"Well but," the reader persists, "you admitted...

§ 4. "Well but," the reader persists, "you admitted just now that because Turner did not get his work to look like a window there was something wrong in him."
I did so; if he were quite right he would have all truth, low as well as high; that is, he would be Nature and not Turner; but that is impossible to man. There is much that is wrong in him; much that is infinitely wrong in all human effort. But, nevertheless, in some an infinity of Betterness above other human effort.
"Well, but you said you would change your Turners for windows, why not, therefore, for Constables?" decorative painting
Nay, I did not say that I would change them for windowsmerely, but for windows which commanded the chain of the Alps and Isola Bella. That is to say, for all the truth that there is in Turner, and all the truth besides which is not in him; but I would not change them for Constables, to have a small piece of truth which is not in Turner, and none of the mighty truth which there is. paintings for sale
§ 5. Thus far, then, though the subject is one requiring somewhat lengthy explanation, it involves no real difficulty. There is not the slightest inconsistency in the mode in which throughout this work I have desired the relative merits of painters to be judged. I have always said, he who is closest to Nature is best. All rules are useless, all genius is useless, all labor is useless, if you do not give facts; the more facts you give the greater you are; and there is no fact so unimportant as to be prudently despised, if it be possible to represent it. Nor, but that I have long known the truth of Herbert's lines, oil paintings on canvas for sale

"Some men are
Full of themselves, and answer their own notion,"

would it have been without intense surprise that I heard querulous readers asking, "how it was possible" that I could praise Pre-Raphaelitism and Turner also. For, from the beginning of this book to this page of it, I have never praised Turner highly for any other cause than that he gave facts more delicately, more Pre-Raphaelitically, than other men. Careless readers, who dashed at the descriptions and missed the arguments, took up their own conceptions of the cause of my liking Turner, and said to themselves: "Turner cannot draw, Turner is generaliz ing, vague, visionary; and the Pre-Raphaelites are hard and distinct. How can any one like both?"But I never said that Turner could not draw. I never said that he was vague or visionary. What I said was,abstract oil painting, that nobody had ever drawn so well: that nobody was so certain, so un-visionary; that nobody had ever given so many hard and downright facts. Glance back to the first volume, and note the expressions now. "He is the only painter who ever drew a mountain or a stone;the only painter who can draw the stem of a tree; the only painter who has ever drawn the sky, previous artists having only drawn it typically or partially, but he absolutely and universally." Note how he is praised in his rock drawing for "not selecting a pretty or interesting morsel here or there, but giving the whole truth, with all the relations of its parts." Observe how thegreat virtue of the landscape of Cima da Conegliano and the early sacred painters is said to be giving "entire, exquisite, humble, realization—a strawberry-plant in the foreground with a blossom, and a berry just set, and one half ripe, and one ripe, all patiently and innocently painted from the real thing, andtherefore most divine." Then re-read the following paragraph (§ 10.), carefully,original oil paintings, and note its conclusion, that the thoroughly great men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and who have never despised anything, however small, of God's making; with the instance given of Wordsworth's daisy casting its shadow on a stone; and the following sentence, "Our painters must come to this before they have done their duty." And yet, when our painters did come to this, did do their duty, and did paint the daisy with its shadow (this passage having been written years before Pre-Raphaelitism was thought of), people wondered how I could possibly like what was neither more nor less than the precise fulfilment of my own most earnest exhortations and highest hopes.
§ 6. Thus far, then, all I have been saying is absolutely consistent, and tending to one simple end. Turner is praised for his truth and finish; that truth of which I am beginning to give examples. Pre-Raphaelitism is praised for its truth and finish; and the whole duty inculcated upon the artist is that of being in all respects as like Nature as possible. cheap oil paintings
And yet this is not all I have to do. There is more than this to be inculcated upon the student, more than this to be admitted or established before the foundations of just judgment can be laid.

For, observe, although I believe any sensible person would exchange his pictures, however good, for windows, he would not feel, and ought not to feel, that the arrangement wasentirely gainful to him. He would feel it was an exchange of a less good of one kind, for a greater of another kind, but that it was definitely exchange, not pure gain, not merely getting more truth instead of less. The picture would be a serious loss; something gone which the actual landscape could never restore, though it might give something better in its place, as age may give to the heart something better than its youthful delusion, but cannot give again the sweetness of that delusion. cheap oil paintings for sale