The Crown of Wild Olive
at Como or elsewhere; and suggested that if I would make the lake look a
little more like water, I should be under no necessity of explaining its
nature by the presence of floating objects. I thought him at the time a
very simple person for his pains; but have since learned, and it is the
very gist of all practical matters, which, as professor of fine art, I
have now to tell you, that the great point in painting a lake is--to get
it to look like water.
125. So far, so good. We lay it down for a first principle, that our
graphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to produce something
which shall look as like Nature as possible. But now we must go one step
farther, and say that it is to produce what shall look like Nature to
people who know what Nature is like! You see this is at once a great
restriction, as well as a great exaltation of our aim. Our business is
not to deceive the simple; but to deceive the wise! Here, for instance,
is a modern Italian print, representing, to the best of its power, St.
Cecilia, in a brilliantly realistic manner. And the fault of the work is
not in its earnest endeavour to show St. Cecilia in habit as she lived,
but in that the effort could only be successful with persons unaware of
the habit St. Cecilia lived in. And this condition of appeal only to the
wise increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, that,
with only average skill or materials, we must surrender all hope of it,
and be content with an imperfect representation, true as far as it
reaches, and such as to excite the imagination of a wise beholder to
complete it; though falling very far short of what either he or we
should otherwise have desired. For instance, here is a suggestion, by
Sir Joshua Reynolds, of the general appearance of a British
Judge--requiring the imagination of a very wise beholder indeed, to fill
it up, or even at first to discover what it is meant for. Nevertheless,
it is better art than the Italian St. Cecilia, because the artist,
however little he may have done to represent his knowledge, does,
indeed, know altogether what a Judge is like, and appeals only to the
criticism of those who know also.
126. There must be, therefore, two degrees of truth to be looked for in
the good graphic arts; one, the commonest, which, by any partial or
imperfect sign conveys to you an idea which you must complete for
yourself; and the other, the finest, a representation so perfect as to
leave you nothing to be farther accomplished by this independent
exertion; but to give you the same feeling of possession and presence
which you would experience from the natural object itself. For instance
of the first, in this representation of a rainbow,[124] the artist has
no hope that, by the black lines of engraving, he can deceive you into
any belief of the rainbow's being there, but he gives indication enough
of what he intends, to enable you to supply the rest of the idea
yourself, providing always you know beforehand what a rainbow is like.
But in this drawing of the falls of Terni,[125] the painter has
strained his skill to the utmost to give an actually deceptive
resemblance of the iris, dawning and fading among the foam. So far as he
has not actually deceived you, it is not because he would not have done
so if he could; but only because his colours and science have fallen
short of his desire. They have fallen so little short that, in a good
light, you may all but believe the foam and the sunshine are drifting
and changing among the rocks.
127. And after looking a little while, you will begin to regret that
they are not so: you will feel that, lovely as the drawing is, you would
like far better to see the real place, and the goats skipping among the
rocks, and the spray floating above the fall. And this is the true sign
of the greatest art--to part voluntarily with its greatness;--to make
_itself_ poor and unnoticed; but so to exalt and set forth its theme
that you may be fain to see the theme instead of it. So that you have
never enough admired a great workman's doing till you have begun to
despise it. The best homage that could be paid to the Athena of Phidias
would be to desire rather to see the living goddess; and the loveliest
Madonnas of Christian art fall short of their due power, if they do not
make their beholders sick at heart to see the living Virgin.
128. We have then, for our requirement of the finest art (sculpture, or
anything else), that it shall be so like the thing it represents as to
please those who best know or can conceive the original; and, if
possible, please them deceptively--its final triumph being to deceive
even the wise; and (the Greeks thought) to please even the Immortals,
who were so wise as to be undeceivable. So that you get the Greek, thus
far entirely true, idea of perfectness in sculpture, expressed to you by
what Phalaris says, at first sight of the bull of Perilaus, "It only
wanted motion and bellowing to seem alive; and as soon as I saw it, I
cried out, it ought to be sent to the god." To Apollo, for only he, the
undeceivable, could thoroughly understand such sculpture, and perfectly
delight in it.
129. And with this expression of the Greek ideal of sculpture, I wish
you to join the early Italian, summed in a single line by Dante--"non
vide me' di me, chi vide 'l vero." Read the 12th canto of the
"Purgatory," and learn that whole passage by heart; and if ever you
chance to go to Pistoja, look at La Robbia's coloured porcelain
bas-reliefs of the seven works of Mercy on the front of the hospital
there; and note especially the faces of the two sick men--one at the
point of death, and the other in the first peace and long-drawn
breathing of health after fever--and you will know what Dante meant by
the preceding line, "Morti li morti, e i vivi paren vivi."
130. But now, may we not ask farther,--is it impossible for art such as
this, prepared for the wise, to please the simple also? Without entering
on the awkward questions of degree, how many the wise can be, or how
much men should know, in order to be rightly called wise, may we not
conceive an art to be possible, which would deceive _every_body, or
everybody worth deceiving? I showed you at my first lecture, a little
ringlet of Japan ivory, as a type of elementary bas-relief touched with
colour; and in your rudimentary series you have a drawing by Mr.
Burgess, of one of the little fishes enlarged, with every touch of the
chisel facsimiled on the more visible scale; and showing the little
black bead inlaid for the eye, which in the original is hardly to be
seen without a lens. You may, perhaps be surprised, when I tell you,
that (putting the question of _subject_ aside for the moment, and
speaking only of the mode of execution and aim at resemblance), you have
there a perfect example of the Greek ideal of method in sculpture. And
you will admit that, to the simplest person whom we could introduce as a
critic, that fish would be a satisfactory, nay, almost a deceptive fish;
while to any one caring for subtleties of art, I need not point out that
every touch of the chisel is applied with consummate knowledge, and that
it would be impossible to convey more truth and life with the given
quantity of workmanship.
131. Here is, indeed, a drawing by Turner, (Edu. 131), in which with
some fifty times the quantity of labour, and far more highly educated
faculty of sight, the artist has expressed some qualities of lustre and
colour which only very wise persons indeed could perceive in a John
Dory; and this piece of paper contains, therefore, much more, and more
subtle, art, than the Japan ivory; but are we sure that it is therefore
_greater_ art? or that the painter was better employed in producing this
drawing, which only one person can possess, and only one in a hundred
enjoy, than he would have been in producing two or three pieces on a
larger scale, which should have been at once accessible to, and
enjoyable by, a number of simpler persons? Suppose for instance, that
Turner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white paper, with
his camel's hair pencil, had struck the main forms of his fish into
marble, thus (Fig. 7): and instead of colouring the white paper so
delicately that, perhaps, only a few of the most keenly observant
artists in England can see it at all, had, with his strong hand, tinted
the marble with a few colours, deceptive to the people, and harmonious
to the initiated; suppose that he had even conceded so much to the
spirit of popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being
inlaid for the eye, in the Japanese manner; and that the enlarged,
deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on the outside of
a great building,--say Fishmongers' Hall,--where everybody commercially
connected with Billingsgate could have seen it, and ratified it with the
wisdom of the market;--might not the art have been greater, worthier,
and kinder in such use?
132. Perhaps the idea does not once approve itself to you of having your
public buildings covered with ornaments like this; but pray, remember
that the choice of _subject_ is an ethical question, not now before us.
All I ask you to decide is whether the method is right, and would be
pleasant in giving the distinctiveness to pretty things, which it has
here given to what, I suppose it may be assumed, you feel to be an ugly
thing. Of course, I must note parenthetically, such realistic work is
impossible in a country where the buildings are to be discoloured by
coal-smoke; but so is all fine sculpture, whatsoever; and the whiter,
the worse its chance. For that which is prepared for private persons, to
be kept under cover, will, of necessity, degenerate into the copyism of
past work, or merely sensational and sensual forms of present life,
unless there be a governing school addressing the populace, for their
instruction, on the outside of buildings. So that, as I partly warned
you in my third lecture, you can simply have _no_ sculpture in a coal
country. Whether you like coals or carvings best, is no business of
mine. I merely have to assure you of the fact that they are
incompatible.
But, assuming that we are again, some day, to become a civilized and
governing race, deputing ironmongery, coal-digging, and lucre-digging,
to our slaves in other countries, it is quite conceivable that, with an
increasing knowledge of natural history, and desire for such knowledge,
what is now done by careful, but inefficient, woodcuts, and in
ill-coloured engravings, might be put in quite permanent sculptures,
with inlay of variegated precious stones, on the outside of buildings,
where such pictures would be little costly to the people; and in a more
popular manner still, by Robbia ware and Palissy ware, and inlaid
majolica, which would differ from the housewives' present favourite
decoration of plates above her kitchen dresser, by being every piece of
it various, instructive, and universally visible.
133. You hardly know, I suppose, whether I am speaking in jest or
earnest. In the most solemn earnest, I assure you; though such is the
strange course of our popular life that all the irrational arts of
destruction are at once felt to be earnest; while any plan for those of
instruction on a grand scale, sounds like a dream or jest. Still, I do
not absolutely propose to decorate our public buildings with sculpture
wholly of this character; though beast, and fowl, and creeping things,
and fishes, might all find room on such a building as the Solomon's
House of a New Atlantis; and some of them might even become symbolic of
much to us again. Passing through the Strand, only the other day, for
instance, I saw four highly finished and delicately coloured pictures of