Joseph Sandell

“ The loss of ambition is a sure sign of the decline of the arts; as, where every one is content to follow, no one will get before. When a great man appears, weak minds are apt to seek for the rules of art in his works, instead of applying to Nature: this is precisely the case of this artist; he has not a wish, or an inquiry to make, that does not end in Reynolds,—forgetting the old proverb, that when two men ride on a horse, one must be behind. ”

“ No one but a painter can imagine this infinite process in the art: other men consider it as confined to very narrow limits. The artist himself sees his toil expanding itself every moment into infinite extent. ”

“ In the intervals of study, a few minutes’ conversation with a creature one loves is the greatest of all reliefs. God bless us both! My pecuniary difficulties are still great; but my love is intense, my ambition intense, and my hope in God’s protection cheering.” But the remainder of the painter’s life—25 years—was one dark cloud, here and there relieved by momentary rays of sunshine. Always in debt; always in danger; always pestered by lawyers and arrests. It has been with truth observed, that upon one half of Haydon’s income, many a better man than he had lived. ”

“ When Vernet, the celebrated painter, visited Voltaire for the first time, the author thus addressed him: “Welcome, M. Vernet! you are rising to immortality, for never were colours more brilliant or more durable than yours!” The painter replied, “My colours can never vie with your ink!” and caught the hand of Voltaire, which he was going to kiss with reverential awe. But the poet snatched it away, modestly saying, “What are you going to do? Surely if you kiss my hand, I must kiss your feet.” ”

“ There is little or nothing in the Exhibition worth looking up to. There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura,—an attempt to do something beyond the truth. Fashion always had, and will have, its day; but truth in all things only will last, and can only have just claims on posterity. ”

“ HIS OPINION OF MICHAEL ANGELO AND RAPHAEL.
“The labours of Michael Angelo and Raphael have since been the chief object of my study,—by far the most intellectual. They make other works appear limited, and though high in all that is great, are still an example,—and a noble example too,—of how the accessories of a work may be treated with most advantage. No style can be so pure as to be above learning from them, nor so low and humble as not to gain even in its own way by their contemplation. ”

“ PORTRAIT PAINTING.
A portrait painter in large practice might write a pretty book on the vanity and singularity of his sitters. A certain man came to Copley, and had himself, and wife, and seven children all included in a family piece. “It wants but one thing,” said he, “and that is the portrait of my first wife—for this one is my second.” “But,” said the artist, “she is dead you know, sir: what can I do? she is only to be admitted as an angel.” ”

“ REYNOLDS ON ART.
Dr. Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, observed in the great artist’s hearing that a pin-maker was a more useful and valuable member of society than Raffaelle. “That,” retorted Reynolds, “is an observation of a very narrow mind,—a mind that is confined to the mere object of commerce,—that sees with a microscopic eye but a part of the great machine of the economy of life, and thinks that small part which he sees to be the whole. ”

“ Sir Godfrey, who was principally eminent as a portrait-painter, after a long discourse upon the various schools of painting, concluded with, “Painters of history make the dead live, and do not themselves live till they be dead; I paint the living, and they make me live.”
CUT AT POPE.
The artist’s consciousness of his own skill was so well known that it exposed him frequently to the banter and irony of the wits, his friends. Pope, to pay him off, said to him after looking round a room full of beauties he had painted, “It’s a pity, Sir Godfrey, that you had not been consulted at the creation.” ”

“ Most men who have arrived at such excellence in colour, have seemed to think they have done enough; but with Haydon it was evidently the signal of his desire to have every greatness of every other school. Hence, he lays siege to the drawing and expression of Nature, which, in this picture, he has certainly carried from, and in the very face of, all his competitors. Of the higher qualities of Art are certainly the tone of the whole picture ”

“ Painting is an act that leads to infinite exertion, and the perfection of it appears difficult to be ascertained. The grandest performances of the greatest masters cannot circumscribe the limits of the art. Raphael has executed prodigious works; but yet we dare to think that he may be excelled, and this great man laboured every day of his life, with a hope to surpass himself. ”

“ Though Fuseli had more imagination and conception than Reynolds, though West put things together quicker than either, though Flaxman and Stothard did what Reynolds could not do, and Hogarth invented a style never thought of before in the world, yet, as a great and practical artist, in which all the others were greatly defective, producing occasional fancy pictures of great beauty, and occasional desperate struggles in high art, with great faults, Reynolds is unquestionably the greatest artist of the British School, and the greatest artist in Europe since Rembrandt and Velasquez. ”

“ All who have attained greatness in the practice of art have followed the same course of study, but none more successfully than our own Edwin Landseer, who first learned to draw animals in the fields around Primrose Hill; and Paul Potter, his great prototype, who acquired his first knowledge of art in the bright green meadows of the Low Countries. Of the value set by the latter painter on this mode of study, we have a striking proof in the picture in which he represents himself making his first sketch. This great painter was born in 1625, at Enkhuysen, in the province of Holland. ”

“ The monument being a plain one, and making no palpable appeal to vulgar admiration, was disregarded by these people. It did not fall in the way, of the untaught, on this otherwise polite spot, to know that they have among them the remains of the first painter of our national school in fancy-pictures, and one of the first in the classes of landscape and portraits; a man who recommended himself as much by his superiority, as by his genius; as much by the mode in which his genius was developed, as by the perfection of his works ”

“ For instance, how often in our exhibitions do we find a portrait painted of a citizen in the dress of a military man, or a naval officer in the costume of a Roman general in a toga, with bare arms! Most must be drawn in the manner of ancient Greece or Rome, instead of their proper habits; the sitter having his head so full of antiquity that everything must be according to the ancient taste. ”

“ Oh, the goodly landscape of Old Fish Street, which, had it not the ill-luck to be crooked, was narrow enough to be your founder’s perspective; and where the garrets (perhaps not for want of architecture, but through abundance of amity) are so made that opposite neighbours may shake hands without stirring from home. Is unanimity of inhabitants in wise cities better expressed than by their coherence and uniformity of buildings, where the street begins, continues, and ends in a like stature and shape? ”

“ Seddon occupied as an artist appears to deserve some public recognition quite other than could be generally granted to genius, however great, which had been occupied only in previously beaten paths. Mr. Seddon’s works are the first which represent a truly historic landscape art; that is to say, they are the first landscapes uniting perfect artistical skill with topographical accuracy; being directed, with stern self-restraint, to no other purpose than that of giving to persons who cannot travel, trustworthy knowledge of the scenes which ought to be most interesting to them. ”

“ The Elgin marbles, which became public property by means of public purchase, on the 1st of July, 1816, was the first unadulterated collection of ancient works of Art possessed by the nation, and the precursor of other collections of no less interest to the artist and man of letters. The Nimroud and Xanthian marbles especially. In these antiques we behold the real Art of the sculptors of remote periods; but in the Townley collection, a superficial observer cannot discover where Greek or Roman Art ceases, and the ingenuity of Joseph Nollekens commences. ”

“ Painter in Miniature and Enamel to
His Majesty George III.,
Died January 19th, 1789.
Meyer! in thy works the world will ever see
How great the loss of Art in losing thee;
But Love and Sorrow find the words too weak,
Nature’s keen sufferings on thy death to speak ”

“ Wilkie had obtained for the young artist a commission from Lord Mulgrave for “Dentatus.” Having delayed the painting some months, Haydon in 1808 removed his lodgings to 41, Great Marlborough Street, when he began the noble lord’s commission in earnest. In this year he first saw the Elgin marbles, and he thus expresses his admiration of them: “I felt the future; I foretold that they would prove themselves the finest things on earth—that they would overturn the false beau ideal, where nature was nothing, and would establish the true beau ideal, of which nature alone is the basis. ”

“ It is needless to repeat here all the tales that have been told of the difficulties of a face painter. The following anecdotes will show to what extent of vanity and folly those people are subject who, though wishing to hand down to posterity their own portrait or that of some member of their family, are entirely ignorant of the simplest rules of Art; and, consequently, give considerable trouble and anxiety to the artist. ”

“ He is alone with Art,—his soul surrounded with the beautiful. He is drunk with love of Loveliness as with a drug. Sorcery-struck, the earthy of him sleeps, and the supernal self is breathing a celestial air. He is not in the dim, damp chamber,—cold and comfortless. Earth singing a wild winter-song without,—he is far away! Fool that he is,—poor dreamer! Fool? Dreamer? Nay!”
THE DOUBLE SURPRISE.
A husband wishing to surprise a beloved wife on her birthday, came to Sully, the painter, and got him to paint his portrait “on the sly.” ”

“ These may almost be summed up as consisting of Greuze, David, and Girodet. He waited upon Greuze, who was from the same province as himself. “Do you possess talent?” said Greuze to him. “Yes,” replied Prudhon naïvely. “All the worse,” continued Greuze. “A family and talent! that is more than you need to die in want. What the deuce have you to do with talent at a period when we no longer have a heaven, nor a devil, nor a king, nor a court, nor poor, nor rich? I, who address you, am, as you know, as good a painter as most men ”

“ Again, in Leslie’s memoirs of the artist we have the following memorandum of Constable:—
“For these few weeks past I have thought more seriously of my profession than at any other time of my life; of that which is the surest way to excellence. I am just returned from a visit to Sir George Beaumont’s pictures, with a deep conviction of the truth of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ observation, that ‘there is no easy way of becoming a good painter.’ For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second-hand. ”

“ As the royal family usually attend here when they reside at Kew, it is superbly fitted up, and the architecture is in the best taste. Several marble monuments of singular beauty adorn the walls, but the record of a man of genius absorbed every attraction of ordinary rank and title. It was a marble slab to the memory of Meyer, the painter, with lines by the poet Hayley. ”

“ David Garrick sat many times to Reynolds for different portraits. At one of these sittings he gave a very lively account of his having sat once for his portrait to an indifferent painter, whom he wantonly teased; for when the artist had worked on the face till he had drawn it very correctly, as he saw it at the time, Garrick caught an opportunity, whilst the painter was not looking at him, totally to change his countenance and expression, when the poor painter patiently worked on to alter the picture, and make it like what he then saw ”

“ In Pasquin’s “Royal Academicians,” we have the following remarks upon this painter, “In the great point of professional taste, Hayman could not be arranged as exemplary. Yet I have many doubts if taste is in any instance wholly intuitive; and am inclined to think that we acquire taste by the progressive movements of early perception, which, by frequent subtle inroads upon the mind, make, in the issue, an establishment, and give a system and a hue to thought. ”

“ CARICATURE.
On a lady expressing a wish to Hogarth to learn the secret of caricature, he replied, with much earnestness, “Alas! young lady, it is not a faculty to be envied. Take my advice and never draw caricature: by the long practice of it I have lost the enjoyment of beauty. I never see a face but distorted; I never have the satisfaction to behold the human face divine.”
WILKES.
Writing to his friend Churchill, Wilkes says: “I take it for granted you have seen Hogarth’s print against me. Was ever anything so contemptible? I think he is fairly felo de se. ”

“ A neighbour, having his garden robbed on several occasions, could never hit upon the thief. It happened one morning early, the painter, then a mere boy, walked in the garden sketching, when he observed a man pop his head over the garden wall. Being unobserved, the young artist had sufficient time to sketch the robber’s head, and from its accuracy, on showing it to a neighbour, the fellow was immediately recognised as living in the neighbourhood, and was accordingly apprehended. ”