William Hazlitt
Objects in themselves disagreeable or indifferent, often
please in the imitation. A brick-floor, a pewter-table, an ugly cur barking, a
Dutch boor smoking or playing at skittles, the inside of a shambles, a
fishmongerıs or a greengrocerıs stall, have been made very interesting as
pictures by the fidelity, skill, and spirit, with which they have been copied.
One source of the pleasure thus received is undoubtedly the surprise or feeling
of admiration, occasioned by the unexpected coincidence between the imitation
and the object. The deception, however, not only pleases at first sight, or
from mere novelty; but it continues to please upon farther acquaintance, and in
proportion to the insight we acquire into the distinctions of nature and of
art. By far the most numerous class of connoisseurs are the admirers of
pictures of still life, which have nothing but the elaborateness of the execution to
recommend them. One chief reason, it should seem then, why imitation pleases,
is, because, by exciting curiosity, and inviting a comparison between the
object and the representation, it opens a new field of inquiry, and leads the
attention to a variety of details and distinctions not perceived before. This
latter source of the pleasure derived from imitation has never been properly
insisted on.
The anatomist is delighted with a coloured plate,
conveying the exact appearance of the progress of certain diseases, or of the
internal parts and dissections of the human body. We have known a Jennerian
Professor as much enraptured with a delineation of the different stages of
vaccination, as a florist with a bed of tulips, or an auctioneer with a
collection of Indian shells. But in this case, we find that not only the
imitation pleases,the objects themselves give as much pleasure to the
professional inquirer, as they would pain to the uninitiated. The learned
amateur is struck with the beauty of the coats of the stomach laid bare, or
contemplates with eager curiosity the transverse section of the brain, divided
on the new Spurzheim[1]
principles. It is here, then, the number of the parts, their distinctions,
connections, structure, uses; in short, an entire new set of ideas, which
occupies the mind of the student, and overcomes the sense of pain and
repugnance, which is the only feeling that the sight of a dead and mangled body
presents to ordinary men. It is the same in art as in science. The painter of
still life, as it is called, takes the same pleasure in the object as the
spectator does in the imitation; because by habit he is led to perceive all
those distinctions in nature, to which other persons never pay any attention
till they are pointed out to them in the picture. The vulgar only see nature as
it is reflected to them from art; the painter sees the picture in nature,
before he transfers it to the canvass. He refines, he analyses, he remarks
fifty things, which escape common eyes; and this affords a distinct source of
reflection and amusement to him, independently of the beauty or grandeur of the
objects themselves, or of their connection with other impressions besides those
of sight. The charm of the Fine Arts, then, does not consist in any thing
peculiar to imitation, even where only imitation is concerned, since there,
where art exists in the highest perfection, namely, in the mind of the artist,
the object excites the same or greater pleasure, before the imitation exists.
Imitation renders an object, displeasing in itself, a source of pleasure, not
by repetition of the same idea, but by suggesting new ideas, by detecting new
properties, and endless shades of difference, just as a close and continued
contemplation of the object itself would do. Art shows us nature, divested of
the medium of our prejudices. It divides and decompounds objects into a
thousand curious parts, which may be full of variety, beauty, and delicacy in
themselves, though the object to which they belong may be disagreeable in its
general appearance, or by association with other ideas. A painted marigold is
inferior to a painted rose only in form and colour: it loses nothing in point
of smell. Yellow hair is perfectly beautiful in a picture. To a person lying
with his face close to the ground in a summerıs day, the blades of spear-grass
will appear like tall forest trees, shooting up into the sky; as an insect seen
through a microscope is magnified into an elephant. Art is the microscope of
the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts
every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside
the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice,
unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present Raphaelıs Galatea; in
the dark shadows of Rembrandt as well as in the splendid colours of Rubens; in
an angelıs or in a butterflyıs wings. They see with different eyes from the
multitude. But true genius, though it has new sources of pleasure opened to it,
does not lose its sympathy with humanity. It combines truth of imitation with
effect, the parts with the whole, the means with the end. The mechanic artist
sees only that which nobody else sees, and is conversant only with the technical
language and difficulties of his art. A painter, if shewn a picture, will
generally dwell upon the academic skill displayed in it, and the knowledge of
the received rules of composition. A musician, if asked to play a tune, will
select that which is the most difficult and the least intelligible. The poet
will be struck with the harmony of versification, or the elaborateness of the
arrangement in a composition. The conceits in Shakspeare were his greatest
delight; and improving upon this perverse method of judging, the German
writers, Goethe and Schiller, look upon Werter and The Robbers as the worst of
all their works, because they are the most popular. Some artists among
ourselves have carried the same principle to a singular excess. If professors themselves are liable to
this kind of pedantry, connoisseurs and dilettanti, who have less sensibility
and more affectation, are almost wholly swayed by it. They see nothing in a
picture but the execution. They are proud of their knowledge in proportion as
it is a secret. The worst judges of pictures in the United Kingdom are, first,
picture-dealers; next, perhaps, the Directors of the British Institution; and
after them, in all probability, the Members of the Royal Academy.
1816