The Crown of Wild Olive Part 19

[100] I shall give a _catalogue raisonnee_ of all this in the third volume of "Modern Painters."

[101] The plate was, however, never published.

[102] And the more probably because Turner was never fond of staying long at any place, and was least of all likely to make a pause of two or three days at the beginning of his journey.

[103] Vide Modern Painters, Part II. Sect. III. Chap. IV. - 14.

[104] This state of mind appears to have been the only one which Wordsworth had been able to discern in men of science; and in disdain of which, he wrote that short-sighted pa.s.sage in the Excursion, Book III.

l. 165-190, which is, I think, the only one in the whole range of his works which his true friends would have desired to see blotted out. What else has been found fault with as feeble or superfluous, is not so in the intense distinctive relief which it gives to his character. But these lines are written in mere ignorance of the matter they treat; in mere want of sympathy with the men they describe; for, observe, though the pa.s.sage is put into the mouth of the Solitary, it is fully confirmed, and even rendered more scornful, by the speech which follows.

ARATRA PENTELICI

SIX LECTURES

ON THE ELEMENTS OF

SCULPTURE

GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1870

PREFACE.

I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to be useless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study itself should be guided; and to vindicate their security against the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately enc.u.mbered a subject which all think themselves competent to discuss. The possibility of such vindication is, of course, implied in the original consent of the universities to the establishment of Art Professorships.

Nothing can be made an element of education of which it is impossible to determine whether it is ill done or well; and the clear a.s.sertion that there is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more important function of each University than the instruction of its younger members in any branch of practical skill. It matters comparatively little whether few or many of our students learn to draw; but it matters much that all who learn should be taught with accuracy. And the number who may be justifiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at college to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, and finally _must_ depend, on their being certified that painting and sculpture, no less than language or than reasoning, have grammar and method,--that they permit a recognizable distinction between scholarship and ignorance, and enforce a constant distinction between Right and Wrong.

This opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore restricted to the statement, not only of first principles, but of those which were ill.u.s.trated by the practice of one school, and by that practice in its simplest branch, the a.n.a.lysis of which could be certified by easily accessible examples, and aided by the indisputable evidence of photography.[105]

The exclusion of the terminal Lecture of the course from the series now published, is in order to mark more definitely this limitation of my subject; but in other respects the Lectures have been amplified in arranging them for the press, and the portions of them trusted at the time to extempore delivery, (not through indolence, but because explanations of detail are always most intelligible when most familiar,) have been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in what I said too imperfectly, completed.

In one essential particular I have felt it necessary to write what I would not have spoken. I had intended to make no reference, in my University Lectures, to existing schools of Art, except in cases where it might be necessary to point out some undervalued excellence. The objects specified in the eleventh paragraph of my inaugural Lecture, might, I hoped, have been accomplished without reference to any works deserving of blame; but the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in the present year showed me a necessity of departing from my original intention. The task of impartial criticism[106] is now, unhappily, no longer to rescue modest skill from neglect; but to withstand the errors of insolent genius, and abate the influence of plausible mediocrity.

The Exhibition of 1871 was very notable in this important particular, that it embraced some representation of the modern schools of nearly every country in Europe; and I am well a.s.sured that looking back upon it after the excitement of that singular interest has pa.s.sed away, every thoughtful judge of Art will confirm my a.s.sertion, that it contained not a single picture of accomplished merit; while it contained many that were disgraceful to Art, and some that were disgraceful to humanity.

It becomes, under such circ.u.mstances, my inevitable duty to speak of the existing conditions of Art with plainness enough to guard the youths whose judgments I am entrusted to form, from being misled, either by their own naturally vivid interest in what represents, however unworthily, the scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly devised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of Art which has long since confessed itself to have no other object than to allure. I have, therefore, added to the second of these Lectures such ill.u.s.tration of the motives and course of modern industry as naturally arose out of its subject, and shall continue in future to make similar applications; rarely, indeed, permitting myself, in the Lectures actually read before the University, to introduce subjects of instant, and therefore too exciting, interest; but completing the addresses which I prepare for publication in these, and in any other particulars which may render them more widely serviceable.

The present course of Lectures will be followed, if I am able to fulfil the design of them, by one of a like elementary character on Architecture; and that by a third series on Christian Sculpture: but, in the meantime, my effort is to direct the attention of the resident students to Natural History, and to the higher branches of ideal Landscape: and it will be, I trust, accepted as sufficient reason for the delay which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for the press, that I have not only been interrupted by a dangerous illness, but engaged, in what remained to me of the summer, in an endeavour to deduce, from the overwhelming complexity of modern cla.s.sification in the Natural Sciences, some forms capable of easier reference by Art students, to whom the anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often no less important than that of the human body.

The preparation of examples for manual practice, and the arrangement of standards for reference, both in Painting and Sculpture, had to be carried on meanwhile, as I was able. For what has already been done, the reader is referred to the _Catalogue of the Educational Series_, published at the end of the Spring Term; of what remains to be done I will make no antic.i.p.atory statement, being content to have ascribed to me rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance in expectation.

DENMARK HILL,

_25th November, 1871._

FOOTNOTES:

[105] Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished sculpture; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the more roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For the rendering of all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of forms disturbed by the l.u.s.tre of metal or polished stone, the method employed in the plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory.

Casts are first taken from the coins, in white plaster; these are photographed, and the photograph printed by the heliotype process of Messrs. Edwards and Kidd. Plate XII. is exceptional, being a pure mezzotint engraving of the old school, excellently carried through by my a.s.sistant, Mr. Allen, who was taught, as a personal favour to myself, by my friend, and Turner's fellow-worker, Thomas Lupton. Plate IV. was intended to be a photograph from the superb vase in the British Museum, No. 564 in Mr. Newton's Catalogue; but its variety of colour defied photography, and after the sheets had gone to press I was compelled to reduce Le Normand's plate of it, which is unsatisfactory, but answers my immediate purpose.

The enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made for me with most successful skill by Sergeant s.p.a.ckman, of South Kensington; and the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is acknowledged in the course of the Lectures; though with thanks which must remain inadequate lest they should become tedious; for Mr. Burgess drew the subjects of Plates III., X., and XIII.; drew and engraved every woodcut in the book; and printed all the plates with his own hand.

[106] A pamphlet by the Earl of Southesk, "_Britain's Art Paradise_,"

(Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh) contains an entirely admirable criticism of the most faultful pictures of the 1871 Exhibition. It is to be regretted that Lord Southesk speaks only to condemn; but indeed, in my own three days' review of the rooms, I found nothing deserving of notice otherwise, except Mr. Hook's always pleasant sketches from fisher life, and Mr. Pettie's graceful and powerful, though too slightly painted, study from _Henry VI_.

ARATRA PENTELICI.

LECTURE I.

OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS.

_November, 1870._

1. If, as is commonly believed, the subject of study which it is my special function to bring before you had no relation to the great interests of mankind, I should have less courage in asking for your attention to-day, than when I first addressed you; though, even then, I did not do so without painful diffidence. For at this moment, even supposing that in other places it were possible for men to pursue their ordinary avocations undisturbed by indignation or pity; here, at least, in the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of England, only one subject, I am well a.s.sured, can seriously occupy your thoughts--the necessity, namely, of determining how it has come to pa.s.s, that in these recent days, iniquity the most reckless and monstrous can be committed unanimously, by men more generous than ever yet in the world's history were deceived into deeds of cruelty; and that prolonged agony of body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflicting wilfully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and accepted portion of unnumbered mult.i.tudes of innocent persons, inhabiting the districts of the world which, of all others, as it seemed, were best instructed in the laws of civilization, and most richly invested with the honour, and indulged in the felicity, of peace.

Believe me, however, the subject of Art--instead of being foreign to these deep questions of social duty and peril,--is so vitally connected with them, that it would be impossible for me now to pursue the line of thought in which I began these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasis would be given to every sentence by the force of pa.s.sing events. It is well, then, that in the plan I have laid down for your study, we shall now be led into the examination of technical details, or abstract conditions of sentiment; so that the hours you spend with me may be times of repose from heavier thoughts. But it chances strangely that, in this course of minutely detailed study, I have first to set before you the most essential piece of human workmanship, the plough, at the very moment when--(you may see the announcement in the journals either of yesterday or the day before)--the swords of your soldiers have been sent for _to be sharpened_, and not at all to be beaten into ploughshares. I permit myself, therefore, to remind you of the watchword of all my earnest writings--"Soldiers of the Ploughshare, instead of Soldiers of the Sword"--and I know it my duty to a.s.sert to you that the work we enter upon to-day is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope; the hope, namely, that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead the national pa.s.sions towards the arts of peace, instead of the arts of war.

I say the work "we enter upon," because the first four lectures I gave in the spring were wholly prefatory; and the following three only defined for you methods of practice. To-day we begin the systematic a.n.a.lysis and progressive study of our subject.

2. In general, the three great, or fine, Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, are thought of as distinct from the lower and more mechanical formative arts, such as carpentry or pottery. But we cannot, either verbally, or with any practical advantage, admit such cla.s.sification. How are we to distinguish painting on canvas from painting on china?--or painting on china from painting on gla.s.s?--or painting on gla.s.s from infusion of colour into any vitreous substance, such as enamel?--or the infusion of colour into gla.s.s and enamel from the infusion of colour into wool or silk, and weaving of pictures in tapestry, or patterns in dress? You will find that although, in ultimately accurate use of the word, painting must be held to mean only the laying of a pigment on a surface with a soft instrument; yet, in broad comparison of the functions of Art, we must conceive of one and the same great artistic faculty, as governing _every mode of disposing colours in a permanent relation on, or in, a solid substance_; whether it be by tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs; inlaying metals with fused flint, or coating walls with coloured stone.

3. Similarly the word "Sculpture,"--though in ultimate accuracy it is to be limited to the development of form in hard substances by cutting away portions of their ma.s.s--in broad definition, must be held to signify _the reduction of any shapeless ma.s.s of solid matter into an intended shape_, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument employed; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument axe, or hammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire to fuse;--whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we do so under the laws of the one great Art of Sculpture.

4. Having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we shall see that there is, in the third place, a cla.s.s of work separated from both, in a specific manner, and including a great group of arts which neither, of necessity, _tint_, nor for the sake of form merely, _shape_, the substances they deal with; but construct or arrange them with a view to the resistance of some external force. We construct, for instance, a table with a flat top, and some support of prop, or leg, proportioned in strength to such weights as the table is intended to carry. We construct a ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference to certain forces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be overcome; or we construct a wall or roof with distinct reference to forces of pressure and oscillation, to be sustained or guarded against; and therefore, in every case, with especial consideration of the strength of our materials, and the nature of that strength, elastic, tenacious, brittle, and the like.

Now although this group of arts nearly always involves the putting of two or more separate pieces together, we must not define it by that accident. The blade of an oar is not less formed with reference to external force than if it were made of many pieces; and the frame of a boat, whether hollowed out of a tree-trunk, or constructed of planks nailed together, is essentially the same piece of art; to be judged by its buoyancy and capacity of progression. Still, from the most wonderful piece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to this simple one,[107]

the ploughshare, on which it depends for its subsistence, _the putting of two or more pieces together_ is curiously necessary to the perfectness of every fine instrument; and the peculiar mechanical work of Daedalus,--inlaying,--becomes all the more delightful to us in external aspect, because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood of a bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension and resistance.

5. And observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the simplest architecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the timbers in a ship's stem, and the laying of the stones in a bridge b.u.t.tress, are similar in art to the construction of the ploughshare, differing in no essential point, either in that they deal with other materials, or because, of the three things produced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it, another to divide water by advancing through it, and the third to divide water which advances against it. And again, the b.u.t.tress of a bridge differs only from that of a cathedral in having less weight to sustain, and more to resist. We can find no term in the gradation, from the ploughshare to the cathedral b.u.t.tress, at which we can set a logical distinction.

6. Thus then we have simply three divisions of Art--one, that of giving colours to substance; another, that of giving form to it without question of resistance to force; and the third, that of giving form or position which will make it capable of such resistance. All the fine arts are embraced under these three divisions. Do not think that it is only a logical or scientific affectation to ma.s.s them together in this manner; it is, on the contrary, of the first practical importance to understand that the painter's faculty, or masterhood over colour, being as subtle as a musician's over sound, must be looked to for the government of every operation in which colour is employed; and that, in the same manner, the appliance of any art whatsoever to minor objects cannot be right, unless under the direction of a true master of that art. Under the present system, you keep your Academician occupied only in producing tinted pieces of canvas to be shown in frames, and smooth pieces of marble to be placed in niches; while you expect your builder or constructor to design coloured patterns in stone and brick, and your china-ware merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can paint china, but nothing else. By this division of labour, you ruin all the arts at once. The work of the Academician becomes mean and effeminate, because he is not used to treat colour on a grand scale and in rough materials; and your manufactures become base because no well educated person sets hand to them. And therefore it is necessary to understand, not merely as a logical statement, but as a practical necessity, that wherever beautiful colour is to be arranged, you need a Master of Painting; and wherever n.o.ble form is to be given, a Master of Sculpture; and wherever complex mechanical force is to be resisted, a Master of Architecture.

7. But over this triple division there must rule another yet more important. Any of these three arts may be either imitative of natural objects or limited to useful appliance. You may either paint a picture that represents a scene, or your street door, to keep it from rotting; you may mould a statue, or a plate; build the resemblance of a cl.u.s.ter of lotus stalks, or only a square pier. Generally speaking, Painting and Sculpture will be imitative, and Architecture merely useful; but there is a great deal of Sculpture--as this crystal ball[108] for instance, which is not imitative, and a great deal of Architecture which, to some extent is so, as the so called foils of Gothic apertures; and for many other reasons you will find it necessary to keep distinction clear in your minds between the arts--of whatever kind--which are imitative, and produce a resemblance or image of something which is not present; and those which are limited to the production of some useful reality, as the blade of a knife, or the wall of a house. You will perceive also, as we advance, that sculpture and painting are indeed in this respect only one art; and that we shall have constantly to speak and think of them as simply _graphic_, whether with chisel or colour, their princ.i.p.al function being to make us, in the words of Aristotle, "[Greek: theoretikoi tou peri ta somata kallous]" (Polit. 8, 3.), "having capacity and habit of contemplation of the beauty that is in material things;" while Architecture, and its co-relative arts, are to be practised under quite other conditions of sentiment.

8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist either in imitation or mechanical construction, the right judgment of them must depend on our knowledge of the things they imitate, and forces they resist: and my function of teaching here would (for instance) so far resolve itself, either into demonstration that this painting of a peach,[109] does resemble a peach, or explanation of the way in which this ploughshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth aside with least force of thrust. And in both of these methods of study, though of course your own diligence must be your chief master, to a certain extent your Professor of Art can always guide you securely, and can show you, either that the image does truly resemble what it attempts to resemble, or that the structure is rightly prepared for the service it has to perform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is, perhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your Professor to teach you most, and which, on the contrary, is exactly that about which you must teach yourselves all that it is essential to learn.

9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible examples of the union of the graphic and constructive powers,--one of my breakfast plates. Since all the finely architectural arts, we said, began in the shaping of the cup and the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with the platter.