One can fancy him lying there in the midst of his books and casts and engravings,a true virtuoso,a subtle connoisseur,turning over his fine collection of Mare Antonios,and his Turner's 'Liber Studiorum,'of which he was a warm admirer,or examining with a magnifier some of his antique gems and cameos,'the head of Alexander on an onyx of two strata,'or 'that superb ALTISSIMORELIEVO on cornelian,Jupiter AEgiochus.'He was always a great amateur of engravings,and gives some very useful suggestions as to the best means of forming a collection.Indeed,while fully appreciating modern art,he never lost sight of the importance of reproductions of the great masterpieces of the past,and all that he says about the value of plaster casts is quite admirable.
As an art-critic he concerned himself primarily with the complex impressions produced by a work of art,and certainly the first step in aesthetic criticism is to realise one's own impressions.He cared nothing for abstract discussions on the nature of the Beautiful,and the historical method,which has since yielded such rich fruit,did not belong to his day,but he never lost sight of the great truth that Art's first appeal is neither to the intellect nor to the emotions,but purely to the artistic temperament,and he more than once points out that this temperament,this 'taste,'as he calls it,being unconsciously guided and made perfect by frequent contact with the best work,becomes in the end a form of right judgment.Of course there are fashions in art just as there are fashions in dress,and perhaps none of us can ever quite free ourselves from the influence of custom and the influence of novelty.He certainly could not,and he frankly acknowledges how difficult it is to form any fair estimate of contemporary work.
But,on the whole,his taste was good and sound.He admired Turner and Constable at a time when they were not so much thought of as they are now,and saw that for the highest landscape art we require more than 'mere industry and accurate tranion.'Of Crome's 'Heath Scene near Norwich'he remarks that it shows 'how much a subtle observation of the elements,in their wild moods,does for a most uninteresting flat,'and of the popular type of landscape of his day he says that it is 'simply an enumeration of hill and dale,stumps of trees,shrubs,water,meadows,cottages and houses;little more than topography,a kind of pictorial map-work;in which rainbows,showers,mists,haloes,large beams shooting through rifted clouds,storms,starlight,all the most valued materials of the real painter,are not.'He had a thorough dislike of what is obvious or commonplace in art,and while he was charmed to entertain Wilkie at dinner,he cared as little for Sir David's pictures as he did for Mr.Crabbe's poems.With the imitative and realistic tendencies of his day he had no sympathy and he tells us frankly that his great admiration for Fuseli was largely due to the fact that the little Swiss did not consider it necessary that an artist should paint only what he sees.The qualities that he sought for in a picture were composition,beauty and dignity of line,richness of colour,and imaginative power.Upon the other hand,he was not a doctrinaire.'I hold that no work of art can be tried otherwise than by laws deduced from itself:whether or not it be consistent with itself is the question.'This is one of his excellent aphorisms.And in criticising painters so different as Landseer and Martin,Stothard and Etty,he shows that,to use a phrase now classical,he is trying 'to see the object as in itself it really is.'
However,as I pointed out before,he never feels quite at his ease in his criticisms of contemporary work.'The present,'he says,'is about as agreeable a confusion to me as Ariosto on the first perusal.Modern things dazzle me.I must look at them through Time's telescope.Elia complains that to him the merit of a MS.poem is uncertain;"print,"as he excellently says,"settles it."Fifty years'toning does the same thing to a picture.'He is happier when he is writing about Watteau and Lancret,about Rubens and Giorgione,about Rembrandt,Corregio,and Michael Angelo;happiest of all when he is writing about Greek things.What is Gothic touched him very little,but classical art and the art of the Renaissance were always dear to him.He saw what our English school could gain from a study of Greek models,and never wearies of pointing out to the young student the artistic possibilities that lie dormant in Hellenic marbles and Hellenic methods of work.
In his judgments on the great Italian Masters,says De Quincey,'there seemed a tone of sincerity and of native sensibility,as in one who spoke for himself,and was not merely a copier from books.'
The highest praise that we can give to him is that he tried to revive style as a conscious tradition.But he saw that no amount of art lectures or art congresses,or 'plans for advancing the fine arts,'will ever produce this result.The people,he says very wisely,and in the true spirit of Toynbee Hall,must always have 'the best models constantly before their eyes.'
As is to be expected from one who was a painter,he is often extremely technical in his art criticisms.Of Tintoret's 'St.
George delivering the Egyptian Princess from the Dragon,'he remarks:-The robe of Sabra,warmly glazed with Prussian blue,is relieved from the pale greenish background by a vermilion scarf;and the full hues of both are beautifully echoed,as it were,in a lower key by the purple-lake coloured stuffs and bluish iron armour of the saint,besides an ample balance to the vivid azure drapery on the foreground in the indigo shades of the wild wood surrounding the castle.
And elsewhere he talks learnedly of 'a delicate Schiavone,various as a tulip-bed,with rich broken tints,'of 'a glowing portrait,remarkable for MORBIDEZZA,by the scarce Moroni,'and of another picture being 'pulpy in the carnations.'
