THE LATE MR. FUSELI.'

IF Art could be made out, like science, by a series of experiments, or built up in regular elevation by the intellect or experience of men, we might reasonably hope to see in this country painters and sculptors, whose works should dwarf and set at nought all the creations of ancient times. But Art is capricious and fantastic; depending not on intellect only, on judicious rules, or faultless proportions; not even on enthusiasm, or industry, or ambition; but on a peculiar temperament, a peculiar aptness and apprehension for what is graceful, sublime, and true, in shape and colour, in sentiment and general expression; and a power of making these manifest. Taste, which directs this power, is only a subtle judgment, operating doubtless by rules and causes, difficult, perhaps, if not impossible to define, but as surely existing as the foundations of mechanics, or any of the axioms by which mathematical problems can be traced and laid bare to the perception of every observer. Without this taste, this subtle judg ment (which implies a power of feeling what is grand, and beautiful, and true) there can be no good artist. Not that it is in itself sufficient to consummate a first-rate painter. Enthusiasm, intellect, ambition, Imagination must combine(they are the stimulants, the executives) to generate and call into life and action the higher wonders of art. It is taste which afterwards fashions, moderates, adorns them; and this, which, in other words, is good judgment, has been but too much neglected. We hear of "a wild genius," "" an eccentric genius,"-" an irregular genius,”—and such like ; yet we doubt prodigiously whether genius ever existed without its concomitant, judgment. It seems almost as necessary to it, as justice is to generosity, without which, in fact, the latter cannot be. Were Homer, or Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Chaucer, Raffaelle, Leonardo, Titian, Corregio, Rembrandt, Claude, or even Michael Angelo "irregular" geniuses? By no means. Some of them had their singularities, perhaps, or a peculiar character, the fault of their age or country. But such things did not form their distinction. They were excrescences-follies, from which they strove to emancipate themselves. They shook off, as much as was in their power, the barbarism and ignorance of their times, and went forward steadily on their way to fame; endeavouring, not to be different from others, but to excel them. In art, the attempt to achieve a renown for singularity, neglecting for it grace and beauty in general, must necessarily be fatal to an artist's fame. An "irregular" genius is a limited genius. He strives to do what none else have attempted, simply because he dares not venture into a fair field, and strike blow for blow with his brother men. He is like Don Quixote with the sheep, except that cunning and impudence supply the place of madness, and enable him sometimes to delude others into an idea that he has obtained a mighty victory, when, in fact, he has had no competitor. The "Cat Raffaelle" excelled all others, it is said, in his portraits of cats ;—but he could do nothing else. If he could have done other things, he would. He was an "eccentric genius," and, in our opinion, precisely of the same order as those geniuses who cut out grotesque heads on the tops of sticks, or illuminate snuff-boxes with distorted visages, in which the want of anatomy and doubtful wit are the only things to be remembered.

Let us not be misunderstood. Originality is not incompatible with the general excellencies which a painter should endeavour to attain. To draw well, to colour well, to group and compose well, to understand the powers of light and shade, and the infinite powers of the human face, and to manage and marshal all these, and make each give value to each,—to match them" in mouth, like bells"-need not interfere with original design. Such things do not clog invention, but assist it. At first glance, indeed, seeing that all is so beautiful and true, we wonder less, although we are pleased the more. Where there is one thing only good, and the rest below the achievements of the village sign-painter, our attention is forced upon the one solitary object of merit, (an accident, probably,) and we celebrate with our brazen trumpets and the wonder of a day, the "eccentric genius that has accomplished it. But such small things are not for im

The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli. By J. Knowles, Esq. London.

mortality. Time, that contemptuous critic, winnows and sifts all the produce of human minds and if one grain only be found amongst the chaff, it is odds but he may cast it away altogether. Yet it is to this very Time that the true painter must look for his reward. Some may be content with traversing an eccentric circle, exhibiting grotesque images and preposterous fancies, and thus blinding the judgment of a few tyros of the palette; but such are only mountebanks in art. Others may labour for gold alone,-but these are manufacturers: others, of a confined ambition, (" limitary cherubs,")-may, like the "Cat Raffaelle," or the fellow who spoils panels of boxwood with a burning poker, labour hard for a minimum of perishable notoriety: others, again, may heed nothing but colour, or nothing but composition, or nothing but an exhibition of their anatomical skill; but all these are persons who must quietly submit to be forgotten, with the thousand and one other things and persons, whose small merits and huge pretensions we have not now leisure to dispose of.

We have been led into these few remarks by seeing upon our table the "Life and Writings" of the late Mr. Fuseli. We are far from wishing, however, to apply all these remarks to him, or to derogate from his just fame. His Lectures are most valuable things, full of learning and enthusiasm; and, notwithstanding some occasional deductions on the score of style, remarkable for their racy and original criticisms, and the vigorous passages with which they abound. His "Aphorisms on Art," indeed, appear to us to be inferior to the "Lectures :" and in regard to his own works in art, (his pictures,) they unquestionably contain more of the absolutely good and bad than the performances of any preceding painter.

Fuseli was assuredly a man of talent, and a critic, not only acute, but of the most exclusive taste. He loved the old masters, and celebrated them worthily; but his opinions of his contemporaries were, as is well known, of the most uncompromising order. "Spare the rod," &c. was his maxim; and so sincere was he in this, that we are quite sure he would have been better pleased, if living, by our impartial estimate of his character, than by any false and tawdry eulogy. Justice to the just is the true measure; honourable to the giver, and grateful to him who receives it. Besides, a veteran of ninety years' standing deserves this. His reputation, built up by the exertions of almost a century, demands truth, which is permanent ; not fulsome and indiscriminate praise, which, in its effects, is transient only; or if otherwise, is destructive to the fame of him on whom it is lavished. Let us, therefore, look at the works of Fuseli as they really exist, and admire them honestly. And first, let us consider him briefly as an artist.

He was a disciple of Michael Angelo; whom it is the fashion to admire, even beyond his deserts, which were, nevertheless, great. Fuseli raised him above all others. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Lawrence concurred in this opinion, so far as theory went; but they dissented from it in practice. Nothing could be so unlike the works of their idol as the labours of the two Presidents. Sir Joshua, who mingled something of the colour of Titian, with the child-beauty of Raffaelle, and the (exaggerated) breadth of Corregio, had little claims to be held an admirer of Michael Angelo, beyond the closing sentence in his Lectures. And Lawrence was his antithesis; resembling him in no respect, excepting, perhaps, in his picture of Satan, a work which may be forgotten, we think, without much injury to his fame. We have our doubts as to the intensity of the admiration which possessed our two celebrated portrait-painters on this subject: but there can be none as to the sincere enthusiasm of Mr. Fuseli. In the region of his imagination, Michael Angelo sat enthroned, the sole presiding deity of his worship. In theory and practice, at home and abroad, he was his "all in all"-his public idol, his household god. Fuseli referred to him as the standard of excellence on all occasions, in his conversation, in his lectures; and in his own pictures he mingled, with something of the grotesqueness of the German masters, much of the ostentatious anatomy of the great Florentine. How far he was wise in this, we shall not now inquire: but it is certain that it marred his temporary interests, whatever may be its effect on his May.-VOL. XXXI. NO. CXXV. 2 F

permanent fame. Not but that Michael Angelo is, and is admitted to be, a lofty model for historical design. His grand sweeping outlines, his superhuman prophets, and dreaming sibyls—his giants, and demons, and angels, are worthy the contemplation of a soaring student. They surpass, in mere sublimity, the creations of Raffaelle himself: but they are surely not well adapted to subjects referring to common life; nor can a map of the muscles and veins of man, however admirably executed, or the profoundest exhibition of osteology, add much to the grace, or even to the merit of a picture. In art, as in other things, it is for the most part, desirable to conceal the scaffolding-the minute evidences of our labours, in order that the general effect may be more complete. We lose one of the main objects of art when we cease to give pleasure to others. To accumulate learning is sufficiently easy, perhaps, (it requires industry and a tolerable memory ;) but to make knowledge lovely, so that others may covet it-to give it a new and graceful stamp, is a more difficult, and, beyond question, a far more important thing.

To be sincere, we cannot think that Mr. Fuseli accomplished this desirable object. He had great learning, great manual skill, and incomparably more sentiment than is usually ascribed to him. But he marred all,-over and over again he marred all, by the most unseasonable exhibitions of mere skill. Whatever may be thought of some of his groups in the aggregate, his figures individually wanted the one great charm-simplicity. The attention is perpetually distracted by some unnecessary developement of the muscles, some almost impossible instance of foreshortening, some perverse contempt of colour, each in their turns fatally injurious to a picture. Yet Fuseli knew well (no one better) what was good and ludicrous in works of art. Others may have written as judiciously, in many respects, on the subject of painting as Fuseli; but there is no one, if we except Mr. Hazlitt, who has said such fine enthusiastic things of the ancient masters, or touched their comparative merits with so discriminating a hand. There is no one who valued their higher qualities more than he passing by, as worthy of small consideration, those inferior points of pictures, which are little more than academical accomplishments, and resting on the loftiest point of all, -expression, which is the SOUL of a picture!

Our living painters are but too often content with pourtraying the body only. The question is not now-how to crown the most characteristic figures with the truest and finest expressions, but how to build up your groups-to make your colours tell-to manage your lights-your effects;-necessary matters, indeed, but inferior, and almost worthless in comparison with the great object of a picture, which is to tell a good story well, and to render it impressive on the mind of the spectator. At present, we do not, in grave subjects, carry away the features of the dramatis persona once in a thousand times. Unlike the heads of Raffaelle, which live in our minds for ever, we forget the vapid imitations of humanity, for which our painters now-a-days insist on our applause. They have no meaning in them," no speculation;" or if there be expression, it is the false expression of the theatre. Generally speaking, however, our modern canvasses are free even from this. We are not now alluding to works of humour, some of which have considerable merit; nor to those debateable subjects, affecting history as well as common life, in which a story is not unfrequently agreeably, and sometimes even gracefully told; but to high historic composition, of which we have not half a dozen examples in this country, to which we can point with pride, and say, "We too are Arcadians!" Let us hope that this is not to last always. Fuseli taught a loftier lesson. Let us hope that our rising artists will do their best to follow it, and become good artists in the proper sense; that they will aim at originality, but not eccentricity; at the highest objects rather than the lowest; at lasting, and not temporary honour;-in which case, they will shine out eventually, like stars in their region, and be known for ever: whilst the mere mountebanks and manufacturers will be thrust into oblivion, even before their indifferent labours have mouldered away, in the broker's shop or the lumber-room. But let us return to our subject.

Mr. Fuseli was not free from eccentricity in his art; but he had, at the same time, mingled with it, talent (whatever precise rank it may hold,-and this rank

we do not profess to determine) of no common sort. That he was less popular than many other painters, his contemporaries, was the natural consequence of the subjects which he chose. He had little in common with the earth. His domain was in air and hell,—the clouds and the grave. It was he who made real and visible to us the vague and unsubstantial phantoms which haunt, like dim dreams, the oppressed imagination. The Ghost of Hamlet, revisiting "the glimpses of the moon;" the Witches of Macbeth, chaunting over their ghastly cauldron; Satan, shouting to his Legions; the Contest between Death and Sin, (in which that gaunt and terrible enemy," which shape had none," is given with frightful power and effect,)-these things, and things like these, were the subjects over which he ruled, and amongst which he revelled; and it must be owned, that often as the attempt has been made, they have as yet owned the sway of no other master.

We have little doubt but that these creations, together with his criticisms, are the things which will carry Fuseli down to posterity. In his purely historical pictures, we cannot but think that he failed.

The volumes that we have before glanced at, "The Life and Writings of Fuseli," are mainly occupied by these criticisms. Setting aside the single defect of style, which is too florid and ambitious, there is a vast deal to admire in the lectures and critical remarks of Fuseli. Less simple and practical in his writings, perhaps even less judicious, than Sir Joshua Reynolds, we cannot but think that he saw farther into the subtler beauties of the ancient masters. It appears, indeed, difficult to believe that Fuseli, whose imagination seemed to associate itself with the goblin and the night-mare, should have hung with rapture over the infinite shades of sentiment and tenderness, which make beautiful the works of the Italian painter. But such was the fact. He had a great sense of grace and expression, as well as of mere grandeur of form. However his pencil may have been occupied in ghastly and terrific subjects, his admiration rested on things of a different order: and, when we examine into his defects and merits, let it not be forgotten that he sedulously laboured to implant in the student's mind a love for the beautiful and graceful, as well as for the sublime, and seldom, if ever, held up for unmitigated praise, those wild and supernatural creations in which he himself was supposed to have excelled. This is disinterested dealing: this is honest and trustworthy criticism.

Lest the reader should be tempted, from our account of Fuseli's writings, to think less respectfully of him than he ought, we will lay before him two or three extracts from his lectures. In these he will probably recognize objectionable phrases, but he will also perceive (or if he should not do so, it will be his own fault) that the very straits to which Fuseli, from his being a foreigner, was reduced for words, sometimes impelled him into fine and vivid expressions. If he has not the freedom of one at ease, he has also none of the tameness of security. Michael Angelo was the painter on whom our author's idolatry was lavished, and on him he bestows elaborate praise. The following is one of the very best specimens which can be found of Mr. Fuseli's style of criticism.

:

"Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are the elements of Michael Angelo's style. By these principles he selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as architect he attempted, and above any other man succeeded, to unite magnificence of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand character and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of the dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race of giants. This is the terribil via hinted at by Agostino Caracci, though perhaps as little understood by the Bolognese as by the blindest of his Tuscan adorers, with Vasari at their head. To give the appearance of perfect ease to the most perplexing difficulty, was the exclusive power of Michael Angelo. He is the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine chapel, which exhibits the origin, the progress, and the final dispensations of theocracy. He has personified motion in the groups of the Cartoon of Pisa; embodied sentiment on the

monuments of Saint Lorenzo; the features of meditation in the Prophets and Sibyls of the Sistine chapel; and in the Last Judgement, with every attitude that varies the human body, traced the master trait of every passion that sways the human heart.”— Vol. ii. p. 84-5.

With the last sentence of the above extract we cannot altogether agree; so far, at least, as it insists on this great painter's developing the passions of men. His forte was, in our opinion, the grand in form, rather than in feature. Even the sentiment which he exhibited arose from the figure, and not from the coun tenance. He was, as Fuseli justly said, an epic painter. It was Raffaelle who was the dramatic artist-the painter, not only of heaven, but of humanity. We have always considered that Mr. Fuseli's adoration of Michael Angelo blinded him, in some degree, to the surpassing merits of Raffaelle. But let us hear what our author says of the painter of Urbino.

"The inspiration of Michael Angelo was followed by the milder genius of Raphael Sanzio, the father of dramatic painting, the painter of humanity; less elevated, less vigorous, but more insinuating, more pressing on our hearts, the warm master of our sympathies. What effect of human connexion, what feature of the mind from the gentlest emotion to the most fervid burst of passion, has been left unobserved, has not received a characteristic stamp from that examiner of man? Michael Angelo came to Nature, Nature came to Raphael,—he transmitted her features like a lucid glass, unstained, unmodified. We stand with awe before M. Angelo, and tremble at the height to which he elevates us-we embrace Raphael, and follow him wherever he leads us Energy, with propriety of character and modest grace, poise his line and determine his correctness. Perfect human beauty he has not represented; no face of Raphael's is perfectly beautiful; no figure of his in the abstract, possesses the proportions that could raise it to a standard of imitation: form to him was only a vehicle of character or pathos, and to those he adapted it in a mode and with a truth which leaves all attempts at emendation hopeless. His invention connects the utmost stretch of possibility with the most plausible degree of probability, in a manner that equally surprises our fancy, persuades our judgment, and affects our heart. His composition always hastens to the most necesary point as its centre, and from that disseminates, to that leads back as rays, all secondary ones. Group, form, and contrast are subordinate to the event, and common-place ever excluded. His expression, in strict unison with and decided by character, whether calm, animated, agitated, convulsed, or absorbed by the inspiring passion, unmixed and pure, never contradicts its cause, equally remote from tameness and grimace: the moment of his choice never suffers the action to stagnate or to expire; it is the moment of transition, the crisis big with the past and pregnant with the future. If separately taken, the line of Raphael has been excelled in correctness, elegance, and energy; his colour far surpassed in tone, and truth, and harmony; his masses in roundness, and his chiaroscuro in effect: considered as instruments of pathos, they have never been equalled; and in composition, invention, expression, and the power of telling a story, he has never been approached."-Vol. ii. p. 87-89.

We leave these extracts to make their way with the reader. We do not attempt to conceal that the sentences are too laboured, and the style altogether too ambitious: but there is much justice, much discrimination in them, and indeed, in all the lectures of our author. Above all, there was a fine and young enthusiasm about him, which, even if his faults were trebled, we should prefer a thousand times to the cold, sceptical, narrow view, which the petty jealousy of many of our modern painters induces them to take of their old superiors in art. The time wasted in decrying ancient pictures would be better employed, in our opinion, in amending their own works and elevating the character of modern art.

We recommend Fuseli's "Lectures" to the notice of all students and amateurs-of all, in short, who wish to admire what is really beautiful and sterling in painting. Each of these may glean much of what is really useful from the perusal and that part will not be found the least useful which directs their admiration from low to lofty objects. In this view we also recommend the volumes, conscientiously, to the attention of our Royal Academicians. They will exhibit far more wit, if they take a hint from his wisdom, than if they content themselves with deriding either his picture or opinions.