Lectures on Painting, Delivered to the Students of the Royal Acadamy. Edward Armitage

for their work in England during the first half of the eighteenth century. I prefer passing on at once to Hogarth, who stands up like a giant amongst his dwarfish contemporaries. He at any rate possessed original genius, and his manual skill, though inferior to that of the best Dutchmen, was by no means contemptible. His portraits are amongst the best and most characteristic of the century, and I can find nothing in his attempts at a higher kind of art, as illustrated by his “Sigismunda” (in the National Gallery), to justify either the savage onslaught of Walpole or the contemptuous pity of Reynolds. On the contrary, it appears to me that this much-abused picture is a very respectable performance, and I fail to see any presumption in a skilful and accomplished artist like Hogarth seeking to escape from the loathsome task of always painting scenes of vice, misery, or folly.

      Sir Joshua ought to have recollected his own “Death of Dido,” and other attempts in what he calls “the great historical style,” before taxing Hogarth with imprudence and presumption.

      As in these lectures I have often ventured to criticise, and, as some may think, to speak disrespectfully of our first President and his discourses, I should like to state that though I do not admire his pictures as universally as some do, I consider him to have been a thorough artist; by which I mean that he was saturated with love for his profession. To him, painting, instead of being a task, was the greatest pleasure in life, and in pursuit of this pleasure he was indefatigable. We owe him a deep debt of gratitude as the great regenerator of art in this country.

      The great French art-reformer, David, went back to the antique, and to nature (who is older still); and this seems to me the more logical method. But there is no doubt that, practically (considering Sir Joshua’s own idiosyncrasies and the state in which he found English portraiture), an intelligent study of the old masters was the best rope for hauling British art off the mudbank on which she had so long been stranded.

      The name of Reynolds as a portrait-painter is almost as much respected abroad as it is here. Most of his work is faded and otherwise much deteriorated, but fortunately the excellent engravings of his portraits will to all ages preserve his fame as a man of great power, taste, and refinement.

      I confess myself quite unable to appreciate Gainsborough’s pictures as they are at present appreciated. I don’t mean to say that I undervalue all his work. I have seen heads by him which I admired exceedingly, but I must protest against the blind fetishism which would compel us to accept as good work any weak, trashy picture which bears his name. I have read laudatory notices both of him and Romney which would tempt one to say with Borachio, “See what a deformed thief this Fashion is!”

      I would recommend young artists to bear in mind a pithy old saying, to the effect that “One man may steal a horse while another may not look over the hedge”; and to beware of treating landscape, or portraiture either, in the Gainsborough style. Should they be misled into any thing of the kind, they will find to their cost that the loose, flimsy manner which is greatly admired in the fashionable painter of the last century, will not be tolerated for one instant in a modern picture.

      Amongst the early members of this Academy, Cotes, Dance, and Ramsay were all portrait-painters, who have, in my opinion, fully as good a right to celebrity as Gainsborough; but their merits are ignored, whilst inferior works attributed to Gainsborough fetch thousands of pounds.

      Amongst the figure-painters of the eighteenth-century academicians, I consider Copley to have been far the best. When I compare his honest, manly work with that of his contemporaries, Angelica Kaufman and West, I am always struck by its immeasurable superiority. Indeed, considering that portraiture had been the only branch of the art cultivated in England since the days of Holbein, and bearing in mind how figure-drawing had been neglected, I look upon Copley’s pictures with something like admiration.

      I cannot feel the same respect for Barry’s paintings at the Adelphi, although the effort evinced in these paintings is worthy of all praise. It was a much-needed protest against the all-absorbing fashionable portraiture of the day; but unfortunately the artist’s drawing was neither correct nor refined enough for this kind of work, and I fear it must be allowed that the execution of these heroic subjects is both weak and pretentious. In my opinion there are but two English figure-painters of the eighteenth century whose merit would be acknowledged by an intelligent foreign critic—by one, in short, who was ignorant of the market value of pictures, and whose judgment was, therefore, wholly unbiased. These two painters would be Hogarth and Copley. We will now see what sort of artists this century of puff and powder produced in France.

      In France the seventeenth century had been a very remarkable period for art, for it was then that Poussin, Lesueur, Claude Gelée, and Lebrun all lived and died. Thus, while in England all historical and landscape painting was a complete blank, France produced some of the greatest artists that have ever lived. They (at least three of them, Poussin, Lesueur, and Claude) were great in the largest sense of the word. Classic, religious, and landscape painting must always, ceteris paribus, take precedence of homely genre and prosaic portraiture. Invention is a higher quality than power of imitation, particularly when, as in the case of these three painters, the inventive power flowed without effort and was exercised with rare taste and judgment. With these three great artists I coupled Lebrun, not because I consider him by any means their equal, but because he was the founder of a good deal of the art which found favor in France during the eighteenth century. It is with this century that we have to deal; so, without further preamble, I will begin with Jean Jouvenet.

      This artist (but little known out of France) narrowly escaped becoming a great painter. His early pictures have a good deal of Poussin’s classical manner about them. Lebrun thought so highly of the young artist that he employed him as an assistant in the large battle-pieces he was executing for Louis XIV at Versailles.

      Here he no doubt acquired a good deal of Lebrun’s vigor and facility, but lost the pure taste and classical feeling he had derived from Poussin. He was a very prolific painter, and all his works are either life-size or larger than life. They are remarkably well drawn and vigorously colored, but they lack the one quality which makes Lesueur’s work so attractive, viz., simplicity and reverential feeling.

      It is by no means necessary that the painter of religious subjects should be an ascetic, nor even what is commonly called a religious man, but it is necessary that he should import into his work some of the spirit of Christianity, just as it is necessary for the painter of pagan heroes and nymphs to imbue himself with the spirit of classical art until it becomes a second nature to him.

      In Jouvenet’s numerous pictures of New Testament subjects the action is too violent, and the painter has evidently thought more about displaying his own skill than doing justice to his subject.

      In Rubens’ Biblical pictures we often find the same kind of vulgar bustle and common types, but every thing is pardoned to Rubens on account of his brilliant color.

      Jouvenet’s color, though fairly good, was not of that transcendent quality which would condone his very unbiblical style of composition.

      With all his faults, Jouvenet is rather a favorite of mine. I like his thoroughly masculine style of work, and I admire his indomitable pluck and industry. It is related of him that some ten years before his death he became afflicted with paralysis, which completely crippled his right arm. He then took to painting with his left, and on recovering partially the use of his right fingers he used to hold his brush in his right hand and guide it with his left. It is said that the work thus done is hardly inferior to what he produced before his paralysis. Contrast this devotion and love for his art with the tradesman-like indifference of the English face-painters, of the Knellers, the Jervases, and the Richardsons, and others who, as soon as they had acquired wealth, shirked work as much as possible.