DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20658#0152
138
PAINTER'S STUDIES.
He will then understand the fundamental rules of perspective, be able to demonstrate its laws,
^and not be confined to the blind practice of it.
Nearly allied with perspective and geometry is optics, with which the painter must not be
wholly unacquainted. Having but a very slight knowledge of geometry and perspective he will
find optics, at least as far as is necessary for him to know, an easy task. Its laws, like those of
perspective, are founded on lines and angles. Any small treatise on the subject, of which there
are abundance in use, containing the general laws of vision, reflection and refraction, will be suf-
ficient for his purpose. It will teach him to determine the degree in which objects are to be il-
luminated or shaded ; it will enable him to cast the shades of his figures properly on the planes
on which they stand ; and in general furnish him with the whole rationale of the chiaro-scuro.
The young painter must not be dispirited by the directions here given, or imagine that he is to
travel through a labyrinth of science; a very general and even confined knowledge of the fore-
going subjects will be all that is requisite in the prosecution of his art: and were it required that
he should attain a perfect mastery of anatomy, perspective, geometry, and optics, equal with an
Albinos, an Euclid, and a Brook Taylor, still the object is worth attempting, the benefits arising
to hitii in his profession, from knowledge of these sciences, is so great; and the necessity of
them so urgent, that no excuse can palliate his neglect.
Amidst his other necessary qualifications the young artist must, by no means, neglect the study
of nature. This was before intimated, with some directions in his pursuit of this subject, in
Chap. vii. Book E. It may not however, be improper, in this place, to produce some further
illustration of this necessary attainment.
The artist must be fully sensible, after what has been said, that by the term following nature he
is by no means to understand a servile manner of copying natural objects. Painting is not only
to be considered as an imitation operating by deception, but it is, strictly speaking, in many
points of view, no imitation at all of external nature; being as far removed from the vulgar idea
of imitation, as the refined civilized state in which we live is removed from the rude unpolished
manners of the native Hottentots; and those who have not cultivated their minds by an atten-
tion to the rules of taste, as is the case of the majority of mankind, may be said to continue with
regard to their intellectual powers, in a state of nature. Such people will always prefer crude un-
qualified imitation to the other higher excellencies which are addressed to faculties ihey do not
possess: but these are not the persons to whom a painter is to look, and from whom he is to ex-
pect reward. His productions, to possess immortality, must deserve the attention of the enlight-
ened part of mankind ; of those only who are taught to renounce the narrow idea of nature, and
the narrow theories derived from that mistaken principle of copying her servilely in the detail.
In the higher parts of both poetry and painting, a servile imitation of nature is strictly to be
avoided. " The mind," as Shakespeare expresses it, " is to be transported beyond the ignorant
present to ages past." A higher order of beings is to be introduced into the piece, to whom every
thing else must correspond. John Steen, in his picture of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, has rendered
both himself and the subject ridiculous, by his slavish confinement to individual nature ; notwith-
standing there is great expression in his figures, and probability in the composition, yet it is such
expression, and the countenances are so familiar and vulgar, and the whole company attired with
such a finery of silks and velvet, that a great artist was tempted to doubt whether the painter did
not purposely intend to burlesque the subject.
" If
PAINTER'S STUDIES.
He will then understand the fundamental rules of perspective, be able to demonstrate its laws,
^and not be confined to the blind practice of it.
Nearly allied with perspective and geometry is optics, with which the painter must not be
wholly unacquainted. Having but a very slight knowledge of geometry and perspective he will
find optics, at least as far as is necessary for him to know, an easy task. Its laws, like those of
perspective, are founded on lines and angles. Any small treatise on the subject, of which there
are abundance in use, containing the general laws of vision, reflection and refraction, will be suf-
ficient for his purpose. It will teach him to determine the degree in which objects are to be il-
luminated or shaded ; it will enable him to cast the shades of his figures properly on the planes
on which they stand ; and in general furnish him with the whole rationale of the chiaro-scuro.
The young painter must not be dispirited by the directions here given, or imagine that he is to
travel through a labyrinth of science; a very general and even confined knowledge of the fore-
going subjects will be all that is requisite in the prosecution of his art: and were it required that
he should attain a perfect mastery of anatomy, perspective, geometry, and optics, equal with an
Albinos, an Euclid, and a Brook Taylor, still the object is worth attempting, the benefits arising
to hitii in his profession, from knowledge of these sciences, is so great; and the necessity of
them so urgent, that no excuse can palliate his neglect.
Amidst his other necessary qualifications the young artist must, by no means, neglect the study
of nature. This was before intimated, with some directions in his pursuit of this subject, in
Chap. vii. Book E. It may not however, be improper, in this place, to produce some further
illustration of this necessary attainment.
The artist must be fully sensible, after what has been said, that by the term following nature he
is by no means to understand a servile manner of copying natural objects. Painting is not only
to be considered as an imitation operating by deception, but it is, strictly speaking, in many
points of view, no imitation at all of external nature; being as far removed from the vulgar idea
of imitation, as the refined civilized state in which we live is removed from the rude unpolished
manners of the native Hottentots; and those who have not cultivated their minds by an atten-
tion to the rules of taste, as is the case of the majority of mankind, may be said to continue with
regard to their intellectual powers, in a state of nature. Such people will always prefer crude un-
qualified imitation to the other higher excellencies which are addressed to faculties ihey do not
possess: but these are not the persons to whom a painter is to look, and from whom he is to ex-
pect reward. His productions, to possess immortality, must deserve the attention of the enlight-
ened part of mankind ; of those only who are taught to renounce the narrow idea of nature, and
the narrow theories derived from that mistaken principle of copying her servilely in the detail.
In the higher parts of both poetry and painting, a servile imitation of nature is strictly to be
avoided. " The mind," as Shakespeare expresses it, " is to be transported beyond the ignorant
present to ages past." A higher order of beings is to be introduced into the piece, to whom every
thing else must correspond. John Steen, in his picture of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, has rendered
both himself and the subject ridiculous, by his slavish confinement to individual nature ; notwith-
standing there is great expression in his figures, and probability in the composition, yet it is such
expression, and the countenances are so familiar and vulgar, and the whole company attired with
such a finery of silks and velvet, that a great artist was tempted to doubt whether the painter did
not purposely intend to burlesque the subject.
" If