This is delightful,--but childlike,
nevertheless. Turner was, above all, an artist; with him Art stood
first, facts secondary;--with the Pre-Raphaelites it is the reverse; it
is far less important to them that their facts should be broadly stated
and in keeping in their pictures, than that they should be there and
comprehensible. To him a fact that was out of keeping was a nuisance,
and he treated it as such; while any falsehood that was in keeping was
as unhesitatingly admitted, if he needed it to strengthen the impression
of his picture. Turner would put a rainbow by the side of the sun, if he
wanted one there;--a Pre-Raphaelite would paint with a stop-watch, to
get the rainbow in the right place. In brief, Turner's was the purely
subjective method of study, a method fatal to any artist of the opposite
quality of mind;--that of the Pre-Raphaelites is the purely objective,
absolutely enslaving to a subjective artist, and no critic capable of
following out the first principles of Art to logical deductions could
confound the two. The one leads to a sentimental, the other to a
philosophic Art; and the only advice to be given to an artist as to his
choice of method is, that, until he knows that he can trust himself in
the liberty of the subjective, he had better remain in the discipline
of the objective.
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