The Crown of Wild Olive
and illustrate the characters of the good; but, on the whole, I believe
it is best to live always on quite wholesome food, and that our taste of
it will not be made more acute by feeding, however temporarily, on
ashes. Of course the works of the great masters can only be serviceable
to the student after he has made considerable progress himself. It only
wastes the time and dulls the feelings of young persons, to drag them
through picture galleries; at least, unless they themselves wish to look
at particular pictures. Generally, young people only care to enter a
picture gallery when there is a chance of getting leave to run a race to
the other end of it; and they had better do that in the garden below.
If, however, they have any real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look
at this one or that, the principal point is never to disturb them in
looking at what interests them, and never to make them look at what does
not. Nothing is of the least use to young people (nor, by the way, of
much use to old ones), but what interests them; and therefore, though it
is of great importance to put nothing but good art into their
possession, yet when they are passing through great houses or galleries,
they should be allowed to look precisely at what pleases them: if it is
not useful to them as art, it will be in some other way: and the
healthiest way in which art can interest them is when they look at it,
not as art, but because it represents something they like in nature. If
a boy has had his heart filled by the life of some great man, and goes
up thirstily to a Vandyck portrait of him, to see what he was like, that
is the wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of portraiture;
if he love mountains, and dwell on a Turner drawing because he sees in
it a likeness to a Yorkshire scar, or an Alpine pass, that is the
wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of landscape; and if a
girl's mind is filled with dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses
before an Angelico because she thinks it must surely be indeed like
heaven, that is the wholesomest way for her to begin the study of
religious art.
When, however, the student has made some definite progress, and every
picture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own work,
it is of great importance that he should never so much as look at bad
art; and then, if the reader is willing to trust me in the matter, the
following advice will be useful to him. In which, with his permission, I
will quit the indirect and return to the epistolary address, as being
the more convenient.
First, in Galleries of Pictures:
1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian,
Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the
authenticity of the picture being of course established for you by
proper authority.
2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however question of right
and wrong,[266] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico,
Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds,
Gainsborough, Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.[267] You had
better look at no other painters than these, for you run a chance,
otherwise, of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults, by
some of the other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens;
and of being, besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as Murillo,
Salvator, Claude, Gasper Poussin, Teniers, and such others. You may
look, however, for examples of evil, with safe universality of
reprobation, being sure that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino,
the Caracci, Bronzino, and the figure pieces of Salvator.
Among those named for study under question, you cannot look too much at,
nor grow too enthusiastically fond of, Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds,
Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites; but, if you find yourself getting
especially fond of any of the others, leave off looking at them, for you
must be going wrong some way or other. If, for instance, you begin to
like Rembrandt or Leonardo especially, you are losing your feeling for
colour; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you must be getting
too fond of rigid detail; and if you like Vandyck or Gainsborough
especially, you must be too much attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.
Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such as you may be
able to get yourself, or to see at private houses or in shops, the works
of the following masters are the most desirable, after the Turners,
Rembrandts, and Durers, which I have asked you to get first:
1. Samuel Prout.
All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest value,
wholly unrivalled in power of composition, and in love and feeling of
architectural subject. His somewhat mannered linear execution, though
not to be imitated in your own sketches from Nature, may be occasionally
copied, for discipline's sake, with great advantage; it will give you a
peculiar steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any other way;
and there is no fear of your getting into any faultful mannerism as long
as you carry out the different modes of more delicate study above
recommended.
If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it your chief
study, you should draw much from photographs of it; and then from the
architecture itself, with the same completion of detail and gradation,
only keeping the shadows of due paleness, in photographs they are always
about four times as dark as they ought to be; and treat buildings with
as much care and love as artists do their rock foregrounds, drawing all
the moss and weeds, and stains upon them. But if, without caring to
understand architecture, you merely want the picturesque character of
it, and to be able to sketch it fast, you cannot do better than take
Prout for your _exclusive_ master; only do not think that you are
copying Prout by drawing straight lines with dots at the end of them.
Get first his "Rhine," and draw the subjects that have most hills, and
least architecture in them, with chalk on smooth paper, till you can lay
on his broad flat tints, and get his gradations of light, which are very
wonderful; then take up the architectural subjects in the "Rhine," and
draw again and again the groups of figures, &c., in his "Microcosm," and
"Lessons on Light and Shadow." After that, proceed to copy the grand
subjects in the sketches in "Flanders and Germany;" or in "Switzerland
and Italy," if you cannot get the Flanders; but the Switzerland is very
far inferior. Then work from Nature, not trying to Proutise Nature, by
breaking smooth buildings into rough ones, but only drawing _what you
see_, with Prout's simple method and firm lines. Don't copy his coloured
works. They are good, but not at all equal to his chalk and pencil
drawings, and you will become a mere imitator, and a very feeble
imitator, if you use colour at all in Prout's method. I have not space
to explain why this is so, it would take a long piece of reasoning;
trust me for the statement.
2. John Lewis.
His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very valuable. Get
them, if you can, and also some engravings (about eight or ten, I think,
altogether) of wild beasts, executed by his own hand a long time ago;
they are very precious in every way. The series of the "Alhambra" is
rather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by himself;
still it is well worth having.
But let _no_ lithographic work come into the house, if you can help it,
nor even look at any, except Prout's, and those sketches of Lewis's.
3. George Cruikshank.
If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of "Grimm's German
Stories," which were illustrated by him long ago, pounce upon them
instantly; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to
Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was
invented. You cannot look at them too much, nor copy them too often.
All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when they touch on
the worst vulgarities of modern life; and often much spoiled by a
curiously mistaken type of face, divided so as to give too much to the
mouth and eyes, and leave too little for forehead, the eyes being set
about two thirds up, instead of at half the height of the head. But his
manner of work is always right; and his tragic power, though rarely
developed, and warped by habits of caricature, is, in reality, as great
as his grotesque power.
There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your principal
work lies among art of so totally different a character as most of that
which I have recommended to you; and you may, therefore, get great good
by copying almost anything of his that may come in your way; except only
his illustrations lately published to "Cinderella," and "Jack and the
Beanstalk," and "Tom Thumb," which are much over-laboured, and confused
in line. You should get them, but do not copy them.
4. Alfred Rethel.
I only know two publications by him; one, the "Dance of Death," with
text by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but to be had now of any London
bookseller for the sum, I believe, of eighteen pence, and containing six
plates full of instructive character; the other, of two plates only,
"Death the Avenger," and "Death the Friend." These two are far superior
to the "Todtentanz," and, if you can get them, will be enough in
themselves, to show all that Rethel can teach you. If you dislike
ghastly subjects, get "Death the Friend" only.
5. Bewick.
The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the most masterly
thing ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is just worked as Paul Veronese
would have worked in wood, had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too
coarse in execution, and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies,
show, nevertheless, intellectual power of the highest order; and there
are pieces of sentiment in them, either pathetic or satirical, which
have never since been equalled in illustrations of this simple kind; the
bitter intensity of the feeling being just like that which characterises
some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is the Burns of painting.
6. Blake.
The "Book of Job," engraved by himself, is of the highest rank in
certain characters of imagination and expression; in the mode of
obtaining certain effects of light it will also be a very useful example
to you. In expressing conditions of glaring and flickering light, Blake
is greater than Rembrandt.
7. Richter.
I have already told you what to guard against in looking at his works. I
am a little doubtful whether I have done well in including them in this
catalogue at all; but the fancies in them are so pretty and numberless,
that I must risk, for their sake, the chance of hurting you a little in
judgment of style. If you want to make presents of story-books to
children, his are the best you can now get.
8. Rossetti.
An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains woodcuts from
drawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite masters. They are
terribly spoiled in the cutting, and generally the best part, the
expression of feature, _entirely_ lost;[268] still they are full of
instruction, and cannot be studied too closely. But observe, respecting
these woodcuts, that if you have been in the habit of looking at much
spurious work, in which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or
artificial, you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine work,
which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is merely art, such as
Veronese's or Titian's, may not offend you, though the chances are that
you will not care about it: but genuine works of feeling, such as Maude
and Aurora Leigh in poetry, or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in
painting, are sure to offend you; and if you cease to work hard, and