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TllOIINItllltYH liAYH AND I.li'tj K NDH....
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Buskin's Pbe-Baphaelitism. Pre-Sap/Iaeli...
viooa writers ? Whatever gifts the boy had , would much be likely to come of them so treated ? unless , indeed , they were so great as to break throug h all sueh snares of falsehood and vanity , and build their own foundation in spite of us ; whereas if , as in cases numbering millions against units , the natur » l gifts were too weak to do this , could anything oome of such training but utter inanity and spuriousness of the whole man ? But if we had sense , should we not
rather restrain and bridle the first flame of invention in early youth , heaping material on it as one would on the first sparks and tongues of a fire which we desired to feed into greatness ? Should we not educate the whole intellect into general strength , and all the affections into warmth and honesty , and look to Heaven for the rest ? This , I say , we should have sense enough to do , in order to produce a poet in words : but , it being required to produce a poet on canvas , what is our way of setting to work ? We begin , in all probability , by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteenthat Nature is full of faults , and that he
, is to improve her ; but that Raphael is perfection , and that the more he copies Raphael the better ; that after much copying of Raphael , he is to try what he can do himself in a Raphaelesque , but yet original , manner : that is to say , he is to try to do something very clever , all out of his own head , but yet this clever something is to be properly subjected to Raphaelesque rules , is to have a principal light occupying one-seventh of its space , and a principal shadow occupying one-third of the same ; that no two people ' s heads in the picture are to be turned the same way
[ not a rule to Raphael ] , and that all the personages represented are to possess ideal beauty of the highest order , which ideal beauty consists partly in a Greek outline of nose , partly in proportions expressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin ; but partly also in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen is to bestow upon God's work in general . This I say is the kind of teaching which through . various channels , Royal Academy lecturings , press criticisms , public enthusiasm , and not least by solid weight of gold , we give to our young men . And we wonder we have no painters . "
The P . R . B . ' s may be accepted as the energetic exponents of reaction against such a system : — " Consider , farther , that the particular system to be overthrown was , in the present case , one of which the main characteristic was the pursuit of beauty at the expense of manliness and truth ; and it will seem likely , a priori , that the men intended successfully to resist the influence of such a system should be endowed with little natural sense of beauty , and thus
rendered dead to the temptation it presented . Summing up these conditions , there is surely little cause for surprise that pictures painted , in a temper of resistance , by exceedingly young men , of stubborn instincts and positive self-trust , and with little natural perception of beauty , should not be calculated , at the first glance , to win us from works enriched by plagiarism , polished by convention , invested with all the attractiveness of artificial grace , and recommended to our respect by established authority . "
But Mr . ltuskin , while thundering against Royal Academy twaddle ( and it is great ) avoids the delicate and difficult question which meets every student at the vestibule ol Art , viz ., Are the great masters to be wholly rejected , and their experience disregarded , so that each painter must begin de novo , as if painting had never been ; or are they to be accepted under certain restrictions ; and what
are those restrictions ? ' 1 he student ought to be told whether , if he reject Raphael , he may accept ( iiotto or Fra liartolommeo ; and if so , why so ? Mr . Ruskin evades the question altogether . Rules of Art , i . e ., the conclusions which the best painters have come to as the result of their experience—he treats with implied scorn . To look at Nature and copy her is the whole process . Read this vivid description
of—_ TWO IVUNTHJUJ . " Suppose , for instance , two men , equally honest , equally industrious , equally impressed with a humble desire to render some part of what they saw in nature faithfully ; and , otherwise , trained in convictions tjuch as 1 have above endeavoured to induce . J 5 ut one of them in quiet in temperament , has u feeble memory , no invention , mid executively keen Bight . The other iH impatient in temperament , has a memory which nothing escapes , an invention which never retttu , and in comparatively nuur-sighted
14 them both free in the name field in a mountain vulloy . One boob everything , Hrnall and large , with almost the sumo cIAu-iichh ; mountain h and grasshoppers alike ;; tl \ c leaven on the brain-hew , the veins in the pcbblcw , tho bubbles in the stream ; but he can remember nothing , and invent ^ ji ^ tjUuuj . Patiently ho m ; tn hhnnelf to Ilia Jrt ^ lty * Ifiiisks a bandoning- at once all i houftfl / llflfliainff twMe * tt clfectn , or giving general iinprjS"ffiof ^ w / wt » l «^ PTi « < : y » present to him in inicrfeoiPlr * fiiJ ^ C ^ , & C chooses uomu small portion ^ tioir ) tft * 'inpjMfe ^ ei" - ' , »» d calculate with courogeT'Uie n | Unb « t Of ¦ week ** which must- cl ^ m * kLV ' . ' ¦' ¦ ¦ . ¦ :- .:
before he can do justice to the intensity of his perceptions , or the fulness of matter in his subject . " Meantime , the other has been watching the change of the clouds , and the march of the light along the mountain sides ; he beholds the entire scene in broad , soft masses of true gradation , and tne very feebleness of his sig ht is in some sort an advantage to him , in making him more sensible of tlie aerial mystery of distance , and hiding from him the multitudes of circumstances which it would have been impossible for him to represent . But there is not one change in the casting of the jagged shadows along the hollows of the hills , but it is fixed mhis mmd lor ever ; not a flake of spray has broken from the sea ———^^—^——— — -
of cloud about their bases , but he has watched it as it melts away , and could recall it to its lost place in heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts . Not only so , but thousands and thousands of such images of older scenes remain congregated in his mind , each mingling in new associations with those now visibly passing before him , and these again confused with other images of his own ceaseless , sleepless imagination , flashing by in sudden troops . Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols and blots , and undecipherable shorthand : as for his sitting down to « draw from Nature . ' there was not one of the
things which he wished to represent , that stayed for so much as five seconds together ; but none of them escaped for all that ; they are sealed up in that strange storehouse of his ; hy may take one of them out perhaps , this day twenty years , and paint it in his dark room , far away . Now , observe , you may tell both of these men , when they are young , that they are to be honest , that they have an important function , and that they are not to care what Raphael did . This you may wholesomely impress on them both . But fancy the exquisite absurdity of expecting either of them to possess any of the qualities of the
other . " I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last , and of invention in the first painter , that the contrast between them might be more striking ; but , with very slight modification , both the characters are real . Grant to the first considerable inventive power , with exquisite sense of colour ; and give to the second , in addition to all his other faculties , the eye of an eagle ; and the first is John Everett Millais , the second Joseph Mallard William Turner . "
But , we repeat , this pamphlet is little more than the jottings down of a critic ; interesting enough as the rambling observations of one who does observe , but carrying forward no " high argument . " He is led incidentally to speak of Turner , and straightway fills half the pamphlet with a review of Turner ' s different sty les . For Turner you must know , is as much a P . R . B . as Millais or Hunt ! According to Mr . Ruskin , every man is a P . R . B . who really succeeds in painting nature ; an extension of the school which renders criticism somewhat vague . Therefore we argue not with Mr . Ruskin , - we content ourselves with two brief passages , one as a specimen of his pictorial style , the other as the iteration of a principle we are incessantly applying to poets and novellists : —
JOHN LEWIS S ANIMALS . " Reubens , Rembrandt , Snyders , Tintoret , and Titian , have all , in various ways , drawn wild beasts magnificently ; but they have in some sort humanized or demonized them , making them either ravenous fiends , or educated beasts , that would draw cars , and had respect for hermits . The sullen isolation of the brutal nature ; the dignity and quietness of the mighty limbs ; tho shaggy mountainous power , mingled until grace as of a Jlowiiig stream ; the stealthy restraint of strength and wrath in every soundless motion of the gigantic frame ; all this acorns never to have been seen , much less drawn , until Lewis drew and himself engraved a scries of animal subjects , now many years ago . "
TRUTH IN ART . " 1 . wish it to be understood how every great man paints what be Hees or did see , his greatness being indeed little clue than bin intense Hen . se of fact . And thusl're-liaphaeliti . sm andltaphaeliti . sm , and Turncrism , are all one ; and the Kiuno , ho far as education can influence thorn . They are different in thuir choice , different in their faculties , but all the sati . e in this , that Raphael himself , ho far as he was grc it , and all who preceded or followed him who ever were great , became ho by painting tho truths around them an they appeared to each man ' s own mind , not an ho had boon taught to , seo them , except by the ( jlod wiio niado both him and them . " "
[ Fli Bad Most Volumes 804 ®Ft Ftt*>*T* ...
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Tlloiinitllltyh Liayh And I.Li'tj K Ndh....
TllOIINItllltYH liAYH AND I . li'tj K NDH . Lilys mid 1 . trends nr JinUadu of the New World . Ity <) . W . Tlioriitmiy . JSiiuiulms iiud Ollcy . To any amlnfiouH friend resolved on mrthing into print we should urge this final counsel : at any rate publish your vcmhch without a Preface ! Authors complain of tho ruthless cril . iri . sm which t . heii imkmun elicit , and little , do they suspect how much of it is owing to the prejudicial effect of howc pompous or
flippant preface . Bad as most volumes of verse unblushingly are , they are often rendered worse by the uneasy flippancy in which criticism is deprecated or defied ; and as the preface strikes the keynote we could never undertand upon what principle the writers so commonly assume a facetious tone : and such , facetiousness ! ye Gods , such facetiousness ! The ordinary preface runs somewhat thus : Here is a volume of poetry thrown off by me in careless moments of leisure . I can do immensely cleverer /* * t + T > _ _ 1 ______• . 1 —
things if I try—but I haven't the time . Nevertheless , though hastily written you are requested to observe that they are by no means crude or incorrect ; for the rest I scorn the opinion of those who do not admire them , and rely on the impartial justice of those who do admire them . There are a number of wretched scribblers—wasps who make no honey —always ready to decry genius * But I never read what they say , and I am perfectly calm and indifferent to what they may think of me .
Word that flippantly or arrogantly and you have the two species of preface usually found introducing a volume of poems ; and so rare is it to find a sensible straightforward word of introduction , that we feel justified in interdicting to poets the use of prefaces altogether . Mr . G . W . Thornbury , though certainly not below the average mediocrity , has very much disfigured his volumt * of Lays and Legends by a preface of dreary facetiousness . What opinion does he think the reader can form of his tact , sense , and judgment after such a display ? If Mr . Thornbury wished to address electors from the hustings , he would not endeavour to enhance the effect of his
eloquence by previously standing on his head , or balancing a chair upon his chin ; then why attempt to captivate a reader by such feeble pranks as those of his preface ? The idea of his volume is good ; but he is greatly mistaken in supposing he is the first to have opened " the new mine" of New World Legends . Columbus , Cortez , and Pizarro have been too obviously poetical not to have been frequently chosen . There is moreover a disadvantage in such subjects , greater even than their advantages . The very facility is an obstacle . Their fertility seduces the writer into a careless
contentment with the first image and the first suggestion which may arise in his mind , while at the same time this suggestiveness of the subject acfe upon the reader ' s mind , and enables him to form pictures for himself . It is thus difficult to treat Columbus adequately , from the very reason that it is easy to treat it with a certain degree of animation . Mr . Thornbury has proved himself no poet by the mediocrity of his treatment of poetic subjects ; on the other hand the interest in his subjec ts has made his Legends readable , and that caused us to say that the idea of writing poems on Columbus , Cortez , and Pizarro , was a good one inasmuch as it
secured a certain amount of interest . There is nothing in the Legends which tempts us to quote it ; but that some specimen of lus style may be given we select the following translation of Freiligrath ' s spirited poem—the reader will see at a glance what are the pretensions of Mr . Thornbury to be considered a poet : — " THE LION'S JOURNEY . * ' ( From the German of Freili grath . ) " The desert king , the lion , his empire wanders through , ., , - lie lies in the marsh , whero the giant rushes luuein .
from the view ; r ( i Where gazelles and giraffes are drinking , he cowl in his reedy bed , . „ And the leaves of the forest sycamore arc quivcri b o ' er hin head . " At evo in tho Hottentot ' s poor village , when g <» the ruddy lircs , . x When on the broad wide table land , blaze up no eife When the « avago Cailrc wanders alone throug h t » o wtill caroo , ., w When the antelope is sleeping beside the ague . / " See , majestic through tho desert comes lh « B '
slately , blow , . , that To dip bin rod and burning tongue m tno l «>" turbid How ; . < - . ( , ho . Stretching forth with joy to taste it , panting pleasure , , . i , liquid Reaching with his long neck o ' er to rencu tn ^ treasure . . j ^ cdy " ttuddon , lining from hi « ambush , from tl »« junglo creeping , - , i } i <> r »< ;~ Springs the lion on bin charger , like « knife "" J man leaping , . . lllI ) ariHo » Never in a prince ' s uluble wuh Ihora rich cui > ^ Jlulf bo fuir usHkin of churgcr that tno uc » in on .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 23, 1851, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_23081851/page/16/
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