DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0337
INTRODUCTION.
293
keep up those sentiments which frequently languish by
absence, and may be instrumental to maintain, and some-
times to augment friendship, and paternal, filial, and con-
jugal love and duty. Upon the sight of a portrait, the
character and master-strokes of the history of the person
it represents are apt to flow in upon the mind, and to be
the subject of conversation: so that to sit for one’s picture,
is to have an abstract of one’s life written and published,
and ourselves thus consigned ovei’ to honour or infamy. I
know not what influence this has, or may have, but me-
thinks it is rational to believe that pictures of this kind are
subservient to virtue; that men are excited to imitate the
good actions, and persuaded to shun the vices of those
whose examples are thus set before them.
“ To be a good face-painter, a degree of the historical and
poetical genius is requisite, and a great measure of the
other talents and advantages which a good history-painter
must possess: nay, some of them, particularly colouring,
he ought to have in greater perfection than is absolutely
necessary for a history-painter.
“ It is not enough to make a tame, insipid resemblance of
the features, so that everybody shall know whom the pic-
ture was intended for, nor even to make the picture what
is often said to be prodigious like (this is often done by the
lowest of face-painters, but then it is ever done with the
air of a fool, and an unbred person); a portrait-painter
must understand mankind and enter into their characters,
and express their minds as well as their faces; and as his
business is chiefly with people of condition, he must think
as a gentleman and a man of sense, or it will be impossible
to give such their true and proper resemblances.
“ But if a painter of this kind is not obliged to take in
such a compass of knowledge as he that paints history, and
that the latter, upon some accounts, is the nobler employ-
ment, upon others the preference is due to the portrait-
293
keep up those sentiments which frequently languish by
absence, and may be instrumental to maintain, and some-
times to augment friendship, and paternal, filial, and con-
jugal love and duty. Upon the sight of a portrait, the
character and master-strokes of the history of the person
it represents are apt to flow in upon the mind, and to be
the subject of conversation: so that to sit for one’s picture,
is to have an abstract of one’s life written and published,
and ourselves thus consigned ovei’ to honour or infamy. I
know not what influence this has, or may have, but me-
thinks it is rational to believe that pictures of this kind are
subservient to virtue; that men are excited to imitate the
good actions, and persuaded to shun the vices of those
whose examples are thus set before them.
“ To be a good face-painter, a degree of the historical and
poetical genius is requisite, and a great measure of the
other talents and advantages which a good history-painter
must possess: nay, some of them, particularly colouring,
he ought to have in greater perfection than is absolutely
necessary for a history-painter.
“ It is not enough to make a tame, insipid resemblance of
the features, so that everybody shall know whom the pic-
ture was intended for, nor even to make the picture what
is often said to be prodigious like (this is often done by the
lowest of face-painters, but then it is ever done with the
air of a fool, and an unbred person); a portrait-painter
must understand mankind and enter into their characters,
and express their minds as well as their faces; and as his
business is chiefly with people of condition, he must think
as a gentleman and a man of sense, or it will be impossible
to give such their true and proper resemblances.
“ But if a painter of this kind is not obliged to take in
such a compass of knowledge as he that paints history, and
that the latter, upon some accounts, is the nobler employ-
ment, upon others the preference is due to the portrait-