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to speak of him here at any length. He is .the leader of the glish Realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable of his

Clarkson

field.

characteristics is the look of common-sense and rationality which his compositions will always bear en opposed to any kind of affectation. He appears to nk of no other artist. What he has learned, has been m his own acquaintance with and affection for the steep s and the deep sea; and his modes of treatment are ke removed from sketchiness or incompletion, and from ggeration or effort. The somewhat over-prosaic tone is subjects is rather a condescension to what he supposes to public feeling, than a sign of want of feeling in himself; for some of his sketches from nature or from fancy, I have seen vers and perceptions manifested of a far higher order than any t are traceable in his Academy works, powers which I think à much to be blamed for checking. The portion of his pices usually most defective in this respect is the sky, which is to be cold and uninventive, always well drawn, but with a d of hesitation in the clouds whether it is to be fair or foul ther; they having neither the joyfulness of rest, nor the jesty of storm. Their color is apt also to verge on a morbid ple, as was eminently the case in the large picture of the ck on the coast of Holland exhibited in 1844, a work in ch both his powers and faults were prominently manifested, picture being full of good painting, but wanting in its entire eal. There was no feeling of wreck about it; and, but for damage about her bowsprit, it would have been impossible a landsman to say whether the hull was meant for a wreck or ardship. Nevertheless, it is always to be recollected, that ubjects of this kind it is probable that much escapes us in sequence of our want of knowledge, and that to the eye of seaman much may be of interest and value which to us ears cold. At all events, this healthy and rational regard hings is incomparably preferable to the dramatic absurdiwhich weaker artists commit in matters marine; and from per-colored sunsets on green waves sixty feet high, with iflower breakers, and ninepin rocks; from drowning on ks, and starving on rafts, and lying naked on beaches, it is y refreshing to turn to a surge of Stanfield's true salt,

serviceable, unsentimental sea. It would be well, however, if he would sometimes take a higher flight. The castle of Ischia gave him a grand subject, and a little more invention in the sky, a little less muddiness in the rocks, and a little more savageness in the sea, would have made it an impressive picture; it just misses the sublime, yet is a fine work, and better engraved than usual by the Art Union.

One fault we cannot but venture to find, even in our own extreme ignorance, with Mr. Stanfield's boats; they never look weather-beaten. There is something peculiarly precious in the rusty, dusty, tar-trickled, fishy, phosphorescent brown of an old boat, and when this has just dipped under a wave and rises to the sunshine it is enough to drive Giorgione to despair. I have never seen any effort at this by Stanfield; his boats always look new painted and clean; witness especially the one before the ship in the wreck picture above noticed; and there is some such absence of a right sense of color in other portions of his subject; even his fishermen have always clean jackets and unsoiled caps, and his very rocks are lichenless. And, by the way, this ought to be noted respecting modern painters in general, that they have not a proper sense of the value of dirt; cottage children never appear but in fresh got-up caps and aprons, and whitehanded beggars excite compassion in unexceptionable rags. reality, almost all the colors of things associated with human life derive something of their expression and value from the tones of impurity, and so enhance the value of the entirely pure tints of nature herself. Of Stanfield's rock and mountain. drawing enough will be said hereafter. His foliage is inferior; his architecture admirably drawn, but commonly wanting in color. His picture of the Doge's palace at Venice was quite clay-cold and untrue. Of late he has shown a marvellous predilection for the realization, even to actually relieved texture, of old worm-eaten wood; we trust he will not allow such fancies to carry him too far.

In

The name I have last to mention is that of J. M. W. Turner. I do not intend to speak of this artist at present in general terms, because my constant practice throughout this work is to say, when I speak of an artist at all, the very truth of what I believe and feel respecting him; and the truth of what I believe

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J. M. W.

feel respecting Turner would appear in this place, unsupted by any proof, mere rhapsody. I shall therefore here confine myself to a rapid glance at the relations of his past and present works, and to some notice of what he has failed of accomplishing: the greater part of the subsequent chapters will be exclusively deed to the examination of the new fields over which he has exled the range of landscape art.

Force all great

tional feel

ers.

It is a fact more universally acknowledged than enforced or d upon, that all great painters, of whatever school, have great only in their rendering of what they had seen and from early childhood; and that the greatest among them e been the most frank in acknowledging this their inability reat anything successfully but that with which they had been iliar. The Madonna of Raffaelle was born on the Urbino ntains, Ghirlandajo's is a Florentine, Bellini's a Venetian; e is not the slightest effort on the part of any one of these t men to paint her as a Jewess. It is not the place here to st farther on a point so simple and so universally demonble. Expression, character, types of countenance, costume, r, and accessories are with all great painters whatsoever se of their native land, and that frankly and entirely, withthe slightest attempt at modification; and I assert fearlessly it is impossible that it should ever be otherwise, and that nan ever painted or ever will paint well anything but what as early and long seen, early and long felt, and early and ; loved. How far it is possible for the mind of one nation eneration to be healthily modified and taught by the work of her, I presume not to determine; but it depends upon ther the energy of the mind which receives the instruction afficient, while it takes out of what it feeds upon that which iversal and common to all nature, to resist all warping national or temporary peculiarities. Nino Pisano got ing but good, the modern French nothing but evil, from study of the antique; but Nino Pisano had a God and a acter. All artists who have attempted to assume, or in weakness have been affected by, the national peculiarities ther times and countries, have instantly, whatever their inal power, fallen to third-rate rank, or fallen altogether,

and have invariably lost their birthright and blessing, lost their power over the human heart, lost all capability of teaching or benefiting others. Compare the hybrid classification of Wilson with the rich English purity of Gainsborough; compare the recent exhibition of middle-age cartoons for the Houses of Parliament with the works of Hogarth; compare the sickly modern German imitations of the great Italians with Albert Durer and Holbein; compare the vile classicality of Canova and the modern Italians with Mino da Fiesole, Luca della Robbia, and Andrea del Verrocchio. The manner of Nicolo Poussin is said to be Greek-it may be so; this only I know, that it is heartless and profitless. The severity of the rule, however, extends not in full force to the nationality, but only to the visibility of things; for it is very possible for an artist of powerful mind to throw himself well into the feeling of foreign nations of his own time. Thus John Lewis has been eminently successful in his seizing of Spanish character. Yet it may be doubted if the seizure be such as Spaniards themselves would acknowledge; it is probably of the habits of the people more than their hearts; continued efforts of this kind, especially if their subjects be varied, assuredly end in failure; Lewis, who seemed so eminently penetrative in Spain, sent nothing from Italy but complexions and costumes, and I expect no good from his stay in Egypt. English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy, but for this there are collateral causes which it is not here the place to examine. Be this as it may, and whatever success may be attained in pictures of slight and unpretending aim, of genre, as they are called, in the rendering of foreign character, of this I am certain, that whatever is to be truly great and affecting must have on it the strong stamp of the native land; not a law this, but a necessity, from the intense hold on their country of the affections of all truly great men ; all classicality, all middleage patent reviving, is utterly vain and absurd; if we are now to do anything great, good, awful, religious, it must be got out of our own little island, and out of this year 1846, railroads and all if a British painter, I say this in earnest seriousness, cannot make historical characters cat of the British House of Peers, he cannot paint history; and if he cannot make a Madonna of a British girl of the nineteenth century, he cannot paint one at all.

The rule, of course, holds in landscape; yet so far less thoritatively, that the material nature of all countries and nes is in many points actually, and in all, in principle, the same; so that feelings educated in Cumberland, feeling on may find their food in Switzerland, and impresndscape sub- sions first received among the rocks of Cornwall, be recalled upon the precipices of Genoa.

3. Influence of

t.

choice of

Add to is actual sameness, the power of every great mind to possess elf of the spirit of things once presented to it, and it is evident, at little limitation can be set to the landscape painter as to e choice of his field; and that the law of nationality will hold th him only so far as a certain joyfulness and completion will by preference found in those parts of his subject which reind him of his own land. But if he attempt to impress on his ndscapes any other spirit than that he has felt, and to make em landscapes of other times, it is all over with him, at least, the degree in which such reflected moonshine takes place of e genuine light of the present day.

The reader will at once perceive how much trouble this mple principle will save both the painter and the critic; it at ce sets aside the whole school of common composition, and xonerates us from the labor of minutely examining any landape which has nymphs or philosophers in it.

It is hardly necessary for us to illustrate this principle by any -ference to the works of early landscape painters, as I suppose is universally acknowledged with respect to them; Titian eing the most remarkable instance of the influence of the native r on a strong mind, and Claude, of that of the classical poison n a weak one; but it is very necessary to keep it in mind in eviewing the works of our great modern landscape painter.

I do not know in what district of England Turner first or ongest studied, but the scenery whose influence I can trace ost definitely throughout his works, varied as they are, is that of Yorkshire. Of all his drawings, I think, those 39. Its peculiar anifestation in of the Yorkshire series have the most heart in them, the most affectionate, simple, unwearied, erious finishing of truth. There is in them little seeking after ffect, but a strong love of place, little exhibition of the artist's wn powers or peculiarities, but intense appreciation of the

urner.

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