DOI Artikel:
Mount, Harry: Shaftesbury V. Richardson: A Counterfactual Exercise
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.56525#0014
SHAFTESBURY V. RICHARDSON: A COUNTERFACTUAL EXERCISE
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primary importance on invention and expression, the parts of the art which enabled the moral story told by
the picture to be communicated most clearly and effectively. Colour and handling, by contrast, were of less
importance. For Shaftesbury, being amused by the sensual qualities of a painting like colour and brushwork
would have constituted an ignoble response.
Richardson also believed that painting might have a moral and didactic role. He argued, for example,
that portraits can inspire us to follow the examples of famous people, and also that the people represented
in portraits will feel compelled to live up to the elevated depictions of themselves given in their portraits.79
As this suggests, Richardson felt that portraiture should be ranked alongside history painting,80 a move that
went against the usual construction of the hierarchy of genres and which was both self-aggrandizing, given
that he was himself a portraitist, and pragmatic, given the notorious domination of British art by portraiture.81
Richardson’s remarks on the moral role of painting are, however, quite brief. Indeed, he gives equal weight
to the argument that painting is to be valued for the knowledge it gives us about things in the world, about
‘Arms, Buildings Civil and Military, Animals, Plants, Minerals’, or what would then have been regarded as
natural, rather than moral, philosophy.82 The bulk of Richardson’s Theory of Painting is, moreover, composed
of chapters on the parts of the art, on invention, colour, handling, and so on, and is primarily focused on the
practicalities of designing and making a painting.83
Shaftesbury, by contrast, seems to have been planning to follow Fréart in covering all five parts of the
art within just one chapter.84 A much greater proportion of Second Characters would have been taken up with
considerations of how painting should carry out its moral role. While Richardson’s belief that painting should
be a source of knowledge about nature echoed that of the Royal Society, Shaftesbury had no time for the
empiricism promoted by that body.85 In the Judgment of Hercules he implies that the highest form of painting
should take moral philosophy, not natural philosophy, as its model, and implies that the knowledge conveyed
by painting is valuable not because it informs us about the world for its own sake but because it helps us to be
better human beings.86 Unlike Richardson, Shaftesbury did not believe that portraiture could play that role as
readily as history painting, and, he consequently saw the dominance of British art by portraiture as a source
of regret.87 For Shaftesbury portraiture was ‘not so much as a liberal Art nor to be so esteem’d; as requiring
no liberal Knowledge, Genius, Education, Converse, Manners, Moral-Science, Mathematicks Opticks: but
merely practical, & vulgar.’88
While Richardson believed that painting would improve as a result of the efforts of increasingly skilled
and theoretically aware painters, Shaftesbury believed that the moral history painting he desired would emerge
as a result of political and social circumstances. He argued that the political liberties which had emerged in
Britain as the consequence of the establishment of a constitutional monarchy would automatically give rise to
good taste, as the disinterested individuals whom he envisaged as the proper leaders of this state would have the
freedom to exercise their natural instincts for truth and beauty. As he wrote in the ‘Letter Concerning Design’:
When the free spirit of a nation turns itself this way, judgements aie formed; critics arise; the public eye and ear
improve; a right taste prevails, and in a manner forces its way. Nothing is so improving, so natural, so congenial to the
liberal ails, as that reigning liberty and high spirit of a people, which from the habit of judging in the highest matters
for themselves, makes them freely judge of other subjects, and enter thoroughly into the characters as well of men
and manners, as of the products of works of men, in ail and science.89
79 Richardson, Theory of Painting, pp. 16-17.
80 Ibidem, p. 25.
81 Unlike Shaftesbury, but like other British writers on the visual ails, Richardson trumpeted the supremacy of British portraiture
(Theory of Painting, p. 143).
82 Richardson, Theory of Painting, p. 10.
83 Ibidem, pp. 43-160.
84 Shaftesbury, Plasticks, p. 166.
85 See Mount, Morality, Microscopy and the Moderns..., pp. 135-140; idem, Leonardo ’s ‘Treatise ’..., pp. 209-212.
86 Shaftesbury, A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, [in:] idem, Second Characters,
pp. 53, 35, 54.
87 Shaftesbury, Plasticks, pp. 283-284.
88 Ibidem, p. 257. Cf. Shaftesbury, Sensus Communis, [in:] idem, Characteristicks (1714), vol. I, pp. 142-143.
89 Shaftesbury, A Letter Concerning Design, [in:] idem, Second Characters..., p. 23.
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primary importance on invention and expression, the parts of the art which enabled the moral story told by
the picture to be communicated most clearly and effectively. Colour and handling, by contrast, were of less
importance. For Shaftesbury, being amused by the sensual qualities of a painting like colour and brushwork
would have constituted an ignoble response.
Richardson also believed that painting might have a moral and didactic role. He argued, for example,
that portraits can inspire us to follow the examples of famous people, and also that the people represented
in portraits will feel compelled to live up to the elevated depictions of themselves given in their portraits.79
As this suggests, Richardson felt that portraiture should be ranked alongside history painting,80 a move that
went against the usual construction of the hierarchy of genres and which was both self-aggrandizing, given
that he was himself a portraitist, and pragmatic, given the notorious domination of British art by portraiture.81
Richardson’s remarks on the moral role of painting are, however, quite brief. Indeed, he gives equal weight
to the argument that painting is to be valued for the knowledge it gives us about things in the world, about
‘Arms, Buildings Civil and Military, Animals, Plants, Minerals’, or what would then have been regarded as
natural, rather than moral, philosophy.82 The bulk of Richardson’s Theory of Painting is, moreover, composed
of chapters on the parts of the art, on invention, colour, handling, and so on, and is primarily focused on the
practicalities of designing and making a painting.83
Shaftesbury, by contrast, seems to have been planning to follow Fréart in covering all five parts of the
art within just one chapter.84 A much greater proportion of Second Characters would have been taken up with
considerations of how painting should carry out its moral role. While Richardson’s belief that painting should
be a source of knowledge about nature echoed that of the Royal Society, Shaftesbury had no time for the
empiricism promoted by that body.85 In the Judgment of Hercules he implies that the highest form of painting
should take moral philosophy, not natural philosophy, as its model, and implies that the knowledge conveyed
by painting is valuable not because it informs us about the world for its own sake but because it helps us to be
better human beings.86 Unlike Richardson, Shaftesbury did not believe that portraiture could play that role as
readily as history painting, and, he consequently saw the dominance of British art by portraiture as a source
of regret.87 For Shaftesbury portraiture was ‘not so much as a liberal Art nor to be so esteem’d; as requiring
no liberal Knowledge, Genius, Education, Converse, Manners, Moral-Science, Mathematicks Opticks: but
merely practical, & vulgar.’88
While Richardson believed that painting would improve as a result of the efforts of increasingly skilled
and theoretically aware painters, Shaftesbury believed that the moral history painting he desired would emerge
as a result of political and social circumstances. He argued that the political liberties which had emerged in
Britain as the consequence of the establishment of a constitutional monarchy would automatically give rise to
good taste, as the disinterested individuals whom he envisaged as the proper leaders of this state would have the
freedom to exercise their natural instincts for truth and beauty. As he wrote in the ‘Letter Concerning Design’:
When the free spirit of a nation turns itself this way, judgements aie formed; critics arise; the public eye and ear
improve; a right taste prevails, and in a manner forces its way. Nothing is so improving, so natural, so congenial to the
liberal ails, as that reigning liberty and high spirit of a people, which from the habit of judging in the highest matters
for themselves, makes them freely judge of other subjects, and enter thoroughly into the characters as well of men
and manners, as of the products of works of men, in ail and science.89
79 Richardson, Theory of Painting, pp. 16-17.
80 Ibidem, p. 25.
81 Unlike Shaftesbury, but like other British writers on the visual ails, Richardson trumpeted the supremacy of British portraiture
(Theory of Painting, p. 143).
82 Richardson, Theory of Painting, p. 10.
83 Ibidem, pp. 43-160.
84 Shaftesbury, Plasticks, p. 166.
85 See Mount, Morality, Microscopy and the Moderns..., pp. 135-140; idem, Leonardo ’s ‘Treatise ’..., pp. 209-212.
86 Shaftesbury, A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, [in:] idem, Second Characters,
pp. 53, 35, 54.
87 Shaftesbury, Plasticks, pp. 283-284.
88 Ibidem, p. 257. Cf. Shaftesbury, Sensus Communis, [in:] idem, Characteristicks (1714), vol. I, pp. 142-143.
89 Shaftesbury, A Letter Concerning Design, [in:] idem, Second Characters..., p. 23.