Gents Mag 1843 part 2 p.452
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Gentleman's Magazine 1843 part 2 p.452
and established, prepared to meet and contravert all the prejudices and partialities that will oppose its reception: in short, it is the work of a very clever man and skilful connoisseur, if not artist, and the questions he raises, and the opinions he delivers, whether right or wrong, are well worthy of attention, and should be examined in the same spirit and feeling in which they are delivered. They are too profound to be refuted by a cavil, and too honest to be dismissed with a sneer. The author begins by a consideration of the ideas conveyable by art; and, as his investigations in the art of painting have led him to dispute the opinions which are generally received, and which have been so long maintained, that denial of them would appear either the result of ignorance or the desire of paradox, he states, as a proposition not to be doubted, that public opinion is no criterion of excellence except after long periods of time; that what is great in art does not address itself to uncultivated faculties, and that no man can be really appreciated but by his equals or superiors. As the merits of a work are of a higher order, fewer in proportion can judge of it; from these few the decision is communicated to those below, and by these to a wider and lower circle, till at length the right opinion is communicated to all, and held as a matter of faith, the more positively in proportion as the grounds of it are less perceived. This argument is peculiarly strong in the case of painting, because much knowledge of what is technical and practical is necessary to a right judgment, so that those persons are alone competent to form a judgment who are themselves the persons to be judged.* In no city of Europe is painting in so hopeless a state as in Rome, because there the authority of their predecessors in art is supreme and without appeal, and the mindless copyist studies of Raffaelle but not what Raffaelle studied. The author, believing that there are certain points of superiority in modern artists which have not yet been fully understood, in this work purposes to institute a close comparison between the great works of ancient and modern landscape art, and to shew the real relations subsisting between them: but, as regards the art of the 14th and 15th centuries, he does not class the hsitorical and landscape painters together as possessing anything like equal rank in their respective walks of art. "It is," he says, "because I look with the most devoted veneration upon M. Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, that I do not distrust the principles which induce me to look with contempt on Claude, Salvator, and G. Poussin. Had I disliked all, I should have believed in and bowed before all; but in my admiration of the greater I consider myself as having a warrant for the repudiation of the less. I feel assured that they cannot with reason be admired together; that the principles of art on which they worked are totally opposed, and that the landscape painters of the old school have been honoured only because thay had in them a shadow and semblance of the manner of the nobler historical painters, whose principles in all important points they directly reversed. ... Speaking generally of the old masters, I refer only to Claude, G. Poussin, S. Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both, Ruysdael Hobbima, Teniers, (in his landscapes,) P. Potter, Canaletti, and the various Van somethings and Back somethings, more especially and malignantly those who have libelled the sea." |
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* Not exactly so. There are portions of a picture,
and of the means used to form it, of which none but a
painter can accurately judge; but there are also others
which the feelings of the enlightened connoisseur can
perhaps more correctly estimate. Thus, to secure a just
decision on the merits of the cartoons lately exhibited in
Westminster Hall, the judges were chosen both from artists
and from gentlemen whose taste and knowledge of art were
generally admitted, and Mr. Rogers and Sir Robert Peel were
very properly joined with Eastlake and Etty. - REV.
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