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The influence of style in design extending through the lower walks of art gives superiority, in the Dutch and Flemish schools, to the works of Metzu, Terbourg, and Jan Stein, over those of Ostade, Mieris, and Gerard Douw. So that, when I select for my theme the highest in the noblest class of art, you may each apply my remarks in well-regulated degrees to the improvement of your own immediate classes of subjects. In portraiture, it is well known to be a controlling principle with the best painters; and the world may well be assured of its truth, while possessed of the labours of Sir Joshua Reynolds; in which grandeur, grace, and truth, contend for the mastery.

The attainment of style inculcated in this lecture from the examples given to us by the older artists, naturally leads to the consideration of the best mode of attaining knowledge in painting, by studying pictures. I shall therefore add a few observations on that subject.

It is doubtless very delightful to indulge in the rapturous feelings, and the enthusiastic language, excited by the great and the admirable in art; and whilst it exhibits capability of comprehending its beauty, it seems, also, to promise the enjoyment of power to produce it.

But the capacity to separate truth from all that disguises it, and portray it for ourselves, is the invaluable gift of a few; whilst the native consciousness within us, of its existence, enabling us at once to acknowledge and enjoy it when displayed, is widely imparted to the mass of mankind. Hence it is a more common and generally found to be a more agreeable task, to indulge in the pleasurable sensations imparted by fine works of art, and far more easy to talk of them than to search out the latent principles whence the pleasure they afford is derived.

To learn, the fervour of enjoyment must subside, and calm reflection, the result of earnest enquiry, take place in our minds; we must bring reason to our aid, ere we can comprehend the mode by which the powerful or the pleasing effect that moved us has been produced. The actor feels not, whilst he studies his part, the passion which he intends to display. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba!" He is thinking of the proper emphasis, the proper action, the proper turn of features for his adoption, to produce the semblance of the passion by which it may be supposed he is influenced; and all this necessary preoccupation of his mind excludes the passion itself.

Just so, the student in painting who aims at excellence will divest himself of the immediate

influence excited by his admiration of a work of art, and apply his mind to the consideration of those combinations of forms, or of colours, of actions, and of expressions, which have been productive of the emotion he feels; whether it arise from sentiment or from beauty, from the power of the art, or the skill of the artist. I speak for those, and they are not a few, who mistakenly seem to think when they feel themselves excited to enthusiastic fervour by a picture, and speak of it with corresponding energy and a glowing imagination, that they exhibit a knowledge of art, and manifest the proof of genius. It is but a step in advance! It is, indeed, the firm basis of the true connoisseur; a testimony of his capacity to feel justly the effect of a fine work. It may be sufficient for the critic, but it will never make a painter; and it is a fatal error to an artist, if he rest content with it: an error, by which many fair hopes have been destroyed; and by which talents, that might have produced admirable results, have been perverted and betrayed their possessor.

It was by the control of reason over enthusiasm that the art attained the perfection which has been exhibited to us; and it is that man only who so regulates his mind, that he can cast aside the warmer emotion, in just time for the more useful and ultimately more grateful

pleasure of enquiry, who, in turn, reaps the benefit of becoming able to excite it in others. It is perhaps to the mistaken notion in the world, that art is almost altogether the product of fervid feeling, unaided by sober judgment, that are owing many of the unsound opinions of art and artists, which have abounded, and do still abound, in the world.

Many will, I fear, deem these observations founded on a cold calculation. But it must be seen, that I do not exclude a capability of warm and enthusiastic sensation from the catalogue of the virtues of a painter; and if I thought that I should destroy, or weaken, the warmth of feeling in a youthful mind devoted to the art, I would not thus treat the subject. No, I proceed to say that he who feels it not, will never be an artist, can never attain a consciousness of that which renders the art estimable. He must enthusiastically feel, or he can never enjoy the beauties of art; he must enjoy them, or he can never endure the labours of practice necessary for the attainment of power to produce them; and he must practise laboriously, and reason calmly while he labours under the influence of his zeal, or his desire to become a great artist will be vain.

LECTURE VII.

ON COMPOSITION IN PAINTING.

1829.

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