The Crown of Wild Olive
it away on subjects either altogether uninteresting, or above his
powers, or unfit for pictorial representation. "The Cherry Woman,"
exhibited in 1850, may be named as an example of the first kind; the
"Burchell and Sophia" of the second (the character of Sir William
Thornhill being utterly missed); the "Seven Ages" of the third; for this
subject cannot be painted. In the written passage, the thoughts are
progressive and connected; in the picture they must be co-existent, and
yet separate; nor can all the characters of the ages be rendered in
painting at all. One may represent the soldier at the cannon's mouth,
but one cannot paint the "bubble reputation" which he seeks. Mulready,
therefore, while he has always produced exquisite pieces of painting,
has failed in doing anything which can be of true or extensive use. He
has, indeed, understood how to discipline his genius, but never how to
direct it.
Edwin Landseer is the last painter but one whom I shall name: I need not
point out to any one acquainted with his earlier works, the labor, or
watchfulness of nature which they involve, nor need I do more than
allude to the peculiar faculties of his mind. It will at once be granted
that the highest merits of his pictures are throughout found in those
parts of them which are least like what had before been accomplished;
and that it was not by the study of Raphael that he attained his eminent
success, but by a healthy love of Scotch terriers.
None of these painters, however, it will be answered, afford examples
of the rise of the highest imaginative power out of close study of
matters of fact. Be it remembered, however, that the imaginative power,
in its magnificence, is not to be found every day. Lewis has it in no
mean degree; but we cannot hope to find it at its highest more than once
in an age. We _have_ had it once, and must be content.
Towards the close of the last century, among the various drawings
executed, according to the quiet manner of the time, in greyish blue,
with brown foregrounds, some began to be noticed as exhibiting rather
more than ordinary diligence and delicacy, signed W. Turner.[99] There
was nothing, however, in them at all indicative of genius, or even of
more than ordinary talent, unless in some of the subjects a large
perception of space, and excessive clearness and decision in the
arrangement of masses. Gradually and cautiously the blues became mingled
with delicate green, and then with gold; the browns in the foreground
became first more positive, and then were slightly mingled with other
local colors; while the touch, which had at first been heavy and broken,
like that of the ordinary drawing masters of the time, grew more and
more refined and expressive, until it lost itself in a method of
execution often too delicate for the eye to follow, rendering, with a
precision before unexampled, both the texture and the form of every
object. The style may be considered as perfectly formed about the year
1800, and it remained unchanged for twenty years.
During that period the painter had attempted, and with more or less
success had rendered, every order of landscape subject, but always on
the same principle, subduing the colors of nature into a harmony of
which the key-notes are greyish green and brown; pure blues and delicate
golden yellows being admitted in small quantity, as the lowest and
highest limits of shade and light: and bright local colors in extremely
small quantity in figures or other minor accessories.
Pictures executed on such a system are not, properly speaking, works in
_color_ at all; they are studies of light and shade, in which both the
shade and the distance are rendered in the general hue which best
expresses their attributes of coolness and transparency; and the lights
and the foreground are executed in that which best expresses their
warmth and solidity. This advantage may just as well be taken as not, in
studies of light and shadow to be executed with the hand: but the use of
two, three, or four colors, always in the same relations and places,
does not in the least constitute the work a study of color, any more
than the brown engravings of the Liber Studiorum; nor would the idea of
color be in general more present to the artist's mind, when he was at
work on one of these drawings, than when he was using pure brown in the
mezzotint engraving. But the idea of space, warmth, and freshness being
not successfully expressible in a single tint, and perfectly expressible
by the admission of three or four, he allows himself this advantage when
it is possible, without in the least embarrassing himself with the
actual color of the objects to be represented. A stone in the fore
ground might in nature have been cold grey, but it will be drawn
nevertheless of a rich brown, because it is in the foreground; a hill in
the distance might in nature be purple with heath, or golden with furze;
but it will be drawn nevertheless of a cool grey, because it is in the
distance.
This at least was the general theory,--carried out with great severity
in many, both of the drawings and pictures executed by him during the
period: in others more or less modified by the cautious introduction of
color, as the painter felt his liberty increasing; for the system was
evidently never considered as final, or as anything more than a means of
progress: the conventional, easily manageable color, was visibly
adopted, only that his mind might be at perfect liberty to address
itself to the acquirement of the first and most necessary knowledge in
all art--that of form. But as form, in landscape, implies vast bulk and
space, the use of the tints which enabled him best to express them, was
actually auxiliary to the mere drawing; and, therefore, not only
permissible, but even necessary, while more brilliant or varied tints
were never indulged in, except when they might be introduced without
the slightest danger of diverting his mind for an instant from his
principal object. And, therefore, it will be generally found in the
works of this period, that exactly in proportion to the importance and
general toil of the composition, is the severity of the tint; and that
the play of color begins to show itself first in slight and small
drawings, where he felt that he could easily secure all that he wanted
in form.
Thus the "Crossing the Brook," and such other elaborate and large
compositions, are actually painted in nothing but grey, brown, and blue,
with a point or two of severe local color in the figures; but in the
minor drawings, tender passages of complicated color occur not
unfrequently in easy places; and even before the year 1800 he begins to
introduce it with evident joyfulness and longing in his rude and simple
studies, just as a child, if it could be supposed to govern itself by a
fully developed intellect, would cautiously, but with infinite pleasure,
add now and then a tiny dish of fruit or other dangerous luxury to the
simple order of its daily fare. Thus, in the foregrounds of his most
severe drawings, we not unfrequently find him indulging in the luxury of
a peacock; and it is impossible to express the joyfulness with which he
seems to design its graceful form, and deepen with soft pencilling the
bloom of its blue, after he has worked through the stern detail of his
almost colorless drawing. A rainbow is another of his most frequently
permitted indulgences; and we find him very early allowing the edges of
his evening clouds to be touched with soft rose-color or gold; while,
whenever the hues of nature in anywise fall into his system, and can be
caught without a dangerous departure from it, he instantly throws his
whole soul into the faithful rendering of them. Thus the usual brown
tones of his foreground become warmed into sudden vigor, and are varied
and enhanced with indescribable delight, when he finds himself by the
shore of a moorland stream, where they truly express the stain of its
golden rocks, and the darkness of its clear, Cairngorm-like pools, and
the usual serenity of his aerial blue is enriched into the softness and
depth of the sapphire, when it can deepen the distant slumber of some
Highland lake, or temper the gloomy shadows of the evening upon its
hills.
The system of his color being thus simplified, he could address all the
strength of his mind to the accumulation of facts of form; his choice of
subject, and his methods of treatment, are therefore as various as his
color is simple; and it is not a little difficult to give the reader who
is unacquainted with his works, an idea either of their infinitude of
aims, on the one hand, or of the kind of feeling which prevades them
all, on the other. No subject was too low or too high for him; we find
him one day hard at work on a cock and hen, with their family of
chickens in a farm-yard; and bringing all the refinement of his
execution into play to express the texture of the plumage; next day, he
is drawing the Dragon of Colchis. One hour he is much interested in a
gust of wind blowing away an old woman's cap; the next he is painting
the fifth plague of Egypt. Every landscape painter before him had
acquired distinction by confining his efforts to one class of subject.
Hobbima painted oaks; Ruysdael, waterfalls and copses; Cuyp, river or
meadow scenes in quiet afternoons; Salvator and Poussin, such kind of
mountain scenery as people could conceive, who lived in towns in the
seventeenth century. But I am well persuaded that if all the works of
Turner, up to the year 1820, were divided into classes (as he has
himself divided them in the Liber Studiorum), no preponderance could be
assigned to one class over another. There is architecture, including a
large number of formal "gentlemen's seats," I suppose drawings
commissioned by the owners; then lowland pastoral scenery of every kind,
including nearly all farming operations,--ploughing, harrowing, hedging
and ditching, felling trees, sheep-washing, and I know not what else;
then all kinds of town life--court-yards of inns, starting of mail
coaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, &c.;
then all kinds of inner domestic life--interiors of rooms, studies of
costumes, of still life, and heraldry, including multitudes of
symbolical vignettes; then marine scenery of every kind, full of local
incident; every kind of boat and method of fishing for particular fish,
being specifically drawn, round the whole coast of England;--pilchard
fishing at St. Ives, whiting fishing at Margate, herring at Loch Fyne;
and all kinds of shipping, including studies of every separate part of
the vessels, and many marine battle-pieces, two in particular of
Trafalgar, both of high importance,--one of the Victory after the
battle, now in Greenwich Hospital; another of the Death of Nelson, in
his own gallery; then all kinds of mountain scenery, some idealised into
compositions, others of definite localities; together with classical
compositions, Romes and Carthages and such others, by the myriad, with
mythological, historical, or allegorical figures,--nymphs, monsters, and
spectres; heroes and divinities.[100]
What general feeling, it may be asked incredulously, can possibly
pervade all this? This, the greatest of all feelings--an utter
forgetfulness of self. Throughout the whole period with which we are at
present concerned, Turner appears as a man of sympathy absolutely
infinite--a sympathy so all-embracing, that I know nothing but that of
Shakespeare comparable with it. A soldier's wife resting by the roadside
is not beneath it; Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, watching the dead
bodies of her sons, not above it. Nothing can possibly be so mean as
that it will not interest his whole mind, and carry away his whole
heart; nothing so great or solemn but that he can raise himself into