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be found in reality as have glowed on the canvas of Claude. In the most
enchanting of natural landscapes, there will always be found a defect
or an excess--many excesses and defects. While the component parts may
defy, individually, the highest skill of the artist, the arrangement
of these parts will always be susceptible of improvement. In short, no
position can be attained on the wide surface of the natural earth,
from which an artistical eye, looking steadily, will not find matter of
offence in what is termed the "composition" of the landscape. And
yet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are justly
instructed to regard nature as supreme. With her details we shrink from
competition. Who shall presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to
improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism which
says, of sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or
idealized rather than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or sculptural
combinations of points of human liveliness do more than approach the
living and breathing beauty. In landscape alone is the principle of the
critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but the headlong
spirit of generalization which has led him to pronounce it true
throughout all the domains of art. Having, I say, felt its truth here;
for the feeling is no affectation or chimera. The mathematics afford no
more absolute demonstrations than the sentiments of his art yields the
artist. He not only believes, but positively knows, that such and
such apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter constitute and alone
constitute the true beauty. His reasons, however, have not yet been
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