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+Project Gutenberg Etext Seven Discourses on Art by Joshua Reynolds
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+Seven Discourses on Art
+
+by Sir Joshua Reynolds
+
+May, 2000 [Etext #2176]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Seven Discourses on Art by Joshua Reynolds
+*******This file should be named artds10.txt or artds10.zip*******
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+This etext was scanned by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk,
+proofing by David, Dawn Smith, Uzma, Jane Foster, Juliana Rew, Marie
+Rhoden and Jo Osment.  It is the 1901 Cassell and Company edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
+
+by Sir Joshua Reynolds
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+It is a happy memory that associates the foundation of our Royal
+Academy with the delivery of these inaugural discourses by Sir
+Joshua Reynolds, on the opening of the schools, and at the first
+annual meetings for the distribution of its prizes.  They laid down
+principles of art from the point of view of a man of genius who had
+made his power felt, and with the clear good sense which is the
+foundation of all work that looks upward and may hope to live.  The
+truths here expressed concerning Art may, with slight adjustment of
+the way of thought, be applied to Literature or to any exercise of
+the best powers of mind for shaping the delights that raise us to
+the larger sense of life.  In his separation of the utterance of
+whole truths from insistance upon accidents of detail, Reynolds was
+right, because he guarded the expression of his view with careful
+definitions of its limits.  In the same way Boileau was right, as a
+critic of Literature, in demanding everywhere good sense, in
+condemning the paste brilliants of a style then in decay, and
+fixing attention upon the masterly simplicity of Roman poets in the
+time of Augustus.  Critics by rule of thumb reduced the principles
+clearly defined by Boileau to a dull convention, against which
+there came in course of time a strong reaction.  In like manner the
+teaching of Reynolds was applied by dull men to much vague and
+conventional generalisation in the name of dignity.  Nevertheless,
+Reynolds taught essential truths of Art.  The principles laid down
+by him will never fail to give strength to the right artist, or
+true guidance towards the appreciation of good art, though here and
+there we may not wholly assent to some passing application of them,
+where the difference may be great between a fashion of thought in
+his time and in ours.  A righteous enforcement of exact truth in
+our day has led many into a readiness to appreciate more really the
+minute imitation of a satin dress, or a red herring, than the
+noblest figure in the best of Raffaelle's cartoons.  Much good
+should come of the diffusion of this wise little book.
+
+Joshua Reynolds was born on the 15th of July, 1723, the son of a
+clergyman and schoolmaster, at Plympton in Devonshire.  His bent
+for Art was clear and strong from his childhood.  In 1741 at the
+age of nineteen, he began study, and studied for two yours in
+London under Thomas Hudson, a successful portrait painter.  Then he
+went back to Devonshire and painted portraits, aided for some time
+in his education by attention to the work of William Gandy of
+Exeter.  When twenty-six years old, in May, 1749, Reynolds was
+taken away by Captain Keppel to the Mediterranean, and brought into
+contact with the works of the great painters of Italy.  He stayed
+two years in Rome, and in accordance with the principles afterwards
+laid down in these lectures, he refused, when in Rome, commissions
+for copying, and gave his mind to minute observation of the art of
+the great masters by whose works he was surrounded.  He spent two
+months in Florence, six weeks in Venice, a few days in Bologna and
+Parma.  "If," he said, "I had never seen any of the fine works of
+Correggio, I should never, perhaps, have remarked in Nature the
+expression which I find in one of his pieces; or if I had remarked
+it, I might have thought it too difficult, or perhaps impossible to
+execute."
+
+In 1753 Reynolds came back to England, and stayed three months in
+Devonshire before setting up a studio in London, in St. Martin's
+Lane, which was then an artists' quarter.  His success was rapid.
+In 1755 he had one hundred and twenty-five sitters.  Samuel Johnson
+found in him his most congenial friend.  He moved to Newport
+Street, and he built himself a studio--where there is now an
+auction room--at 47, Lincoln's Inn Fields.  There he remained for
+life.
+
+In 1760 the artists opened, in a room lent by the Society of Arts,
+a free Exhibition for the sale of their works.  This was continued
+the next year at Spring Gardens, with a charge of a shilling for
+admission.  In 1765 they obtained a charter of incorporation, and
+in 1768 the King gave his support to the foundation of a Royal
+Academy of Arts by seceders from the preceding "Incorporated
+Society of Artists," into which personal feelings had brought much
+division.  It was to consist, like the French Academy, of forty
+members, and was to maintain Schools open to all students of good
+character who could give evidence that they had fully learnt the
+rudiments of Art.  The foundation by the King dates from the 10th
+of December, 1768.  The Schools were opened on the 2nd of January
+next following, and on that occasion Joshua Reynolds, who had been
+elected President--his age was then between forty-five and forty-
+six--gave the Inaugural Address which formed the first of these
+Seven Discourses.  The other six were given by him, as President,
+at the next six annual meetings:  and they were all shaped to form,
+when collected into a volume, a coherent body of good counsel upon
+the foundations of the painter's art.
+
+H. M.
+
+
+
+TO THE KING
+
+
+
+The regular progress of cultivated life is from necessaries to
+accommodations, from accommodations to ornaments.  By your
+illustrious predecessors were established marts for manufactures,
+and colleges for science; but for the arts of elegance, those arts
+by which manufactures are embellished and science is refined, to
+found an academy was reserved for your Majesty.
+
+Had such patronage been without effect, there had been reason to
+believe that nature had, by some insurmountable impediment,
+obstructed our proficiency; but the annual improvement of the
+exhibitions which your Majesty has been pleased to encourage shows
+that only encouragement had been wanting.
+
+To give advice to those who are contending for royal liberality has
+been for some years the duty of my station in the Academy; and
+these Discourses hope for your Majesty's acceptance as well-
+intended endeavours to incite that emulation which your notice has
+kindled, and direct those studies which your bounty has rewarded.
+
+May it please your Majesty,
+Your Majesty's
+Most dutiful servant,
+And most faithful subject,
+JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
+
+
+
+Gentlemen,--That you have ordered the publication of this Discourse
+is not only very flattering to me, as it implies your approbation
+of the method of study which I have recommended; but likewise, as
+this method receives from that act such an additional weight and
+authority as demands from the students that deference and respect,
+which can be due only to the united sense of so considerable a body
+of artists.
+
+I am,
+With the greatest esteem and respect,
+GENTLEMEN,
+Your most humble
+And obedient servant,
+JOSHUA REYNOLDS
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
+
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+
+
+
+Delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy, January 2nd, 1769,
+by the President
+
+Gentlemen,--An academy in which the polite arts may be regularly
+cultivated is at last opened among us by royal munificence.  This
+must appear an event in the highest degree interesting, not only to
+the artists, but to the whole nation.
+
+It is indeed difficult to give any other reason why an Empire like
+that of Britain should so long have wanted an ornament so suitable
+to its greatness than that slow progression of things which
+naturally makes elegance and refinement the last effect of opulence
+and power.
+
+An institution like this has often been recommended upon
+considerations merely mercantile.  But an academy founded upon such
+principles can never effect even its own narrow purposes.  If it
+has an origin no higher, no taste can ever be formed in it which
+can be useful even in manufactures; but if the higher arts of
+design flourish, these inferior ends will be answered of course.
+
+We are happy in having a prince who has conceived the design of
+such an institution, according to its true dignity, and promotes
+the arts, as the head of a great, a learned, a polite, and a
+commercial nation; and I can now congratulate you, gentlemen, on
+the accomplishment of your long and ardent wishes.
+
+The numberless and ineffectual consultations that I have had with
+many in this assembly, to form plans and concert schemes for an
+academy, afford a sufficient proof of the impossibility of
+succeeding but by the influence of Majesty.  But there have,
+perhaps, been times when even the influence of Majesty would have
+been ineffectual, and it is pleasing to reflect that we are thus
+embodied, when every circumstance seems to concur from which honour
+and prosperity can probably arise.
+
+There are at this time a greater number of excellent artists than
+were ever known before at one period in this nation; there is a
+general desire among our nobility to be distinguished as lovers and
+judges of the arts; there is a greater superfluity of wealth among
+the people to reward the professors; and, above all, we are
+patronised by a monarch, who, knowing the value of science and of
+elegance, thinks every art worthy of his notice that tends to
+soften and humanise the mind.
+
+After so much has been done by his Majesty, it will be wholly our
+fault if our progress is not in some degree correspondent to the
+wisdom and, generosity of the institution; let us show our
+gratitude in our diligence, that, though our merit may not answer
+his expectations, yet, at least, our industry may deserve his
+protection.
+
+But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this we may be
+sure, that the present institution will at least contribute to
+advance our knowledge of the arts, and bring us nearer to that
+ideal excellence which it is the lot of genius always to
+contemplate and never to attain.
+
+The principal advantage of an academy is, that, besides furnishing
+able men to direct the student, it will be a repository for the
+great examples of the art.  These are the materials on which genius
+is to work, and without which the strongest intellect may be
+fruitlessly or deviously employed.  By studying these authentic
+models, that idea of excellence which is the result of the
+accumulated experience of past ages may be at once acquired, and
+the tardy and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us
+a shorter and easier way.  The student receives at one glance the
+principles which many artists have spent their whole lives in
+ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect, is spared the
+painful investigation by which they come to be known and fixed.
+How many men of great natural abilities have been lost to this
+nation for want of these advantages?  They never had an opportunity
+of seeing those masterly efforts of genius which at once kindle the
+whole soul, and force it into sudden and irresistible approbation.
+
+Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in an
+academy; but all Rome, and the works of Michael Angelo in
+particular, were to him an academy.  On the site of the Capel la
+Sistina he immediately from a dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner,
+which attends to the minute accidental discriminations of
+particular and individual objects, assumed that grand style of
+painting, which improves partial representation by the general and
+invariable ideas of nature.
+
+Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an
+atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe
+somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions.  Knowledge,
+thus obtained, has always something more popular and useful than
+that which is forced upon the mind by private precepts or solitary
+meditation.  Besides, it is generally found that a youth more
+easily receives instruction from the companions of his studies,
+whose minds are nearly on a level with his own, than from those who
+are much his superiors; and it is from his equals only that he
+catches the fire of emulation.
+
+One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our
+academy, which no other nation can boast.  We shall have nothing to
+unlearn.  To this praise the present race of artists have a just
+claim.  As far as they have yet proceeded they are right.  With us
+the exertions of genius will henceforward be directed to their
+proper objects.  It will not be as it has been in other schools,
+where he that travelled fastest only wandered farthest from the
+right way.
+
+Impressed as I am, therefore, with such a favourable opinion of my
+associates in this undertaking, it would ill become me to dictate
+to any of them.  But as these institutions have so often failed in
+other nations, and as it is natural to think with regret how much
+might have been done, and how little has been done, I must take
+leave to offer a few hints, by which those errors may be rectified,
+and those defects supplied.  These the professors and visitors may
+reject or adopt as they shall think proper.
+
+I would chiefly recommend that an implicit obedience to the rules
+of art, as established by the great masters, should be exacted from
+the YOUNG students.  That those models, which have passed through
+the approbation of ages, should be considered by them as perfect
+and infallible guides as subjects for their imitation, not their
+criticism.
+
+I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a
+progress in the arts; and that he who sets out with doubting will
+find life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments.  For
+it may be laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on
+his own sense has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced
+them.  Every opportunity, therefore, should be taken to
+discountenance that false and vulgar opinion that rules are the
+fetters of genius.  They are fetters only to men of no genius; as
+that armour, which upon the strong becomes an ornament and a
+defence, upon the weak and misshapen turns into a load, and
+cripples the body which it was made to protect.
+
+How much liberty may be taken to break through those rules, and, as
+the poet expresses it,
+
+
+"To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,"
+
+
+may be an after consideration, when the pupils become masters
+themselves.  It is then, when their genius has received its utmost
+improvement, that rules may possibly be dispensed with.  But let us
+not destroy the scaffold until we have raised the building.
+
+The directors ought more particularly to watch over the genius of
+those students who, being more advanced, are arrived at that
+critical period of study, on the nice management of which their
+future turn of taste depends.  At that age it is natural for them
+to be more captivated with what is brilliant than with what is
+solid, and to prefer splendid negligence to painful and humiliating
+exactness.
+
+A facility in composing, a lively, and what is called a masterly
+handling the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed,
+captivating qualities to young minds, and become of course the
+objects of their ambition.  They endeavour to imitate those
+dazzling excellences, which they will find no great labour in
+attaining.  After much time spent in these frivolous pursuits, the
+difficulty will be to retreat; but it will be then too late; and
+there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour after
+the mind has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious
+mastery.
+
+By this useless industry they are excluded from all power of
+advancing in real excellence.  Whilst boys, they are arrived at
+their utmost perfection; they have taken the shadow for the
+substance; and make that mechanical facility the chief excellence
+of the art, which is only an ornament, and of the merit of which
+few but painters themselves are judges.
+
+This seems to me to be one of the most dangerous sources of
+corruption; and I speak of it from experience, not as an error
+which may possibly happen, but which has actually infected all
+foreign academies.  The directors were probably pleased with this
+premature dexterity in their pupils, and praised their despatch at
+the expense of their correctness.
+
+But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being
+thought masterly inciting them on one hand, but also their natural
+sloth tempting them on the other.  They are terrified at the
+prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness.
+The impetuosity of youth is distrusted at the slow approaches of a
+regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take
+the citadel by storm.  They wish to find some shorter path to
+excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other
+means than those which the indispensable rules of art have
+prescribed.  They must, therefore, be told again and again that
+labour is the only price of solid fame, and that whatever their
+force of genius may be, there is no easy method of becoming a good
+painter.
+
+When we read the lives of the most eminent painters, every page
+informs us that no part of their time was spent in dissipation.
+Even an increase of fame served only to augment their industry.  To
+be convinced with what persevering assiduity they pursued their
+studies, we need only reflect on their method of proceeding in
+their most celebrated works.  When they conceived a subject, they
+first made a variety of sketches; then a finished drawing of the
+whole; after that a more correct drawing of every separate part,
+heads, hands, feet, and pieces of drapery; they then painted the
+picture, and after all re-touched it from the life.  The pictures,
+thus wrought with such pain, now appear like the effect of
+enchantment, and as if some mighty genius had struck them off at a
+blow.
+
+But, whilst diligence is thus recommended to the students, the
+visitors will take care that their diligence be effectual; that it
+be well directed and employed on the proper object.  A student is
+not always advancing because he is employed; he must apply his
+strength to that part of the art where the real difficulties lie;
+to that part which distinguishes it as a liberal art, and not by
+mistaken industry lose his time in that which is merely ornamental.
+The students, instead of vying with each other which shall have the
+readiest band, should be taught to contend who shall have the
+purest and most correct outline, instead of striving which shall
+produce the brightest tint, or, curiously trifling endeavour to
+give the gloss of stuffs so as to appear real, let their ambition
+be directed to contend which shall dispose his drapery in the most
+graceful folds, which shall give the most grace and dignity to the
+human figure.
+
+I must beg leave to submit one thing more to the consideration of
+the visitors, which appears to me a matter of very great
+consequence, and the omission of which I think a principal defect
+in the method of education pursued in all the academies I have ever
+visited.  The error I mean is, that the students never draw exactly
+from the living models which they have before them.  It is not
+indeed their intention, nor are they directed to do it.  Their
+drawings resemble the model only in the attitude.  They change the
+form according to their vague and uncertain ideas of beauty, and
+make a drawing rather of what they think the figure ought to be
+than of what it appears.  I have thought this the obstacle that has
+stopped the progress of many young men of real genius; and I very
+much doubt whether a habit of drawing correctly what we see will
+not give a proportionable power of drawing correctly what we
+imagine.  He who endeavours to copy nicely the figure before him
+not only acquires a habit of exactness and precision, but is
+continually advancing in his knowledge of the human figure; and
+though he seems to superficial observers to make a slower progress,
+he will be found at last capable of adding (without running into
+capricious wildness) that grace and beauty which is necessary to be
+given to his more finished works, and which cannot be got by the
+moderns, as it was not acquired by the ancients, but by an
+attentive and well-compared study of the human form.
+
+What I think ought to enforce this method is, that it has been the
+practice (as may be seen by their drawings) of the great masters in
+the art.  I will mention a drawing of Raffaelle, "The Dispute of
+the Sacrament," the print of which, by Count Cailus, is in every
+hand.  It appears that he made his sketch from one model; and the
+habit he had of drawing exactly from the form before him appears by
+his making all the figures with the same cap, such as his model
+then happened to wear; so servile a copyist was this great man,
+even at a time when he was allowed to be at his highest pitch of
+excellence.
+
+I have seen also academy figures by Annibale Caracci, though he was
+often sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all
+the peculiarities of an individual model.
+
+This scrupulous exactness is so contrary to the practice of the
+academies, that it is not without great deference that I beg leave
+to recommend it to the consideration of the visitors, and submit it
+to them, whether the neglect of this method is not one of the
+reasons why students so often disappoint expectation, and being
+more than boys at sixteen, become less than men at thirty.
+
+In short, the method I recommend can only be detrimental when there
+are but few living forms to copy; for then students, by always
+drawing from one alone, will by habit be taught to overlook
+defects, and mistake deformity for beauty.  But of this there is no
+danger, since the council has determined to supply the academy with
+a variety of subjects; and indeed those laws which they have drawn
+up, and which the secretary will presently read for your
+confirmation, have in some measure precluded me from saying more
+upon this occasion.  Instead, therefore, of offering my advice,
+permit me to indulge my wishes, and express my hope, that this
+institution may answer the expectations of its royal founder; that
+the present age may vie in arts with that of Leo X. and that "the
+dignity of the dying art" (to make use of an expression of Pliny)
+may be revived under the reign of George III.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+
+
+
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution
+of the Prizes, December 11, I769, by the President.
+
+Gentlemen,--I congratulate you on the honour which you have just
+received.  I have the highest opinion of your merits, and could
+wish to show my sense of them in something which possibly may be
+more useful to you than barren praise.  I could wish to lead you
+into such a course of study as may render your future progress
+answerable to your past improvement; and, whilst I applaud you for
+what has been done, remind you of how much yet remains to attain
+perfection.
+
+I flatter myself, that from the long experience I have had, and the
+unceasing assiduity with which I have pursued those studies, in
+which, like you, I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of
+vanity in offering some hints to your consideration.  They are
+indeed in a great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same
+pursuit.  But the history of errors properly managed often shortens
+the road to truth.  And although no method of study that I can
+offer will of itself conduct to excellence, yet it may preserve
+industry from being misapplied.
+
+In speaking to you of the theory of the art, I shall only consider
+it as it has a relation to the method of your studies.
+
+Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall
+address you as having passed through the first of them, which is
+confined to the rudiments, including a facility of drawing any
+object that presents itself, a tolerable readiness in the
+management of colours, and an acquaintance with the most simple and
+obvious rules of composition.
+
+This first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is
+in literature, a general preparation to whatever species of the art
+the student may afterwards choose for his more particular
+application.  The power of drawing, modelling, and using colours is
+very properly called the language of the art; and in this language,
+the honours you have just received prove you to have made no
+inconsiderable progress.
+
+When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree
+of correctness, he must then endeavour to collect subjects for
+expression; to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and varied as
+occasion may require.  He is now in the second period of study, in
+which his business is to learn all that has hitherto been known and
+done.  Having hitherto received instructions from a particular
+master, he is now to consider the art itself as his master.  He
+must extend his capacity to more sublime and general instructions.
+Those perfections which lie scattered among various masters are now
+united in one general idea, which is henceforth to regulate his
+taste and enlarge his imagination.  With a variety of models thus
+before him, he will avoid that narrowness and poverty of conception
+which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master, and will
+cease to follow any favourite where he ceases to excel.  This
+period is, however, still a time of subjection and discipline.
+Though the student will not resign himself blindly to any single
+authority when he may have the advantage of consulting many, he
+must still be afraid of trusting his own judgment, and of deviating
+into any track where he cannot find the footsteps of some former
+master.
+
+The third and last period emancipates the student from subjection
+to any authority but what he shall himself judge to be supported by
+reason.  Confiding now in his own judgment, he will consider and
+separate those different principles to which different modes of
+beauty owe their original.  In the former period he sought only to
+know and combine excellence, wherever it was to be found, into one
+idea of perfection; in this he learns, what requires the most
+attentive survey and the subtle disquisition, to discriminate
+perfections that are incompatible with each other.
+
+He is from this time to regard himself as holding the same rank
+with those masters whom he before obeyed as teachers, and as
+exercising a sort of sovereignty over those rules which have
+hitherto restrained him.  Comparing now no longer the performances
+of art with each other, but examining the art itself by the
+standard of nature, he corrects what is erroneous, supplies what is
+scanty, and adds by his own observation what the industry of his
+predecessors may have yet left wanting to perfection.  Having well
+established his judgment, and stored his memory, he may now without
+fear try the power of his imagination.  The mind that has been thus
+disciplined may be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm, and venture
+to play on the borders of the wildest extravagance.  The habitual
+dignity, which long converse with the greatest minds has imparted
+to him, will display itself in all his attempts, and he will stand
+among his instructors, not as an imitator, but a rival.
+
+These are the different stages of the art.  But as I now address
+myself particularly to those students who have been this day
+rewarded for their happy passage through the first period, I can
+with no propriety suppose they want any help in the initiatory
+studies.  My present design is to direct your view to distant
+excellence, and to show you the readiest path that leads to it.  Of
+this I shall speak with such latitude as may leave the province of
+the professor uninvaded, and shall not anticipate those precepts
+which it is his business to give and your duty to understand.
+
+It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life
+must be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of
+genius.  Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new
+combination of those images which have been previously gathered and
+deposited in the memory.  Nothing can come of nothing.  He who has
+laid up no materials can produce no combinations.
+
+A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is
+always apt to overrate his own abilities, to mistake the most
+trifling excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new
+to him for a new-found country.  If by chance he passes beyond his
+usual limits, he congratulates his own arrival at those regions
+which they who have steered a better course have long left behind
+them.
+
+The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of
+originality:  they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and
+if they are found to differ in anything from their predecessors, it
+is only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits.  The more
+extensive therefore your acquaintance is with the works of those
+who have excelled the more extensive will be your powers of
+invention; and what may appear still more like a paradox, the more
+original will be your conceptions.  But the difficulty on this
+occasion is to determine who ought to be proposed as models of
+excellence, and who ought to be considered as the properest guides.
+
+To a young man just arrived in Italy, many of the present painters
+of that country are ready enough to obtrude their precepts, and to
+offer their own performances as examples of that perfection which
+they affect to recommend.  The modern, however, who recommends
+HIMSELF as a standard, may justly be suspected as ignorant of the
+true end, and unacquainted with the proper object of the art which
+he professes.  To follow such a guide will not only retard the
+student, but mislead him.
+
+On whom, then, can he rely, or who shall show him the path that
+leads to excellence?  The answer is obvious:  Those great masters
+who have travelled the same road with success are the most likely
+to conduct others.  The works of those who have stood the test of
+ages have a claim to that respect and veneration to which no modern
+can pretend.  The duration and stability of their fame is
+sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the
+slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart
+by every tie of sympathetic approbation.
+
+There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great
+men, but how they may be studied to advantage is an inquiry of
+great importance.
+
+Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the
+real dignity of the art, and who rate the works of an artist in
+proportion as they excel, or are defective in the mechanical parts,
+look on theory as something that may enable them to talk but not to
+paint better, and confining themselves entirely to mechanical
+practice, very assiduously toil on in the drudgery of copying, and
+think they make a rapid progress while they faithfully exhibit the
+minutest part of a favourite picture.  This appears to me a very
+tedious, and I think a very erroneous, method of proceeding.  Of
+every large composition, even of those which are most admired, a
+great part may be truly said to be common-place.  This, though it
+takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improvement.  I
+consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the
+student satisfies himself with the appearance of doing something;
+he falls into the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting,
+and of labouring without any determinate object; as it requires no
+effort of the mind, he sleeps over his work; and those powers of
+invention and composition which ought particularly to be called out
+and put in action lie torpid, and lose their energy for want of
+exercise.
+
+It is an observation that all must have made, how incapable those
+are of producing anything of their own who have spent much of their
+time in making finished copies.
+
+To suppose that the complication of powers, and variety of ideas
+necessary to that mind which aspires to the first honours ill the
+art of painting, can be obtained by the frigid contemplation of a
+few single models, is no less absurd than it would be in him who
+wishes to be a poet to imagine that by translating a tragedy he can
+acquire to himself sufficient knowledge of the appearances of
+nature, the operations of the passions, and the incidents of life.
+
+The great use in copying, if it be at all useful, should seem to be
+in learning to colour; yet even colouring will never be perfectly
+attained by servilely copying the mould before you.  An eye
+critically nice can only be formed by observing well-coloured
+pictures with attention:  and by close inspection, and minute
+examination you will discover, at last, the manner of handling, the
+artifices of contrast, glazing, and other expedients, by which good
+colourists have raised the value of their tints, and by which
+nature has been so happily imitated.
+
+I must inform you, however, that old pictures deservedly celebrated
+for their colouring are often so changed by dirt and varnish, that
+we ought not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their
+reputation in the eyes of unexperienced painters, or young
+students.  An artist whose judgment is matured by long observation,
+considers rather what the picture once was, than what it is at
+present.  He has acquired a power by habit of seeing the brilliancy
+of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured.  An exact
+imitation, therefore, of those pictures, is likely to fill the
+student's mind with false opinions, and to send him back a
+colourist of his own formation, with ideas equally remote from
+nature and from art, from the genuine practice of the masters and
+the real appearances of things.
+
+Following these rules, and using these precautions, when you have
+clearly and distinctly learned in what good colouring consists, you
+cannot do better than have recourse to nature herself, who is
+always at hand, and in comparison of whose true splendour the best
+coloured pictures are but faint and feeble.
+
+However, as the practice of copying is not entirely to be excluded,
+since the mechanical practice of painting is learned in some
+measure by it, let those choice parts only be selected which have
+recommended the work to notice.  If its excellence consists in its
+general effect, it would be proper to make slight sketches of the
+machinery and general management of the picture.  Those sketches
+should be kept always by you for the regulation of your style.
+Instead of copying the touches of those great masters, copy only
+their conceptions.  Instead of treading in their footsteps,
+endeavour only to keep the same road.  Labour to invent on their
+general principles and way of thinking.  Possess yourself with
+their spirit.  Consider with yourself how a Michael Angelo or a
+Raffaelle would have treated this subject:  and work yourself into
+a belief that your picture is to be seen and criticised by them
+when completed.  Even an attempt of this kind will rouse your
+powers.
+
+But as mere enthusiasm will carry you but a little way, let me
+recommend a practice that may be equivalent, and will perhaps more
+efficaciously contribute to your advancement, than even the verbal
+corrections of those masters themselves, could they be obtained.
+What I would propose is, that you should enter into a kind of
+competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a companion
+to any picture that you consider as a model.  After you have
+finished your work, place it near the model, and compare them
+carefully together.  You will then not only see, but feel your own
+deficiencies more sensibly than by precepts, or any other means of
+instruction.  The true principles of painting will mingle with your
+thoughts.  Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects, will be certain
+and definitive; and sinking deep into the mind, will not only be
+more just, but more lasting than those presented to you by precepts
+only:  which will, always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined.
+
+This method of comparing your own efforts with those of some great
+master, is indeed a severe and mortifying task, to which none will
+submit, but such as have great views, with fortitude sufficient to
+forego the gratifications of present vanity for future honour.
+When the student has succeeded in some measure to his own
+satisfaction, and has felicitated himself on his success, to go
+voluntarily to a tribunal where he knows his vanity must be
+humbled, and all self-approbation must vanish, requires not only
+great resolution, but great humility.  To him, however, who has the
+Ambition to be a real master, the solid satisfaction which proceeds
+from a consciousness of his advancement (of which seeing his own
+faults is the first step) will very abundantly compensate for the
+mortification of present disappointment.  There is, besides, this
+alleviating circumstance.  Every discovery he makes, every
+acquisition of knowledge he attains, seems to proceed from his own
+sagacity; and thus he acquires a confidence in himself sufficient
+to keep up the resolution of perseverance.
+
+We all must have experienced how lazily, and consequently how
+ineffectually, instruction is received when forced upon the mind by
+others.  Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been
+their own teachers.  We prefer those instructions which we have
+given ourselves, from our affection to the instructor; and they are
+more effectual, from being received into the mind at the very time
+when it is most open and eager to receive them.
+
+With respect to the pictures that you are to choose for your
+models, I could wish that you would take the world's opinion rather
+than your own.  In other words, I would have you choose those of
+established reputation rather than follow your own fancy.  If you
+should not admire them at first, you will, by endeavouring to
+imitate them, find that the world has not been mistaken.
+
+It is not an easy task to point out those various excellences for
+your imitation which he distributed amongst the various schools.
+An endeavour to do this may perhaps be the subject of some future
+discourse.  I will, therefore, at present only recommend a model
+for style in painting, which is a branch of the art more
+immediately necessary to the young student.  Style in painting is
+the same as in writing, a power over materials, whether words or
+colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.  And in
+this Lodovico Carrache (I mean in his best works) appears to me to
+approach the nearest to perfection.  His unaffected breadth of
+light and shadow, the simplicity of colouring, which holding its
+proper rank, does not draw aside the least part of the attention
+from the subject, and the solemn effect of that twilight which
+seems diffused over his pictures, appear to me to correspond with
+grave and dignified subjects, better than the more artificial
+brilliancy of sunshine which enlightens the pictures of Titian.
+Though Tintoret thought that Titian's colouring was the model of
+perfection, and would correspond even with the sublime of Michael
+Angelo; and that if Angelo had coloured like Titian, or Titian
+designed like Angelo, the world would once have had a perfect
+painter.
+
+It is our misfortune, however, that those works of Carrache which I
+would recommend to the student are not often found out of Bologna.
+The "St. Francis in the midst of his Friars," "The
+Transfiguration," "The Birth of St. John the Baptist," "The Calling
+of St. Matthew," the "St. Jerome," the fresco paintings in the
+Zampieri Palace, are all worthy the attention of the student.  And
+I think those who travel would do well to allot a much greater
+portion of their time to that city than it has been hitherto the
+custom to bestow.
+
+In this art, as in others, there are many teachers who profess to
+show the nearest way to excellence, and many expedients have been
+invented by which the toil of study might be saved.  But let no man
+be seduced to idleness by specious promises.  Excellence is never
+granted to man but as the reward of labour.  It argues, indeed, no
+small strength of mind to persevere in habits of industry, without
+the pleasure of perceiving those advances; which, like the hand of
+a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet
+proceed so slowly as to escape observation.  A facility of drawing,
+like that of playing upon a musical instrument, cannot be acquired
+but by an infinite number of acts.  I need not, therefore, enforce
+by many words the necessity of continual application; nor tell you
+that the port-crayon ought to be for ever in your hands.  Various
+methods will occur to you by which this power may be acquired.  I
+would particularly recommend that after your return from the
+academy (where I suppose your attendance to be constant) you would
+endeavour to draw the figure by memory.  I will even venture to
+add, that by perseverance in this custom, you will become able to
+draw the human figure tolerably correct, with as little effort of
+the mind as to trace with a pen the letters of the alphabet.
+
+That this facility is not unattainable, some members in this
+academy give a sufficient proof.  And, be assured, that if this
+power is not acquired whilst you are young, there will be no time
+for it afterwards:  at least, the attempt will be attended with as
+much difficulty as those experience who learn to read or write
+after they have arrived to the age of maturity.
+
+But while I mention the port-crayon as the student's constant
+companion, he must still remember that the pencil is the instrument
+by which he must hope to obtain eminence.  What, therefore, I wish
+to impress upon you is, that whenever an opportunity offers, you
+paint your studies instead of drawing them.  This will give you
+such a facility in using colours, that in time they will arrange
+themselves under the pencil, even without the attention of the hand
+that conducts it.  If one act excluded the other, this advice could
+not with any propriety be given.  But if painting comprises both
+drawing and colouring and if by a short struggle of resolute
+industry the same expedition is attainable in painting as in
+drawing on paper, I cannot see what objection can justly be made to
+the practice; or why that should be done by parts, which may be
+done altogether.
+
+If we turn our eyes to the several schools of painting, and
+consider their respective excellences, we shall find that those who
+excel most in colouring pursued this method.  The Venetian and
+Flemish schools, which owe much of their fame to colouring, have
+enriched the cabinets of the collectors of drawings with very few
+examples.  Those of Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, and the
+Bassans, are in general slight and undetermined.  Their sketches on
+paper are as rude as their pictures are excellent in regard to
+harmony of colouring.  Correggio and Barocci have left few, if any,
+finished drawings behind them.  And in the Flemish school, Rubens
+and Vandyke made their designs for the most part either in colours
+or in chiaroscuro.  It is as common to find studies of the Venetian
+and Flemish painters on canvas, as of the schools of Rome and
+Florence on paper.  Not but that many finished drawings are sold
+under the names of those masters.  Those, however, are undoubtedly
+the productions either of engravers or of their scholars who copied
+their works.
+
+These instructions I have ventured to offer from my own experience;
+but as they deviate widely from received opinions, I offer them
+with diffidence; and when better are suggested, shall retract them
+without regret.
+
+There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by
+the vain, the ignorant, and the idle.  I am not afraid that I shall
+repeat it too often.  You must have no dependence on your own
+genius.  If you have great talents, industry will improve them:  if
+you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their
+deficiency.  Nothing is denied to well-directed labour:  nothing is
+to be obtained without it.  Not to enter into metaphysical
+discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will venture to
+assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition
+eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects
+similar to those which some call the result of natural powers.
+
+Though a man cannot at all times, and in all places, paint or draw,
+yet the mind can prepare itself by laying in proper materials, at
+all times, and in all places.  Both Livy and Plutarch, in
+describing Philopoemen, one of the ablest generals of antiquity,
+have given us a striking picture of a mind always intent on its
+profession, and by assiduity obtaining those excellences which some
+all their lives vainly expect from Nature.  I shall quote the
+passage in Livy at length, as it runs parallel with the practice I
+would recommend to the painter, sculptor, or architect.
+
+"Philopoemen was a man eminent for his sagacity and experience in
+choosing ground, and in leading armies; to which he formed his mind
+by perpetual meditation, in times of peace as well as war.  When,
+in any occasional journey, he came to a straight difficult passage,
+if he was alone, he considered with himself, and if he was in
+company he asked his friends what it would be best to do if in this
+place they had found an enemy, either in the front, or in the rear,
+on the one side, or on the other.  'It might happen,' says he,
+'that the enemy to be opposed might come on drawn up in regular
+lines, or in a tumultuous body, formed only by the nature of the
+place.'  He then considered a little what ground he should take;
+what number of soldiers he should use, and what arms he should give
+them; where he should lodge his carriages, his baggage, and the
+defenceless followers of his camp; how many guards, and of what
+kind, he should send to defend them; and whether it would be better
+to press forward along the pass, or recover by retreat his former
+station:  he would consider likewise where his camp could most
+commodiously be formed; how much ground he should enclose within
+his trenches; where he should have the convenience of water; and
+where he might find plenty of wood and forage; and when he should
+break up his camp on the following day, through what road he could
+most safely pass, and in what form he should dispose his troops.
+With such thoughts and disquisitions he had from his early years so
+exercised his mind, that on these occasions nothing could happen
+which he had not been already accustomed to consider."
+
+I cannot help imagining that I see a promising young painter,
+equally vigilant, whether at home, or abroad in the streets, or in
+the fields.  Every object that presents itself is to him a lesson.
+He regards all nature with a view to his profession; and combines
+her beauties, or corrects her defects.  He examines the countenance
+of men under the influence of passion; and often catches the most
+pleasing hints from subjects of turbulence or deformity.  Even bad
+pictures themselves supply him with useful documents; and, as
+Leonardo da Vinci has observed, he improves upon the fanciful
+images that are sometimes seen in the fire, or are accidentally
+sketched upon a discoloured wall.
+
+The artist who has his mind thus filled with ideas, and his hand
+made expert by practice, works with ease and readiness; whilst he
+who would have you believe that he is waiting for the inspirations
+of genius, is in reality at a loss how to beam, and is at last
+delivered of his monsters with difficulty and pain.
+
+The well-grounded painter, on the contrary, has only maturely to
+consider his subject, and all the mechanical parts of his art
+follow without his exertion, Conscious of the difficulty of
+obtaining what he possesses he makes no pretensions to secrets,
+except those of closer application.  Without conceiving the
+smallest jealousy against others, he is contented that all shall be
+as great as himself who are willing to undergo the same fatigue:
+and as his pre-eminence depends not upon a trick, he is free from
+the painful suspicions of a juggler, who lives in perpetual fear
+lest his trick should be discovered.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+
+
+
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
+of the Prizes, December, 14, 1770, by the President
+
+Gentlemen,--It is not easy to speak with propriety to so many
+students of different ages and different degrees of advancement.
+The mind requires nourishment adapted to its growth; and what may
+have promoted our earlier efforts, might, retard us in our nearer
+approaches to perfection.
+
+The first endeavours of a young painter, as I have remarked in a
+former discourse, must be employed in the attainment of mechanical
+dexterity, and confined to the mere imitation of the object before
+him.  Those who have advanced beyond the rudiments, may, perhaps,
+find advantage in reflecting on the advice which I have likewise
+given them, when I recommended the diligent study of the works of
+our great predecessors; but I at the same time endeavoured to guard
+them against an implicit submission to the authority of any one
+master, however excellent; or by a strict imitation of his manner,
+to preclude ourselves from the abundance and variety of nature.  I
+will now add that nature herself is not to be too closely copied.
+There are excellences in the art of painting, beyond what is
+commonly called the imitation of nature:  and these excellences I
+wish to point out.  The students who, having passed through the
+initiatory exercises, are more advanced in the art, and who, sure
+of their hand, have leisure to exert their understanding, must now
+be told that a mere copier of nature can never produce anything
+great; can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the
+heart of the spectator.
+
+The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive:  instead of
+endeavouring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his
+imitations, he must endeavour to improve them by the grandeur of
+his ideas; instead of seeking praise, by deceiving the superficial
+sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame, by captivating the
+imagination.
+
+The principle now laid down, that the perfection of this art does
+not consist in mere imitation, is far from being new or singular.
+It is, indeed, supported by the general opinion of the enlightened
+part of mankind.  The poets, orators, and rhetoricians of
+antiquity, are continually enforcing this position, that all the
+arts receive their perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to
+what is to be found in individual nature.  They are ever referring
+to the practice of the painters and sculptors of their times,
+particularly Phidias (the favourite artist of antiquity), to
+illustrate their assertions.  As if they could not sufficiently
+express their admiration of his genius by what they knew, they have
+recourse to poetical enthusiasm.  They call it inspiration; a gift
+from heaven.  The artist is supposed to have ascended the celestial
+regions, to furnish his mind with this perfect idea of beauty.
+"He," says Proclus, "who takes for his model such forms as nature
+produces, and confines himself to an exact imitation of them, will
+never attain to what is perfectly beautiful.  For the works of
+nature are full of disproportion, and fall very short of the true
+standard of beauty.  So that Phidias, when he formed his Jupiter,
+did not copy any object ever presents to his sight; but
+contemplated only that image which he had conceived in his mind
+from Homer's description."  And thus Cicero, speaking of the same
+Phidias:  "Neither did this artist," says he, "when he carved the
+image of Jupiter or Minerva, set before him any one human figure as
+a pattern, which he was to copy; but having a more perfect idea of
+beauty fixed in his mind, this he steadily contemplated, and to the
+imitation of this all his skill and labour were directed.
+
+The moderns are not less convinced than the ancients of this
+superior power existing in the art; nor less conscious of its
+effects.  Every language has adopted terms expressive of this
+excellence.  The Gusto grande of the Italians; the Beau ideal of
+the French and the GREAT STYLE, GENIUS, and TASTE among the
+English, are but different appellations of the same thing.  It is
+this intellectual dignity, they say, that ennobles the painter's
+art; that lays the line between him and the mere mechanic; and
+produces those great effects in an instant, which eloquence and
+poetry, by slow and repeated efforts, are scarcely able to attain.
+
+Such is the warmth with which both the ancients and moderns speak
+of this divine principle of the art; but, as I have formerly
+observed, enthusiastic admiration seldom promotes knowledge.
+Though a student by such praise may have his attention roused, and
+a desire excited, of running in this great career, yet it is
+possible that what has been said to excite, may only serve to deter
+him.  He examines his own mind, and perceives there nothing of that
+divine inspiration with which he is told so many others have been
+favoured.  He never travelled to heaven to gather new ideas; and he
+finds himself possessed of no other qualifications than what mere
+common observation and a plain understanding can confer.  Thus he
+becomes gloomy amidst the splendour of figurative declamation, and
+thinks it hopeless to pursue an object which he supposes out of the
+reach of human industry.
+
+But on this, as upon many other occasions, we ought to distinguish
+how much is to be given to enthusiasm, and how much to reason.  We
+ought to allow for, and we ought to commend, that strength of vivid
+expression which is necessary to convey, in its full force, the
+highest sense of the most complete effect of art; taking care at
+the same time not to lose in terms of vague admiration that
+solidity and truth of principle upon which alone we can reason, and
+may be enabled to practise.
+
+It is not easy to define in what this great style consists; nor to
+describe, by words, the proper means of acquiring it, if the mind
+of the student should be at all capable of such an acquisition.
+Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer
+taste and genius.  But though there neither are, nor can be, any
+precise invariable rules for the exercise or the acquisition of
+those great qualities, yet we may as truly say that they always
+operate in proportion to our attention in observing the works of
+nature, to our skill in selecting, and to our care in digesting,
+methodising, and comparing our observations.  There are many
+beauties in our art, that seem, at first, to lie without the reach
+of precept, and yet may easily be reduced to practical principles.
+Experience is all in all; but it is not every one who profits by
+experience; and most people err, not so much from want of capacity
+to find their object, as from not knowing what object to pursue.
+This great ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought in the
+heavens, but upon the earth.  They are about us, and upon every
+side of us.  But the power of discovering what is deformed in
+nature, or in other words, what is particular and uncommon, can be
+acquired only by experience; and the whole beauty and grandeur of
+the art consists, in my opinion, in being able to get above all
+singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of
+every kind.
+
+All the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, upon
+close examination will be found to have their blemishes and
+defects.  The most beautiful forms have something about them like
+weakness, minuteness, or imperfection.  But it is not every eye
+that perceives these blemishes.  It must be an eye long used to the
+contemplation and comparison of these forms; and which, by a long
+habit of observing what any set of objects of the same kind have in
+common, that alone can acquire the power of discerning what each
+wants in particular.  This long laborious comparison should be the
+first study of the painter who aims at the greatest style.  By this
+means, he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects
+nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect.  His
+eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies,
+excrescences, and deformities of things from their general figures,
+he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any
+one original; and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design
+naturally by drawing his figures unlike to any one object.  This
+idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls the
+ideal beauty, is the great leading principle by which works of
+genius are conducted.  By this Phidias acquired his fame.  He
+wrought upon a sober principle what has so much excited the
+enthusiasm of the world; and by this method you, who have courage
+to tread the same path, may acquire equal reputation.
+
+This is the idea which has acquired, and which seems to have a
+right to the epithet of Divine; as it may be said to preside, like
+a supreme judge, over all the productions of nature; appearing to
+be possessed of the will and intention of the Creator, as far as
+they regard the external form of living beings.
+
+When a man once possesses this idea in its perfection, there is no
+danger but that he will he sufficiently warmed by it himself, and
+be able to warm and ravish every one else.
+
+Thus it is from a reiterated experience, and a close comparison of
+the objects in nature, that an artist becomes possessed of the idea
+of that central form, if I may so express it, from which every
+deviation is deformity.  But the investigation of this form I grant
+is painful, and I know but of one method of shortening the road;
+this is, by a careful study of the works of the ancient sculptors;
+who, being indefatigable in the school of nature, have left models
+of that perfect form behind them, which an artist would prefer as
+supremely beautiful, who had spent his whole life in that single
+contemplation.  But if industry carried them thus far, may not you
+also hope for the same reward from the same labour?  We have the
+same school opened to us that was opened to them; for nature denies
+her instructions to none who desire to become her pupils.
+
+To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in each
+species of beings is invariably one, it may be objected that in
+every particular species there are various central forms, which are
+separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably
+beautiful; that in the human figure, for instance, the beauty of
+the Hercules is one, of the gladiator another, of the Apollo
+another, which makes so many different ideas of beauty.
+
+It is true, indeed, that these figures are each perfect in their
+kind, though of different characters and proportions; but still
+none of them is the representation of an individual, but of a
+class.  And as there is one general form, which, as I have said,
+belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of these classes
+there is one common idea and central form, which is the abstract of
+the various individual forms belonging to that class.  Thus, though
+the forms of childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a
+common form in childhood, and a common form in age,--which is the
+more perfect, as it is more remote from all peculiarities.  But I
+must add further, that though the most perfect forms of each of the
+general divisions of the human figure are ideal, and superior to
+any individual form of that class, yet the highest perfection of
+the human figure is not to be found in any one of them.  It is not
+in the Hercules, nor in the gladiator, nor in the Apollo; but in
+that form which is taken from them all, and which partakes equally
+of the activity of the gladiator, of the delicacy of the Apollo,
+and of the muscular strength of the Hercules.  For perfect beauty
+in any species must combine all the characters which are beautiful
+in that species.  It cannot consist in any one to the exclusion of
+the rest:  no one, therefore, must be predominant, that no one may
+be deficient.
+
+The knowledge of these different characters, and the power of
+separating and distinguishing them, is undoubtedly necessary to the
+painter, who is to vary his compositions with figures of various
+forms and proportions, though he is never to lose sight of the
+general idea of perfection in each kind.
+
+There is, likewise, a kind of symmetry or proportion, which may
+properly be said to belong to deformity.  A figure lean or
+corpulent, tall or short, though deviating from beauty, may still
+have a certain union of the various parts, which may contribute to
+make them, on the whole, not unpleasing.  When the artist has by
+diligent attention acquired a clear and distinct idea of beauty and
+symmetry; when he has reduced the variety of nature to the abstract
+idea; his next task will be to become acquainted with the genuine
+habits of nature, as distinguished from those of fashion.  For in
+the same manner, and on the same principles, as he has acquired the
+knowledge of the real forms of nature, distinct from accidental
+deformity, he must endeavour to separate simple chaste nature from
+those adventitious, those affected and forced airs or actions, with
+which she is loaded by modern education.
+
+Perhaps I cannot better explain what I mean than by reminding you
+of what was taught us by the Professor of Anatomy, in respect to
+the natural position and movement of the feet.  He observed that
+the fashion of turning, them outwards was contrary to the intent of
+nature, as might be seen from the structure of the bones, and from
+the weakness that proceeded from that manner of standing.  To this
+we may add the erect position of the head, the projection of the
+chest, the walking with straight knees, and many such actions,
+which are merely the result of fashion, and what nature never
+warranted, as we are sure that we have been taught them when
+children.
+
+I have mentioned but a few of those instances, in which vanity or
+caprice have contrived to distort and disfigure the human form;
+your own recollection will add to these a thousand more of ill-
+understood methods, that have been practised to disguise nature,
+among our dancing-masters, hair-dressers, and tailors, in their
+various schools of deformity.
+
+However the mechanic and ornamental arts may sacrifice to fashion,
+she must be entirely excluded from the art of painting; the painter
+must never mistake this capricious changeling for the genuine
+offspring of nature; he must divest himself of all prejudices in
+favour of his age or country; he must disregard all local and
+temporary ornaments, and look only on those general habits that are
+everywhere and always the same.  He addresses his works to the
+people of every country and every age; he calls upon posterity to
+be his spectators, and says with Zeuxis, In aeternitatem pingo.
+
+The neglect of separating modern fashions from the habits of
+nature, leads to that ridiculous style which has been practised by
+some painters who have given to Grecian heroes the airs and graces
+practised in the court of Louis XIV.; an absurdity almost as great
+as it would have been to have dressed them after the fashion of
+that court.
+
+To avoid this error, however, and to retain the true simplicity of
+nature, is a task more difficult than at first sight it may appear.
+The prejudices in favour of the fashions and customs that we have
+been used to, and which are justly called a second nature, make it
+too often difficult to distinguish that which is natural from that
+which is the result of education; they frequently even give a
+predilection in favour of the artificial mode; and almost every one
+is apt to be guided by those local prejudices who has not chastised
+his mind, and regulated the instability of his affections, by the
+eternal invariable idea of nature.
+
+Here, then, as before, we must have recourse to the ancients as
+instructors.  It is from a careful study of their works that you
+will be enabled to attain to the real simplicity of nature; they
+will suggest many observations, which would probably escape you, if
+your study were confined to nature alone.  And, indeed, I cannot
+help suspecting, that in this instance the ancients had an easier
+task than the moderns.  They had, probably, little or nothing to
+unlearn, as their manners were nearly approaching to this desirable
+simplicity; while the modern artist, before he can see the truth of
+things, is obliged to remove a veil, with which the fashion of the
+times has thought proper to cover her.
+
+Having gone thus far in our investigation of the great style in
+painting; if we now should suppose that the artist has formed the
+true idea of beauty, which enables him to give his works a correct
+and perfect design; if we should suppose also that he has acquired
+a knowledge of the unadulterated habits of nature, which gives him
+simplicity; the rest of his talk is, perhaps, less than is
+generally imagined.  Beauty and simplicity have so great a share in
+the composition of a great style, that he who has acquired them has
+little else to learn.  It must not, indeed, be forgot that there is
+a nobleness of conception, which goes beyond anything in the mere
+exhibition, even of perfect form; there is an art of animating and
+dignifying the figures with intellectual grandeur, of impressing
+the appearance of philosophic wisdom or heroic virtue.  This can
+only be acquired by him that enlarges the sphere of his
+understanding by a variety of knowledge, and warms his imagination
+with the best productions of ancient and modern poetry.
+
+A hand thus exercised, and a mind thus instructed, will bring the
+art to a higher degree of excellence than, perhaps, it has hitherto
+attained in this country.  Such a student will disdain the humbler
+walks of painting, which, however profitable, can never assure him
+a permanent reputation.  He will leave the meaner artist servilely
+to suppose that those are the best pictures which are most likely
+to deceive the spectator.  He will permit the lower painter, like
+the florist or collector of shells, to exhibit the minute
+discriminations which distinguish one object of the same species
+from another; while he, like the philosopher, will consider nature
+in the abstract, and represent in every one of his figures the
+character of its species.
+
+If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no
+doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed:
+but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius
+desires to address; nor will he waste a moment upon these smaller
+objects, which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the
+attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the
+heart.
+
+This is the ambition I could wish to excite in your minds; and the
+object I have had in my view, throughout this discourse, is that
+one great idea which gives to painting its true dignity, that
+entitles it to the name of a Liberal Art, and ranks it as a sister
+of poetry.
+
+It may possibly have happened to many young students whose
+application was sufficient to overcome all difficulties, and whose
+minds were capable of embracing the most extensive views, that they
+have, by a wrong direction originally given, spent their lives in
+the meaner walks of painting, without ever knowing there was a
+nobler to pursue.  "Albert Durer," as Vasari has justly remarked,
+"would probably have been one of the first painters of his age (and
+he lived in an era of great artists) had he been initiated into
+those great principles of the art which were so well understood and
+practised by his contemporaries in Italy.  But unluckily, having
+never seen or heard of any other manner, he considered his own,
+without doubt, as perfect."
+
+As for the various departments of painting, which do not presume to
+make such high pretensions, they are many.  None of them are
+without their merit, though none enter into competition with this
+great universal presiding idea of the art.  The painters who have
+applied themselves more particularly to low and vulgar characters,
+and who express with precision the various shades of passion, as
+they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the works of
+Hogarth) deserve great praise; but as their genius has been
+employed on low and confined subjects, the praise that we give must
+be as limited as its object.  The merrymaking or quarrelling of the
+Boors of Teniers; the same sort of productions of Brouwer, or
+Ostade, are excellent in their kind; and the excellence and its
+praise will be in proportion, as, in those limited subjects and
+peculiar forms, they introduce more or less of the expression of
+those passions, as they appear in general and more enlarged nature.
+This principle may be applied to the battle pieces of Bourgognone,
+the French gallantries of Watteau, and even beyond the exhibition
+of animal life, to the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, and the sea-
+views of Vandervelde.  All these painters have, in general, the
+same right, in different degrees, to the name of a painter, which a
+satirist, an epigrammatist, a sonnetteer, a writer of pastorals, or
+descriptive poetry, has to that of a poet.
+
+In the same rank, and, perhaps, of not so great merit, is the cold
+painter of portraits.  But his correct and just imitation of his
+object has its merit.  Even the painter of still life, whose
+highest ambition is to give a minute representation of every part
+of those low objects, which he sets before him, deserves praise in
+proportion to his attainment; because no part of this excellent
+art, so much the ornament of polished life, is destitute of value
+and use.  These, however, are by no means the views to which the
+mind of the student ought to be PRIMARILY directed.  By aiming at
+better things, if from particular inclination, or from the taste of
+the time and place he lives in, or from necessity, or from failure
+in the highest attempts, he is obliged to descend lower; he will
+bring into the lower sphere of art a grandeur of composition and
+character that will raise and ennoble his works far above their
+natural rank.
+
+A man is not weak, though he may not be able to wield the club of
+Hercules; nor does a man always practise that which he esteems the
+beat; but does that which he can best do.  In moderate attempts,
+there are many walks open to the artist.  But as the idea of beauty
+is of necessity but one, so there can be but one great mode of
+painting; the leading principle of which I have endeavoured to
+explain.
+
+I should be sorry if what is here recommended should be at all
+understood to countenance a careless or indetermined manner of
+painting.  For though the painter is to overlook the accidental
+discriminations of nature, he is to pronounce distinctly, and with
+precision, the general forms of things.  A firm and determined
+outline is one of the characteristics of the great style in
+painting; and, let me add, that he who possesses the knowledge of
+the exact form, that every part of nature ought to have, will be
+fond of expressing that knowledge with correctness and precision in
+all his works.
+
+To conclude:  I have endeavoured to reduce the idea of beauty to
+general principles.  And I had the pleasure to observe that the
+professor of painting proceeded in the same method, when he showed
+you that the artifice of contrast was founded but on one principle.
+And I am convinced that this is the only means of advancing
+science, of clearing the mind from a confused heap of contradictory
+observations, that do but perplex and puzzle the student when he
+compares them, or misguide him if he gives himself up to their
+authority; but bringing them under one general head can alone give
+rest and satisfaction to an inquisitive mind.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+
+
+
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
+of the Prizes, December 10, 1771, by the President.
+
+Gentlemen,--The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the
+mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by
+it.  As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession
+becomes either a liberal art or a mechanical trade.  In the hands
+of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to
+the noblest faculties, In those of another it is reduced to a mere
+matter of ornament, and the painter has but the humble province of
+furnishing our apartments with elegance.
+
+This exertion of mind, which is the only circumstance that truly
+ennobles our art, makes the great distinction between the Roman and
+Venetian schools.  I have formerly observed that perfect form is
+produced by leaving out particularities, and retaining only general
+ideas.  I shall now endeavour to show that this principle, which I
+have proved to be metaphysically just, extends itself to every part
+of the art; that it gives what is called the grand style to
+invention, to composition, to expression, and even to colouring and
+drapery.
+
+Invention in painting does not imply the invention of the subject,
+for that is commonly supplied by the poet or historian.  With
+respect to the choice, no subject can be proper that is not
+generally interesting.  It ought to be either some eminent instance
+of heroic action or heroic suffering.  There must be something
+either in the action or in the object in which men are universally
+concerned, and which powerfully strikes upon the public sympathy.
+
+Strictly speaking, indeed, no subject can be of universal, hardly
+can it be of general concern:  but there are events and characters
+so popularly known in those countries where our art is in request,
+that they may be considered as sufficiently general for all our
+purposes.  Such are the great events of Greek and Roman fable and
+history, which early education and the usual course of reading have
+made familiar and interesting to all Europe, without being degraded
+by the vulgarism of ordinary life in any country.  Such, too, are
+the capital subjects of Scripture history, which, besides their
+general notoriety, become venerable by their connection with our
+religion.
+
+As it is required that the subject selected should be a general
+one, it is no less necessary that it should be kept unembarrassed
+with whatever may any way serve to divide the attention of the
+spectator.  Whenever a story is related, every man forms a picture
+in his mind of the action and the expression of the persons
+employed.  The power of representing this mental picture in canvas
+is what we call invention in a painter.  And as in the conception
+of this ideal picture the mind does not enter into the minute
+peculiarities of the dress, furniture, or scene of action, so when
+the painter comes to represent it he contrives those little
+necessary concomitant circumstances in such a manner that they
+shall strike the spectator no more than they did himself in his
+first conception of the story.
+
+I am very ready to allow that some circumstances of minuteness and
+particularity frequently tend to give an air of truth to a piece,
+and to interest the spectator in an extraordinary manner.  Such
+circumstances, therefore, cannot wholly be rejected; but if there
+be anything in the art which requires peculiar nicety of
+discernment, it is the disposition of these minute circumstantial
+parts which, according to the judgment employed in the choice,
+become so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur.
+
+However, the usual and most dangerous error is on the side of
+minuteness, and, therefore, I think caution most necessary where
+most have failed.  The general idea constitutes real excellence.
+All smaller things, however perfect in their way, are to be
+sacrificed without mercy to the greater.  The painter will not
+inquire what things may be admitted without much censure.  He will
+not think it enough to show that they may be there; he will show
+that they must be there, that their absence would render his
+picture maimed and defective.
+
+Thus, though to the principal group a second or third be added, and
+a second and third mass of light, care must be yet taken that these
+subordinate actions and lights, neither each in particular, nor all
+together, come into any degree of competition with the principal;
+they should make a part of that whole which would be imperfect
+without them.  To every part of painting this rule may be applied.
+Even in portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness,
+consists more in taking the general air than in observing the
+effect similitude of every feature.
+
+Thus figures must have a ground whereon to stand; they must be
+clothed, there must be a background, there must be light and
+shadow; but none of these ought to appear to have taken up any part
+of the artist's attention.  They should be so managed as not even
+to catch that of the spectator.  We know well enough, when we
+analyse a piece, the difficulty and the subtlety with which an
+artist adjusts the background, drapery, and masses of light; we
+know that a considerable part of the grace and effect of his
+picture depends upon them; but this art is so much concealed, even
+to a judicious eye, that no remains of any of these subordinate
+parts occur to memory when the picture is not present.
+
+The great end of the art is to strike the imagination.  The painter
+is, therefore, to make no ostentation of the means by which this is
+done; the spectator is only to feel the result in his bosom.  An
+inferior artist is unwilling that any part of his industry should
+be lost upon the spectator.  He takes as much pains to discover, as
+the greater artist does to conceal, the marks of his subordinate
+assiduity.  In works of the lower kind everything appears studied
+and encumbered; it is all boastful art and open affectation.  The
+ignorant often part from such pictures with wonder in their mouths,
+and indifference in their hearts.
+
+But it is not enough in invention that the artist should restrain
+and keep under all the inferior parts of his subject; he must
+sometimes deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth in
+pursuing the grandeur of his design.
+
+How much the great style exacts from its professors to conceive and
+represent their subjects in a poetical manner, not confined to mere
+matter of fact, may be seen in the cartoons of Raffaelle.  In all
+the pictures in which the painter has represented the apostles, he
+has drawn them with great nobleness; he has given them as much
+dignity as the human figure is capable of receiving yet we are
+expressly told in Scripture they had no such respectable
+appearance; and of St. Paul in particular, we are told by himself,
+that his bodily presence was mean.  Alexander is said to have been
+of a low stature:  a painter ought not so to represent him.
+Agesilaus was low, lame, and of a mean appearance.  None of these
+defects ought to appear in a piece of which he is the hero.  In
+conformity to custom, I call this part of the art history painting;
+it ought to be called poetical, as in reality it is.
+
+All this is not falsifying any fact; it is taking an allowed
+poetical licence.  A painter of portraits retains the individual
+likeness; a painter of history shows the man by showing his
+actions.  A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his
+art.  He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit.
+He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate, and impress the
+mind with great veneration for the character of the hero or saint
+he represents, though he lets us know at the same time that the
+saint was deformed, or the hero lame.  The painter has no other
+means of giving an idea of the dignity of the mind, but by that
+external appearance which grandeur of thought does generally,
+though not always, impress on the countenance, and by that
+correspondence of figure to sentiment and situation which all men
+wish, but cannot command.  The painter, who may in this one
+particular attain with ease what others desire in vain, ought to
+give all that he possibly can, since there are so many
+circumstances of true greatness that he cannot give at all.  He
+cannot make his hero talk like a great man; he must make him look
+like one.  For which reason he ought to be well studied in the
+analysis of those circumstances which constitute dignity of
+appearance in real life.
+
+As in invention, so likewise in, expression, care must be taken not
+to run into particularities, Those expressions alone should be
+given to the figures which their respective situations generally
+produce.  Nor is this enough; each person should also have that
+expression which men of his rank generally exhibit.  The joy or the
+grief of a character of dignity is not to be expressed in the same
+manner as a similar passion in a vulgar face.  Upon this principle
+Bernini, perhaps, may be subject to censure.  This sculptor, in
+many respects admirable, has given a very mean expression to his
+statue of David, who is represented as just going to throw the
+stone from the sling; and in order to give it the expression of
+energy he has made him biting his under-lip.  This expression is
+far from being general, and still farther from being dignified.  He
+might have seen it in an instance or two, and he mistook accident
+for universality.
+
+With respect to colouring, though it may appear at first a part of
+painting merely mechanical, yet it still has its rules, and those
+grounded upon that presiding principle which regulates both the
+great and the little in the study of a painter.  By this, the first
+effect of the picture is produced; and as this is performed the
+spectator, as he walks the gallery, will stop, or pass along.  To
+give a general air of grandeur at first view, all trifling or
+artful play of little lights or an attention to a variety of tints
+is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must reign over the
+whole work; to which a breadth of uniform and simple colour will
+very much contribute.  Grandeur of effect is produced by two
+different ways, which seem entirely opposed to each other.  One is,
+by reducing the colours to little more than chiaroscuro, which was
+often the practice of the Bolognian schools; and the other, by
+making the colours very distinct and forcible, such as we see in
+those of Rome and Florence; but still, the presiding principle of
+both those manners is simplicity.  Certainly, nothing can be more
+simple than monotony, and the distinct blue, red, and yellow
+colours which are seen in the draperies of the Roman and Florentine
+schools, though they have not that kind of harmony which is
+produced by a variety of broken and transparent colours, have that
+effect of grandeur that was intended.  Perhaps these distinct
+colours strike the mind more forcibly, from there not being any
+great union between them; as martial music, which is intended to
+rouse the noble passions, has its effect from the sudden and
+strongly marked transitions from one note to another, which that
+style of music requires; whilst in that which is intended to move
+the softer passions the notes imperceptibly melt into one another.
+
+In the same manner as the historical painter never enters into the
+detail of colours, so neither does he debase his conceptions with
+minute attention to the discriminations of drapery.  It is the
+inferior style that marks the variety of stuffs.  With him, the
+clothing is neither woollen, nor linen, nor silk, satin, or velvet:
+it is drapery; it is nothing more.  The art of disposing the
+foldings of the drapery make a very considerable part of the
+painter's study.  To make it merely natural is a mechanical
+operation, to which neither genius or taste are required; whereas,
+it requires the nicest judgment to dispose the drapery, so that the
+folds have an easy communication, and gracefully follow each other,
+with such natural negligence as to look like the effect of chance,
+and at the same time show the figure under it to the utmost
+advantage.
+
+Carlo Maratti was of opinion that the disposition of drapery was a
+more difficult art than even that of drawing the human figure; that
+a student might be more easily taught the latter than the former;
+as the rules of drapery, he said, could not be so well ascertained
+as those for delineating a correct form, This, perhaps, is a proof
+how willingly we favour our own peculiar excellence.  Carlo Maratti
+is said to have valued himself particularly upon his skill in this
+part of the art yet in him the disposition appears so artificial,
+that he is inferior to Raffaelle, even in that which gave him his
+best claim to reputation
+
+Such is the great principle by which we must be directed in the
+nobler branches of our art.  Upon this principle the Roman, the
+Florentine, the Bolognese schools, have formed their practice; and
+by this they have deservedly obtained the highest praise.  These
+are the three great schools of the world in the epic style.  The
+best of the French school, Poussin, Le Sueur, and Le Brun, have
+formed themselves upon these models, and consequently may be said,
+though Frenchmen, to be a colony from the Roman school.  Next to
+these, but in a very different style of excellence, we may rank the
+Venetian, together with the Flemish and the Dutch schools, all
+professing to depart from the great purposes of painting, and
+catching at applause by inferior qualities.
+
+I am not ignorant that some will censure me for placing the
+Venetians in this inferior class, and many of the warmest admirers
+of painting will think them unjustly degraded; but I wish not to be
+misunderstood.  Though I can by no means allow them to hold any
+rank with the nobler schools of painting, they accomplished
+perfectly the thing they attempted.  But as mere elegance is their
+principal object, as they seem more willing to dazzle than to
+affect, it can be no injury to them to suppose that their practice
+is useful only to its proper end.  But what may heighten the
+elegant may degrade the sublime.  There is a simplicity, and I may
+add, severity, in the great manner, which is, I am afraid, almost
+incompatible with this comparatively sensual style.
+
+Tintoret, Paul Veronese, and others of the Venetian schools, seem
+to have painted with no other purpose than to be admired for their
+skill and expertness in the mechanism of painting, and to make a
+parade of that art which, as I before observed, the higher style
+requires its followers to conceal.
+
+In a conference of the French Academy, at which were present Le
+Brun, Sebastian Bourdon, and all the eminent artists of that age,
+one of the academicians desired to have their opinion on the
+conduct of Paul Veronese, who, though a painter of great
+consideration, had, contrary to the strict rules of art, in his
+picture of Perseus and Andromeda, represented the principal figure
+in shade.  To this question no satisfactory answer was then given.
+But I will venture to say, that if they had considered the class of
+the artist, and ranked him as an ornamental painter, there would
+have been no difficulty in answering:  "It was unreasonable to
+expect what was never intended.  His intention was solely to
+produce an effect of light and Shadow; everything was to be
+sacrificed to that intent, and the capricious composition of that
+picture suited very well with the style he professed."
+
+Young minds are indeed too apt to be captivated by this splendour
+of style, and that of the Venetians will be particularly pleasing;
+for by them all those parts of the art that give pleasure to the
+eye or sense have been cultivated with care, and carried to the
+degree nearest to perfection.  The powers exerted in the mechanical
+part of the art have been called the language of painters; but we
+must say, that it is but poor eloquence which only shows that the
+orator can talk.  Words should be employed as the means, not as the
+end:  language is the instrument, conviction is the work.
+
+The language of painting must indeed be allowed these masters; but
+even in that they have shown more copiousness than choice, and more
+luxuriancy than judgment.  If we consider the uninteresting
+subjects of their invention, or at least the uninteresting manner
+in which they are treated; if we attend to their capricious
+composition, their violent and affected contrasts, whether of
+figures, or of light and shadow, the richness of their drapery,
+and, at the same time, the mean effect which the discrimination of
+stuffs gives to their pictures; if to these we add their total
+inattention to expression, and then reflect on the conceptions and
+the learning of Michael Angelo, or the simplicity of Raffaelle, we
+can no longer dwell on the comparison.  Even in colouring, if we
+compare the quietness and chastity of the Bolognese pencil to the
+bustle and tumult that fills every part of, a Venetian picture,
+without the least attempt to interest the passions, their boasted
+art will appear a mere struggle without effect; an empty tale told
+by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
+
+Such as suppose that the great style might happily be blended with
+the ornamental, that the simple, grave, and majestic dignity of
+Raffaelle could unite with the glow and bustle of a Paulo or
+Tintoret, are totally mistaken.  The principles by which each are
+attained are so contrary to each other, that they seem, in my
+opinion, incompatible, and as impossible to exist together, as to
+unite in the mind at the same time the most sublime ideas and the
+lowest sensuality.
+
+The subjects of the Venetian painters are mostly such as give them
+an opportunity of introducing a great number of figures, such as
+feasts, marriages, and processions, public martyrdoms, or miracles.
+I can easily conceive that Paul Veronese, if he were asked, would
+say that no subject was proper for an historical picture but such
+as admitted at least forty figures; for in a less number, he would
+assert, there could be no opportunity of the painter's showing his
+art in composition, his dexterity of managing and disposing the
+masses of light, and groups of figures, and of introducing a
+variety of Eastern dresses and characters in their rich stuffs.
+
+But the thing is very different with a pupil of the greater
+schools.  Annibale Caracci thought twelve figures sufficient for
+any story:  he conceived that more would contribute to no end but
+to fill space; that they would, be but cold spectators of the
+general action, or, to use his own expression, that they would be
+figures to be let.  Besides, it is impossible for a picture
+composed of so many parts to have that effect, so indispensably
+necessary to grandeur, of one complete whole.  However
+contradictory it may be in geometry, it is true in taste, that many
+little things will not make a great one.  The sublime impresses the
+mind at once with one great idea; it is a single blow:  the elegant
+indeed may be produced by a repetition, by an accumulation of many
+minute circumstances.
+
+However great the difference is between the composition of the
+Venetian and the rest of the Italian schools, there is full as
+great a disparity in the effect of their pictures as produced by
+colours.  And though in this respect the Venetians must be allowed
+extraordinary skill, yet even that skill, as they have employed it,
+will but ill correspond with the great style.  Their colouring is
+not only too brilliant, but, I will venture to say, too harmonious
+to produce that solidity, steadiness, and simplicity of effect
+which heroic subjects require, and which simple or grave colours
+only can give to a work.  That they are to be cautiously studied by
+those who are ambitious of treading the great walk of history is
+confirmed, if it wants confirmation, by the greatest of all
+authorities, Michael Angelo.  This wonderful man, after having seen
+a picture by Titian, told Vasari, who accompanied him, "that he
+liked much his colouring and manner; but then he added, that it was
+a pity the Venetian painters did not learn to draw correctly in
+their early youth, and adopt a better manner of study."
+
+By this it appears that the principal attention of the Venetian
+painters, in the opinion of Michael Angelo, seemed to be engrossed
+by the study of colours, to the neglect of the ideal beauty of
+form, or propriety of expression.  But if general censure was given
+to that school from the sight of a picture of Titian, how much more
+heavily, and more justly, would the censure fall on Paulo Veronese,
+or more especially on Tintoret?  And here I cannot avoid citing
+Vasari's opinion of the style and manner of Tintoret.  "Of all the
+extraordinary geniuses," says he, "that have ever practised the art
+of painting, for wild, capricious, extravagant, and fantastical
+inventions, for furious impetuosity and boldness in the execution
+of his work, there is none like Tintoret; his strange whims are
+even beyond extravagance; and his works seem to be produced rather
+by chance than in consequence of any previous design, as if he
+wanted to convince the world that, the art was a trifle, and of the
+most easy attainment."
+
+For my own part, when I speak of the Venetian painters, I wish to
+be understood to mean Paulo Veronese and Tintoret, to the exclusion
+of Titian; for though his style is not so pure as that of many
+other of the Italian schools, yet there is a sort of senatorial
+dignity about him, which, however awkward in his imitators, seems
+to become him exceedingly.  His portraits alone, from the nobleness
+and simplicity of character which he always gave them, will entitle
+him to the greatest respect, as he undoubtedly stands in the first
+rank in this branch of the art.
+
+It is not with Titian, but with the seducing qualities of the two
+former, that I could wish to caution you, against being too much
+captivated.  These are the persons who may be said to have
+exhausted all the powers of florid eloquence, to debauch the young
+and unexperienced, and have, without doubt, been the cause of
+turning off the attention of the connoisseur and of the patron of
+art, as well as that of the painter, from those higher excellences
+of which the art is capable, and which ought to be required in
+every considerable production.  By them, and their imitators, a
+style merely ornamental has been disseminated throughout all
+Europe.  Rubens carried it to Flanders, Voet to France, and Luca
+Giordano to Spain and Naples.
+
+The Venetian is indeed the most splendid of the schools of
+elegance; and it is not without reason that the best performances
+in this lower school are valued higher than the second-rate
+performances of those above them; for every picture has value when
+it has a decided character, and is excellent in its kind.  But the
+student must take care not to be so much dazzled with this
+splendour as to be tempted to imitate what must ultimately lead
+from perfection.  Poussin, whose eye was always steadily fixed on
+the sublime, has been often heard to say, "That a particular
+attention to colouring was an obstacle to the student in his
+progress to the great end and design of the art; and that he who
+attaches himself to this principal end will acquire by practice a
+reasonably good method of colouring."
+
+Though it be allowed that elaborate harmony of colouring, a
+brilliancy of tints, a soft and gradual transition from one to
+another, present to the eye what an harmonious concert of music
+does to the ear, it must be remembered that painting is not merely
+a gratification of the sight.  Such excellence, though properly
+cultivated where nothing higher than elegance is intended, is weak
+and unworthy of regard, when the work aspires to grandeur and
+sublimity.
+
+The same reasons that have been urged why a mixture of the Venetian
+style cannot improve the great style will hold good in regard to
+the Flemish and Dutch schools.  Indeed, the Flemish school, of
+which Rubens is the head, was formed upon that of the Venetian;
+like them, he took his figures too much from the people before him.
+But it must be allowed in favour of the Venetians that he was more
+gross than they, and carried all their mistaken methods to a far
+greater excess.  In the Venetian school itself, where they all err
+from the same cause, there is a difference in the effect.  The
+difference between Paulo and Bassano seems to be only that one
+introduced Venetian gentlemen into his pictures, and the other the
+boors of the district of Bassano, and called them patriarchs and
+prophets.
+
+The painters of the Dutch school have still more locality.  With
+them, a history piece is properly a portrait of themselves; whether
+they describe the inside or outside of their houses, we have their
+own people engaged in their own peculiar occupations, working or
+drinking, playing or fighting.  The circumstances that enter into a
+picture of this kind are so far from giving a general view of human
+life that they exhibit all the minute particularities of a nation
+differing in several respects from the rest of mankind.  Yet, let
+them have their share of more humble praise.  The painters of this
+school are excellent in their own way; they are only ridiculous
+when they attempt general history on their own narrow principles,
+and debase great events by the meanness of their characters.
+
+Some inferior dexterity, some extraordinary mechanical power, is
+apparently that from which they seek distinction.  Thus, we see,
+that school alone has the custom of representing candle-light, not
+as it really appears to us by night, but red, as it would
+illuminate objects to a spectator by day.  Such tricks, however
+pardonable in the little style, where petty effects are the sole
+end, are inexcusable in the greater, where the attention should
+never be drawn aside by trifles, but should be entirely occupied by
+the subject itself.
+
+The same local principles which characterise the Dutch school
+extend even to their landscape painters; and Rubens himself, who
+has painted many landscapes, has sometimes transgressed in this
+particular.  Their pieces in this way are, I think, always a
+representation of an individual spot, and each in its kind a very
+faithful but very confined portrait.
+
+Claude Lorraine, on the contrary, was convinced that taking nature
+as he found it seldom produced beauty.  His pictures are a
+composition of the various draughts which he has previously made
+from various beautiful scenes and prospects.  However, Rubens in
+some measure has made amends for the deficiency with which he is
+charged; he has contrived to raise and animate his otherwise
+uninteresting views, by introducing a rainbow, storm, or some
+particular accidental effect of light.  That the practice of Claude
+Lorraine, in respect to his choice, is to be adopted by landscape
+painters, in opposition to that of the Flemish and Dutch schools,
+there can be no doubt, as its truth is founded upon the same
+principle as that by which the historical painter acquires perfect
+form.  But whether landscape painting has a right to aspire so far
+as to reject what the painters call accidents of nature is not easy
+to determine.  It is certain Claude Lorraine seldom, if ever,
+availed himself of those accidents; either he thought that such
+peculiarities were contrary to that style of general nature which
+he professed, or that it would catch the attention too strongly,
+and destroy that quietness and repose which he thought necessary to
+that kind of painting.
+
+A portrait painter likewise, when he attempts history, unless he is
+upon his guard, is likely to enter too much into the detail.  He
+too frequently makes his historical heads look like portraits; and
+this was once the custom amongst those old painters who revived the
+art before general ideas were practised or understood.  A history
+painter paints man in general; a portrait painter, a particular
+man, and consequently a defective model.
+
+Thus an habitual practice in the lower exercises of the art will
+prevent many from attaining the greater.  But such of us who move
+in these humbler walks of the profession are not ignorant that, as
+the natural dignity of the subject is less, the more all the little
+ornamental helps are necessary to its embellishment.  It would be
+ridiculous for a painter of domestic scenes, of portraits,
+landscapes, animals, or of still life, to say that he despised
+those qualities which have made the subordinate schools so famous.
+The art of colouring, and the skilful management of light and
+shadow, are essential requisites in his confined labours.  If we
+descend still lower, what is the painter of fruit and flowers
+without the utmost art in colouring, and what the painters call
+handling; that is, a lightness of pencil that implies great
+practice, and gives the appearance of being done with ease?  Some
+here, I believe, must remember a flower-painter whose boast it was
+that he scorned to paint for the million; no, he professed to paint
+in the true Italian taste; and despising the crowd, called
+strenuously upon the few to admire him.  His idea of the Italian
+taste was to paint as black and dirty as he could, and to leave all
+clearness and brilliancy of colouring to those who were fonder of
+money than of immortality.  The consequence was such as might be
+expected.  For these pretty excellences are here essential
+beauties; and without this merit the artist's work will be more
+short-lived than the objects of his imitation.
+
+From what has been advanced, we must now be convinced that there
+are two distinct styles in history painting:  the grand, and the
+splendid or ornamental.
+
+The great style stands alone, and does not require, perhaps does
+not so well admit, any addition from inferior beauties.  The
+ornamental style also possesses its own peculiar merit.  However,
+though the union of the two may make a sort of composite style, yet
+that style is likely to be more imperfect than either of those
+which go to its composition.  Both kinds have merit, and may be
+excellent though in different ranks, if uniformity be preserved,
+and the general and particular ideas of nature be not mixed.  Even
+the meanest of them is difficult enough to attain; and the first
+place being already occupied by the great artists in either
+department, some of those who followed thought there was less room
+for them, and feeling the impulse of ambition and the desire of
+novelty, and being at the same time perhaps willing to take the
+shortest way, they endeavoured to make for themselves a place
+between both.  This they have effected by forming a union of the
+different orders.  But as the grave and majestic style would suffer
+by a union with the florid and gay, so also has the Venetian
+ornament in some respect been injured by attempting an alliance
+with simplicity.
+
+It may be asserted that the great style is always more or less
+contaminated by any meaner mixture.  But it happens in a few
+instances that the lower may be improved by borrowing from the
+grand.  Thus, if a portrait painter is desirous to raise and
+improve his subject, he has no other means than by approaching it
+to a general idea.  He leaves out all the minute breaks and
+peculiarities in the face, and changes the dress from a temporary
+fashion to one more permanent, which has annexed to it no ideas of
+meanness from its being familiar to us.  But if an exact
+resemblance of an individual be considered as the sole object to be
+aimed at, the portrait painter will be apt to lose more than he
+gains by the acquired dignity taken from general nature.  It is
+very difficult to ennoble the character of a countenance but at the
+expense of the likeness, which is what is most generally required
+by such as sit to the painter.
+
+Of those who have practised the composite style, and have succeeded
+in this perilous attempt, perhaps the foremost is Correggio.  His
+style is founded upon modern grace and elegance, to which is super,
+added something of the simplicity of the grand style.  A breadth of
+light and colour, the general ideas of the drapery, an
+uninterrupted flow of outline, all conspire to this effect.  Next
+him (perhaps equal to him) Parmegiano has dignified the genteelness
+of modern effeminacy by uniting it with the simplicity of the
+ancients and the grandeur and severity of Michael Angelo.  It must
+be confessed, however, that these two extraordinary men, by
+endeavouring to give the utmost degree of grace, have sometimes,
+perhaps, exceeded its boundaries, and have fallen into the most
+hateful of all hateful qualities, affectation.  Indeed, it is the
+peculiar characteristic of men of genius to be afraid of coldness
+and insipidity, from which they think they never can be too far
+removed.  It particularly happens to these great masters of grace
+and elegance.  They often boldly drive on to the very verge of
+ridicule; the spectator is alarmed, but at the same time admires
+their vigour and intrepidity.
+
+
+Strange graces still, and stranger flights they had,
+. . .
+Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create
+Ae when they touch'd the brink of all we hate.
+
+
+The errors of genius, however, are pardonable, and none even of the
+more exalted painters are wholly free from them; but they have
+taught us, by the rectitude of their general practice, to correct
+their own affected or accidental deviation.  The very first have
+not been always upon their guard, and perhaps there is not a fault
+but what may take shelter under the most venerable authorities; yet
+that style only is perfect in which the noblest principles are
+uniformly pursued; and those masters only are entitled to the first
+rank in, our estimation who have enlarged the boundaries of their
+art, and have raised it to its highest dignity, by exhibiting the
+general ideas of nature.
+
+On the whole, it seems to me that there is but one presiding
+principle which regulates and gives stability to every art.  The
+works, whether of poets, painters, moralists, or historians, which
+are built upon general nature, live for ever; while those which
+depend for their existence on particular customs and habits, a
+partial view of nature, or the fluctuation of fashion, can only be
+coeval with that which first raised them from obscurity.  Present
+time and future maybe considered as rivals, and he who solicits the
+one must expect to be discountenanced by the other.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+
+
+
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
+of the Prizes, December 10, 1772, by the President.
+
+Gentlemen,--I purpose to carry on in this discourse the subject
+which I began in my last.  It was my wish upon that occasion to
+incite you to pursue the higher excellences of the art.  But I fear
+that in this particular I have been misunderstood.  Some are ready
+to imagine, when any of their favourite acquirements in the art are
+properly classed, that they are utterly disgraced.  This is a very
+great mistake:  nothing has its proper lustre but in its proper
+place.  That which is most worthy of esteem in its allotted sphere
+becomes an object, not of respect, but of derision, when it is
+forced into a higher, to which it is not suited; and there it
+becomes doubly a source of disorder, by occupying a situation which
+is not natural to it, and by putting down from the first place what
+is in reality of too much magnitude to become with grace and
+proportion that subordinate station, to which something of less
+value would be much better suited.
+
+My advice in a word is this:  keep your principal attention fixed
+upon the higher excellences.  If you compass them and compass
+nothing more, you are still in the first class.  We may regret the
+innumerable beauties which you may want:  you may be very
+imperfect:  but still, you are an imperfect person of the highest
+order.
+
+If, when you have got thus far, you can add any, or all, of the
+subordinate qualifications, it is my wish and advice that you
+should not neglect them.
+
+But this is as much a matter of circumspection and caution at least
+as of eagerness and pursuit.
+
+The mind is apt to be distracted by a multiplicity of pursuits; and
+that scale of perfection, which I wish always to be preserved, is
+in the greatest danger of being totally disordered, and even
+inverted.
+
+Some excellences bear to be united, and are improved by union,
+others are of a discordant nature; and the attempt to join them
+only produces a harsher jarring of incongruent principles.
+
+The attempt to unite contrary excellences (of form, for instance)
+in a single figure, can never escape degenerating into the
+monstrous, but by sinking into the insipid, taking away its marked
+character, and weakening its expression.
+
+This remark is true to a certain degree with regard to the
+passions.  If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in its
+most perfect state, you cannot express the passions, which produce
+(all of them) distortion and deformity, more or less, in the most
+beautiful faces.
+
+Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his ideas and
+his powers, or in attempting to preserve beauty where it could not
+be preserved has in this respect succeeded very ill.  His figures
+are often engaged in subjects that required great expression:  yet
+his "Judith and Holofernes," the "Daughter of Herodias with the
+Baptist's Head," the "Andromeda," and even the "Mothers of the
+Innocents," have little more expression than his "Venus attired by
+the Graces."
+
+Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many writers on our art,
+who, not being of the profession, and consequently not knowing what
+can or what cannot be done, have been very liberal of absurd
+praises in their descriptions of favourite works.  They always find
+in them what they are resolved to find.  They praise excellences
+that can hardly exist together, and above all things are fond of
+describing with great exactness the expression of a mixed passion,
+which more particularly appears to me out of the reach of our art.
+
+Such are many disquisitions which I have read on some of the
+cartoons and other pictures of Raffaelle, where the critics have
+described their own imagination; or indeed where the excellent
+master himself may have attempted this expression of passions above
+the powers of the art; and has, therefore, by an indistinct and
+imperfect marking, left room for every imagination, with equal
+probability to find a passion of his own.  What has been, and what
+can be done in the art, is sufficiently difficult; we need not be
+mortified or discouraged for not being able to execute the
+conceptions of a romantic imagination.  Art has its boundaries,
+though imagination has none.  We can easily, like the ancients,
+suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers and
+perfections which the subordinate Deities were endowed with
+separately.  Yet, when they employed their art to represent him,
+they confined his character to majesty alone.  Pliny, therefore,
+though we are under great obligations to him for the information he
+has given us in relation to the works of the ancient artists, is
+very frequently wrong when he speaks of them, which he does very
+often in the style of many of our modern connoisseurs.  He observes
+that in a statue of Paris, by Fuphranor, you might discover at the
+same time three different characters; the dignity of a judge of the
+goddesses, the lover of Helen, and the conqueror of Achilles.  A
+statue in which you endeavour to unite stately dignity, youthful
+elegance, and stern valour, must surely possess none of these to
+any eminent degree.
+
+From hence it appears that there is much difficulty as well as
+danger in an endeavour to concentrate upon a single subject those
+various powers which, rising from different points, naturally move
+in different directions.
+
+The summit of excellence seems to be an assemblage of contrary
+qualities, but mixed, in such proportions, that no one part is
+found to counteract the other.  How hard this is to be attained in
+every art, those only know who have made the greatest progress in
+their respective professions.
+
+To conclude what I have to say on this part of the subject, which I
+think of great importance, I wish you to understand that I do not
+discourage the younger students from the noble attempt of uniting
+all the excellences of art, but to make them aware that, besides
+the difficulties which attend every arduous attempt, there is a
+peculiar difficulty in the choice of the excellences which ought to
+be united; I wish you to attend to this, that you may try
+yourselves, whenever you are capable of that trial, what you can,
+and what you cannot do:  and that, instead of dissipating your
+natural faculties over the immense field of possible excellence,
+you may choose some particular walk in which you may exercise all
+your powers, in order each of you to be the first in his way.  If
+any man shall be master of such a transcendant, commanding, and
+ductile genius, as to enable him to rise to the highest, and to
+stoop to the lowest flights of art, and to sweep over all of them
+unobstructed and secure, he is fitter to give example than to
+receive instruction.
+
+Having said thus much on the union of excellences, I will next say
+something of the subordination in which various excellences ought
+to be kept.
+
+I am of opinion that the ornamental style, which in my discourse of
+last year I cautioned you against considering as principal, may not
+be wholly unworthy the attention of those who aim even at the grand
+style; when it is properly placed and properly reduced.
+
+But this study will be used with far better effect, if its
+principles are employed in softening the harshness and mitigating
+the rigour of the great style, than if in attempt to stand forward
+with any pretensions of its own to positive and original
+excellence.
+
+It was thus Lodovico Caracci, whose example I formerly recommended
+to you, employed it.  He was acquainted with the works both of
+Correggio and the Venetian painters, and knew the principles by
+which they produced those pleasing effects which at the first
+glance prepossess us so much in their favour; but he took only as
+much from each as would embellish, but not overpower, that manly
+strength and energy of style, which is his peculiar character.
+
+Since I have already expatiated so largely in my former discourse,
+and in my present, upon the styles and characters of painting, it
+will not be at all unsuitable to my subject if I mention to you
+some particulars relative to the leading principles, and capital
+works of those who excelled in the great style, that I may bring
+you from abstraction nearer to practice, and by exemplifying the
+propositions which I have laid down, enable you to understand more
+clearly what I would enforce.
+
+The principal works of modern art are in fresco, a mode of painting
+which excludes attention to minute elegancies:  yet these works in
+fresco are the productions on which the fame of the greatest
+masters depend:  such are the pictures of Michael Angelo and
+Raffaelle in the Vatican, to which we may add the cartoons, which,
+though not strictly to be called fresco, yet may be put under that
+denomination; and such are the works of Giulio Romano at Mantua.
+If these performances were destroyed, with them would be lost the
+best part of the reputation of those illustrious painters, for
+these are justly considered as the greatest efforts of our art
+which the world can boast.  To these, therefore, we should
+principally direct our attention for higher excellences.  As for
+the lower arts, as they have been once discovered, they may be
+easily attained by those possessed of the former.
+
+Raffaelle, who stands in general foremost of the first painters,
+owes his reputation, as I have observed, to his excellence in the
+higher parts of the art.  Therefore, his works in fresco ought to
+be the first object of our study and attention.  His easel-works
+stand in a lower degree of estimation; for though he continually,
+to the day of his death, embellished his works more and more with
+the addition of these lower ornaments, which entirely make the
+merit of some, yet he never arrived at such perfection as to make
+him an object of imitation.  He never was able to conquer perfectly
+that dryness, or even littleness of manner, which he inherited from
+his master.  He never acquired that nicety of taste in colours,
+that breadth of light and shadow, that art and management of
+uniting light, to light, and shadow to shadow, so as to make the
+object rise out of the ground with that plenitude of effect so much
+admired in the works of Correggio.  When he painted in oil, his
+hand seemed to be so cramped and confined that he not only lost
+that facility and spirit, but I think even that correctness of
+form, which is so perfect and admirable in his fresco works.  I do
+not recollect any pictures of his of this kind, except perhaps the
+"Transfiguration," in which there are not some parts that appear to
+be even feebly drawn.  That this is not a necessary attendant on
+oil-painting, we have abundant instances in more modern painters.
+Lodovico Caracci, for instance, preserved in his works in oil the
+same spirit, vigour, and correctness, which he had in fresco.  I
+have no desire to degrade Raffaelle from the high rank which he
+deservedly holds:  but by comparing him with himself, he does not
+appear to me to be the same man in oil as in fresco.
+
+From those who have ambition to tread in this great walk of the
+art, Michael Angelo claims the next attention.  He did not possess
+so many excellences as Raffaelle, but those he had were of the
+highest kind.  He considered the art as consisting of little more
+than what may be attained by sculpture, correctness of form, and
+energy of character.  We ought not to expect more than an artist
+intends in his work.  He never attempted those lesser elegancies
+and graces in the art.  Vasari says, he never painted but one
+picture in oil, and resolved never to paint another, saying it was
+an employment only fit for women and children.
+
+If any man had a right to look down upon the lower accomplishments
+as beneath his attention, it was certainly Michael Angelo:  nor can
+it be thought strange that such a mind should have slighted or have
+been withheld from paying due attention to all those graces and
+embellishments of art which have diffused such lustre over the
+works of other painters.
+
+It must be acknowledged likewise, that together with these, which
+we wish he had more attended to, he has rejected all the false
+though specious ornaments which disgrace the works even of the most
+esteemed artists; and I will venture to say, that when those higher
+excellences are more known and cultivated by the artists and the
+patrons of arts, his fame and credit will increase with our
+increasing knowledge.  His name will then be held in the same
+veneration as it was in the enlightened age of Leo the Tenth:  and
+it is remarkable that the reputation of this truly great man has
+been continually declining as the art itself has declined.  For I
+must remark to you, that it has long been much on the decline, and
+that our only hope of its revival will consist in your being
+thoroughly sensible of its depravation and decay.  It is to Michael
+Angelo that we owe even the existence of Raffaelle; it is to him
+Raffaelle owes the grandeur of his style.  He was taught by him to
+elevate his thoughts, and to conceive his subjects with dignity.
+His genius, however, formed to blaze and to shine, might, like fire
+in combustible matter, for ever have lain dormant if it had not
+caught a spark by its contact with Michael Angelo:  and though it
+never burst out with that extraordinary heat and vehemence, yet it
+must be acknowledged to be a more pure, regular, and chaste flame.
+Though our judgment will upon the whole decide in favour of
+Raffaelle:  yet he never takes that firm hold and entire possession
+of the mind in such a manner as to desire nothing else, and feel
+nothing wanting.  The effect of the capital works of Michael Angelo
+perfectly correspond to what Bourchardon said he felt from reading
+Homer.  His whole frame appeared to himself to be enlarged, and all
+nature which surrounded him diminished to atoms.
+
+If we put those great artists in a light of comparison with each
+other, Raffaelle had more taste and fancy, Michael Angelo more
+genius and imagination.  The one excelled in beauty, the other in
+energy.  Michael Angelo has more of the poetical inspiration; his
+ideas are vast and sublime; his people are a superior order of
+beings; there is nothing about them, nothing in the air of their
+actions or their attitudes, or the style and cast of their very
+limbs or features, that puts one in mind of their belonging, to our
+own species.  Raffaelle's imagination is not so elevated; his
+figures are not so much disjoined from our own diminutive race of
+beings, though his ideas are chaste, noble, and of great conformity
+to their subjects.  Michael Angelo's works have a strong, peculiar,
+and marked character; they seem to proceed from his own mind
+entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant, that he never needed,
+or seemed to disdain, to look abroad for foreign help.  Raffaelle's
+materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is his
+own.  The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the
+propriety, beauty, and majesty of his characters, his judicious
+contrivance of his composition, correctness of drawing, purity of
+taste, and the skilful accommodation of other men's conceptions to
+his own purpose.  Nobody excelled him in that judgment, with which
+he united to his own observations on nature the energy of Michael
+Angelo, and the beauty and simplicity of the antique.  To the
+question, therefore, which ought to hold the first rank, Raffaelle
+or Michael Angelo, it must be answered, that if it is to be given
+to him who possessed a greater combination of the higher qualities
+of the art than any other man, there is no doubt but Raffaelle is
+the first.  But if, according to Longinus, the sublime, being the
+highest excellence that human composition can attain to, abundantly
+compensates the absence of every other beauty, and atones for all
+other deficiencies, then Michael Angelo demands the preference.
+
+These two extraordinary men carried some of the higher excellences
+of the art to a greater degree of perfection than probably they
+ever arrived at before.  They certainly have not been excelled, nor
+equalled since.  Many of their successors were induced to leave
+this great road as a beaten path, endeavouring to surprise and
+please by something uncommon or new.  When this desire after
+novelty has proceeded from mere idleness or caprice, it is not
+worth the trouble of criticism; but when it has been in consequence
+of a busy mind of a peculiar complexion, it is always striking and
+interesting, never insipid.
+
+Such is the great style as it appears in those who possessed it at
+its height; in this, search after novelty in conception or in
+treating the subject has no place.
+
+But there is another style, which, though inferior to the former,
+has still great merit, because it shows that those who cultivated
+it were men of lively and vigorous imagination.  This I call the
+original or characteristical style; this, being less referred to
+any true architype existing either in general or particular nature,
+must be supported by the painter's consistency in the principles he
+has assumed, and in the union and harmony of his whole design.  The
+excellency of every style, but I think of the subordinate ones more
+especially, will very much depend on preserving that union and
+harmony between all the component parts, that they appear to hang
+well together, as if the whole proceeded from one mind.  It is in
+the works of art, as in the characters of men.  The faults or
+defects of some men seem to become them when they appear to be the
+natural growth, and of a piece with the rest of their character.  A
+faithful picture of a mind, though it be not of the most elevated
+kind, though it be irregular, wild, and incorrect, yet if it be
+marked with that spirit and firmness which characterises works of
+genius, will claim attention, and be more striking than a
+combination of excellences that do not seem to hang well together,
+or we may say than a work that possesses even all excellences, but
+those in a moderate degree.
+
+One of the strongest marked characters of this kind, which must be
+allowed to be subordinate to the great style, is that of Salvator
+Rosa.  He gives us a peculiar cast of nature, which, though void of
+all grace, elegance, and simplicity; though it has nothing of that
+elevation and dignity which belongs to the grand style, yet has
+that sort of dignity which belongs to savage and uncultivated
+nature.  But what is most to be admired in him is the perfect
+correspondence which he observed between the subjects which he
+chose, and his manner of treating them.  Everything is of a piece:
+his rocks, trees, sky, even to his handling have the same rude and
+wild character which animates his figures.
+
+To him we may contrast the character of Carlo Maratti, who, in my
+own opinion, had no great vigour of mind or strength of original
+genius.  He rarely seizes the imagination by exhibiting the higher
+excellences, nor does he captivate us by that originality which
+attends the painter who thinks for himself.  He knew and practised
+all the rules of art, and from a composition of Raffaelle, Caracci,
+and Guido, made up a style, of which its only fault was, that it
+had no manifest defects and no striking beauties, and that the
+principles of his composition are never blended together, so as to
+form one uniform body, original in its kind, or excellent in any
+view.
+
+I will mention two other painters who, though entirely dissimilar,
+yet by being each consistent with himself, and possessing a manner
+entirely his own, have both gained reputation, though for very
+opposite accomplishments.
+
+The painters I mean are Rubens and Poussin.  Rubens I mention in
+this place, as I think him a remarkable instance of the same mind
+being seen in all the various parts of the art.  The whole is so
+much of a piece that one can scarce be brought to believe but that
+if any one of them had been more correct and perfect, his works
+would not be so complete as they now appear.  If we should allow a
+greater purity and correctness of drawing, his want of simplicity
+in composition, colouring, and drapery would appear more gross.
+
+In his composition his art is too apparent.  His figures have
+expression, and act with energy, but without simplicity or dignity.
+His colouring, in which he is eminently skilled, is,
+notwithstanding, too much of what we call tinted.  Throughout the
+whole of his works there is a proportionable want of that nicety of
+distinction and elegance of mind which is required in the higher
+walks of painting; and to this want it may be in some degree
+ascribed that those qualities which make the excellency of this
+subordinate style appear in him with their greatest lustre.
+Indeed, the facility with which he invented, the richness of his
+composition, the luxuriant harmony and brilliancy of his colouring,
+so dazzle the eye, that whilst his works continue before us we
+cannot help thinking that all his deficiencies are fully supplied.
+
+Opposed to this florid, careless, loose, and inaccurate style, that
+of the simple, careful, pure, and correct style of Poussin seems to
+be a complete contrast.
+
+Yet however opposite their characters, in one thing they agreed,
+both of them having a perfect correspondence between all the parts
+of their respective manners.
+
+One is not sure but every alteration of what is considered as
+defective in either, would destroy the effect of the whole.
+
+Poussin lived and conversed with the ancient statues so long, that
+he may be said to be better acquainted with then than with the
+people who were about him.  I have often thought that he carried
+his veneration for them so far as to wish to give his works the air
+of ancient paintings.  It is certain he copied some of the antique
+paintings, particularly the "Marriage in the Albrobrandini Palace
+at Rome," which I believe to be the best relique of those remote
+ages that has yet been found.
+
+No works of any modern has so much of the air of antique painting
+as those of Poussin.  His best performances have a remarkable
+dryness of manner, which, though by no means to be recommended for
+imitation, yet seems perfectly correspondent to that ancient
+simplicity which distinguishes his style.  Like Polidoro he studied
+them so much, that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way,
+and seemed to know perfectly the actions and gestures they would
+use on every occasion.
+
+Poussin in the latter part of his life changed from his dry manner
+to one much softer and richer, where there is a greater union
+between the figures and the ground, such as the "Seven Sacraments"
+in the Duke of Orleans' collection; but neither these, nor any in
+this manner, are at all comparable to many in his dry manner which
+we have in England.
+
+The favourite subjects of Poussin were ancient fables; and no
+painter was ever better qualified to paint such subjects, not only
+from his being eminently skilled in the knowledge of ceremonies,
+customs, and habits of the ancients, but from his being so well
+acquainted with the different characters which those who invented
+them gave their allegorical figures.  Though Rubens has shown great
+fancy in his Satyrs, Silenuses, and Fauns, yet they are not that
+distinct separate class of beings which is carefully exhibited by
+the ancients and by Poussin.  Certainly when such subjects of
+antiquity are represented, nothing in the picture ought to remind
+us of modern times.  The mind is thrown back into antiquity, and
+nothing ought to be introduced that may tend to awaken it from the
+illusion.
+
+Poussin seemed to think that the style and the language in which
+such stories are told is not the worse for preserving some relish
+of the old way of painting which seemed to give a general
+uniformity to the whole, so that the mind was thrown back into
+antiquity not only by the subject, but the execution.
+
+If Poussin, in imitation of the ancients, represents Apollo driving
+his chariot out of the sea by way of representing the sun rising,
+if he personifies lakes and rivers, it is no ways offensive in him;
+but seems perfectly of a piece with the general air of the picture.
+On the contrary, if the figures which people his pictures had a
+modern air or countenance, if they appeared like our countrymen, if
+the draperies were like cloth or silk of our manufacture, if the
+landscape had the appearance of a modern view, how ridiculous would
+Apollo appear instead of the sun, an old man or a nymph with an urn
+instead of a river or lake.
+
+I cannot avoid mentioning here a circumstance in portrait painting
+which may help to confirm what has been said.
+
+When a portrait is painted in the historical style, as it is
+neither an exact minute representation of an individual nor
+completely ideal, every circumstance ought to correspond to this
+mixture.  The simplicity of the antique air and attitude, however
+much to be admired, is ridiculous when joined to a figure in a
+modern dress.  It is not to my purpose to enter into the question
+at present, whether this mixed style ought to be adopted or not;
+yet if it is chosen it is necessary it should be complete and all
+of a piece:  the difference of stuffs, for instance, which make the
+clothing, should be distinguished in the same degree as the head
+deviates from a general idea.
+
+Without this union, which I have so often recommended, a work can
+have no marked and determined character, which is the peculiar and
+constant evidence of genius.  But when this is accomplished to a
+high degree, it becomes in some sort a rival to that style which we
+have fixed as the highest.
+
+Thus I have given a sketch of the characters of Rubens and Salvator
+Rosa, as they appear to me to have the greatest uniformity of mind
+throughout their whole work.  But we may add to these, all these
+artists who are at the head of the class, and have had a school of
+imitators from Michael Angelo down to Watteau.  Upon the whole it
+appears that setting aside the ornamental style, there are two
+different paths, either of which a student may take without
+degrading the dignity of his art.  The first is to combine the
+higher excellences and embellish them to the greatest advantage.
+The other is to carry one of these excellences to the highest
+degree.  But those who possess neither must be classed with them,
+who, as Shakespeare says, are men of no mark or likelihood.
+
+I inculcate as frequently as I can your forming yourselves upon
+great principles and great models.  Your time will be much misspent
+in every other pursuit.  Small excellences should be viewed, not
+studied; they ought to be viewed, because nothing ought to escape a
+painter's observation, but for no other reason.
+
+There is another caution which I wish to give you.  Be as select in
+those whom you endeavour to please, as in those whom you endeavour
+to imitate.  Without the love of fame you can never do anything
+excellent; but by an excessive and undistinguishing thirst after
+it, you will come to have vulgar views; you will degrade your
+style; and your taste will be entirely corrupted.  It is certain
+that the lowest style will be the most popular, as it falls within
+the compass of ignorance itself; and the vulgar will always be
+pleased with what is natural in the confined and misunderstood
+sense of the word.
+
+One would wish that such depravation of taste should be
+counteracted, with such manly pride as Euripides expressed to the
+Athenians, who criticised his works, "I do not compose," says he,
+"my works in order to be corrected by you, but to instruct you."
+It is true, to have a right to speak thus, a man must be a
+Euripides.  However, thus much may be allowed, that when an artist
+is sure that he is upon firm ground, supported by the authority and
+practice of his predecessors of the greatest reputation, he may
+then assume the boldness and intrepidity of genius; at any rate, he
+must not be tempted out of the right path by any tide of popularity
+that always accompanies the lower styles of painting.
+
+I mention this, because our exhibitions, that produce such
+admirable effects by nourishing emulation, and calling out genius,
+have also a mischievous tendency by seducing the painter to an
+ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people
+who resort to them.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+
+
+
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
+of the Prizes, December 10, 1774, by the President.
+
+Gentlemen,--When I have taken the liberty of addressing you on the
+course and order of your studies, I never proposed to enter into a
+minute detail of the art.  This I have always left to the several
+professors, who pursue the end of our institution with the highest
+honour to themselves, and with the greatest advantage to the
+students.
+
+My purpose in the discourses I have held in the Academy is to lay
+down certain general ideas, which seem to me proper for the
+formation of a sound taste; principles necessary to guard the
+pupils against those errors into which the sanguine temper common
+at their time of life, has a tendency to lead them, and which have
+rendered abortive the hopes of so many successions of promising
+young men in all parts of Europe.
+
+I wish, also, to intercept and suppress those prejudices which
+particularly prevail when the mechanism of painting is come to its
+perfection, and which when they do prevail are certain to prevail
+to the utter destruction of the higher and more valuable parts of
+this literate and liberal profession.
+
+These two have been my principal purposes; they are still as much
+my concern as ever; and if I repeat my own ideas on the subject,
+you who know how fast mistake and prejudice, when neglected, gain
+ground upon truth and reason, will easily excuse me.  I only
+attempt to set the same thing in the greatest variety of lights.
+
+The subject of this discourse will be imitation, as far as a
+painter is concerned in it.  By imitation I do not mean imitation
+in its largest sense, but simply the following of other masters,
+and the advantage to be drawn from the study of their works.
+
+Those who have undertaken to write on our art, and have represented
+it as a kind of inspiration, as a gift bestowed upon peculiar
+favourites at their birth, seem to ensure a much more favourable
+disposition from their readers, and have a much more captivating
+and liberal air, than he who goes about to examine, coldly, whether
+there are any means by which this art may be acquired; how our mind
+may be strengthened and expanded, and what guides will show the way
+to eminence.
+
+It is very natural for those who are unacquainted with the cause of
+anything extraordinary to be astonished at the effect, and to
+consider it as a kind of magic.  They, who have never observed the
+gradation by which art is acquired, who see only what is the full
+result of long labour and application of an infinite number, and
+infinite variety of acts, are apt to conclude from their entire
+inability to do the same at once, that it is not only inaccessible
+to themselves, but can be done by those only who have some gift of
+the nature of inspiration bestowed upon them.
+
+The travellers into the East tell us that when the ignorant
+inhabitants of these countries are asked concerning the ruins of
+stately edifices yet remaining amongst them, the melancholy
+monuments of their former grandeur and long-lost science, they
+always answer that they were built by magicians.  The untaught mind
+finds a vast gulf between its own powers and these works of
+complicated art which it is utterly unable to fathom.  And it
+supposes that such a void can be passed only by supernatural
+powers.
+
+And, as for artists themselves, it is by no means their interest to
+undeceive such judges, however conscious they may be of the very
+natural means by which the extraordinary powers were acquired; our
+art being intrinsically imitative, rejects this idea of inspiration
+more, perhaps, than any other.
+
+It is to avoid this plain confession of truth, as it should seem,
+that this imitation of masters--indeed, almost all imitation which
+implies a more regular and progressive method of attaining the ends
+of painting--has ever been particularly inveighed against with
+great keenness, both by ancient and modern writers.
+
+To derive all from native power, to owe nothing to another, is the
+praise which men, who do not much think what they are saying,
+bestow sometimes upon others, and sometimes on themselves; and
+their imaginary dignity is naturally heightened by a supercilious
+censure of the low, the barren, the grovelling, the servile
+imitator.  It would be no wonder if a student, frightened by these
+terrors and disgraceful epithets, with which the poor imitators are
+so often loaded, should let fall his pencil in mere despair,
+conscious how much he has been indebted to the labours of others,
+how little, how very little of his art was born with him; and,
+considering it as hopeless, to set about acquiring by the imitation
+of any human master what he is taught to suppose is matter of
+inspiration from heaven.
+
+Some allowance must be made for what is said in the gaiety or
+ambition of rhetoric.  We cannot suppose that any one can really
+mean to exclude all imitation of others.  A position so wild would
+scarce deserve a serious answer, for it is apparent, if we were
+forbid to make use of the advantages which our predecessors afford
+us, the art would be always to begin, and consequently remain
+always in its infant state; and it is a common observation that no
+art was ever invented and carried to perfection at the same time.
+
+But to bring us entirely to reason and sobriety, let it be
+observed, that a painter must not only be of necessity an imitator
+of the works of nature, which alone is sufficient to dispel this
+phantom of inspiration, but he must be as necessarily an imitator
+of the works of other painters.  This appears more humiliating, but
+it is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may
+suppose, upon any other terms.
+
+However, those who appear more moderate and reasonable allow that
+study is to begin by imitation, but that we should no longer use
+the thoughts of our predecessors when we are become able to think
+for ourselves.  They hold that imitation is as hurtful to the more
+advanced student as it was advantageous to the beginner.
+
+For my own part, I confess I am not only very much disposed to lay
+down the absolute necessity of imitation in the first stages of the
+art, but am of opinion that the study of other masters, which I
+here call imitation, may be extended throughout our whole life
+without any danger of the inconveniences with which it is charged,
+of enfeebling the mind, or preventing us from giving that original
+air which every work undoubtedly ought always to have.
+
+I am, on the contrary, persuaded that by imitation only, variety,
+and even originality of invention is produced.
+
+I will go further; even genius, at least what generally is so
+called, is the child of imitation.  But as this appears to be
+contrary to the general opinion, I must explain my position before
+I enforce it.
+
+Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are
+out of the reach of the rules of art--a power which no precepts can
+teach, and which no industry can acquire.
+
+This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those beauties which
+stamp the work with the character of genius, supposes that it is
+something more fixed than in reality it is, and that we always do,
+and ever did agree, about what should be considered as a
+characteristic of genius.
+
+But the truth is that the degree of excellence which proclaims
+genius is different in different times and different places; and
+what shows it to be so is that mankind have often changed their
+opinion upon this matter.
+
+When the arts were in their infancy, the power of merely drawing
+the likeness of any object was considered as one of its greatest
+efforts.
+
+The common people, ignorant of the principles of art, talk the same
+language even to this day.  But when it was found that every man
+could be taught to do this, and a great deal more, merely by the
+observance of certain precepts, the name of genius then shifted its
+application, and was given only to those who added the peculiar
+character of the object they represented; to those who had
+invention, expression, grace, or dignity; or, in short, such
+qualities or excellences the producing of which could not then be
+taught by any known and promulgated rules.
+
+We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of the
+passions, the art of composition, even the power of giving a
+general air of grandeur to your work, is at present very much under
+the dominion of rules.  These excellences were, heretofore,
+considered merely as the effects of genius; and justly, if genius
+is not taken for inspiration, but as the effect of close
+observation and experience.
+
+He who first made any of these observations and digested them, so
+as to form an invariable principle for himself to work by, had that
+merit; but probably no one went very far at once; and generally the
+first who gave the hint did not know how to pursue it steadily and
+methodically, at least not in the beginning.  He himself worked on
+it, and improved it; others worked more, and improved farther,
+until the secret was discovered, and the practice made as general
+as refined practice can be made.  How many more principles may be
+fixed and ascertained we cannot tell; but as criticism is likely to
+go hand in hand with the art which is its subject, we may venture
+to say that as that art shall advance, its powers will be still
+more and more fixed by rules.
+
+But by whatever strides criticism may gain ground, we need be under
+no apprehension that invention will ever be annihilated or subdued,
+or intellectual energy be brought entirely within the restraint of
+written law.  Genius will still have room enough to expatiate, and
+keep always the same distance from narrow comprehension and
+mechanical performance.
+
+What we now call genius begins, not where rules, abstractedly
+taken, end, but where known vulgar and trite rules have no longer
+any place.  It must of necessity be that even works of genius, as
+well as every other effect, as it must have its cause, must
+likewise have its rules; it cannot be by chance that excellences
+are produced with any constancy, or any certainty, for this is not
+the nature of chance, but the rules by which men of extraordinary
+parts, and such as are called men of genius work, are either such
+as they discover by their own peculiar observation, or of such a
+nice texture as not easily to admit handling or expressing in
+words, especially as artists are not very frequently skilful in
+that mode of communicating ideas.
+
+Unsubstantial, however, as these rules may seem, and difficult as
+it may be to convey them in writing, they are still seen and felt
+in the mind of the artist, and he works from them with as much
+certainty as if they were embodied, as I may say, upon paper.  It
+is true these refined principles cannot be always made palpable,
+like the more gross rules of art; yet it does not follow but that
+the mind may be put in such a train that it shall perceive, by a
+kind of scientific sense, that propriety which words, particularly
+words of unpractised writers such as we are, can but very feebly
+suggest.
+
+Invention is one of the great marks of genius, but if we consult
+experience, we shall find that it is by being conversant with the
+inventions of others that we learn to invent, as by reading the
+thoughts of others we learn to think.
+
+Whoever has so far formed his taste as to be able to relish and
+feel the beauties of the great masters has gone a great way in his
+study; for, merely from a consciousness of this relish of the
+right, the mind swells with an inward pride, and is almost as
+powerfully affected as if it had itself produced what it admires.
+Our hearts frequently warmed in this manner by the contact of those
+whom we wish to resemble, will undoubtedly catch something of their
+way of thinking, and we shall receive in our own bosoms some
+radiation at least of their fire and splendour.  That disposition,
+which is so strong in children, still continues with us, of
+catching involuntarily the general air and manner of those with
+whom we are most conversant; with this difference only, that a
+young mind is naturally pliable and imitative, but in a more
+advanced state it grows rigid, and must be warmed and softened
+before it will receive a deep impression.
+
+From these considerations, which a little of your reflection will
+carry a great way further, it appears of what great consequence it
+is that our minds should be habituated to the contemplation of
+excellence, and that, far from being contented to make such habits
+the discipline of our youth only, we should, to the last moment of
+our lives, continue a settled intercourse with all the true
+examples of grandeur.  Their inventions are not only the food of
+our infancy, but the substance which supplies the fullest maturity
+of our vigour.
+
+The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil soon exhausted, and will
+produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilised
+and enriched with foreign matter.
+
+When we have had continually before us the great works of art to
+impregnate our minds with kindred ideas, we are then, and not till
+then, fit to produce something, of the same species.  We behold all
+about us with the eyes of these penetrating observers, and our
+minds, accustomed to think the thoughts of the noblest and
+brightest intellects, are prepared for the discovery and selection
+of all that is great and noble in nature.  The greatest natural
+genius cannot subsist on its own stock:  he who resolves never to
+ransack any mind but his own will be soon reduced, from mere
+barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to
+imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.
+When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be
+difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.
+
+It is vain for painters or poets to endeavour to invent without
+materials on which the mind may work, and from which invention must
+originate.  Nothing can come of nothing.
+
+Homer is supposed to be possessed of all the learning of his time.
+And we are certain that Michael Angelo and Raffaelle were equally
+possessed of all knowledge in the art which was discoverable in the
+works of their predecessors.
+
+A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures of ancient
+and modern art will be more elevated and fruitful in resources in
+proportion to the number of ideas which have been carefully
+collected and thoroughly digested.  There can be no doubt that he
+who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention; and
+if he has not the power of using them, it must proceed from a
+feebleness of intellect or from the confused manner in which those
+collections have been laid up in his mind.
+
+The addition of other men's judgment is so far from weakening, as
+is the opinion of many, our own, that it will fashion and
+consolidate those ideas of excellence which lay in their birth
+feeble, ill-shaped, and confused, but which are finished and put in
+order by the authority and practice of those whose works may be
+said to have been consecrated by having stood the test of ages.
+
+The mind, or genius, has been compared to a spark of fire which is
+smothered by a heap of fuel and prevented from blazing into a
+flame.  This simile, which is made use of by the younger Pliny, may
+be easily mistaken for argument or proof.
+
+There is no danger of the mind's being over-burdened with
+knowledge, or the genius extinguished by any addition of images; on
+the contrary, these acquisitions may as well, perhaps better, be
+compared, if comparisons signified anything in reasoning, to the
+supply of living embers, which will contribute to strengthen the
+spark that without the association of more would have died away.
+
+The truth is, he whose feebleness is such as to make other men's
+thoughts an incumbrance to him can have no very great strength of
+mind or genius of his own to be destroyed, so that not much harm
+will be done at worst.
+
+We may oppose to Pliny the greater authority of Cicero, who is
+continually enforcing the necessity of this method of study.  In
+his dialogue on Oratory he makes Crassus say, that one of the first
+and most important precepts is to choose a proper model for our
+imitation.  Hoc fit primum in preceptis meis ut demonstremus quem
+imitemur.
+
+When I speak of the habitual imitation and continued study of
+masters, it is not to be understood that I advise any endeavour to
+copy the exact peculiar colour and complexion of another man's
+mind; the success of such an attempt must always be like his who
+imitates exactly the air, manner, and gestures of him whom he
+admires.  His model may be excellent, but the copy will be
+ridiculous; this ridicule does not arise from his having imitated,
+but from his not having chosen the right mode of imitation.
+
+It is a necessary and warrantable pride to disdain to walk
+servilely behind any individual, however elevated his rank.  The
+true and liberal ground of imitation is an open field, where,
+though he who precedes has had the advantage of starting before
+you, yet it is enough to pursue his course; you need not tread in
+his footsteps, and you certainly have a right to outstrip him if
+you can.
+
+Nor, whilst I recommend studying the art from artists, can I be
+supposed to mean that nature is to be neglected?  I take this study
+in aid and not in exclusion of the other.  Nature is, and must be,
+the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all
+excellences must originally flow.
+
+The great use of studying our predecessors is to open the mind, to
+shorten our labour, and to give us the result of the selection made
+by those great minds of what is grand or beautiful in nature:  her
+rich stores are all spread out before us; but it is an art, and no
+easy art, to know how or what to choose, and how to attain and
+secure the object of our choice.
+
+Thus the highest beauty of form must be taken from nature; but it
+is an art of long deduction and great experience to know how to
+find it.
+
+We must not content ourselves with merely admiring and relishing;
+we must enter into the principles on which the work is wrought;
+these do not swim on the superficies, and consequently are not open
+to superficial observers.
+
+Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid, and works
+its effect itself unseen.  It is the proper study and labour of an
+artist to uncover and find out the latent cause of conspicuous
+beauties, and from thence form principles for his own conduct; such
+an examination is a continual exertion of the mind, as great,
+perhaps, as that of the artist whose works he is thus studying.
+
+The sagacious imitator not only remarks what distinguishes the
+different manner or genius of each master; he enters into the
+contrivance in the composition, how the masses of lights are
+disposed, the means by which the effect is produced, how artfully
+some parts are lost in the ground, others boldly relieved, and how
+all these are mutually altered and interchanged according to the
+reason and scheme of the work.  He admires not the harmony of
+colouring alone, but he examines by what artifice one colour is a
+foil to its neighbour.  He looks close into the tints, of what
+colours they are composed, till he has formed clear and distinct
+ideas, and has learnt to see in what harmony and good colouring
+consists.  What is learnt in this manner from the works of others
+becomes really our own, sinks deep, and is never forgotten; nay, it
+is by seizing on this clue that we proceed forward, and get further
+and further in enlarging the principle and improving the practice.
+
+There can be no doubt but the art is better learnt from the works
+themselves than from the precepts which are formed upon these
+works; but if it is difficult to choose proper models for
+imitation, it requires no less circumspection to separate and
+distinguish what in those models we ought to imitate.
+
+I cannot avoid mentioning here, though it is not my intention at
+present to enter into the art and method of study, an error which
+students are too apt to fall into.
+
+He that is forming himself must look with great caution and
+wariness on those peculiarities, or prominent parts, which at first
+force themselves upon view, and are the marks, or what is commonly
+called the manner, by which that individual artist is
+distinguished.
+
+Peculiar marks I hold to be generally, if not always, defects,
+however difficult it may be, wholly to escape them.
+
+Peculiarities in the works of art are like those in the human
+figure; it is by them that we are cognisable and distinguished one
+from another, but they are always so many blemishes, which,
+however, both in the one case and in the other, cease to appear
+deformities to those who have them continually before their eyes.
+In the works of art, even the most enlightened mind, when warmed by
+beauties of the highest kind, will by degrees find a repugnance
+within him to acknowledge any defects; nay, his enthusiasm will
+carry him so far as to transform them into beauties and objects of
+imitation.
+
+It must be acknowledged that a peculiarity of style, either from
+its novelty, or by seeming to proceed from a peculiar turn of mind,
+often escapes blame; on the contrary, it is sometimes striking and
+pleasing; but this it is vain labour to endeavour to imitate,
+because novelty and peculiarity being its only merit, when it
+ceases to be new, it ceases to have value.
+
+A manner, therefore, being a defect, and every painter, however
+excellent, having a manner, it seems to follow that all kinds of
+faults, as well as beauties, may be learned under the sanction of
+the greatest authorities.
+
+Even the great name of Michael Angelo may be used to keep in
+countenance a deficiency, or rather neglect of colouring, and every
+other ornamental part of the art.
+
+If the young student is dry and hard, Poussin is the same.  If his
+work has a careless and unfinished air, he has most of the Venetian
+School to support him.  If he makes no selection of objects, but
+takes individual nature just as he finds it, he is like Rembrandt.
+If he is incorrect in the proportions of his figures, Correggio was
+likewise incorrect.  If his colours are not blended and united,
+Rubens was equally crude.
+
+In short, there is no defect but may be excused, if it is a
+sufficient excuse that it can be imputed to considerable artists;
+but it must be remembered that it was not by these defects they
+acquired their reputation:  they have a right to our pardon, but
+not to our admiration.
+
+However, to imitate peculiarities or mistake defects for beauties
+that man will be most liable who confines his imitation to one
+favourite master; and, even though he chooses the best, and is
+capable of distinguishing the real excellences of his model, it is
+not by such narrow practice that a genius or mastery in the art is
+acquired.  A man is as little likely to form a true idea of the
+perfection of the art by studying a single artist as he would be of
+producing a perfectly beautiful figure by an exact imitation of any
+individual living model.
+
+And as the painter, by bringing together in one piece those
+beauties which are dispersed amongst a great variety of
+individuals, produces a figure more beautiful than can be found in
+nature, so that artist who can unite in himself the excellences of
+the various painters, will approach nearer to perfection than any
+one of his masters.
+
+He who confines himself to the imitation of an individual, as he
+never proposes to surpass, so he is not likely to equal, the object
+of imitation.  He professes only to follow, and he that follows
+must necessarily be behind.
+
+We should imitate the conduct of the great artists in the course of
+their studies, as well as the works which they produced, when they
+were perfectly formed.  Raffaelle began by imitating implicitly the
+manner of Pietro Perugino, under whom he studied; so his first
+works are scarce to be distinguished from his master's; but soon
+forming higher and more extensive views, he imitated the grand
+outline of Michael Angelo.  He learnt the manner of using colours
+from the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Fratre Bartolomeo:  to all
+this he added the contemplation of all the remains of antiquity
+that were within his reach, and employed others to draw for him
+what was in Greece and distant places.  And it is from his having
+taken so many models that he became himself a model for all
+succeeding painters, always imitating, and always original.
+
+If your ambition therefore be to equal Raffaelle, you must do as
+Raffaelle did; take many models, and not take even him for your
+guide alone to the exclusion of others.  And yet the number is
+infinite of those who seem, if one may judge by their style, to
+have seen no other works but those of their master, or of some
+favourite whose manner is their first wish and their last.
+
+I will mention a few that occur to me of this narrow, confined,
+illiberal, unscientific, and servile kind of imitators.  Guido was
+thus meanly copied by Elizabetta Sirani, and Simone Cantarini;
+Poussin, by Verdier and Cheron; Parmigiano, by Jeronimo Mazzuoli;
+Paolo Veronese and Iacomo Bassan had for their imitators their
+brothers and sons; Pietro de Cortona was followed by Ciro Ferri and
+Romanelli; Rubens, by Jacques Jordans and Diepenbeck; Guercino, by
+his own family, the Gennari; Carlo Marratti was imitated by
+Giuseppe Chiari and Pietro da Pietri; and Rembrandt, by Bramer,
+Eckhout, and Flink.  All these, to whom may be added a much longer
+list of painters, whose works among the ignorant pass for those of
+their masters, are justly to be censured for barrenness and
+servility.
+
+To oppose to this list a few that have adopted a more liberal style
+of imitation:  Pelegrino Tibaldi, Rosso, and Primaticio did not
+coldly imitate, but caught something of the fire that animates the
+works of Michael Angelo.  The Carraches formed their style from
+Pelegrino Tibaldi, Correggio, and the Venetian School.
+Domenichino, Guido, Lanfranco, Albano, Guercino, Cavidone,
+Schidone, Tiarini, though it is sufficiently apparent that they
+came from the School of the Carraches, have yet the appearance of
+men who extended their views beyond the model that lay before them,
+and have shown that they had opinions of their own, and thought for
+themselves, after they had made themselves masters of the general
+principles of their schools.
+
+Le Seure's first manner resembles very much that of his master
+Vovet:  but as he soon excelled him, so he differed from him in
+every part of the art.  Carlo Marratti succeeded better than those
+I have first named, and I think owes his superiority to the
+extension of his views; besides his master Andrea Sacchi, he
+imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Carraches.  It is true, there is
+nothing very captivating in Carlo Marratti; but this proceeded from
+wants which cannot be completely supplied; that is, want of
+strength of parts.  In this, certainly men are not equal, and a man
+can bring home wares only in proportion to the capital with which
+he goes to market.  Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he
+had; but there was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which
+extended itself, uniformly to his invention, expression, his
+drawing, colouring, and the general effect of his pictures.  The
+truth is, he never equalled any of his patterns in any one thing,
+and he added little of his own.
+
+But we must not rest contented, even in this general study of the
+moderns; we must trace back the art to its fountain head, to that
+source from whence they drew their principal excellences, the
+monuments of pure antiquity.
+
+All the inventions and thoughts of the ancients, whether conveyed
+to us in statues, bas-reliefs, intaglios, cameos, or coins, are to
+be sought after and carefully studied:  The genius that hovers over
+these venerable relics may be called the father of modern art.
+
+From the remains of the works of the ancients the modern arts were
+revived, and it is by their means that they must be restored a
+second time.  However it may mortify our vanity, we must be forced
+to allow them our masters; and we may venture to prophecy, that
+when they shall cease to be studied, arts will no longer flourish,
+and we shall again relapse into barbarism.
+
+The fire of the artist's own genius operating upon these materials
+which have been thus diligently collected, will enable him to make
+new combinations, perhaps, superior to what had ever before been in
+the possession of the art.  As in the mixture of the variety of
+metals, which are said to have been melted and run together at the
+burning of Corinth, a new and till then unknown metal was produced
+equal in value to any of those that had contributed to its
+composition.  And though a curious refiner may come with his
+crucibles, analyse and separate its various component parts, yet
+Corinthian brass would still hold its rank amongst the most
+beautiful and valuable of metals.
+
+We have hitherto considered the advantages of imitation as it tends
+to form the taste, and as a practice by which a spark of that
+genius may be caught which illumines these noble works, that ought
+always to be present to our thoughts.
+
+We come now to speak of another kind of imitation; the borrowing a
+particular thought, an action, attitude, or figure, and
+transplanting it into your own work:  this will either come under
+the charge of plagiarism, or be warrantable, and deserve
+commendation, according to the address with which it is performed.
+There is some difference likewise whether it is upon the ancients
+or the moderns that these depredations are made.  It is generally
+allowed that no man need be ashamed of copying the ancients:  their
+works are considered as a magazine of common property, always open
+to the public, whence every man has a right to what materials he
+pleases; and if he has the art of using them, they are supposed to
+become to all intents and purposes his own property.
+
+The collection which Raffaelle made of the thoughts of the ancients
+with so much trouble, is a proof of his opinion on this subject.
+Such collections may be made with much more ease, by means of an
+art scarce known in his time; I mean that of engraving, by which,
+at an easy rate, every man may now avail himself of the inventions
+of antiquity.
+
+It must be acknowledged that the works of the moderns are more the
+property of their authors; he who borrows an idea from an artist,
+or perhaps from a modern, not his contemporary, and so accommodates
+it to his own work that it makes a part of it, with no seam or
+joining appearing, can hardly be charged with plagiarism; poets
+practise this kind of borrowing without reserve.  But an artist
+should not be contented with this only; he should enter into a
+competition with his original, and endeavour to improve what he is
+appropriating to his own work.  Such imitation is so far from
+having anything in it of the servility of plagiarism, that it is a
+perpetual exercise of the mind, a continual invention.
+
+Borrowing or stealing with such art and caution will have a right
+to the same lenity as was used by the Lacedemonians; who did not
+punish theft, but the want of artifice to conceal it.
+
+In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let
+me add, that very finished artists in the inferior branches of the
+art will contribute to furnish the mind and give hints of which a
+skilful painter, who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no
+danger of being infected by the contact of vicious models, will
+know how to avail himself.  He will pick up from dunghills what by
+a nice chemistry, passing through his own mind, shall be converted
+into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of Gothic essays, he will
+find original, rational, and even sublime inventions.
+
+In the luxuriant style of Paul Veronese, in the capricious
+compositions of Tintoret, he will find something that will assist
+his invention, and give points, from which his own imagination
+shall rise and take flight, when the subject which he treats will,
+with propriety, admit of splendid effects.
+
+In every school, whether Venetian, French, or Dutch, he will find
+either ingenious compositions, extraordinary effects, some peculiar
+expressions, or some mechanical excellence, well worthy his
+attention and, in some measure, of his imitation; even in the lower
+class of the French painters, great beauties are often found united
+with great defects.
+
+Though Coypel wanted a simplicity of taste, and mistook a
+presumptuous and assuming air for what is grand and majestic; yet
+he frequently has good sense and judgment in his manner of telling
+his stories, great skill in his compositions, and is not without a
+considerable power of expressing the passions, The modern
+affectation of grace in his works, as well as in those of Bouche
+and Watteau, may be said to be separated by a very thin partition
+from the more simple and pure grace of Correggio and Parmigiano.
+
+Amongst the Dutch painters, the correct, firm, and determined
+pencil, which was employed by Bamboccio and Jan Miel on vulgar and
+mean subjects, might without any change be employed on the highest,
+to which, indeed, it seems more properly to belong.  The greatest
+style, if that style is confined to small figures such as Poussin
+generally painted, would receive an additional grace by the
+elegance and precision of pencil so admirable in the works of
+Teniers.
+
+Though this school more particularly excelled in the mechanism of
+painting, yet there are many who have shown great abilities in
+expressing what must be ranked above mechanical excellences.
+
+In the works of Frank Hals the portrait painter may observe the
+composition of a face, the features well put together as the
+painters express it, from whence proceeds that strong marked
+character of individual nature which is so remarkable in his
+portraits, and is not to be found in an equal degree in any other
+painter.  If he had joined to this most difficult part of the art a
+patience in finishing what he had so correctly planned, he might
+justly have claimed the place which Vandyke, all things considered,
+so justly holds as the first of portrait painters.
+
+Others of the same school have shown great power in expressing the
+character and passions of those vulgar people which are the
+subjects of their study and attention.  Amongst those, Jean Stein
+seems to be one of the most diligent and accurate observers of what
+passed in those scenes which he frequented, and which were to him
+an academy.  I can easily imagine that if this extraordinary man
+had had the good fortune to have been born in Italy instead of
+Holland, had he lived in Rome instead of Leyden, and had been
+blessed with Michael Angelo and Raffaelle for his masters instead
+of Brower and Van Gowen, that the same sagacity and penetration
+which distinguished so accurately the different characters and
+expression in his vulgar figures, would, when exerted in the
+selection and imitation of what was great and elevated in nature,
+have been equally successful, and his name would have been now
+ranged with the great pillars and supporters of our art.
+
+Men who, although thus bound down by the almost invincible powers
+of early habits, have still exerted extraordinary abilities within
+their narrow and confined circle, and have, from the natural vigour
+of their mind, given such an interesting expression, such force and
+energy to their works, though they cannot be recommended to be
+exactly imitated, may yet invite an artist to endeavour to
+transfer, by a kind of parody, those excellences to his own works.
+Whoever has acquired the power of making this use of the Flemish,
+Venetian, and French schools is a real genius, and has sources of
+knowledge open to him which were wanting to the great artists who
+lived in the great age of painting.
+
+To find excellences however dispersed, to discover beauties however
+concealed by the multitude of defects with which they are
+surrounded, can be the work only of him who, having a mind always
+alive to his art, has extended his views to all ages and to all
+schools, and has acquired from that comprehensive mass which he has
+thus gathered to himself, a well digested and perfect idea of his
+art, to which everything is referred.  Like a sovereign judge and
+arbiter of art, he is possessed of that presiding power which
+separates and attracts every excellence from every school, selects
+both from what is great and what is little, brings home knowledge
+from the east and from the west, making the universe tributary
+towards furnishing his mind and enriching his works with
+originality and variety of inventions.
+
+Thus I have ventured to give my opinion of what appears to me the
+true and only method by which an artist makes himself master of his
+profession, which I hold ought to be one continued course of
+imitation, that is not to cease but with our lives.
+
+Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business,
+or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected
+looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation
+reaches, have from that time not only ceased to advance and improve
+in their performance, but have gone backward.  They may be compared
+to men who have lived upon their principal till they are reduced to
+beggary and left without resources.
+
+I can recommend nothing better, therefore, than that you endeavour
+to infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of
+the works of others.  To recommend this has the appearance of
+needless and superfluous advice, but it has fallen within my own
+knowledge that artists, though they are not wanting in a sincere
+love for their art, though they have great pleasure in seeing good
+pictures, and are well skilled to distinguish what is excellent or
+defective in them, yet go on in their own manner, without any
+endeavour to give a little of those beauties which they admire in
+others, to their own works.  It is difficult to conceive how the
+present Italian painters, who live in the midst of the treasures of
+art, should be contented with their own style.  They proceed in
+their common-place inventions, and never think it worth while to
+visit the works of those great artists with which they are
+surrounded.
+
+I remember several years ago to have conversed at Rome with an
+artist of great fame throughout Europe; he was not without a
+considerable degree of abilities, but those abilities were by no
+means equal to his own opinion of them.  From the reputation he had
+acquired he too fondly concluded that he stood in the same rank,
+when compared to his predecessors, as he held with regard to his
+miserable contemporary rivals.
+
+In conversation about some particulars of the works of Raffaelle,
+he seemed to have, or to affect to have, a very obscure memory of
+them.  He told me that he had not set his foot in the Vatican for
+fifteen years together; that indeed he had been in treaty to copy a
+capital picture of Raffaelle, but that the business had gone off;
+however, if the agreement had held, his copy would have greatly
+exceeded the original.  The merit of this artist, however great we
+may suppose it, I am sure would have been far greater, and his
+presumption would have been far less if he had visited the Vatican,
+as in reason he ought to have done, once at least every month of
+his life.
+
+I address myself, gentlemen, to you who have made some progress in
+the art, and are to be for the future under the guidance of your
+own judgment and discretion
+
+I consider you as arrived to that period when you have a right to
+think for yourselves, and to presume that every man is fallible; to
+study the masters with a suspicion that great men are not always
+exempt from great faults; to criticise, compare, and rank their
+works in your own estimation, as they approach to or recede from
+that standard of perfection which you have formed in your own mind,
+but which those masters themselves, it must be remembered, have
+taught you to make, and which you will cease to make with
+correctness when you cease to study them.  It is their excellences
+which have taught you their defects.
+
+I would wish you to forget where you are, and who it is that speaks
+to you.  I only direct you to higher models and better advisers.
+We can teach you here but very little; you are henceforth to be
+your own teachers.  Do this justice, however, to the English
+Academy, to bear in mind, that in this place you contracted no
+narrow habits, no false ideas, nothing that could lead you to the
+imitation of any living master, who may be the fashionable darling
+of the day.  As you have not been taught to flatter us, do not
+learn to flatter yourselves.  We have endeavoured to lead you to
+the admiration of nothing but what is truly admirable.  If you
+choose inferior patterns, or if you make your own FORMER works,
+your patterns for your LATTER, it is your own fault.
+
+The purpose of this discourse, and, indeed, of most of my others,
+is to caution you against that false opinion, but too prevalent
+amongst artists, of the imaginary power of native genius, and its
+sufficiency in great works.  This opinion, according to the temper
+of mind it meets with, almost always produces, either a vain
+confidence, or a sluggish despair, both equally fatal to all
+proficiency.
+
+Study, therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever.
+Study as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, on the
+principles, on which they studied.  Study nature attentively, but
+always with those masters in your company; consider them as models
+which you are to imitate, and at the same time as rivals which you
+are to combat.
+
+
+
+A DISCOURSE
+
+
+
+Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
+of the Prizes, December 10th, 1776, by the President.
+
+Gentlemen,--It has been my uniform endeavour, since I first
+addressed you from this place, to impress you strongly with one
+ruling idea.  I wished you to be persuaded, that success in your
+art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry
+which I principally recommended, is not the industry of the HANDS,
+but of the MIND.
+
+As our art is not a divine gift, so neither is it a mechanical
+trade.  Its foundations are laid in solid science.  And practice,
+though essential to perfection, can never attain that to which it
+aims, unless it works under the direction of principle.
+
+Some writers upon art carry this point too far, and suppose that
+such a body of universal and profound learning is requisite, that
+the very enumeration of its kind is enough to frighten a beginner.
+Vitruvius, after going through the many accomplishments of nature,
+and the many acquirements of learning, necessary to an architect,
+proceeds with great gravity to assert that he ought to be well
+skilled in the civil law, that he may not be cheated in the title
+of the ground he builds on.
+
+But without such exaggeration, we may go so far as to assert, that
+a painter stands in need of more knowledge than is to be picked off
+his pallet, or collected by looking on his model, whether it be in
+life or in picture.  He can never be a great artist who is grossly
+illiterate.
+
+Every man whose business is description ought to be tolerably
+conversant with the poets in some language or other, that he may
+imbibe a poetical spirit and enlarge his stock of ideas.  He ought
+to acquire a habit of comparing and divesting his notions.  He
+ought not to be wholly unacquainted with that part of philosophy
+which gives him an insight into human nature, and relates to the
+manners, characters, passions, and affections.  He ought to know
+something concerning the mind, as well as a great deal concerning
+the body of man.
+
+For this purpose, it is not necessary that he should go into such a
+compass of reading, as must, by distracting his attention,
+disqualify him for the practical part of his profession, and make
+him sink the performer in the critic.  Reading, if it can be made
+the favourite recreation of his leisure hours, will improve and
+enlarge his mind without retarding his actual industry.
+
+What such partial and desultory reading cannot afford, may be
+supplied by the conversation of learned and ingenious men, which is
+the best of all substitutes for those who have not the means or
+opportunities of deep study.  There are many such men in this age;
+and they will be pleased with communicating their ideas to artists,
+when they see them curious and docile, if they are treated with
+that respect and deference which is so justly their due.  Into such
+society, young artists, if they make it the point of their
+ambition, will by degrees be admitted.  There, without formal
+teaching, they will insensibly come to feel and reason like those
+they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste
+imperceptibly formed in their minds, which they will know how to
+reduce to a standard, by applying general truth to their own
+purposes, better perhaps than those to whom they owed the original
+sentiment.
+
+Of these studies and this conversation, the desired and legitimate
+offspring is a power of distinguishing right from wrong, which
+power applied to works of art is denominated taste.  Let me then,
+without further introduction, enter upon an examination whether
+taste be so far beyond our reach as to be unattainable by care, or
+be so very vague and capricious that no care ought to be employed
+about it.
+
+It has been the fate of arts to be enveloped in mysterious and
+incomprehensible language, as if it was thought necessary that even
+the terms should correspond to the idea entertained of the
+instability and uncertainty of the rules which they expressed.
+
+To speak of genius and taste as any way connected with reason or
+common sense, would be, in the opinion of some towering talkers, to
+speak like a man who possessed neither, who had never felt that
+enthusiasm, or, to use their own inflated language, was never
+warmed by that Promethean fire, which animates the canvas and
+vivifies the marble.
+
+If, in order to be intelligible, I appear to degrade art by
+bringing her down from her visionary situation in the clouds, it is
+only to give her a more solid mansion upon the earth.  It is
+necessary that at some time or other we should see things as they
+really are, and not impose on ourselves by that false magnitude
+with which objects appear when viewed indistinctly as through a
+mist.
+
+We will allow a poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is
+not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as
+it is one source of the sublime.  But when, in plain prose, we
+gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call
+and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where
+he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to
+times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest
+vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the equinox, sagaciously
+observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is
+cramped by attention to established rules, and how this same
+imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and
+deadened by too much judgment.  When we talk such language, or
+entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented
+with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless,
+but pernicious.
+
+If all this means what it is very possible was originally intended
+only to be meant, that in order to cultivate an art, a man secludes
+himself from the commerce of the world, and retires into the
+country at particular seasons; or that at one time of the year his
+body is in better health, and consequently his mind fitter for the
+business of hard thinking than at another time; or that the mind
+may be fatigued and grow confused by long and unremitted
+application; this I can understand.  I can likewise believe that a
+man eminent when young for possessing poetical imagination, may,
+from having taken another road, so neglect its cultivation as to
+show less of its powers in his latter life.  But I am persuaded
+that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who
+preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising
+his profession to the very last, whose later works are not as
+replete with the fire of imagination as those which were produced
+in his more youthful days.
+
+To understand literally these metaphors or ideas expressed in
+poetical language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude that
+because painters sometimes represent poets writing from the
+dictates of a little winged boy or genius, that this same genius
+did really inform him in a whisper what he was to write, and that
+he is himself but a mere machine, unconscious of the operations of
+his own mind.
+
+Opinions generally received and floating in the world, whether true
+or false, we naturally adopt and make our own; they may be
+considered as a kind of inheritance to which we succeed and are
+tenants for life, and which we leave to our posterity very near in
+the condition in which we received it; not much being in any one
+man's power either to impair or improve it.
+
+The greatest part of these opinions, like current coin in its
+circulation, we are obliged to take without weighing or examining;
+but by this inevitable inattention, many adulterated pieces are
+received, which, when we seriously estimate our wealth, we must
+throw away.  So the collector of popular opinions, when he embodies
+his knowledge, and forms a system, must separate those which are
+true from those which are only plausible.  But it becomes more
+peculiarly a duty to the professors of art not to let any opinions
+relating to that art pass unexamined.  The caution and
+circumspection required in such examination we shall presently have
+an opportunity of explaining.
+
+Genius and taste, in their common acceptation, appear to be very
+nearly related; the difference lies only in this, that genius has
+superadded to it a habit or power of execution.  Or we may say,
+that taste, when this power is added, changes its name, and is
+called genius.  They both, in the popular opinion, pretend to an
+entire exemption from the restraint of rules.  It is supposed that
+their powers are intuitive; that under the name of genius great
+works are produced, and under the name of taste an exact judgment
+is given, without our knowing why, and without being under the
+least obligation to reason, precept, or experience.
+
+One can scarce state these opinions without exposing their
+absurdity, yet they are constantly in the mouths of men, and
+particularly of artists.  They who have thought seriously on this
+subject, do not carry the point so far; yet I am persuaded, that
+even among those few who may be called thinkers, the prevalent
+opinion gives less than it ought to the powers of reason; and
+considers the principles of taste, which give all their authority
+to the rules of art, as more fluctuating, and as having less solid
+foundations than we shall find, upon examination, they really have.
+
+The common saying, that tastes are not to be disputed, owes its
+influence, and its general reception, to the same error which leads
+us to imagine it of too high original to submit to the authority of
+an earthly tribunal.  It will likewise correspond with the notions
+of those who consider it as a mere phantom of the imagination, so
+devoid of substance as to elude all criticism.
+
+We often appear to differ in sentiments from each other, merely
+from the inaccuracy of terms, as we are not obliged to speak always
+with critical exactness.  Something of this too may arise from want
+of words in the language to express the more nice discriminations
+which a deep investigation discovers.  A great deal, however, of
+this difference vanishes when each opinion is tolerably explained
+and understood by constancy and precision in the use of terms.
+
+We apply the term taste to that act of the mind by which we like or
+dislike, whatever be the subject.  Our judgment upon an airy
+nothing, a fancy which has no foundation, is called by the same
+name which we give to our determination concerning those truths
+which refer to the most general and most unalterable principles of
+human nature, to works which are only to be produced by the
+greatest efforts of the human understanding.  However inconvenient
+this may be, we are obliged to take words as we find them; all we
+can do is to distinguish the things to which they are applied.
+
+We may let pass those things which are at once subjects of taste
+and sense, and which having as much certainty as the senses
+themselves, give no occasion to inquiry or dispute.  The natural
+appetite or taste of the human mind is for truth; whether that
+truth results from the real agreement or equality of original ideas
+among themselves; from the agreement of the representation of any
+object with the thing represented; or from the correspondence of
+the several parts of any arrangement with each other.  It is the
+very same taste which relishes a demonstration in geometry, that is
+pleased with the resemblance of a picture to an original, and
+touched with the harmony of music.
+
+All these have unalterable and fixed foundations in nature, and are
+therefore equally investigated by reason, and known by study; some
+with more, some with less clearness, but all exactly in the same
+way.  A picture that is unlike, is false.  Disproportionate
+ordinance of parts is not right because it cannot be true until it
+ceases to be a contradiction to assert that the parts have no
+relation to the whole.  Colouring is true where it is naturally
+adapted to the eye, from brightness, from softness, from harmony,
+from resemblance; because these agree with their object, nature,
+and therefore are true:  as true as mathematical demonstration; but
+known to be true only to those who study these things.
+
+But besides real, there is also apparent truth, or opinion, or
+prejudice.  With regard to real truth, when it is known, the taste
+which conforms to it is, and must be, uniform.  With regard to the
+second sort of truth, which may be called truth upon sufferance, or
+truth by courtesy, it is not fixed, but variable.  However, whilst
+these opinions and prejudices on which it is founded continue, they
+operate as truth; and the art, whose office it is to please the
+mind, as well as instruct it, must direct itself according to
+opinion, or it will not attain its end.
+
+In proportion as these prejudices are known to be generally
+diffused, or long received, the taste which conforms to them
+approaches nearer to certainty, and to a sort of resemblance to
+real science, even where opinions are found to be no better than
+prejudices.  And since they deserve, on account of their duration
+and extent, to be considered as really true, they become capable of
+no small decree of stability and determination by their permanent
+and uniform nature.
+
+As these prejudices become more narrow, more local, more
+transitory, this secondary taste becomes more and more fantastical;
+recedes from real science; is less to be approved by reason, and
+less followed in practice; though in no case perhaps to be wholly
+neglected, where it does not stand, as it sometimes does, in direct
+defiance of the most respectable opinions received amongst mankind.
+
+Having laid down these positions, I shall proceed with less method,
+because less will serve, to explain and apply them.
+
+We will take it for granted that reason is something invariable and
+fixed in the nature of things; and without endeavouring to go back
+to an account of first principles, which for ever will elude our
+search, we will conclude that whatever goes under the name of
+taste, which we can fairly bring under the dominion of reason, must
+be considered as equally exempt from change.  If therefore, in the
+course of this inquiry, we can show that there are rules for the
+conduct of the artist which are fixed and invariable, it implies,
+of course, that the art of the connoisseur, or, in other words,
+taste, has likewise invariable principles.
+
+Of the judgment which we make on the works of art, and the
+preference that we give to one class of art over another, if a
+reason be demanded, the question is perhaps evaded by answering, "I
+judge from my taste"; but it does not follow that a better answer
+cannot be given, though for common gazers this may be sufficient.
+Every man is not obliged to investigate the causes of his
+approbation or dislike.
+
+The arts would lie open for ever to caprice and casualty, if those
+who are to judge of their excellences had no settled principles by
+which they are to regulate their decisions, and the merit or defect
+of performances were to be determined by unguided fancy.  And
+indeed we may venture to assert that whatever speculative knowledge
+is necessary to the artist, is equally and indispensably necessary
+to the connoisseur.
+
+The first idea that occurs in the consideration of what is fixed in
+art, or in taste, is that presiding principle of which I have so
+frequently spoken in former discourses, the general idea of nature.
+The beginning, the middle, and the end of everything that is
+valuable in taste, is comprised in the knowledge of what is truly
+nature; for whatever ideas are not conformable to those of nature,
+or universal opinion, must be considered as more or less
+capricious.
+
+The idea of nature comprehending not only the forms which nature
+produces, but also the nature and internal fabric and organisation,
+as I may call it, of the human mind and imagination:  general
+ideas, beauty, or nature, are but different ways of expressing the
+same thing, whether we apply these terms to statues, poetry, or
+picture.  Deformity is not nature, but an accidental deviation from
+her accustomed practice.  This general idea therefore ought to be
+called nature, and nothing else, correctly speaking, has a right to
+that name.  But we are so far from speaking, in common
+conversation, with any such accuracy, that, on the contrary, when
+we criticise Rembrandt and other Dutch painters, who introduced
+into their historical pictures exact representations of individual
+objects with all their imperfections, we say, though it is not in a
+good taste, yet it is nature.
+
+This misapplication of terms must be very often perplexing to the
+young student.  Is not, he may say, art an imitation of nature?
+Must he not, therefore, who imitates her with the greatest fidelity
+be the best artist?  By this mode of reasoning Rembrandt has a
+higher place than Raffaelle.  But a very little reflection will
+serve to show us that these particularities cannot be nature:  for
+how can that be the nature of man, in which no two individuals are
+the same?
+
+It plainly appears that as a work is conducted under the influence
+of general ideas or partial it is principally to be considered as
+the effect of a good or a bad taste.
+
+As beauty therefore does not consist in taking what lies
+immediately before you, so neither, in our pursuit of taste, are
+those opinions which we first received and adopted the best choice,
+or the most natural to the mind and imagination.
+
+In the infancy of our knowledge we seize with greediness the good
+that is within our reach; it is by after-consideration, and in
+consequence of discipline, that we refuse the present for a greater
+good at a distance.  The nobility or elevation of all arts, like
+the excellence of virtue itself, consists in adopting this enlarged
+and comprehensive idea, and all criticism built upon the more
+confined view of what is natural, may properly be called shallow
+criticism, rather than false; its defect is that the truth is not
+sufficiently extensive.
+
+It has sometimes happened that some of the greatest men in our art
+have been betrayed into errors by this confined mode of reasoning.
+Poussin, who, upon the whole, may be produced as an instance of
+attention to the most enlarged and extensive ideas of nature, from
+not having settled principles on this point, has in one instance at
+least, I think, deserted truth for prejudice.  He is said to have
+vindicated the conduct of Julio Romano, for his inattention to the
+masses of light and shade, or grouping the figures, in the battle
+of Constantine, as if designedly neglected, the better to
+correspond with the hurry and confusion of a battle.  Poussin's own
+conduct in his representations of Bacchanalian triumphs and
+sacrifices, makes us more easily give credit to this report, since
+in such subjects, as well indeed as in many others, it was too much
+his own practice.  The best apology we can make for this conduct is
+what proceeds from the association of our ideas, the prejudice we
+have in favour of antiquity.  Poussin's works, as I have formerly
+observed, have very much the air of the ancient manner of painting,
+in which there are not the least traces to make us think that what
+we call the keeping, the composition of light and shade, or
+distribution of the work into masses, claimed any part of their
+attention.  But surely whatever apology we may find out for this
+neglect, it ought to be ranked among the defects of Poussin, as
+well as of the antique paintings; and the moderns have a right to
+that praise which is their due, for having given so pleasing an
+addition to the splendour of the art.
+
+Perhaps no apology ought to be received for offences committed
+against the vehicle (whether it be the organ of seeing or of
+hearing) by which our pleasures are conveyed to the mind.  We must
+take the same care that the eye be not perplexed and distracted by
+a confusion of equal parts, or equal lights, as of offending it by
+an unharmonious mixture of colours.  We may venture to be more
+confident of the truth of this observation, since we find that
+Shakespeare, on a parallel occasion, has made Hamlet recommend to
+the players a precept of the same kind, never to offend the ear by
+harsh sounds:- "In the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of your
+passions," says he, "you must beget a temperance that may give it
+smoothness."  And yet, at the same time, he very justly observes,
+"The end of playing, both at the first and now, is to hold, as it
+were, the mirror up to nature."  No one can deny but that violent
+passions will naturally emit harsh and disagreeable tones; yet this
+great poet and critic thought that this imitation of nature would
+cost too much, if purchased at the expense of disagreeable
+sensations, or, as he expresses it, of "splitting the ear."  The
+poet and actor, as well as the painter of genius who is well
+acquainted with all the variety and sources of pleasure in the mind
+and imagination, has little regard or attention to common nature,
+or creeping after common sense.  By overleaping those narrow
+bounds, he more effectually seizes the whole mind, and more
+powerfully accomplishes his purpose.  This success is ignorantly
+imagined to proceed from inattention to all rules, and in defiance
+of reason and judgment; whereas it is in truth acting according to
+the best rules, and the justest reason.
+
+He who thinks nature, in the narrow sense of the word, is alone to
+be followed, will produce but a scanty entertainment for the
+imagination:  everything is to be done with which it is natural for
+the mind to be pleased, whether it proceeds from simplicity or
+variety, uniformity or irregularity:  whether the scenes are
+familiar or exotic; rude and wild, or enriched and cultivated; for
+it is natural for the mind to be pleased with all these in their
+turn.  In short, whatever pleases has in it what is analogous to
+the mind, and is therefore, in the highest and best sense of the
+word, natural.
+
+It is this sense of nature or truth which ought more particularly
+to be cultivated by the professors of art; and it may be observed
+that many wise and learned men, who have accustomed their minds to
+admit nothing for truth but what can be proved by mathematical
+demonstration, have seldom any relish for those arts which address
+themselves to the fancy, the rectitude and truth of which is known
+by another kind of proof:  and we may add that the acquisition of
+this knowledge requires as much circumspection and sagacity, as to
+attain those truths which are more open to demonstration.  Reason
+must ultimately determine our choice on every occasion; but this
+reason may still be exerted ineffectually by applying to taste
+principles which, though right as far as they go, yet do not reach
+the object.  No man, for instance, can deny that it seems at first
+view very reasonable, that a statue which is to carry down to
+posterity the resemblance of an individual should be dressed in the
+fashion of the times, in the dress which he himself wore:  this
+would certainly be true if the dress were part of the man.  But
+after a time the dress is only an amusement for an antiquarian; and
+if it obstructs the general design of the piece, it is to be
+disregarded by the artist.  Common sense must here give way to a
+higher sense.
+
+In the naked form, and in the disposition of the drapery, the
+difference between one artist and another is principally seen.  But
+if he is compelled to the modern dress, the naked form is entirely
+hid, and the drapery is already disposed by the skill of the
+tailor.  Were a Phidias to obey such absurd commands, he would
+please no more than an ordinary sculptor; since, in the inferior
+parts of every art, the learned and the ignorant are nearly upon a
+level.
+
+These were probably among the reasons that induced the sculptor of
+that wonderful figure of Laocoon to exhibit him naked,
+notwithstanding he was surprised in the act of sacrificing to
+Apollo, and consequently ought to be shown in his sacerdotal
+habits, if those greater reasons had not preponderated.  Art is not
+yet in so high estimation with us as to obtain so great a sacrifice
+as the ancients made, especially the Grecians, who suffered
+themselves to be represented naked, whether they were generals,
+lawgivers, or kings.
+
+Under this head of balancing and choosing the greater reason, or of
+two evils taking the least, we may consider the conduct of Rubens
+in the Luxembourg gallery, of mixing allegorical figures with
+representations of real personages, which, though acknowledged to
+be a fault, yet, if the artist considered himself as engaged to
+furnish this gallery with a rich and splendid ornament, this could
+not be done, at least in an equal degree, without peopling the air
+and water with these allegorical figures:  he therefore
+accomplished that he purposes.  In this case all lesser
+considerations, which tend to obstruct the great end of the work,
+must yield and give way.
+
+If it is objected that Rubens judged ill at first in thinking it
+necessary to make his work so very ornamental, this brings the
+question upon new ground.  It was his peculiar style; he could
+paint in no other; and he was selected for that work, probably,
+because it was his style.  Nobody will dispute but some of the best
+of the Roman or Bolognian schools would have produced a more
+learned and more noble work.
+
+This leads us to another important province of taste, of weighing
+the value of the different classes of the art, and of estimating
+them accordingly.
+
+All arts have means within them of applying themselves with success
+both to the intellectual and sensitive part of our natures.  It can
+be no dispute, supposing both these means put in practice with
+equal abilities, to which we ought to give the preference:  to him
+who represents the heroic arts and more dignified passions of man,
+or to him who, by the help of meretricious ornaments, however
+elegant and graceful, captivates the sensuality, as it may be
+called, of our taste.  Thus the Roman and Bolognian schools are
+reasonably preferred to the Venetian, Flemish, or Dutch schools, as
+they address themselves to our best and noblest faculties.
+
+Well-turned periods in eloquence, or harmony of numbers in poetry,
+which are in those arts what colouring is in painting, however
+highly we may esteem them, can never be considered as of equal
+importance with the art of unfolding truths that are useful to
+mankind, and which make us better or wiser.  Nor can those works
+which remind us of the poverty and meanness of our nature, be
+considered as of equal rank with what excites ideas of grandeur, or
+raises and dignifies humanity; or, in the words of a late poet,
+which makes the beholder learn to venerate himself as man.
+
+It is reason and good sense therefore which ranks and estimates
+every art, and every part of that art, according to its importance,
+from the painter of animated down to inanimated nature.  We will
+not allow a man, who shall prefer the inferior style, to say it is
+his taste; taste here has nothing, or at least ought to have
+nothing to do with the question.  He wants not taste, but sense,
+and soundness of judgment.
+
+Indeed, perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably preferred
+to mediocrity in the highest walks of art.  A landscape of Claude
+Lorraine may be preferred to a history of Luca Jordano; but hence
+appears the necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists
+the excellence of each class, in order to judge how near it
+approaches to perfection.
+
+Even in works of the same kind, as in history painting, which is
+composed of various parts, excellence of an inferior species,
+carried to a very high degree, will make a work very valuable, and
+in some measure compensate for the absence of the higher kind of
+merits.  It is the duty of the connoisseur to know and esteem, as
+much as it may deserve, every part of painting; he will not then
+think even Bassano unworthy of his notice, who, though totally
+devoid of expression, sense, grace, or elegance, may be esteemed on
+account of his admirable taste of colours, which, in his best
+works, are little inferior to those of Titian.
+
+Since I have mentioned Bassano, we must do him likewise the justice
+to acknowledge that, though he did not aspire to the dignity of
+expressing the characters and passions of men, yet, with respect to
+the facility and truth in his manner of touching animals of all
+kinds, and giving them what painters call their character, few have
+ever excelled him.
+
+To Bassano we may add Paul Veronese and Tintoret, for their entire
+inattention to what is justly esteemed the most essential part of
+our art, the expression of the passions.  Notwithstanding these
+glaring deficiencies, we justly esteem their works; but it must be
+remembered that they do not please from those defects, but from
+their great excellences of another kind, and in spite of such
+transgressions.  These excellences, too, as far as they go, are
+founded in the truth of general nature.  They tell the truth,
+though not the whole truth.
+
+By these considerations, which can never be too frequently
+impressed, may be obviated two errors which I observed to have
+been, formerly at least, the most prevalent, and to be most
+injurious to artists:  that of thinking taste and genius to have
+nothing to do with reason, and that of taking particular living
+objects for nature.
+
+I shall now say something on that part of taste which, as I have
+hinted to you before, does not belong so much to the external form
+of things, but is addressed to the mind, and depends on its
+original frame, or, to use the expression, the organisation of the
+soul; I mean the imagination and the passions.  The principles of
+these are as invariable as the former, and are to be known and
+reasoned upon in the same manner, by an appeal to common sense
+deciding upon the common feelings of mankind.  This sense, and
+these feelings, appear to me of equal authority, and equally
+conclusive.
+
+Now this appeal implies a general uniformity and agreement in the
+minds of men.  It would be else an idle and vain endeavour to
+establish rules of art; it would be pursuing a phantom to attempt
+to move affections with which we were entirely unacquainted.  We
+have no reason to suspect there is a greater difference between our
+minds than between our forms, of which, though there are no two
+alike, yet there is a general similitude that goes through the
+whole race of mankind; and those who have cultivated their taste
+can distinguish what is beautiful or deformed, or, in other words,
+what agrees with or what deviates from the general idea of nature,
+in one case as well as in the other.
+
+The internal fabric of our mind, as well as the external form of
+our bodies, being nearly uniform, it seems then to follow, of
+course, that as the imagination is incapable of producing anything
+originally of itself, and can only vary and combine these ideas
+with which it is furnished by means of the senses, there will be,
+of course, an agreement in the imaginations as in the senses of
+men.  There being this agreement, it follows that in all cases, in
+our lightest amusements as well as in our most serious actions and
+engagements of life, we must regulate our affections of every kind
+by that of others.  The well-disciplined mind acknowledges this
+authority, and submits its own opinion to the public voice.
+
+It is from knowing what are the general feelings and passions of
+mankind that we acquire a true idea of what imagination is; though
+it appears as if we had nothing to do but to consult our own
+particular sensations, and these were sufficient to ensure us from
+all error and mistake.
+
+A knowledge of the disposition and character of the human mind can
+be acquired only by experience:  a great deal will be learned, I
+admit, by a habit of examining what passes in our bosoms, what are
+our own motives of action, and of what kind of sentiments we are
+conscious on any occasion.  We may suppose a uniformity, and
+conclude that the same effect will be produced by the same cause in
+the minds of others.  This examination will contribute to suggest
+to us matters of inquiry; but we can never be sure that our own
+sensations are true and right till they are confirmed by more
+extensive observation.
+
+One man opposing another determines nothing but a general union of
+minds, like a general combination of the forces of all mankind,
+makes a strength that is irresistible.  In fact, as he who does not
+know himself does not know others, so it may be said with equal
+truth, that he who does not know others knows himself but very
+imperfectly.
+
+A man who thinks he is guarding himself against Prejudices by
+resisting the authority of others, leaves open every avenue to
+singularity, vanity, self-conceit, obstinacy, and many other vices,
+all tending to warp the judgment and prevent the natural operation
+of his faculties.
+
+This submission to others is a deference which we owe, and indeed
+are forced involuntarily to pay.
+
+In fact we are never satisfied with our opinions till they are
+ratified and confirmed by the suffrages of the rest of mankind.  We
+dispute and wrangle for ever; we endeavour to get men to come to us
+when we do not go to them.
+
+He therefore who is acquainted with the works which have pleased
+different ages and different countries, and has formed his opinion
+on them, has more materials and more means of knowing what is
+analogous to the mind of man than he who is conversant only with
+the works of his own age or country.  What has pleased, and
+continues to please, is likely to please again:  hence are derived
+the rules of art, and on this immovable foundation they must ever
+stand.
+
+This search and study of the history of the mind ought not to be
+confined to one art only.  It is by the analogy that one art bears
+to another that many things are ascertained which either were but
+faintly seen, or, perhaps, would not have been discovered at all if
+the inventor had not received the first hints from the practices of
+a sister art on a similar occasion.  The frequent allusions which
+every man who treats of any art is obliged to draw from others in
+order to illustrate and confirm his principles, sufficiently show
+their near connection and inseparable relation.
+
+All arts having the same general end, which is to please, and
+addressing themselves to the same faculties through the medium of
+the senses, it follows that their rules and principles must have as
+great affinity as the different materials and the different organs
+or vehicles by which they pass to the mind will permit them to
+retain.
+
+We may therefore conclude that the real substance, as it may be
+called, of what goes under the name of taste, is fixed and
+established in the nature of things; that there are certain and
+regular causes by which the imagination and passions of men are
+affected; and that the knowledge of these causes is acquired by a
+laborious and diligent investigation of nature, and by the same
+slow progress as wisdom or knowledge of every kind, however
+instantaneous its operations may appear when thus acquired.
+
+It has been often observed that the good and virtuous man alone can
+acquire this true or just relish, even of works of art.  This
+opinion will not appear entirely without foundation when we
+consider that the same habit of mind which is acquired by our
+search after truth in the more serious duties of life, is only
+transferred to the pursuit of lighter amusements:  the same
+disposition, the same desire to find something steady, substantial,
+and durable, on which the mind can lean, as it were, and rest with
+safety.  The subject only is changed.  We pursue the same method in
+our search after the idea of beauty and perfection in each; of
+virtue, by looking forwards beyond ourselves to society, and to the
+whole; of arts, by extending our views in the same manner to all
+ages and all times.
+
+Every art, like our own, has in its composition fluctuating as well
+as fixed principles.  It is an attentive inquiry into their
+difference that will enable us to determine how far we are
+influenced by custom and habit, and what is fixed in the nature of
+things.
+
+To distinguish how much has solid foundation, we may have recourse
+to the same proof by which some hold wit ought to be tried--whether
+it preserves itself when translated.  That wit is false which can
+subsist only in one language; and that picture which pleases only
+one age or one nation, owes its reception to some local or
+accidental association of ideas.
+
+We may apply this to every custom and habit of life.  Thus the
+general principles of urbanity, politeness, or civility, have been
+ever the same in all nations; but the mode in which they are
+dressed is continually varying.  The general idea of showing
+respect is by making yourself less:  but the manner, whether by
+bowing the body, kneeling, prostration, pulling off the upper part
+of our dress, or taking away the lower, is a matter of habit.  It
+would be unjust to conclude that all ornaments, because they were
+at first arbitrarily contrived, are therefore undeserving of our
+attention; on the contrary, he who neglects the cultivation of
+those ornaments, acts contrarily to nature and reason.  As life
+would be imperfect without its highest ornaments, the arts, so
+these arts themselves would be imperfect without THEIR ornaments.
+
+Though we by no means ought to rank these with positive and
+substantial beauties, yet it must be allowed that a knowledge of
+both is essentially requisite towards forming a complete, whole,
+and perfect taste.  It is in reality from the ornaments that arts
+receive their peculiar character and complexion; we may add that in
+them we find the characteristical mark of a national taste, as by
+throwing up a feather in the air we know which way the wind blows,
+better than by a more heavy matter.
+
+The striking distinction between the works of the Roman, Bolognian,
+and Venetian schools, consists more in that general effect which is
+produced by colours than in the more profound excellences of the
+art; at least it is from thence that each is distinguished and
+known at first sight.  As it is the ornaments rather than the
+proportions of architecture which at the first glance distinguish
+the different orders from each other; the Doric is known by its
+triglyphs, the Ionic by its volutes, and the Corinthian by its
+acanthus.
+
+What distinguishes oratory from a cold narration, is a more liberal
+though chaste use of these ornaments which go under the name of
+figurative and metaphorical expressions; and poetry distinguishes
+itself from oratory by words and expressions still more ardent and
+glowing.  What separates and distinguishes poetry is more
+particularly the ornament of VERSE; it is this which gives it its
+character, and is an essential, without which it cannot exist.
+Custom has appropriated different metre to different kinds of
+composition, in which the world is not perfectly agreed.  In
+England the dispute is not yet settled which is to be preferred,
+rhyme or blank verse.  But however we disagree about what these
+metrical ornaments shall be, that some metre is essentially
+necessary is universally acknowledged.
+
+In poetry or eloquence, to determine how far figurative or
+metaphorical language may proceed, and when it begins to be
+affectation or beside the truth, must be determined by taste,
+though this taste we must never forget is regulated and formed by
+the presiding feelings of mankind, by those works which have
+approved themselves to all times and all persons.
+
+Thus, though eloquence has undoubtedly an essential and intrinsic
+excellence, and immovable principles common to all languages,
+founded in the nature of our passions and affections, yet it has
+its ornaments and modes of address which are merely arbitrary.
+What is approved in the Eastern nations as grand and majestic,
+would be considered by the Greeks and Romans as turgid and
+inflated; and they, in return, would be thought by the Orientals to
+express themselves in a cold and insipid manner.
+
+We may add likewise to the credit of ornaments, that it is by their
+means that art itself accomplishes its purpose.  Fresnoy calls
+colouring, which is one of the chief ornaments of painting, lena
+sororis, that which procures lovers and admirers to the more
+valuable excellences of the art.
+
+It appears to be the same right turn of mind which enables a man to
+acquire the TRUTH, or the just idea of what is right in the
+ornaments, as in the more stable principles of art.  It has still
+the same centre of perfection, though it is the centre of a smaller
+circle.
+
+To illustrate this by the fashion of dress, in which there is
+allowed to be a good or, bad taste.  The component parts of dress
+are continually changing from great to little, from short to long,
+but the general form still remains; it is still the same general
+dress which is comparatively fixed, though on a very slender
+foundation, but it is on this which fashion must rest.  He who
+invents with the most success, or dresses in, the best taste, would
+probably, from the same sagacity employed to greater purposes, have
+discovered equal skill, or have formed the same correct taste in
+the highest labours of art.
+
+I have mentioned taste in dress, which is certainly one of the
+lowest subjects to which this word is applied; yet, as I have
+before observed, there is a right even here, however narrow its
+foundation respecting the fashion of any particular nation.  But we
+have still more slender means of determining, in regard to the
+different customs of different ages or countries, to which to give
+the preference, since they seem to be all equally removed from
+nature.
+
+If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair
+on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard
+knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it; and having
+rendered them immovable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered
+the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost
+regularity; if, when thus attired he issues forth, he meets a
+Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and
+laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red ochre on
+particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most
+becoming; whoever despises the other for this attention to the
+fashion of his country, whichever of these two first feels himself
+provoked to laugh, is the barbarian.
+
+All these fashions are very innocent, neither worth disquisition,
+nor any endeavour to alter them, as the change would, in all
+probability, be equally distant from nature.  The only
+circumstances against which indignation may reasonably be moved,
+are where the operation is painful or destructive of health, such
+as is practised at Otahaiti, and the straight lacing of the English
+ladies; of the last of which, how destructive it must be to health
+and long life, the professor of anatomy took an opportunity of
+proving a few days since in this Academy.
+
+It is in dress as in things of greater consequence.  Fashions
+originate from those only who have the high and powerful advantages
+of rank, birth, and fortune; as many of the ornaments of art, those
+at least for which no reason can be given, are transmitted to us,
+are adopted, and acquire their consequence from the company in
+which we have been used to see them.  As Greece and Rome are the
+fountains from whence have flowed all kinds of excellence, to that
+veneration which they have a right to claim for the pleasure and
+knowledge which they have afforded us, we voluntarily add our
+approbation of every ornament and every custom that belonged to
+them, even to the fashion of their dress.  For it may be observed
+that, not satisfied with them in their own place, we make no
+difficulty of dressing statues of modern heroes or senators in the
+fashion of the Roman armour or peaceful robe; we go so far as
+hardly to bear a statue in any other drapery.
+
+The figures of the great men of those nations have come down to us
+in sculpture.  In sculpture remain almost all the excellent
+specimens of ancient art.  We have so far associated personal
+dignity to the persons thus represented, and the truth of art to
+their manner of representation, that it is not in our power any
+longer to separate them.  This is not so in painting; because,
+having no excellent ancient portraits, that connection was never
+formed.  Indeed, we could no more venture to paint a general
+officer in a Roman military habit, than we could make a statue in
+the present uniform.  But since we have no ancient portraits, to
+show how ready we are to adopt those kind of prejudices, we make
+the best authority among the moderns serve the same purpose.  The
+great variety of excellent portraits with which Vandyke has
+enriched this nation, we are not content to admire for their real
+excellence, but extend our approbation even to the dress which
+happened to be the fashion of that age.  We all very well remember
+how common it was a few years ago for portraits to be drawn in this
+Gothic dress, and this custom is not yet entirely laid aside.  By
+this means it must be acknowledged very ordinary pictures acquired
+something of the air and effect of the works of Vandyke, and
+appeared therefore at first sight to be better pictures than they
+really were; they appeared so, however, to those only who had the
+means of making this association, for when made, it was
+irresistible.  But this association is nature, and refers to that
+Secondary truth that comes from conformity to general prejudice and
+opinion; it is therefore not merely fantastical.  Besides the
+prejudice which we have in favour of ancient dresses, there may be
+likewise other reasons, amongst which we may justly rank the
+simplicity of them, consisting of little more than one single piece
+of drapery, without those whimsical capricious forms by which all
+other dresses are embarrassed.
+
+Thus, though it is from the prejudice we have in favour of the
+ancients, who have taught us architecture, that we have adopted
+likewise their ornaments; and though we are satisfied that neither
+nature nor reason is the foundation of those beauties which we
+imagine we see in that art, yet if any one persuaded of this truth
+should, therefore, invent new orders of equal beauty, which we will
+suppose to be possible, yet they would not please, nor ought he to
+complain, since the old has that great advantage of having custom
+and prejudice on its side.  In this case we leave what has every
+prejudice in its favour to take that which will have no advantage
+over what we have left, but novelty, which soon destroys itself,
+and, at any rate, is but a weak antagonist against custom.
+
+These ornaments, having the right of possession, ought not to be
+removed but to make room for not only what has higher pretensions,
+but such pretensions as will balance the evil and confusion which
+innovation always brings with it.
+
+To this we may add, even the durability of the materials will often
+contribute to give a superiority to one object over another.
+Ornaments in buildings, with which taste is principally concerned,
+are composed of materials which last longer than those of which
+dress is composed; it, therefore, makes higher pretensions to our
+favour and prejudice.
+
+Some attention is surely required to what we can no more get rid of
+than we can go out of ourselves.  We are creatures of prejudice; we
+neither can nor ought to eradicate it; we must only regulate, it by
+reason, which regulation by reason is, indeed, little more than
+obliging the lesser, the focal and temporary prejudices, to give
+way to those which are more durable and lasting.
+
+He, therefore, who in his practice of portrait painting wishes to
+dignify his subject, which we will suppose to be a lady, will not
+paint her in the modern dress, the familiarity of which alone is
+sufficient to destroy all dignity.  He takes care that his work
+shall correspond to those ideas and that imagination which he knows
+will regulate the judgment of others, and, therefore, dresses his
+figure something with the general air of the antique for the sake
+of dignity, and preserves something of the modern for the sake of
+likeness.  By this conduct his works correspond with those
+prejudices which we have in favour of what we continually see; and
+the relish of the antique simplicity corresponds with what we may
+call the, more learned and scientific prejudice.
+
+There was a statue made not long since of Voltaire, which the
+sculptor, not having that respect for the prejudices of mankind
+which he ought to have, has made entirely naked, and as meagre and
+emaciated as the original is said to be.  The consequence is what
+might be expected; it has remained in the sculptor's shop, though
+it was intended as a public ornament and a public honour to
+Voltaire, as it was procured at the expense of his cotemporary wits
+and admirers.
+
+Whoever would reform a nation, supposing a bad taste to prevail in
+it, will not accomplish his purpose by going directly against the
+stream of their prejudices.  Men's minds must be prepared to
+receive what is new to them.  Reformation is a work of time.  A
+national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally change
+at once; we must yield a little to the prepossession which has
+taken hold on the mind, and we may then bring people to adopt what
+would offend them if endeavoured to be introduced by storm.  When
+Battisto Franco was employed, in conjunction with Titian, Paul
+Veronese, and Tintoret, to adorn the library of St. Mark, his work,
+Vasari says, gave less satisfaction than any of the others:  the
+dry manner of the Roman school was very ill calculated to please
+eyes that had been accustomed to the luxuriance, splendour, and
+richness of Venetian colouring.  Had the Romans been the judges of
+this work, probably the determination would have been just
+contrary; for in the more noble parts of the art Battisto Franco
+was, perhaps, not inferior to any of his rivals.
+
+
+Gentlemen,--It has been the main scope and principal end of this
+discourse to demonstrate the reality of a standard in taste, as
+well as in corporeal beauty; that a false or depraved taste is a
+thing as well known, as easily discovered, as anything that is
+deformed, misshapen, or wrong in our form or outward make; and that
+this knowledge is derived from the uniformity of sentiments among
+mankind, from whence proceeds the knowledge of what are the general
+habits of nature, the result of which is an idea of perfect beauty.
+
+If what has been advanced be true, that besides this beauty or
+truth which is formed on the uniform eternal and immutable laws of
+nature, and which of necessity can be but one; that besides this
+one immutable verity there are likewise what we have called
+apparent or secondary truths proceeding from local and temporary
+prejudices, fancies, fashions, or accidental connection of ideas;
+if it appears that these last have still their foundation, however
+slender, in the original fabric of our minds, it follows that all
+these truths or beauties deserve and require the attention of the
+artist in proportion to their stability or duration, or as their
+influence is more or less extensive.  And let me add that as they
+ought not to pass their just bounds, so neither do they, in a well-
+regulated taste, at all prevent or weaken the influence of these
+general principles, which alone can give to art its true and
+permanent dignity.
+
+To form this just taste is undoubtedly in your own power, but it is
+to reason and philosophy that you must have recourse; from them we
+must borrow the balance by which is to be weighed and estimated the
+value of every pretension that intrudes itself on your notice.
+
+The general objection which is made to the introduction of
+philosophy into the regions of taste is, that it checks and
+restrains the flights of the imagination, and gives that timidity
+which an over-carefulness not to err or act contrary to reason is
+likely to produce.
+
+It is not so.  Fear is neither reason nor philosophy.  The true
+spirit of philosophy by giving knowledge gives a manly confidence,
+and substitutes rational firmness in the place of vain presumption.
+A man of real taste is always a man of judgment in other respects;
+and those inventions which either disdain or shrink from reason,
+are generally, I fear, more like the dreams of a distempered brain
+than the exalted enthusiasm of a sound and true genius.  In the
+midst of the highest flights of fancy or imagination, reason ought
+to preside from first to last, though I admit her more powerful
+operation is upon reflection.
+
+I cannot help adding that some of the greatest names of antiquity,
+and those who have most distinguished themselves in works of genius
+and imagination, were equally eminent for their critical skill.
+Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Horace; and among the moderns,
+Boileau, Corneille, Pope, and Dryden, are at least instances of
+genius not being destroyed by attention or subjection to rules and
+science.  I should hope, therefore, that the natural consequence
+likewise of what has been said would be to excite in you a desire
+of knowing the principles and conduct of the great masters of our
+art, and respect and veneration for them when known.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Seven Discourses on Art by Joshua Reynolds
+
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