Now, so far from the labor's being...

§ 5. Now, so far from the labor's being turned to good account which is given to our English "finishing," I believe it to be usually destructive of the best powers of our workmen's minds. For it is evident, in the first place, that there is almost always a useful and a useless finish; the hammering and welding which are necessary to produce a sword plate of the best quality, are useful finishing; the polishing of its surface, useless. In nearly all work this distinction will, more or less, take place between substantial finish and apparent finish, or what may be briefly characterized as "Make" and "Polish." And so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "make," I have nothing to say against it. Even the vanity which displays itself in giving strength to our work is rather a virtue than a vice. But so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "polish," there is much to be said against it; this first, and very strongly,art oil paintings, that the qualities aimed at in common finishing, namely, smoothness, delicacy, or fineness, cannot in reality exist, in a degree worth admiring, in anything done by human hands. Our best finishing is but coarse and blundering work after all We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till we are sick at heart; but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle of skill, and the invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thread a rugged cable, and the soft surface a granite desert. Let all the ingenuity and all the art of the human race be brought to bear upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this respect. So then it is not a little absurd to weary ourselves in struggling towards a point which we never can reach, and to exhaust our strength in vain endeavors to produce qualities which exist inimitably and inexhaustibly in the commonest things around us. art oil paintings for sale
§ 6. But more than this: the fact is that in multitudes of instances, instead of gaining greater fineness of finish by our work, we are only destroying the fine finish of nature, and substituting coarseness and imperfection. For instance, when a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the weather, Nature finishes it in her own way; first, she takes wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow; then she colors it; and every one of her touches of color, instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure, which in all probability are mysteries even to the eyes of angels. Man comes and digs up this finished and marvellous piece of work, which in his ignorance he calls a "rough stone." He proceeds to finish it in his fashion, that is, to split it in two,art oil paintings online, rend it into ragged blocks, and, finally, to chisel its surface into a large number of lumps and knobs, all equally shapeless, colorless, deathful, and frightful. And the block, thus disfigured, he calls "finished," and proceeds to build therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent animal. Whereas, all that he has really done is, to destroy with utter ravage a piece of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by the Deity to regulate his work in this world, it must take good twenty years to produce the like of again. This he has destroyed, and has himself given in its place a piece of work which needs no more intelligence to do than a pholas has, or a worm, or the spirit which throughout the world has authority over rending, rottenness, and decay. I do not say that stone must not be cut; it needs to be cut for certain uses; only I say that the cutting it is not "finishing," but unfinishing it; and that so far as the mere fact of chiselling goes, the stone is ruined by the human touch. It is with it as with the stones of the Jewish altar: "If thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it." In like manner a tree is a finished thing. But a plank, though ever so polished, is not. We need stones and planks, as we need food; but we no more bestow an additional admirableness upon stone in hewing it, or upon a tree in sawing it, than upon an animal in killing it. original oil paintings
§ 7. Well, but it will be said, there is certainly a kind of finish in stone-cutting, and in every other art, which is meritorious, and which consists in smoothing and refining as much as possible. Yes, assuredly there is a meritorious finish. First, as it has just been said, that which fits a thing for its uses,—as a stone to lie well in its place, or the cog of an engine wheel to play well on another; and, secondly, a finish belonging properly to the arts; but that finish does not consist in smoothing or polishing, but in the completeness of the expression of ideas. For in painting, there is precisely the same difference between the ends proposed in finishing that there is in manufacture. Some artists finish for the finish' sake; dot their pictures all over, as in some kinds of miniature-painting (when a wash of color would have produced as good an effect); or polish their pictures all over, making the execution so delicate that the touch of the brush cannot be seen, for the sake of the smoothness merely, and of the credit they may thus get for great labor; which kind of execution, seen in great perfection in many works of the Dutch school, and in those of Carlo Dolce, is that polished "language" against which I have spoken at length in various portions of the first volume; nor is it possible to speak of it with too great severity or contempt, where it has been made an ultimate end. cheap oil paintings for sale

But other artists finish for the impression's sake, not to show their skill, nor to produce a smooth piece of work, but that they may, with each stroke, render clearer the expression of knowledge. And this sort of finish is not, properly speaking, so much completing the picture as adding to it. It is not that what is painted is more delicately done, but that infinitely moreis painted. This finish is always noble, and, like all other noblest things, hardly ever understood or appreciated. I must here endeavor, more especially with respect to the state of quarrel between the schools of living painters, to illustrate it thoroughly. buy oil paintings online