Specific Idealization-continued. 97 been precisely followed in them by our countrymen, it is because the fastidiousness of our times demands subjects of greater refinement, though by no means partaking to a greater extent of absolute or generic qualities. It is from this circumstance that the tendency to caricature in this department of art is even greater than in individual portraiture; and so much so indeed has this been the case, that the great majority of Dutch pictures might be more correctly described as caricatures of a class, than by any other epithet. As it is to this department of specific idealization that nineteen out of every twenty of the cabinet pictures which crowd the walls of all our exhibition rooms belong, we may regard it as pretty certain that it at present enjoys no small share of favour both with artists and the public. For this favour many reasons might be assigned besides that of its comparatively easy execution, which we have mentioned as a temptation to the less aspiring class of artists. From dealing almost entirely with prominent external peculiarities, it is far more easily understood by the vulgar than works of art of a higher class, nay, even than thoroughly good portraits, whilst to a more universal interest than portraiture can possibly possess, it adds the charm of caricature without the malignity of individual satire. To those who regard art as a mere amusement, it is unquestionably the most attractive form in which it can present itself, and by all it must be admitted that it affords an infinite field for the display, not only of good-natured humour, but of shrewd observation of life and manners. Notwithstanding all these advantages however, we must admit that the frequency of its appearance is to us a subject of regret, regarding it, as we do, as probably less calculated than any other to affect the great ends and purposes of art, of which it will presently be our business to speak. But independently of the class (we fear a numerous one) of those who are contented to rest at the stage which we have now reached, and who seek in art nothing higher than a harmless amusement, arising either from that literal copying of natural objects by which their instinctive love of imitation is gratified, or from a clever seizing of some of those peculiarities by which different classes of their fellow-men are distinguished, there is, if we may trust a species of indefinite longing which frequently expresses itself in a scarcely articulate manner both from the press and the platform, no small number of persons who would willingly regard it in a very different light. From them we continually hear of the influence which art is calculated to exercise in reforming the taste and in elevating the imagination of the people; and by them it is not unfrequently referred to as an instrument, the use of which, those whose business it is to watch VOL. XVI. NO. XXXI. G over the advance of civilisation are not entitled to neglect. It is at the instigation of persons holding these opinions that galleries are built, academies founded, and a very considerable portion both of public and private wealth expended on works of art. It is very rarely, however, that we hear from them anything like an intelligible account of the manner in which they look for the attainment of these results; and if we do not greatly err, it is from a certain want of clearness on this point, that so much laudable enthusiasm for the promotion of art in this country has hitherto been productive of so little. We constantly find that persons professing these expectations, practically bestow their patronage upon those very departments of art which receive the countenance of those who have no such sanguine views with regard to it. Now, could we predicate an unlimited amount of patience on the part of our readers, we believe it would be no hard task to demonstrate, that from neither of the departments of which we have hitherto spoken, least of all from the second, as it is usually practised, can any important social influence by possibility arise. In individual portraiture, if the primary idea of nature be brought out with greater consistency and clearness than she herself has exhibited it, something unquestionably will be taught to him who appreciates the work, beyond what, with unartistic eyes, he could have read in the individual face; but where the magnifying of accidental peculiarities alone is attempted, whether they be those of an individual or a class, the spectator may learn the influence of circumstances on the human frame, but he will not be raised one step nearer to the idea after which it was formed. It is from the last and highest department of art alone, that which, according to the division which we have adopted, we call generic idealization, that these results can be expected; and in order that we may see in what manner they flow from it rather than from the others, we must endeavour to determine in what respect it differs from them. The main distinction between the highest department of art and every other, we take to be that from the former deformity, i.e., all violation of the norm, or general law of nature, with reference to the object to be represented, is absolutely excluded. In the most freely idealized portrait, in order to preserve the identity to which he is bound down, the artist may be compelled to admit positive deformity, and the type of any class of actually existing beings, must necessarily exhibit many characteristics at variance with nature's absolute law.* In both cases, the representation The artist may represent an individually idealized hunchback, or a specifically idealized hunchback, but a generically idealized hunchback would be a self-contradiction. must unquestionably be consistent with nature, but with nature only in so far as she has manifested herself in this or that particular case, or class of cases. In the higher art, however, the image presented by the artist must be natural beyond nature herself, as exhibited in any individual example. It must be absolutely, not relatively natural. "The painter," says Sir J. Reynolds, "corrects nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect; his eye being able to distinguish the accidental differences, excrescences and deformities of things, from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any original, and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally, by drawing figures unlike to any one object." After this most orthodox exposition, however, Sir Joshua, without guarding them by any definition, or qualifying them by any comment, makes use of certain customary modes of expression, which have done much to propagate an error which still occasions no small difficulty to many in considering this subject. He speaks of " this idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artists call the ideal beauty." Elsewhere he mentions the beau ideal, and at last, as if anticipating what would now be regarded as a Germanic mode of putting the same thought, he calls it, "that central form from which every deviation is deformity." From these and similar phrases, persons little acquainted with the subject have not unnaturally inferred that not only deformity, but variety also, must be excluded from ideal art, and that if carried to its highest perfection it must necessarily end, in so far as the human form is concerned, in one ideal man, and one ideal woman; or perhaps by carrying the abstraction a little farther, in one sexless human form. Such, however, we are persuaded, was far from the meaning which Sir Joshua Reynolds intended to convey, and such certainly was not the view upon which the ancients, who framed the canon of form which he adopted, acted in their own practice. Of this latter fact no farther proof is necessary than that which will be afforded by the most cursory examination of a gallery of Greek statues, where they will be found to vary quite as much as an equal number of family portraits. They have not only the peculiarities incident to sex and to age, but they have, moreover, and very conspicuously, those necessary for the expression of the mythological ideas which respectively attached to them. It would be difficult to find two men more unlike than a Jove and an Apollo, or a Hercules and a Mercury. If the extraordinary attempt of arriving at "one central * In a subsequent page, (63 of the edition of 1798,) Sir Joshua goes somewhat farther, and, we fear, falls quite into the error which we have here endeavoured to point out. form" were actually made, it is obvious that it must be in one or other of two ways; either the whole qualities of life, moral, intellectual, and physical, must in all instances be subordinated to the same ruling quality, such as power, majesty, love, or the like, which should be selected as their representative; or, they must be co-ordinated, and presented in an expression infinitely complex. But in neither of these was it attempted by the Greeks at all events; for against the first of these methods the whole system of Pantheism, which it was the peculiar function of their artists to embody, may be regarded as a standing protest, its leading characteristic being, not to embrace every form of existence in divinity, but to exhibit divinity under every form of existence; whilst the other is excluded by a rule of art which Sir Joshua has himself professedly derived from them, viz., that the expression of a mixed passion, emotion, or quality, is beyond the reach of art. On this subject Sir Joshua is far more sound than consistency with his own principles would have warranted. After mentioning the childish delight which a certain class of critics in his day exhibited in attempting to trace mixed passions in some of the figures in Raffaelle's Cartoons, he has these most sensible observations, which we would gladly see engraven on the walls of every exhibition-room in the kingdom :-" What has been, and what can be done in art, is sufficiently difficult; we need not be mortified or discouraged at not being able to execute the conceptions of a romantic imagination. Art has its boundaries, though imagination has none. We can easily, like the ancients, suppose Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers and perfections which the subordinate deities were endowed with separately; yet, when they employed their art to represent him, they confined his character to majesty alone." The "central form," then, in this sense at all events, according to Sir Joshua's own shewing, becomes an impossibility. If it contains "equally the activity of the Gladiator, the delicacy of the Apollo, and the strength of the Hercules," as he elsewhere says it must, it sins against his own law of unity of expression, and ceases to be a legitimate work of art; and conversely, if it complies with the requirements of the law of unity, it ceases to fulfil his idea of the central form. This central form, indeed, if such there were, would be nothing short of a sensible expression of the Tò Tâv, which it is as little within the province of the imagination to conceive as of art to portray. But what then, it will be asked, is this invariable element, this opposite to deformity, with which we have said that an absolute compliance is requisite in works of ideal art? According to our view, nothing more definite can be said of it than that it is the law of organic form, that is to say, the law in the shape of the several parts, and their relative proportion to each other, within which nature in the general case confines herself, and which may be arrived at or approximated by a comparison of her several workings in any particular species. So long as this canon is complied with, the variations which are requisite for the expression of the qualities or attributes of the individual are as legitimate in the highest department of art as in any other; for, like those which are incident to sex and age, they are as much in accordance with the scheme of nature, and consequently as far removed from the forbidden deformities, as the invariable proportions themselves. But in saying that this absolute law of form, this idea which an undisturbed and perfect natural action would have exhibited in each individual, may be approximated by a generalization from particular instances, we do not mean to assert that a mathematical law of construction has been, or can be evolved. To set a limit to all flagrant and glaring deformity, it is true, is within the reach of every one who possesses a tolerable acquaintance with the structure of the human frame; but when we come to a finer harmony of the parts, principles unknown to the mathematician and the anatomist are brought into play, and we touch upon the law of beauty itself, which has hitherto been found to be far too subtle for such definite handling. Novalis said that painting was nothing but "the art of seeing;" and in every other department of art as well as painting this may be called the ars artium. It is to this faculty of artistic vision, and not to any rules, either mathematical or anatomical, that the artist must finally trust for separating the permanent idea from, or tracing it in, its accidental and abnormal accompaniments; and, once acquired, we believe the faculty is exercised, for the most part, as spontaneously and unconsciously as the ordinary operations of acquired perception. But, unconscious as it is at the moment of its exercise, they err gravely, if we mistake not, who suppose that its acquisition is equally unconscious. To some, it may be, the happy gift has been imparted of seeing instinctively in all things the glory of the original idea, unclouded by the accidents of individual imperfections, or the peculiarities of specific existence; but to far the majority of mankind not only is its perception at first hand impossible, but even its recognition, when presented by another, (in other words, the appreciation of a work of art,) is the result of careful and serious and conscious culture. As to the methods by which this art is to be acquired, the primary and the ultimate one, that by which the earliest artists of necessity began, that with which the highest artists must of necessity end, is what Sir Joshua calls, "the correcting of nature by herself, her imperfect states by her more perfect.' Since it |