Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847.
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"Who maketh the clouds his chariot?"
Let then, not only their forms, but their colours too, be as far as may be worthy Him whom they are said to bear. They are, as it were, the folding and unfolding volumes wherein the history of all creation is written. As they are prominent in the language of poetry, so should they ever be the materials for poetic art.
I speak of this noble character of cloud skies, because a writer of more persuasive power than mature judgement, – the Author of "Modern Painters," – has condemned them; that he has not felt them is surprising. He has, however, in his second, in many respects admirable part, manifested such change of opinion, and has shown such a growing admiration for the old masters, whom in his first volume he treated with so little respect, nay, with perfect contempt, that I cannot doubt the operation of his better judgment, when in prosecuting his subject, he will be led to consider the use of these materials of nature to poetic art.
I must not, however, forget that I began this paper with questioning the title of Rubens as a colourist. It has been shown, that I consider no painter a colourist, who does not unite the two essentials of colour, – agreeability, and its perfect sympathy with the subject.
I have endeavoured to show in what this agreeability consists. I have not presumed to lay down any definite rules for the second great essential; but I have endeavoured by illustration to enforce its necessity; in this confident that a proper practice will follow, and be the necessary result of a proper feeling. Now to speak of Rubens; what are his characteristics as a colourist? Wherein lies his excellence? I do not stop to repeat any of the extravagant praises that have been so freely lavished upon him. But I would ask, is there one important picture by his hand, wherein the colour is of a sentiment? Is there any one which, if you remove from it to such a distance as not to see the subject in its particulars, will indicate by its colouring what sort of narrative is to be told by a nearer inspection? Try him by those in our National Gallery. I will take first, his most powerful, and one of a subject most advantageous perhaps to his manner, because there is no very striking sentiment to be conveyed by it; for he seems scarcely serious in his treatment of this passage in the Roman history. I speak of his "Rape of the Sabines." Inasmuch as it is a picture of glare, and fluster, and confusion, it may be said to represent the subject; but such ought not to be the sentiment of it. But inasmuch as it has this glare, and is entirely deficient in all repose of colour, (for it is not requisite to representation of violent action, that there should not be that character of repose of colour which the essential agreeability demands,) the eye cannot rest upon it with satisfaction as a whole. You must approach it then nearer, to see how the particular objects are coloured. You will be pleased with the skill with which one colour is set off by another; and, doubtless, you will acknowledge a certain truth in the flesh tints: but all this while you are led away from the subject, draw no conclusion from it as a whole, and are induced to examine a detail which, however coloured with skill, and powerfully executed, is vulgar and disgusting. A mere trifle more of gross vulgarity would turn it into caricature, and you would think, that Rubens had been a successfully laborious satirist upon the narrative of the Roman historian. I confess that, but for its technical merits, which are lost upon most of the visitors of the Gallery, the picture would give me no pleasure whatever, nay, much disgust, as altogether derogatory to the dignity of art.
I purposely pass by his allegorical pictures as mere furniture for walls, not being subjects of sentiment; nor should I very much care if his "Peace and War" were in the sorry condition which has been wrongly given to it.
Examine then the Judgment of Paris. Here is a subject most favourable for him. It shows glaringly the defect of his manner. Admit that his flesh tints are most natural, that they are beautiful; has he not sacrificed too much to make them so? All, excepting these nude figures, is monotonous, has no relation by any tint to the figures, or to any idea of sentiment such a subject may be supposed to convey. The single excellence lies in the flesh-colouring of the three goddesses. But when I use the word excellence, I do not mean to say that in this respect he surpasses any other painter, as I will presently show. Now, there is a peculiarity in Rubens' method, and which strictly belongs to his colouring, from which arises what may be not improperly designated flimsiness, that is, the leaving too much of the first getting in of his picture, the first transparent sketchy brown. If in some respect this gives force to the more solid parts, by the contrast of the transparent with the opaque, yet is it rather a flashy force, in which the means become too visible; an entire substance is wanted; we come too immediately to the bare ground of the canvass. And this first colouring being a mere brown, not deserving the name of colour, as it is not the real colour of the objects upon which it is disposed, is in entire disagreement with the studied truth to nature in the other parts. There is every reason to believe that Rubens, after his return from Italy, was aware of this, by his partially adopting the Italian method of more generally solid painting and after glazing; but he returned to the Flemish method, and as it certainly was the more expeditious, it may have better suited his hand, and the demands upon it. Now, here it may be remarked, that even for the first essential – agreeability of colouring, that is, of the substance of the paint – it is necessary that it should be rich, really a substance, not a merely thin wash: such was the positive depth of even the shadowy parts in the back grounds of Corregio; the paint itself is a rich substance, with the lustrous depth of precious stones. So that it would appear that there is in Rubens' style of colouring an original incompleteness, destructive in part of the naturalness he would aim at; it is a mannerism, very tolerable in such light works as those lucid and charming pictures by Teniers where all is light and unlaboured; but becoming a weakness where the other labour and the subject are important.
Now, with regard to this celebrated excellence of his, in colouring the nude, (and here it should be observed, that it is almost exclusively in his female figures,) however natural it may be, is it nature in its most agreeable, its most perfect colouring? It has been said, and intended as praise, that the flesh looks as if it had fed upon roses; but is it a praise? I should rather say it would not unaptly express the thinness, the unsubstantialness of it, as of a rose leaf surface merely. In form, indeed, the figures are any thing but thin and unsubstantial: but I am considering only the colouring; it is not rich; it has indeed the light and play of life, but it has not the glow; it is a surface life, not life, warm life to the very marrow, such as we see in the works of Titian and Giorgione. They did not, as Rubens did, heighten the flesh with pure white; they reserved the power of that for another purpose, preserving throughout a lower tone, so that the eye shall not fasten upon any one particular tint, the whole being of the character of the "nimium lubricus aspici." Their white and their dark, they artfully placed as opposition, the cool white to set off the warmth, the life-glow of the flesh, and the dark to make the low tone shine out fair; so that in this very excellence of flesh painting, they were more perfect, that one only approach to excellence, by which it should seem Rubens had acquired his title as a colourist. But these painters, as well as many others – though take only these, as the most striking contrasts to Rubens – excelled also in the agreeability of their colouring, without reference to subject, and in the sympathy with regard to it. So that in them were united the two essentials. Whereas Rubens had in any perfection neither; the one not at all, and the other only in a minor part and degree.
Such was the general character of Rubens' colouring. I do not mean that there are no felicitous exceptions. I would notice – but there the human figure is not – his lioness on a ledge of rock; there is an entire absence of his strong and flickering colours: on the contrary all is dim – the scenery natural to the animal, for it partakes of its proper colours, (and this is strictly true, as the hare and the fox conceal themselves by their assimilating earths and forms.) The spectator advances upon the scene, unaware of the stealthily lurking danger. The dimness and repose are of a terror, that contrast and forcible colour would at least mitigate; the surprise would be lost, or rather be altogether of another kind; it would arm you for the danger, which becomes sublime by taking you unprepared. And there is his little landscape with the sun shedding his rays through the hole in the tree, where the sentiment of the obscure – the dim wood – is enhanced by the bright gleam – and there is in this little picture a whole agreeability of colour. His landscapes in general are, however, very strange; rather eccentric than natural in colour, yet preserving the intended atmospheric effect by an idealism of colouring not quite in keeping with the unromantic commonness of the scenery.
But these exceptions do not indicate the characteristics of Rubens as a colourist; he is more known, and more imitated, as far as he can be imitated, in the mannerism of his style which has been described.
Deficient, then, as I think him to have been in these two essentials, I am still disposed to question his claim to the title, and to ask, "Was Rubens a colourist?" If the answer be in the negative, it may be worth while to consider the precise point from which his style may be said to have deviated from the right road; nor is it here necessary to particularise, but to refer to the Italian practice generally, which will be found to consist chiefly in this – in the choosing a low key; and for the greatest perfection of colouring, the proper union of the two essentials of good colouring, it may be safe to refer, first to the Venetian, the Lombard, and then to the Bolognese schools. Not that the Roman school is altogether to be omitted. Out of his polished style, Raffaelle is often excellent – both rich in tone, and, where he is not remarkably so, often sentimental. Some of his frescoes, as the Heliodorus, are good examples. And in that small picture in our National Gallery, the "St Catherine," the sentiment of purity and loveliness is admirably sustained in the colouring. There is in the best pictures of that school no affected flashiness of high lights – no flimsiness in the unsubstantial paint in the shadows; there is an evenness throughout, which, if it reach not the perfection of colouring, is the best substitute for it.
Power is not inconsistent with modesty – with forbearance. In the flashy style, all the force is expended, and visibly so; and as in that excess of power the flash of lightning is but momentary, we cannot long bear the exhibition of such a power rendered continuous. In the more modest – the subdued style – the artist conceals as much as may be the very power he has used, thereby actually strengthening it; for while you have all you want, you know not how much may be in reserve, and you feel it unseen, or may believe it to be unseen, when in fact it is before your eyes, though half veiled for a purpose.
Let not any painter who would be a colourist deceive himself into the belief that the most vivid and unmixed colours are the best for his art, nor that even they are the truest to nature, in whatever sense he may take the word nature. It is easy enough to lay on crude vermilion, lake, and chrome yellows; yet the colours that shall be omitted shall be infinite, and by far more beautiful than the chosen, and for which, since the generality are not painters, nor scientific in the effects of colours, there are no names. Let a painter who would have so limited a scale and view of colour do his best, and the first flower-bed he looks at will shame him with regard to those very colours he has adopted, as with regard to those thousand shades of hues, mixed and of endless variety, which are still more beautiful. We scarcely ever in nature see a really unmixed colour; and that the mixed are the most agreeable may be more than conjectured, from the fact that, of the three, the blue, the red, and the yellow, the mixture of the two will be so unsatisfactory, that the mind's eye will, when withdrawn, supply the third.
A few words only remain to be said. To complete, practically, agreeability of colouring, there is wanting a more perfect vehicle for our colours. Much attention has, of late years, been directed to this subject; and there is every reason to believe not in vain. I wait, impatiently enough, Mr Eastlake's other volume, in which he promises to treat of the Italian methods. He has been indefatigable in collecting materials, – has an eye to know well what is wanted; and, as a scholar and collector of all that has been written on art, in Italian, as well as other languages, has the best sources from which to gather isolated facts, which, put together, may lead to most important discoveries.
Mrs Merrifield, also, whose translation from Cennino Cennini, and whose works on fresco painting are so valuable, has been collecting materials abroad, and will shortly publish her discoveries. The two proofs to which we are to look are documents and chemistry. The secret of Van Eyck may have been found out, but its modification under the Italian practice will be, perhaps, the more important discovery. I am glad also to learn, that Mr Hendrie intends to publish entire with notes, the "De Magerne MS." in the British Museum. I believe artists are already giving up the worst of vehicles, the meguilp, made of mastic, of all the varnishes the most ready to decompose, as well as to separate the paint, and produce those unseemly gashes which have been the ruin of so many pictures.
Whether colour be considered in its agreeability, per se, or in its sympathetic, its sentimental application, – for the attainment of either end, it is of the highest importance to resume the very identical vehicle, and the mode of using it, which were the vehicle and the methods of Titian, Giorgione, and Corregio, and generally of the old masters. Yours ever,
A – s.
4th June, 1847.
THE AMERICAN LIBRARY. 12
We are not – as the title placed at the head of this paper, till further explained, might seem to imply – we are not about to pass in review the whole literature of America. Scanty as that youthful literature is, and may well confess itself to be, it would afford subject for a long series of papers. Besides, the more distinguished of its authors are generally known, and fairly appreciated, and we should have no object nor interest just at present in determining, with perhaps some nearer approach to accuracy than has hitherto been done, the merits of such well-known writers as Irving, Cooper, Prescott, Emerson, Channing, and others. But the series now in course of publication by Messrs Wiley and Putnam, under the title of "Library of American Books," has naturally attracted our attention, bringing as it were some works before us for the first time, and presenting what – after a few distinguished names are bracketed off – may be supposed to be a fair specimen of the popular literature of that country.
It will be seen that we have taken up a pretty large handful for present examination. Our collection will be acknowledged, we think, to be no bad sample of the whole. At all events we have shaken from our sheaf two or three unprofitable cars, and one in particular so empty, and so rotten withal, that to hang over it for close examination was impossible. How it happens that the publishers of the series have admitted to the "Library of American Books" as if it were a book– a thing called "Big Abel and The Little Manhattan," is to us, at this distance from the scene of operations, utterly inexplicable. It is just possible that the author may have earned a reputable name in some other department of letters; pity, then, he should forfeit both it, and his character for sanity, by this outrageous attempt at humour. Perhaps he is the potent editor of some American broad-sheet, of which publishers stand in awe. We know not; of this only we are sure, that more heinous trash was never before exposed to public view. We read two chapters of it – more we are persuaded than any other person in England has accomplished – and then threw it aside with a sort of charitable contempt. For the sake of all parties, readers, critics, publishers and the author himself, it should be buried, at once, out of sight, with other things noisome and corruptible.
On the other hand, we shall be able to introduce to our readers (should it be hitherto unknown to them) one volume, at least, which they will be willing to transfer from the American to the English library. The "Mosses from an old Manse," is occasionally written with an elegance of style which may almost bear comparison with that of Washington Irving; and though certainly it is inferior to the works of that author in taste and judgment, and whatever may be described as artistic talent, it exhibits deeper traces of thought and reflection. What can our own circulating libraries be about? At all our places of summer resort they drug us with the veriest trash, without a spark of vitality in it, and here are tales and sketches like these of Nathaniel Hawthorne, which it would have done one's heart good to have read under shady coverts, or sitting – no unpleasant lounge – by the sea-side on the rolling shingles of the beach. They give us the sweepings of Mr Colburn's counter, and then boastfully proclaim the zeal with which they serve the public. So certain other servants of the public feed the eye with gaudy advertisements of every generous liquor under heaven, and retail nothing but the sour ale of some crafty brewer who has contrived to bind them to his vats and his mash-tub.
The first book we opened of this series is one called, with a charming alliteration, "Views and Reviews," by the author of "The Yemassee, &c." whom we fortunately learn, from another quarter, to be a gentleman of the more commodious name of Mr Sims; and the first words which caught our eye were "Americanism in Literature," printed in capital letters, it being the title of an essay which has for its object to stimulate the Americans to the formation of a national literature. This appears to be a favourite subject with a certain class of their writers, more distinguished for ardour than for judgment. Mrs Margaret Fuller, in her Papers on Literature and Art, is also eloquent on the same theme. Let us first hear Mr Sims. There is in this gentleman's enthusiasm a business-like air which is highly amusing.
"Americanism in Literature. This is the right title. It indicates the becoming object of our aim. Americanism in our literature is scarcely implied by the usual phraseology. American literature seems to be a thing certainly—but it is not the thing exactly. To put Americanism in our letters, is to do a something much more important. The phrase has a peculiar signification which is worth our consideration. By a liberal extension of the courtesies of criticism, we are already in possession of a due amount of American authorship; but of such as is individual and properly peculiar to ourselves, we cannot be said to enjoy much. Our writers are numerous – quite as many perhaps as, in proportion to our years, our circumstances, and necessities, might be looked for amongst any people. But, with very few exceptions, their writings might as well be European. They are European. The writers think after European models, draw their stimulus and provocation from European books, fashion themselves to European tastes, and look chiefly to the awards of European criticism. This is to denationalise the American mind. This is to enslave the national heart – to place ourselves at the mercy of the foreigner, and to yield all that is individual in our character and hope, to the paralysing influence of his will, and frequently hostile purposes." – (P. 1.)
All the literati of Europe are manifestly in league to sap the constitution and destroy the independence of America; and, at this very time, its own men of letters: – the traitors! – are seeking a European reputation. Truly a state of alarm which may be described as unparalleled. "A nation," says our most profound and original patriot, "must do its own thinking, as well as its own fighting, for as truly as all history has shown that the people who rely for their defence in battle on foreign mercenaries, inevitably become their prey; so the nation falls a victim to that genius of another to which she passively defers." Fearful to contemplate. There can be no safety for the United States as long as people will read Bulwer and Dickens instead of our "Yemassee," and our "Wigwams and Cabins."
But a national literature – will it come for any calling to it? Will it come the sooner for the banishment of all other literature? If Mr Sims makes his escape into the woods, and sits there naked and ignorant as a savage, will inspiration visit him? Will trying to uneducate his mind, however successful he may be in the attempt, – and he has really carried his efforts in this direction to a most heroic length – exactly enable him, or any other, to compete with this dreaded influence of foreign literature? And if not, what other measures are to be taken against this insidious enemy? We see none.
But no nation was ever hurt, as far as we have heard, by the light of genius shining on it from another. And as to this national literature – though it will not obey the conjurations of Mr Sims, we may be quite sure that, in due time, it will make its appearance. America can no more begin a literature, no more start fresh from its woods and its prairies, than we here in England could commence a literature, neither can it any more abstract itself from the influence of its own institutions, the temper of its people, its history, its natural scenery, than we here in England can manumit ourselves from the influence of the age in which we live. These things determine themselves by their own laws. You may as well call out to the tides of the ocean to flow this way or that, as think to control these great tidal movements of the human mind. America cannot begin a literature, for it must look up to the same wellhead, or rather to the same mountain streams as ourselves; neither do we suppose that it is seriously anxious to disclaim all connexion with Bacon and Shakspeare, Milton and Locke; but it can, and will, continue and carry on a literature of its own in a separate stream, branching from what we must be permitted to call, for some time at least, the main current; and which, now diverging from that, and now approaching to it, will at length wear for itself a deep and independent channel.
But such slow and gradual progress of things by no means suits the impetuous patriotism of Mr Sims. He is possessed evidently with the idea that some great explosion of national genius would suddenly take place, if the people would but resolve upon it. It is an affair of public opinion, like any other measure of policy; if but the universal suffrage could be brought to bear upon it, the thing were done; it is from the electoral urn that the whole scroll of poets and philosophers is to be drawn. "Let the nation," he solemnly proclaims, "but yield a day's faith to its own genius, and that day will suffice for triumph!.. Our development," he continues, "depends upon our faith in what we are, and in our independence of foreign judgment." One would think Mr Sims was fighting over again the war of independence. Or has some old speech of Mr O'Connell's on the repeal of the union got shuffled amongst his papers? One expects the sentence to close with the reiterated quotation, —
"Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow!"
As the freedom Mr Sims is struggling for, is the release from superior genius, superior intelligence, from philosophy and taste, we may surely congratulate him, at least, on his own personal attainment of it. He has "struck the blow" for himself – whatever blow was necessary. He is free. Free, and as barren, as the north wind. Free as the loose and blinding sand upon a gusty day – and about as pleasing and as profitable. His "Views and Reviews" demonstrate in every page that he has quite liberated himself from all those fetters and prejudices which, in Europe, go under the name of truth and common sense.