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Gentleman's Magazine 1843 part 2 p.455
and modern landscape to faithfulness 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,
shewing 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 or effect, or any other of their more captivating
qualities, to examine and 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."
The author, as a preliminary step to prove the importance of
accurate and scientific investigations of the subject,
considers how far the truth of nature is to be discovered by
the uneducated senses. "Cannot we," say the public, "see
what nature is with our own eyes, and find out for ourselves
what is like her?" Now, in the first place, he considers
that men derive pleasure from art, and discern the beauties
of art, in proportion to their natural sensibilty to colour
and form, and in connection with a healthy state of moral
feeling, and then he adds,
"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 impressions 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 connexion, 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 confirmed by Benvenuto Cellini; who, I
remember, on his first entering France, is especially struck
by 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 source, 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 this influence of the imagination
over the senses is peculiarly observable in the perpetual
disposition of mankind, to suppose that they see what
they know, and vice versa, in their not seeing
what they do not know. ...
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,
unless it be previously known and sought for: and numberless
observable differences between 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. The people of those
ages only saw so much, and admired it, because they knew no
more;' and the deception which takes place so broadly in
cases like these has infinitely greater influences over our
judgment of the more intricate and less tangible truths of
nature. We are constantly supposing that we see what
experience only has shown us, or can show us, constantly
missing the sight of what we do not know beforehand to be
visible; and painters to the last hour of their lives are
apt to fall in some degree into the error of painting what
exists, rather than what they can see. ...
Be 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
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