DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1183#0118
COMPOSITION IN PAINTING. 21
Plate IV. Jig. 2. Ostade's pictures have the peculiarly valuable property
of looking well at a distance, thereby attracting the attention of the spec-
tator towards them. When we come nigh to examine, we find that this is
produced by their possessing a decided mass of light, obtained by means of
a light wall, sky, &c. His heads and hands form a number of luminous
spots in a mass of half tint, and are rendered of more value by the intro-
duction of blue and dark draperies; this requires much consideration, in
order that those spots may take agreeable and decided forms to prevent
confusion. In Ostade's works it is rendered the more easy, as he has sel-
dom any particular story to interfere with the arrangement. His pictures
call to my mind a passage in Hervey, which appears like the language
of a painter, so completely consonant is it to the principles on which he
constructs his work. Speaking of the stars, Hervey says, "ona careless
inspection, you perceive no accuracy or uniformity in the position of the
heavenly bodies, they appear like an illustrious chaos, a promiscuous heap
of shining globes, neither ranked in order nor moving by line; but what
seems confusion is all regularity; what carries a show of negligence is
really the result of the most masterly contrivance."
Fig. 3. P. De Laer, from his long residence amongst the Italian pain-
ters, has constructed most of his pictures, though generally in the low
walks of art, on the most regular and severe principles of their grandest
compositions. As this regularity is considered by some to be incompati-
ble with the negligence of arrangement which they suppose necessary to
the picturesque, I shall here make a few observations on that doctrine. I
consider it to be false, and not tenable, when referred to the operations of
nature; for we find her conducting and exhibiting the most beautiful
appearances and effects in the humblest and most trifling of her works, by
the same laws that regulate her in the formation of the most sublime.
Abernethy says, u that work is beheld with admiration and delight, as the
result of deep counsel, which is complicated in its parts, yet simple in its
operations, where a variety of effects are seen to arise from one principle
Plate IV. Jig. 2. Ostade's pictures have the peculiarly valuable property
of looking well at a distance, thereby attracting the attention of the spec-
tator towards them. When we come nigh to examine, we find that this is
produced by their possessing a decided mass of light, obtained by means of
a light wall, sky, &c. His heads and hands form a number of luminous
spots in a mass of half tint, and are rendered of more value by the intro-
duction of blue and dark draperies; this requires much consideration, in
order that those spots may take agreeable and decided forms to prevent
confusion. In Ostade's works it is rendered the more easy, as he has sel-
dom any particular story to interfere with the arrangement. His pictures
call to my mind a passage in Hervey, which appears like the language
of a painter, so completely consonant is it to the principles on which he
constructs his work. Speaking of the stars, Hervey says, "ona careless
inspection, you perceive no accuracy or uniformity in the position of the
heavenly bodies, they appear like an illustrious chaos, a promiscuous heap
of shining globes, neither ranked in order nor moving by line; but what
seems confusion is all regularity; what carries a show of negligence is
really the result of the most masterly contrivance."
Fig. 3. P. De Laer, from his long residence amongst the Italian pain-
ters, has constructed most of his pictures, though generally in the low
walks of art, on the most regular and severe principles of their grandest
compositions. As this regularity is considered by some to be incompati-
ble with the negligence of arrangement which they suppose necessary to
the picturesque, I shall here make a few observations on that doctrine. I
consider it to be false, and not tenable, when referred to the operations of
nature; for we find her conducting and exhibiting the most beautiful
appearances and effects in the humblest and most trifling of her works, by
the same laws that regulate her in the formation of the most sublime.
Abernethy says, u that work is beheld with admiration and delight, as the
result of deep counsel, which is complicated in its parts, yet simple in its
operations, where a variety of effects are seen to arise from one principle