Haydon 1842
Benjamin Robert Haydon, Thoughts on the Relative Value of Fresco and Oil Painting, as applied to the Architectural Decoration of The Houses of Parliament; Read at the Friday Evening Meeting at The Royal Institution, Albemarle Street, March 4, 1842, London [Henry Hooper] 1842.
pp. 1–41
THOUGHTS, &c.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
BRITISH art never had higher prospects than at the end of the war: – The reform in drawing and essential detail, so much neglected by the imitators of Reynolds, had begun to take root; the works of Wilkie had spread the reputation of the domestic school over Europe; historical pictures of undoubted genius had refuted for ever the doubts of an Englishman’s capacity to express passion or poetry: – our landscape, animals, fruit, flowers, still life, sea-views, portrait and water-colour painting, no continental school could at all approach; and it is no exaggeration to say, that the shock given to continental art, by the power, the colour, the reality, the light and shadow, the impasto, the execution of the British school, in spite of gross defects in a knowledge of construction, gave the death-blow to the hideous school of David in France, which the predominating influence of Napoleon had made the school of Europe, from that instant to this hour, more colour, more nature, more simplicity, more truth, and less exaggeration, have characterised the French school, and have not been without their due effect on the rest of Europe. Canova and Cicognara expressed to me, when in England, their wonder, that the only school of colour on earth was the British, and yet colour, said they, seems to require a brilliant climate, more than any other quality or element for painting! So true it is, that the power of innate genius has never been obstructed by any deficiency of element or opposition of man, but has turned both difficulties and obstructions to honour and glory.
The advantage the continental schools gained by intercourse with the British was more rapidly apparent, than the benefit the British school derived from continental connexion; because, the elements of continental education in art were sounder; every Frenchman drew the figure, understood its anatomical construction, and could more easily and more rapidly graft colour and light and shadow on the noble basis of form, than the British school could go back to the first elements of design, after sipping with relishing gusto the delights of touch and tone, impasto, and colour; still the recoil upon British art was beneficial, and an English exhibition exhibits at present far more correctness in hands and feet, far more firmness of form, than were visible in the mere imitations of Reynolds, thirty years ago; however slowly, design is progressing; it is progressing, and the moment it can be proved an artist of genius will be competently rewarded by devoting himself to improve the taste of the market, rather than supply its demand by conforming to its meretricious necessities, that moment the dignity of British art will rise, and a school ultimately be established, more perfect in aim, in practice, and in essence, than any since those of ancient Greece.
It is indisputable, that the various schools of Italy were all imperfect, however individually exquisite in their separate aims; the colour of the Venetians, the form of the Romans and Florentines, the light and shadow and impasto of Correggio, were only component parts of the perfection of art.
Painting is conveying thoughts by the imitation of things; the more perfect the thing represented, the more impressive will be the thought conveyed. Reality, therefore, was the basis of Greek art in its finest days, and the separate excellencies of modern Italy were always combined in the works of ancient Greece. As each Italian school found out the error of its exclusive practice, each school tried to remedy its defects. Titian combined all the elements of reality in his Pietro Martyre, and Raffael tried to do so in the Transfiguration; Titian added form, Raffael colour and tone, but Zeuxis, Apelles, Polygnotos, Protogenes, Euphranor, always did this, and this is the principle of perfection which will ultimately be combined again in Britain.
Many changes have we yet to undergo before we settle; we are now fast drifting to the upholstery school of David in our own small works, from an over anxiety to correct the excesses of the generalizing habits of Reynolds, from continental influence; but after a short time, I have no doubt, the manly sense of the school will return again to the sound elements of Reynolds’ masses, combined with a greater knowledge of construction; and if the massings of Reynolds can be combined (as they can) with the correctness of Greek form and fine nature, that will be the style, for great spaces and mighty halls; for nothing will do in great spaces and mighty halls, but the leading elements of objects touched with unerring hand, leaving atmosphere to unite, to soften, and complete by distance. All trifling lights and petty beauties would be lost and unseen.
The school of useless detail must be abandoned for ever; and the school of Titian and Correggio, and Tintoretto, be practised in execution, Michael Angelo, and Raffael, in form and composition; for great names and great principles only, will do in great halls and great temples.
As early as the reign of Edward the Confessor, bas reliefs were executed, quite equal to anything then done in any part of Europe.
In Alfred’s time, and before, York and Canterbury were adorned with public pictures, and in the tenth century, Etheleda, widow of Burthwood, Duke of Northumberland, adorned Ely cathedral with a series of historical pictures to illustrate his great deeds and famous actions.
In 1236, historical designs on their chamber-walls were the fashion of the king, court, and upper classes.
In 1250, the authorities of Florence sent for Greek artists, because there were no painters in the city, though English designers were then in full employ.
In 1350, the decoration of St. Stephen’s Chapel commenced under the direction of Hugh de St. Albans.
“The king, to all and singular, the sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, officers, and his other lieges, know ye, that we have appointed our beloved Hugh de St. Albans, master of the painters, assigned for the works to be executed in our chapel at our palace of Westminster, to take and choose as many painters as may be required, and therefore we command you to be counselling the said Hugh, as often and in such manner the said Hugh may require.” Then follows the following entry: “To H. de St. Albans, ordering or designing the drawings for the painting, one day, one shilling.” (25 Ed. III.)
In 1336, Wickliffe began to preach, and by the time the reformation was completed, the decoration of high art, as a principle worthy of state encouragement being considered a portion of papal superstition, was considerably checked, and English historical painting received a blow it staggers under to this day. Historical decoration, however, still continued more or less fashionable, till Henry VIII., in his zeal against all the forms of popery, buried what was good with what was evil in the same grave; for it is impossible to be just in a sweeping reform; and during the reign of Elizabeth, design as a part of public ornament and state encouragement, are indirectly referred to in a debate, as things passed by and to be regretted.
Sir William Monson, in his account of the acts of Elizabeth, published in 1632, states, that a dispute being brought by petition before the House, by the Chartered Society of Painters, a member said, (in alluding to the design of St. Stephen’s Chapel) – “These walls thus curiously painted in former ages – these images so perfectly done, do witness our forefathers’ care in cherishing this art of painting.”
This extract from the debate on the painters’ petition proves, that in Elizabeth’s reign, the decoration of public buildings by art was over, and was alluded to by the members as a glory and beauty passed by; and the bill to remedy the particular grievance of the moment was passed with this remark, “that the practice of decorating public buildings was a wise practice, and this wise practice the reformation destroyed.”
In the same reign, Nicholas Hillier says, “Men induced by nature to high art, have been made poorer, like the most rare English drawers of story works.”
Englishmen then did invent and did design, and I can assure you, what they did design was, in many respects, equal to what the rest of Europe could execute in their day.
This rapid sketch from authentic documents was a necessary preface to the sequel.
It is clear we were advancing side by side by the continental nations – it is clear designers and inventors were prolific – it is clear an Englishman was the designer of the paintings on the wall of St. Stephen’s – it is clear that the violence of the early reformers threw us off our balance, whilst the nations on the continent were advancing in their practical course of art, and practical superstition, till Masaccio, Lionardo, Michael Angelo, Georgione, and Titian appeared. It is indisputable, that portrait, while it preserved the art from decay, got naturally so much the upper hand, that the careful investigation of the construction of the human figure was neglected in the hurry to supply the demands of sitters; and that now the intention existing and expressed by the last and present government to decorate the Houses of Parliament, is but a revival of a public system of patronage and practice, which existed five hundred years ago in as much perfection as in any other state abroad, and on this very spot where it is now determined to revive it.*
* Such was the state of art between Kneller and Hogarth that the portrait painters used to send their whole lengths to Bath by wagon, to have the figure drawn in by a Dutchman, and then sent back again. This I had from Prince Hoare, on the authority of his father, who was a painter settled at Bath, and when the Dutchman died, Hogarth caricatured the painters going to his funeral.
There was no doubt then of the genius of Britain. Henry III. and Edward III. had the most manly reliance on the capacity of their subjects; and by that honourable confidence, a work was produced, which contained figures equal to any which decorate the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa.
To disbelieve in the power of Britons in art is a modern refinement; to attribute the long sleep of high art to a natural incapacity, and not to a local obstruction, is kept alive rather than checked, as it ought to be, by the talent of the press.
The moment some Englishmen set their foot on the continent – the moment they leave the white cliffs of their father-land, they seem to doubt whether England really be the great country they believed her; they fear India does not belong to her, and the Cape has ceased to be governed by her; they question if the Duke’s battles in the Peninsula were more than lucky accidents, or Waterloo anything but a splendid mistake.
But, it is replied, the Houses of Parliament are to be decorated in fresco, and what practice have British artists in that style?
As much practice, I reply, as the Germans had when in Rome they began to paint the walls of Bertholdy’s house! And will any man have the hardihood to assert, that there is anything any other nation can do, or has done, which, with equal advantages, is beyond our reach?
And what are these tremendous difficulties of fresco?
Oh, it is replied, you must paint dark, because it dries light. Granted, and in oil you paint light, when you glaze dark. There is no more difficulty in one than the other,
I know no more difficulties in fresco than in oil, but I know a great many more nuisances.
You proceed on a great historical picture in oil as you proceed in fresco; you make a finished sketch, in which everything is settled; you make separate studies of head, hands, feet, drapery; you do the same in fresco, and a cartoon of the whole the full size is also necessary, but not always.
Frescos were executed in 498 and 795 in Rome, and in St. John Lateran there is a head of Christ still to be seen which shows great feeling.
Fresco (which is the immediate object of this discourse) is the art of painting, with natural colours of earth ground in water, on the last coat of mortar and sand, which the plasterer puts on, as he finishes the rooms of a house in the progress of building.
When the walls are finished, and the house covered in, you will observe, in any of the new squares in London, the plasterer covers all the walls first with a rough coat of ox-hair and mortar, and then crosses with the trowel.
When this coat is freshly dry, the second coat is put on, less rough, but roughed a little in circles, when spread, to hold the last coat. And when this second coat is freshly dry, not too dry, then fine-sifted river-sand and fine lime are mixed in certain proportions, and polished with water and a hand-board; and on this last coat, when polished, you paint, dipping your brush in water and lime, and rapidly developing your composition. In four or five hours the coat begins to DRY, and THAT is your signal for ceasing.
When dry, there is no correction to be made, (but you can correct when drying,) and therefore everything must be first settled, in what is called a Cartoon, (from Cartone, a large sheet of paper,) the same size as the extent of wall on which you are to paint.
You do only as much as you can finish in a day, tracing off your composition, bit by bit, and putting as much of it as can be done in a day on the mortar, and marking the outline with an iron point, which leaves its trace on the wet mortar.
This is a rapid outline of fresco. Nothing can be simpler, and nothing easier, when the figure is mastered; as lime whitens the colour in drying, you use your colours much darker than they dry, as in oil you paint flesh much lighter when you glaze; the difficulty is equal. You may lay it down as a law, if fresco when wet looks well, it will look ill when dry.
The modes of imitating nature in the great schools of painting have been four, viz. tempera, encaustic, fresco, and oil. The general practice of the Greeks was tempera, intensely varnished; encaustic was the exception; fresco, it is clear, they practised, and oil and wax they varnished with.
For tempera, colours are ground in water, and worked with the yolk of egg thinned with vinegar, to prevent putrefaction. Wax was the vehicle of encaustic, liquified by fire, used hot with the brush on ships, and when cooled after liquefaction, used cool for tabular works, and amalgamated by fire again, or by a heated stylus alone. The use of fire to amalgamate wax, or the use of the cauterion, authorised the term ενεκαυσεν, (burnt in); in particular instances some colours were ultimately varnished with wax and oil. This varnish was afterwards heated by a cauterion, which held live coals, until it frothed, then rubbed with wax candles, and finally with white napkins, and the polish was exquisite.
The practice on walls with the brush was quite different from the practice on miniatures, or tabular easel works, because when Pausias, a tabular painter in encaustic, was employed to repair the great works of Polygnotos at Thespiæ, he was to use the brush; and he FAILED, because the brush was not his accustomed instrument.
Working encaustic with the stylus was, therefore, totally different to working on wall with the brush; and Pliny is wrong in saying the brush was invented after the stylus. We have Egyptian brushes perhaps much older than Greek art, and how was the ark covered with melted pitch inside and out? The Egyptians used tempera inside their tombs, and the colours on the outside of their great temples have stood for hundreds of years there, from the dryness of the climate; I do not know the material, though it may be tempera.
For fresco, colours are also ground in water. Oil needs no explanation.
When the material and vehicle are settled, the next point, and one of great importance, is the ground on which the colours are to be placed. The Egyptians painted in tempera on a white ground, perhaps of marble dust; the Greeks on a ground of finely powdered marble. The white grounds were carried on through the dark and middle ages, and were used by the Italians, whilst they painted on wood; gesso, or plaster, being the material; but when they began to use canvas alone, gesso being liable to crack in rolling, they made a ground of flour and oil.
The ground of fresco is of course the last coat of mortar put on; but if possible the materials of the ground for fresco, (imbibing, as it does, in fact crystallising the colours,) are of more importance in fresco, than either in tempera, oil, or encaustic. The sand, the lime, and the water cannot be too pure. Rain water, or distilled water, I would undoubtedly prefer. The sand must be sifted to a beautiful powder, the lime ground and crushed till it becomes a butter or a jelly.
The grounds in oil are either mixed with oil or water.
If water, they absorb the oil out of the first coat of colour put on; if oil, there is no absorption.
The ground of fresco being water, and lime, and sand, is absorbent. The Italians called the white ground of course “Luce di dentro,” (light within); and the great colourists in oil never, in their darkest tints, lose the effect of the light within, which is the great secret of the clearness of the shadows, in Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Rembrandt. The light within is the great source of purity both in oil and in fresco; but in oil it clears both light and shadow, while in fresco the power of the lime renders shadow always faint and powerless, but in light colours gives a radiance like the sun.
I have said that in fresco there are a great many useless nuisances: these deserve not the name of difficulties, as they are a mere trial of patience; though the practice of fresco is not to be preferred because of the nuisances to be vanquished.
That art of decoration which has the most advantages and the least nuisances, ought surely to be adopted.
All the great fresco painters, except Michael Angelo, seemed to have ended their labours in oil; and the Venetians, from the useless obstructions of fresco, to have given it up.
But notwithstanding these authorities, the power of light, which the reflection of lime produces, shining through the colours placed on it, renders fresco, in spite of its deficiency of shadow, fitter for public decoration than oil, whose power lies in its gorgeous shadow.
The power of fresco lies in light – the power of oil in depth and tone. Oil is luminous in shadow – fresco in light.
A mighty space of luminous depth and “darkness visible” gives a murky splendour to a hall or public building.
A mighty space of silvery breadth and genial fleshliness, with lovely faces, and azure draperies, and sunny clouds, and heroic forms, elevates the spirits, and gives a gaiety and triumphant joy to the mind. The less shadow in decoration the better.
Fresco is not desirable, because it is practised on a despotic material, and therefore requires a resolute and unerring hand, a fixed eye, and steady brain. It is desirable for its beauties, not for its obstructions. It is more difficult to paint with your feet than your hands, but that is no reason such a process is desirable. It would be better for fresco, if lime had the facilities of oil. It would be no disadvantage to be able to work up and retouch like Rembrandt, but it is not to be rejected because you cannot do it.
You must take the process as it is; and as it has been done effectually by Italians and Greeks, as it has been effectually used as an engine by the modern Germans, though far from the perfection of Raffael, there is no reason on earth why it may not be also adopted by the British school.
If our first attempts be timid, so were Raffael’s and Michael Angelo’s first attempts decided failures; yet an advance will be made, for the very process of attempting will reform at once the careless, dashing, slovenliness of habit so common in oil practice.
Lime is the basis of the technical practice of fresco, chemically considered.
Every species of lime originates in limestone; and carbonic acid and stone are the original combinations chemically.
Burning the stone disengages the carbonic acid; by adding water we make the lime a hydrate of lime, and the result is a powder.
Hydrate of lime, sand, and water, in certain proportions, form the basis of stucco, on which fresco is painted.
The theory of stucco is the theory of induration. The lime has a tendency to combine carbonic acid from the air, and return to its original hardness, which depends on the lime and water cementing the fine particles of sand, which are not acted on, because sand is insoluble in such cases.
As colours are in reality tinted water, and as fresco and stucco have a tendency to imbibe water, colours ground in water become incorporated with lime, water, and sand; and when dry they are not to be dissolved again by water; and the basis of fresco and its colours thus become harder than the stone by drying. If the stucco dry too rapidly, as it always does in a hot climate, it does not dry THROUGH; and the hardness of the surface, from having imbibed carbonic acid from the atmosphere, hinders the interior from doing the same. The foundation of the stucco not being dry, very often, in its struggles to get at the carbonic acid, splits and blisters what has dried too soon over it as a skin.
This was the reason that Vasari and the Italian artists were continually obliged to moisten as they went on, and this is the reason why, in my opinion, the climate of England, being moist, is more adapted for fresco than Italy itself. Here, certainly, we have no chance of fresco drying too soon on the surface; but mortar dries here as hard as in Italy, and wherever mortar dries hard, THERE fresco may be safely practised.
All the cant about our climate is puerile and morbid, and the ingenious objections of a sect in England, who are alarmed at the prospect of a masterly style of design and thinking, being established at last, are not to be regarded.
A few more words may be of use on the mode of preparing the one main expedient for painting in fresco.
Before lime is fit for this process, it must be entirely free of its acrid qualities, for if it be used before these are extinguished, the colours will get fainter and fainter till they perish altogether.
The Germans, after having experienced the fatal consequence, in their early experiments, of using lime too early and fresh, never paint now on any stucco in which the lime is less than three years old.
To get rid of the fiery tendencies of the lime, they reduce it to putty, then bury it and keep it from the air for three years at least.
Being kept rather moist it imbibes a certain portion of carbonic acid, but remains far from the point of saturation; it also loses a great portion of its acrid qualities, which destroy colour, if, as I have just said, used too recently after slaking.
Vitruvius’s proof that lime is well slaked, is this: take a hatchet, he says, and cut into the lime as it lies slaked; if any particles obstruct the hatchet it is not done enough; if the hatchet comes out pure and dry, it is weak and useless; but when rich and well slaked, it sticks about the instrument.
Vitruvius recommends three coats of sand and three of marble dust; the walls then become solid and defy cracks.
When the mortar is reduced by beating with sticks, and the marble dust levigated to whiteness, it is fit for colours, which shine out with splendour. “For colours when carefully spread on wet plaster, (udo tectorio,) are permanent. Each coat is spread before the other is perfectly dry and hard.”
The Greeks, when the marble was mixed, used to have ten men to beat it with sticks; it was so compact, that the stucco was often cut out for marble tables.
Pliny describes (36, c. iii.) cisterns in which was kept lime prepared for use, five parts of sand and two of lime; but he adds, that Cato objected to stone lime, but liked the white lime better, as purer and more useful in building. Pliny mentions pit sand, river and sea sand, – of pit sand a fourth part, of river a third. The older the lime the better, he adds, and in building there were laws forbidding the use of lime when less than three years old.
Thus, says he, no plastering of theirs was disgraced by cracks.
And no plastering had any splendour unless spread with sand three times, and marble dust twice.
Among Italian writers, Cennini, Vasari, and Armenini, have written technically of fresco. Cennini is the earliest; he was a pupil of Agnolo Gaddi, who was a pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, who was a pupil of Giotto, who was a pupil of Cimabue, who was a pupil of the Greeks, and he says his precepts were handed through this succession of great masters to himself. Cennini recommends “due parti de sabbione, la terza parte calcina,” and this I have found the simplest and the surest preparation.
Sand, lime, and water, do not indurate so strongly as marble-dust and lime; these become marble in polish and strength.
Fresco seems to have nettled Vasari, who, in his introduction on sculpture, says, “You may say what you please of the judgment required in sculpture, but I affirm fresco requires more; because there are neither time, space, nor patience, to unite these irreconcileable enemies, lime and colour! when the eye cannot see the true colour till the lime is dry; so that he who said it was working in the dark, was not far form the truth.”
“Besides, whilst the lime is moist, it must not be left, and all must be done in one day; and he who has not this power, is obliged to retouch when the fresco is dry; which in time brings out patchings, stains, retouchings, colours one on another, and brush-marks, after the colour is set; which, adds Vasari, is the vilest thing in the world, because it is evidence of the shallow power of the artist; so that when the fresco is washed, all the retouchings (after it is dry,) disappear in the sponge, and nothing is left but what is genuine fresco.”
This comparatively imbecile habit of retouching when dry seems Vasari’s abhorrence, and certainly could never have been the practice of Raffael and Michael Angelo, but of inferior men.
Again, in Antonio Veneziano’s life, Vasari praises his frescos, and says, he never retouched, and that is the reason, adds he, that even to this day his colours maintain their splendour, proving his great power and sound principle, in not retouching, because all retouchings vanish from genuine fresco, painted on soft mortar, which will not endure any other material on it after it is dry. – Vol. ii. p. 208. Ed. 1568. His proportions of marble, dust, and lime, vary from those of Vitruvius, Pliny, and Cennini, but the principle is the same.
The great necessity in fresco, is the condition of the lime; in fact, its durability depends upon it. This is a difficulty which time only can conquer, but if the acidity of the lime could be removed by chemical process, it would be a happy alliance between art and science.
It is curious, however, that Pliny is the only one who says it should be kept three years. Neither Cennini, or Armenini, or Vasari, say more than that its heating qualities should be subdued.
Old lime cannot be got in England, in Italy it is always at hand. The lime used by the Germans in their first attempts, was eight years old, and Cornelius had lime for his Last Judgment twelve years old.
The moment it is settled that fresco shall be adopted, lime, the best adapted, should be instantly fitted, and buried till used.
From a careful examination of an exquisite head in fresco, painted by Correggio, and now belonging to Mr. Harman, it is clear, that in every part of the painting there was a gemmy and solid body of colour, equal to Rembrandt or Reynolds; in fact, if some parts are thin and some thick, the lime ground will shine through the thin parts, and utterly destroy all gradation from light to dark.
A distinguished painter, who was four years in the Vatican, copying daily, assured me that he wetted the head of Pythagoras, and found it as rich in body and impasto as Sir Joshua. I remark on this, because fresco was called by a clever artist, in the evidence before the committee, perpetual glazing, like water colour tinting.
The unfortunate weakness of fresco practice, is the rarity of being able to paint at once from nature on your wall; and though cartoons, when everything is settled, generate a habit of settled thinking, they generate a habit also of feeble copying, when the spirit of invention is evaporated, and which pupils may execute almost as well as the master.
The imperfection in the realities of fresco, which proceeds from this miserable and tame method, induced Reynolds to lay down a law that reality of effect was incompatible with high thought. Nothing could be more unjust, as the attempt of Michael Angelo to embody his thoughts in oil, by the hand of Sebastian del Piombo, and the attempt of Raffael in the Transfiguration, decidedly prove.
This cartoon practice is the reverse of the principle of the Venetians, the Flemings, the English, or the great Spaniards. After a sketch is settled, nature is resorted to; at the moment of execution the deficiencies of the model are supplied by the imagination of the painter, and even though not one feature of the model be copied, in truth, force, and colour, it has been the greatest aid.
The Venetians occasionally painted in fresco without cartoons, and so did the other Italians at times, but nothing must be left to chance; and, therefore, those delicious rapid expressions of tone and touch, the very essence of the genius of Rubens, Tintoretto, and Titian, must not be expected; indeed, Cornelius and the Germans, with great ingenuity, finding the utter impossibility of those excellencies of a perfect imitation being accomplished in lime, came to the ingenious conclusion they are not to be attempted; and they most heroically assert, that Titian, Georgione, and Rubens, are to be set aside entirely, as incompatible with the high aim of their sect, just as Raffael had been before set aside, because he gave evidence of being subjected to classic influences. A very pretty vacuum in art for the new system.
Rubens, and Titian, and Rembrandt, made drawings of hands, and feet, and heads, but they still had the living model to paint from; they did not copy and colour from feeble chalk cartoons, trusting for truth of imitation to their memories of nature. This is a lamentable exigency in fresco, which it is very difficult to avoid. The absence of shadow, it has been said, gives fresco a more real look of life than any other mode of painting, even than oil with its contrasts.
The Germans, to remedy this, make coloured cartoons, but nothing can supply the immediate reference to life; and though the higher qualities of beauty, and form, and drapery, and composition, and grace, and expression, form an ample equivalent for the want of shadow, more shadow and power of effect would perhaps not injure those high qualities of excellence, which belong to this national style of decoration, though lightness be its essence.
To conclude the technical part, the wall for fresco is at first the common preparation for all walls; then comes the second coat, on which pozzolana is used in Italy; when that is freshly dry, the last is spread over, composed of fine river sand and lime, as much as is wanted; and when the plasterer, in polishing, feels the board sticking, or difficult to move, then is the time to trace your portion of cartoon, and work away, or dash at it without a cartoon. It is a mistake to suppose you cannot glaze whilst painting in fresco; when nearly dry you can spread over a tint warm or dark, and touch in, and increase the power before final setting. It may utterly ruin your whole day’s practice, but if done with decision, it will double its beauty.
With respect to the question, whether the early painters, Giotto, Grottino, Spinello, Masaccio, tinted the lime only, leaving the lime for the lights and body, was not introduced till after Giorgione’s impasto in oil, I reply, that, on hearing and reading this, which appeared to me perfectly incompatible with my experience, I wrote immediately to Florence, and requested an intimate friend to go instantly to the works of Masaccio and the earlier ones, and tell me, after the most scrupulous examination, whether they had body and touch, or were perpetual glazings, and left the lime for lights; and to write to me time enough for this evening’s meeting. He did so, and a few days ago I got his reply, and give you the extract.
“I have been round to visit the churches – I have examined well the old ones – Giotto, Gaddi, Giottino, and Spinello; they painted with less body, because the rough sandy texture of the wall is apparent all through, but their colours were not transparent – their lights are touched on – they are body colours, not at all washy; and perhaps not much thinner in quantity than the more modern works, for there the ground may have been smoother, and that would give more the look of the body to the colour put on.
“Masaccio, for instance, not only has none of the gritty mealy look, but his paint is in sufficient body to show the tooth of the brush; he has, too, very deep rich tone, and even more body than Andrea del Sarto, or Pietro da Cortona.”
He concludes, by saying, “I repeat, the oldest frescos were painted with body colour, not glazed, or the wall left for the lights, not even in the architecture, or light parts of the back-ground or drapery, but the surface of the rough wall telling more through the paint, and looking a little mealy, more than in the works of Masaccio.”
There have been great disputes, whether the Greeks painted in fresco; and Letronne,* who denies they did, except in ornament, appears to me to prove the very thing he wishes to disprove by his quotations.
* Lettres d’un Antiquaire à un Artiste sur l’Emploi de la Peinture Historique Murale. Paris, Oct. 1835. A most learned and useful work. See page 364, et seq.
He says udo tectorio applies to plasterers, and not to painters in Vitruvius; but he does not give us what Vitruvius just before says in the progress of fitting a work for stucco. In the middle of the process he stops and says, “Thus completed, it will be a species of plastering fit for pictures;” sic emendata tectoriorum in picturis erit species.†
† Lib. vii. cap. iii. Vit.
After this allusion to painting, he says, colours, on udo tectorio, are permanent.
As to the Greeks, Letronne is equally positive, though his own quotation from Plutarch, to prove they did not paint in fresco, proves that they infallibly did.
He says, εφ’ ὔγροῖς ζωγραφεῖν, (to paint on the wet,) does not mean fresco.
Plutarch, in alluding to the different impressions people you love make on your mind, in comparison with those who are indifferent to you, says, “those you care nothing about leave no more impression on your soul, than paintings on the wet, which speedily vanish and escape your observation; whilst those you do love remain on your mind like pictures in encaustic, which live, and breathe, and which time cannot efface.”*
* Plut. Amat. p. 759; t. ix. p. 42, 43. Ed. Reiske.
Now, says Letronne, it is undoubted fresco is unalterable, and does not vanish.
I grant him, when dry and settled; but it is a fact, that the beauty of Plutarch’s remark is felt deeply by those who have practised fresco, and also know that it vanishes at first, as if a spirit was sinking into the wall. Its revival after is no argument against the truth of Plutarch’s allusion in its first process. It is fair, therefore, to infer that εφ’ ὔγροῖς ζωγραφεῖν, means to paint on wet mortar, or fresco, and that the Greeks knew this practice as well as tempera and encaustic, and its various modes; and by their mixing oil with wax as a varnish, “cera punica cum olio liquefacta,” I am convinced oil and wax were used for a vehicle as well as for a varnish.
Armenini is, I think, the best author to consult on the technical practice of fresco; his practical experience seems great; he describes a man who painted in fresco with both hands – Luchetto of Genoa – he painted the church of St. Matthew; he painted with incredible facility and great power, holding a brush in each hand full of colour.
Armenini says, many painters boiled their lime, to reduce its acridity; and the whole chapter is full of excellent practical advice.
He describes the preparation of fresco, the same exactly as our setting our palette in oil.
First of all, the pots containing the colours, (all earths,) ground in water: then of each colour in its native condition, two mixtures are made, the last the lightest, with the whitest lime, and placed in gradation for use after the original tint.
The flesh colour, red, yellow, and blue, and black, are all treated in the same way; and a sufficient quantity is always mixed at once for the whole picture, so that no variation in the degree of tint may take place by subsequent preparation.
Indeed I recommend his chapters 6 and 7, on cartoons and fresco, as amusing to the connoisseur, and essential to the artist.
Having thus placed before you, first, the necessity of being careful in stucco preparation to receive the colours; secondly, the mode of fitting the lime to make it; thirdly, the process of execution from the best authors; – now comes the question, – Is the English school, as a body, in a condition for the practice of fresco? and which is to be recommended as a model – the Italian or the German school? Munich or Rome?
Prima facie, the exclusive habits of the British school for many years have not been the very best to form a race of fearless designers and inventors. But the country teems with talent, which only wants right direction, sound instruction, and fair reward.
The majority of artists will naturally wish what they can most easily do; but the question is not what the artists wish, but what the state wants; and I hope there is too much manly pride in the profession to allow Europe to say, which it will, that the objection to fresco proceeds from the anticipating agony of being obliged to draw, and not from any doubt of its superiority. Those who are unqualified, and are ambitious of employment, have plenty of time to draw and dissect. Are the opposers to be indulged, because fresco will make them draw? Surely not. I grant a man may be deep in the chemical affinities of lime and alumina, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, and yet be a very bad painter; but her Majesty’s commission must be cautious of such pretences; they must not be imposed on by the profundity of mortar. An artist may be able to prove that all our bodies are but chemical compositions. The best reply to such evidences of genius, is, Can you draw the figure? Do you know its construction? What have you done in oil before you are let loose in fresco?
Whether the decoration and design will be worthy the architect who has prepared the opportunity, whether the epoch coming will be an epoch or not; – will entirely depend on the importance attached to the great opportunity; first, by the commission; next, by the artists; and on the gravity, ardour, and vigour with which both proceed.
If the plan of Munich or Rome be not adopted, nothing will be the result, but a plan without consistency, vain struggles without results, and disjointed and futile efforts, which, however individually excellent, will have no connexion as a whole, and then, indeed, will revive the sneers at the genius of Britain, and justly.
It is our duty to prevent this disgrace; it is our duty to adopt the plan of foreign nations, to prevent the necessity of calling in their personal aid, which must be the case if we do not. Bentham’s greatest happiness principle to the greatest number, will not do here. You disdain foreign aid, and yet you seem resolved to act in every way which, in the end, will oblige you to ask it.
The only way to equal or beat them, is to adopt their modes of proceeding; and what were they? What was the system of the Germans as more immediately to the purpose? 1st. They tried their inexperience on a private residence, and succeeded beyond expectation.
Let British artists be thus tested before the Houses are ready. Let the ablest be placed at the head, and direct and claim the help of the others, consulting them as friends, guiding them as pupils, and attending to their suggestions when valuable.
The result of the German attempt in Rome was, that the ablest was selected by the King of Bavaria, and commissioned at a salary for ten years; thus a school was rapidly formed UNDER A LEADER, the only way of forming one; and though fresco has never been extinct in Italy, it has never, since the Vatican, been so effectually concentrated in one decided national effort for one national effect, as at Munich, and this is the glory which belongs to the school, to the great monarch who sanctioned it, and to the great artist Cornelius, who devoted himself to realize the wishes of his sovereign.
How far the system of design pursued by this school be sound or mistaken, is another question.
The leaders conceived the art to have degenerated, and to require an opposition so comprehensive, that it bordered on the ridiculous in its very purity.
They conceived that the classic influence of the discoveries of some of the great single works of the ancients did not bring Italian art to excellence, but led it astray; they therefore resolved to return to that point where it first began, in hopes of perfecting another style, more appertaining to a christian people, which should be totally independent of classic influence.
In the extravagance of this beautiful and original theory, Raffael was proscribed as being liable to classic influence, and therefore he was out of their pale; so that nothing was thought worthy of a christian style, but what had no evidence of Raffael’s influence left, when by this classic influence he had perfected his own ideas of art.
The principles of classic works, as works of art, could not be objected to, because they could not be refuted; but it must have been, not by the works, but by the paganism of the people who produced them, that the purity of their christian feelings must have been shocked.
The Greeks were Pagans, and therefore whatever may have been the genius displayed in their works, they, the Greeks, not being Christians, their works could not be suffered to have any influence on the principles of German perfection, because they, the Germans, were Christians, and they had resolved to establish a pure christian style.
What is this christian style? Is it anti-christian to restore man to the essential properties of his species as compared with the brute, in form, figure and head? to show him to us as God first made him, cleared from all the consequences of accident and disease, and dress? Is to do this, anti-christian because it is classical? And is to degrade man, and dwindle his form, his neck by cravats, his legs by garters, his shoulders by braces, his feet by shoes, is this a christian style because it is not classical? What absurdity!
The back of the Theseus, and front of the Ilyssus, the head of the Apollo, and majesty of Jupiter, are anti-christian! The principles of our common nature were rejected in German art, because they were discovered by Pagans!
But why not carry this principle through? What right has a German painter to give a Hero the straight nose? that is classical. Why not adopt the system of the monkish painters, who maintained that in proportion as Christ’s head was ugly and agonised, in that proportion was it christian?
This wonderful people, in spite of Lessing and a host of excellent critics, have ever had more imagination than reason, and have always given evidence of more power to produce discussion than discover truth, to take fact for fiction, and fiction for fact. Their mental energy and fervour are worthy examples, but the excess to which they go is to be watched.
To suppose that by going back to the Gothicism of gold grounds, staring eyes, and meagre forms, they must arrive at the perfection of art was a mental delusion: we might as well agree to write like Chaucer, under a hope of advancing to Milton as a result. Cimabue and Giotto did their best, as well as Raffael and Michael Angelo; and if each head of an epoch did not always do so, what reason can be given why each should not every century go back to hieroglyphics as the earliest mode of design?
Any principle which excludes Raffael is insanity, and must be treated as such; for the classic influences which affected him, were the sound principles of the greatest artists which the world ever saw, and as applicable to christian art as to any other.
The German system may be characteristic; so is the Chinese, the Peruvian, the Hindoo, the Bosjeman at the Cape. German art has always been characteristic, and Albert Durer’s style infatuated the Italians in their greatest period.
So intense is the instinct for a new sensation in mankind, that it palls on beauty, wearies of truth, and seeks relief often in deformity. Variety is a component principle in our pleasurable sensations, and any art is at times a relief from the continuity of what is no longer new, however divine. No wonder at the success of German art.
Thoughts too refined to be expressed in words, imaginings too impossible to be comprehended by thought, longings which belong not to earth, yearnings that would puzzle in heaven; of all people in the world, the Germans are the least fit to settle the limits of an art, the essence of which consists in pal-pabilities and positive realities, or it is not understood.
It is said the German school have opposed classic prejudices, and their works are from natural impressions, and not from classic recollections.
Thus the unalterable principles of the perfection of the human form is a classic prejudice, and the half-starved, every-day figures of the mediæval age a christian perfection; whereas I maintain the purity of the inward Christian can be best conveyed by beauty and perfection in the outward symbol; for there is no necessary connexion between external beauty and internal depravity, any more than there is between internal virtue and external deformity.
The leading doctrine of art is to convey its meanings by beauty in everything, and the best guides to this goal are the works of the Greeks; a selection from nature on their principles is not less a natural impression because they guide, than taking nature as it is found with all its defects, where they are no guide at all.
A man, say they, must have art in himself; but supposing a great genius in art born blind, how much would come out of him?
A great painter must have an intense susceptibility to form and colour, through his senses to his brain, in himself of course, so as to be propelled to imitate by lines and colours, in his earliest childhood, what he sees, and thus to convey his thoughts and combinations by this imitation to others. His first imitations of life will be without selection or choice; but when he wants to convey great thoughts and grand actions by human forms and human faces, he finds ANY form and any face will not be in character with his imaginary actors. He then seeks the works of predecessors, and there are works by a people who always did select the beautiful from the ugly, the heroic from the common, the sublime from the petty, the essential from the accidental; he ascertains their principles from perpetual comparisons of their works with living nature; he comes to conclusions by their assistance; he forms anew a principle for his own practice; – and this, it seems, is a classic prejudice, a classic influence inconsistent with the purity of a christian mind, and must not be done in German art. No man can be more alive to the great merit of the German school than I am, in their struggle to revive the great principle of monumental decoration. They persevered through scorn, and ridicule, and laughter, which may have driven them to their early excess on a principle of defiance: but they succeeded in going through; and say what we may, and be as irrefutable as we please, their frescos (tapestry-in mortar as they may be) are a fourth great epoch in art. If they went back for the sake of going forward, it was the excess of all reformers, so common, so natural in the fury of the moment they did not see they could only arrive at the perfection they aimed at, in proportion as they approached the very classic influence they dreaded!
Raffael began from necessity, as THEY began from choice, with gold grounds and gothic purity; but the moment his beautiful mind was directed by classic influence, how to select in daily life the essential from the superfluous in form, he left those simplicities; as you can perceive even in his first great fresco, the Dispute of the Sacrament, where the part of that very picture which he last finished is higher in aim, execution, and thought, than the part he began on first with his golden glories.
Cornelius told an honourable member, who, I have no doubt remarked on the exaggeration of his expressions, “Such exaggeration was necessary to affect the people.”
Never was a greater mistake. What exaggeration is there in the Cartoons, the Vatican, or the pediment of Phidias? None. And what works so affect the people?
This will not do for us. Exaggeration of nature not founded on common sense will never do for the British people; and though the continent may insinuate that it proceeds from our not being advanced enough, permit me to say it proceeds from our being too far advanced in truth and simplicity, ever to relish “any o’erstepping the modesty of life.” The real grand style is nature elevated, not distorted, – and though I am convinced there exists no desire in the highest quarters to call in any foreigner to do what can be better and more nationally done by the British school (and the very constitution of the commission is an evidence); there is also no reason for supposing Cornelius would have less delicacy than Canova on such a point; Canova, to my certain knowledge, shrunk from even giving advice where the character of the country was concerned.
Cornelius is a great man, a great composer, and a grand conceiver. In his Last Judgment, his Christ is infinitely superior to Michael Angelo’s, and though the whole composition is but a varied repetition of Michael Angelo, with all his faults, still Cornelius has many original and magnificent ideas in this work.
The angels accompanying Dante in his motion towards heaven, rising to everlasting happiness by the force of his own virtue and look, while he is surrounded with the struggling damned, is sublime in conception; and worthy of any man in any period, Greek or Italian; but he too clings to the monsters for fallen angels, like Dante, and Tasso, and Michael Angelo, forgetting they were not born in hell, but had fallen from heaven. Though evil, the devils were splendid ruins of beauty, vengeance, and form, not deformed wretches, the devils of the nursery, with tails and fiery eyes and pug faces.
Cornelius, Overbech, and Snorr, are all great artists, and the monarch who has given them the opportunity of distinction is worthy of the men; but the error of the school is the error of the Germans, “they are always cutting off the wrong leg.”* They should not have excluded, on a principle, the refinements of classic selection, but should have made the perfection of classic art their guide to nature.
* Edinburgh Review.
In returning to the severity of the Gothic schools, it was not necessary to retain their barbarity. What the Goths did from ignorance, the Germans adopt as knowledge; and the Germans exclude as Gothic, what Titian and Raffael in the perfection of their experience, tried to unite in the Petro Martyre, and in the Transfiguration. Is this not cutting off the right head as well as the wrong leg?
But, eminent as the German school is, its exaggerations are incompatible with the excellencies of the English school. Retsch’s Macbeth, and Lear, are specimens of what sort of Teutonic ferocities we should be honoured with; and if any German be called to control, direct, or design, it will be an insult to the dignity and honour of Britain.
The mysticism of their metaphysics and poetry they wish to carry into an art, in which nothing is felt that is not evident passion, or palpable form, colour, and identity, as the vehicles of thought.
In our approaching epoch, let us visit Munich only in our journey to Rome.
Italian art and Greek perfection, the Cartoons and the Elgin Marbles, form a school here, which no other country can equal. Do we mean to forego these models of excellence and to pursue a phantom? Are we to give up what 2,500 years in the one case, and 300 years in the other, have sanctioned and settled? Rash delusion! Let us base our effects on these foundations of common sense and common truth, carry them further if we can; but to swerve from Greek art as the guide to English nature, is to be wrong, and the sure precursor of inextricable absurdity and decay.
Consider for a moment our apathy to high art since the Reformation; consider we are excelled in a feeling of the influence of decorative commemoration, by barbarians. Lord Jocelyn found figures of justice painted outside a police-office at Chusan: and Mehemet Ali, after the battle of Nezib, commissioned Horace Vernet to paint a grand commemoration of his victory, whilst to this hour no national commemoration has taken place in Britain for Waterloo; no vote of the state, no thought of the people, as far as painting is concerned.
The respective durability of oil or fresco I believe to be this: fresco will retain its purity longer than oil, but whether it will decay as a material sooner, I know not, though the following fact is in its favour.
In the refectory at Milan, Lionardo painted his Last Supper in oil;* on another part of the same room, and on the opposite wall, Montorfano had painted a fresco before Lionardo’s work.
* Michael Angelo said oil-painting was fit for children. Did he mean Lionardo’s great work was the work of a child? The tameness of the oil painting in Rome, even by Raffael, in comparison with the gigantic sweep of a fresco brush may have justified him in his feeling; but there are parts of ceilings in oil by the great Venetians worthy of fresco, or any style. Would Michael Angelo have called “the Miracle of the Slave” a child’s work? or the Pietro Martyre?
Lionardo’s Last Supper is sadly decayed, whilst the fresco of Montorfano is in good condition; the Vatican frescos have been shamefully treated; just after they were finished, Bourbon soldiers, on sacking Rome, bivouacked in the chambers, and seriously injured by their fires some of the heads; the smoke of thousands of candles have ruined the Last Judgment, but the Farnese Palace is perfect, because it has had its due proportion of light, heat, and air, and not been liable to the accidents of the Vatican.
If the commission heroically adopt fresco, the effect on British art will be tremendous. The provinces I know to be silent volcanos; and all classes will be astonished at the interest suddenly displayed, if fresco be baffled by timidity or intrigue.
The great fact in fresco is this; there are no means of indulging in those tricks to conceal ignorance in design, which oil so copiously affords. A style, where a knowledge of the construction of everything represented is essential by compulsion, will and must effect that very renovation, which the condition of the school at this moment renders it peculiarly adapted to receive.
The impressions of fresco on the mind of my friend Sir David Wilkie were deep and overwhelming. As soon as he recovered from the agitation of a first visit to the Vatican in 1826, he wrote me from Rome.
In the beginning of his letter, he alludes to the Last Supper of Lionardo, and says, “That once perfect work is now but a shadow, and past all power of retrieval. Its material is said to be fresco or tempera, but oil it was, beyond all doubt.
This is a proof of Wilkie’s sagacity, for oil* it is. “Like all other pictures in oil of that date, it is cracked, the small spaces leaving the plaster tinged only with what it had absorbed of the paint.
* Goethe, Du Fresne.
“Lionardo had an eye for softness and depth, incompatible with fresco.” (It is a curious fact, Lionardo’s hand trembled so when he began to paint, he never could paint in fresco.)
After other matters, he says, “I am now in Rome, and one of the day-dreams of my youth has been accomplished.”
“Phillips and Hilton had arrived the day before, by Perugia; slight things make deep impressions; they told me they had been in the Sistine Chapel; they avoided all remark till we should go together.
“The next day we and another went in a body. We passed upstairs, and through the Loggie of Raffael, then through to the first stanza; Battle of Constantine; impression unfavourable; looked grey and chalky; proceeded to the second, the Attila; looked warm, light, and elegant; but the Bolsena, when we hid the window, told with amazing truth and richness; by this time the dryness of fresco had worn off; and this last, with the Heliodorus, began to glow upon us with all the tone and richness of oil.
“Fresco, however, being limited in its power of depth, the St. Peter in Prison, fine as it is arranged, is black and colourless, and in material, for want of what oil alone can give, a failure.
“But of all, the School of Athens is the most elegant, though suffering much from change. Parts of it are most highly finished, and the French, who object to the latter pictures, think this the purest of any.
“The whole looked less than I expected, and in worse condition.
“By many intricate stairs we came to the Capella Sistina, and on entering, looked to the end, but not seeing the Last Judgment, guessed that I was immediately under it; on turning, the effect produced by shapes was rich beyond everything, but the hue was grey and slaty, this wearing off as it always does in fresco. I was gratified by a rich and harmonious arrangement of tints, and what we did not expect, much which reminded us of Sir Joshua, even of his colour and feeling, impressing us with the undoubted sincerity of that great man’s admiration.”
“Fresco,” he says, “has excited my attention much; it decays sooner than oil,* and is incapable of being repaired and refreshed like oil.
* This is not true.
“To the common eye, too, when old, it is not so inviting; but after all, fresco, when new, as I have seen here, is gay and luminous and ornamental, and from the space it allows, capable of combinations that oil can never pretend to.
“Might it not be revived in England! Might not the halls at Windsor, or the House of Lords? – I wonder no Englishman has ever thought of reviving it. I applaud the Germans for the attempt, gothic as it is, and think Snorr the chief of the SECT, worthy to be so employed in his own country; sure he would gain honour.”
“At Sienna,” he says, “the frescos of Pinturicchio, are the freshest and most beautiful frescos I ever saw, in perfect state, and give one the clearest idea of fresco, and with the arabesques round them make this one of the most beautiful and ornamental rooms I ever witnessed.”
This was written in 1826, sixteen years ago. The frescos at Sienna were before the Vatican, but have always been unmolested, and you hear Wilkie says they are perfect and fresh.
It is curious to reflect, that there have been but three great epochs of commemorative art. The great Hall at Delphi by Polygnotos; the Parthenon; and subsequently the Vatican, comprising the Sistine Chapel; perhaps the Glyptothek might be added as a fourth.
The greatest decorative work of the Greeks was this magnificent Lesche at Delphi; it was executed by order of the Cnidians, who had a treasure at Delphi, and had built a stadium on the most elevated part of the town.
Besides this construction, they connected their names with the hall, by employing Polygnotos to paint the walls at their expense, leaving, of course, the choice of subjects to him. One portion of these subjects represented the sacking of Troy by the Greeks, in memory of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, who was murdered at Delphi – the other, the descent of Ulysses to the shades below.
Polygnotos was the great genius of Greek art, and La Roche in the Palais des Beaux Arts, at Paris, has lately been guilty of great injustice in placing the courtly portrait-painter Apelles on the throne.
Aristotle says, Polygnotos made men better than they were – Dionysius the same as they are, and Pauson worse than they were. Polygnotos, therefore, had a standard of form, and could, in the human figure, select the essential from the superfluous, and at whatever period of art that is done, art is in a high condition of design. He lived about the ninetieth olympiad; the Parthenon was doing or done, and no man would have been endured or employed by the independent states of Greece, who was an ignorant composer.
You all know the glorious Parthenon and its decorations; nothing more appeared on a great principle, though art flourished long, till after its ruin and decay, and then by slow degrees and the establishment of Christianity, came the Vatican and Sistine Chapel.
You will thus see that such epochs for the developement of genius are rare, and are never realized unless the genius and the patron exist together; when they do, the Lesche at Delphi, the Parthenon, the Vatican, and Glyptothek are the result; when they do not, then come Greenwich Hospitals, Domes of St. Paul’s, Versailles Palaces, and Montague Houses.
No patronage can create genius – but genius cannot fully develope itself without patronage, and that is the real moral condition of the question.
Southey said to me twenty-five years ago, “It takes one man’s life to get a principle acknowledged, and another to get it acted on.” We have lived to see the principle acknowledged, viz., state support: may we all live to see it acted on; but it must not be concealed, we have strong prejudices to get over which no other country ever had in an equal degree.
First, we have a German party, who are so delighted at Munich they forget Rome.
Next we have an oil party, who hate fresco, Raphael, and drawing.
Third, we have an encaustic party, who forget Sir Joshua was an encaustic painter, and that when he sent Northcote with a lady’s portrait to dry by the fire, he found her head slipped below her shoulder on his return.
Fourth, we have a cheap party, who like to contract for the effusions of genius, who would rather pay £ 10,000 for a work which would be sure to decay, at £ 1,000 a-year, than £ 5,000 at once, to secure an enduring one.
Fifthly, we have what the Duke calls in his despatches, the croakers, who have no belief in their own talents, or the talents of any others; and we have the procrastinators, who say, had we not better wait till there is a rail-road in the Bolan pass, till the corn-law league be abolished, till the revenue be in surplus, and till there be no longer a single complaint from people, chartists, radicals, abolitionists, electors, dissenters, agriculturists, manufacturers, constituencies, or corporations? when this millennium of happiness comes to pass, then will be the time for historical painting.
Again, we have the Gothic party – who, because the building is Gothic, insist that the frescos should be Gothic too, and should have no symptom of the advance or perfection of art, – in fact should have no classic influence.
And lastly we have the great Utilitarian party, who, if they had created the world, I fear, and I say it without disrespect, would have left out beauty in women – flowers on earth – and colour in heaven!
Two-and-thirty years ago Mr. Perceval was asked to devote 5,000 l. a-year, for the advance of historical painting. “During the war!” said he; “No, no; wait till the peace!” The peace came: Lord Liverpool was applied to – and he said, “Wait till we are a little recovered.” Canning was entreated to use his influence with Lord Liverpool, and he said “It did not belong to the Foreign Office.” A million of money was voted for churches. The Bishop of London gave leave for one altar-piece in every church in his diocese. Lord Farnborough was requested to entreat Mr. Vansittart to propose to the House to set aside one per cent. for the support of high art at such a glorious opportunity. And he replied, “Wait till the churches are finished.” At last came Mr. Canning’s successor, as First Lord; his taste was known – application was made, an hour fixed for discussion in Downing Street. The aspirant came as the Horse Guards was striking. Hour after hour passed away. Deputations from the silk-mercers of Coventry, cotton-merchants from Manchester, timber-merchants from Liverpool, all came after him and passed on before him. He took up a folio to write a note, when in large letters inside was written by some unhappy wight like himself – “Waiting room – heaven knows, true enough.”
Then came one, whose straight-forward energy of mind entered into the question at once; but before anything could be thought of, he resigned on a point of honour. The next noble lord approved of the plan of adorning the old House, but feared the House would not support a vote of money for art, whereas in nothing would they be more unanimous; and the last noble lord admitted the beauty, the feasibility of the plan, but he had heard it was not wanted; yet he granted a committee. Lords Brougham, Durham, Colborne, Dover, and Morpeth, had all presented petitions in favour of high art in vain, and now when we have a minister on whom the glory will fall, we hear it said, “Call in the Germans!”
To the late government the country is indebted for the school of design, and to the present, for carrying out the intentions of the last government to their full extent; and further, as correct design is advancing, and cannot be stopped, if fresco be adopted, there is no calculating the rapid improvement.
Poor high art! Scouted so harshly by the reformed church, neglected by the authorities, longed for by the people. Everybody says, what do the English know of fresco? * Was there not the same outcry against the army when they went to Portugal? What did they know of military service? Alas! alas! Does not the vice of Britain lurk in all our corners? a democratic hatred of all superiority, rank, wealth, or genius.
* No English artist able to paint in Fresco! At this very instant there exists, in a collection not far from Carlton Gardens, a fresco painted by an English artist at Rome, in the year 1810, which he threw aside! It was got hold of by a dealer, sold as an ancient fresco, exhibited as such at the British Gallery in Pall Mall, and since commented upon, and lauded, as a beautiful specimen of ancient art. So much for a British artist not knowing how to paint in fresco!
But fresco decays, and is not durable! Who can help smiling at the eagerness of the combatants for human durability, when one thinks that the first era of the world, with all its passions and schemes for durability, was drowned in a deluge, that Babylon is a shapeless mound in solitude and silence, that the Pyramids and temples of Egypt are mountainous fragments, that Palmyra is a desert, the Parthenon a ruin, and ancient Rome a mass of tottering bricks? What patent have we in creation, to hesitate at developing the genius of the nation, because durability is not human, or because one mode of developement may last a century or two longer than another, with these mighty examples before our eyes that all must go? Debemur morti nos, nostraque.
Durability is a question of degree. The object now is to give the country a power of wiping off a stigma by its own talents, and will you call in foreigners to do that? will you give them the power of saying, “You could not do this without us, and, therefore, your suspected incapacity is apparent?”
At least keep this ground sacred and holy, which has been already immortalized by the hero of Cressy, the father of the hero of Poictiers, with all its historical recollections, which imagination will call up at the very mention of its name; at least let this portion of London be unbruised by foreign hoof. No man surely who has a drop of English blood in his veins, or British bottom in his nature, ever can, or ever will, patiently endure the decoration by any other than British hands, of a spot, hallowed by the tread of the Black Prince, or his illustrious father.
The genius of the country is not to be feared, whatever may be the moral courage of those who wield it.
An eminent witness said before the committee, and said justly, it was mortifying to find confidence placed in British artists, in every part of Europe, and diffidence existing as to the extent of their capacity only where they were born and bred.
For fifty years past, has it not been the predominating tendency of all classes to maintain that high art would never succeed in Britain?
Has not every youth been kindly advised not to devote himself to a pursuit, in which there was little chance of reward? Has he not rather been pitied than encouraged, if he wished to spread a taste, to contest the palm with Italy and France? Surely this is simply true, and so true it cannot be refuted. And now, when at last a great public opportunity is “casting its shadow before,” is it just to question the genius existing, and to whisper the necessity of foreign aid? Are the artists to be punished for the omissions of their patrons?
It may be and is answered, artists are of no country, but Chatham, and Pitt, and Nelson, and the Duke, never carried their genial sympathy, in their philosophical estimation of other nations, so far as not altogether always to prefer their own.
This may not be very enlightened, but it is the basis of the greatness of all nations.
An English exhibition is a mass of genius frittered, distilled, and filtered into petty trifles for sale, and is not a criterion of its power; the British artists do not do what they can do, what they wish to do, nor what they ought to do, but what they are obliged to do; they send their goods to market, and suit them to the demand; give them a higher market and a nobler demand, they will meet your wishes, and rise superior to all competition.
When the mode of execution shall have been determined on by the Royal Commission, then should a plan of invention be decidedly arranged.
Our leading passion as a nation, are “politics and commerce,” our government a constitutional monarchy; and the object in decorating the Legislative Houses, with a series of grand frescos, should be to illustrate, by designs of suitable subjects, “The best government to regulate without cramping the liberty of man.”
There will be a corridor, a St. Stephen’s Hall, another hall, a Robing-room for the Queen, and a Speaker’s House.
Let every space in each hall, by choice of subject from our own history and the history of the world, illustrate this object.
First, in the Great Corridor.
Illustrate the Horrors of Anarchy and Democracy.
Second, St. Stephen’s Hall.
The Evils of Despotism and Revolution.
Third, the Great Hall.
The Blessings of Law and Justice.
Fourth, the Robing-Room.
The Liberty of a Limited Monarchy.
Fifth, the Speaker’s House.
By smaller works, complete the illustration of the principle.
Between each design, let there be statues of all the great men from Alfred, who have contributed to complete the fabric of monarchy, and let every design, historical or allegorical, in every part of the building, have reference to the leading object of the illustration.
The subjects need not be confined to our own country exclusively. The school of Athens had nothing to do with Italy; it suited collaterally the object of Raffael; had he been confined to Italian subjects alone, what would have become of St. Peter’s release from prison, the Heliodorus, or the School of Athens?
If confined to our own history; variety will be injured as well as beauty, and we shall have a gothic armoury and a collection of costumes in native art.
Thus far as to the nature of the subject suited to her Majesty’s Palace at Westminster, now as to the principle in selecting the genius required.
After the plan is settled, each hall should be placed under the direction of one eminent artist, and he should be left to choose his own assistants.
Each directing artist should be part of a council, the architect to be president; all matters relating to the decoration, should be finally settled by this council, subject to the consideration of the commission.
When once the plan of decoration be settled, the cartoons should be begun, for now is not too soon, and when once begun, the work and preparations should continue regularly, the expence provided in the annual estimate like any other government expenditure, the whole work taking so much time and no more, as is necessary to its perfect execution.
By the time one hall is done, a school would be formed, and the high art of England take its proper level.
It is said competition will be better than selection, because there may be a great genius unknown: there may be; but I humbly suggest that a great youthful genius, at present unknown, is much more likely to be properly trained by eminent artists, than by sanguine enthusiasts.
Under the guidance of Polygnotos, Phidias, Raffael, and Michael Angelo, Alcamenes, Julio Romano, Perino del Vaga, Polidoro, and Giovanni d’Udine, by the discipline of their masters, became the pride of their country; and if selection take place on the same principles on this occasion, I predict the same results.
But if competition be preferred, boys, more than boys of sixteen and less than men of thirty, will be the annual novelty of the season, disgust will follow, and in three years the plan will be given up.
To conclude, if the same rational confidence be placed in British painters, as the Duke placed in British soldiers, the reign of our beloved Queen Victoria will be as splendid an era in art, as was that of her great predecessor Elizabeth in literature and in politics.
THE END.