Ernest Govett

“ But how is the painter to use these ancient gods and goddesses, for the time has gone by to gather them together on the heights of Olympus, or to associate them with human frailties? Surely he may leave aside the fables of the poets, and try to portray the deities as the Grecian populace saw them in their hearts—noble forms of adoration, or images of terror, objects of curses veneered with prayer and of offerings wrapped in fear. The artist has not now to be troubled with pangs of dread, nor will his imagination be limited by sacerdotal scruples. ”

“ Such is Aphrodite, for that is the name under which we seem to love her best—the Aphrodite of the Greeks, without the vague terrifying aspect of Astarte, or the more earthly qualities of the Roman Venus. Who loves not the Aphrodite sprung from the foam of the sea; shading the sun on the Cytheran isle with the light of her glory; casting an eternal hallow over the groves of Cyprus; flooding the god-like mind of Greece with her sparkling radiance? What conception of her beauty can rise high enough when the grass in astonishment grows beneath her feet on desert rocks ”

“ The art is lost behind the unreality. But why does not the painter revert to the childhood of Vulcan, when he was hiding in the glistening cavern beneath the roll of ocean, fashioning resplendent eardrops for silver-footed Thetis? Here is scope for the imagination—to indicate the fancies of the budding genius who was to carve the wondrous shield, and adorn the heaven-domed halls of Olympus. Let Hephæstus mature as he will for the poet: he should only bloom for the painter. ”

“ Thus there was formed a type of beauty acceptable to the average human mind as an unsurpassable representation of an ideal woman: to the worshipper at the ancient shrines, a comprehensible goddess; to all other men the personification of sublime beauty. The fifth century goddess was left aside as beyond mortal reach, and from the time it left the sculptor's hands to this day, the Cnidian Venus has been regarded as a model for all that is true and beautiful in women. To the sculptor it is an everlasting beacon; to all men a crowning glory of human handiwork. ”

“ What imagination can picture the expansion of art throughout the world had its flight been free since the dawn of history? Greece reached the sublime because its mind was unfettered, but twenty or thirty centuries before Phidias, Egyptian art had arrived at a loftier plane than that on which the highest plastic art of Greece was standing but a few decades before the Olympian Zeus uplifted the souls of men, while whole civilizations with their arts had lived and died, and were practically forgotten. ”

“ But in the art of the painter there is a limit to the expression of general beauty. Theoretically there is no beauty possible to the sculptor which the painter cannot produce, but practically there is. A sculptor may carve what we understand as a god-like figure—a glorious image embodying all the highest qualities that may be conceived by man, with a general expression covering supreme wisdom and every noble attribute—such a figure as the greatest Grecian artist chiselled. ”

“ Simultaneously in Flanders, in Holland, in France, and in England, private citizens appeared to develop a sudden demand for pictures, and quite naturally artists multiplied and fed the flame. Outside of Italy the hustle and bustle in the art world were novelties to the general public, though pleasant ones withal, and for half a century or more they delighted in the majestic designs of Rubens and Van Dyck, the intimate scenes of the Dutch artists, and the delicate landscapes of Claude and Poussin and their followers, which were continually finding their way from Rome. ”

“ Nature in her grandest form: sublime forces which kindle the spirit of man: exhibit them to the impressionist, and he presents to you a flat experiment in the juxtaposition of pure colours! And the majesty of the human form, with its glorious attributes; the noble woman and courageous man; incidents of self-sacrifice; the realms of spiritual beauty, and the great ideals which expand the mind to the bounds of space and lift the soul to Heaven! ”

“ Why, surely he can represent nature as she is at a particular moment, over the hills and valleys, or across great plains, with sunlight and atmosphere to mark the breadth and distance and so produce an illusion of movement to delight the eyes of the observer with bewitching surprise. For the eye as it involuntarily travels from the foreground of the picture to the background, proceeds from sign to sign, each decreasing in definition in conformity with the changes in nature, till vague suggestions of form announce that far distance has been reached. ”

“ There is no special virtue in a broad manner, a fine manner, or any other manner, and the public, for whom the artist toils, is not concerned with the point. It is as indifferent to the kind of brushwork used by the painter, as to the variety of chisel handled by the sculptor. The observer of the picture judges it for its beauty, and if it be well painted, then the character of the brushwork is unconsidered. If, however, the brushwork is so broad that the manner of painting protrudes itself upon the observer at first sight, then the work cannot be of a high class. ”

“ But who is responsible for the association of such a wretched example of divinity with the radiant Aphrodite, for surely it is only the cloak of Homer that covers the story! Was it a painter who had sought in vain from the poets a suggestion for a composition in which the god would at least appear normal, or a cynical critic who wished to incite ridicule as well as contempt for the divinity? In any case the painter must sigh in vain for an inspiriting design with Ares as the leading figure: he cannot harmonize love and terror. ”

“ But it will be an eternal mystery how he came to design such a Bacchus. A voluptuous semi-realistic god, opposed to everything else that was conceived by the sculptor, and antagonistic to all that was known in Greece, it can never be anything more than a sublime example of a purely earthly figure. One stands amazed before the perfect modelling, but aghast at the conception. It represents the most extraordinary transition from the god-like man of the Greeks, to a man-like god, ever seen in art. ”

“ But a painting of an acted scene is meaningless, for it can represent only one in a series of a thousand moments of action which are all connected, and of which the comprehension of any one is dependent upon our knowledge of the whole. The painter has no scope. He simply copies a number of figures in a fixed setting, and the result is necessarily inferior art to a copy of the poorest original picture, since in this case the artist at least copies the direct product of the imagination, while in the other he has only before him a series of dummies who are imitating the product. ”

“ A mighty barrier must be passed before a woman is translated on canvas into the type of Madonna sought by the first Renaissance artists. She must be a woman of the earth; a woman who has grown up amidst human surroundings from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood to womanhood; with human aspirations and sympathies, and experience of joys and trials: she must have all these, and as well have become a mother; and yet with human beauty, her countenance must be such that by no stretch of the imagination can the possibility of desire be suggested. ”

“ It is difficult to connect the Hermes of the poet with the tedious expressionless figure commonly seen in painting, whose only costume is a helmet, and whose invariable province is apparently to look on and do nothing. For the sculptor he is a god; for the painter a symbol of subordination. A Rubens may give him the pulse of life, but only the sculptor can suggest the divinity. With the painter the winged helmet is a bizarre ornament; the immortal sandals are shrunken to leather ”

“ Nevertheless for the painter Diana has always had a certain attraction, because the legends connected with her offer opportunities for the exercise of skill in the representation of the nude. But there is an end of all things, and the bathing and hunting scenes have been fairly exhausted. For the sculptor only is Artemis likely to live. Bright colours are not the vehicle to represent the symbol of an idea which is beyond, but not above, nature—a useless abstraction which neither warms the heart nor elevates the soul. ”

“ But a good many of them were executed though they have long ceased to interest anybody. Now and again one comes across an example in a sleepy Italian village, or in the smaller shops of Rome or Florence, but it is quickly put aside as a melancholy memento of a disordered period of art when talented painters had to struggle for fame, and the untalented for bread.
The cult of Sprezzatura faded to a glimmer before the end of the seventeenth century. Bernini was dead, and Carlo Maratta with a few others led the way in re-establishing the health if not the brilliancy and renown of Italian art. ”

“ Nature never produces a perfect form with a perfect countenance, and she actually refuses to provide a countenance which is free from elements connected with purely human instincts and passions. But it is within the power of art to correct the work of nature in these respects—to put together perfect parts, and to provide a general expression approaching our highest conceptions of human majesty. Homer, Phidias, and Raphael have enabled us to throw upon our minds images far above any of actual experience. ”

“ It is of course impossible for any meaning to be put into a smile by the painter, other than that of pleasure. Psychological suggestions are possible with the poet or novelist, but not with the painter. If there be any enigma or mystery in a picture, then the art is bad, for the work is incomprehensible, but there is no problem to be solved in Mona Lisa's smile. It is not different from any other smile except in degree, and of course in the quality appertaining to the particular countenance. ”

“ As with the great epic poems, they are concerned entirely with ideals—with personages far above the level of life, rising to the spiritual domain—or with human beings as they would be if the highest conceptions of our imagination were possible of realization. When we recall these splendid legacies of genius to our minds, and ponder over the apparently limitless range of human vision which they evidence, it is the designs that absorb us, and not the colour—the forms and expression, and not the tints by which their definition is assisted. ”

“ Naturally in either of these cases any realistic representation of death, or of distortion connected therewith, should be studiously avoided. For while many aspects of death may not be unpleasant to the senses, its actual presence—the cold immobility; the pulseless soulless, decaying thing; the appalling mirror of our own fate—these things are most unpleasant, and hence should have no place in painting. In sculpture, represented in a certain way, death is admissible, for in marble or bronze a body may be carved indicating only the eternal composure of a beautiful form. ”

“ The artist can aspire to no definite goal: his imagination is limited to the arrangement of things which are inanimate and expressionless. He may produce sensorial, but not intellectual, beauty. The nobler human attributes and passions, as wisdom, courage, spiritual exaltation, patriotism, cannot be connected with landscape, and so it is unable to produce in the mind the elevation of thought and grandeur of sentiment which are the sweetest blossoms of the tree of art.60
Another drawback in landscape is the necessity for painting it on an extraordinarily reduced scale. ”