Sixth Discourse

Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December 10, 1774, by the President.

Gentlemen,--When I have taken the liberty of addressing you on the
course and order of your studies, I never proposed to enter into a
minute detail of the art. This I have always left to the several
professors, who pursue the end of our institution with the highest
honour to themselves, and with the greatest advantage to the
students.

My purpose in the discourses I have held in the Academy is to lay
down certain general ideas, which seem to me proper for the
formation of a sound taste; principles necessary to guard the
pupils against those errors into which the sanguine temper common
at their time of life, has a tendency to lead them, and which have
rendered abortive the hopes of so many successions of promising
young men in all parts of Europe.

I wish, also, to intercept and suppress those prejudices which
particularly prevail when the mechanism of painting is come to its
perfection, and which when they do prevail are certain to prevail
to the utter destruction of the higher and more valuable parts of
this literate and liberal profession.

These two have been my principal purposes; they are still as much
my concern as ever; and if I repeat my own ideas on the subject,
you who know how fast mistake and prejudice, when neglected, gain
ground upon truth and reason, will easily excuse me. I only
attempt to set the same thing in the greatest variety of lights.

The subject of this discourse will be imitation, as far as a
painter is concerned in it. By imitation I do not mean imitation
in its largest sense, but simply the following of other masters,
and the advantage to be drawn from the study of their works.

Those who have undertaken to write on our art, and have represented
it as a kind of inspiration, as a gift bestowed upon peculiar
favourites at their birth, seem to ensure a much more favourable
disposition from their readers, and have a much more captivating
and liberal air, than he who goes about to examine, coldly, whether
there are any means by which this art may be acquired; how our mind
may be strengthened and expanded, and what guides will show the way
to eminence.

It is very natural for those who are unacquainted with the cause of
anything extraordinary to be astonished at the effect, and to
consider it as a kind of magic. They, who have never observed the
gradation by which art is acquired, who see only what is the full
result of long labour and application of an infinite number, and
infinite variety of acts, are apt to conclude from their entire
inability to do the same at once, that it is not only inaccessible
to themselves, but can be done by those only who have some gift of
the nature of inspiration bestowed upon them.

The travellers into the East tell us that when the ignorant
inhabitants of these countries are asked concerning the ruins of
stately edifices yet remaining amongst them, the melancholy
monuments of their former grandeur and long-lost science, they
always answer that they were built by magicians. The untaught mind
finds a vast gulf between its own powers and these works of
complicated art which it is utterly unable to fathom. And it
supposes that such a void can be passed only by supernatural
powers.

And, as for artists themselves, it is by no means their interest to
undeceive such judges, however conscious they may be of the very
natural means by which the extraordinary powers were acquired; our
art being intrinsically imitative, rejects this idea of inspiration
more, perhaps, than any other.

It is to avoid this plain confession of truth, as it should seem,
that this imitation of masters--indeed, almost all imitation which
implies a more regular and progressive method of attaining the ends
of painting--has ever been particularly inveighed against with
great keenness, both by ancient and modern writers.

To derive all from native power, to owe nothing to another, is the
praise which men, who do not much think what they are saying,
bestow sometimes upon others, and sometimes on themselves; and
their imaginary dignity is naturally heightened by a supercilious
censure of the low, the barren, the grovelling, the servile
imitator. It would be no wonder if a student, frightened by these
terrors and disgraceful epithets, with which the poor imitators are
so often loaded, should let fall his pencil in mere despair,
conscious how much he has been indebted to the labours of others,
how little, how very little of his art was born with him; and,
considering it as hopeless, to set about acquiring by the imitation
of any human master what he is taught to suppose is matter of
inspiration from heaven.

Some allowance must be made for what is said in the gaiety or
ambition of rhetoric. We cannot suppose that any one can really
mean to exclude all imitation of others. A position so wild would
scarce deserve a serious answer, for it is apparent, if we were
forbid to make use of the advantages which our predecessors afford
us, the art would be always to begin, and consequently remain
always in its infant state; and it is a common observation that no
art was ever invented and carried to perfection at the same time.

But to bring us entirely to reason and sobriety, let it be
observed, that a painter must not only be of necessity an imitator
of the works of nature, which alone is sufficient to dispel this
phantom of inspiration, but he must be as necessarily an imitator
of the works of other painters. This appears more humiliating, but
it is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may
suppose, upon any other terms.

However, those who appear more moderate and reasonable allow that
study is to begin by imitation, but that we should no longer use
the thoughts of our predecessors when we are become able to think
for ourselves. They hold that imitation is as hurtful to the more
advanced student as it was advantageous to the beginner.

For my own part, I confess I am not only very much disposed to lay
down the absolute necessity of imitation in the first stages of the
art, but am of opinion that the study of other masters, which I
here call imitation, may be extended throughout our whole life
without any danger of the inconveniences with which it is charged,
of enfeebling the mind, or preventing us from giving that original
air which every work undoubtedly ought always to have.

I am, on the contrary, persuaded that by imitation only, variety,
and even originality of invention is produced.

I will go further; even genius, at least what generally is so
called, is the child of imitation. But as this appears to be
contrary to the general opinion, I must explain my position before
I enforce it.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are
out of the reach of the rules of art--a power which no precepts can
teach, and which no industry can acquire.

This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those beauties which
stamp the work with the character of genius, supposes that it is
something more fixed than in reality it is, and that we always do,
and ever did agree, about what should be considered as a
characteristic of genius.

But the truth is that the degree of excellence which proclaims
genius is different in different times and different places; and
what shows it to be so is that mankind have often changed their
opinion upon this matter.

When the arts were in their infancy, the power of merely drawing
the likeness of any object was considered as one of its greatest
efforts.

The common people, ignorant of the principles of art, talk the same
language even to this day. But when it was found that every man
could be taught to do this, and a great deal more, merely by the
observance of certain precepts, the name of genius then shifted its
application, and was given only to those who added the peculiar
character of the object they represented; to those who had
invention, expression, grace, or dignity; or, in short, such
qualities or excellences the producing of which could not then be
taught by any known and promulgated rules.

We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of the
passions, the art of composition, even the power of giving a
general air of grandeur to your work, is at present very much under
the dominion of rules. These excellences were, heretofore,
considered merely as the effects of genius; and justly, if genius
is not taken for inspiration, but as the effect of close
observation and experience.

He who first made any of these observations and digested them, so
as to form an invariable principle for himself to work by, had that
merit; but probably no one went very far at once; and generally the
first who gave the hint did not know how to pursue it steadily and
methodically, at least not in the beginning. He himself worked on
it, and improved it; others worked more, and improved farther,
until the secret was discovered, and the practice made as general
as refined practice can be made. How many more principles may be
fixed and ascertained we cannot tell; but as criticism is likely to
go hand in hand with the art which is its subject, we may venture
to say that as that art shall advance, its powers will be still
more and more fixed by rules.

But by whatever strides criticism may gain ground, we need be under
no apprehension that invention will ever be annihilated or subdued,
or intellectual energy be brought entirely within the restraint of
written law. Genius will still have room enough to expatiate, and
keep always the same distance from narrow comprehension and
mechanical performance.

What we now call genius begins, not where rules, abstractedly
taken, end, but where known vulgar and trite rules have no longer
any place. It must of necessity be that even works of genius, as
well as every other effect, as it must have its cause, must
likewise have its rules; it cannot be by chance that excellences
are produced with any constancy, or any certainty, for this is not
the nature of chance, but the rules by which men of extraordinary
parts, and such as are called men of genius work, are either such
as they discover by their own peculiar observation, or of such a
nice texture as not easily to admit handling or expressing in
words, especially as artists are not very frequently skilful in
that mode of communicating ideas.

Unsubstantial, however, as these rules may seem, and difficult as
it may be to convey them in writing, they are still seen and felt
in the mind of the artist, and he works from them with as much
certainty as if they were embodied, as I may say, upon paper. It
is true these refined principles cannot be always made palpable,
like the more gross rules of art; yet it does not follow but that
the mind may be put in such a train that it shall perceive, by a
kind of scientific sense, that propriety which words, particularly
words of unpractised writers such as we are, can but very feebly
suggest.

Invention is one of the great marks of genius, but if we consult
experience, we shall find that it is by being conversant with the
inventions of others that we learn to invent, as by reading the
thoughts of others we learn to think.

Whoever has so far formed his taste as to be able to relish and
feel the beauties of the great masters has gone a great way in his
study; for, merely from a consciousness of this relish of the
right, the mind swells with an inward pride, and is almost as
powerfully affected as if it had itself produced what it admires.
Our hearts frequently warmed in this manner by the contact of those
whom we wish to resemble, will undoubtedly catch something of their
way of thinking, and we shall receive in our own bosoms some
radiation at least of their fire and splendour. That disposition,
which is so strong in children, still continues with us, of
catching involuntarily the general air and manner of those with
whom we are most conversant; with this difference only, that a
young mind is naturally pliable and imitative, but in a more
advanced state it grows rigid, and must be warmed and softened
before it will receive a deep impression.

From these considerations, which a little of your reflection will
carry a great way further, it appears of what great consequence it
is that our minds should be habituated to the contemplation of
excellence, and that, far from being contented to make such habits
the discipline of our youth only, we should, to the last moment of
our lives, continue a settled intercourse with all the true
examples of grandeur. Their inventions are not only the food of
our infancy, but the substance which supplies the fullest maturity
of our vigour.

The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil soon exhausted, and will
produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilised
and enriched with foreign matter.

When we have had continually before us the great works of art to
impregnate our minds with kindred ideas, we are then, and not till
then, fit to produce something, of the same species. We behold all
about us with the eyes of these penetrating observers, and our
minds, accustomed to think the thoughts of the noblest and
brightest intellects, are prepared for the discovery and selection
of all that is great and noble in nature. The greatest natural
genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to
ransack any mind but his own will be soon reduced, from mere
barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to
imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.
When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be
difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.

It is vain for painters or poets to endeavour to invent without
materials on which the mind may work, and from which invention must
originate. Nothing can come of nothing.

Homer is supposed to be possessed of all the learning of his time.
And we are certain that Michael Angelo and Raffaelle were equally
possessed of all knowledge in the art which was discoverable in the
works of their predecessors.

A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures of ancient
and modern art will be more elevated and fruitful in resources in
proportion to the number of ideas which have been carefully
collected and thoroughly digested. There can be no doubt that he
who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention; and
if he has not the power of using them, it must proceed from a
feebleness of intellect or from the confused manner in which those
collections have been laid up in his mind.

The addition of other men's judgment is so far from weakening, as
is the opinion of many, our own, that it will fashion and
consolidate those ideas of excellence which lay in their birth
feeble, ill-shaped, and confused, but which are finished and put in
order by the authority and practice of those whose works may be
said to have been consecrated by having stood the test of ages.

The mind, or genius, has been compared to a spark of fire which is
smothered by a heap of fuel and prevented from blazing into a
flame. This simile, which is made use of by the younger Pliny, may
be easily mistaken for argument or proof.

There is no danger of the mind's being over-burdened with
knowledge, or the genius extinguished by any addition of images; on
the contrary, these acquisitions may as well, perhaps better, be
compared, if comparisons signified anything in reasoning, to the
supply of living embers, which will contribute to strengthen the
spark that without the association of more would have died away.

The truth is, he whose feebleness is such as to make other men's
thoughts an incumbrance to him can have no very great strength of
mind or genius of his own to be destroyed, so that not much harm
will be done at worst.

We may oppose to Pliny the greater authority of Cicero, who is
continually enforcing the necessity of this method of study. In
his dialogue on Oratory he makes Crassus say, that one of the first
and most important precepts is to choose a proper model for our
imitation. Hoc fit primum in preceptis meis ut demonstremus quem
imitemur.

When I speak of the habitual imitation and continued study of
masters, it is not to be understood that I advise any endeavour to
copy the exact peculiar colour and complexion of another man's
mind; the success of such an attempt must always be like his who
imitates exactly the air, manner, and gestures of him whom he
admires. His model may be excellent, but the copy will be
ridiculous; this ridicule does not arise from his having imitated,
but from his not having chosen the right mode of imitation.

It is a necessary and warrantable pride to disdain to walk
servilely behind any individual, however elevated his rank. The
true and liberal ground of imitation is an open field, where,
though he who precedes has had the advantage of starting before
you, yet it is enough to pursue his course; you need not tread in
his footsteps, and you certainly have a right to outstrip him if
you can.

Nor, whilst I recommend studying the art from artists, can I be
supposed to mean that nature is to be neglected? I take this study
in aid and not in exclusion of the other. Nature is, and must be,
the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all
excellences must originally flow.

The great use of studying our predecessors is to open the mind, to
shorten our labour, and to give us the result of the selection made
by those great minds of what is grand or beautiful in nature: her
rich stores are all spread out before us; but it is an art, and no
easy art, to know how or what to choose, and how to attain and
secure the object of our choice.

Thus the highest beauty of form must be taken from nature; but it
is an art of long deduction and great experience to know how to
find it.

We must not content ourselves with merely admiring and relishing;
we must enter into the principles on which the work is wrought;
these do not swim on the superficies, and consequently are not open
to superficial observers.

Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid, and works
its effect itself unseen. It is the proper study and labour of an
artist to uncover and find out the latent cause of conspicuous
beauties, and from thence form principles for his own conduct; such
an examination is a continual exertion of the mind, as great,
perhaps, as that of the artist whose works he is thus studying.

The sagacious imitator not only remarks what distinguishes the
different manner or genius of each master; he enters into the
contrivance in the composition, how the masses of lights are
disposed, the means by which the effect is produced, how artfully
some parts are lost in the ground, others boldly relieved, and how
all these are mutually altered and interchanged according to the
reason and scheme of the work. He admires not the harmony of
colouring alone, but he examines by what artifice one colour is a
foil to its neighbour. He looks close into the tints, of what
colours they are composed, till he has formed clear and distinct
ideas, and has learnt to see in what harmony and good colouring
consists. What is learnt in this manner from the works of others
becomes really our own, sinks deep, and is never forgotten; nay, it
is by seizing on this clue that we proceed forward, and get further
and further in enlarging the principle and improving the practice.

There can be no doubt but the art is better learnt from the works
themselves than from the precepts which are formed upon these
works; but if it is difficult to choose proper models for
imitation, it requires no less circumspection to separate and
distinguish what in those models we ought to imitate.

I cannot avoid mentioning here, though it is not my intention at
present to enter into the art and method of study, an error which
students are too apt to fall into.

He that is forming himself must look with great caution and
wariness on those peculiarities, or prominent parts, which at first
force themselves upon view, and are the marks, or what is commonly
called the manner, by which that individual artist is
distinguished.

Peculiar marks I hold to be generally, if not always, defects,
however difficult it may be, wholly to escape them.

Peculiarities in the works of art are like those in the human
figure; it is by them that we are cognisable and distinguished one
from another, but they are always so many blemishes, which,
however, both in the one case and in the other, cease to appear
deformities to those who have them continually before their eyes.
In the works of art, even the most enlightened mind, when warmed by
beauties of the highest kind, will by degrees find a repugnance
within him to acknowledge any defects; nay, his enthusiasm will
carry him so far as to transform them into beauties and objects of
imitation.

It must be acknowledged that a peculiarity of style, either from
its novelty, or by seeming to proceed from a peculiar turn of mind,
often escapes blame; on the contrary, it is sometimes striking and
pleasing; but this it is vain labour to endeavour to imitate,
because novelty and peculiarity being its only merit, when it
ceases to be new, it ceases to have value.

A manner, therefore, being a defect, and every painter, however
excellent, having a manner, it seems to follow that all kinds of
faults, as well as beauties, may be learned under the sanction of
the greatest authorities.

Even the great name of Michael Angelo may be used to keep in
countenance a deficiency, or rather neglect of colouring, and every
other ornamental part of the art.

If the young student is dry and hard, Poussin is the same. If his
work has a careless and unfinished air, he has most of the Venetian
School to support him. If he makes no selection of objects, but
takes individual nature just as he finds it, he is like Rembrandt.
If he is incorrect in the proportions of his figures, Correggio was
likewise incorrect. If his colours are not blended and united,
Rubens was equally crude.

In short, there is no defect but may be excused, if it is a
sufficient excuse that it can be imputed to considerable artists;
but it must be remembered that it was not by these defects they
acquired their reputation: they have a right to our pardon, but
not to our admiration.

However, to imitate peculiarities or mistake defects for beauties
that man will be most liable who confines his imitation to one
favourite master; and, even though he chooses the best, and is
capable of distinguishing the real excellences of his model, it is
not by such narrow practice that a genius or mastery in the art is
acquired. A man is as little likely to form a true idea of the
perfection of the art by studying a single artist as he would be of
producing a perfectly beautiful figure by an exact imitation of any
individual living model.

And as the painter, by bringing together in one piece those
beauties which are dispersed amongst a great variety of
individuals, produces a figure more beautiful than can be found in
nature, so that artist who can unite in himself the excellences of
the various painters, will approach nearer to perfection than any
one of his masters.

He who confines himself to the imitation of an individual, as he
never proposes to surpass, so he is not likely to equal, the object
of imitation. He professes only to follow, and he that follows
must necessarily be behind.

We should imitate the conduct of the great artists in the course of
their studies, as well as the works which they produced, when they
were perfectly formed. Raffaelle began by imitating implicitly the
manner of Pietro Perugino, under whom he studied; so his first
works are scarce to be distinguished from his master's; but soon
forming higher and more extensive views, he imitated the grand
outline of Michael Angelo. He learnt the manner of using colours
from the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Fratre Bartolomeo: to all
this he added the contemplation of all the remains of antiquity
that were within his reach, and employed others to draw for him
what was in Greece and distant places. And it is from his having
taken so many models that he became himself a model for all
succeeding painters, always imitating, and always original.

If your ambition therefore be to equal Raffaelle, you must do as
Raffaelle did; take many models, and not take even him for your
guide alone to the exclusion of others. And yet the number is
infinite of those who seem, if one may judge by their style, to
have seen no other works but those of their master, or of some
favourite whose manner is their first wish and their last.

I will mention a few that occur to me of this narrow, confined,
illiberal, unscientific, and servile kind of imitators. Guido was
thus meanly copied by Elizabetta Sirani, and Simone Cantarini;
Poussin, by Verdier and Cheron; Parmigiano, by Jeronimo Mazzuoli;
Paolo Veronese and Iacomo Bassan had for their imitators their
brothers and sons; Pietro de Cortona was followed by Ciro Ferri and
Romanelli; Rubens, by Jacques Jordans and Diepenbeck; Guercino, by
his own family, the Gennari; Carlo Marratti was imitated by
Giuseppe Chiari and Pietro da Pietri; and Rembrandt, by Bramer,
Eckhout, and Flink. All these, to whom may be added a much longer
list of painters, whose works among the ignorant pass for those of
their masters, are justly to be censured for barrenness and
servility.

To oppose to this list a few that have adopted a more liberal style
of imitation: Pelegrino Tibaldi, Rosso, and Primaticio did not
coldly imitate, but caught something of the fire that animates the
works of Michael Angelo. The Carraches formed their style from
Pelegrino Tibaldi, Correggio, and the Venetian School.
Domenichino, Guido, Lanfranco, Albano, Guercino, Cavidone,
Schidone, Tiarini, though it is sufficiently apparent that they
came from the School of the Carraches, have yet the appearance of
men who extended their views beyond the model that lay before them,
and have shown that they had opinions of their own, and thought for
themselves, after they had made themselves masters of the general
principles of their schools.

Le Seure's first manner resembles very much that of his master
Vovet: but as he soon excelled him, so he differed from him in
every part of the art. Carlo Marratti succeeded better than those
I have first named, and I think owes his superiority to the
extension of his views; besides his master Andrea Sacchi, he
imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Carraches. It is true, there is
nothing very captivating in Carlo Marratti; but this proceeded from
wants which cannot be completely supplied; that is, want of
strength of parts. In this, certainly men are not equal, and a man
can bring home wares only in proportion to the capital with which
he goes to market. Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he
had; but there was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which
extended itself, uniformly to his invention, expression, his
drawing, colouring, and the general effect of his pictures. The
truth is, he never equalled any of his patterns in any one thing,
and he added little of his own.

But we must not rest contented, even in this general study of the
moderns; we must trace back the art to its fountain head, to that
source from whence they drew their principal excellences, the
monuments of pure antiquity.

All the inventions and thoughts of the ancients, whether conveyed
to us in statues, bas-reliefs, intaglios, cameos, or coins, are to
be sought after and carefully studied: The genius that hovers over
these venerable relics may be called the father of modern art.

From the remains of the works of the ancients the modern arts were
revived, and it is by their means that they must be restored a
second time. However it may mortify our vanity, we must be forced
to allow them our masters; and we may venture to prophecy, that
when they shall cease to be studied, arts will no longer flourish,
and we shall again relapse into barbarism.

The fire of the artist's own genius operating upon these materials
which have been thus diligently collected, will enable him to make
new combinations, perhaps, superior to what had ever before been in
the possession of the art. As in the mixture of the variety of
metals, which are said to have been melted and run together at the
burning of Corinth, a new and till then unknown metal was produced
equal in value to any of those that had contributed to its
composition. And though a curious refiner may come with his
crucibles, analyse and separate its various component parts, yet
Corinthian brass would still hold its rank amongst the most
beautiful and valuable of metals.

We have hitherto considered the advantages of imitation as it tends
to form the taste, and as a practice by which a spark of that
genius may be caught which illumines these noble works, that ought
always to be present to our thoughts.

We come now to speak of another kind of imitation; the borrowing a
particular thought, an action, attitude, or figure, and
transplanting it into your own work: this will either come under
the charge of plagiarism, or be warrantable, and deserve
commendation, according to the address with which it is performed.
There is some difference likewise whether it is upon the ancients
or the moderns that these depredations are made. It is generally
allowed that no man need be ashamed of copying the ancients: their
works are considered as a magazine of common property, always open
to the public, whence every man has a right to what materials he
pleases; and if he has the art of using them, they are supposed to
become to all intents and purposes his own property.

The collection which Raffaelle made of the thoughts of the ancients
with so much trouble, is a proof of his opinion on this subject.
Such collections may be made with much more ease, by means of an
art scarce known in his time; I mean that of engraving, by which,
at an easy rate, every man may now avail himself of the inventions
of antiquity.

It must be acknowledged that the works of the moderns are more the
property of their authors; he who borrows an idea from an artist,
or perhaps from a modern, not his contemporary, and so accommodates
it to his own work that it makes a part of it, with no seam or
joining appearing, can hardly be charged with plagiarism; poets
practise this kind of borrowing without reserve. But an artist
should not be contented with this only; he should enter into a
competition with his original, and endeavour to improve what he is
appropriating to his own work. Such imitation is so far from
having anything in it of the servility of plagiarism, that it is a
perpetual exercise of the mind, a continual invention.

Borrowing or stealing with such art and caution will have a right
to the same lenity as was used by the Lacedemonians; who did not
punish theft, but the want of artifice to conceal it.

In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let
me add, that very finished artists in the inferior branches of the
art will contribute to furnish the mind and give hints of which a
skilful painter, who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no
danger of being infected by the contact of vicious models, will
know how to avail himself. He will pick up from dunghills what by
a nice chemistry, passing through his own mind, shall be converted
into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of Gothic essays, he will
find original, rational, and even sublime inventions.

In the luxuriant style of Paul Veronese, in the capricious
compositions of Tintoret, he will find something that will assist
his invention, and give points, from which his own imagination
shall rise and take flight, when the subject which he treats will,
with propriety, admit of splendid effects.

In every school, whether Venetian, French, or Dutch, he will find
either ingenious compositions, extraordinary effects, some peculiar
expressions, or some mechanical excellence, well worthy his
attention and, in some measure, of his imitation; even in the lower
class of the French painters, great beauties are often found united
with great defects.

Though Coypel wanted a simplicity of taste, and mistook a
presumptuous and assuming air for what is grand and majestic; yet
he frequently has good sense and judgment in his manner of telling
his stories, great skill in his compositions, and is not without a
considerable power of expressing the passions, The modern
affectation of grace in his works, as well as in those of Bouche
and Watteau, may be said to be separated by a very thin partition
from the more simple and pure grace of Correggio and Parmigiano.

Amongst the Dutch painters, the correct, firm, and determined
pencil, which was employed by Bamboccio and Jan Miel on vulgar and
mean subjects, might without any change be employed on the highest,
to which, indeed, it seems more properly to belong. The greatest
style, if that style is confined to small figures such as Poussin
generally painted, would receive an additional grace by the
elegance and precision of pencil so admirable in the works of
Teniers.

Though this school more particularly excelled in the mechanism of
painting, yet there are many who have shown great abilities in
expressing what must be ranked above mechanical excellences.

In the works of Frank Hals the portrait painter may observe the
composition of a face, the features well put together as the
painters express it, from whence proceeds that strong marked
character of individual nature which is so remarkable in his
portraits, and is not to be found in an equal degree in any other
painter. If he had joined to this most difficult part of the art a
patience in finishing what he had so correctly planned, he might
justly have claimed the place which Vandyke, all things considered,
so justly holds as the first of portrait painters.

Others of the same school have shown great power in expressing the
character and passions of those vulgar people which are the
subjects of their study and attention. Amongst those, Jean Stein
seems to be one of the most diligent and accurate observers of what
passed in those scenes which he frequented, and which were to him
an academy. I can easily imagine that if this extraordinary man
had had the good fortune to have been born in Italy instead of
Holland, had he lived in Rome instead of Leyden, and had been
blessed with Michael Angelo and Raffaelle for his masters instead
of Brower and Van Gowen, that the same sagacity and penetration
which distinguished so accurately the different characters and
expression in his vulgar figures, would, when exerted in the
selection and imitation of what was great and elevated in nature,
have been equally successful, and his name would have been now
ranged with the great pillars and supporters of our art.

Men who, although thus bound down by the almost invincible powers
of early habits, have still exerted extraordinary abilities within
their narrow and confined circle, and have, from the natural vigour
of their mind, given such an interesting expression, such force and
energy to their works, though they cannot be recommended to be
exactly imitated, may yet invite an artist to endeavour to
transfer, by a kind of parody, those excellences to his own works.
Whoever has acquired the power of making this use of the Flemish,
Venetian, and French schools is a real genius, and has sources of
knowledge open to him which were wanting to the great artists who
lived in the great age of painting.

To find excellences however dispersed, to discover beauties however
concealed by the multitude of defects with which they are
surrounded, can be the work only of him who, having a mind always
alive to his art, has extended his views to all ages and to all
schools, and has acquired from that comprehensive mass which he has
thus gathered to himself, a well digested and perfect idea of his
art, to which everything is referred. Like a sovereign judge and
arbiter of art, he is possessed of that presiding power which
separates and attracts every excellence from every school, selects
both from what is great and what is little, brings home knowledge
from the east and from the west, making the universe tributary
towards furnishing his mind and enriching his works with
originality and variety of inventions.

Thus I have ventured to give my opinion of what appears to me the
true and only method by which an artist makes himself master of his
profession, which I hold ought to be one continued course of
imitation, that is not to cease but with our lives.

Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business,
or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected
looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation
reaches, have from that time not only ceased to advance and improve
in their performance, but have gone backward. They may be compared
to men who have lived upon their principal till they are reduced to
beggary and left without resources.

I can recommend nothing better, therefore, than that you endeavour
to infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of
the works of others. To recommend this has the appearance of
needless and superfluous advice, but it has fallen within my own
knowledge that artists, though they are not wanting in a sincere
love for their art, though they have great pleasure in seeing good
pictures, and are well skilled to distinguish what is excellent or
defective in them, yet go on in their own manner, without any
endeavour to give a little of those beauties which they admire in
others, to their own works. It is difficult to conceive how the
present Italian painters, who live in the midst of the treasures of
art, should be contented with their own style. They proceed in
their common-place inventions, and never think it worth while to
visit the works of those great artists with which they are
surrounded.

I remember several years ago to have conversed at Rome with an
artist of great fame throughout Europe; he was not without a
considerable degree of abilities, but those abilities were by no
means equal to his own opinion of them. From the reputation he had
acquired he too fondly concluded that he stood in the same rank,
when compared to his predecessors, as he held with regard to his
miserable contemporary rivals.

In conversation about some particulars of the works of Raffaelle,
he seemed to have, or to affect to have, a very obscure memory of
them. He told me that he had not set his foot in the Vatican for
fifteen years together; that indeed he had been in treaty to copy a
capital picture of Raffaelle, but that the business had gone off;
however, if the agreement had held, his copy would have greatly
exceeded the original. The merit of this artist, however great we
may suppose it, I am sure would have been far greater, and his
presumption would have been far less if he had visited the Vatican,
as in reason he ought to have done, once at least every month of
his life.

I address myself, gentlemen, to you who have made some progress in
the art, and are to be for the future under the guidance of your
own judgment and discretion

I consider you as arrived to that period when you have a right to
think for yourselves, and to presume that every man is fallible; to
study the masters with a suspicion that great men are not always
exempt from great faults; to criticise, compare, and rank their
works in your own estimation, as they approach to or recede from
that standard of perfection which you have formed in your own mind,
but which those masters themselves, it must be remembered, have
taught you to make, and which you will cease to make with
correctness when you cease to study them. It is their excellences
which have taught you their defects.

I would wish you to forget where you are, and who it is that speaks
to you. I only direct you to higher models and better advisers.
We can teach you here but very little; you are henceforth to be
your own teachers. Do this justice, however, to the English
Academy, to bear in mind, that in this place you contracted no
narrow habits, no false ideas, nothing that could lead you to the
imitation of any living master, who may be the fashionable darling
of the day. As you have not been taught to flatter us, do not
learn to flatter yourselves. We have endeavoured to lead you to
the admiration of nothing but what is truly admirable. If you
choose inferior patterns, or if you make your own FORMER works,
your patterns for your LATTER, it is your own fault.

The purpose of this discourse, and, indeed, of most of my others,
is to caution you against that false opinion, but too prevalent
amongst artists, of the imaginary power of native genius, and its
sufficiency in great works. This opinion, according to the temper
of mind it meets with, almost always produces, either a vain
confidence, or a sluggish despair, both equally fatal to all
proficiency.

Study, therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever.
Study as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, on the
principles, on which they studied. Study nature attentively, but
always with those masters in your company; consider them as models
which you are to imitate, and at the same time as rivals which you
are to combat.