§ 4. Let us therefore look into the facts of the thing, not with any
metaphysical, or otherwise vain and troublesome effort at acuteness, but in a
plain way; for the facts themselves are plain enough, and may be plainly stated,
only the difficulty is that out of these facts, right and left, the different
forms of misapprehension branch into grievous complexity, and branch so far and
wide, that if once we try to follow them, they will lead us quite from our mark
into other separate, though not less interesting discussions. The best way will
be, therefore, I think, to sketch out at once in this chapter, the different
characters which really constitute "greatness" of style, and to indicate the
principal directions of the outbranching misapprehensions of them; then, in the
succeeding chapters, to take up in succession those which need more talk about
them, and follow out at leisure whatever inquiries they may suggest. oil paintings for sale
§ 5. I. Choice of Noble Subject.—Greatness of style
consists, then: first, in the habitual choice of subjects of thought which
involve wide interests and profound passions, as opposed to those which involve
narrow interests and slight passions. The style is greater or less in exact
proportion to the nobleness of the interests and passions involved in the
subject. The habitual choice of sacred subjects, such as the Nativity,
Transfiguration, Crucifixion (if the choice be sincere), implies that the
painter has a natural disposition to dwell on the highest thoughts of which
humanity is capable; it constitutes him so far forth a painter of the highest
order,art oil paintings, as, for instance, Leonardo, in his painting of the Last Supper: he who
delights in representing the acts or meditations of great men, as, for instance,
Raphael painting the School of Athens, is, so far forth, a painter of the second order: he
who represents the passions and events of ordinary life, of the third. And in
this ordinary life, he who represents deep thoughts and sorrows, as, for
instance, Hunt, in his Claudio and Isabella, and such other works, is of the
highest rank in his sphere; and he who represents the slight malignities and
passions of the drawingroom, as, for instance, Leslie, of the second rank: he
who represents the sports of boys or simplicities of clowns, as Webster or
Teniers, of the third rank; and he who represents brutalities and vices (for
delight in them, and not for rebuke of them), of no rank at all, or rather of a
negative rank, holding a certain order in the abyss. large oil paintings for sale
§ 6. The reader will, I hope, understand how much importance is to be
attached to the sentence in the first parenthesis, "if the choice be sincere;"
for choice of subject is, of course, only available as a criterion of the rank
of the painter, when it is made from the heart. Indeed, in the lower orders of
painting, the choice is always made from such heart as the painter has; for his
selection of the brawls of peasants or sports of children can, of course,
proceed only from the fact that he has more sympathy with such brawls or
pastimes than with nobler subjects. But the choice of the higher kind of
subjects is often insincere; and may, therefore,large oil paintings on canvas, afford no real criterion of the
painter's rank. The greater number of men who have lately painted religious or
heroic subjects have done so in mere ambition, because they had been taught that
it was a good thing to be a "high art" painter; and the fact is that, in nine
cases out of ten, the so-called historical or "high-art" painter is a person
infinitely inferior to the painter of flowers or still life. He is, in modern
times, nearly always a man who has great vanity without pictorial capacity, and
differs from the landscape or fruit painter merely in misunderstanding and
over-estimating his own powers. He mistakes his vanity for inspiration, his
ambition for greatness of soul, and takes pleasure in what he calls "the ideal,"
merely because he has neither humility nor capacity enough to comprehend the
real. modern oil paintings
§ 7. But also observe, it is not enough even that the choice be sincere. It
must also be wise. It happens very often that a man of weak intellect, sincerely
desiring to do what is good and useful, will devote himself to high art subjects
because he thinks them the only ones on which time and toil can be usefully
spent, or, sometimes, because they are really the only ones he has pleasure in
contemplating. But not having intellect enough to enter into the minds of truly
great men, or to imagine great events as they really happened, he cannot become
a great painter; he degrades the subjects he intended to honor, and his work is
more utterly thrown away, and his rank as an artist in reality lower, than if he
had devoted himself to the imitation of the simplest objects of natural history.
The works of Overbeck are a most notable instance of this form of error.
§ 8. It must also be remembered, that in nearly all the great periods of art
the choice of subject has not been left to the painter. His employer,—abbot,
baron, or monarch,oil painted portraits,—determined for him whether he should earn his bread by making
cloisters bright with choirs of saints, painting coats of arms on leaves of
romances, or decorating presence-chambers with complimentary mythology; and his
own personal feelings are ascertainable only by watching, in the themes assigned
to him, what are the points in which he seems to take most pleasure. Thus, in
the prolonged ranges of varied subjects with which Benozzo Gozzoli decorated the
cloisters of Pisa, it is easy to see that love of simple domestic incident,
sweet landscape, and glittering ornament, prevails slightly over the solemn
elements of religious feeling, which, nevertheless, the spirit of the age
instilled into him in such measure as to form a very lovely and noble mind,
though still one of the second order. In the work of Orcagna, an intense
solemnity and energy in the sublimest groups of his figures, fading away as he
touches inferior subjects, indicates that his home was among the archangels, and
his rank among the first of the sons of men: while Correggio, in the sidelong
grace, artificial smiles, and purple languors of his saints, indicates the
inferior instinct which would have guided his choice in quite other directions,
had it not been for the fashion of the age, and the need of the day. still life oil paintings
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