DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0334
290
LANSDOWNE COLLECTION.
How is it that in wandering through a gallery of pic-
tures, we often meet with nameless portraits, designated
merely as a “ Head by Velasquez,” a “ Venetian gentle-
man by Titian,” a “ Lady by Van Dyck,” which, having
once looked upon, thenceforth live to us? The worth of
which, if told down in gold, were a “ king’s ransom?”
Those they represent are dead—are dust. These shadows,
though no longer consecrated by affection, memory, vanity,
are immortal, through their own beauty and truth, through
the force of the mind which originated them. “ I should
grieve,” said Dr. Johnson, “ to see Reynolds transfer to
heroes and goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction,
that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in
renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the
absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.” Now
any tolerable face-painter may fulfil the first conditions,
whose pictures after two or three generations are doomed
to “ flutter in rags in front of a broker’s shop;” but to
how few has it been given “ to continue the presence of
the dead” for centuries—for even half a century !
When Sir Joshua Reynolds, the son of a poor school-
master, came up to London to study as an artist, nothing
could well be more hopeless than his prospects. As far as
art was concerned, a worse than Cimmerian darkness had
fallen on our land. Thornhill, who painted literally by
the yard, was the historical painter: in portrait painting,
the stiff, common-place of Hudson had succeeded to the
vapid puppyism of Jervas. Such were the artists; and as
for the patrons of art, it would be difficult to conceive more
obtuse ignorance, and more perverse taste, than that which
almost universally prevailed. It could not, indeed, be said
that original genius was extinct among us; we possessed
Hogarth: but the mind of Hogarth and the mind of Rey-
nolds were so opposed, that there could be no approxima-
tion, nor even mutual appreciation. The former, in 1743,
LANSDOWNE COLLECTION.
How is it that in wandering through a gallery of pic-
tures, we often meet with nameless portraits, designated
merely as a “ Head by Velasquez,” a “ Venetian gentle-
man by Titian,” a “ Lady by Van Dyck,” which, having
once looked upon, thenceforth live to us? The worth of
which, if told down in gold, were a “ king’s ransom?”
Those they represent are dead—are dust. These shadows,
though no longer consecrated by affection, memory, vanity,
are immortal, through their own beauty and truth, through
the force of the mind which originated them. “ I should
grieve,” said Dr. Johnson, “ to see Reynolds transfer to
heroes and goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction,
that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in
renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the
absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.” Now
any tolerable face-painter may fulfil the first conditions,
whose pictures after two or three generations are doomed
to “ flutter in rags in front of a broker’s shop;” but to
how few has it been given “ to continue the presence of
the dead” for centuries—for even half a century !
When Sir Joshua Reynolds, the son of a poor school-
master, came up to London to study as an artist, nothing
could well be more hopeless than his prospects. As far as
art was concerned, a worse than Cimmerian darkness had
fallen on our land. Thornhill, who painted literally by
the yard, was the historical painter: in portrait painting,
the stiff, common-place of Hudson had succeeded to the
vapid puppyism of Jervas. Such were the artists; and as
for the patrons of art, it would be difficult to conceive more
obtuse ignorance, and more perverse taste, than that which
almost universally prevailed. It could not, indeed, be said
that original genius was extinct among us; we possessed
Hogarth: but the mind of Hogarth and the mind of Rey-
nolds were so opposed, that there could be no approxima-
tion, nor even mutual appreciation. The former, in 1743,