associating fornij but each retaining still its marked points and
features of character; that each of these individual members has,
by the verj process which assimilated it to the rest, been divided
and subdivided into equally multitudinous groups of minor moun-
tains ; finally, that the whole complicated system is interrapted for
ever and ever by daring manifestations of the inward mountain will,
by the precipice which has submitted to no modulation of the
torrent, and the peak which has bowed itself to no terror of the
storm. Hence we see that the same imperative laws which I'equire
perfect simplicity of mass, require infinite and termless complication
of detail; that there will not be an inch nor a hair's-breadth of
the gigantic heap which has not its touch of separate character, its
own peculiar curve, stealing out for an instant and then melting
into the common line; felt for a moment by the blue mist of the
hollow beyond, then lost when it crosses the enlightened slope;
that all this multiplicity will be grouped into larger divisions, each
felt by its increasing aerial perspective, and its instants of indi-
vidual form, these into larger, and these into larger still, imtil all
are merged in the great impression and prevailing energy of the
two or three vast dynasties which divide the kingdom of the

There is no vestige nor shadow of approach to such treatment as
this in the whole compass of ancient art. Whoever the master,
his hills, wherever he has attempted them, have not the slightest
trace of association or connection ; they are separate, conflicting,
confused, petty and paltry heaps of earth; there is no marking of
distances or divisions in their body ; they may have holes in them,
but no valleys,—protuberances and excrescences, but no parts ;
and, in consequence, are invariably diminutive and contemptible in
their whole appearance and impression.

But look at the mass of mountain on the right in Turner's
Daphne hunting with Leucippus. It is simple, broad, and united
as one surge of a swelling sea; it rises in an unbroken line along
the valley, and lifts its promontories with an equal slope. But it
contains in its body ten thousand hills. There is not a quarter
of an inch of its surface without its suggestion of increasing dis-
tanc'v and individual form. First, on the right, you have a range

of tower-like precipices, the clinging wood climbing along tlieir
ledges and cresting tlieir summits, white waterfalls gleaming
through its leaves; not, as in Claude's scientific ideals, poured in
vast torrents over the top, and carefully keeping all the way down
on the most projecting parts of the sides; but stealing down,
traced from point to point, through shadow after shadow, by their
evanescent foam and flashing light,—here a wreath, and there a
ray, — through the deep chasms and hollow ravines, out of which
rise the soft rounded slopes of mightier mountain, surge beyond
surge, immense and numberless, of delicate and gradual curve,
accumulating in the sky until their garment of forest is exchanged
for the shadowy fold of slumbrous morning cloud, above which the
utmost silver peak shines islanded and alone. Put what moimtain
painting you will beside this, of any other artist, and its heights
will look like mole-hills in comparison, because it will not have the
unity and the multiplicity which are in nature, and with Turner,
the signs of size.

Again, in the Avalanche and Inundation, we have for the whole § 17. And in
subject nothing but one vast bank of united mountain, and one and inundation,
stretch of uninterrupted valley. Though the bank is broken into
promontory beyond promontory, peak above peak, each the abode
of a new tempest, the arbiter of a separate desolation, divided from
each other by the rushing of the snow, by the motion of the storm,
by the thunder of the torrent; the mighty unison of their dark
and lofty line, the brotherhood of ages, is preserved unbroken: .
and the broad valley at their feet, though measured league after
league away by a thousand passages of sun and darkness, and
marked with fate beyond fate of hamlet and of inhabitant, lies yet
but as a straight and narrow channel, a filling furrow before the
flood. Whose work will you compare with this ? Salvator's grey
heaps of earth, seven yards high, covered with bunchy brambles
that we may be under no mistake about the size, thrown about at
random in a little plain, beside a zigzagging river just wide
enough to admit of the possibility of there being fish in it, and
with banks just broad enough to allow the respectable angler or
hermit to sit upon them conveniently in the foreground ? Is there

more of nature in such paltriness, think you, than in the valley
and the mountain which bend to each other like the trough of the
sea; with the flank of the one swept in one surge into the height
of heaven, until the pine forests lie on its immensity like the
shadows of narrow clouds, and the hollow of the other laid league
by league into the blue of the air, until its white villages flash in
the distance only like the fall of a sunbeam ?

But let us examine by what management of the details them-
selves this wholeness and vastness of effect are given. We have
just seen (§ 11.) that it is impossible for the slope of a mountain,
not actually a precipice of rock, to exceed 35° or 40°, and that by
far the greater part of all hill-surface is composed of graceful
curves of much less degree than this, reaching 40° only as their
ultimate and utmost inclination. It must be farther observed that
the interruptions to such curves, by precipices or steps, are always
small in proportion to the slopes themselves. Precipices rising
vertically more than 100 feet are very rare among the secondary
hills of which we are speaking. I am not aware of any cliff in
England or Wales where a plumb-line can swing clear for 200 feet;
and even although sometimes, with intervals, breaks, and steps, we
get perhaps 800 feet of a slope of 60° or 70°, yet not only are these
cases very rare, but even these have little influence on the great
contours of a mountain 4000 or 5000 feet in elevation, being com-
monly balanced by intervals of ascent not exceeding 6° or 8°. The
result of which is, first, that the peaks and precipices of a moun-
tain appear as little more than jags or steps emerging from its
great curves; and, secondly, that the bases of all hills are enor-
mously extensive as compared with their elevation, so that there
must be always a horizontal distance between the observer and the
summit five or six times exceeding the perpendicular one.

Now it is evident, that, whatever the actual angle of elevation of
the mountain may be, every exhibition of this horizontal distance
between us and the summit is an addition to its height, and of
course to its impressiveness ; while every endeavour to exhibit its
slope as steep and sudden is diminution at once of its distance and
elevation. In consequence, nature is constantly endeavouring to

impress upon us this horizontal distance, which, even in spite of
all her means of manifesting it, we are apt to forget or under-
estimate ; and all her noblest effects depend on the full measure-
ment and feeling of it. And it is to the abundant and marvellous
expression of it by Turner, that I would direct especial attention,
as being that which is in itself demonstrative of the highest know-
ledge and power: knowledge, in the constant use of lines of sub-
dued slope in preference to steep or violent ascents, and in the
perfect subjection of all such features, when thej necessarily occur,
to the larger masses; and power, in the inimitable statements of
retiring space by mere painting of surface details, without the aid
of crossing shadows, divided forms, or any other artifice.

The Caudebec, in the Rivers of France, is a fine instance of § 20. Full
almost every fact which we have been pointing out. We have in thcsTfoiV//"
it, first, the clear expression of what takes place constantly among
hills; that the river, as it passes through the valley, will fall Caudebec, &c.
backwards and forwards from side to side, lying first, if I may so
speak, with all its weight against the hills on the one side, and
then against those on the other ; so that, as here it is exquisitely
told, in each of its circular sweeps the whole force of its current is
brought deep and close to the bases of the hills, while the water on
the side next the plain is shallow, deepening gradually. In con-
sequence of this, the hills are cut away at their bases by the
current, so that their slopes are interrupted by precipices moulder-
ing to the water. Observe, first, how nobly Turner has given us
the perfect unity of the whole mass of hill, making us understand
that every ravine in it has been cut gradually by streams. The
first eminence, beyond the city, is not disjointed from, nor inde-
pendent of, the one succeeding, but evidently part of the same
whole, originally united, separated only by the action of the stream
between. The association of the second and third is still more
clearly told, for we see that there has been a little longitudinal
valley running along the brow of their former united mass, which,
after the ravine had been cut between, formed the two jags which
Turner has given us at the same point in each of their curves.
This great triple group has, however, been originally distinct from

those beyond it; for we see that these latter are only the termi-
nation of the enormous even slope, which appears again on the
extreme right, haying been interrupted by the rise of the near
hills. Observe how the descent of the whole series is kept gentle
and subdued, never suffered to become steep except where it has
been cut away by the river, the sudden precipice caused by which
is exquisitely marked in the last two promontories, where they are
defined against the bright horizon; and, finally, observe how, in
the ascent of the nearest eminence beyond the city, without one
cast shadow or any division of distances, every yard of surface is
felt to be retiring by the mere painting of its details, how we are
permitted to walk up it, and along its top, and are carried, before
we are half-way up, a league or two forward into the picture.
The difficulty of doing this, however, can scarcely be appreciated
except by an artist.

I do not mean to assert that this great painter is acquainted with
the geological laws and facts he has thus illustrated; I am not
aware whether he be or not; I merely wish to demonstrate, in
points admitting of demonstration, that intense observation of, and
strict adherence to, truth, which it is impossible to demonstrate in
its less tangible and more delicate manifestations. However I may
feel the truth of every touch and line, I cannot prove truth, except
in large and general features; and I leave it to the arbitration of
every man's reason, whether it be not likely that the painter who
is thus so rigidly faithful in great things that every one of his
pictures might be the illustration of a lecture on the physical
sciences, is not likely to be faithful also in small.

Honfieur, and the scene between Clairmont and Mauves, supply
us with farther instances of the same grand simplicity of treatment;
and the latter is especially remarkable for its expression of the fur-
rowing of the hills by descending water, in the comj)lete roundness
and symmetry of their curves, and in the delicate and sharp shadows
which are cast in the undulating ravines. It is interesting to com-
pare with either of these noble works such hills as those of Claude,
on the left of the picture marked 260. in the Dulwich Gallery.
There is no detail nor surface in one of them; not an inch of ground

for us to stand upon; we must either sit astride upon the edge, or
fall to the bottom. I could not point to a more complete instance
of mountain calumniation; nor can I oppose it more completely, in
every circumstance, than with the Honfleur of Turner, already
mentioned; in which there is not one edge or division admitted,
and yet we are permitted to climb up the hill from the town, and
pass far into the mist along its top, and so descend mile after mile
along the ridge to seaward, until, without one break in the mag-
nificent unity of progress, we are carried down to the utmost horizon.
And contrast the brown paint of Claude, which you can only guess
to be meant for rock or soil because it is brown, with Turner's
profuse pauseless richness of feature, carried through all the
enormous space; the unmeasured wealth of exquisite detail, over
which the mind can dwell, and walk, and wander, and feast for
ever, without finding either one break in its vast simplicity, or one
vacuity in its exhaustless splendour.

But these, and hundreds of others, which it is sin not to dwell § 23. The same
upon, wooded hills and undulating moors of North England, rolling ^ope ^in^The^^
surges of park and forest of the South, soft and vine-clad ranges ^iiis ^^^

of French coteaux casting their oblique shadows on silver leagues
of glancing rivers, and olive-whitened promontories of Alp and
Apennine, are only instances of Turner's management of the lower
and softer hills. In the bolder examples of his powers, where
he is dealing with lifted masses of enormous mountain, we shall
still find him as cautious in his use of violent slopes or vertical lines,
and still as studied in his expression of retiring surface. "We never
get to the top of one of his hills without being tired with our walk;
not by the steepness, observe, but by the stretch; for we are carried
up towards the heaven by such delicate gradation of line, that we
scarcely feel that we have left the earth before we find ourselves
among the clouds. The Skiddaw, in the Illustrations to Scott, is
a noble instance of this majestic moderation. The mountain lies in
the morning light, like a level vapour; its gentle lines of ascent are
scarcely felt by the eye; it rises without effort or exertion, by
the mightiness of its mass; every slope is full of slumber; and we
know not how it has been exalted, until we find it laid as a floor

for the walking of tlie eastei-n clouds. So again in the Fort Au-
gustus, where the whole elevation of the hills depends on the soft
lines of swelling surface which undulate back through leagues of
mist, carrying us unawares higher and higher above the diminished
lake, until, when we are all but exhausted with the endless distance,
the mountains make their last spring, and bear us, in that instant
of exertion, half-way to heaven.

T ought perhaps rather to have selected, as instances of mountain
form, such elaborate works as the Oberwesel or Lake of TJri, but
I have before expressed my dislike of speaking of such magnificent
pictures as these by parts. And indeed all proper consideration of
the hill drawing of Turner must be deferred until we are capable
of testing it by the principles of beauty; for, after all, the most
essential qualities of line, those on which all right delineation of
mountain character must depend, are those which are only to be
explained or illustrated by appeals to our feeling of what is beauti-
ful. There is an expression about all the hill lines of nature,
which I think I shall be able hereafter to explain; but it is not to
be reduced to line and rule, not to be measured by angles or
described by compasses, not to be chipped out by the geologist or
equated by the mathematician. It is intangible, incalculable ; a
thing to be felt, not understood; to be loved, not comprehended;
a music of the eyes, a melody of the heart, whose truth is known
only by its sweetness.

I can scarcely, without repeating myself to tediousness, enter at
present into proper consideration of the mountain drawing of other
modern painters. We have, fortunately, several by wdiom the
noble truths which we have seen so fully exemplified by Turner
are also deeply felt and faithfully rendered; though, for the per-
fect statement of them, there is a necessity of such a union of
freedom of thought with perfect mastery over the greatest me-
chanical difficulties, as we can scarcely hope to see attained by
more than one man in our age. Very nearly the same words
which we used in reference to Stanfield's drawings of the central
clouds, might be applied to his rendering of mountain truth. He
occupies exactly the same position wath respect to other artists in

earth as in cloud. None can be said really to draw the mountain
as he will, to have so perfect a mastery over its organic develope-
ment; but there is, nevertheless, in all his works, some want of
feeling and individuality. He has studied and mastered his subject

presses in them the fresh ideas received from nature. Hence,
in all that he does, we feel a little too much that the hills are his
own. We cannot swear to their being the particular crags and
individual promontories which break the cone of Ischia, or shadow
the waves of Maggiore. We are nearly sure, on the contrary, that
nothing but the outline is local, and that all the filling up has been
done in the study. Now, we haA^e already shown (Sec. I. Chap. § 26. import-
in.) that particular truths are more important than general ones, ticij^i.^aM in-

and this is just one of the cases in which that rule especially applies, dividual truth

as the appearance of individuality; nothing is so great a proof of
real imagination and invention, as the appearance that nothing has
been imagined or invented. We ought to feel of every inch of
mountain, that it must have existence in reality, that if we had
lived near the place we should have known every crag of it, and
that there must be people to whom every crevice and shadow of
the picture is fraught with recollections, and coloured with associ-
ations. The moment the artist can make us feel this, the moment
he can make us think that he has done nothing, that Nature has
done' all, that moment he becomes ennobled, he proves himself
great. As long as we remember him, we cannot respect him. We
honour him most when we most forget him. He becomes great
when he becomes invisible. And we may, perhaps, be permitted
to express our hope that Mr. Stanfield will, our conviction that he
must, if he would advance in his rank as an artist, attend more to
local character, and give us generally less of the Stanfield limestone.
He ought to study with greater attention the rocks which alFord !

finer divisions and more delicate parts (slates and gneiss); and he
ought to observe more fondly and faithfully those beautiful
laws and lines of swell and curvature, by intervals of which nature

sets off and relieves the energy of her peaked outlines. He is at
present apt to be too rugged, and, in consequence, to lose size. Of
his best manner of drawing hills, I believe I can scarcely give a
better example than the rocks of Suli, engraved in Finden's illus-
trations to Byron. It is very grand and perfect in all parts and
points.

Copley Fielding is peculiarly graceful and affectionate in his
drawing of the inferior momitains. But as with his clouds, so with
his hills; as long as he keeps to silvery films of misty outline, or
purple shadows mingled with the evening light, he is true and
beautiful; but the moment he withdraws the mass out of his veiling
mystery, he is lost. His worst drawings, therefore, are those on
which he has spent most time; for he is sure to show weakness
wherever he gives detail. We believe that all his errors proceed,
as we observed before, from his not working with the chalk or
pencil; and that if he would paint half the number of pictures in
the year which he usually produces, and spend his spare time in
hard dry study of forms, the half he painted would be soon worth
double the present value of all. For he really has deep and
genuine feeling of hill character, a far higher perception of space,
elevation, incorporeal colour, and all those qualities which are the
poetry of mountains, than any other of our water-colour painters; and
it is an infinite pity that he should not give to these delicate feelings
the power of realization, which might be attained by a little labour.
A few thorough studies of his favourite mountains, Ben Venue or
Ben Cruachan, in clear, strong, front chiaroscuro, allowing himself
neither colour nor mist, nor any means of getting over the ground
but downright drawing, would, we think, open his eyes to soiirces
of beauty of which he now takes no cognizance. He ought not,
however, to repeat the same subjects so frequently, as the casting
about of the mind for means of varying them blunts the feelings
to truth. And he should remember that an artist, who is not
making progress, is nearly certain to be retrograding; and that
progress is not to be made by working in the study, or by mere
labour bestowed on the repetition of unchanging conceptions.

J. D. Harding would paint mountains very nobly, if he made
them of more importance in his compositions, but they are usually

little more than backgrounds for liis foliage or buildings ; and it is
his present system to make his backgrounds very slight. Some of
the best and most substantial renderings of the green and turfy
masses of our lower hills are to be found in the drawings of Black-
lock ; and I am sorry not to have before noticed the quiet and
simple earnestness, and the tender feeling, of the mountain drawings
of William Turner of Oxford.^

' It is not without indignation that I see the drawings of this patient and un-
assuming master dehberately insulted every year by the Old Water-Colour Society, and
placed in consistent degradation at the top of the room, while the commonest affec-
tations and trickeries of vulgar draughtsmanship are constantly hung on the line.
Except the works of Hunt, Prout, Cox, Fielding, and Finch, there are generally none
in the room which deserve so honourable a place as those of William Turner.

We liave now only to observe the close characteristics of the rocks
and soils to which the large masses of which we have been speaking,
owe their ultimate characters.

We have already seen that there exists a marked distinction
between those stratified rocks whose beds are amorphous and with-
out subdivision, as many limestones and sandstones, and those which
are divided by lines of lamination, as all slates. The last kind of
rock is the more frequent in nature, and forms the greater part of
all hill scenery. It has, however, been successfully grappled with
by few, even of the moderns, except Turner; while there is no
single example of any aim at it or thought of it among the ancients,
whose foregrounds, as far as it is possible to guess at their intention
through their concentrated errors, are chosen from among the tufa
and travertin of the lower Apennines (the ugliest as well as the
least characteristic rocks of nature), and whose larger features of
rock scenery, if we look at them with a predetermination to find in
them a resemblance of something, may be pronounced at least liker
the mountain limestone than anything else. I shall glance, there-
fore, at the general characters of these materials first, in order that
we may be able to appreciate the fidelity of rock-drawing on which
Salvator's reputation has been built.

The massive limestones separate generally into irregular blocks,
tending to the form of cubes or parallelepipeds, and terminated by
tolerably smooth planes. The weather, acting on the edges of
these blocks, rounds them oiff; but the frost, which, while it cannot
penetrate nor split the body of the stone, acts energetically on the

angles, splits off' tlie rounded fragments, and supplies sharp, fresli,
and complicated edges. Hence the angles of such blocks are
usually marked by a series of steps and fractures, in which the
peculiar character of the rock is most distinctly seen; the effect
being increased in many limestones by the interposition of two or
three thinner beds between the large strata of which the block has
been a part; these thin laminaa breaking easily, and supplying a
number of fissures and lines at the edge of the detached mass.
Thus, as a general principle, if a rock have character anywhere, it
will be on the angle; and however even and smooth its great planes
may be, it will usually break into variety where it turns a corner.
In one of the most exquisite pieces of rock truth ever put on
canvass, the foreground of the " Napoleon " in the Academy, 1842,
this principle was beautifully exemplified in the complicated frac-
tures of the upper angle just where it turned from the light, wliile
the planes of the rock were varied only by the modulation they
owed to the waves. It follows from this structure that the edges
of all rock being partially truncated, first by large fractures, and
then by the rounding of the fine edges of these by the weather,
perpetually present convex transitions from the light to the dark
side, the planes of the rock almost always swelling a little from
the angle.

Now it will be found throughout the works of Salvator, that his § 3. Saivator's
most usual practice was to give a concave sweep of the brush for causecfbyrhe
his first expression of the dark side, leaving the paint darkest meeting of
towards the light; by which daring and original method of pro-
cedure he has succeeded in covering his foregrounds with forms
which approximate to those of drapery, of ribands, of crushed
cocked hats, of locks of hair, of waves, leaves, or anything, in
short, flexible or tough, but which of course are not only unlike,
but directly contrary to, the forms which nature has impressed on
rocks.' And the circular and sweeping strokes or stains which are

' I have cut out a passage in this place which insisted on the angular character of
rocks ; not because it was false, but because it was incomplete, and I cannot explain
it nor complete it without example. It is not the absence of curves, but the suggestion
of hardness through curves, and of the under tendencies of the structure, which is the

dashed at random over their surfaces, only fail of destroying all
resemblance whatever to rock structure from their frequent want
of any meaning at all, and from the impossibility of our supposing
any of them to be representative of shade. Now, if there be any
part of landscape in which nature developes her principles of light
and shade more clearly than another, it is rock ; for the dark sides
of fractured stone receive brilliant reflexes from the lighted sur-
faces, on which the shadows are marked with the most exquisite
precision, especially because, owing to the parallelism of cleavage,
the surfaces lie iisually in directions nearly parallel. Hence every
crack and fissure has its shadow and reflected light separated with
the most delicious distinctness, and the organization and solid form
of all parts are told with a decision of language, which, to be fol-
lowed with anything like fidelity, requires the most transparent
colour, and the most delicate and scientific drawing. So far are
the works of the old landscape painters from rendering this, that it
is exceedingly rare to find a single passage in which the shadow
can even be distinguished from the dark side—they scarcely seem
to know the one to be darker than the other; and the strokes of
the brush are not used to explain or express a form known or con-
ceived, but are dashed and daubed about without any aim beyond
the covering of the canvass. " A rock," the old masters appear to
say to themselves, " is a great, irregular, formless, characterless
lump; but it must have shade upon it, and any grey marks will
do for that shade."

Finally, while few, if any, of the rocks of nature are untraversed
by delicate and slender fissures, whose black sharp lines are the
only means by which the peculiar quality in which rocks most
differ from the other objects of the landscape, brittleness, can be

true chai-acteristic of rock form ; and Salvator, whom neither here nor elsewhere I have
jibused enough, is not wrong because he paints curved rocks, but because his curves are
the curves of ribands and not of rocks. The difference between rock curvaturc and
other curvature I cannot explain verbally, but I hope to do it hereafter by illustration ;
at present, let the reader study the rock-drawing of the Mont St. Gothard subject, in
the Liber Studiorum, and compare it -^vith any examples of Salvator to which he may
happen to have access. The account of rocks here given is altogether inadequate,
and I only do not add to it because I first wish to give longer study to the subject.

transparency. Take, for instance, the foreground of Salvator, in § 7. instances

any of his works as better or more characteristic than others; but
among small and easily accessible engravings, the Botallack Mine,
Cornwall, engraved in the Coast Scenery, gives us a very finished
and generic representation of rock, whose primal organization has
been violently affected by external influences. We have the strati-
fication and cleavage indicated at its base, every fissure being sharp,
angular, and decisive, disguised gradually as it rises by the round-
ing of the surface, and the successive furrows caused by the descent
of streams. But the exquisite drawing of the foreground is espe-
cially worthy of notice. No huge concave sweeps of the brush,
no daubing or splashing here. Every inch of it is brittle and
splintery, and the fissures are explained to the eye by the most
perfect, speaking light and shade; we can stumble over the edges
of them. The East Clifi', Hastings, is another very fine example,
from the exquisite irregularity with which its squareness of general
§ 9. Their ab- Structure is varied and disguised. Observe how totally contrary
every one of its lines is to the absurdities of Salvator. Stanfield's
are all angular and straight, every apparent curve made up of
right lines, while Salvator's are all sweeping and flourishing like so
much penmanship. Stanfield's lines pass away into delicate
splintery fissures, Salvator's are broad daubs throughout. Not
one of Stanfield's lines is like another. Every one of Salvator's
mocks all the rest. All Stanfield's curves, where his universal
angular character is massed, as on the left-hand side, into large
sweeping forms, are convex. Salvator's are every one concave.

The foregrounds of J. D. Harding, and the rocks of his middle
distances, are also thoroughly admirable. He is not quite so various
and undulating in his line as Stanfield ; and sometimes, in his middle
distances, is wanting in solidity, owing to a little confusion of the
dark side and shadow with each other, or with the local colour:
but his work, in near passages of fresh-broken sharp-edged rock,
is absolute perfection, excelling Stanfield in the perfect freedom and
facility with which his fragments are splintered and scattered; true
in every line without the least apparent efibrt. Stanfield's best
works are laborious; but Harding's rocks fall from under his hand
as if they had just crashed down the hill-side, flying on the instant
into lovely form. In colour, also, he incomparably surpasses

Stanfield, who is apt to verge upon mud, or be cold in his grey.
The rich, lichenous, and changeful Avarmth, and delicate weathered
greys of Harding's rock, illustrated as they are by the most fearless,
firm, and unerring drawing, render his wild pieces of torrent shore
the finest things, next to the work of Turner, in English fore-
ground art.

J. B. Pyne has very accurate knowledge of limestone rock, and
expresses it clearly and forcibly; but it is much to be regretted
that this clever artist appears to be losing all sense of colour, and is
getting more and more mannered in execution, evidently never
studying from nature except with the previous determination to
Pynize everything. ^

Before passing to Turner, let us take one more glance at the § H- Charac-
foregrounds of the old masters, with reference, not to their manage- earth and soil,
ment of rock, which is comparatively a rare component part of their
foregrounds, but to the common soil which they were obliged to
paint constantly, and whose forms and appearances are the same
all over the world. A steep bank of loose earth of any kind, that
has been at all exposed to the weather, contains in it, though it
may not be three feet high, features capable of giving high grati-
fication to a careful observer. It is almost a fac-simile of a mountain
slope of soft and decomj)osing rock; it possesses nearly as much
variety of character, and is governed by laws of organization no less
rigid. It is furrowed in the first place by undulating lijies, caused
by the descent of the rain; little ravines, which are cut precisely

' A passage which I happened to see in an Essay of Mr. Pyne's, in the Art-Union,
about nature's " foisting rubbish" upon the artist, sufficiently explains the cause of this
dccline. If Mr. Pyne will go to nature, as all great men have done, and as all men
who mean to be great must do, that is not merely to be helped, but to be taught by her;
he will most assuredly find — and I say this in no unkind or depreciatory feeling, for
I should say the same of all artists who are in the habit of only sketching nature, and
not studying her — that her worst is better than his best. I am quite sure that if
Mr. Pyne, or any other painter who has hitherto been very careful in his choice of
subject, will go into the next turnpike-road, and taking the first four trees that he
comes to in the hedge, give them a day each, drawing them leaf for leaf, as far as may
be, and even their smallest boughs with as much care as if they wei-e rivers, or an
important map of a newly surveyed country, he will find, when he has brought them
all home, tliat any one of them is better than the best he ever invented. Compare
Part III. Sec. I. Chap. III. § 12, 13.

at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave ridges
scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beautifully sharp in
their chiselling. Where a harder knot of ground or a stone cocurs,
the earth is washed from beneath it, and accumulates above it, and
there we have a little precipice connected by a sweeping curve at
its summit with the great slope, and casting a sharp dark shadow;
where the soil has been soft, it will probably be washed away
underneath until it gives way, and leaves a jagged, hanging,
irregular line of fracture: and all these circumstances are ex-
plained to the eye in sunshine with the most delicious clearness;
every touch of shadow being expressive of some particular truth of
structure, and bearing witness to the symmetry into which the
whole mass has been reduced. Where this operation has gone on
long, and vegetation has assisted in softening the outlines, we have
our ground brought into graceful and irregular curves, of infinite
variety, but yet always so connected with each other, and guiding
to each other, that the eye never feels them as separate things, nor
feels inclined to count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to the
other; they are not repetitions of each other, but are different parts
of one system. Each would be imperfect without the one next
to it.

Now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the particulars
wherein this fine character of curve consists, and to show in definite
examples what it is which makes one representation right and
another wrong. The ground of Teniers, for instance, in No. 139.
in the Dulwich Gallery, is an example of all that is wrong. It is
a representation of the forms of shaken and disturbed soil, such as
we should see here and there after an earthquake, or over the ruins
of fallen buildings. It has no tone contour or character of the
soil of nature, and yet I can scarcely tell you why, except that the
curves repeat one another, and are monotonous in their flow, and
are unbroken by the delicate angle and momentary pause with
which the feeling of nature would have touched them ; and are
disunited, so that the eye leaps from this to that, and does not
pass from one to the other without being able to stop, drawn on
by the continuity of line: neither is there any undulation or fur-
rowing of watermark, nor in one spot or atom of the whole surface

is there distinct explanation of form to the eye by means of a
determined shadow; all is mere sweeping of the brush over the
surface with various ground colours, without a single indication of
character by means of real shade.

Let not these points be deemed unimportant: the truths of form § u. import-
in common ground are quite as valuable (let me anticipate myself n^nor partr
for a moment), quite as beautiful, as any others which nature points,
presents; and in lowland landscape they furnish a species of
line which it is quite impossible to obtain in any other way,
the alternately flowing and broken line of mountain scenery,
which, however small its scale, is always of inestimable value,
contrasted with the repetitions of organic form which we are com-
pelled to give in vegetation. A really great artist dwells on every
inch of exposed soil with care and delight, and renders it one of
the most essential, speaking, and pleasurable parts of his compo-
sition. And be it remembered, that the man who, in the most
conspicuous part of his foreground, will violate truth with every
stroke of the pencil, is not likely to be more careful in other parts
of it; and that, in the little bits which I fix upon for animadversion,
I am not pointing out solitary faults, but only the most charac-
teristic examples of the falsehood which is everywhere, and which
renders tlie whole foreground one mass of contradictions and absur-
dities. Nor do I myself see wherein the great difference lies §15. The ob-
between a master and a novice, except in the rendering of the finer then"

It would take me no reasonable or endurable time, if I were to
point out one half of the various kinds and classes of falsehood
which the inventive faculties of the old masters succeeded in
originating, in the drawing of foregrounds. It is not this man
nor that man, nor one school nor another; all agree in entire
repudiation of everything resembling facts, and in the high degree
of absurdity of what they substitute for them. Even Cuyp, who
evidently saw and studied a certain kind of nature, as an artist
should do; not fishing for idealities, but taking what nature gave
him, and thanking her for it; even he appears to have supposed
that the drawing of the earth might be trusted to chance or imagi-
nation, and, in consequence, strews his banks with lumps of dough,
instead of stones. Perhaps, however, the foregrounds of Claude
afford the most remarkable instances of childishness and incom-
petence of all. That of his morning landscape, with the large group
of trees and high single-arched bridge, in the National Gallery, is a
fair example of the kind of error into which he constantly falls. I
will not say anything of the agreeable composition of the three
banks, rising one behind another from the water, except only that
it amounts to a demonstration that all three were painted in
the artist's study, without any reference to nature whatever. In
fact, there is quite enough intrinsic evidence in each of them to
p]'ove this, seeing that what appears to be meant for vegetation upon
them, amounts to nothing more than a green stain on their surfaces,
the more evidently false becatise the leaves of the trees twenty
yards farther off are all perfectly visible and distinct; and that the
sharp lines with which each cuts against that beyond it are not
only such as crumbling earth could never show or assume, but are
maintained through their whole progress ungraduated, unchanging,
and unaffected by any of the circumstances of A^arying shade to
which every one of nature's lines is inevitably subjected. In fact
the whole arrangement is the impotent struggle of a tyro to express
by successive edges that approach of earth which he finds himself
incapable of expressing by the drawing of the surface. Claude
wished to make you understand that the edge of his pond came
nearer and nearer: he had probably often tried to do this with an
unbroken bank, or a bank only varied by the delicate and harnio-

nized anatomy of nature; and he liad found that owing to his total
ignorance of the laws of perspective, such efforts on his part invari-
ably ended in his reducing his pond to the form of a round O, and
making it look perpendicular. Much comfort and solace of mind,
in such unpleasant circumstances, may be derived from instantly
dividing the obnoxious bank into a number of successive promon-
tories, and developing their edges with completeness and intensity.
Every school-girl's drawing, as soon as her mind has arrived at so
great a degree of enlightenment as to perceive that perpendicular
water is objectionable, will supply us with edifying instances of this
unfailing resource; and this foreground of Claude's is only one out
of the thousand cases in which he has been reduced to it. And if § 19. Compared
it be asked, how the proceeding differs from that of nature, I have of TurnerT'^
only to point to nature herself, as she is drawn in the foreground
of Turner's Mercury and Argus, a case precisely similar to Claude's,
of earthy crumbling banks cut away by water. It will be found in
this picture (and I am now describing nature's work and Turner's
with the same words) that the whole distance is given by retire-
ment of solid surface; and that if ever an edge is expressed, it is
only felt for an instant, and then lost again; so that the eye cannot
stop at it and prepare for a long jump to another like it, but is
guided over it, and round it into the hollow beyond; and thus the
whole receding mass of ground, going back for more than a quarter
of a mile, is made completely oyxe, no part of it is separated from
the rest for an instant, it is all united, and its modidations are
members, not divisions of its mass. But those modulations are count-
less ; heaving here, sinking there ; now swelling, now mouldering ;
now blending, now breaking; giving, in fact, to the foreground
of this universal master precisely the same qualities which we have
before seen in his hills, as Claude gave to his foreground precisely
the same qualities which we had before found in his hills,— infinite
unity in the one case, finite division in the other.

Let us, then, having now obtained some insight into the prin- § 20. General
ciples of the old masters in foreground drawing, contrast them x^niCT's^fore-
throughout with those of our great modern master. The investi- ground,
gation of the excellence of Turner's drawing becomes shorter and
easier as we proceed, because the great distinctions between his

work and that of other painters are the same, whatever the object
or subject may be; and after once showing the general characters
of the particular specific forms under consideration, we have only to
point, in the works of Turner, to the same principles of infinity and
variety in carrying them out, which we have before insisted upon
with reference to other subjects.

The Upper Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire, engraved in the England
series, may be given as a standard example of rock-drawing to be
opposed to the work of Salvator. We have, in the great face of
rock which divides the two streams, horizontal lines which indicate
the real direction of the strata, and these same lines are given in
ascending perspective all along the precipice on the right. But we
see also on the central precipice fissures absolutely vertical, which
inform us of one series of joints dividing these horizontal strata;
and the exceeding smoothness and evenness of the precipice itself
inform us that it has been caused by a great separation of sub-
stance in the direction of another more important line of joints,
running across the river. Accordingly, we see on the left that
the whole summit of the precipice is divided again and again by
this great series of joints into vertical beds, which lie against each
other with their sides toward us, and are traversed downwards by
the same vertical lines traceable on the face of the central cliff.
Now, let me direct especial attention to the way in which Turner
has marked, over this general and grand unity of structure, the
modifying effects of the weather and the torrent. Observe how the
whole surface of the hill above the precipice on the left' is brought
into one smooth unbroken curvature of gentle convexity, until it
comes to the edge of the precipice, and then, just on the angle
(compare § 2.), breaks into the multiplicity of fissure which marks
its geological structure. Observe how every one of the separate
blocks into which it divides is rounded and convex in its salient
edges turned to the weather, and how every one of their inward
angles is marked clearly and sharply by the determined shadow and
transparent reflex. Observe how exquisitely graceful are all the
curves of the convex surfaces, indicating that every one of them

In the light between the waterfall and the large dark mass on the extreme right.

has been modelled by the winding and undulating of running
water; and how gradually they become steeper as they descend,
until they are torn down into the face of the precipice. Finally, § 23. And
observe the exquisite variety of all the touches which express
fissure or shade; every one in varying direction and with new
form, and yet of which one deep and marked piece of shadow indi-
cates the greatest proximity; and from this every shade becomes
fainter and fainter, until all are lost in the obscurity and dimness
of the hanging precipice and the shattering fall. Again, see how
the same fractures just upon the edge take place with the central
cliff above the right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is
told us by the confusion of debris accumulated in its channel.
In fact, the great quality about Turner's drawings which more
especially proves their transcendent truth is, the capability they
afford us of reasoning on past and future phenomena, just as if
we had the actual rocks before us; for this indicates not that one
truth is given, or another, not that a pretty or interesting morsel
has been selected here and there, but that the whole truth has
been given, with all the relations of its parts ; so that we can pick
and choose our points of pleasure or of thought for ourselves, and
reason upon the whole with the same certainty which we should
after having climbed and hammered over the rocks bit by bit.
With this drawing before him, a geologist could give a lecture § 24. Various
upon the whole system of aqueous erosion, and speculate as htstory^s told

were standing and getting wet with the spray. He would tell drawing,
you at once, that the waterfall was in a state of rapid recession;
that it had once formed a wide cataract just at the place where the
figure is sitting on the heap of debris; and that when it was there,
part of it came down by the channel on the left, its bed being still
marked by the delicately chiselled lines of fissure. He would tell
you that the foreground had also once been the top of the fall, and
that the vertical fissures on the right of it were evidently then the
channel of a^side stream. He would tell you that the fall was then
much lower than it is now, and that being lower, it had less force,
and cut itself a narrower bed; and that the spot where it reached
the higher precipice is marked by the expansion of the wide basin

wliicli its increased violence has excavated, and by the gradually
increasing concavity of the rocks below, vs^hich w^e see have been
hollowed into a complete vault by the elastic bound of the water.
But neither he nor I could tell you with what exquisite and
finished marking of every fragment and particle of soil or rock,
both in its own structure and the evidence it bears of these great
influences, the whole of this is confirmed and carried out.

With this inimitable drawing we may compare the rocks in the
foreground of the Llanthony. These latter are not divided by joints,
but into thin horizontal and united beds, which the torrent in its
times of flood has chiselled away, leaving one exposed under
another, with the sweeping marks of its eddies upon their edges.
And here we have an instance of an exception to a general rule,
occasioned by particular and local action. We have seen that the
action of water over any surface universally, whether falling, as in
rain, or sweeping, as a torrent, induces convexity of form. But
when we have rocks in situ, as here, exposed at their edges to the
violent action of an eddy, that eddy will cut a vault or circular
space for itself (as we saw on a large scale witli the high waterfall),
and we have a concave curve interrupting the general contours of
the rock. And thus Turner (wliile every edge of his masses is
rounded, and, the moment we rise above the level of the water, all
is convex) lias interrupted the great contours of his strata with
concave curves, precisely where the last waves of the torrent have
swept against the exposed edges of the beds. Nothing could more
strikingly prove the depth of that knowledge by which every touch
of this consummate artist is regulated, that universal command of
subject which never acts for a moment on anything conventional
or habitual, but fills every corner and space with new evidence of
knowledge, and fresh manifestation of thought.

The Lower Fall of the Tees, with the chain-bridge, might serve
us for an illustration of all the properties and forms of vertical beds
of rock, as the Upper Fall has of horizontal; but we pass rather to
observe, in detached pieces of foreground, the particular modulation
of parts which cannot be investigated in the grand combinations of
general mass.

are, I believe, the finest example in tlie world of tlie finished
drawing of rocks which have been subjected to violent aqueous
action. Their surfaces seem to palpitate from the fine touch of the
waves, and every part of them is rising or falling, in soft swell or
gentle depression, though the eye can scarcely trace the fine
shadows on which this chiselling of the surface depends. And
with all this, every block of them has individual character, de-
pendent on the expression of the angular lines of which its contours
were first formed, and which is retained and felt through all the
modulation and melting of the water-worn surface. And what is
done here in the most important part of the picture, to be especially
attractive to the eye, is often done by Turner with lavish and over-
whelming power in the accumiilated debris of a wide foreground,
strewed with the ruin of ages; as, for instance, in the Junction of
the Greta and Tees, where he has choked the torrent bed with a
mass of shattered rock, thrown down with the profusion and care-
lessness of nature herself; and yet every separate block is a study,
chiselled and varied in its parts, as if it were to be the chief
member of a separate subject, yet without ever losing in a single
instance its subordinate position, or occasioning, throughout the
whole accumulated multitude, the repetition of a single line.

I consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new conception, § 27. And of
applied and exerted in the drawing of every member of a confused fo^gro'undt
and almost countlessly divided system, about the most wonderful,
as well as the most characteristic, passages of Tux'ner's foregrounds.
It is done not less marvellously, though less distinctly, in the indi-
vidual parts of all his broken ground, as in examples like these of
separate blocks. The articulation of such a passage as the nearest
bank, in the picture we have already spoken of at so great length,
the Upper Fall of the Tees, might serve us for a day's study, if
we were to go into it part by part; but it is impossible to do this,
except with the pencil; we can only repeat the same general obser-
vations about eternal change and unbroken unity, and tell you to
observe how the eye is kept throughout on solid and retiring
surfaces, instead of being thrown, as by Claude, on flat and equal
edges. You cannot find a single edge in Turner's work; you are
everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back on these

you cannot tell how, never taking a leap, but progressing im-
perceptibly along the unbroken bank, till you find yourself a
quarter of a mile into the picture, beside the figure at the bottom
of the waterfall.

Finally, the bank of earth on the right of the grand drawing of
Penmaen Mawr may be taken as the standard of the representation
of soft soil modelled by descending rain; and may serve to show
us how exquisite in character are the resultant lines, and how full
of every species of attractive and even sublime quality, if we only
are wise enough not to scorn the study of them. The higher the
mind, it may be taken as a universal rule, the less it will scorn
that which appears to be small or unimportant; and the rank of a
painter may always be determined by observing how he uses, and
with what respect he views the minutiae of nature. Greatness of
mind is not shown by admitting small things, but by making small
things great under its influence. He who can take no interest in
what is small, will take false interest in what is great; he who
cannot make a bank sublime, will make a mountain ridiculous.

It is not until we have made ourselves acquainted with these
simple facts of form, as they are illustrated by the slighter works
of Turner, that we can become at all competent to enjoy the com-
bination of all, in such works as the Mercury and Argus, or Bay
of Baise, in which the mind is at first bewildered by the abundant
outpouring of the master's knowledge. Often as I have paused
before these noble works, I never felt on returning to them as if I
had ever seen them before; for their abundance is so deep and
various, that the mind, according to its own temper at the time of
seeing, perceives some new series of truths rendered in them, just
as it would on revisiting a natural scene; and detects new relations
and associations of these truths which set the whole picture in a
different light at every return to it. And this effect is especially
caused by the management of the foreground: for the more marked
objects of the picture may be taken one by one, and thus examined
and known; but the foregrounds of Turner are so united in all
their parts that the eye cannot take them by divisions, but is
guided from stone to stone, and bank to bank, discovering truths
totally different in aspect, according to the direction in which it

approaches them, and approaching them in a different direction,
and viewing them as part of a new system, every time tliat it
begins its course at a new point. One lesson, however, we are in- § 30. And the
variably taught by all, however approached or viewed, that the brrecd^'
work of the Great Spirit of nature is as deep and unapproachable f™™
in the lowest as in the noblest objects; that the Divine mind is
as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and
mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and
settling the foundation of the earth; and that to the rightly per-
ceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty, the
same power, the same unity, and the same perfection, manifest in
the casting of the clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the
mouldering of the dust as in the kindling of the day-star.

Of all inorganic substances, acting in tlieir own proper nature, and
without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If
we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty
which we have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which
the earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and
its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes
the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we
could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in
the foam of the torrent, in the iris which spans it, in the morning
mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror
its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in
that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied
unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity
of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal
element, for glory and for beauty ? or how shall we follow its eternal
changefulness of feeling ? It is like trying to paint a soul.

To suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water, to lay on
canvass as much evidence of surface and reflection as may make

ITS understand that water is meant, is, perhaps, the easiest task
of art; and even ordinary running or falling water may be suf-
ficiently rendered, by observing careful curves of projection with
a dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as we see done
with judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual
play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury
of water when it begins to show itself; to give the flashing and
rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace
of the sea wave, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly
transient, so mountainous in its form, yet so cloud-like in its
motion, with its variety and delicacy of colour, when every
ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection upon
itself alone, and the radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed
with the dim hues of transparent depth and dark rock below; to
do this perfectly is beyond the power of man ; to do it even partially
has been granted to but one or two, even of those few who have
dared to attempt it.

As the general laws which govern the appearances of water have
equal effect on all its forms, it would be injudicious to treat the
subject in divisions; for the same forces which govern the waves
and foam of the torrent are equally influential on those of the sea,
and it will be more convenient to glance generally at the system of
water-painting of each school and artist, than to devote separate
chapters to the examination of the lake, river, or sea-painting of
all. We shall, thei'efore, vary our usual plan, and look forward at
the water-painting of the ancients; then at that of the moderns
generally; lastly, at that of Turner.

It is necessary in the outset to state briefly one or two of the
optical conditions by which the appearance of the surface of water
is affected; to describe them all would require a separate essay,
even if I possessed the requisite knowledge, which I do not. The
accidental modifications under which general laws come into play
are innumerable, and often, in their extreme complexity, inex-
plicable, I suppose, even by men of the most extended optical
knowledge. What I shall here state are a few only of the broadest
laws verifiable by the reader's immediate observation, but of which,

nevertheless, I have found artists frequently ignorant; owing to their
habit of sketching from nature without thinking or reasoning, and
especially of finishing at home. It is not often, I believe, that an
artist draws the reflections in water as he sees them; over large
spaces, and in weather that is not very calm, it is nearly impossible
to do so; when it is possible, sometimes in haste, and sometimes in
idleness, and sometimes under the idea of improving nature, they
are slurred or misrepresented. It is so easy to give something like
a suggestive resemblance of calm water, that, even when the land-
scape is finished from nature, the water is merely indicated as
something tliat may be done at any time; and then, in the home
work, come the cold leaden greys with some, and the violent blues
and greens with others, and the horizontal lines with the feeble,
and the bright touches and sparkles with the dexterous, and every
thing that is shallow and commonplace with all. Now, the fact is
that there is hardly a road-side pond or pool which has not as much
landscape in it as above it. It is not the brown, muddy, dull thing
we suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves, and in the
bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades
of the shaking grass, and all manner of hues of variable pleasant
light out of the sky. Nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the
drain-bars in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base;
down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the dark
serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It is
at your own will that you see, in that despised stream, either the
refuse of the street, or the image of the sky. So it is wdth almost
all other things that we unkindly despise. Now, this far-seeing is
jvTSt the difference between the great and the vulgar painter: the
common man knoivs the road-side pool is muddy, and drawls its
mud; the great painter sees beneath and behind the brown surface
what will take him a day's work to follow, but he follows it, cost
what it will. And if painters would only go out to the nearest
common, and take the nearest dirty pond among the furze, and
draw^ that thoroughly; not considering that it is water that they
are drawing, and that water must be done in a certain way, but
drawing determinedly what they see;—that is to say, all the trees.

and their shaking leaves, and all the hazy passages of disturbing
sunshine; and the bottom seen in the clearer little bits at the edge,
and the stones of it; and all the sky, and the clouds far down in
the middle, drawn as completely as the real clouds above; — they
would come home with such a notion of water-painting as might
save me and every one else all trouble of writing about the
matter. But now they do nothing of the kind, but take the ugly,
round, yellow surface for granted, or else " improve " it at home;
and, instead of giving that refined, complex, delicate, but saddened
and gloomy reflection in the polluted water, they clear it up with
coarse flashes of yellow, and green, and blue, and spoil their own
eyes, and hurt ours; failing, of course, still more hopelessly in reach-
ing the pure light of Avaves thrown loose. And so Canaletto is
still thought to have painted canals, and Vandevelde and Back-
huysen to have painted sea; and the uninterpreted streams and
maligned sea hiss shame upon us from all their rocky beds and
hollow shores.

I approach this part of my subject with more despondency than § 5. Difficulty
any other, and that for several reasons; first, the water-painting part of^the
of all the elder landscape painters, except a few of the better
passages of Claude and Ruysdael, is so execrable, so beyond all
expression and explanation bad, and Claude's and Ruysdael's best
so cold and valueless, that I do not know how to address those
who like such painting; I do not know what their sensations are
respecting sea. I can perceive nothing in Vandevelde or Back-
huysen of the lowest redeeming merit: no power, no presence of
intellect, or evidence of perception of any sort or kind; no re-
semblance, even the feeblest, of anything natural; no invention,
even the most sluggish, of anything agreeable. Had they given
us staring green seas with hatchet edges, such as we see Her
Majesty's ships so-and-so fixed into by the heads or sterns, in the
Royal Academy, the admiration of them Avould have been com-
prehensible ; there being a natural predilection in the mind of man
for green waves with curling tops, but not for clay and wool: so
that though I can understand, in some sort, why people admire
everything else in old art, why they admire Salvator's rocks, and

Claude's foregrounds, and Hobbima's trees, and Paul Potter's
cattle, and Jan Steen's pans; and while I can perceive in all these
likings a root which seems right and legitimate, and to be appealed
to; yet when I find they can even endure the sight of a Backhuysen
on their room walls (I speak seriously) it makes me hopeless at
I may be wrong, or they may be wrong, or at least I can

conceive of no principle or opinion common between iis, which
either can address or understand in the other; and yet I am wrong
in this want of conception, for I know that Turner once liked
Vandevelde, and I can trace the evil influence of Vandevelde on
most of his early sea-painting, but Turner certainly could not have
liked V^andevelde without some legitimate cause. Another dis-
couraging point is, that I cannot catch a wave, nor daguerreotype
it, and so there is no coming to pure demonstration; but the forms
and hues of water must always be in some measure a matter of
dispute and feeling, and the more so because there is no perfect
or even tolerably perfect sea-painting to refer to. The sea never
has been, and I fancy never will be nor can be painted; it is only
suggested by means of more or less spiritual and intelligent con-
ventionalism : and though Turner has done enough to suggest the
sea mightily and gloriously, after all it is by conventionalism still,
and there remains so much that is unlike nature, that it is always
possible for those who do not feel his power to justify their dislike, on
very sufficient and reasonable grounds; and to maintain themselves
obstinately unreceptant of the good, by insisting on the deficiency
which no mortal hand can supply, and which commonly is most
manifest on the one hand, where most has been achieved on the
other.

With calm water the case is different. Facts are ascertainable
and demonstrable there, and, by the notice of one or two of the
simplest, wo may obtain some notion of the little success and intel-
ligence of the elder painters in this easier field, and so prove their
probable failure in contending with greater difficulties.

I. Water, of course, owing to its transparency, possesses not a
perfectly reflective surface, like that of speculum metal, but a
surface whose reflective power is dependent on the angle at which

the rays to be reflected fall. The smaller this angle, the greater
are the number of rays reflected. Now, according to the number
of rays reflected is the force of the image of objects above, and
according to the number of rays transmitted is the perceptibility of
objects below, the water. Hence the visible transparency and re-
flective power of Avater are in inverse ratio. In looking down into
it from above, Ave receive, transmitted rays which exhibit either the
bottom or the objects floating in the Avater; or else if the Avater be
deep and clear, we receive very few rays, and the Avater looks
black. In looking along water Ave receive reflected rays, and
therefore the image of objects above it. Hence, in shalloAv Avater
on a level shore the bottom is seen at our feet, clearly; it becomes
more and more obscure as it retires, even though the water do not
increase in depth ; and at a distance of tAvelve or twenty yards,
more or less according to our height above the Avater, becomes
entirely invisible, lost in the lustre of the reflected surface.

II. The brighter the objects reflected, the larger the angle at
a\diich reflection is Aasible. It is alAA^ays to be remembered that,
strictly speaking, only light objects are reflected, and that the
darker ones are seen only in proportion to the number of rays of
light that they can send; so that a dark object comparatively loses
its poAver to affect the surface of Avater, and the aa ater in the space
of a dark reflection is seen partially with the image of the object,
and partially transparent. It will be found on observation that
under a bank, suppose with dark trees aboA^e showing spaces of
bright sky, the bright sky is reflected distinctly, and the bottom of
the Avater is in those spaces not seen; but in the dark spaces of
reflection Ave see the bottom of the water, and the colour of that
bottom and of the Avater itself mingles with and modifies that of
the colour of the trees casting the dark reflection.

This is one of the most beautiful circumstances connected with
Avater surface, for by these means a variety of colour and a grace
and evanescence are introduced in the reflection otherwise im-
possible. Of course, at great distances, even the darkest objects
cast distinct images, and the hue of the water cannot be seen ; but,
in near Avater, the occurrence of its own colour modifying the

"May 17th, 4 p.m. Looking east the water is calm, and
reflects the sky and vessels, with this peculiarity: the sky, which
is pale blue, is in its reflection of the s^me kind of blue, only a
little deeper; but the vessels^ hulls, lohich are black, are reflected in
pale sea green, i. e. the natural colour of the water under sunlight;
while the orange masts of the vessels, wet with a recent shower,
are reflected without change of colour, only not quite so bright as
above. One ship has a white, another a red stripe," (I ought to
have said, running horizontally along the gunwales,) " of these the
water takes no notice.

" What is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark
figures, the water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out
all the white; this is chiefly owing to the dark images being op-
posed to the bright reflected sky.

" A boat swinging near the quay casts an apparent shadow on
the rippled water. This appearance I find to be owing altogether
to the increased reflective power of the water in the shaded space;
for the farther sides of the ripples therein take the deep pure blue
of the sky, coming strongly dark on the pale green, and the nearer
sides take the pale grey of the cloud, hardly darker than the
bright green."

I have inserted the last two paragraphs because they will be
useful to us presently; all that I wish to insist upon here is the
showing of the local colour (pea green) of the water in the spaces
which were occupied by dark reflections, and the unaltered colour
of the bright ones.

a perfect surface of speculum metal takes no shadow (this the
reader may instantly demonstrate for himself), and a perfectly
transparent body, as air, takes no shadow, hence water, whether
transparent or reflective, takes no shadow.

and sharply: it is necessary carefully to explain the causes of these,
as they form one of the most eminent sources of error in water
painting.

First, water in shade is much more reflective than water in sun-
light. Under sunlight the local colour of the water is commonly
vigorous and active, and forcibly affects, as we have seen, all the
dark reflections, commonly diminishing their depth. Under shade,
the reflective power is in a high degree increased and it will be
found most frequently that the forms of shadows are expressed on
the surface of water, not by actual shade, but by more genuine
reflection of objects above. This is another most important and
valuable circumstance, and we owe to it some phenomena of the
highest beauty.

A very muddy river, as the Arno for instance at Florence, is
seen during sunshine of its own yellow colour, rendering all
reflections discoloured and feeble. At twilight it recovers its
reflective power to the fullest extent, and the mountains of Carrara
are seen reflected in it as clearly as if it were a crystalline lake.
The Mediterranean, whose determined blue yields to hardly any
modifying colour in day-time, receives at evening the image of its
rocky shores. On our own seas, seeming shadows are seen con-
stantly cast in purple and blue, upon pale green. These are no
shadows, but the pure reflection of dark or blue sky above, seen in
the shadowed space, refused by the local colour of the sea in the
sunlighted spaces, and turned more or less purple by the opposition
of the vivid green.

We have seen however above, that the local colour of water, § 9, Modifica-
while it comparatively refuses dark reflections, accepts bright ones reflec^tLm'by
without deadening them. Hence when a shadow is thrown across shadow,
a space of water of strong local colour, receiving, alternately, light
and dark reflections, it has no power of increasing the reflectiveness
of the water in the bright spaces, still less of diminishing it; hence,
on all the dark reflections it is seen more or less distinctly, on all
the light ones it vanishes altogether.

' I state this merely as a fact: I am unable satisfactorily to account for it on optical
principles, and were it otherwise the investigation would be of little interest to the
general reader, and little value to the artist.

Let us take an instance of the exquisite complexity of effect
induced by these various circumstances in cooperation.

Suppose a space of clear water showing the bottom, under a group
of trees showing sky through their branches, and casting shadows
on the surface of the water, which we will suppose also to possess
some colour of its own. Close to us, we shall see the bottom, with
the shadows of the trees clearly thrown upon it, and the colour of
the water seen in its genuineness by transmitted light. Farther
off, the bottom will be gradually lost sight of, but it will be seen
in the dark reflections much farther than in the light ones. At
last it ceases to affect even the former, and the pure surface effect
takes place. The blue bright sky is reflected truly, but the dark
trees are reflected imperfectly, and the colour of the water is seen
instead. Where the shadow falls on these dark reflections a dark-
ness is seen plainly, which is found to be composed of the pure
clear reflection of the dark trees; when it crosses the reflection of
the sky, the shadow, being thus fictitious, of necessity vanishes.

Farther, on whatever dust and other foulness may be present in
water, real shadow of course falls clear and dark in proportion to
the quantity of solid substance present. On very muddy rivers,
real shadow falls in sunlight nearly as sharply as on land; on our
own sea, the apparent shadow caused by increased reflection is
much increased in depth by the chalkiness and impurity of the
water.

Farther, when surface is rippled, every ripple, up to a certain
variable distance on each side of the spectator, and at a certain
angle between him and the sun varying with the size and shape of
the ripples, reflects to him a small image of the sun. Hence those
dazzling fields of expanding light so often seen upon the sea.
Any object that comes between the sun and these ripples takes
from them the power of reflecting the sun, and, in consequence, all
their light; hence any intervening objects cast upon such spaces
seeming shadows of intense force, and of the exact shape, and in
the exact place, of real shadows, and yet which are no more real
shadows than the withdrawal of an image of a piece of white paper
from a mirror is a shadow on the mirror.

Farther, in all shallow water, more or less in proportion to its
shallowness, but in some measure, I suppose, up to depths of
forty or fifty fathoms, and perhaps more, the local colour of
the water depends in great measure on light reflected from the
bottom. This, however, is especially manifest in clear rivers
like the Rhone, where the absence of the light reflected from
below forms an apparent shadow, often visibly detached some
distance from the floating object which casts it.

The following extract from my own diary at Geneva, with the § lo. Examples
last paragraph of that already given at Venice, illustrates both this "he Rhral^"^ °
and the other points we have been stating.

" Geneva, 21st April, morning. The sunlight falls from the
cypresses of Rousseau's island straight towards the bridge. The
shadows of the bridge and of the trees fall on the water in leaden
purple, opposed to its general hue of aquamarine green. This
green colour is caused by the light being reflected from the bottom,
though the bottom is not seen; as is evident by its becoming paler
towards the middle of the river, where the water shoals, on which
pale part the purple shadow of the small bridge falls most forcibly;
which shadow, however, is still only apparent, being the absence
of this reflected light, associated with the increased reflective power
of the water, which in those spaces reflects blue sky above. A boat
swings in the shoal water; its reflection is cast in a transparent pea-
green, Avhich is considerably darker than the pale aquamarine of the
surface at the spot. Its shadow is detached from it just about half
the depth of the reflection, which, therefore, forms a bright green
light between the keel of the boat and its shadow; where the shadow
cuts the reflection, the reflection is darkest and something like the
true colour of the boat; where the shadow falls out of the reflection,
it is of a leaden purple, pale. Another boat, nearer, in deeper water,
shows no shadow whatsoever, and the reflection is marked by its
transparent green, while the surrounding water takes a lightish
blue reflection from the sky."

The above notes, after what has been said, require no comment;
but one more case must be stated belonging to rough water. Every

surface of uniform colour is, indeed, affected more or less by an
infinite variety of liues, prolonged, like the sun image, from a great
distance, and that our apprehension of its lustre, purity, and even
of its surface, is in no small degree dependent on our feeling
of these multitudinous hues, which the continual motion of that
surface prevents us from analysing or understanding for what
they are.

VI. Rippled water, of which we can see the farther side of the
waves, will reflect a perpendicular line clearly, a bit of its length
being given on the side of each wave, and easily joined by the eye.
But if the line slope, its reflection will be excessively confused and
disjointed ; and if horizontal, nearly invisible. It was this circum-
stance which prevented the red and white stripe of the ships at
Yenice, noticed above, from being visible.

VII. Every reflection is the image in reverse of just so much of
the objects beside the water, as we could see if we were placed as
much under the level of the water as we are actually above it. If
an object be so far back from the bank, that if we were five feet
under the water level we could not see it over the bank, then,
standing five feet above the water, we shall not be able to see its
image under the reflected bank. Hence the reflection of all objects
that have any slope back from the water is shortened, and at last
disappears as we rise above it. Lakes seen from a great height
appear like plates of metal set in the landscape, reflecting the sky,
but none of their shores.

VIII. Any given point of the object above the water is reflected,
if reflected at all, at some spot in a vertical line beneath it, so long
as the plane of the water is horizontal. On rippled water a slight
deflection sometimes takes place, and the image of a vertical tower
will slope a little away from the wind, owing to the casting of the
image on the sloping sides of the ripples. On the sloping sides of
large waves the deflection is in proportion to the slope. For rough
practice, after the slope of the wave is determined, let the artist
turn his paper until such slope becomes horizontal, and then paint
the reflections of any object upon it as on level w^ater, and he will
be right.

Such are the most common and general optical laws which are § 16. Necessity
to be taken into consideration in the painting of water. Yet, in "g weu
the application of them as tests of good or bad water-painting, we science.^ Li-
must be cautious in the extreme. An artist may know all these taken by great
laws, and comply with them, and yet paint water execrably; and
he may be ignorant of every one of them, and, in their turn, and
in certain places, violate every one of them, and yet paint water
gloriously. Thousands of exquisite effects take place in nature,
utterly inexplicable, and which can be believed only while they
are seen; the combinations and applications of the above laws are
so varied and complicated that no knowledge or labour could, if
applied analytically, keep pace with them. Constant and eager
watchfulness, and portfolios filled with actual statements of water-
effect, drawn on the spot and on the instant, are worth more to
the painter than the most extended optical knowledge. Without
these all his knowledge will end in a pedantic falsehood; with
these it does not matter how gross or how daring here and there
may be his violations of this or that law; his very transgressions
will be admirable.

It may be said, that this is a dangerous principle to advance in
these days of idleness. I cannot help it; it is true, and must be
affirmed. Of all contemptible criticism, that is most to be con-
temned which punishes great works of art when they fig] it with-
out armour, and refuses to feel or acknowledge the great spiritual
refracted sun of their truth, because it has risen at a false angle,
and burst upon them before its appointed time. And yet, on the
other hand, let it be observed, that it is not feeling, nor fancy,
nor imagination, so called, that I have put before science, but
watchfulness, experience, affection, and trust in nature; and farther
let it be observed, that there is a difference between the license
taken by one man and another, which makes one license admirable,
and the other punishable; and that this difference is of a kind
sufficiently discernible by every earnest person, though it is not so
explicable as that we can beforehand say where and when, or even
to whom, the license is to be forgiven. In the Paradise of Tintoret,
in the Academy of Venice, the angel is seen in the distance driving

Adam and Eve out of the garden: not leading them to the gate
with consolation or council; the painter's strange ardour of con-
ception cannot sufiPer tliis. Full speed they fly, the angel and
the human creatures ; the angel, wrapt in an orb of light, floats
on, stooped forward in his fierce flight, and does not touch the
ground; the chastised creatures rush before him in abandoned
terror. All this might have been invented by another, though in
other hands it would assuredly have been ofiensive; but one cir-
cumstance, which completes the story, could have been thought of
or dared by none but Tintoret. The angel casts a shadow before
him towards Adam and Eve.

Now that a globe of light should cast a shadow is a license, as
far as mere optical matters are concerned, of the most audacious
kind. But how beautiful is the circumstance in its application
here, showing that the angel, who is light to all else around
him, is darkness to those whom he is commissioned to banish
for ever!

I have before noticed the license of Rubens in making his
horizon an oblique line. His object is to carry the eye to a given
point in the distance. The road winds to it, the clouds fly at it,
the trees nod to it, a flock of sheep scamper towards it, a carter
points his whij^ at it, his horses pull for it, the figures push for it,
and the horizon slopes to it. If the horizon liad been horizontal,
it would have embarrassed everything and everybody.

In Turner's Pas de Calais there is a buoy poised on the ridge
of a near wave. It casts its reflection vertically down the flank
of the wave, which slopes steeply. I cannot tell whether this is
license or mistake; I suspect the latter, for the same thing occurs
not unfrequently in Turner's seas; but I am almost certain that it
would have been done wilfully in this case, even had the mistake
been recognized, for the vertical line is necessary to the picture,
and the eye is so little accustomed to catch the real bearing of
the reflections on the slopes of waves that it does not feel the
fault.

SEC. V. CHAP. I. or WATER, AS PAINTED BY THE ANCIENTS. 335
landscape, I tliink a copv, the other a marine with architecture, painting of

very sweet and genunie. Ihe sun is setting at the side ot the vandeveide,
picture, it casts a long stream of light upon the water. This
stream of light is oblique, and comes from the horizon, where it is
under the sun, to a point near the centre of the picture. If this
had been done as a license, it would be an instance of most
absurd and unjustifiable license, as the fault is detected by the
eye in a moment, and there is no occasion nor excuse for it. But
I imagine it to be an instance rather of the harm of imperfect
science. Taking his impression instinctively from nature, Claude
usually did Avhat is right and put his reflection vertically under
the sun; probably, however, he had read in some treatise on
optics that every point in this reflection was in a vertical plane
between the sun and spectator; or he might have noticed, walking
on the shore, that the reflection came straight from the sun to
his feet, and intending to indicate the position of the spectator, drew
in his next picture the reflection sloping to this supposed point, the
error being excusable enough, and plausible enough to have been
lately revived and systematized.^

In the picture of Cuyp, No. 83. in the Dulwich Gallery, the post
at the end of the bank casts three or four radiating reflections.
This is visibly neither license nor half-science, but pure ignorance.
Again, in the picture attributed to Paul Potter, No. 176. Dulwich
Gallery, I believe most people must feel, the moment they look at
it, that there is something wrong with the water, that it looks odd,
and hard, and like ice or lead; and though they may not be able
to tell the reason of the impression, for when they go near they

' Parsey's " Convergence of Perpendiculars." I have not space here to enter into
any lengthy exposure of this mistake, but reasoning is fortunately unnecessary, the
appeal to experiment heing easy. Every picture is the representation, as before stated,
of a vertical plate of glass, vs^ith what might be seen through it drawn on its surface.
Let a vertical plate of glass be taken, and wherever it be placed, whether the sun be at
its side or at its centre, the reflection will always be found in a vertical line under the
sun, parallel with tlie side of the glass. The pane of any window looking to sea is all
the apparatus necessary for this experiment; and yet it is not long since this very
principle was disputed with me by a man of much taste and information, who supposed
Turner to be wrong in drawing the reflection straight down at the side of his picture,
as in his Lancaster Sands, and innumerable other instances.

will find it smooth and lustrous^ and prettily painted, yet they will
not be able to shake off the unpleasant sense of its being like a plate
of bad mirror set in a model landscape among moss, rather than
like a pond. The reason is, that while this water receives clear
reflections from the fence and hedge on the left, and is everywhere
smooth and evidently capable of giving true images, it yet reflects
none of the cows.

In the Vandevelde (113.) there is not a line of ripple or swell in
any part of the sea; it is absolutely windless, and the near boat
casts its image with great fidelity, which being unprolonged down-
wards informs us that the calm is perfect (Rule V.), and being
unshortened informs us that we are on a level with the water, or
nearly so (Rule VII.). Yet underneath the vessel on the right,
the grey shade which stands for reflection breaks off immediately,
descending like smoke a little way below the hull, then leaving
the masts and sails entirely unrecorded. This I imagine to be not
ignorance, but unjustifiable license. Vandevelde evidently desired
to give an impression of great extent of surface, and thought that if
he gave the reflection more faithfully, as the tops of the masts would
come down to the nearest part of the surface, they would destroy
the evidence of distance, and appear to set the ship above the boat
instead of beyond it. I doubt not in such awkward hands that
such would indeed have been the case, but he is not on that account
to be excused for painting his surface with grey horizontal lines, as
is done by nautically disposed children; for no destruction of dis-
tance in the ocean is so serious a loss as that of its liquidity. It
is better to feel a want of extent in the sea, than an extent which
we might walk upon, or play at billiards upon.

Among all the pictures of Canaletto, which I have ever seen, and
they are not a few, I remember but one or two where there is any
variation from one method of treatment of the water. He almost
always covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple,
composed of a coat of well chosen, but perfectly opaque and
smooth sea-green, covered with a certain number, I cannot state the
exact average, but it varies from three hundred and fifty to four
hundred and upwards, according to the extent of canvass to be

covered, of white concave touches, which are very properly sym-
bolical of ripple.

And, as the canal retires back from the eye, he very geometrically
diminishes the size of his ripples, until he arrives at an even field
of apparently smooth water. By our sixth rule, this rippling water,
as it retires, should show more and more of the reflection of the
sky above it, and less and less of that of objects beyond it, until,
at two or three hundred yards down the canal, the whole field of
water should be one even grey or blue, the colour of the sky,
receiving no reflections whatever of other objects. What does
Canaletto do? Exactly in proportion as he retires, he displays
more and more of the reflection of objects, and less and less of
the sky, until, three hundred yards away, all the houses are reflected
as clear and sharp as in a quiet lake.

This, again, is wilful and inexcusable violation of truth, of which
the reason, as in the last case, is the painter's consciousness of
weakness. It is one of the most difficult things in the world to
express the light reflection of the blue sky on a distant ripple, and
to make the eye understand the cause of the colour, and the motion
of the apparently smooth water, especially where there are buildings
above to be reflected, for the eye never understands the want of
the reflection. But it is the easiest and most agreeable thing in
the world to give the inverted image: it occupies a vast space of
otherwise troublesome distance in the simplest way possible, and is
understood by the eye at once. Hence Canaletto is glad, as any
other inferior workman would be, not to say obliged, to give the
reflections in the distance. But when he comes up close to the
spectator, he finds the smooth surface just as troublesome near, as
the ripple would have been far ofiP. It is a very nervous thing for
an ignorant artist to have a great space of vacant smooth water to
deal with, close to him, too far down to take reflections from
buildings, and yet which must be made to look flat and retiring
and transparent. Canaletto, with his sea-green, did not at all feel
himself equal to anything of this kind, and had therefore no re-
source but in the white touches above described, which occupy
the alarming space without any troublesome necessity for know-

ledge or invention, and supply by their gradual diminution some
means of expressing retirement of surface. It is easily understood,
therefore, why he should adopt this system, which is just what any
awkward workman would naturally cling to, trusting to the in-
accuracy of observation of the public to secure him from detection.

Now in all these cases it is not the mistake or the license itself,
it is not the infringement of this or that law, which condemns
the picture, but it is the habit of mind in which the license is
taken, the cowardice or bluntness of feeling, which infects every
part alike, and deprives the whole picture of vitality. Canaletto,
had he been a great painter, might have cast his reflections wherever
he chose, and rippled the water wherever he chose, and painted
his sea sloping if he chose, and neither I nor any one else should
have dared to say a word against him; but he is a little and a bad
painter, and so continues everywhere multiplying and magnifying
mistakes, and adding apathy to error, until nothing can any more
be pardoned in him. If it be but remembered that every one of
the surfaces of those multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror
which catches, according to its position, either the image of the
sky or of the silver beaks of the gondolas, or of their black bodies
and scarlet draperies, or of the white marble, or the green sea-weed
on the low stones, it cannot but be felt that those waves would
have something more of colour upon them than that opaque dead
green. Green they are by their own nature, but it is a transparent
and emerald hue, mixing itself with the thousand reflected tints
without overpowering the weakest of them; and thus, in every one
of those individual waves, the truths of colour are contradicted by
Canaletto by the thousand,

Venice is sad and silent now, to what she was in his time; the
canals are choked gradually one by one, and the foul water laps
more and more sluggishly against the rent foundations: but even
yet, could I but place the reader at early morning on the quay
below the Rialto, when the market boats, full laden, float into
groups of golden colour, and let him watch the dashing of the
water about their glittering steely heads, and under the shadows of
the vine leaves; and show him the purple of the grapes and the

figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds, carried awaj in long
streams upon the waves; and among them, the crimson fish-baskets,
plashing and sparkling, and flaming as the morning sun falls on
their wet tawny sides; and above, the painted sails of the fishing-
boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue; and better than all such
florid colour, the naked, bronzed, burning limbs of the seamen, the
last of the old Venetian race, who yet keep the right Giorgione
colour on their brows and bosoms, in strange contrast with the
sallow sensual degradation of the creatures that live in the caf^s of
the Piazza, he would not be merciful to Canaletto any more.

Yet even Canaletto, in relation to the truths he had to paint, is
spiritual, faithful, powerful, compared with the Dutch painters of of sea.
sea. It is easily understood why his green paint and concave
touches should be thought expressive of the water on which the
real colours are not to be discerned but by attention, which is never
given; but it is not so easily understood, considering how many
there are who love the sea, and look at it, that Vandevelde and
such others should be tolerated. As I before said, I feel utterly
hopeless in addressing the admirers of these men, because I do not
know what it is in their works which is supposed to be like nature.
Foam appears to me to curdle and cream on the wave sides, and
to fly flashing from their crests, and not to be set astride upon
them like a peruke; and waves appear to me to fall, and plunge,
and toss, and nod, and crash over, and not to curl up like shavings ;
and water appears to me, when it is grey, to have the grey of stormy
air mixed with its own deep, heavy, thunderous, threatening blue,
and not the grey of the first coat of cheap paint on a deal door;
and many other such things appear to me, which, as far as I can
conjecture by what is admired of marine painting, appear to few
else; yet I shall have something more to say about these men
presently, with respect to the effect they have had upon Turner;
and something more, I hope, hereafter, with the help of illustration.

There is a sea-piece of Ruysdael's in the Louvre, which, though § 21. Ruysdaei,
nothing very remarkable in any quality of art, is at least forceful, saivato'n
agreeable, and, as far as it goes, natural; the waves have much
freedom of action, and power of colour; the wind blows hard over

the shore, and the whole picture may be studied with profit, as a
proof that the deficiency of colour and everything else, in Back-
huysen's works, is no fault of the Dutch sea. There is sub-
limity in every field of nature from the pole to the line; and
though the painters of one country are often better and greater
universally than those of another, this is less because the subjects
of art are wanting anywhere, than because one country or one age
breeds mighty and thinking men, and another none.

Ruysdael's painting of falling water is also generally agreeable;
more than agreeable it can hardly be considered. There appears
no exertion of mind in any of his works; nor are they calculated
to produce either harm or good by their feeble influence. They
are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving
of blame.

The seas of Claude are the finest pieces of water-painting in
ancient art. I do not say that I like them, because they appear to
me selections of the particular moment when the sea is most insipid
and characterless; but I think that they are exceedingly true to the
forms and times selected, or at least that the fine instances of them
are so, of which there are exceedingly few.

On the right hand of one of the marines of Salvator, in the Pitti
palace, there is a passage of sea reflecting the sunrise, which is
thoroughly good, and very like Turner; the rest of the picture, as
the one opposite to it, utterly virtueless. I have not seen any
other instance of Salvator's painting water with any care; it is
usually as conventional as the rest of his work, yet conventionalism
is perhaps more tolerable in water painting than elsewhere ; and if
his trees and rocks had been good, the rivers might have been
generally accepted without objection.
§ 22. Nicoio The merits of Poussin as a sea or water painter may, I think, be
sufficiently determined by the Deluge in the Louvre, where the
breaking up of the fountains of the deep is typified by the capsizing
of a wherry over a weir.

In the outer porch of St. Mark's, at Venice, among the mosaics
on the roof, there is a representation of the deluge. The ground is
dark blue; the rain is represented in bright white undulating

parallel stripes; between these stripes is seen the massy outline of
the ark, a bit between each stripe, very dark and hardly distinguish-
able from the sky; but it has a square window with a bright
golden border, which glitters out conspicuously, and leads the eye
to the rest: the sea below is almost concealed with dead bodies.

On the font of the church of San Frediano at Lucca there is a
representation of, possibly, the Israelites and Egyptians in the
Red Sea. The sea is typified by undulating bands of stone, each
band composed of three strands (almost the same type is to be seen
in the glass-painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as
especially at Chartres). These bands would perhaps be hardly felt
as very aqueous, but for the fish, which are interwoven with them
in a complicated manner, their heads appearing at one side of every
band, and their tails at the other.

Both of these representations of deluge, archaic and rude as they
are, I consider better, more suggestive, more inventive, and more
natural than Poussin's. Indeed, this is not saying anything very
depreciatory, as regards the St. Mark's one; for the glittering of
the golden window through the rain is wonderfully well conceived,
and almost deceptive, looking as if it had just caught a gleam of
sunlight on its panes, and there is something very sublime in the
gleam of this light above the floating corpses. But the other
instance is sufficiently grotesque and rude, and yet, I speak
with perfect seriousness, it is, I think, very far preferable to
Poussin's.

On the other hand, there is a just medium between the meanness
and apathy of such a conception as his, and the extravagance, still
more contemptible, with which the subject has been treated in
modern days.^ I am not aware that I can refer to any instructive
example of this intermediate course; for I fear the reader is by this
time wearied of hearing of Turner, and the plate of Turner's
picture of the deluge is so rare that it is of no use to refer to it.

' I am here, of course, speaking of the treatment of the subject as a landscape only j
many mighty examples of its conception occur where the sea, and all other adjuncts,
are entirely subservient to the figures, as with RafFaelle and M. Angelo.

It seems exceedingly strange that the great Venetian painters
should have left us no instance, as far as I know, of any marine
effects carefully studied. As already noted, whatever passages of
sea occur in their backgrounds are merely broad extents of blue or
green surface, fine in colour, and coming dark usually against the
horizon, well enough to be understood as sea (yet even that not
always without the help of a ship), but utterly unregarded in all
questions of completion and detail. The water even in Titian's
landscape is almost always violently, though grandly, conventional,
and seldom forms an important feature. Among the religious
schools very sweet motives occur, but nothing which for a moment
can be considered as real water painting. Perugino's sea is usually
very beautifully felt; his river in the fresco of Maddalena at
Florence is freely indicated, and looks level and clear; the re-
flections of the trees given with a rapid zigzag stroke of the brush.
On the whole, I suppose that the best imitations of level water
surface to be found in ancient art are in the clear Flemish land-
scapes. Cuyp's are usually very satisfactory; but even the best of
these attain nothing more than the agreeable suggestion of calm
pond or river. Of any tolerable representation of water in agitation,
or under any circumstances that bring out its power and character,
I know no instance; and the more capable of noble treatment the
subject happens to be, the more manifest invariably is the painter's
want of feeling in every effort, and of knowledge in every line.

There are few men among modern landscape painters who cannot
paint quiet water at least suggestively, if not faithfully. Those
who are incapable of doing this would scarcely be considered artists
at all; and anything like the ripples of Canaletto, or the black
shadows of Vandevelde, would be looked upon as most unpromising,
even in the work of a novice. Among those who most fully
appreciate and render the qualities of space and surface in calm
water, perhaps Copley Fielding stands first. His expanses of
windless lake are among the most perfect passages of his works;
for he can give surface as well as depth, and make his lake look not
only clear, but, which is far more difficult, lustrous. He is less
dependent than most of our artists upon reflections; and can give
substance, transparency, and extent, where another painter would
be reduced to paper; and he is exquisitely refined in his expression
of distant breadth, by the delicate line of ripple interrupting the
reflection, and by aerial qualities of colour. Nothing, indeed, can
be purer or more refined than his general feeling of lake sentiment,
were it not for a want of simplicity, a fondness for pretty, rather
than impressive colour, and a consequent want of some of the higher
expression of repose.

Hundreds of men might be named, whose works are highly in-
structive in the management of calm water. Stand for half an
hour beside the Fall of Schaff'hausen, on the north side where the

rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends,
unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the
brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty
feet thick, so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam
globe from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the
trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant that
it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn
with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how,
ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray
leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and
driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through
the curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue
of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the
sky through white rain-cloud; while the shuddering iris stoops in
tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through
the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last
among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy
with the wild water; their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like
sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract,
and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away; the
dew gxishing from their thick branches through drooping clusters of
emerald herbage, and sparkling in white threads along the dark
rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens which chase and chequer
them with purple and silver. I believe, when you have stood by
this for half an hour, you will have discovered that there is some-
thing more in nature than has been given by Ruysdael. Probably
you will not be much disposed to think of any mortal work at the
time; but when you look back to what you have seen, and are
inclined to compare it with art, you will remember; or ought to
remember, Nesfield. He has shown extraordinary feeling, both
for the colour and the spirituality of a great Vaterfall; exquisitely
delicate in his management of the changeful veil of spray or
mist, just in his curves and contours, and rich in colour, if he
would remember that in all such scenes there is much gloom as
well as much splendour, and relieve the lustre of his attractive
passages of colour with more definite and prevalent greys, and give

a little more substance to parts of liis picture unaffected by spray,
his work would be nearly perfect. His seas are also most instruc-
tive ; a little confused in chiaroscuro, but refined in form and
admirable in colour,

J. D. Harding is, I think, nearly unequalled in the drawing of § 4. The ad-
running water. I do not know what Stanfield would do; I have
never seen an important piece of torrent drawn by him; but I
believe even he could scarcely contend with the magnificent abandon
of Harding's brush. There is perhaps nothing which tells more in
the drawing of water than decisive and swift execution; for, in a
rapid touch the hand naturally falls into the very curve of projection
which is the absolute truth; while in slow finish, all precision of
curve and character is certain to be lost, except under the hand
of an unusually powerful master. But Harding has both knowledge
and velocity, and the fall of his torrents is beyond praise; impatient,
chafing, substantial, shattering, crystalline, and capricious; full of
various form, yet all apparently instantaneous and accidental;
nothing conventional, nothing dependent upon parallel lines or
radiating curves; all broken up and dashed to pieces over the
irregular rock, and yet all in unity of motion. The colour also § 5. His colour;
of his falling and bright water is very perfect; but in the dark and
level parts of his torrents he has employed a cold grey, which has
hurt some of his best pictures. His grey in shadows under rocks
or dark reflections is admirable; but it is when the stream is in full
light, and unaffected by reflections in distance, that he gets wrong.
We believe that the fault is in want of expression of darkness in the
colour, making it appear like a positive hue of the water, for which
it is much too dead and cold.

Harding seldom paints sea, and it is well for Stanfield that he
does not, or the latter would have to look to his crown. All that
we have seen from his hand is, as coast sea, quite faultless; we
only wish he would paint it more frequently; always, however, with
a veto upon French fishing-boats. In the Exhibition of 1842,-
he spoiled one of the most superb pieces of sea-shore and sunset
which modern art has produced, with the pestilent square sail of
one of these clumsy craft, from which the eye could not escape.

rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends,
unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the
brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty
feet thick, so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam
globe from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the
trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant that
it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn
with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how,
ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray
leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and
driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through
the curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue
of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the
sky through white rain-cloud; while the shuddering iris stoops in
tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through
the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last
among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy
with the wild water; their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like
sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract,
and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away; the
dew gushing from their thick branches through drooping clusters of
emerald herbage, and sparkling in white threads along the dark
rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens which chase and chequer
them with purple and silver. I believe, when you have stood by
this for half an hour, you will have discovered that there is some-
thing more in nature than has been given by Euysdael. Probably
you will not be much disposed to think of any mortal work at the
time; but when you look back to what you have seen, and are
inclined to compare it with art, you will remember, or ought to
remember, Nesfield. He has shown extraordinary feeling, both
for the colour and the spirituality of a great waterfall; exquisitely
delicate in his management of the changeful veil of spray or
mist, just in his curves and contours, and rich in colour, if he
would remember that in)all such scenes there is much gloom as
well as much splendour, and relieve the lustre of his attractive
passages of colour with more definite and prevalent greys, and give

J. D. Harding is, I think, nearly unequalled in the draioing of § 4. The ad-
running water. I do not know what Stanfield would do; I have ^"wingof^'^"
never seen an important piece of torrent drawn by him; but I Harding,
believe even he could scarcely contend with the magnificent abandon
of Harding's brush. There is perhaps nothing which tells more in
the drawing of water than decisive and swift execution; for, in a
rapid touch the hand naturally falls into the very curve of projection
which is the absolute truth; while in slow finish, all precision of
curve and character is certain to be lost, except under the hand
of an unusually powerful master. But Harding has both knowledge
and velocity, and the fall of his torrents is beyond praise; impatient,
chafing, substantial, shattering, crystalline, and capricious; full of
various form, yet all apparently instantaneous and accidental;
nothing conventional, nothing dependent upon parallel lines or
radiating curves; all broken up and dashed to pieces over the
irregular rock, and yet all in unity of motion. The colour also § 3. His colour;
of his falling and bright water is very perfect; but in the dark and g^^
level parts of his torrents he has employed a cold grey, which has
hurt some of his best pictvires. His grey in shadows under rocks
or dark reflections is admirable; but it is when the stream is in full
light, and unaffected by reflections in distance, that he gets wrong.
We believe that the fault is in want of expression of darkness in the
colour, making it appear like a positive hue of the water, for which
it is much too dead and cold.

Harding seldom paints sea, and it is well for Stanfield that he
does not, or the latter would have to look to his crown. All that
we have seen from his hand is, as coast sea, quite faultless; we
only wish he would paint it more frequently; always, however, with
a veto upon French fishing-boats. In the Exhibition of 1842;
he spoiled one of the most superb pieces of sea-shore and sunset
which modern art has produced, with the pestilent square sail of
one of these clumsy craft, from which the eye could not escape.

Before passing to our great sea-painter, we must again refer to
tlie works of Copley Fielding. It is with his sea as with his sky,
he can only paint one, and that an easy one, but it is, for all that,
an impressive and a true one. No man has ever given, with the
same flashing freedom, the race of a running tide under a stiff
breeze; nor caught, with the same grace and precision, the cur-
vature of the breaking wave, arrested or accelerated by the wind.
The forward fling of his foam, and the impatient run of his surges,
whose quick redoubling dash we can almost hear as they break
in their haste upon their own bosoms, are nature itself; and his
sea grey or green was, nine years ago, very right as colour, always
a little wanting in transparency, but never cold or toneless. Since
that time, he seems to have lost the sense of greenness in water,
and has verged more and more on the purple and black, with un-
happy results. His sea was always dependent for effect on its light
or dark relief against the sky, even when it possessed colour; but
it now has lost local colour and transparency together, and is little
more than a study of chiaroscuro.

There is indeed one point in all his seas deserving especial praise,
a marked aim at character. He desires, especially in his latter
works, not so much to produce an agreeable picture, a scientific
piece of arrangement, or delightful melody of colour, as to make
us feel the utter desolation, the cold, withering, frozen hopelessness
of the continuous storm and merciless sea. And this is peculiarly
remarkable in his denying himself all colour, just in the little bits
which an artist of inferior mind would paint in sienna and cobalt.
If a piece of broken wreck is allowed to rise for an instant through
the boiling foam, though the blue stripe of a sailor's jacket, or a
red rag of a flag would do all our hearts good, we are not allowed
to have it; it would make us too comfortable, and prevent us from
shivering and shrinking as we look; and the artist, with admirable
intention and most meritorious self-denial, expresses his piece of
wreck with a dark cold brown. Now we think this aim and effort
worthy of the very highest praise, and we only wish the lesson
were taken up and acted on by our other artists; but Mr. Fielding
should remember that nothing of this kind can be done with success

unless by the most studied management of the general tones of the
picture; for the eye, deprived of all means of enjoying the grey
hues, merely as a contrast to bright points, becomes painfully
fastidious in the quality of the hues themselves, and demands for
its satisfaction such melodies and richness of grey, as may in some
degree atone to it for the loss of points of stimulus. That grey
which would be taken frankly and freely for an expression of gloom,
if it came behind a yellow sail or a red cap, is examined with
invidious and merciless intentness when there is nothing to relieve
it; and, if not able to bear the investigation, if neither agreeable
nor variable in its hue, renders the picture weak instead of im-
pressive, and unpleasant instead of awful. And indeed the manage- § 9. Variety
ment of nature might teach him this; for though, when using nlturef'^^^
violent contrasts, she frequently makes her gloom somewhat mo-
notonous, the moment she gives up her vivid colour, and depends
upon her desolation, that moment she begins to steal the greens
into her sea-grey, and the browns and yellows into her cloud-grey,
and the expression of variously tinted light through all. The
Land's End, and Lowestoft, and Snowstorm (in the Academy,
1842) of Turner are nothing more than passages of the most
hopeless, desolate, uncontrasted greys, and yet are three of the
very finest pieces of colour that have come from his hand. And we
sincerely hope that Mr. Fielding will gradually perceive the necessity
of such studied melodies of quiet colour, and will neither fall back
into the old tricks of contrast, nor continue to paint with purple
and ink. If he would only make a few careful studies of grey
from the mixed atmosphere of spray, rain, and mist of a gale that
has been three days hard at work; not of a rainy squall, but of a
persevering and powerful storm, and not where the sea is turned
into milk and magnesia by a chalk coast, but where it breaks pure
and green on grey slate or white granite, as along the cliffs
of Cornwall; we think his pictures would present some of the
finest examples of high intention and feeling to be found in
modern art.

The works of Stanfield evidently, and at all times, proceed from § jo, -works
the hand of a man who has both thorough knowledge of his subject, ^jf pJJ^gp^'

and thorough acquaintance with all the means and principles of art.
We never criticise them; because we feel, the moment we look care-
fully at the drawing of any single wave, that the knowledge pos-
sessed by the master is much greater than our own; and therefore
believe that if anything offends us in any part of the work, it is
nearly certain to be oiir fault, and not the painter's. The local
colour of Stanfield's sea is singularly true and powerful, and entirely
independent of any tricks of chiaroscuro. He will carry a mighty
Wave up against the sky, and make its whole body dark and sub-
stantial against the distant light, using all the while nothing more
than chaste and unexaggerated local colour to gain the relief. His
surface is at once lustrous, transparent, and accurate to a hair's-
breadth in every curve; and he is entirely independent of dark
skies, deep blues, driving spray, or any other means of concealing
want of form, or atoning for it. He fears no difficulty, desires no
assistance, takes his sea in open daylight, under general sunshine,
§ 11. But want and paints the element in its pure colour and complete forms. But
we wish that he were less powerful, and more interesting; or that
he were a little less Diogenes-like, and did not scorn all that he
does not want. Now that he has shown us what he can do without
such aids, we wish he would show us what he can do with them.
He is, as we have already said, wanting in what we have just been
praising in Fielding, impressiveness. We should like him to be
less clever, and more affecting; less wonderful, and more terrible;
and, as the very first step towards such an end, to learn how to
conceal. We are, however, trenching upon matters with which we
have at present nothing to do; our concern is now only with
truth, and one work of Stanfield alone presents us with as much
concentrated knowledge of sea and sky, as, diluted, would have
lasted any one of the old masters his life. And let it be especially
observed, how extensive and how various is the truth of our modern
masters; how it comprises a complete history of that nature, of
which, from the ancients, you only here and there can catch a
stammering descriptive syllable; how Fielding has given us every
character of the quiet lake, Robson ^ of the mountain tarn, De Wint

of the lowland river, Nesfield of the radiant cataract, Harding of
the roaring torrent. Fielding of the desolated sea, Stanfield of the
blue, open, boundless ocean. Arrange all this in your mind, ob-
serve the perfect truth of it in all its parts, compare it with the
fragmentary falsities of the ancients, and then come with me
to Turner.

somewhat feeble in execution, but there is a feeling of the character of deep calm water
in them quite unequalled, and dilFerent from the works and thoughts of all other men.

I BELIEVE it is a result of the experience of all artists, that it is
the easiest thing in the world to give a certain degree of depth and
transparency to water; but that it is next to impossible, to give a
full impression of surface. If no reflection be given, a ripple
being supposed, the water looks like lead: if reflection be given,
it, in nine cases out of ten, looks morbidly clear and deep, so that
we always go down into it, even when the artist most wishes us to
glide over it. Now, this difficulty arises from the very same cir-
cumstance which occasions the frequent failure in effect of the
best-drawn foregrounds, noticed in Section II. Chapter III., the
change, namely, of focus necessary in the eye in order to receive
rays of light coming from different distances. Go to the edge of
a pond, in a perfectly calm day, at some place where there is
duckweed floating on the surface, not thick, but a leaf here and
there. Now, you may either see in the water the reflection of the
sky, or you may see the duckweed; but you cannot, by any effort,
see both together. If you look for the reflection, you will be
sensible of a sudden change or effort in the eye, by which it adapts
itself to the reception of the rays which have come all the way
from the clouds, have struck on the water, and so been sent up
again to the eye. The focus you adopt is one fit for great distance;
and, accordingly, you will feel that you are looking down a great
way under the water, while the leaves of the duckweed, though
they lie upon the water at the very spot on which you are gazing
so intently, are felt only as a vague uncertain interruption, causing

a little confusion in the image below, but entirely undistinguisliable
as leaves, and even their colour unknown and unperceived.
Unless you think of them, you will not even feel that anything
interrupts your sight, so excessively slight is their effect. If, on
the other hand, you make up your mind to look for the leaves of
the duckweed, you will perceive an instantaneous change in the
effort of the eye, by which it becomes adapted to receive near rays,
those which have only come from the surface of the pond. You
will then see the delicate leaves of the duckweed with perfect
clearness, and in vivid green; but, while you do so, you will be
able to perceive nothing of the reflections in the very water on
which they float, nothing but a vague flashing and melting of
light and dark hues, without form or meaning, which to investi-
gate, or find out what they mean or are, you must quit your hold
of the duckweed, and plunge down.

Hence it appears, that whenever we see plain reflections of com- § 3. Morbid
paratively distant objects, in near water, we cannot possibly see sione^in pa^n't-
the surface, and vice versa; so that when in a painting we give
the reflections with the same clearness with which they are visible reflections,
in nature, we presuppose the effort of the eye to look under the
surface, and, of course, destroy the surface, and induce an effect
of clearness which, perhaps, the artist has not particularly wished
to attain, but which he has found himself forced into, by his re-
flections, in spite of himself. And the reason of this effect of clear-
ness appearing preternatural is, that people are not in the habit of
looking at water with the distant focus adapted to the reflections,
unless by particular effort. We invariably, under ordinary cir-
cumstances, use the surface focus; and, in consequence, receive
nothing more than a vague and confused impression of the reflected
colours and lines, however clearly, calmly, and vigorously all
may be defined underneath, if we choose to look for them. We
do not look for them, but glide along over the surface, catching
only playing light and capricious colour for evidence of reflection,
except where we come to images of objects close to the surface,
which the surface focus is of course adapted to receive; and these
we see clearly, as of the weeds on the shore, or of sticks rising out
of the water, &c. Hence, the ordinary effect of water is only to

be rendered by giving the reflections of tlie margin clear and
distinct (so clear they usually are in nature, that it is impossible
to tell where the water begins); but the moment we touch the
reflection of distant objects, as of high trees or clouds, that instant
we must become vague and uncertain in drawing, and, though
vivid in colour and light as the object itself, quite indistinct in form
and feature. If we take such a piece of water as that in the fore-
ground of Turner's Chateau of Prince Albert, the first impression
from it is, " What a wide surface !" We glide over it a quarter
of a mile into the picture before M^e know where we are, and yet
the water is as calm and crystalline as a mirror; but we are not
allowed to tumble into it, and gasp for breath as we go down, we
are kept upon the surface, though that surface is flashing and
radiant with every hue of cloud, and sun, and sky, and foliage.
But the secret is in the drawing of these reflections.^ We cannot
tell, when we look at them and for them, what they mean. They
have all character, and are evidently reflections of something definite
and determined; but yet they are all uncertain and inexplicable;
playing colour and palpitating shade, which, though we recognize
them in an instant for images of something, and feel that the water is
bright, and lovely, and calm, we cannot penetrate nor interpret:
we are not allowed to go down to them, and we repose, as we
should in nature, upon the lustre of the level surface. It is in
this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly,
that the perfection of art here, as in all other cases, consists. But,
as it was before shown in Sec. II. Chap. III. that the focus of the
eye required little alteration after the first half-mile of distance, it
is evident that on the distant surface of water, all reflections will
be seen plainly; for the same focus adapted to a mdderate distance

' Not altogether. I believe here, as in a former case, I have attributed far too much
influence to this change of focus. lu Turner's earlier works the principle is not found.
In the rivers of the Yorkshire drawings, every reflection is given clearly, even to the
farthest depth, and yet the surface is not lost, and it would deprive the painter of much
power if he were not sometimes so to represent them, especially when his object is
repose; it being, of course, as lawful for him to choose one adaptation of the sight as
another. I have, however, left tlie above paragraphs as first written, because they are
true, although I think they make too much of an unimportant matter. The reader may
attribute to them such weight as he thinks fit. He is referred to § 11. of this Chapter,
and to § 4. of the first Chapter of this Section.

of surface will receive with distinctness rays coming from tlie sky,
or from any other distance, however great. Thus we always see
the reflection of Mont Blanc on the Lake of Geneva, whether we
take pains to look for it or not, because the water upon which it is
cast is itself a mile off; but if we would see the reflection of Mont
Blanc in the Lac de Ch^de, Avhich is close to us, we must take
some trouble about the matter, leave the green snakes swimming
upon the surface, and plunge for it. Hence reflections, if viewed
collectively, are always clear in proportion to the distance of the
water on which they are cast. And now look at tJlleswater, or
any of his distant lake expanses, and you will find every crag and
line of the hills rendered in them with absolute fidelity, while the
near surface shows nothing but a vague confusion of exquisite and
lustrous tint. The reflections even of the clouds will be given far
off, while those of near boats and figures will be confused and
mixed among each other, except just at the water-line.

And now we see what Vandevelde ought to have done with the § 6. The error
shadow of his ship spoken of in the first chapter of this section. Vandevelde.

In such a calm, we should in nature, if we had looked for the
reflection, have seen it clear from the water-line to the flag on
the mainmast; but, in so doing, we should have appeared to
ourselves to be looking under the water, and should have lost
all feeling of surface. When we looked at the surface of the
sea, we should have seen the image of the hull absolutely clear
and perfect, because that image is cast on distant water; but
we should have seen the image of the masts and sails gradually
more confused as they descended, and the water close to us
would have borne only upon its surface a maze of flashing colour
and indefinite hue. Had Vandevelde, therefore, given the perfect
image of his ship, he would have represented a truth dependent
on a particular effort of the eye, and destroyed his surface.
But his business was to give, not a distinct reflection, but the
colours of the reflection in mystery and disorder upon his near
water, all perfectly vivid, but none intelligible: and had he done
so, the eye would not have troubled itself to search them out;
it would not have cared whence or how the colours came, but
it would have felt them to be true and right, and rested satisfied

upon the polished surface of the clear sea. Of the perfect truth,
the best examples I can give are Turner's Saltash, and Castle
TJpnor.

§ 7. Difference Be it next observed, that the reflection of all near objects is, by
of fifth rule, not an exact copy of the parts of them which we

and its image, of them, that which we should get if we were looking at them from
beneath. Hence we see the dark sides of leaves hanging over a
stream, in their reflection, though we see the light sides above;
and all objects and groups of objects are thus seen in the reflection
under different lights, and in different positions with respect to each
other, from those which they assume above; some which we see on
the bank being entirely lost in their reflection, and others which we
cannot see on the bank brought into view. Hence nature contrives
never to repeat herself, and the surface of water is not a mockery,
but a new view of what is above it. And this difference in what
is represented, as well as the obscurity of the representation, is one
of the chief sources by which the sensation of surface is kept up
in the reality. The reflection is not so remarkable, it does not
attract the eye in the same degree when it is entirely different
from the images above, as when it mocks them and repeats them,
and we feel that the space and surface have colour and character
of their own, and that the bank is one thing and the water another.
I It is by not making this change manifest, and giving underneath

a mere duplicate of what is seen above, that artists are apt to
t destroy the essence and substance of water, and to drop us

I § 8. Illustrated Now one instance will be sufiicient to show the exquisite care

ham, the water (a smooth canal) is terminated by a banlt fenced
up with wood, on which, just at the edge of the water, stands a
white sign-post, A quarter of a mile back, the hill on which
Nottingham Castle stands rises steeply nearly to the top of the
picture. The upper part of this hill is in bright golden light, and
the lower in very deep grey shadow, against which the white board
of the sign-post is seen entirely in light relief, though, being turned
from the liglit, it is itself in delicate middle tint, illumined only

on the edge. But the image of all this in the canal is very
different, Tirst, we have the reflection of the piles of the bank
sharp and clear, but under this we have not what we see above
it, the dark hase of the hill (for this being a quarter of a mile
back, we could not see it over the fence if we were looking from
below), but the golden summit of the hill, the shadow of the under
part having no record nor place in the reflection. Now this summit,
being very distant, cannot be seen clearly by the while its focus
is adapted to the surface of the water, and accordingly its reflection
is entirely vague and confused; you cannot tell what it is meant
for, it is mere playing golden light. But the sign-post, being on
the bank close to us, will be reflected clearly, and accordingly its
distinct image is seen in the midst of this confusion; relieved,
however, not now against the dark base, but against the illumined
summit of the hill, and appearing therefore, instead of a white
space thrown out from blue shade, a dark grey space thrown out
from golden light. I do not know that any more magnificent
example could be given of concentrated knowledge, or of the daring
statement of most difficult truth. For who but this consummate § 9. The boid-
artist would have had courage, even if he had perceived the laws menUhowiln
which required it, to undertake, in a single small space of water, the^observance
the painting of an entirely new picture, with all its tones and
arrangements altered,—what was made above bright by opposition
to blue, being underneath made cool and dark by opposition to
gold; or would have dared to contradict so boldly the ordinary
expectation of the uncultivated eye, to find in the reflection a
mockery of the realit}'-? Biit the reward is immediate, for not
only is the change most grateful to the eye, and most exquisite
as composition, but the surface of the water in consequence of it
is felt to be as spacious as it is clear, and the eye rests not on
the inverted image of the material objects, but on the element which
receives them. And we have a farther instance in this passage of
the close study which is required to enjoy the works of Turner, for
another artist might have altered the reflection or confused it, but
he would not have reasoned upon it so as to find out what the
exact altei^ation must he; and if we had tried to account for the
reflection, we should have found it false or inaccurate. But the

master mind of Turner, without effort, showers its knowledge into
every touch, and we have only to trace out even his slightest
passages, part by part, to find in them the imiversal working of
the deepest thought, that consistency of every minor truth which
admits of and invites the same ceaseless study as the work of
nature herself.

There is, however, yet another peculiarity in Turner's painting
of smooth water, which, though less deserving of admiration, as
being merely a mechanical excellence, is not less wonderful than
its other qualities, nor less unique; a peculiar texture, namely,
given to the most delicate tints of the surface, when there is little
reflection from anything except sky or atmosphere, and which, just
at the points where other painters are reduced to paper, gives to
the surface of Turner the greatest appearance of substantial liquidity.
It is impossible to say how it is produced; it looks like some modi-
fication of body colour; but it certainly is not body colour used as
by other men, for I have seen this expedient tried over and over
again without success; and it is often accompanied by crumbling
touches of a dry brush, which never could have been put upon
body colour, and which could not have shown through underneath
it. As a piece of mechanical excellence, it is one of the most
remarkable things in the works of the master; and it brings the
truth of his water-painting up to the last degree of perfection; often
rendering those passages of it the most attractive and delightful,
which, from their delicacy and paleness of tint, would have been
weak and papery in the hands of any other man. The best in-
stance of it I can give is, I think, the distance of the Devonport
with the Dockyards.

After all, however, there is more in Turner's painting of water
surface than any philosophy of reflection, or any peculiarity of
means, can account for or accomplish; there is a might and wonder
about it which will not admit of our Avhys and hows. Take, for
instance, the picture of the Sun of Venice going to Sea, of 1843;
respecting Avhich, however, there are one or two circumstances
which may as w^ell be noted besides its water-painting. The reader,
if he has not been at Venice, ought to be made aware that the
Venetian fishing-boats, almost without exception, carry canvass

painted with bright colours; the favourite design for the centre
being either a cross or a large sun with many rays, the favourite
colours being red, orange, and black, blue occurring occasionally.
The radiance of these sails and of the bright and grotesque vanes
at the mast-heads under sunlight is beyond all painting; but it is
strange that, of constant occurrence as these boats are on all the
lagoons, Turner alone should have availed himself of them. No-
thing could be more faithful than the boat which was the principal
object in this picture, in the cut of the sail, the filling of it, the
exact height of the boom above the deck, the quartering of it with
colour; finally and especially, the hanging of the fish-baskets about
the bows. All these, however, are comparatively minor merits
(though not the blaze of colour which the artist elicited from the
right use of these circumstances); but the peculiar power of the
picture was the painting of the sea surface, where there were no
reflections to assist it, A stream of splendid colour fell from the
boat, but that occupied the centre only; in the distance the city
and crowded boats threw down some playing lines, but these still
left on each side of the boat a large space of water reflecting
nothing but the morning sky. This was divided by an eddying
swell, on whose continuous sides the local colour of the water was
seen, pure aqua-marine (a beautiful occurrence of closely observed
truth); but still there remained a large blank space of pale water
to be treated, the sky above had no distinct details, and was
pure faint grey, with broken white vestiges of cloud; it gave no
help therefore. But there the water lay, no dead grey flat paint,
but downright clear, playing, palpable surface, full of indefinite
hue, and retiring as regularly and visibly back and far away, as if
there had been objects all over it to tell the story by perspective.
Now it is the doing of this which tries the painter, and it is his
having done this which made me say above that " no man had ever
painted the surface of calm water but Turner." The San Bene-
detto, looking towards Fusina, contained a similar passage, equally
fine; in one of the Canale della Guidecca the specific green colour
of the water is seen in front, with the shadows of the boats thrown
on it in purple; all, as it retires, passing into the pure reflective
blue.

But Turner is not satisfied with this. He is never altogether
content unless he can, at the same time that he takes advantage of
all the placidity of repose, tell us something either about the past
commotion of the water, or of some present stirring of tide or
current which its stillness does not show; or give us something
or other to think about and reason upon, as well as to look at.
Take a few instances. His Cowes, Isle of Wight, is a summer
twilight, about half an hour, or more, after sunset. Intensity of
repose is the great aim throughout, and the unity of tone of the
picture is one of the finest things that Turner has ever done. But
there is not only quietness, there is the very deepest solemnity in
the whole of the light, as well as in the stillness of the vessels;
and Turner wishes to enhance this feeling by representing not only
repose, but power in repose, the emblem, in the sea, of the quiet
ships of war. Accordingly, he takes the greatest possible pains to
get his surface polished, calm, and smooth; but he indicates the
reflection of a buoy floating a full quarter of a mile off by three
black strokes with wide intervals between them, the last of which
touches the water within twenty yards of the spectator. Now these
three reflections can only indicate the farther sides of three rises of
an enormous swell, and give by their intervals of separation, a space
of from twelve to twenty yards for the breadth of each wave,
including the sweep between them; and this swell is farther indi-
cated by the reflection of the new moon falling in a wide zigzag
line. The exceeding majesty which this single circumstance gives
to the whole picture, the sublime sensation of power and knowledge
of former exertion which we instantly receive from it, if we have
but acquaintance with nature enough to understand its language,
render this work not only a piece of the most refined truth (as
which I have at present named it), but, to my mind, one of the
highest pieces of intellectual art existing.

Again, in the scene on the Loire, with the square precipice and
fiery sunset, in the Rivers of France, repose has been aimed at in
the same way, and most thoroughly given; but the immense width
of the I'iver at this spot makes it look like a lake or sea, and it was
therefore necessary that we should be made thoroughly to under-
stand and feel that this is not the calm of still water, but the

tranquillity of a majestic current. Accordingly, a boat sAvings at
anchor on the right; and the stream, dividing at its bow, flows
towards us in two long, dark waves, especial attention to which is
enforced by the one on the left being brought across the reflected
stream of sunshine, which is separated and broken by the general
undulation and agitation of the water in the boat's wake; a wake
caused by the water's passing it, not by its going through the
water.

Again, in the Confluence of the Seine and Marne, we have the § 14. Expres-
repose of the wide river stirred by the paddles of the steam-boat, -^vaves caused
whose plashing we can almost hear; for we are especially com-
pelled to look at them by their being made the central note of the
composition—the blackest object in it, opposed to the strongest
light. And this disturbance is not merely caused by the two lines
of surge from the boat's wake, for any other painter must have
given these: but Turner never rests satisfied till he has told you all
in his power; and he has not only given the receding surges, but
these have gone on to the shore, have struck upon it, and been
beaten back from it in another line of weaker contrary surges,
whose point of intersection with those of the wake itself is marked
by the sudden subdivision and disorder of the waves of the wake
on the extreme left; and whose reverted direction is exquisitely
given where their lines cross the calm water, close to the spectator,
and marked also by the sudden vertical spring of the spray just
where they intersect the swell from the boat; and in order that
we may fully be able to account for these reverted waves, we are
allowed, just at the extreme right-hand limit of the picture, to see
the point where the swell from the boat meets the shore. In the
Chaise de Gargantua we have the still water, lulled by the dead
calm which usually precedes the most violent storms, suddenly
broken upon by a tremendous burst of wind from the gathered
thunder-clouds, scattering the boats, and razing the water into
rage, except where it is sheltered by the hills. In the Jumi(5ges § is. Various
and Yernon we have farther instances of local agitation, caused, in
the one case, by a steamer, in the other, by the large water-wheels
under the bridge; not, observe, a mere splashing about the wheel
itself, this is too far off to be noticeable, so that we should not

have even known that the objects beneath the bridge were water-
wheels^ but for the agitation recorded a quarter of a mile down the
river, where its current crosses the sunlight. And thus there will
scarcely ever be found a piece of quiet water by Turner^ without
some story in it of one kind or another; sometimes a slight but
beautiful incident; oftener, as in the Cowes, something on which
the whole sentiment and intention of the picture in a great degree
depends; but invariably presenting some new instance of varied
knowledge and observation, some fresh appeal to the highest
faculties of the mind.

Of extended surfaces of water, as rendered by Turner, the Loch
Katrine and Derwentwater of the Illustrations to Scott, and the
Loch Lomond vignette in Rogers's Poems, are characteristic in-
stances. The first of these gives us the most distant part of the
lake entirely under the influence of a light breeze, and therefore
entirely without reflections of the objects on its borders; but the
whole near half is untouched by the wind, and on that is cast the
image of the upper part of Ben Venue and of the islands. The
second gives us the surface, with just so much motion upon it as
to prolong, but not to destroy, the reflections of the dark woods,
reflections only interrupted by the ripple of the boat's wake. And
the third gives us an example of the whole surface so much affected
by ripj)le as to bring into exercise all those laws which we have
seen so grossly violated by Canaletto. We see in the nearest boat
that though the lines of the gunwale are much blacker and more
conspicuous than that of the cutwater, yet the gunwale lines, being
nearly horizontal, have no reflection whatsoever; while the line of
the cutwater, being vertical, has a distinct reflection of three times
its own length. But even these tremu.lous reflections are only
visible as far as the islands; beyond them, as the lake retires into
distance, we find it receives only the reflection of the grey light
from the clouds, and runs in one flat white field up between the
hills; and besides all this, we have another phenomenon, quite
new, given to us,—the brilliant gleam of light along the centre of
the lake. This is not caused by ripple, for it is cast on a surface
rippled all over; but it is what we could not have without ripple,
—the light of a passage of sunshine. 1 have already (Chap. L

§ 9.) explained the cause of this plienomenon, which never can hy
any possibility take place on calm water, being the multitudinous
reflection of the sun from the sides of the ripples, causing an ap-
pearance of local light and shadow; and being dependent, like real
light and shadow, on the passage of the clouds, though the dark
parts of the water are the reflections of the clouds, not the shadows
of them, and the bright parts are the reflections of the sun, and not
the light of it. This little vignette, then, will entirely complete
the system of Turner's imiversal truth in quiet water. We have
seen every phenomenon given by him,—the clear reflection, the
prolonged reflection, the reflection broken by ripple, and, finally,
the ripple broken by light and shade; and it is especially to be
observed how careful he is, in this last case, when he uses the
apparent light and shade, to account for it by showing us in the
whiteness of the lake beyond, its universal subjection to ripple.

We have not spoken of Turner's magnificent drawing of distant § 18. His draw-
rivers, which, however, is dependent only on more complicated appli- rivers
cation of the same laws, with exquisite perspective. The sweeps of
river in the Dryburgh (Illustrations to Scott) and Melrose are
bold and characteristic examples, as well as the Rouen from St.
Catharine's Hill, and the Caudebec, in the Rivers of France. The
only thing which in these works requires particular attention is, the
care with which the height of the observer above the river is
indicated by the loss of the reflections of its banks. This is,
perhaps, shown most clearly in the Caudebec. If we had been on
a level with the river, its whole surface would have been darkened
by the reflection of the steep and high banks; but, being far above
it, we can see no more of the image than we could of the hill itself,
if it were actually reversed under the water; and therefore we see
that Turner gives us a narrow line of dark water, immediately
under the precipice, the broad surface reflecting only the sky.
This is also finely shown on the left-hand side of the Dryburgh.

But all these early works of the artist have been eclipsed by § 19. And of
some recent drawings of Switzerland. These latter are not to be c^a^^er^Tth"
described by any words; but they must be noted here, not only as
presenting records of lake effect on a grander scale, and of more
imaginative character, than any other of his works, but as combining

effects of the surface of mist witli tlie surface of water. Two or
tliree of the Lake of Lucerne, seen from above, give the melting of
the mountain promontories beneath into the clear depth, and above
into the clouds; one of Constance shows the vast lake at evening,
seen not as water, but its surface covered with low white mist,
lying, league beyond league, in the twilight, like a fallen space of
moony cloud; one of Goldau shows the Lake of Zug appearing
through the chasm of a thunder-cloud under sunset, its whole
surface one blaze of fire, and the promontories of the hills thrown
out against it like spectres; another of Zurich gives the playing of
the green waves of the river among white streams of moonlight;
a purple sunset on the Lake of Zug is distinguished for the
glow obtained without positive colour, the rose and purple tints
being in great measure brought by opposition out of browns;
finally, a drawing executed in 1845, of the town of Lucerne from
the lake, is unique for its expression of water surface reflecting the
clear green hue of sky at twilight.

It will be remembered that it was said above, that Turner was
the only painter who had ever represented the surface of calm or
\he force of agitated water. He obtains this expression of force in
falling or running water by fearless and full rendering of its forms.
He never loses himself and his subject in the splash of the fall, his
presence of mind never fails as he goes down; he does not blind us
with the spray, or veil the countenance of his fall with its own
drapery. A little crumbling white, or lightly rubbed paper, will
soon give the effect of indiscriminate foam; but nature gives more
than foam, she shows beneath it, and through it, a peculiar
character of exquisitely studied form bestowed on every wave and
line of fall; and it is this variety of definite character which Turner
always aims at, rejecting, as much as possible, everything that
conceals or overwhelms it. Thus, in the Upper Fall of the Tees,
though the whole basin of the fall is blue and dim with the rising
vapour, yet the attention of the spectator is chiefly directed to the
concentric zones and delicate curves of the falling water itself; and
it is impossible to express with what exquisite accuracy these are
given. They are the characteristic of a powerful stream descending
without impediment or break, but from a narrow channel, so as to

weir or over a stone, but it tumbles over a high fall like this; and and plunge of

catenary, when we have lost the spring of the fall, and arrived at him.
the plunge of it, that we begin really to feel its weight and wildness.
Where water takes its first leap from the top, it is cool, and col-
lected, and uninteresting, and mathematical; but it is when it finds
that it has got into a scrape, and has farther to go than it thought,
that its character comes out: it is then that it begins to writhe,
and twist, and sweep out, zone after zone, in wilder stretching as it
falls; and to send down the rocket-lilce, lance-pointed, whizzing
shafts at its sides, sounding for the bottom. And it is this prostra-
tion, this hopeless abandonment of its ponderous power to the air,
which is always peculiarly expressed by Turner, and especially in
the case before us; while our other artists, keeping to the parabolic
line, where they do not lose themselves in smoke and foam, make
their cataract look muscular and wiry, and may consider themselves
fortunate if they can keep it from stopping. I believe the majesty
of motion which Turner has given by these concentric catenary
lines must be felt even by those who have never seen a high
waterfall, and therefore cannot appreciate their exquisite fidelity
to nature.

In the Chain Bridge over the Tees, this passiveness and swinging
of the water to and fro are yet more remarkable; while we have
another characteristic of a great waterfall given to us, that the
wind, in this instance coming up the valley against the current,
takes the spray up off" the edges, and carries it back in little torn,
reverted rags and threads, seen in delicate form against the dark-
ness on the left. But we must understand a little more about the

nature of running water before we can appreciate the drawing
either of this, or any other of Turner's torrents.

When water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much
interrupted by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then in
a pool as it goes along, it does not acquire a continuous velocity of
motion. It pauses after every leap, and curdles about, and rests a
little and then goes on again; and if in this comparatively tranquil
and rational state of mind it meets with any obstacle, as a rock or
stone, it parts on each side of it with a little bubbling foam, and
goes round; if it comes to a step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and
then after a little splashing at the bottom, stops again to take breath.
But if its bed be on a continuous slope, not much interrupted by
hollows, so that it cannot rest, or if its own mass be so increased
by flood that its usual resting-places are not sufficient for it, but
that it is perpetually pushed out of them by the following current,
before it has had time to tranquillize itself, it of course gains
velocity with every yard that it runs; the impetus got at one leap
is carried to the credit of the next, until the whole stream becomes
one mass of unchecked accelerating motion. Now when water in
this state comes to an obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears it,
like a race-horse; and when it comes to a hollow, it does not fill it
up and run out leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down into
it and comes up again on the other side, as a ship into the hollow
of the sea. Hence the whole appearance of the bed of the stream
is changed, and all the lines of the water altered in their nature.
The quiet stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are
light and springy, and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing
when they tumble into the pool; then we have a space of quiet
curdling water, and another similar leap below. But the stream
when it has gained an impetus, takes the shape of its bed, goes down
into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing, not foaming,
nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong sea-wave, and
comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the
ease of a bounding leopard; if it meet a rock three or four feet
above the level of its bed, it will often neither part nor foam, nor
express any concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth
dome of water, without apparent exertion, the whole surface of the

surge being drawn into parallel lines by its extreme yelocity, so
that the whole river has the appearance of a deep and raging sea,
with this only difference, that the torrent-waves always brealc
backwards, and sea-waves forwards. Thus, then, in the water § 24. its ex-
which has gained an impetus, we have the most exquisite arrange- curved

ments of curved lines, perpetually changing from convex to concave,
and vice versa, following every swell and hollow of the bed with
their modulating grace, and all in unison of motion, presenting
perhaps the most beautiful series of inorganic forms which nature
can possibly produce; for the sea runs too much into similar and
concave curves with sharp edges, but every motion of the torrent
is united, and all its curves are modifications of beautiful line.

We see, therefore, why Turner seizes on these curved lines of § 25. Turner's
the torrent, not only as being among the most beautiful forms of or^fhistorical
nature, but because they are an instant expression of the utmost truth,
power and velocity, and tell us how the torrent has been flowing
before we see it. For the leap and splash might be seen in the
sudden freakishness of a quiet stream, or the fall of a rivulet over
a mill-dam; but the undulating line is the attribute of the
mountain-torrent^, whose fall and fury have made the valleys
echo for miles; and thus the moment we see one of its curves
over a stone in the foreground, we know it has come far and
fiercely. And in the drawing we have been speaking of, the

' On a large scale it is exclusively so, but the same lines are to be seen, for the
moment, whenever water becomes exceedingly rapid, and yet feels the bottom as it
passes, being not thrown up or cast clear of it. In general, the drawing of water fails
from being too interrupted, the forms flung hitlier and thither, and broken up and
covered with bright touches, instead of being wrought out in their real unities of cur-
vature. It is difficult enough to draw a curved surface, even when it is rough and has
texture; but to indicate the varied and sweeping forms of a crystalline and polished
substance, requires far more skill and patience than most artists possess. In some
respects, it is impossible. I do not suppose any means of art are capable of rightly
expressing the smooth multitudinous rippling of a rapid rivulet of shallow water, giving
transparency, lustre, and fully developed form; and the greater number of the lines and
actions of torrent-waves are equally inimitable. The effort should, nevertheless, always
be made; and whatever is sacx-ificed in colour, freedom, or brightness, the real contours
ought always in some measure to be drawn, as a careful draughtsman secures those of
flesh, or any other finely modelled surface. It is better, in many respects, the drawing
should miss of being like water, than that it should miss in this one respect the grandeur
of water. Many tricks of scratching and dashing will bring out a deceptive resemblance j
the determined and laborious rendering of contour alone secures sublimity.

Lower Tall of tlie Tees, in tlie foreground of the Killiecrankie
and Rliymer's Glen, and of the St. Maurice in Rogers's Italy, we
shall find the most exquisite instances of the use of such lines; but
the most perfect of all in the Llantliony Abbey, which may be
considered as the standard of torrent-drawing. The chief light of
the picture here falls upon the surface of the stream, swelled by
recent rain; and its mighty waves come rolling down close to the
spectator, green and clear, but pale with anger, in broad, im-
broken, oceanic curves, bending into each other without break,
though jets of fiery spray are cast into the air along the rocky
shore, and rise in the sunshine in dusty vapour. The whole sur-
face is one united race of mad motion; all the waves dragged, as
I have described, into lines and furrows by their swiftness; and
every one of these fine forms is drawn with the most studied
chiaroscuro of delicate colour, greys and greens, as silvery and
pure as the finest passages of Paul Veronese, and with a refinement
of execution which the eye strains itself in looking into. The
rapidity and gigantic force of this torrent, the exquisite refinement
of its colour, and the vividness of foam which is obtained through
a general middle tint, render it about the most perfect piece of
painting of running water in existence.

Now this picture is, as was noticed in our former reference to it,
full of expression of every kind of motion: the clouds are in wild
haste; the sun is gleaming fast and fitfully through the leaves;
the rain drifting away along the hill-side; and the torrent, the
principal object, to complete the impression, is made the wildest
thing of all; and not only wild before us, and with us, but bearing
with it in its every motion, from its long course, the record of its
rage. Observe how differently Turner uses his torrent when the
spirit of the picture is repose. In the Mercury and Argus, we
have also a stream in the foreground; but, in coming down to us,
we see it stopping twice in two quiet and glassy pools, upon which
the drinking cattle cast an unstirred image. From the nearest of
these, the water leaps in three cascades into another basin close to
us; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its edge, and
falls tinkling and splashing (though in considerable body) into tlie
pool, stirring its quiet surface, at which a bird is stooping to

drink, with concentric and curdling ripples, wliicli divide I'ound
the stone at its farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over
the lip of the basin. Thus we find, in every case, the system of
Turner's truth entirely unbroken, each phase and phenomenon of
nature being recorded exactly where it is most valuable and im-
pressive.

torrent-drawing. The above two examples are characteristic of
the two great divisions or classes of torrents, that whose motion
is continuous, and that whose motion is interrupted; all drawing of
running water will resolve itself into the representation of one or
other of these. The descent of the distant stream in the vignette
to the Boy of Egremond is slight, but very striking; and the
Junction of the Greta and Tees, a singular instance of the bold
drawing of the complicated forms of a shallow stream among
multitudinous rocks. A still finer example occurs in a recent
drawing of Dazio Grande on the St. Gothard, the waves of the
Toccia, clear and blue, fretting among the granite debris which
were brought down by the storm that destroyed the whole road.
In the Ivy bridge the subject is the rest of the torrent in a pool
among fallen rocks, the forms of the stones are seen through the
clear brown water, and their reflections mingle with those of the
foliage.

More determined efforts have at all periods been made in sea- § 29. sea-paint-
painting than in torrent-painting, yet less successful. As above |,'-ifj.y onraiy'
stated, it is easy to obtain a resemblance of broken running water representing
by tricks and dexterities, but the sea must be legitimately drawn;
it cannot be given as utterly disorganized and confused, its weight
and mass must be expressed, and the efforts at expression of it end
in failure with all but the most powerful men; even with these
few a partial success must be considered worthy of the highest
praise.

As the right rendering of the Alps depends on power of drawing
snow, so the right painting of the sea must depend, at least in all
coast scenery, in no small measure on the power of drawing foam.
Yet there are two conditions of foam of invariable occurrence on
breaking waves, of which I have never seen the slightest record at-

tempted; first the thick, creamy, curcUmg, overlappmg, massy foam,
which remains for a moment only after the fall of the wave, and is
seen in perfection in its running up the beach; and secondly, the
thin white coating into which this subsides, which opens into oval
gaps and clefts, marbling the waves over their whole surface, and
connecting the breakers on a flat shore by long dragging streams
of white.

It is evident that the difficulty of expressing either of these two
conditions must be immense. The lapping and curdling foam is
difficult enough to catch, even when the lines of its undulation
alone are considered; but the lips, so to speak, which lie along
these lines, are full, projecting, and marked by beautiful light and
shade; each has it high light, a gradation into shadow of indescrib-
able delicacy, a bright reflected light, and a dark cast shadow: to
draw all this requires labour, and care, and firmness of work,
which, as I imagine, must always, however skilfully bestowed,
destroy all impressions of wildness, accidentalism, and evanescence,
and so kill the sea. Again, the openings in the thin subsided foam,
in their irregular modifications of circular and oval shapes
dragged hither and thither, would be hard enough to draw, even if
they could be seen on a flat surface; instead of which, every one
of the openings is seen in undulation on a tossing surface, broken
up over small surges and ripples, and so thrown into perspectives
of the most hopeless intricacy. Now it is not easy to express the
fall of a pattern with oval openings on the folds of drapery. I do
not know that any one under the mark of Veronese or Titian could
even do this as it ought to be done, yet in drapery much stifihess
and error may be overlooked: not so in sea; the slightest inac-
curacy, the slightest want of flow and freedom in the line, is at-
tached by the eye in a moment of high treason, and I believe
success to be impossible.

Yet there is not a wave, nor any violently agitated sea, on which
both these forms do not appear; the latter especially, after some
time of storm, extends over their whole surfaces: the reader sees,
therefore, why I said that sea could only be painted by means of
more or less dexterous conventionalism, since two of its most
enduring phenomena cannot be represented at all.

Again, as respects the form of breakers on an even shore there § 30. Character
is difficulty of no less formidable kind. There is in them an irre- breakers" also
concilable mixture of fury and formalism. Their hollow surface inexpressible,
is marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-weir, and
graduated by reflected and transmitted lights of the most wonder-
ful intricacy, its curve being at the same time necessarily of
mathematical purity and precision; yet at the top of this curve,
when it nods over, there is a sudden laxity and giving way, the
water swings and jumps along the ridge like a shaken chain, and
the motion runs from part to part as it does through a serpent's
body. Then the wind is at work on the extreme edge, and instead
of letting it fling itself off naturally, it supports it, and drives it
back, or scrapes it off, and carries it bodily away; so that the
spray at the top is in a continual transition between forms pro-
jected by their own weight, and forms blown and carried off with
their weight overcome. Then at last, when it has come down, who
shall say what shape that may be called, which shape has none, of
the great crash where it touches the beach ?

I think it is that last crash which is the great taskmaster.
Nobody can do anything with it. I have seen Copley Fielding
come very close to the jerk and nod of the lifted threatening edge,
curl it very successfully, and without any look of its having been
in papers, down nearly to the beach, but the final fall has no
thunder in it. Turner has tried hard for it once or twice, but it
will not do. The moment is given in the Sidon of the Bible
Illustrations, and more elaborately in a painting of Bamborough:
in both these cases there is little foam at the bottom, and the fallen
breaker looks like a wall; yet grand always, and in the latter
picture very beautifully assisted in expression by the tossing of a
piece of cable, which some figures are dragging ashore, and which
the breaker flings into the air as it rises. Perhaps the most suc-
cessful rendering of the forms Avas in the Hero and Leander, but
there the drawing was rendered easier by the powerful effect of
light which disguised the foam.

It is not, however, from the shore that Turner usually studies his § 31. Their
sea. Seen from the land, the curl of the breakers, even in nature, whin seen
is somewhat uniform and monotonous; the size of the waves out at f™*" t^®

sea is uncomprehended; and those nearer the eye seem to succeed
and resemble each other, to move slowly to the beach, and to break
in the same lines and forms.

Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we receive a totally
diiferent impression. Every wave around us appears vast, every
one different from all the rest; and the breakers present, now that
we see them with their backs towards us, the grand, extended, and
varied lines of long curvature which are peculiarly expressive both
of velocity and power. Recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested
in the mad, perpetual, changeful, undirected motion, not of wave
after wave, as it appears from the shore, but of the very same
water rising and falling. Of waves that successively approach and
break, each appears to the mind a separate individual, whose part
being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded by another; and
there is nothing in this to impress us with the idea of restlessness,
any more than in any successive and continuous functions of life
and death. But it is when we perceive that it is no succession
of wave, but the same water, constantly rising, and crashing, and
recoiling, and rolling in again in new forms and with fresh fury,
that we perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity of its
unwearied rage. The sensation of power is also trebled; for not
only is the vastness of apparent size much increased, but the whole
action is different; it is not a passive wave, rolling sleepily forward
until it tumbles heavily, prostrated upon the beach ; but a sweeping
exertion of tremendous and living strength, which does not now
appear to fall, but to hurst upon the shore; which never perishes,
but recoils and recovers.

Aiming at these grand characters of the sea. Turner almost
always places the spectator, not on the shore, but twenty or thirty
yards from it, beyond the first range of the breakers, as in the
Land's End, Fowey, Dunbar, and Laugharne. The latter has been
well engraved, and may be taken as a standard of the expression of
fitfulness and power. The grand division of the whole space of
the sea by a tew daric contmuous furrows of tremendous swell (the
breaking of one of which alone has strewed the rocks in front
with ruin) furnishes us with an estimate of space and strength,
which at once reduces the men upon the shore to insects ; and

yet through this terrific simplicity there are indicated a fitfulness.
and fury in the tossing of the individual lines, which give to
the whole sea a wild, unwearied, reckless incoherency, like that of
an enraged multitude, whose masses act together in phrensy, while
not one individual feels as another. Especial attention is to be
directed to the flatness of all the lines, for the same principle
holds in sea which we have seen in mountains. All the size and
sublimity of nature are given, not by the height, but by the breadth,
of her masses ; and Turner, by following her in her sweeping lines,
while he does not lose the elevation of its surges, adds in a ten-
fold dea-ree to their power. Farther, observe the peculiar expression § 33. With

In the distance of this grand picture, there are two waves which § 34. Peculiar
entirely depart from the principle observed by all the rest, and ing waves;
spring high into the air. They have a message for us which it is

important that we should understand. Their leap is not a prepa-
ration for breaking, neither is it caused by their meeting with a
rock. It is caused hj their encounter with the recoil of the
preceding wave. When a large surge, in the act of breaking, just
as it curls over, is hurled against the face either of a wall or of a
vertical rock, the sound of the blow is not a crash, nor a roar, it
is a report as loud as, and in everj respect similar to, that of a great
gun, and the wave is dashed back from the rock with force scarcely
diminished, but reversed in direction; it now recedes from the
shore, and at the instant that it encounters the following breaker,
the result is the vertical bound of both which is here rendered by
Turner. Such a recoiling wave will proceed out to sea through ten
or twelve ranges of following breakers, before it is overpowered.
The effect of the encounter is more completely and palpably given
in the Quilleboeuf, in the Rivers of France. It is peculiarly in-
structive here, as informing us of the nature of the coast, and the
force of the waves, far more clearly than any spray about the rocks
themselves could have done. But the effect of the blow at the
shore itself is given in the Land's End, and Tantallon Castle.
Under favourable circumstances with an advancing tide under a
heavy gale, where the breakers feel the shore underneath them a
moment before they touch the rock, so as to nod over when they
strike, the effect is nearly incredible except to an eye-witness. I
have seen the whole body of the wave rise in one white vertical
broad fountain, eighty feet above the sea, half of it beaten so fine
as to be borne away by the wind, the rest turning in the air when
exhausted, and falling back with a weight and crash like that of an
enormous waterfall. This is given in the vignette to " Lycidas ";
and the blow of a less violent wave among broken rocks, not meet-
ing it with an absolute wall, along the shore of the Land's End.
This last picture is a study of sea whose whole organization has
been broken up by constant recoils from a rocky coast. The
Laugharne gives the surge and weight of the ocean in a gale, on
a comparatively level shore ; but the Land's End, the entire disorder
of the surges when every one of them, divided and entangled among
promontories as it rolls in, and beaten back part by part from walls
of rock on this side and that side, recoils like the defeated division

of a great armj, throwing all behind it into disorder, breaking up
the succeeding waves into vertical ridges, which in their turn, yet
more totally shattered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless con-
fusion ; until the whole surface of the sea becomes one dizzy whirl
of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected rage, bounding, and crash-
ing, and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power; subdivided into
myriads of waves, of which every one is not, be it remembered, a
separate surge, but part and portion of a vast one, actuated by
internal power, and giving in every direction the mighty undulation
of impetuous line which glides over the rocks and writhes in the
wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other with the form,
fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lambent fire. And throughout the
rendering of all this there is not one false curve given, not one
which is not the perfect expression of visible motion; and the forms
of the infinite sea are drawn throughout with that utmost mastery
of art which, through the deepest study of every line, makes every
line appear the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in itself
a subject and a picture different from all else around. Of the
colour of this magnificent sea I have before spoken; it is a solemn
green grey (with its foam seen dimly through the darkness of
twilight), modulated with the fulness, changefulness, and sadness of
a deep wdld melody.

The greater number of Turner's paintings of open sea belong § 37, open seas
to a somewhat earlier period than these drawings; nor, generally Turner's
speaking, are they of equal value. It appears to me that the artist
had at that time either less knowledge of, or less delight in, the
characteristics of deep water than of coast sea; and that, in conse-
quence, he suffered himself to be influenced by some of the
qualities of the Dutch sea-painters. In particular, he borrowed
from them the habit of casting a dark shadow on the near waves,
80 as to bring out a stream of light behind; and though he did this
in a more legitimate way than they, that is to say, expressing the
light by touches on the foam, and indicating the shadow as cast on
foamy surface, still the habit has induced much feebleness and con-
ventionality in the pictures of the period. His drawing of the
waves was also somewhat petty and divided, small forms covered

with white flat spray, a condition which I doubt not the artist has
seen on some of the shallow Dutch seas, but which I have never
met with myself, and of the rendering of which therefore I cannot
speak. Yet even in these, which I think among the poorest works
of the painter, the expressions of breeze, motion, and light, are
very marvellous; and it is instructive to compare them either with
the lifeless works of the Dutch themselves, or with any modern
imitations of them; as for instance with the seas of Callcott, where
all the light is white, and all the shadows grey, where no distinc-
tion is made betAveen water and foam, or between real and reflec-
tive shadow, and which are generally without evidence of the
artist's having ever seen the sea.

Some pictures, however, belonging to this period of Turner, are
free from the Dutch infection, and show the real power of the
artist. A very important one is in the possession of the Earl of
Ellesmere, somewhat heavy in its forms, but remarkable for the
grandeur of distance obtained at the liorizon; a much smaller, but
more powerful example is the Port Ruysdael in the possession of
E. Bicknell, Esq., with which I know of no work at all comparable
for the expression of the white, wild, cold, comfortless waves of
northern sea, even though the sea is almost subordinate to the
awful rolling clouds. Both these pictures are very grey. The
Pas de Calais has more colour, and shows more art than either, yet
is less impressive. Recently (1843), two marine subjects of the
same subdued colour have appeared in the midst of more radiant
works. One, Ostend, soinewhat forced and affected, but the other,
also called Port Ruysdael, is among the most perfect sea pictures
he has produced, and especially remarkable as being painted with-
out one marked opposition either of colour or of shade, all quiet
and simple even to an extreme, so that the picture was exceedingly
unattractive at first sight. The shadow of the pier-head on the
near waves is marked solely by touches indicative of reflected
light, and so mysteriously that when the picture is seen near,
it is quite untraceable, and comes into existence as the spectator
retires. It is instructive as a contrast to the dark shadows of his
earlier time.

Few people, comparatively, have ever seen tlie effect on tlie sea § 38. Effect of
of a powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four lonfe^dTtorm^^
days and nights; and to those who have not, I believe it must be
unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from
the complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The
water from its prolonged agitation is beaten, not into mere cream-
ing foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast^, which hang in
ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and, where one curls over to
break, form a festoon like a drapery from its edge; these are taken
up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing,
hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick as
with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each: the surges
themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath,
making them white all through, as the water is under a great
cataract; and their masses, being thus half water and half air, are
torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and carried away in
roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like actual water. Add
to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its moisture by
long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as described above

' The " yesty waves " of Shakspeare have made the likeness familiar, and probably
most readers take the expression aa merely equivalent to "foamy;" but Shakspeare
knew betten Sea-foam does not, under ordinary circumstances, last a moment after it
is formed, but disappears, as above described, in a mere white film. But the foam of a
prolonged tempest is altogether different; it is " whipped" foam, thick, permanent,
and, in a foul or discoloured sea, very ugly, especially in the way it hangs about the
tops of the waves, and gathers into clotted concretions before the driving wind. The
sea looks truly working or fermenting. The following passage from Tenimore Cooper
is an intei'esting confirmation of the rest of the above description, which may be de-
pended upon as entirely free from exaggeration : — " For the first time I now witnessed
a tempest at sea. Gales, and pretty hard ones, I had often seen, but the force of the
wind on this occasion as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of wind, as the force of
these had exceeded that of a whole-sail breeze. The seas seemed crushed ; the pressure
of the swooping atmosphere, as the currents of the air went howling over the surface of
the ocean, fairly preventing them from rising} or where a mound of water did appear,
it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as the axe dubs inequalities from the log.
When the day returned, a species of lurid sombre light was diffused over the watery
waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship. Even the sea-birds
seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of the adjacent coast, none reappearing
with the dawn. The air was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the eye could
penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a mile." — Miles Wallingford. Half
a mile is an over-estimate on coast sea.

(Section III. Chapter lY. § 13.), and covers its surface not merely
with the smoke of finely divided water, but with boiling mist;
imagine also the low rain-clouds brought down to the very level of
the I have often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and

fragments from wave to wave; and finally, conceive the surges
themselves in their utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and
madness, lifting themselves in precipices and peaks, furrowed with
their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos ; and you will under-
stand that there is indeed no distinction left between the sea and
air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any land-mark or natural
evidence of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the
ocean all cloud, and that you can see no farther in any direction
than you could see through a cataract. Suppose the ejBPect of the
first sunbeam sent from above to show this annihilation to itself,
and you have the sea picture of the Academy, 1842, the Snow-
storm, one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, and
light, that has ever been put on canvass, even by Turner. Of
course it was not understood; his finest works never are: but
there was some apology for the public's not comprehending this,
for few people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea at such a
time, and when they have, cannot face it. To hold by a mast or a
rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning which
few people have courage to go through. To those who have, it is
one of the noblest lessons of nature.

§ 39. Turner's But, I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and,

storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-clouds
are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of
the night. The whole surface of sea included in the picture is
divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor local,
but a low broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of
its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm.
Between these two ridges the fire of the sunset falls along the
trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the

intense and lurid splendour which burns like gold, and bathes like
blood. Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by
which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided, lift themselves in
dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly
shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not rise
everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and
furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits
them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and
whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now
flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed
from above with the undistinguishable images of the burning clouds,
which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to
the reckless waves the added motion of their own fieiy flying.
Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast
upon the mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing
like the shadow of death upon the guilty^ ship as it labours amidst
the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines
of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs
the sky with horror and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight,
and, cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves,
incarnadines the multitudinous sea.

I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon § 40. its united
any single work, I should choose this. Its daring conception, perftctimrar''^
ideal in the highest sense of the word, is based on the purest
truth, and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge of a life ;
its colour is absolutely perfect, not one false or morbid hue in any
part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of canvass is
a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate as fearless; the ship
buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as true as they are
wonderful^; and the whole picture dedicated to the most sublime

' She is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near sea is encumbered with
corpses.

* There is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part, but not so united with
the rest of the picture, in the storm scene illustrative of the Antiquary,—a sunset light
on polished sea. I ought to have particularly mentioned the sea in the Lowestoft, as a
piece of the cutting motion of shallow water under storm, altogether in grey, which

of subjects and impressions (completing thus the perfect system
of all truth, which we have shown to be formed by Turner's works)
—the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable

should be especially contrasted, as a piece of colour, with the gi-eys of Vandevelde.
And the sea in the Great Yarmouth should have been noticed for its expression of
water under a fresh gale, seen in enormous extent from a great elevation. There is
almost every form of sea in it: roUing waves dashing on the pier; successive breakers
rolling to the shore; a vast horizon of multitudinous waves; and winding canals of
calm water along the sands, bringing fragments of bi'ight sky down into their yellow
waste. There is hardly one of the views of the Southern Coast which does not give
some new condition or circumstance of sea.

It will be best to begin as nature does, with the stems and
branches, and then to put the leaves on. And in speaking of trees
generally, be it observed, when I say all trees, I mean only those
ordinary forest or copse trees of Europe, which are the chief subjects
of the landscape painter. I do not mean to include every kind of
foliage which by any accident can find its way into a picture, but
the ordinary trees of Europe; oak, elm, ash, hazel, willow, birch,
beech, poplar, chestnut, pine, mulberry, olive, ilex, carob, and
such others. I do not purpose to examine the characteristics of
each tree; it will be enough to observe the laws common to all.
First, then, neither the stems nor the boughs of any of the above
trees taper, except where they fork. Wherever a stem sends off a
branch, or a branch a lesser bough, or a lesser bough a bud, the
stem or the branch is, on the instant, less in diameter by the exact
quantity of the branch or the bough they have sent off, and they
remain of the same diameter; or if there be any change, rather
increase than diminish until they send off another branch or bough.
This law is imperative and without exception; no bough, nor stem,
nor twig, ever tapering or becoming narrower towards its extremity
by a hair's-breadth, save where it parts with some portion of its
substance at a fork or bud, so that if all the twigs and sprays at
the top and sides of the tree, which are, and have been, could be
united without loss of space, they would form a round log of at
least the diameter of the trunk from which they spring.

But as the trunks of most trees send off twigs and sprays of
light under*foliage, of which every individual fibre takes precisely
its own thickness of wood from the parent stem, and as many of
these drop off, leaving nothing but a small excrescence to record
their existence, there is frequently a slight and delicate appearance
of tapering caused in the trunk itself; while the same operation
takes place much more extensively in the branches: it being natural
to almost all trees to send out from their young limbs more wood
than they can support; which, as the stem increases, gets con-
tracted at the point of insertion, so as to check the flow of the sap,
and then dies and drops off, leaving all along the bough, first on
one side, then on another, a series of small excrescences sufficient
to account for a degree of tapering, which is yet so very slight, that

if we select a portion of a branch witli no real fork or living bough
to divide it or diminish it, the tapering is scarcely to be detected
bj the eye; and if we select a portion without such evidences of
past ramification, there will be found none whatsoever.

But nature takes great care and pains to conceal this uniformity § 4. And care
in her boughs. They are perpetually parting with little sprays conceaTthe°
here and there, which steal away their substance cautiously, and parallelism,
where the eye does not perceive the theft, until, a little way above,
it feels the loss; and in the upper parts of the tree, the ramifications
take place so constantly and delicately, that the effect upon the eye
is precisely the same as if the boughs actually tapered, except here
and there, where some avaricious one, greedy of substance, runs on
for two or three yards without parting with anything, and becomes
ungraceful in so doing.

Hence we see that although boughs may, and must be represented § s. The degree
as actually tapering, they must only be so when they are sending wwXmay be
off foliage and sprays, and when they are at such a distance that pyjj^^'^^oyg
the particular forks and divisions cannot be evident to the eye;
and farther, even in such circumstances, the tapering never can be
sudden or rapid. No bough ever, with appearance of smooth
tapering, loses more than one tenth of its diameter in a length of
ten diameters. Any greater diminution than this must be accounted
for by visible ramification, and must take place by steps, at each
fork.

And therefore we see at once that the stem of Gaspar Poussin's § 6. The trees
tall tree, on the right of the La Riccia, in the National Gallery, is pougsiir*^
a painting of a carrot or a parsnep, not of the trunk of a tree.
For, being so near that every individual leaf is visible, we should
not have seen, in nature, one branch or stem actually tapering.
We should have received an impression of graceful diminution; but
we should have been able, on examination, to trace it joint by joint,
fork by fork, into the thousand minor supports of the leaves.
Gaspar Poussin's stem, on the contrary, only sends off four or five
minor branches altogether, and both it and they taper violently,
and without showing why or wherefore; without parting with a
single twig, without showing one vestige of roughness or excres-
cence ; and leaving, therefore, their unfortunate leaves to hold on

as best they may. The latter, however, are clever leaves, and
support themselves as swarming bees do, hanging on by each other.

But even this piece of work is a jest to the perpetration of the
bough at the left-hand upper corner of the picture opposite to it,
the View near Albano. This latter is a representation of an orna-
mental group of elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the ends of
them. Not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the
remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the
claws of a witch, the talons of an eagle, the horns of a fiend;
but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can
be told respecting foliage, a piece of work so barbarous in every
way, that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism
and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape painters.
For I will depart for once from my usual plan, of abstaining from
all assertion of a thing's being beatitiful or otherwise; I will say
here, at once, that such drawing as this is as ugly as it is childish,
and as painful as it is false; and that the man who could tolerate,
much more, who could deliberately set down such a thing on his
canvass, had neither eye nor feeling for one single attribute or
excellence of God's works. He might have drawn the other stem
in excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of being
able to improve upon nature; but this is conclusive and unpar-
donable. Again, take the stem of the chief tree in Claude's
Narcissus. It is a very faithful portrait of a large boa constrictor,
with a handsome tail; the kind of trunk which young ladies at
fashionable boarding-schools represent with nosegays at the top of
them, by way of forest scenery.

SIS H is given by y^Q need not go to Turner, we will go to the man who next to him

is unquestionably the greatest master of foliage in Europe, J. D.
Harding. Take the trunk of the largest stone-pine, plate 25. in
" The Park and the Forest." For the first nine or ten feet from the
ground it does not lose one hair's-breadth of its diameter. But the
shoot broken off just under the crossing part of the distant tree is
followed by an instant diminution of the trunk, perfectly appreciable
both by the eye and the compasses. Again, the stem maintains
undiminished thickness up to the two shoots on the left, from the

loss of which it suffers again perceptibly. On the right, imme-
diately above, is the stump of a very large bough, whose loss
reduces the trunk suddenly to about two thirds of what it was at
the root. Diminished again, less considerably, by the minor branch
close to this stump, it now retains its diameter up to the three
branches broken off just under the head, where it once more loses
in diameter; and finally branches into the multitude of head-
boughs, of which not one will be found tapering in any part, but
losing itself gradually by division among its off-shoots and spray.
This is nature, and beauty too.

But the old masters are not satisfied with drawing carrots for § 9. Boughs, in
boughs. Nature can be violated in more ways than one, and the this'^Iaw^musf
industry with which they seek out and adopt every conceivable mode
of contradicting her is matter of no small interest. It is evident Those of the
from what we have above stated of the structure of all trees, that often'do!iot.
as no boughs diminish where they do not fork, so they cannot fork
without diminishing. It is impossible that the smallest shoot can
be sent out of a bough without a diminution of the diameter above
it; and wherever a branch goes off it must not only be less in
diameter than the bough from which it springs, but the bough
beyond the fork must be less by precisely the quantity of the
branch it has sent ofF.^ Now observe the bough underneath the
first bend of the great stem in Claude's Narcissus; it sends off
four branches like the ribs of a leaf. The two lowest of these are
both quite as thick as the parent stem, and the stem itself is much
thicker after it has sent off the first one than it was before. The
top boughs of the central tree, in the Marriage of Isaac and
Rebecca, ramify in the same scientific way.

But there are farther conclusions to be drawn from this great § lo. Boughs
principle in trees. As they only diminish where they divide, their ^"h^y dimu^

' It sometimes happens that a morbid direction of growth will cause an ^exception
here and there to this rule, the bough swelling beyond its legitimate size; knots and
excrescences, of course, sometimes interfere with the effect of diminution. I believe
that in the laurel, when it grows large and old, singular instances may be found of thick
upper boughs and over-quantity of wood at the extremities. All these accidents or ex-
ceptions are felt as such by the eye. They may occasionally be used by the painter in
savage or grotesque scenery, or as points of contrast, but are no excuse for his ever
losing sight of the general law.

nish. Those of increase of number is in precise proportion to their diminution
drnot of size; so that whenever we come to the extremities of boughs, we

must have a multitude of sprays sufficient to make up, if they were
united, the bulk of that from which they spring. Precision in
representing this is neither desirable nor possible. All that is
required is just so much observance of the general principle as may
make the eye feel satisfied that there is something like the same
quantity of wood in the sprays which there is in the stem. But to
do this there must be, what there always is in nature, an exceeding
complexity of the outer sprays. This complexity gradually in-
creases towards their extremities, of course exactly in proportion to
the slenderness of the twigs. The slenderer they become, the
more there are of them, until at last, at the extremities of the tree,
they form a mass of intricacy, which in winter, when it can be seen,
is scarcely distinguishable from fine herbage, and is beyond all
power of definite representation; it can only be expressed by a mass
of involved strokes. Also, as they shoot out in every direction,
some are nearer, some more distant; some distinct, some faint; and
their intersections and relations of distance are marked with the
most exquisite gradations of aerial perspective. Now it will be
found universally, in the works of Claude, Gaspar, and Salvator,
that the boughs do not get in the least complex or multiplied
towards the extremities; that each large limb forks only into two
or three smaller ones, each of which vanishes into the air without
any cause or reason for such unaccountable conduct, unless that
the mass of leaves transfixed upon it or tied to it, entirely dependent
on its single strength, have been too much, as well they may be,
for its powers of solitary endurance. This total ignorance of tree-
structure is shown throughout their works. The Sinon before
Priam is an instance of it in a really fine work of Claude's, but
the most gross examples are in the works of Salvator. It appears
that thk latter artist was hardly in the habit of studying from
nature at all, after his boyish ramble among the Calabrian hills; and
I do not recollect any instance of a piece of his bough-drawing
which is not palpably and demonstrably a made up phantasm of the
studio, the proof derivable from this illegitimate tapering being one
of the most convincing. The painter is always visibly embarrassed

to reduce the thick boughs to spray, and feeling (for Salvator
naturally had acute feeling for truth) that the bough was wrong
when it tapered suddenly, he accomplishes its diminution by an
impossible protraction; throwing out shoot after shoot until his
branches straggle all across the picture, and at last disappear un-
willingly where there is no room for them to stretch any farther.
The consequence is, that whatever leaves are put upon such boughs
have evidently no adequate support, their power of leverage is
enough to uproot the tree; or, if the boughs are left bare, they have
the look of the long tentacula of some complicated marine monster,
or of the waving endless threads of bunchy sea-weed, instead of the
firm, upholding, braced, and bending grace of natural boughs. I
grant tliat this is in a measure done by Salvator from a love of
ghastliness, and that in certain scenes it is in a sort allowable;
but it is in a far greater degree done from pure ignorance of tree
structure, as is sufficiently proved by the landscape of the Pitti
Palace, Peace burning the arms of War: where the spirit of the
scene is intended to be quite other than ghastly, and yet the tree
branches show the usual errors in an extraordinary degree; every
one of their arrangements is impossible, and the trunk of the tree
could not for a moment support the foliage it is loaded with. So
also in the pictures of the Guadagni Palace. And even where the
skeleton look of branches is justifiable or desirable, there is no
occasion for any violation of natural laws. I have seen more
spectral character in the real limbs of a blasted oak, than ever in
Salvator's best monstrosities; more horror is to be obtained by right
combination of inventive line, than by drawing tree branches as
if they were wing-bones of a pterodactyle. All departure from
natural forms to give fearfulness is mere Germanism; it is the work
of fancy, not of imagination', and instantly degrades whatever it
affects to a third-rate level. There is nothing more marked in
truly great men, than their power of being dreadful without^eing
false or licentious. In Tintoret's Murder of Abel, the head of the
sacrificed firstling lies in the corner of the foreground obscurely
sketched in, and with the light gleaming upon its glazed eyes.

There is nothing exaggerated ahout the head, but there is more
horror got out of it, and more of death suggested by its treatment,
than if he had turned all the trees of his picture into skeletons, and
raised a host of demons to drive the club.

It is curious that in Salvator's sketches or etchings there is less
that is wrong than in his paintings; there seems a fresher remem-
brance of nature about them. Not so with Claude. It is only by
looking over his sketches in the British Museum, that a complete
and just idea is to be formed of his capacities of error; for the
feeling and arrangement of many of them are those of an advanced
age, so that we can scarcely set them down for what they resemble,
the work of a boy ten years old; and the drawing, being seen with-
out any aids of tone or colour to set it off, shows in its naked
falsehood. The landscape of Poussin with the storm, the companion
to the Dido and iEneas, in the National Gallery, presents us, in
the foreground tree, with a piece of atrocity which I think, to any
person who candidly considers it, may save me all farther troubLs
of demonstrating the errors of ancient art. I do not in the least
suspect the picture; the tones of it, and much of the handling,
are masterly ; yet that foreground tree comprises every conceivable
violation of truth which the human hand can commit, or head
invent, in drawing a tree, except only that it is not drawn root
uppermost. It has no bark, no roughness nor character of stem;
its boughs do not grow out of each other, but are stuck into each
other; they ramify without diminishing, diminish without ramifying,
are terminated by no complicated sprays, have their leaves tied to
their ends, like the heads of Dutch brooms; and finally, and chiefly,
they are evidently not made of wood, but of some soft elastic
substance, which the wind can stretch out as it pleases, for there is
not a vestige of an angle in any one of them. Now the fiercest wind
that ever blew upon the earth could not tahe the angles out of the
hough of a tree an inch thicJc. The whole bough bends together,
retaining its elbows, and angles, and natural form, but affected
throughout with curvature in each of its parts and joints. That
part of it which was before perpendicular being bent aside, and that
which was before sloping being bent into still greater inclination,
the angle at which the two parts meet remains the same; or, if the

strain be put in the opposite direction, the bough will break long
before it loses its angle. You will find it difficult to bend the
angles out of the youngest sapling, if they be marked; and abso-
lutely impossible, with a strong bough. You may break it, but you
will not destroy its angles. And if you watch a tree in the wildest
storm, you will find that though all its boughs are bending, none
lose their character, but the utmost shoots and sapling spray. Hence
Gaspar Poussin, by hiss bad drawing, does not make his storm
strong, but his tree weak; he does not make his gust violent, but
his boughs of Indian rubber.

These laws respecting vegetation are so far more imperative than § 14. Bough-
those which were stated respecting water, that the greatest artist Titian.^
cannot violate them without danger, because they are laws resulting
from organic structure which it is always painful to see inter-
rupted; on the other hand, they have this in common with all
laws, that they may be observed with mathematical precision, yet
with no right result; the disciplined eye and the life in the woods
are worth more than all botanical knowledge. For there is that
about the growing of the tree trunk, and that grace in its upper
ramification, which cannot be taught, and which cannot even be
seen but by eager watchfulness. There is not an Exhibition
passes, but there appear in it hundreds of elaborate paintings of
trees, many of them executed from nature. For three hundred
years back, trees have been drawn with affection by all the
civilized nations of Europe, and yet I repeat boldly, what I before
asserted, that no men but Titian and Turner ever drew the stem
of a tree.

Generally, I think, the perception of the muscular qualities of
the tree trunk incomplete, except in men who have studied the
human figure, and in loose expression of those characters, the
painter who can draw the living muscle seldom fails; but the
thoroughly peculiar lines belonging to woody fibre can only be
learned by patient forest study. And hence, in all the trees of the
merely historical painters, there is fault of some kind or another;
commonly exaggeration of the muscular swellings, or insipidity and
want of spring in curvature, or fantasticism and unnaturalness of

arrangement, and especially a want of the peculiar characters of
bark which express the growth and age of the tree: for bark is no
mere excrescence, lifeless and external, it is a skin of especial
significance in its indications of the organic form beneath; in
places under the arms of the tree it wrinkles up and forms fine
lines round the trunk, inestimable in their indication of the direction
of its surface; in others, it bursts or peels longitudinally, and the
rending and bursting of it are influenced in direction and degree by
the under-growth and swelling of the woody fibre, and are not a
mere roughness and granulated pattern of the hide. Where there
are so many points to be observed, some are almost always ex-
aggerated, and others missed, according to the predilections of the
painter, Albert Durer has given some splendid examples of woody
structure, but misses the grace of the great lines. Titian took a
larger view, yet (as before noticed), from the habit of drawing the
figure, he admits too much fiaccidity and bend, and sometimes makes
his tree trunks look flexible like sea-weed. There is a peculiar
stiffness about the curves of the wood, which separates them com-
pletely from animal curves, and which especially defies recollection
or invention; it is so subtle that it escapes but too often, even in
the most patient study from nature; it lies within the thickness of
a pencil line. Farther, the modes of ramification of the upper
branches are so varied, inventive, and graceful, that the least
alteration of them, even the measure of a hair's-breadth, spoils
them; and though it is sometimes possible to get rid of a trouble-
some bough, accidentally awkward, or in some minor respects to
assist the arrangement, yet so far as the real branches are copied,
the hand libels their lovely curvatures even in its best attempts to
follow them.

These two characters, the woody stiffness hinted through mus-
cular line, and the inventive grace of the upper boughs, have never
been rendered except by Turner; he does not merely draw them
better than others, but he is the only man who has ever drawn
them at all. Of the woody character, the tree subjects of the Liber
Studiorum afford marked examples; the Cephalus and Procris,
scenes near the Grand Chartreuse and Blair Athol, Juvenile
Tricks, and Hedging and Ditching, may be particularized: in the

England series, the Bolton Abbey is perliaps a more characteristic
and thoroughlj Turneresque example than any.

Of the arrangement of the upper boughs, the ^sacus and
Hesperie is perhaps the most consummate example; the absolute
truth and simplicity, and freedom from everything like fantasticism
or animal form, being as marked on the one hand, as the exquisite
imaginativeness of the lines on the other. Among the Yorkshire sub-
jects, the Aske Hall, Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard, and Brignall
Church are the most characteristic: among the England subjects,
the Warwick, Dartmouth Cove, Durham, and Chain Bridge over
the Tees, "vvhere the piece of thicket on the right has been well
rendered by the engraver, and is peculiarly expressive of the aerial
relations and play of light among complex boughs. The vignette
at the opening of Rogers's Pleasures of Memory, that of Chiefs-
wood Cottage in the Illustrations to Scott's Works, and the Chateau
de la belle Gabrielle engraved for the Keepsake, are among the
most graceful examples accessible to every one: the Crossing the
Brook will occur at once to those acquainted with the artist's
gallery. The drawing of the stems in all these instances, and
indeed in all the various and frequent minor occurrences of such
subject throughout the painter's works, is entirely unique, there is
nothing of the same kind in art.

Let us, however, pass to the leafage of the elder landscape- § Leafage,
painters, and see if it atones for the deficiencies of the stems. One symmetry^
of the most remarkable characters of natural leafage is the con-
stancy with which, while the leaves are arranged on the spray with
exquisite regularity, that regularity is modified in their actual
effect. For as in every group of leaves some are seen sideways,
forming merely long lines, some foreshortened, some crossing each
other, every one differently turned and placed from all the others,
the forms of the leaves, though in themselves similar, give rise to
a thousand strange and differing forms in the group; and the
shadows of some, passing over the others, still farther disguise and
confuse the mass, until the eye can distinguish nothing but a
graceful and flexible disorder of innumerable forms, with here and
there a perfect leaf on the extremity, or a symmetrical association
of one or two, just enough to mark the specific character and to

give unity and grace, but never enough to repeat in one group
what was done in another, never enough to prevent the eye from
feeling that, however regular and mathematical may be the structure
of parts, what is composed out of them is as various and infinite as
any other part of nature. Nor does this take place in general
effect only. Break off an elm bough three feet long, in full leaf,
and lay it on the table before you, and try to draw it, leaf for leaf.
It is ten to one if in the whole bough (provided you do not twist it
about as you work) you find one form of a leaf exactly like
another; perhaps you will not even have one complete. Every
leaf will be oblique, or foreshortened, or curled, or crossed by
another, or shaded by another, or have something or other the
matter with it; and though the whole bough will look graceful and
symmetrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why it does
so, since there is not one line of it like another. Now go to
Gaspar Poussin and take one of his sprays where they come against
the sky; you may count it all round: one, two, three, four, one
bunch; five, six, seven, eight, two bunches; nine, ten, eleven,
twelve, three bunches; with four leaves each: and such leaves!
every one precisely the same as its neighbour, blunt and round at
the end (where every forest leaf is sharp, except that of the fig-
tree), tied together by the stalks, and so fastened on to the demo-
niacal claws above described, one bunch to each claw.

But if nature is so various when you have a bough on the table
before you, what must she be when she retires from you, and gives
you her whole mass and multitude ? The leaves then at the extre-
mities become as fine as dust, a mere confusion of points and lines
between you and the sky, a confusion which you might as well hope
to draw sea-sand particle by particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf.
This, as it comes down into the body of the tree, gets closer, but
never opaque; it is always transparent, with crumbling lights in it
letting you through to the sky: then, out of this, come, heavier
and heavier, the masses of illumined foliage, all dazzling and inex-
tricable, save here and there a single leaf on the extremities: then,
under these, you get deep passages of broken irregular gloom,
passing into transparent, green-lighted, misty hollows; the twisted
stems glancing through them in their pale and entangled infinity.

and the shafted sunbeams, rained from above, running along the
lustrous leaves for an instant; then lost, then caught again on some
emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again with a faint
reflex on the white under-sides of dim groups of drooping foliage,
the shadows of the upper boughs running in grey network down
the glossy stems, and resting in quiet chequers upon the glittering
earth; but all penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion,
inextricable and incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth
and the mystery of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls,
close to us, some solitary spray, some wreath of two or three
motionless large leaves, the type and embodying of all that in the
rest we feel and imagine, but can never see.

Now, with thus much of nature in your mind, go to Gaspar § 19. How con-
Poussin's View near Albano, in the National Gallery. It is the free^paltems^of
very subject to unite all these effects^ a sloping bank shaded with I'oussin.
intertwined forest. And what has Gaspar given us ? A mass of
smooth, opaque, varnished brown, without one interstice, one
change of hue, or any vestige of leafy structure in its interior, or
in those parts of it, I should say, which are intended to represent
interior; but out of it, over it rather, at regular intervals, we have
circular groups of greenish touches, always the same in size, shape,
and distance from each other, containing so exactly the same
number of touches each, that you cannot tell one from another.
There are eight or nine and thirty of them, laid over each other
like fish-scales; the shade being most carefully made darker and
darker as it recedes from each until it comes to the edge of the
next, against which it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and
then begins to decline again, until the canvass is covered, with
about as much intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has
in marbling a wainscot, or a weaver in repeating an ornamental
pattern. What is there in this, which the most determined pre-
judice in favour of the old masters can for a moment suppose to
resemble trees ? It is exactly what the most ignorant beginner,
trying to make a complete drawing, would lay down; exactly the
conception of trees which we have in the works of our worst
drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with the black lead

and stump, and every human power exerted to make it look like a
kitchen-grate well polished.

Oppose to this the drawing even of our somewhat inferior tree
painters. I will not insult Harding by mentioning his work after
it, but take Creswick, for instance, and match one of his sparkling
bits of green leafage with this tree-pattern of Poussin's. I do not
say there is not a dignity and impressiveness about the old land-
scape, owing to its simplicity; and I am very far from calling
Creswick's good tree-painting; it is false in colour and deficient in
mass and freedom, and has many other defects, but it is the work
of a man who has sought earnestly for truth: and who, with one
thought or memory of nature in his heart, could look at the two
landscapes, and receive Poussin's with ordinary patience ? Take
Creswick in black and white, where he is unembarrassed by his
fondness for pea-green, the illustrations, for instance, to the Nut-
brown Maid, in the Book of English Ballads. Look at the intricacy
and fulness of the dark oak foliage where it bends over the brook;
see how you can go through it, and into it, and come out behind it
to the quiet bit of sky. Observe the grey aerial transparency of
the stunted copse on the left, and the entangling of the boughs
where the light near foliage detaches itself. Above all, note the
forms of the masses of light. Not things like scales or shells,
sharp at the edge and flat in the middle, but irregular and rounded,
stealing in and out accidentally from the shadow, and presenting
in general outline, as the masses of all trees do, a resemblance to
the specific forms of the leaves of which they are composed. Turn
over the page, and look into the weaving of the foliage and sprays
against the dark night-sky, how near they are, yet how untraceable;
see how the moonlight creeps up underneath them, trembling and
shivering on the silver boughs above; note, also, the descending bit
of ivy on the left, of which only two leaves are made out, and the
rest is confusion, or tells only in the moonlight like faint flakes of
snow.

But nature observes another principle in her foliage more im-
portant even than its intricacy. She always secures an exceeding
harmony and repose. She is so intricate that her minuteness of
parts becomes to the eye, at a little distance, one united veil c

cloud of leaves, to destroy the evenness of wliich is perhaps a
greater fault than to destroy its transparency. Look at Creswick's
oak again, in its dark parts. Intricate as it is, all is blended into
a cloud-like harmony of shade, which becomes fainter and fainter,
as it retires, with the most delicate flatness and unity of tone.
And it is by this kind of vaporescence, so to speak, by this flat
misty unison of parts, that nature, and her faithful followers, are
enabled to keep the eye in perfect repose in the midst of profusion,
and to display beauty of form, wherever they choose, to the greatest
possible advantage, by throwing it across some quiet visionary
passage of dimness and rest.

It is here that Hobbima and Both fail. They can paint oak § 22. Total
leafage faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too Both and*^
much, lose the truth of all, lose the very truth of detail at which
they aim, for all their mmute work only gives two leaves to nature's
twenty. They are evidently incapable of even thinking of a tree,
much more of drawing it, except leaf by leaf; they have no notion
nor sense of simplicity, mass, or obscurity, and when they come
to distance, where it is totally impossible that leaves should be
separately seen, being incapable of conceiving or rendering the
grand and quiet forms of truth, they are reduced to paint their
bushes with dots and touches expressive of leaves three feet broad
each. Nevertheless there is a genuine aim in their works, and
their failure is rather to be attributed to ignorance of art, than to
such want of sense for nature as we find in Claude or Poussin; and
when they come close home, we sometimes receive from them fine
passages of mechanical truth.

But let us oppose to their works the group of trees on the left § 23. How
in Turner's Marly. ^ We have there perfect and ceaseless intricacy Turncrf
to oppose to Poussin, perfect and unbroken repose to oppose to
Hobbima; and in the unity of these the perfection of truth. This
group may be taken as a fair standard of Turner's tree-painting.
We have in it the admirably drawn stems, mstead of the claws or
the serpents; full, transparent, boundless intricacy, instead of thQ

' This group I have before noticed as singularly (but, I doubt not, accidentally, and
in consequcnce of the love of the two great painters for the same grand forms) re-
sembling that introduced by Tintoret in the background of his Cain and Abel.

shell pattern; and misty depth of intermingled light and leafage,
instead of perpetual repetition of one mechanical touch.

I have already spoken (Section II. Chapter IV. § 15.) of the way
in which mystery and intricacy are carried even into the nearest
leaves of the foreground, and noticed the want of such intricacy
even in the best works of the old masters. Claude's are particularly
deficient, for by representing every particular leaf ol" them, or
trying to do so, he makes nature finite; and even his nearest bits
of leafage are utterly false, for they have neither shadows modifying
their form (compare Section II. Chapter III. § 7.) nor sparkling
lights, nor confused intersections of their own forms and lines; and
the perpetual repetition of the same shape of leaves and the same
arrangement, relieved from a black ground, is more like an orna-
mental pattern for dress than the painting of a foreground. Never-
theless, the foliage of Claude, in his middle distances, is the finest
and truest part of his pictures, and, on the whole, affords the best
example of good drawing to be found in ancient art. It is always
false in colour, and has not boughs enough amongst it, and the
stems commonly look a great deal nearer than any part of it, but
it is still graceful, flexible, abundant, intricate; and, in all but
colour and connection with stems, very nearly right. Of the
perfect painting of thick leafy foreground. Turner's Mercury and
Argus, and Oakhampton, are the standards.^

' The above paragraphs I have left as originally written, because they are quite true
as far as they reach; but, like many other portions of this essay, they take in a very
small segment of the ti-uth. I shall not add to them at present, because I can explain
my meaning better in our consideration of the laws of beauty; but the reader must
bear in mind that what is above stated refers, throughout, to large masses of foliage
seen under broad sunshine, and it has especial reference to Turner's enormous scale
of scene, and intense desire of light. In twilight, when tree foi-ms are seen against sky,
other laws come into operation, as well as in subject of narrow limits and near fore-
ground. It is, I think, to be regretted that Turner does not in his Academy pictures
sometimes take more confined and gloomy subjects, like tliat grand one, near the
Chartreuse, of the Liber Studiorum, wherein his magnificent power of elaborating close
foliage might be developed: but, for the present, let the reader, with respect to what
has been here said of close foliage, note the drawing of the leaves in that plate, in the
JEsacus and Hesperie, and in the Cephalus, and the elaboration of the foregrounds in the
Yorkshire drawings; let him compare what is said of Turner's foliage painting above
in Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. §§ 40, 41., and of Titian's previously, as well as Part III.
Sec. I. Chap. VIIL, and Sec. H. Chap. IV. §21. I shall hereafter endeavoui- to

The last and most important truth to be observed respecting § 25. Universal
trees is, that their boughs always, in finely grown individuals, bear trec""ntynimc-
among themselves such a ratio of length as to describe with their curves,
extremities a symmetrical curve, constant for each species; and
within this curve all the irregularities, segments, and divisions of
the tree are included, each bough reaching the limit with its ex-
tremity, but not passing it. When aj;ree is perfectly grown, each
bough starts from the trunk with just so much wood as, allowing
for constant ramification, will enable it to reach the terminal line;
or if by mistalce, it start with too little, it will proceed without rami-
fying till within a distance where it may safely divide; if on the
contrary it start with too much, it will ramify quickly and
constantly; or, to express the real operation more accurately, each
bough, growing on so as to keep even with its neighbours, takes so
much wood from the trunk as is sufficient to enable it to do so,
more or less in proportion as it ramifies fast or slowly. In badly
grown trees the boughs are apt to fall short of the curve, or at least
there are so many jags and openings that its symmetry is inter-
rupted; and in young trees, the impatience of the upper shoots fre-
quently breaks the line: but, in perfect and mature trees,every bough
does its duty completely, and the Ime of curve is quite filled up,
and the mass within it unbroken, so that the tree assumes the shape
of a dome, as in the oak, or, in tall trees, of a pear with the stalk
downmost. The old masters paid no attention whatsoever to this § 26. Altogether
great principle. They swing their boughs about, anywhere and JUIJ'oiS'^mfftcM.
everywhere; each stops or goes on just as it likes ; nor will it be
possible, in any of their works, to find a single example in which
any symmetrical curve is indicated by the extremities.'

ai-range the subject in a more systematic manner, but what additional observations I
may have to make will none of them be in any wise more favourable to Gaspar, Salvator,
or Hobbima, than the above paragraphs.

' Perhaps, in some instances, this may be the case with the trees of Nicholas Poussin ;
but even with him the boughs only touch the line of limit with then- central jpoi'nte of
extremity, and are not sectors of the great curve, forming a part of it with expanded
extremities, as in nature. Draw a few straight lines from the centre to the circum-
ference of a circle. The forms included between them are the forms of the individual
boughs of a fine tree, with all their ramifications; only the external curve is not a circle,
but more frequently two parabolas (which, I believe, it is in the oak), or an ellipse.

But I need scarcely tell any one in the slightest degree acquainted
with the works of Turner, how rigidly and constantly he adheres
to this principle of nature; taking in his highest compositions the
perfect ideal form, every spray being graceful and varied in itself,
but inevitably terminating at the assigned limit, and filling up the
curve without break or gap; in his lower works, taking less perfect
form but invariably hinting the constant tendency in all; and thus,
in spite of his abundant complexity, he arranges his trees under
simpler and grander forms than any other artist, even among the
moderns.

It was above asserted that J. D. Harding is, after Turner, the
greatest master of foliage in Europe: I ought, however, to state
that my knowledge of the modern landscape of Germany is very
limited, and that, even with respect to France and Italy, I judge
rather from the general tendency of study and character of mind
visible in the annual Exhibition of the Louvre, and in some galleries
of modern paintings at Milan, Venice, and Florence, than from any
detailed acquaintance with the works of their celebrated painters.
Yet I think I can hardly be mistaken. I have seen nothing to
induce me to take a closer survey ; no life, knowledge, or emotion
in any qiiarter; nothing but the meanest and most ignorant copyism
of vulgar details, coupled with a style of conception resembling that
of the various lithographic ideals on the first leaves of the music of
pastoral ballads. An exception ought, however, to be made in
favour of French etching ; some studies in black and white may be
seen in the narrow passages of the Louvre of very high merit,
showing great skill and delicacy of execution, and most determined
industry (in fact, I think when the French artist fails, it is never
through fear of labour); nay, more than this, some of them exhibit
acute perception of landscape character and great power of reaching
simple impressions of gloom, wildness, sound, and motion. Some
of their illustrated works also exhibit these powers in a high degree;
there are a spirit, fire, and sense of reality about some of the wood-
cuts to the large edition of Paul and Virginia, and a determined

But each bough of the old masters is club-shaped, and broadest, not at the outside of
the tree, but a little way towards its centre.

rendering of separate feeling in each, such as we look for in vain
in our own ornamental works.^ But the French appear to have no
teaching such as might carry them beyond this ; their entire igno-
rance of colour renders the assumption of the brush instantly fatal,
and the false, forced, and impious sentiment of the nation renders
anything like grand composition altogether impossible.

It is therefore only among good artists of our own school that § 28. Foliage
I think any fair comparison can be instituted, and I wish to assert ing." its Ue-
Harding's knowledge of foliage more distinctly, because he neither
does justice to himself, nor is, I think, rightly estimated by his
fellow artists. I shall not make any invidious remarks respecting
individuals, but I think it necessary to state generally, that the
style of foliage-painting chiefly characteristic of the pictures on the
line of the Royal Academy is of the most degraded kind and that,
except Turner and Mulready, we have, as far as I know, no Royal
Academician capable of painting even the smallest portion of foliage
in a dignified or correct manner®; all is lost in green shadows
with glittering yellow lights, white trunks with black patches on
them, and leaves of no species in particular. Much laborious and
clever foliage-drawing is to be found in the rooms of the New
Water-Colour Society but we have no one in any wise comparable
to Harding for power of expression in a sketch from nature, or for
natural and unaffected conception in the study.

Maintaining for him this high position, it is necessary that I § 29. His brii-
should also state those deficiencies which appear to me to conceal too
his real power, and in no small degree to prevent his progress. manifest

His over-fondness for brilliant execution I have already noticed.
He is fonder of seeing something tolerably like a tree produced

' On the other hand, nothing can be more exquisitely ridiculous than the French
illustrations of a second or third rate order, as those to the Harmonies of Lamartine.

^ Of Stanfield's foliage I remember too little to enable me to form any definite judg-
ment ; it is a pity that he so much neglects this noble element of landscape.

3 The Pre-Raphaelite brethren, as they unfortunately call themselves (I heartily wish
they would be content to paint well without calling themselves names), are not, I think,
as yet any of them Academicians. Their foliage, like the rest of the accessaries in their
paintings, is inimitable in its parts, but as yet imperfectly generalized.

* I ought especially to name the quiet and correct studies of Mr Davidson and
Mr. Bennett.

with few touches^ than something very like a tree produced with
many. Now, it is quite allowable that occasionally, and in portions
of his picture, a great artist should indulge himself in this luxury
of sketching; yet it is a perilous luxury, it blunts the feeling and
weakens the hand. I have said enough in various places respecting
the virtues of negligence and of finish (compare above the Chapter
on Ideas of Power in Part 1. Sec. II., and Part III. Sec. I. Ch.
X. § 4.), and I need only say here, therefore, that Harding's foliage
is never sufficiently finished, and has at its best the look of a rapid
sketch from nature touched upon at home. In 1843 (I think), there
was a pretty drawing in the rooms of the Water-Colour Society,
the clear green water of a torrent resting among stones, with copse-
like wood on each side, a bridge in the distance, a white flower
(water-lily?) catching the eye in front; the tops of the trees on
the left of this picture were mere broad blots of colour dashed upon
the sky and connected by stems. I allow the power necessary to
attain any look of foliage by such means, but it is power abused:
by no such means can the higher virtue and impressiveness of
foliage be rendered. In the use of body colour for near leaves, his
execution is also too hasty; often the touches are mere square or
round dots, which can be understood only for foliage by their ar-
rangement. This fault was especially marked in the trees of his
picture painted for the Academy two years ago; they were very
nearly shapeless, and could not stand even in courtesy for walnut
leaves, for which, judging by the make of the tree, they must have
been intended.

His drawing of boughs is, in all points of demonstrable law, right,
and very frequently easy and graceful also; yet it has two eminent
faults; the first, that the flow of the bough is sacrificed to its tex-
ture, the pencil checking itself and hesitating at dots, and stripes,
and knots, instead of following the grand and unbroken tendency of
growth; the second, that however good the arrangement may be as
far as regards merely flexibility, intricacy, and freedom, there are
none of those composed groups of line which are unfailing in
nature. Harding's work is not grand enough to be natural. The
drawings in the Park and the Forest are, I believe, almost fac-

similes of sketches made from nature; yet it is evident at once
that in all of them nothing but the general lie and disposition
of the boughs has been taken from the tree, and that no single
branch or spray has been faithfully copied or patiently studied.

This want of close study necessarily causes several deficiencies of
feeling respecting general form. Harding's choice is always of
tree forms comparatively imperfect, leaning this way and that, and
unequal in the lateral arrangements of foliage. Such forms are
often graceful, always picturesque, but rarely grand; and, when
systematically adopted, untrue. It requires more patient study
than any he has lately gone through, to attain just feeling of the
dignity and character of a purely formed tree with all its symmetries
perfect.

One more cause of incorrectness I may note, though it is not § 31. Local
peculiar to the artist's tree-drawing, but attaches to his general expressibiTin"'^
system of sketching. In Harding's valuable work on the use of the
Lead Pencil, there is one principle advanced which I believe to be with what
false and dangerous; namely, that the local colour of objects is not
to be rendered by the pencil. I think the instance given is that of
some baskets, whose dark colour is rendered solely by the touches
indicating the wickerwork. Now I believe that an essential dif-
ference between the sketch of a great and of a comparatively inferior
master is, that the former is conceived entirely in shade and colour,
and its masses are blocked out with reference to both, while the
inferior draughtsman checks at textures and petty characters of
object. If Rembrandt had had to sketch such baskets, he would have
troubled himself very little about the wickerwork; but he would
have looked to see where they came dark or light on the sand, and
where there were any sparkling points of light on the wet osiers.
These darks and lights he would have scratched in with the fastest
lines he could, leaving no white paper but at the wet points of
lustre; if he had had time, the wickerwork would have come after-
wards.' And I think that the first thing to be taught to any pupil

' It is tme that many of Rembrandt's etchings are merely in line, but it may be
obsciTcd that the subject is universally conceived in light and shade, and that the lines

is, neither how to manage the pencil, nor how to attain character
of outline, but rather to see where things are light and where they
are dark, and to draw them as he sees them, never caring whether
his lines be dexterous or slovenly. The result of such study is the
immediate substitution of downright drawing for symbolism, and
afterwards a judicious moderation in the use of extreme lights
and darks; for where local colours are really drawn, so much of
what seems violently dark is found to come light against something
else, and so much of what seems high light to come dark against
the sky, that the draughtsman trembles at finding himself plunged
either into blackness or whiteness, and seeks, as he should, for
means of obtaining force without either.

It is in consequence of his evident habit of sketching more with
a view to detail and character than to the great masses, that
Harding's chiaroscuro is frequently crude, scattered, and petty.
Black shadows occur under his distant trees, white high lights on
his foreground rocks, the foliage and trunks are divided by violent
oppositions into separate masses, and the branches lose, in spots of
moss and furrowings of bark, their soft roundings of delicate form
and their grand relations to each other and the sky.

It is owing to my respect for the artist, and my belief in his
power and conscientious desire to do what is best, that I have
thus extended these somewhat unkind remarks. On the other hand,
it is to be remembered, that his knowledge of nature is most ex-
tended, and his dexterity of drawing most instructive, especially
considering his range of subjects; for whether in water, rock, or
foliage, he is equally skilful in attaining whatever he desires (though
he does not always desire all that he ought); and artists should
keep in mind, that neither grandeur of manner nor truth of system
can atone for the want of this knowledge and this skill. Con-
stable's manner was good and great, but being unable to draw even
a log of wood, much more a trunk of a tree or a stone, he left

are either merely guides in the arrangement, or an exquisite indication of the key-notes
of shade, on which the after system of it is to be based, portions of fragmentary finish

his works destitute of substance, mere studies of effect without any
expression of specific knowledge; and thus even what is great
in them has been productive, I believe, of much injury, in its
encouragement of the most superficial qualities of the English
school.

The foliage of David Cox has been already noticed (preface to
second edition). It is altogether exquisite in colour, and in its
impressions of coolness, shade, and mass; of its drawing I cannot
say anything, but that I should be sorry to see it better. Copley
Fielding's is remarkable for its intricacy and elegance; it is, how-
ever, not free from affectation, and, as it has been before remarked,
is always evidently composed in the study. The execution is too
rough and woolly ; it is wanting in simplicity, sharpness, and fresh-
ness, above all in specific character; not, however, in his middle
distances, where the rounded masses of forest and detached blasted
trunks of fir are usually very admirable. Cattermole has very
grand conceptions of general form, but wild and without substance,
and therefore incapable of long maintaining their attractiveness,
especially lately, the execution having become in the last degree
coarse and affected.

Hunt, I think, fails in foliage, and in foliage only; fails, as the
daguerreotype does, from over-fidelity; for foliage will not be
imitated, it must be reasoned out and suggested: yet Hunt is the
only man we have who can paint the real leaf-green under sun-
light, and in this respect his trees are delicious, summer itself.
Creswick has sweet feeling, and tries for the real green too, but,
from want of science in his shadows, ends in green paint instead of
green light; in mere local colour, instead of colour raised by sun-
shine. One example is enough to show where the fault lies. In
his picture of the Weald of Kent, exhibited some years ago in the
British Institution, there was a cottage in the middle distance with
white walls and a red roof. The dark sides of the white walls and
of the roof were of the same colour, a dark purple; wrong for both.
Repeated inaccuracies of this kind necessarily deprive even the
most brilliant colour of all appearance of sunshine, and they are
much to be deprecated in Creswick, as he is one of the very few

artists who do draw from nature, and try for nature. Some of his
thickets and torrent-beds are most painfully studied, and yet he
cannot draw a bough nor a stone. I suspect he is too much in
the habit of studying only large views on the spot, and not of
drawing small portions thoroughly. I trust it will be seen that
these, as all other remarks that I have made throughout this
volume on particular works, are not in depreciation of, or un^»
thankfulness for, what the artist has done, but in the desire that
he should do himself more justice and more honour.

We have now arrived at some general conception of the extent of § i. No neces-
Turner's knowledge, and the truth of his practice, bj the deliberate huoicuSon^

examination of the characteristics of the four great elements of of architectural

landscape, — sky, earth, water, and vegetation. I have not thought
it necessary to devote a chapter to architecture, because enough
has been said on this subject in Part II. Sec. I. Chap, VII.; and
its general truths, which are those with which the landscape painter,
as such, is chiefly concerned, require only a simple and straight-
forward application of those rules of which every other material
object of a landscape has required a most difficult and complicated
application. Turner's knowledge of perspective probably adds to
his power in the arrangement of every order of subject; but
ignorance on this head is rather disgraceful than knowledge meri-
torious. It is disgraceful, for instance, that any man should commit
such palpable and atrocious errors in ordinary perspective as are
seen in the quay in Claude's sea-piece. No. 14. National Gallery, or
in the curved portico of No. 30.; but still these are not points to be
taken into consideration as having anything to do with artistical
rank, just as, though we should say it was disgraceful if a great
poet could not spell, we should not consider such a defect as in any
way taking from his poetical rank. Neither is there anything par-
ticularly belonging to architecture, as such, which it is any credit
to an artist to observe or represent; it is only a simple and clear
field for the manifestation of his knowledge of general laws. Any
surveyor or engineer could have drawn the steps and balustrade in

the Hero and Leander, as well as Turner has; but there is no man
living but himself who could have thrown the accidental shadows
upon them. I may, however, refer, for general illustration of
Turner's power as an architectural draughtsman, to the front of
Rouen Cathedral, engraved in the Rivers of France, and to the
Ely in the England. I know nothing in art which can be set beside
the former of these for overwhelming grandeur and simplicity of
effect, and inexhaustible intricacy of parts. I have then only a
few remarks farther to offer respecting the general character of all
those truths which we have been hitherto endeavouring to explain
and illustrate.

The difference in accuracy between the lines of the Torso of the
Vatican (the " Master" of M. Angelo), and those in one of M.
Angelo's finest works, could perhaps scarcely be appreciated by
any eye or feeling undisciplined by the most perfect and practical
anatomical knowledge. It rests on points of so traceless and refined
delicacy, that though we feel them in the result, we cannot follow
them in the details. Yet they are such and so great as to place
the Torso alone in art, solitary and supreme; while the finest of
M. Angelo's works, considered with respect to truth alone, are said
to be only on a level with antiques of the second class, under the
Apollo and Venus, that is, two classes or grades below the Torso.
But suppose the best sculptor in the world, possessing the most
entire appreciation of the excellence of the Torso, were to sit down,
pen in hand, to try and tell us wherein the peculiar truth of each
line consisted. Could any words that he could use make us feel
the hair's-breadth of depth and curve on which all depends? or
end in anything more than bare assertions of the inferiority of this
line to that, which, if we did not perceive for ourselves, no explana-
tion could ever illustrate to us? He might as well endeavour to ex-
plain to us by words some scent or flavour, or other subject of sense,
of which we had no experience. And so it is with all truths of the
highest order; they 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 and useless. Consequently, in all that I have been
saying of the truth of artists, I have been able to point out only

coarse, broad, and explicable matters; I liaye been perfectly unable degree shown
to express (and indeed I have made no endeavour to express) tlie going pages,
finely drawn and distinguished truth in which all the real excellence

of art consists. All those truths which I have been able to explain
and demonstrate in Turner, are such as any artist of ordinary
powers of observation ought to be capable of rendering. It is dis-^
graceful to omit them; but it is no very great credit to observe
them. I have indeed proved that they have been neglected, and
disgracefully so, by those men who are commonly considered the
Fathers of Art; but in showing that they have been observed by
Turner, I have only proved him to be above other men in know-
ledge of truth, I have not given any conception of his own positive
rank as a Painter of JS^ature. But it stands to reason, that the
men, who in broad, simple, and demonstrable matters are perpetually
violating truth, will not be particularly accurate or careful in carry-
ing out delicate and refined and undemonstrable matters; and it
stands equally to reason that the man who, as far as argument or
demonstration can go, is found invariably truthful, will, in all pro-
bability, be truthful to the last line, and shadow of a line. And § 4. The ex-
such is, indeed, the case with every touch of this consummate nu^rlrof hir^^
artist; the essential excellence, all that constitutes the real and
exceeding value of his works, is beyond and above expression: it
is a truth inherent in every line, and breathing in every hue, too
delicate and exquisite to admit of any kind of proof, nor to be
ascertained except by the highest of tests, the keen feeling attained
by extended knowledge and long study. Two lines are laid on
canvass; one is right and another wrong. There is no difference
between them appreciable by the compasses, none appreciable by
the ordinary eye, none which can be pointed out, if it is not seen.
One person feels it, another does not; but the feeling or sight of
the one can by no words be communicated to the other: — that
feeling and sight have been the reward of years of labour.
There is no test of our acquaintance with nature so absolute
and unfailing, as the degree of admiration we feel for Turner's
painting. Precisely as we are shallow in our knowledge, vulgar in
our feeling, and contracted in our views of principles, will the
works of this artist be stumbling-blocks or foolishness to uS :

precisely in the degree in whicli we are familiar with nature,
constant in our observation of her, and enlarged in our understand-
ing of her, will they expand before our eyes into glory and beauty.
In every new insight which we obtain into the works of God, in
every new idea which we receive from His creation, we shall find
ourselves possessed of an interpretation and a guide to something in
Turner's works which we had not before understood. We may
range over Europe, from shore to shore; and from every rock that
we tread upon, every sky that passes over our heads, every local
form of vegetation or of soil, we shall receive fresh illustration of
his principles, fresh confirmation of his facts. We shall feel,
wherever we go, that he has been there before us; whatever we
see, that he has seen and seized before us: and we shall at last
cease the investigation, with a well-grounded trust, that whatever
we have been unable to account for, and what we still dislike in his
works, has reason for it, and foundation like the rest; and that
even where he has failed or erred, there is a beauty in the failure
which none are able to equal, and a dignity in the error which none
are worthy to reprove.

There has been marked and constant progress in his mind; he
has not, like some few artists, been without childhood; his course
of study has been as evidently as it has been swiftly progressive,
and in different stages of the struggle, sometimes one order of truth,
sometimes another, has been aimed at or omitted. But, from the
beginning to the height of his career, he never sacrificed a greater
truth to a less. As he advanced, the previous knowledge or at-
tainment was absorbed in what succeeded, or abandoned only if
incompatible, and never abandoned without a gain; and his last
works presented the sum and perfection of his accumulated know-
ledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of one who feels
too much, and knows too much, and has too little time to say it
in, to pause for expression, or ponder over his syllables. There
was in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the in-
stinctive and burning language which would express less if it
uttered more, which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with
its abundant meaning. He felt now, with long-trained vividness
and keenness of sense, too bitterly the impotence of the hand, and

the vainness of the colour, to catch one shadow or one image of
the glory which God had revealed to him. " I cannot gather the
sunbeams out of the east, or I would make them tell you what I
have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember
together. I cannot gather the gloom out of the night-sky, or I
would make that teach you what I have seen; but read this, and
interpret this, and let us feel together. And if you have not that
within you which I can summon to my aid, if you have not the sun
in your spirit, and the passion in your heart, which my words may
awaken, though they be indistinct and swift, leave me; for I will
give you no patient mockery, no laborious insult of that glorious
nature, whose I am and whom I serve. Let other servants imitate
the voice and the gesture of their master, while they forget his
message. Hear that message from me; but remember that the
teaching of Divine truth must still be a mystery."

§ L The entire We liave only, ill conclusion, to offer a few general remarks re-
prominence . ...

caused only by vidiousness and partiality which the constant prominence given in

the present portion of the work to the productions of one artist, can
scarcely fail of bearing in the minds of most readers. When we
pass to the examination of what is beautiful and expressive in art,
we shall frequently find distinctive qualities in the minds even of
inferior artists, which have led them to the pursuit and embodying
of particular trains of thought, altogether different from those which
direct the compositions of other men, and incapable of comparison
with them. Now, when this is the case, we should consider it in
the highest degree both invidious and illogical, to say of such dif-
ferent modes of exertion of the intellect, that one is in all points
greater or nobler than another. We shall probably find something
in the working of all minds which has an end and a power
peculiar to itself, and which is deserving of free and full admiration,
without any reference whatsoever to what has, in other fields, been
accomplished by other modes of thought, and directions of aim.
We shall, indeed, find a wider range and grasp in one man than in
another; but yet it will be our own fault if we do not discover
something in the most limited range of mind which is different
from, and in its way better than, anything presented to us by the
more grasping intellect. We all know that the nightingale sings

more nobly than the lark; but who, therefore, would wish the lark
not to sing, or would deny that it had a character of its own, which
bore a part among the melodies of creation no less essential than
that of the more richly gifted bird ? And thus we shall find and
feel that whatever difference may exist between the intellectual
powers of one artist and another, yet wherever there is any true
genius, there will be some peculiar lesson which even the humblest
will teach us more sweetly and perfectly than those far above them
in prouder attributes of mind ; and we should be as mistaken as we
should be unjust and invidious, if we refused to receive this their
peculiar message with gratitude and veneration, merely because it
was a sentence and not a volume. But the case is different when
we examine their relative fidelity to given facts. That fidelity
depends on no peculiar modes of thought or habits of character;
it is the result of keen sensibility, combined with high powers of
memory and association. These qualities, as such, are the same in
all men; character or feeling may direct their choice to this or
that object, but the fidelity with which they treat either the one
or the other, is dependent on those simple powers of sense and
intellect which are like and comparable in all, and of which we
can always say that they are greater in this man, or less in that,
without reference to the character of the individual. Those feelings
which direct Cox to the painting of wild weedy banks, and cool
melting skies, and those which directed Barret to the painting of
glowing foliage and melancholy twilight, are both just and beautiful
in their way, and are both worthy of high praise and gratitude,
without necessity, nay, without proper possibility of comparing one
with the other. But the degree of fidelity with which the leaves
of the one and the light of the other are rendered, depends upon
faculties of sight, sense, and memory common to both, and perfectly
comparable ; and we may say fearlessly, and without injustice, that
one or the other, as the case may be, is more faithful in that which
he has chosen to represent. It is also to be remembered that
these faculties of sense and memory are not partial in their efiect;
they will not induce fidelity in the rendering of one class of object,
and fail of doing so in another. They act equally, and with equal
results, whatever may be the matter subjected to them. The same

delicate sense wliicli perceives the utmost grace of the fibres of a
tree, will be equally unerring in tracing the character of cloud;
and the quick memory which seizes and retains the circumstances
of a flying effect of shadow or colour, will be equally effectual in
fixing the impression of the instantaneous form of a moving figure
or a breaking wave. There are indeed one or two broad distinctions
in the nature of the senses, a sensibility to colour, for instance,
being very different from a sensibility to form; so that a man may
possess one without the other, and an artist may succeed in mere
imitation of what is before him, of air, sunlight, &c., without pos-
sessing sensibility at all. But wherever we have, in the drawing
of any one object, sufficient evidence of real intellectual power, of
the sense which perceives the essential qualities of a thing, and the
judgment which arranges them so as to illustrate each other, we
may be quite certain that the same sense and judgment will operate
equally on whatever is subjected to them, and that the artist
will be equally great and masterly in his drawing of all that he at-
tempts. Hence we may be quite sure that wherever an artist
appears to be truthful in one branch of art, and not in another, the
apparent truth is either owing to some trickery of imitation, or is
not so great as we suppose it to be. In nine cases out of ten, people
who are celebrated for drawing only one thing, and can only draw
one thing, draw that one thing worse than anybody else. An artist
may indeed confine himself to a limited range of subject, but if he
be really true in his rendering of this, his power of doing more will
be perpetually showing itself in accessaries and minor points. There
are few men, for instance, more limited in subject than Hunt, and
yet I do not think there is another man in the Old Water-Colour
Society with so keen an ejQ for truth, or with power so universal.
And this is the reason for the exceeding prominence which in the
foregoing investigation one or two artists have always assumed over
the rest; for the habits of accurate observation and delicate powers
of hand which they possess have equal effect, and maintain the
same superiority in their works, to whatever class of subject they
may be directed. And thus we have been compelled, however un-
willingly, to pass hastily by the works of many gifted men, because,

however pure their feeling, or original their conceptions, they were
wanting in those faculties of the hand and mind which insure
perfect fidelity to nature; it will be only hereafter, when we are
at liberty to take full cognizance of the thought, however feebly it
may be clothed in language, that we shall be able to do real justice
to the disciples either of modern or of ancient art.

But as far as we have gone at present, and with respect only to
the material truth, which is all that we have been able to investigate,
the conclusion to which we must be led is as clear as it is inevitable:
that modern artists, as a body, are far more just and full in their
views of material things than any landscape painters whose works
are extant; but that J. M. W. Turner is the only man who has
ever given an entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and
is, in this point of view, the only perfect landscape painter whom
the world has ever seen.

Nor are we disposed to recede from our assertion made in Sec. 1.
Chap. I. § 10., that this material truth is indeed a perfect test of the
relative rank of painters, though it does not in itself constitute that
rank. We shall be able to prove that truth and beauty, knowledge
and imagination, invariably are associated in art; and we shall be
able to show that not only in truth to nature, but in all other points,
Turner is the greatest landscape painter who has ever lived. But
his superiority is, in matters of feeling, one of kind, not of degree.
Superiority of degree implies a superseding of others; superiority
of kind implies only sustaining a more important, but not more
necessary, part than others. If truth were all that we required
from art, all other painters might cast aside their brushes in
despair, for all that they have done he has done more fully and
accurately; but when we pass to the higher requirements of art,
beauty and character, their contributions are all equally necessary
and desirable, because different, and however inferior in position
or rank, are still perfect of their kind; their inferiority is only that
of the lark to the nightingale, or of the violet to the rose.

Such then are the rank and standing of our modern artists. We
have had, living with us, and painting for us, the greatest painter of
all time; a man with whose supremacy of power no intellect of past

ages can be put in comparison for a moment. Let us next inquire
what is the rank of our critics. Public taste, I believe, as far as it
is the encourager and supporter of art, has been the same in all
ages; a fitful and vacillating current of vague impression, per-
petually liable to change, subject to epidemic desires, and agitated
by infectious passion, the slave of fashion, and the fool of fancy;
but yet always distinguishing, with singular clearsightedness, be-
tween that which is best and that which is worst of the particular
class of food which its morbid appetite may call for; never failing
to distinguish that which is produced by intellect, from that which
is not, though it may be intellect degraded by ministering to its
misguided will. Public taste may thus degrade a race of men
capable of the highest efforts in art into the portrait painters of
ephemeral fashions, but it will yet not fail of discovering who,
among these portrait painters, is the man of most mind. It will
separate the man who would have become Buonaroti from the man
who would have become Bandinelli, though it will employ both in
painting curls, and feathers, and bracelets. Hence, generally
speaking, there is no comparative injustice done, no false elevation
of the fool above the man of mind, provided only that the man of
mind will condescend to supply the particular article which the
public chooses to want. Of course a thousand modifying circum-
stances interfere with the action of the general rule; but, taking
one case with another, we shall very constantly find the price which
the picture commands in the market a pretty fair standard of the
artist's rank of intellect. The press, therefore, and all who pretend
to lead the public taste, have not so much to direct the multitude
whom to go to, as what to ask for. Their business is not to tell us
which is our best painter, but to tell us whether we are making our
best painter do his best.

Now none are capable of doing this, but those whose principles
of judgment are based both on thorough practical knowledge of art,
and on broad general views of what is true and right, without
reference to what has j been done at one time or another, or in one
school or another. Nothing can be more perilous to the cause of
art, than the constant ringing in our painters' ears of the names of

great predecessors, as their examples of masters. I would rather
hear a great poet, entirely original in his feeling and aim, rebuked or
maligned for not being like "Wordsworth or Coleridge, than a great
painter criticised for not putting us in mind of Claude or Poussin.
But such references to former excellence are the only refuge and
resource of persons endeavouring to be critics without being artists.
They cannot tell you whether a thing is right or not; but they
can tell you whether it is like something else or not. And the § 12. General
whole tone of modern criticism, so far as it is worthy of being modem ci-fucl,
called criticism, sufficiently shows it to proceed entirely from
persons altogether unversed in practice, and ignorant of truth, but
possessing just enough of feeling to enjoy the solemnity of ancient
art; who, not distinguishing that which is really exalted and valuable
in the modern school, nor having any just idea of the real ends or
capabilities of landscape art, consider nothing right which is not
based on the conventional principles of the ancients, and nothing
true which has more of nature in it than of Claude. But it is § 13. And
strange that while the noble and unequalled works of modern land-
scape painters are thus maligned and misunderstood, our historical selves,
painters, such as we have, are permitted to pander more fatally
every year to the vicious English taste, which can enjoy nothing
but what is theatrical, entirely unchastised, nay, encouraged and
lauded, by the very men who endeavour to hamper our great land-
scape painters with rules derived from consecrated blunders. The
very critic who has just passed one of the noblest works of Turner,
—that is to say, a masterpiece of art to which Time can show no
parallel,—with a ribald jest, will yet stand gaping in admiration
before the next piece of dramatic glitter and grimace, suggested by
the society and adorned with the appurtenances of the green-room,
which he finds hung low upon the wall as a brilliant example of
the ideal of English art. It is natural enough indeed, that the
persons who are disgusted by what is pure and noble, should be
delighted with what is vicious and degraded; but it is singular
that those who are constantly talking of Claude and Poussin, should
never even pretend to a thought of Raffaelle. We could excuse them
for not comprehending Turner, if they only would apply the same

cut-and-dried criticisms where they might be applied with truth,
and productive of benefit; but we endure not the paltry compound
of ignorance, false taste, and pretension, which assumes the dignity
of classical feeling, that it may be able to abuse whatever is above
the level of its understanding, but bursts into rapture with all that
is mean or meretricious, if sufficiently adapted to the calibre of its
comprehension.

To notice such criticisms, however, is giving them far more
importance than they deserve. They can lead none astray but
those whose opinions are absolutely valueless, and we did not begin
this chapter with any intent of wasting our time on these small
critics, but in the hope of pointing out to the periodical press what
kind of criticism is now most required by our school of landscape
art; and how it may be in their power, if they will, to regulate its
impulses, without checking its energies, and really to advance both
the cause of the artist, and the taste of the public.

One of the most morbid symptoms of the general taste of the
present day is, a too great fondness for unfinished works. Brilliancy
and rapidity of execution are everywhere sought as the highest good,
and so that a picture be cleverly handled as far as it is carried,
little regard is paid to its imperfection as a whole. Hence some
artists are permitted, and others compelled, to confine themselves
to a manner of working altogether destructive of their powers, and
to tax their energies, not to concentrate the greatest quantity of
thought on the least possible space of canvass, but to produce the
greatest quantity of glitter and clap-trap in the shortest possible
time. To the idler and the trickster in art, no system can be more
advantageous; but to the man who is really desirous of doing some-
thing worth having lived for, to a man of industry, energy, or
feeling, we believe it to be the cause of the most bitter discourage-
ment. If ever, working upon a favourite subject or a beloved idea,
he is induced to tax his powers to the utmost, and to spend as
much time upon his picture as he feels necessary for its perfection,
he will not be able to get so high a price for the result, perhaps, of
a twelvemonth's thought, as he might have obtained for half-a-
dozen sketches with a forenoon's work in each, and he is compelled

either to fall back upon meclianism, or to starve. Now the press
should especially endeavour to convince the public that bj this
purchase of imperfect pictures they not only prevent all progress
and developement of high talent, and set tricksters and mechanics
on a level with men of mind, but defraud and injure themselves.
For there is no doubt whatever, that, estimated merely by the
quantity of pleasure it is capable of conveying, a well-finished
picture is worth to its possessor half-a-dozen incomplete ones; and
that a perfect drawing is, simply as a source of delight, better worth
a hundred guineas than a drawing half as finished is worth thirty. ^
On the other hand, the body of our artists should be kept in mind,
that, by indulging the public with rapid and unconsidered work,
they are not only depriving themselves of the benefit which each
picture ought to render to them, as a piece of practice and study,
but they are destroying the refinement of general taste, and ren-
dering it impossible for themselves ever to find a market for more
careful works, supposing that they were inclined to execute them.
Nor need any single artist be afraid of setting the example, and
producing laboured works, at advanced prices, among the cheap
quick drawings of the day. The public will soon find the value of
the complete work, and will be more ready to give a large sum for
that which is inexhaustible, than a portion of it for that which they
are wearied of in a month. The artist who never lets the price
command the picture, will soon find the picture command the price.
And it ought to be a rale with every painter, never to let a picture
leave his easel while it is yet capable of improvement, or of having
more thought put into it. The general efi'ect is often perfect and

' I would fm-ther .insist on all that is advanced in these paragraphs, with especial
reference to the admirable, though strange, pictures of Mr. Millais and Mr. Holman
Hunt; and to the principles exemplified in the efforts of other members of a society
which unfortunately, or rather unwisely, has given itself the name of " Pre-Raphaelite;"
unfortunately, because the principles on which its members are working are neither
pre- nor post-Raphaelite, but everlasting. They are endeavouring to paint, with the
highest possible degree of completion, what they see in nature, without reference to
conventional or established rules; but by no means to imitate the style of any past
epoch. Their works are, in finish of drawing, and in splendour of colour, the best in
the Royal Academy; and I have great hope that they may become the foundation of
a more earnest and able school of art than we have seen for centuries.

pleasing, and not to be improved upon, when the details and facts
are altogether imperfect and unsatisfactory. It may be difficult,
perhaps the most difficult task of art, to complete these details,
and not to hurt the general effect; but, until the artist can do this,
his art is imperfect and his picture unfinished. That only is a
complete picture which has both the general wholeness and effect
of nature, and the inexhaustible perfection of nature's details. And
it is only in the effort to unite these that a painter really improves.
By aiming only at details, he becomes a mechanic; by aiming only
at generals, he becomes a trickster; his fall in both cases is sure.
Two questions the artist has, therefore, always to ask himself:
First, " Is my whole right ?" Secondly, " Can my details be added
to ? Is there a single space in the picture where I can crowd in
another thought ? Is there a curve in it which I can modulate,
a line which I can vary, a vacancy I can fill ? Is there a single
spot which the eye, by any peering or prying, can fathom or
exhaust? If so, ray picture is imperfect; and if, in modulating
the line or filling the vacancy, I hurt the general effect, my art is
imperfect."

But, on the other hand, though incomplete pictures ought neither
to be produced nor purchased, careful and real sketches ought to be
valued much more highly than they are. Studies of landscape, in
chalk or sepia, should form a part of every Exhibition, and a room
should be allotted to drawings and designs of figures in the
Academy. We should be heartily glad to see the room which is
noAv devoted to bad drawings of incorporeal and imaginary archi-
tecture,—of things which never were, and which, thank Heaven!
never will be,—occupied, instead, by careful studies for historical
pictures; not blots of chiaroscuro, but delicate outlines with the
pen or crayon.

From young artists nothing ought to be tolerated but simple
hona fide imitation of nature. They have no business to ape the
execution of masters; to utter weak and disjointed repetitions of
other men's words, ^ and mimic the gestures of the preacher,
without understanding liis meaning or sharing in his emotions.
We do not want their crude ideas of composition, their unformed

tracing the finger of God. Nothing is so bad a symptom, in the
work of young artists, as too much dexterity of handling; for it is
a sign that they are satisfied with their work, and have tried to do
nothing more than they were able to do. Their work should be § 21. The duty
full of failures; for these are the signs of efforts. They should keep viioges of aii
to quiet colours, greys and browns; and, making the early works students,
of Turner their example, as his latest are to be their object of
emulation, should go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk
with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but
how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instruction;
rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing; believing
all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth.
Then, when their memories are stored, and their imaginations fed,
and their hands firm, let them take up the scarlet and the gold,
give the reins to their fancy, and show us what their heads are
made of. We will follow them wherever they choose to lead; we
will check at nothing; they are then our masters, and are fit to be
so. They have placed themselves above our criticism, and we will
listen to their words in all faith and humility; but not unless they
themselves have before bowed, in the same submission, to a higher
Authority and Master.

Among our greater artists, the chief want, at the present day, § 22. NcccssUy,
is that of solemnity and definite purpose. We have too much gn'at^r""tists,
picture-manufacturing, too much making up of lay figures with a ^esT
certain quantity of foliage, and a certain quantity of sky, and a
certain quantity of water; a little bit of all that is pretty, a little
sun and a little shade, a touch of pink and a touch of blue,
a little sentiment and a little sublimity, and a little humour and a
little antiquarianism, all very neatly associated in a very charming

picture, but not working together for a definite end. Or if tlie aim
be higher, as was the case with Barrett and Varley, we are gene-
rally put off with stale repetitions of eternal composition; a great
tree, and some goats, and a bridge and a lake, and the Temple at
Tivoli, &c. Now we should like to see our artists working out,
with all exertion of their concentrated powers, such marked pieces
of landscape character as might bear upon them the impression of
solemn, earnest, and pervading thought, definitely directed, and aided
by every accessary of detail, colour, and idealized form, which the
disciplined feeling, accumulated knowledge, and unspared labour of
the painter could supply. I have alluded, in the second preface, to
the deficiency of our modern artists in these great points of earnest-
ness and completeness; and I revert to it, in conclusion, as their
paramount failing, and one fatal in many ways to the interests of
art. Our landscapes are all descriptive, not reflective; agreeable
and conversational, but not impressive nor didactic. They have no
better foundation than

Tliey err ; 'tis merely what is called mobilit}'-,
A thing of temperament and not of art.

Tliis makes your actors, artists, and romancers,
Little that's great, but much of what is clever."

Only it is to be observed that, in painters, this vivacity is not
always versatile. It is to be wished that it were, but it is no such
easy matter to be versatile in painting. Shallowness of thought
insures not its variety, nor rapidity of production its originality.
Whatever may be the case in literature, facility is in art no certain
sign of inventive power. The artist who covers most canvass does not
always show, even in the sum of his works, the largest expenditure
of thought.' I have never seen more than four works of John Lewis

' Of course this assertion does not refer to the differences in mode of execution,
which causc one painter to work faster or slower than another, but only to the
exertion of mind commonly manifested by the artist, according as he is sparing or
prodigal of production.

on tlie walls of the Water-Colour Exhibition; I have counted forty
from other hands; but have found in the end that the forty were a
multiplication of one, and the four a concentration of forty. And
therefore I would earnestly plead with all our artists, that they
should make it a law never to repeat themselves; for he who never
repeats himself will not produce an inordinate number of pictures,
and he who limits himself in number gives himself at least the op-
portunity of completion. Besides, all repetition is degradation of
the art; it reduces it from headwork to handwork; and indicates
something like a persuasion on the part of the artist that nature is
exhaustible or art perfectible ; perhaps, even, by him exhausted and
perfected. All copyists are contemptible, but the copyist of himself
the most so, for he has the worst original.

him some one particular, but exalted, beauty. Let a real subject be
carefully selected, in itself suggestive of, and replete with, this feeling
and beauty; let an effect of light and colour be taken whicli may
harmonize with both ; and a sky not invented but recollected: in
fact, all so-called invention is in landscape nothing more than ap-
propriate recollection, good in proportion as it is distinct. Then
let the details of the foreground be separately studied, especially
those plants which appear peculiar to the place; if any one, however
imimportant, occurs there, which occurs not elsewhere, it should
occupy a prominent position: for the other details, the highest ex-
amples of the ideal forms ^ or characters which he requires are to

' " Talk of improving nature -when it is nature—Nonsense."—E, V, Rippingille.
I have not yet spoken of the diiference, even in what wc commonly call Nature,
between imperfect and ideal form : the study of this difficult question must, of coui'se,
be deferred until we have examined the nature of our impressions of beauty; but
it may not be out of place here to hint at the want of care, in many of our artists, to
distinguish between the real work of nature and the diseased results of man's inter-
ference with her. Many of the works of our gi-eatest artists have for their subjects
nothing but hacked and hewn remnants of farm-yard vegetation, branded, root and
branch, from their birth, by the prong and the pruning-hook; and the feelings once
accustomed to take pleasure in such abortions can scarccly become perceptive of
forms truly ideal. I have just said (page 417.) that young painters should go to
nature trustingly, rejecting nothing, and selecting nothing: so they should; but
they must be careful that it is nature to whom they go, nature in her liberty, not

be selected by tlie artist from his former studies, or fresh studies
made expressly for the purpose, leaving as little as possible—
nothing, in fact, beyond their connection and arrangement—to mere
nnagination. Finally, when his picture is thus perfectly realized
in all its parts, let him dash as much of it out as he likes; throw,
if he will, mist around it, darkness, or dazzling and confused
light, whatever, in fact, impetuous feeling or vigorous imagination
may dictate or desire; the forms, once so laboriously realized,
will come out, whenever they do occur, with a startling and im-
pressive truth which the uncertainty in which they are veiled will

as servant of all work in the hands of the agriculturist, nor stiffened into court-dress
by the landscape-gardener. It must be the pure wild volition and energy of the
creation which they follow, not subdued to the furrow, and cicatrizcd to the pol-
lard, not persuaded into proprieties, nor pampered into diseases. Let them work
by the torrent side, and in the forest shadows ; not by purling brooks and under
" tonsile shades," It is impossible to enter here into discussion of what man can or
cannot do by assisting natural operations; it is an intricate question: nor can I,
without anticipating what I shall have hereafter to advance, show how or why it
happens that the race-horse is not the artist's ideal of a horse, nor a prize tulip his
ideal of a flower ; but so it is. As far as the painter is concerned, man never touches
nature but to spoil; he operates on her as a barber would on the Apollo; and if he
sometimes increases some particular power or excellence, strength or agility in the
animal, tallness, or fruiti'ulness, or solidity in the tree, he invariably loses that
bahnce of good quaUties which is the chief sign of perfect specific form; above all,
he destroys the appearance of free volition and felicity, which, as I shall show hereafter,
is one of the essential characters of organic beauty. Until, however, I can enter into
tlie discussion of the nature of beauty, tlie only advice I can safely give the young
painter is, to keep clear of clover fields and parks, and to hold to the unpenetrated
forest and the unfurrowed hill. There he will find that every influence is noble, even
wlien destructive ; that decay itself is beautiful j and that, in the elaborate and lovely
composition of all things, if at first sight it seems less studied tlian the works of men,
the appearance of Ai't is only prevented by the presence of Power,

" Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her : 'tis licr privilege.
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
Witli lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
liasli judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faitli, that all which we behold

enhance rather than diminish; and the imagination, strengthened
by discipHne and fed with truth, will achieve the utmost of creation
that is possible to finite mind.

The artist who thus works will soon find that he cannot repeat
himself if he would; and new fields of exertion, new subjects of
contemplation, open to him in nature day by day; and that, while
others lament the Aveakness of their invention, he has nothing to
lament but the shortness of life.

And now but one word more, respecting the great artist whose § 24. Duty
works have formed the chief subject of this treatise. The greatest ^^jfji respe^ct to
qualities of those works have not yet been so much as touched upon,
None but their imitative excellences have been proved, and, there-
fore, the enthusiasm with which I speak of them must necessarily
appear overcharged and absurd. It might perhaps, have been more
prudent to have witheld the full expression of it till I had shown
the full grounds for it; but, once written, such expression must
remain till I have justified it. And, indeed, I think there is
enough, even in the foregoing pages, to show that these works are,
as far as concerns the ordinary critics of the press, above all ani-
madversion, and above all praise; and that, by the public, they are
not to be received as in any way subjects or matters of opinion, but
of faith. We are not to approach them to be pleased, but to be
taught: not to form a judgment, but to receive a lesson. Our
periodical writers, therefore, may save themselves the trouble either
of blaming or praising: their duty is not to pronounce opinions upon
the work of a man who has walked with nature threescore years;
but to impress upon the public the respect with which they are to
be received, and to make request to him, on the part of the people
of England, that he would now touch no unimportant work, that
he would not spend time on slight or small pictures, but give to the
nation a series of grand, consistent, systematic, and completed poems.
We desire that he should follow out his own thoughts and intents of
heart, without reference to any human authority. But we request,
in all humility, that those thoughts may be seriously and loftily
given; and that the whole power of Ins unequalled intellect may be
exerted in the production of such works as may remain for ever, for

the teaching of the nations. In all that he says, we believe ; in all
that he does, we trust. ^ It is therefore that we pray him to utter
nothing lightly; to do nothing regardlessly. He stands upon an
eminence, from which he looks hack over the universe of God and
forward over the generations of men. Let every work of his hand
be a history of the one, and a lesson to the other. Let each exertion
of his mighty mind be both hymn and prophecy ; adoration to the
Deity, revelation to mankind.

The above passage was written in the year 1843 ; too late. It is
true, that, soon after the publication of this work, the abuse of the
press, which had been directed against Turner with unceasing
virulence during the production of his noblest works, sank into
timid animadversion, or changed into unintelligent praise; but not
before illness, and, in some degree, mortification, had enfeebled the
hand and chilled the heart of the painter,

' It has been hinted, in some of the reviews of the second volume of this work, that
the writer's respect for Turner has diminished since the above passage was written.
He would, indeed, have been deserving of little attention, if, with the boldness mani-
fested in the preceding pages, he had advanced opinions based on so infirm foundation
as that the course of three years could effect modification in them. He was justified
by the sudden accession of power which the works of the great artist exhibited at the
period when this volume Avas first published, as well as by the low standard of the
criticism to which they were subjected, in claiming, with respect to his then works, a
submission of judgment greater indeed than may generally be accorded to even the
liighest human intellect, yet not greater than such a master might 1 legitimately claim
from such critics; and the cause of the peculiar form of advocacy into which the
preceding chapters necessarily fell has been already stated more than once. In the
following sections it became necessary, as they treated a subject of intricate relations
and peculiar difficulty, to obtain a more genei-al view of the scope and operation of
art, and to avoid all conclusions in any Aviso referable to the study of particular
painters. The reader will therefore find, not that lower rank is attributed to Turner,
but that he is henceforward compared with the greatest men, and occupies his true
position among the most noble of all time.

This year (1851) lie has no picture on the walls of the Academy;
and the " Times" of May 3rd says, " We miss those works of
INSPIRATION I "

We miss! Who misses ? The populace of England rolls by to
weary itself in the great bazaar of Kensington, little thinking that
a day will come when those veiled vestals and prancing amazons,
and goodly merchandize of precious stones and gold, will all be for-
gotten as though they had not been, but that the light which has
faded from the walls of the Academy is one which a million of
Koh-i-Noors could not rekindle, and that the year 1851 will, in
the far future, be remembered less for what it has displayed than
for what it has withdrawn.

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