Shearjashub Spooner

“ The Art-Union of New-York have struck a commemorative medal, with Allston’s face on the obverse side; and thus is the great artist rewarded.
Genius, that breaks the fetters encircling the mind, is fated to drink life’s bitterest cup to the dregs. After earth has flung the gem away, she proclaims its value.
Reformers must be martyrs. Every Socrates must quaff his hemlock—every Burns pine in unpitied poverty. In life, the artist appears on the reverse side of the world’s medal—in death, on the obverse.”—Dewey Fay. ”

“ Correggio was one of that splendid triumvirate of painters who, living at the same time, were working on different principles, and achieving, each in his own department, excellence hitherto unequalled; and if Correggio must be allowed to be inferior to Raffaelle in invention and expression, and to Titian in life-like color, he has united design and color with the illusion of light and shadow in a degree of perfection not then nor since approached by any painter. Hence Annibale Caracci, on seeing one of his great pictures, exclaimed in a transport that he was “the only painter!” ”

“ Such was the unparalleled eminence which this wonderful genius attained in the three sister arts of sculpture, architecture, and painting. His chief characteristics were grandeur and sublimity. His powers were little adapted to represent the gentle and the beautiful; but whatever in nature partook of the sublime and the terrible, were portrayed by him with such fidelity and grandeur as intimidates the beholder. Never before nor since has the world beheld so powerful a genius. ”

“ Is it not a burning shame, that the most gifted artists of this great and glorious country should be compelled to go abroad to seek both fame and bread, not fortune? What merchant prince will set his countrymen an example, and, like Sir George Beaumont, bribe Congress and his fellow citizens to form a national gallery, by giving a collection of casts from the antique, first class paintings and engravings, rare works of art, and a library on art, worth 70,000 guineas? It is a mistaken opinion, entertained by many, that the fine arts are of little importance to our country. ”

“ Few works are more evanescent than paintings. Sculpture retains its freshness for twenty centuries. The Apollo and the Venus are as they were. But books are perhaps the only productions of man coeval with the human race. Sophocles and Shakspeare can be produced and reproduced forever. But how evanescent are paintings, and must necessarily be! Those of Zeuxis and Apelles are no more, and perhaps they have the same relation to Homer and Æschylus, that those of Raffaelle and Guido have to Dante and Petrarch. ”

“ Moreland was a man of genius, and might have shone as a bright star in the history of art, had he not degraded himself by dissipation, almost to a level with the pigs he delighted to paint. The glory of both Stuart and Jarvis is obscured by the same fatal passion. “O that men should put an enemy in their mouths, to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, revel, pleasure, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts.” ”

“ I will draw your portrait, for you have been an angel to me.” She obeyed, and the dying artist made a fine likeness. He was cheerful and contented to the last. “I glory,” said he, “in dying, and have no grief but in leaving you, Katharine; we have lived happy and we have lived long; we have ever been together, but we shall be divided soon. Why should I fear death! ”

“ ALLSTON’S DEATH.
“Notwithstanding the general respect which is manifested to the memory of this distinguished artist, there are unsympathising, ice-hearted men of the world who yet reproach him for uncontrollable events in his career.
The actions of the painter, the poet, and the musician, are dictated often by other motives than those impelling the arm of the mechanic, or the tongue of the advocate. Men of genius are of a more delicate organization than those possessing inferior abilities, and are swayed by emotions the most lofty that can actuate humanity. ”

“ At the sale of the effects of the former after his decease, they brought two hundred and fifty guineas each!
Shall instances like these stain the annals of American Art, or will this free people accord to its gifted sons the encouragement they so richly deserve? May the sympathies of those who can perceive in painting and sculpture, most efficient means of mental culture, refinement, and gratification, be enlisted by these sad memories, to render timely encouragement to exalted genius! It adds to national and individual profit, pride, and glory. ”

“ Commerce is the means, not the end of happiness or pleasure; the end is a rational enjoyment by means of arts and sciences. It is therefore the highest degree of folly to set the means in a higher rank of esteem than the end. It is as much as to say that the brick-maker is superior to the architect.” He might have added that the artisan is indebted to the artist for the design of every beautiful fabric, therefore the artist is a more “valuable member of society” than the manufacturer or the merchant. ”

“ When I look back some five or six-and-thirty years, when we were both in Rome, and next-door neighbors on the Trinita del Monte, and in the spring of life, full of enthusiasm for our art, and fancying fair prospects awaiting us in after years—and few certainly had more right than my worthy colleague to look towards such a futurity—it is painful to reflect how far these hopes have been from being realized. ”

“ The same master who consumed four years on the portrait of Mona Lisa{280} Giocondo, gave one of the earliest and best lessons to the age, in the great style, in his memorable painting of the Last Supper. This power of attending at the same moment to the minutiæ of detail, and to the grand and leading principles of the art or science in which a person may be employed, shows a species of universality of power that may be reckoned among the highest perfections of the human mind; and it places Da Vinci not merely in the rank of the first of painters, but of the greatest of men. ”

“ By the general approbation of mankind, this illustrious artist has been styled “the prince of modern painters.” He is universally acknowledged to have possessed a greater combination of the excellencies of art than has fallen to the lot of any other individual. It is a remarkable fact, mentioned by many artists and writers, that the most capital frescoes of Raffaelle in the Vatican, do not at first strike the beholder with surprise, nor satisfy his expectations; but as he begins to study them, he constantly discovers new beauties, and his admiration continues to increase with contemplation. ”

“ Mengs, who saw them near, and judged of them as an artist, appears astonished at their boldness, which he calls “sconcia terribile,” particularly that of Christ, which occupies the centre. But the effect, when seen from below, proves that the painter had deeply studied that delicate branch of the art; for nothing can exceed the bold and exquisite management of the light and shade, and the beautiful proportion in which the figures appear to the eye, except the life and spirit with which they are animated, and the general harmony of the whole. ”

“ A nobleman, not remarkable for personal beauty, once sat to Hogarth for his portrait, which the artist executed in his happiest manner, but with rigid fidelity. The peer, disgusted at this exact counterpart of his dear self, did not feel disposed to pay for the picture. After some time had elapsed, and numerous unsuccessful attempts had been made to obtain payment, the painter resorted to an expedient which he knew must alarm the nobleman’s pride. ”

“ The King of Wurtemberg, at the suggestion of the Emperor, also waited upon the artist to inspect his labor, who, on contemplating the performance, and in particular, the luminous brightness spread over the group in which are the pope and Cardinal Caprara, his majesty thus expressed himself: “I did not believe that your art could effect such wonders; white and black in painting afford but very weak resources. When you produced this you had, no doubt, a sunbeam upon your pencil.” ”

“ I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and goddesses, to empty splendor and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead. Every man is always present to himself, and has, therefore, little need of his own resemblance ”

“ The difference in value between an original and a copy is so greatly in favor of the former, with anything like approach to success, that I am surprised that more of our amateurs are not induced to command them. The little group I have sent home, (the Chanting Cherubs) will always have an interest that can belong to no other work of the same character. It is the first effort of a young artist who bids fair to build for himself a name, and whose life will be connected with the history of the art in that country which is so soon to occupy such a place in the world. ”

“ THE INFLUENCE OF THE INQUISITION UPON SPANISH PAINTING.
A strong and enthusiastic feeling of a religious character has often inspired the Fine Arts: we owe to such sentiments the finest and purest productions of modern painting. Progress in art, however, implies the study of nature; the study of nature and the exhibition of its results have continually shocked the rigid asceticism of a severe morality—a morality which makes indecency depend on the simple fact of exposure, not on the feeling in which the work is conceived. ”

“ But this is not the principle but the mis-employment of painting. In wise and pure hands, it rises in the scale of moral excellence, and displays a loftiness of sentiment, and a devout dignity, worthy of the contemplation of Christians. I think genius is given by God for some high purpose. What the purpose is, let us not inquire—it will be manifest in His own good time and way. He hath in this remote wilderness endowed with rich gifts of a superior spirit this youth, who has now our consent to cultivate his talents for art ”

“ Men there are who would visit the generous Allston with censure, because, while laboring under disappointments, ill health, and crushed anticipations, he failed to finish his painting of Belshazzar’s Feast, a theme that possibly became uncongenial to his pencil. May their ill feeling be forgotten, and, if the fountain of their sympathies be not wholly dried up, may it yield a little lenity towards one of America’s noblest sons. ”

“ I have been to the Steccata, and the Zocoli, and have observed what you told me many times, and what I now confess to be true; but I will say that, to my taste, Parmeggiano bears no comparison with Correggio, because the thoughts and conceptions of Correggio were his own, evidently drawn from his own mind, and invented by himself, guided only by the original idea. The others all rest on something not their own; some on models, some on statues or drawings: all the productions of the others are represented as they may be; all of this man as they truly are. ”

“ Raffaelle stood alone, but aimed at producing works with a degree of perfection beyond the united efforts of Michael Angelo and F. Sebastiano, combining in himself a fertile imagination, ideal beauty founded on a correct imitation of the Greek style, grace, ease, amenity, and a universality of genius in every department of art. ”

“ There is little of the academy discernible in his design or his composition. It is a chaste and faithful representation of what he saw or conceived; truth and simplicity are never lost sight of; his coloring is clear, tender, and harmonious, and though it possesses the truth of Titian, and the sweetness of Vandyck, it has nothing of the appearance of imitation. ”

“ On the contrary, every person is directly interested. A foreign writer observes that, “silver-plating in the United States, is what tin-smithery is in Paris.” Fuseli terms Venice “the toy-shop of Europe;” better Paris. What a multitude of people are supported in that great city by the manufacture of ten thousand fabrics, exquisitely designed and executed. The Parisians have a keen perception of the beautiful, simply from being educated in a city abounding with galleries{70} and the best models of art, or as Reynolds terms it, “the accumulated genius of ages.” ”

“ DA VINCI’S IDEA OF PERFECTION IN ART.
Da Vinci was never satisfied with his works, and Lanzi finds the same fault with him that Apelles did with Protogenes—his not knowing when to take his hand from his work. Phidias himself, says Tully, bore in his mind a more beautiful Minerva and a grander Jove than he was capable of exhibiting with his chisel. It is prudent counsel that teaches us to aspire to the best, but to rest satisfied with attaining what is good. “Vinci,” says Lanzi, “was never satisfied with his labors, if he did not execute them as perfectly as he had conceived them ”

“ When Michael Angelo had finished the works in the Sistine chapel which Julius II. had commanded him to paint, the Pope, not appreciating their native dignity and simplicity, told him that “the chapel appeared cold and mean, and there wanted some brilliancy of coloring, and some gilding to be added to it.” “Holy father,” replied the artist, “formerly men did not dress as they do now, in gold and sil{59}ver; those personages whom I have represented in my pictures in the chapel, were not persons of wealth, but saints, who were divinely inspired, and despised pomp and riches.” ”

“ It has been remarked by some close observer, that modesty is like shadow in a picture—too much of it obscures real excellence, while the proper medium exhibits all parts in agreeable relief. John Riley, an English portrait painter who flourished in the latter part of the seventeenth century, was a proof that one may have a superabundance of this in itself excellent quality. ”

“ Among the rest was Cardinal Albani, who, though old and blind, had such delicacy of touch that he was considered supreme in all matters of judgment regarding medals and intaglios. ‘I have the honor,’ said Lord Grantham, ‘to present you a young American, who has a letter for your Eminence, and who has come to Italy for the purpose of studying the Fine Arts.’ The Cardinal knew so little of the New World, that he conceived an American must needs be a savage. ”

“ WEST’S FIRST PICTURE.
When he was only eight years old, a merchant of Philadelphia, named Pennington, and a cousin of the Wests, was so much pleased with the sketches of little Benjamin, that he sent him a box of paints and pencils, with canvass prepared for the easel, and six engravings by Gribelin. The child was perfectly enraptured with his treasure; he carried the box about in his arms, and took it to his bedside, but could not sleep. He rose with the dawn, carried his canvass and colors to the garret, hung up the engravings, prepared a palette, and commenced work. ”

“ Jarvis was a great wag as well as an inimitable story-teller. Whenever he met with an eccentric genius, he delighted to make him indulge in strong potations, and then engage him on his favorite hobby. On one such occasion, a gentleman who had a smattering of Zoology, declared it as his opinion, that it was possible to change the nature of animals; for instance, that by cutting off the end of dogs’ or monkeys’ tails for a few generations, they would become tailless. ”