William Holman Hunt

“ Supported by the healthy antecedents of our Nation, we should not hesitate to condemn the festering corruption as having no part in wisdom, beauty, and real joy·
Let us consider what true Art essence is. It is one and indivisible, whether it prompts the artist to affect the mind through the channel of the eye or the ear. In either case the desire is to make others participate in the delight of what seems to him a new revelation of beauty.
Art inspiration is the redundance of an overflowing heart. It is the spirit of love. ”

“ Pictorial art is the handwriting of a nation, the signature, the autograph; it is not the mere cross-mark of a clown, nor the imprint of the thumb of a savage. It is not superseded by the Great Seal, for it represents even more than the decisions of law-makers. It puts into tangible form the affections and restraints of a people in varying but ever just balance. ”

“ Think what a revelation it was to find such work at such a moment, and to recognize it with the triple enthusiasm of our three spirits, if Newton could say of his theory of gravitation, that his conviction of its truth increased tenfold from the moment in which he got one other person to believe in it, was it wonderful that, when we three saw, as it were, in a flash of lightning, this truth of art, it appealed to us almost with the force of a revolution? ”

“ During the spring-time, rich in flowers and first-fruits, the Holy Travellers are represented as passing across the Philistine plain on the road to Gaza at a distance of about thirty miles from their point of departure. The night is far spent. While the declining moon sheds its last rays on the natural objects in the picture, unearthly light reveals the embodied spirits of the martyred Innocents advancing in procession.
The Virgin is seated on a she-ass of the breed now known as the Mecca race, and the foal follows its mother, as is seen to this day in the East. ”

“ You recognize a Chinese article by the device it has upon it; the barbarous extravagance and self-assertion of the Celestial Empire serve as a striking example of what with attention we see in more modest form on the face of every product from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Italy, early Germany, and Holland. You identify each invention, whether it be a temple, a statue, a painting, an ornamental panel, a coin, a bust, or a jar containing perfumes, as the one particular nation's work, distinct at first sight from all others, just as the penmanship of one friend from another's is clear. ”

“ It is natural to follow the mind of the mother in such distraction of love, while the wintry mountains are traversed, and the fugitives descend into the rich plain with its genial breath, the more placid from the cleared sky. ”

“ Architecture, sculpture, decoration, and painting have grown simultaneously with letters; painting coming to full perfection somewhat later than literature, yet with this tardiness in her progress, who needs so many handmaids of science, perspective, the laws of light and shade, of colour and of optics, it may still be said that our art in all her ways (the art of shaping materials into living thoughts) , walks in step with poetry and music in mutual effort to arouse human responsiveness. ”

“ It is now forty-two years since I have seen these, but more notable examples of early practice have confirmed the conclusions they forced upon me, that in art, as in other pursuits, it is a loss in the end both for schools and for individuals to begin as masters. My business was, however, only for myself. I had to find out a path for my own feet, and for mine only. I had no temptation to think of founding a school. By nature, and by the encouragement of my City painting-master, I was slovenly, and impatient for result. ”

“ The Parisian artist does not cultivate that power which thrills the spectator's heart for the sorrows or joys of an actor in the picture's drama, by stamping the children of men as, although clouded, yet truly sons of heaven. His figures may be of true proportion and of standard colour, but with these merits achieved the master stops short of all attempt to possess his figures of a charm, beauty, and personality commanding love. I might say—if to convey a meaning it were permissible to exaggerate—that the spectator looks on but with the coldness felt at the acting of marionettes ”

“ Midway there is an infant bewildered to find that his new spiritual body bears no trace of the fatal wound. Behind in the air are babes; this sleeping, grieving group is the only one in the picture which in its sorrowing aspect connects the idea of human pain with the fate suffered, for the rest, in degrees differing, death is already seen to have no sting, the grave no victory. ”

“ To make a long story short, this led to my retirement; my master happened to come in and see the portrait where it was pinned up to dry behind the door; he showed it to several people, and the knowledge of it came to my father's ears. And my determination to be a painter having been increased by this little success, I told him so frankly. I would be an artist, and nothing but an artist, and if he kept me in the City till I was twenty-one, he would only be taking away so much of my chance of doing anything in the profession. ”

“ Italy, of course, has its great artists figuring in glorious dignity. Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland, are all acknowledged in full academic richness. A compartment is generously given to poor England, and here the artist shows ingenious invention with charitable indulgence. The cupola of St. Paul's Cathedral appears as the background of a sleeping youth who personifies the Art genius of the nation; at his ear is the mouth of a trumpet with which Genius, hovering above, is preparing to awaken him. ”

“ This artist was the last who had attempted to have a school for painters in England, and those who had become famous under his instruction had done so in ways as different from his own as could well be conceived. Was there any living man whom I could choose as a model? I could not think so. Though I looked upon many with boundless wonder and admiration, I could see none who stood directly on the road which seemed the only one for me. In my admiration of Landseer I had been one of the public, but as an artist my feeling towards him was very different. ”

“ I do not care to speak of other virtues in this design than those of its majestic thought,—but you may well imagine for yourselves how the painter’s quite separate and, in its skill, better than magical, power of giving effects of intense light, has aided the effort of his imagination, while the passion of his subject has developed in him a swift grace of invention which for my own part I never recognised in his design till now. ”

“ To do this I must demonstrate how in all times there have been evils that have been inherent in the society in which Art has arisen, that a proportion of these have grown and accumulated about her while she has been overcoming other ills, and that she has often, like Herakles, perished from the poison robe craftily furnished by the vanquished.
What is eternally precious is the sublimated message that purifying time has left of the artist's soul. To discover this refined element, and with it to chasten their own developing faculties, is what all true sons of Art have to do ”

“ The foal accompanies the mother ass, in a long journey the young creature lags behind whinnying in remonstrance at the ceaseless steps, and only hurrying on in bounds when there is fear of the parent ass getting beyond reach and sight. The glorified infants are encircling the weary laggard, who is thus brought up to the onward group. The wild dogs which have come out of the mill-house to bark—as is their wont with nocturnal travellers striving to pass a homestead in silence—are cowed at the unusual apparition and steal away in fear. ”

“ Leslie, in the front rank of figure-painters, was to me the most thoroughly inspired with sweet simplicity, the taste for healthy color, and the power of giving unaffected expression to his characters; but his was essentially a miniature style. One cannot imagine any painting of his of life-size, and the two scales of workmanship need independent apprenticeship. ”

“ What has been the great want throughout my term of observation has been the due cultivation of Art knowledge by the rulers of our land, and by those who direct and control public taste. There should be no insuperable obstacle to affording the cultivation wanted. I have striven to prove that Literature and Design are prompted by the same spirit; it follows that a good taste in Literature should need little to make it an infallible judge of the sister Art, but it does want that little, and we have but too many examples to show that, for want of it, serious disgrace has fallen upon our nation. ”

“ It is time to take alarm, and to set our faces against its use of the weapons of knightly art; for if we yielded these we should be handing over our nation and every precious attainment of the civilized world, with all that is dearest—perfected only by long past effort—to ruin and chaos, and the prejudice once blindly entertained against Art would be more than justified. ”

“ You know that in the most beautiful former conceptions of the Flight into Egypt, the Holy Family were always represented as watched over, and ministered to, by attendant angels. But only the safety and peace of the Divine Child and its mother are thought of. No sadness or wonder of meditation returns to the desolate homes of Bethlehem. ”

“ I will endeavor to tell this story quite plainly and simply, without rhetoric or exaggeration, hoping that it may perhaps not only serve the cause of truth, but in some small measure encourage young students who are striving to-day, amidst many hindrances, after true forms of art, and seeking them amidst the exhaustless treasures of nature, and the ever-changing conditions of life and knowledge. ”