and Hunt, who invariably destroy everything else that comes within range of them. His most beautiful tones occur in those drawings in which there is prevalent and powerful warm grey; his most failing ones in those of sandy red. On his deficiencies I shall not insist, because I am not prepared to say how far it is possible for him to avoid them. We have never seen the reconciliation of the peculiar characters he has obtained, with the accurate following out of architectural detail. With his present modes of execution, farther fidelity is impossible, nor has any other mode of execution, yet obtained the same results; and though much is unaccomplished by him in certain subjects, and something of over-mannerism may be traced in his treatment of others, as especially in his mode of expressing the decorative parts of Greek or Roman architecture, yet in his own peculiar Gothic territory, where the spirit of the subject itself is somewhat rude and grotesque, his abstract of decoration has more of the spirit of the reality, than far more laborious imitation.1 The spirit of the Flemish Hôtel de Ville and decorated street architecture has never been, even in the slightest degree, felt or conveyed except by him, and by him, to my mind, faultlessly and absolutely; and though his interpretation of architecture that contains more refined art in its details is far less satisfactory, still it is impossible, while walking on his favourite angle of the Piazza at Venice, either to think of any other artist than Prout or not to think of him.

painting

G. Cattermole.

Many other dexterous and agreeable architectural artists we § 33. Modern have, of various degrees of merit, but of all of whom, it may be architectural generally said, that they draw hats, faces, cloaks and caps much generally. better than Prout, but figures not so well: that they draw walls and windows, but not cities; mouldings and buttresses, but not cathedrals. Joseph Nash's work on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, is, however, valuable, and I suppose that Haghe's

works

may be depended on for fidelity. But it appears very strange that a workman capable of producing the clever drawings he has, from time to time, sent to the New Society of Painters in Water Colours, should publish lithographs so conventional, forced,

and lifeless.

VOL. I.

1 Compare Stones of Venice, vol. i. chap. xxiii. § 5.

I

It is not without hesitation, that I mention a name respecting which the reader may already have been surprised at my silence, that of G. Cattermole. There are signs in his works of very peculiar gifts, and perhaps also of powerful genius; their deficiencies I should willingly attribute to the advice of ill-judging friends, and to the applause of a public satisfied with shallow efforts, if brilliant; yet I cannot but think it one necessary characteristic of all true genius to be misled by no such false fires. The antiquarian feeling of Cattermole is pure, earnest, and natural; and I think his imagination originally vigorous, certainly his fancy; his grasp of momentary passion considerable, his sense of action in the human body vivid and ready. But no original talent, however brilliant, can sustain its energy when the demands upon it are constant, and all legitimate support and food withdrawn. I do not recollect in any, even of the most important of Cattermole's works, so much as a fold of drapery studied out from nature. Violent conventionalism of light and shade, sketchy forms continually less and less developed, the walls and the faces drawn with the same stucco colour, alike opaque, and all the shades on flesh, dress, or stone, laid in with the same arbitrary brown, for ever tell the same tale of a mind wasting its strength and substance in the production of emptiness, and seeking, by more and more blindly hazarded handling, to conceal the weakness which the attempt at finish would betray.

This tendency has of late been painfully visible in his architecture. Some drawings made several years ago for an Annual, illustrative of Scott's works, were, for the most part, pure and finely felt, though irrelevant to our present subject, a fall of the Clyde should be noticed, admirable for breadth and grace of foliage, and for the bold sweeping of the water; and another subject of which I regret that I can only judge by the engraving, Glendearg at twilight (the monk Eustace chased by Christie of the Clint hill), which I think must have been one of the sweetest pieces of simple Border hill feeling ever painted ;—and about that time, his architecture, though always conventionally brown in the shadows, was generally well drawn, and always powerfully conceived.

Since then, he has been tending gradually through exaggeration to caricature, and vainly endeavouring to attain, by inordinate bulk

of decorated parts, that dignity which is only to be reached by purity of proportion and majesty of line.

evil, in an

architectural

It has pained me deeply, to see an artist of so great original § 34. The power indulging in childish fantasticism and exaggeration, and sub- archæological stituting for the serious and subdued work of legitimate imagination point of view of misapplied monster machicolations, and colossal cusps and crockets. While invention, in there is so much beautiful architecture daily in process of destruc- subject. tion around us, I cannot but think it treason to imagine anything; at least, if we must have composition, let the design of the artist be such as the architect would applaud. But it is surely very grievous, that while our idle artists are helping their vain inventions by the fall of sponges on soiled paper, glorious buildings with the whole intellect and history of centuries concentrated in them are suffered to fall into unrecorded ruin. A day does not now pass in Italy without the destruction of some mighty monument; the streets of all her cities echo to the hammer; half of her fair buildings lie in separate stones about the places of their foundation: would not time be better spent in telling us the truth about these perishing remnants of majestic thought, than in perpetuating the ill-digested fancies of idle hours? It is, I repeat, treason to the cause of art, for any man to invent, unless he invents something better than has been invented before, or something differing in kind. There is room enough for invention in the pictorial treatment of what exists. There is no more honourable exhibition of imaginative power, than in the selection of such place, choice of such treatment, introduction of such incident, as may produce a noble picture without deviation from one line of the actual truth: and such I believe to be, indeed, in the end the most advantageous, as well as the most modest direction of the invention; for I recollect no single instance of architectural composition by any men except such as Leonardo or Veronese, who could design their architecture thoroughly before they painted it, which has not a look of inanity and absurdity. The best landscapes and the best architectural studies have been views ; and I would have the artist take shame to himself in the exact degree in which he finds himself obliged in the production of his picture to lose any, even of the smallest parts or most trivial hues which bear a part in the great impression made by the reality. The

§ 35. Works of David

Roberts: their fidelity and grace.

difference between the drawing of the architect and artist1 ought never to be, as it now commonly is, the difference between lifeless formality and witless license; it ought to be between giving the mere lines and measures of a building, and giving those lines and measures with the impression and soul of it besides. All artists should be ashamed of themselves when they find they have not the power of being true; the right wit of drawing is like the right wit of conversation, not hyperbole, not violence, not frivolity, only well expressed, laconic truth.

Among the members of the Academy, we have at present only one professedly architectural draughtsman of note, David Roberts; whose reputation is probably farther extended on the continent than that of any other of our artists, except Landseer. I am not certain, however, that I have any reason to congratulate either of my countrymen upon this their European estimation; for I think it exceedingly probable that in both instances it is exclusively based on their defects; and in the case of Mr. Roberts, in particular, there has of late appeared more ground for it than is altogether desirable, in a smoothness and over-finish of texture which bear dangerous fellowship with the work of our Gallic neighbours.

The fidelity of intention and honesty of system of Roberts have, however, always been meritorious; his drawing of architecture is dependent on no unintelligible lines or blots, or substituted types; the main lines of the real design are always there, and its hollowness and undercuttings given with exquisite feeling; his sense of solidity of form is very peculiar, leading him to dwell with great delight on the roundings of edges and angles; his execution is dexterous and delicate, singularly so in oil, and his sense of chiaroscuro refined. But he has never done himself justice, and suffers his pictures to fall below the rank they should assume, by the presence of several marring characters, which I shall name, because it is perfectly in his power to avoid them. In looking over the valuable series of drawings of the Holy Land, which we owe to Mr. Roberts, we cannot but be amazed to find

1 Indeed there should be no such difference at all. Every architect ought to be an artist; every very great artist is necessarily an architect.

how frequently it has happened that there was something very white immediately in the foreground, and something very black exactly behind it. The same thing happens perpetually with Mr. Roberts's pictures; a white column is always coming out of a blue mist, or a white stone out of a green pool, or a white monument out of a brown recess, and the artifice is not always concealed with dexterity. This is unworthy of so skilful a composer, and it has destroyed the impressiveness as well as the colour of some of his finest works. It shows a poverty of conception, which appears to me to arise from a deficient habit of study. It will be remembered that of the sketches for this work, several times exhibited in London, every one was executed in the same manner, and with about the same degree of completion; being all of them accurate records of the main architectural lines, the shapes of the shadows and the remnants of artificial colour, obtained by means of the same greys throughout, and of the same yellow (a singularly false and cold though convenient colour) touched upon the lights. As far as they went, nothing could be more valuable than these sketches; and the public, glancing rapidly at their general and graceful effects, could hardly form anything like an estimate of the endurance and determination which must have been necessary in such a climate to obtain records so patient, entire, and clear, of details so multitudinous as, especially, the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian temples; an endurance which perhaps only artists can estimate, and for which we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Roberts, most difficult to discharge. brought home, whatever value is to be attached to them as statements of fact, they are altogether insufficient for the producing of pictures. I saw among them no single instance of a downright study; of a study in which the real hues and shades of sky and earth had been honestly realized or attempted; nor were there, the other hand, any of those invaluable blotted five-minutes' works which record the unity of some single and magnificent impressions. Hence the pictures which have been painted from these sketches have been as much alike in their want of impressiveness as the sketches themselves, and have never borne the living aspect of the Egyptian light; it has always been impossible to say

on

But if these sketches were all that the artist