DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25683#0082
ESSAY
ON THE
APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF
PERSPECTIVE,
TO THE PRACTICE OF
TAKING VIE JV$,
■ •M~>mm-o-+<>+<>+$fc+0+o+<yimmn
THE chief charge which those, who object to the study of Perspective, adduce
against this science, is the impossibility of performing its operations at the moment when
those operations appear to be the most necessary; that is, at. the time when an artist is
taking a view. If Perspective had no fixed purpose but what depended on the com-
passes and ruler; nor any influence where actual measurement and determinate angles
could not be obtained, it would indeed be a science worthy the architect alone ; and
its claims on the Landscape Painter, or on the pupil of refined taste, however just those
claims might be, would be rendered nugatory by their impossibility. Nature has thrown
a pleasing irregularity over all her works, and the pencil or pen, that presumes to describe
her beauties, must not be trammelled by the formal precepts of pedants, however correct
may be the proportions, to which they would reduce the exertions of practice. Never-
theless there exist certain laws which Nature ever observes: these may be subject to slight
aberrations, but they still exist: it is the business of science to explain and render them
ON THE
APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF
PERSPECTIVE,
TO THE PRACTICE OF
TAKING VIE JV$,
■ •M~>mm-o-+<>+<>+$fc+0+o+<yimmn
THE chief charge which those, who object to the study of Perspective, adduce
against this science, is the impossibility of performing its operations at the moment when
those operations appear to be the most necessary; that is, at. the time when an artist is
taking a view. If Perspective had no fixed purpose but what depended on the com-
passes and ruler; nor any influence where actual measurement and determinate angles
could not be obtained, it would indeed be a science worthy the architect alone ; and
its claims on the Landscape Painter, or on the pupil of refined taste, however just those
claims might be, would be rendered nugatory by their impossibility. Nature has thrown
a pleasing irregularity over all her works, and the pencil or pen, that presumes to describe
her beauties, must not be trammelled by the formal precepts of pedants, however correct
may be the proportions, to which they would reduce the exertions of practice. Never-
theless there exist certain laws which Nature ever observes: these may be subject to slight
aberrations, but they still exist: it is the business of science to explain and render them