The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 2 (of 3)
TekstThe wounded Cornicularius, known by the name of the Dying Gladiator, the Savage whetting his knife to excoriate Marsyas, the enraged Shepherd Boy ludicrously transformed to a young Patroclus, are too undisguised portraits to deserve being ranked with this higher class of characteristic delineation. We with more exultation subjoin to it the Pathetic Groups which, to the historic artist, at once disclose the whole extent and limits of dramatic composition – the agonies of Niobe and her Progeny; the pangs of the Laocoon; Menelaus raising Patroclus slain by Hector; the Warrior who deserves to be called Hæmon, with Antigone, self-slain, hanging on his arm – the softer and more familiar expression of Æthra and Theseus, maternal enquiry and filial simplicity; Orestes and Pylades pouring libations to Agamemnon's shade; Venus expostulating with Amor, Amor embracing Psyche: works of different periods and different styles, but true to the same unerring principles, – principles not abandoned in the lascivious dream of the Hermaphrodite, the gross sonorous repose of the Faun, and the tottering inebriety of Hercules.
The artists of the third epoch concluded from existence to possibility. The simple purity of the first, and the energetic harmonious variety of the second period, were its bases; it amalgamated their artless angular line and rigid precision with the suavity of undulating contours, elegance of attitude, the soft inflexions of flesh: and created a standard of ideal beauty which regulated the whole, from the most prominent, conspicuous, and interesting, to the most remote and minute parts. The Apollo, the Venus, the Torso, arose to prove that in the same degree as in an image of art the idea of simplicity, or of one, predominates, it will partake of grandeur; and that in the degree as the idea of variety prevails, it will partake of beauty: variety leads to simplicity in images of beauty, simplicity to variety in images of grandeur, and the union of both produces the sublime.
Such are the splendid, and I repeat it, unparalleled advantages that surround you; but lest, by their specious display, I should be suspected of more enthusiasm than becomes the sober office of a teacher, and you be led to delusive expectations and false conclusions, remember that, though even the best directed labour cannot supply what Nature has refused, still it remains an experiment uniformly sanctioned by time, that without unwearied toil, obstinate perseverance, and submissive resignation, neither the theory nor the practice of the art can be fully acquired, and that without them genius is a bubble and talent a trifle.
And now permit me to finish this fragment of observations on Design with a few remarks on our mutual situation, as teachers and as pupils of this Institution: if the advancement of art be the cause and the ultimate aim of its foundation.
When in recommending the antique as the student's guide in copying the life, I comparatively might have seemed to depreciate the servile adherence to the model, I was perfectly aware that the use of life alone can supply the artist with the real expression, and consequently the real appearances of bones and muscles in varied action. It will not be suspected, I trust, that I meant to recommend the frigid introduction of that marble style, that pedantic stiffness, which, under the abused name of correctness, frequently disfigures the labours of those who, at too late a period for successful attempts at changing their manner, abjure or lose the courage to use what they had learnt before, and content themselves with being the tame transcribers of the dead letter, instead of the spirit of the ancients, and importers of nothing but forms and attitudes of stone.
It is to life we must recur, – to warm, fleshy, genial life, – for animated forms. To Nature and life Zeuxis applied, to embody the forms of Polycletus and Alcamenes: and what was the prerogative of Lysippus, but to give the air, the "morbidezza," the soft transitions, the illusions of palpitating life, to bronze and marble? The pedantry of geometrically straight lines is not only no idealism, it is a solecism in Nature. Organization, your object, is inseparable from life; motion from organization: where organization and life are, there is a seat of life, a punctum saliens, acting through veins and branching arteries, consequently with pulsation, and by that, undulating and rounding the passages of parts to parts. Of the milliards of commas, or points, that Nature mediately or immediately produces, no two are alike: how, then, could she produce straight lines, which are all similar, and by their nature cut, divide, interrupt, destroy?
The province delegated by the Academy to its teachers must be, – where hope promises success and sparks of genius appear, to foster, to encourage; but where necessity commands, rather to deter than to delude, and thus to check the progress of that compendiary method, which, according to your late President, has ruined the Arts of every country, by reducing execution to a recipè, substituting manner for style, ornament for substance, and giving admission to mediocrity.
If the students of this Academy must be supposed to have overcome the rudiments, and to be arrived at that point from which it may be discovered whether Nature intended them for mere craftsmen or real artists, near that point, where, in the phrase of Reynolds, "genius begins and rules end," it behoves us not to mistake the mere children of necessity, or the pledges of vanity, for the real nurselings of public hope, or the future supporters of the beneficent establishment that rears them. Instruction, it is true, may put them in possession of every attainable part of the Art in a decent degree; they may learn to draw with tolerable correctness, to colour with tolerable effect, to put their figures together tolerably well, and to furnish their faces with a tolerable expression – it may not be easy for any one to pick any thing intolerably bad out of their works; but when they have done all this – and almost all may do all this, for all this may be taught – they will find themselves exactly at the point where all that gives value to Art begins – Genius, which cannot be taught – at the threshold of the Art, in a state of mediocrity. "Gods, men, and fame," says Horace, "reject mediocrity in poets." Why? Neither Poetry nor Painting spring from the necessities of society, or furnish necessaries to life; offsprings of fancy, leisure, and lofty contemplation, organs of religion and government, ornaments of society, and too often mere charms of the senses and instruments of luxury, they derive their excellence from novelty, degree, and polish. What none indispensably want, all may wish for, but few only are able to procure, acquires its value from some exclusive quality, founded on intrinsic or some conventional merit, and that, or an equal substitute, mediocrity cannot reach: hence, by suffering it to invade the province of genius and talent, we rob the plough, the shop, the loom, the school, perhaps the desk and pulpit, of a thousand useful hands. A good mechanic, a trusty labourer, an honest tradesman, are beings more important, of greater use to society, and better supporters of the state, than an artist or a poet of mediocrity. When I therefore say that it is the duty of the Academy to deter rather than to delude, I am not afraid of having advanced a paradox hostile to the progress of real Art. The capacities that time will disclose, genius and talents, cannot be deterred by the exposition of difficulties, and it is the interest of society that all else should.