§ 14. Evil first,—that we lose the true force of
beauty.
First. That beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be
enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as
light. A white canvas cannot produce an effect of sunshine; the painter must
darken it in some places before he can make it look luminous in others; nor can
an uninterrupted succession of beauty produce the true effect of beauty; it must
be foiled by inferiority before its own power can be developed. Nature has for
the most part mingled her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles sunshine
with shade, giving due use and influence to both, and the painter who chooses to
remove the shadow,oil paintings online, perishes in the burning desert he has created. The truly high
and beautiful art of Angelico is continually refreshed and strengthened by his
frank portraiture of the most ordinary features of his brother monks, and of the
recorded peculiarities of ungainly sanctity; but the modern German and
Raphaelesque schools lose all honor and nobleness in barber-like admiration of handsome
faces, and have, in fact, no real faith except in straight noses and curled
hair. Paul Veronese opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress to the
queen; Shakspere places Caliban beside Miranda, and Autolycus beside Perdita;
but the vulgar idealist withdraws his beauty to the safety of the saloon, and
his innocence to the seclusion of the cloister; he pretends that he does this in
delicacy of choice and purity of sentiment, while in truth he has neither
courage to front the monster, nor wit enough to furnish the knave. art oil paintings online
§ 15. Evil second,—we lose the true quantity of
beauty.
It is only by the habit of representing faithfully all things, that we can
truly learn what is beautiful and what is not. The ugliest objects contain some
element of beauty; and in all, it is an element peculiar to themselves, which
cannot be separated from their ugliness, but must either be enjoyed together
with it, or not at all. The more a painter accepts nature as he finds it, the
more unexpected beauty he discovers in what he at first despised; but once let
him arrogate the right of rejection, and he will gradually contract his circle
of enjoyment, until what he supposed to be nobleness of selection ends in
narrowness of perception. Dwelling perpetually upon one class of ideas, his art
becomes at once monstrous and morbid; until at last he cannot faithfully
represent even what he chooses to retain; his discrimination contracts into
darkness, and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity. oil paintings of italyHigh art, therefore, consists neither in altering, nor in improving nature; but in seeking throughout nature for "whatsoever things are lovely, and whatsoever things are pure;" in loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis. Of the degree in which this can be done, and in which it may be permitted to gather together, without falsifying, the finest forms or thoughts, so as to create a sort of perfect vision, we shall have to speak hereafter: at present, it is enough to remember that art (cæteris paribus) is great in exact proportion to the love of beauty shown by the painter, provided that love of beauty forfeit no atom of truth. oil paintings of nature
§ 16. III. Sincerity.—The next[7] characteristic of great art is that it includes the largest possible quantity of Truth in the most perfect possible harmony. If it were possible for art to give all the truths of nature, it ought to do it. But this is not possible. Choice must always be made of some facts which canbe represented, from among others which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some respects, misrepresented. The inferior artist chooses unimportant and scattered truths; the great artist chooses the most necessary first, and afterwards the most consistent with these, so as to obtain the greatest possible and most harmonious sum. For instance, Rembrandt always chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. In order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the light and color of five sixths of his picture; and the expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of shape or tint. But he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety. Veronese,oil paintings for sale uk,on the contrary, chooses to represent the great relations of visible things to each other, to the heaven above, and to the earth beneath them. He holds it more important to show how a figure stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall; how as a red, or purple, or white figure, it separates itself, in clear discernibility, from things not red, nor purple, nor white; how infinite daylight shines round it; how innumerable veils of faint shadow invest it; how its blackness and darkness are, in the excess of their nature, just as limited and local as its intensity of light: all this, I say, he feels to be more important than showing merely the exact measure of the spark of sunshine that gleams on a dagger-hilt, or glows on a jewel. All this, moreover, he feels to be harmonious,—capable of being joined in one great system of spacious truth. And with inevitable watchfulness, inestimable subtlety, he unites all this in tenderest balance, noting in each hair's-breadth of color, not merely what its rightness or wrongness is in itself, but what its relation is to every other on his canvas; restraining, for truth's sake, his exhaustless energy, reining back, for truth's sake, his fiery strength;veiling, before truth, the vanity of brightness; penetrating, for truth, the discouragement of gloom; ruling his restless invention with a rod of iron; pardoning no error, no thoughtlessness, no forgetfulness; and subduing all his powers, impulses, and imaginations, to the arbitrament of a merciless justice, and the obedience of an incorruptible verity. dafen oil painting village
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