Connoisseurship

“ I know of nothing better calculated to foster refinement and purity of life than the cultivation of a Taste for the Fine Arts. I do not refer to a dillettante affectation of familiarity with the technicalities of artistic language, or to fashionable pretension and an assumption of connoisseurship, but to honest, manly, æsthetical perceptions, quickened and elevated by familiarity with the true principles of Art, and by the study of the highest productions of genius. ”

“ Rather, when he finds an object at hand, he considers it from many points of view—its historical value, its significance in the development of the arts, its anecdotal interest, its worth as a work of art, and its workmanship.
The intuitive sense will carry the amateur a long way, but connoisseurship will depend upon knowledge. ”

“ A connoisseur in painting, when his sight is very bad, experiences in seeing a beautiful picture, a hundred times more pleasure, than one who is indifferent to it, though he examines it with good eyes, and the connoisseur preserves the image of it long after the other has lost it. ”

“ But the judgment of the connoisseur does not confirm this testimony of an excited self-love. With his pitiless criticism he dissipates all the prestige of the imagination and of its dreams, and carrying the torch before these novices he leads them into the mysterious depths of science and life, where, far from profane eyes, the source of all true beauty flows ever towards him who is initiated. If now a true genius slumbers in the young aspirant, no doubt his modesty will at first receive a shock; but soon the consciousness of real talent will embolden him for the trial. ”

“ The first satisfies the heart, the second the mind. The crowd is impressed through the heart without knowing the cause of the magic impression. But, on the other hand, there is a class of connoisseurs on whom that which affects the heart is entirely lost, and who can only be gained by the appropriateness of the means; a strange contradiction resulting from over-refined taste, especially when moral culture remains behind intellectual. This class of connoisseurs seek only the intellectual side in touching and sublime themes. ”

“ A connoisseur standing before the picture of a great master will regard it as a whole. He knows how to combine instantly the scattered parts into the general effect; the universal, as well as the individual, is to him animated. ”

“ A connoisseur will fix his attention on these as willingly as on the largest gallery pictures of the same artist, while a mere soi-disant critic will treat them with disdain,—not recollecting, that to be fastidious is, in ninety-nine cases out of each hundred, no proof of taste, but of perceptions blunted and obtuse. ”

“ Yet every day some wandering connoisseur stands before these pictures, and at once, without waiting to let them sink deep into his mind, discovers all the merits which are stereotyped in the criticisms, and discovers nothing else. He does not wait to feel, he is impatient to range himself with men of taste ”

“ To the connoisseur of human nature, the suggestion that all children be reduced to similarity is as dreadful as the suggestion to the connoisseur of art that all pictures and intaglios be turned out identical, by a uniform factory process. ”

“ They both are like the crowd which judges a picture by its effect alone; while the connoisseur knows how it came into existence, what colors the painter had upon his palette, how he blended them, how he handled his brush, what difficulties he encountered, and how he overcame them, or why it was that he failed of his aim. ”

“ Are our conscience and our morals like articles of dress which we can take off and put on again as we fancy it convenient or expedient?—shut up in a drawer and leave behind us when we visit a theatre or a gallery of art? or are they not rather a part of ourselves—our very life—to graduate the worth, to fix the standard of all that mingles with our life? The idea that what we call taste in art has something quite distinctive from conscience, is one cause that the popular notions concerning the productions of art are abandoned to such confusion and uncertainty ”

“ Given a native sensibility to the worth of life and to the appeal of beauty, the justice of our estimate will be in proportion to the extent of our knowledge of life and of our contact with art. Our individual judgment, therefore, must be controlled by experience,—our momentary judgments by the sum of our own experience, and our total judgment by universal experience. In all sound criticism and right appreciation there must be a basis of disciplined taste. We must guard ourselves against whims and caprice, even our own. ”

“ So there are connoisseurs who give you the subject, the grouping, the perspective, and all the mechanical circumstances of a picture; but never say a word about the expression. The reason is, they see the former, but not the latter. There are persons, however, who cannot employ themselves better than in taking an inventory of works of art (they want a faculty for higher studies,) as there are works of art, so called, which seem to have been composed expressly with an eye to such a class of connoisseurs. ”

“ Knowledge of technique and of the methods by which its difficulties are overcome is the foundation of all appreciation of art. The only true connoisseur is the one who can enter into the delight felt by the artist in creating his work. ”

“ The connoisseur in music, in painting, in architecture, in poetry, in medals, etc., experiences sensations of which the vulgar have no comprehension; the discovery even of a fault pleases him, and makes him feel the beauties with more animation. It is the advantage of a good sight over a bad one. The man of taste has other eyes, other ears, and another tact from the uncultivated man ”

“ These things are matters of taste, on which I have the misfortune to differ with the connoisseurs. Not feeling bold enough to venture on defending myself against the masters who are teaching me to appreciate High Art, I can only look away from the upper part of the picture, and try if I can derive any useful or pleasant impressions from the lower half of the composition, in which no supernatural event is depicted, and which it is therefore perfectly justifiable to judge by referring it to the standard of dramatic truth, or, in one word, of Nature. ”

“ When his color sense is jaded the artist uses the sapphire or ruby to bring his tints up to perfection. And when contact with selfishness or sordidness has soiled the soul's garments, dulled its instruments, and lowered its standards, then conscience comes in to freshen the ideals and to smite vice and vulgarity. In these luminous hours when conscience causes the deeper convictions to prevail, how beautiful seem truth and purity and justice! How does the soul revolt from iniquity, even as the eye revolts from the slough or the nostril from filth! ”

“ And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the other innumerable temperaments whose subtle and resistless power endows passing events with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere of the place and time. ”

“ To those who are resolved to be Critics in spite of nature, and at the same time have no great disposition to much reading and study, I would recommend to assume the character of Connoisseur, which may be purchased at a much cheaper rate than that of a Critic in poetry. ”

“ From the society of such characters, who seem to consider the noble productions of superior intellect, the fine and vigorous flights of fancy, the brilliant effusions of a sublime imagination, and the refined feelings of the heart, as fancied conceits or wild deliriums, those who examine them by a better standard than that of fashion or common taste, fly with delight. ”

“ But with us, in an age of more complete intellectual culture, a thick disguise is spread over the naked foundations of human life; and the instincts of good taste banish from good company the expression of all the profounder emotions. ”

“ Thus it is the further change has come about that critics of art-production no longer have an eye simply to the education of taste, or are intent upon the illustration of such a sense. The connoisseur, or art-scholar, has taken the place of the man, or judge of artistic taste. The positive side of art-scholarship, in so far as it implies a sound and exhaustive acquaintance with the entire embrace of what is distinctive and peculiar in a given work of art, we have already maintained to be a necessary condition of artistic research. ”

“ If not a connoisseur, yet a professed admirer of the fine arts, each in its turn met with his unbounded encouragement. The artist, emerging from want and obscurity, owed to his timely patronage a future ease and celebrity. ”

“ However, there have always been artists and connoisseurs who have striven to reflect upon their appreciations and acts, unhappy until they have understood and justified what they were doing; and one meets with numerous art-loving people whose intellectual curiosity is rather quickened than put to sleep by just that element of elusiveness in beauty upon which the mystics dwell. ”

“ He must know that our purer modern taste, our higher modern morality, limits him to doing exactly two things for us, when he writes us a book. All we want of him is—occasionally to make us laugh; and invariably to make us comfortable. ”

“ The fellow who calls me a connoisseur of art and pretends to mean it, may be surely as crooked as a dog’s hind legs. I told him I did not like such art-stuff, which is usually favored by retired people. ”

“ Beauty inspires passion, but will it create sincerity? Something more than that is wanted, I think. No love lasts that is unrequited. No lamp burns long that isn’t replenished with oil. There are hundreds of verses among the poets illustrative of this, the best of which I might easily quote if I knew where to find them. Don’t say this digression is neither here nor there. It is here and there too. It concerns my sincerity; it vindicates my loyalty.
Riding with Theresa on a fragrant and glowing summer evening, we fell to talking about Conny. ”

“ To the connoisseur it will form a guide to facilitate his acquaintance with the peculiar styles, and their varieties, of the great masters; a species of knowledge which it is difficult to convey, although of the greatest importance to possess. ”

“ A cultivated taste in Literature and Art, as, indeed, in relation to all the embellishments and enjoyments of life, is, properly, one of the indications, if not the legitimate result, of thorough mental education. But, while you seek, by every means within your control, to enlarge the sphere of your perceptions, and to elevate your standard of intellectual pleasures, carefully avoid all semblance of conscious superiority, all dilettanti pretension, all needless technicalities of artistic language. ”

“ The matter which he gives us is real life; virile, tender, humorous, pathetic, spiritual, wholesome. His style, fresh, crisp and terse, accords with the Western life, which he understands."—The Outlook. ”

“ If, therefore, in the course of this inquiry, we can show that there are rules for the conduct of the artist which are fixed and invariable, it follows, of course, that the art of the connoisseur, or, in other words, taste, has likewise invariable principles. ”

“ Who can say how much falsehood and unreality have been shed through the life and influence of individuals by tinsel in the drawing-room and rags up-stairs?
Just now we are the victims of two reactions. Our ancestors made external beauty everything, and the starved inner life of man rebelled. Puritanism arose, with grim visage, turning all beautiful things to stone. From it was bequeathed us a race of artisans who had lost the sense of beauty. A reaction came, in which the passion for external beauty displayed itself in an intemperate outbreak of gaudiness and frivolity. ”

“ He did not enjoy being ignored any more than any other man does, and he had his full share of man’s natural desire for a beam of the lime-light. A craving for attention had of late been growing more insistent within him. ”

“ If we see, not only without annoyance, but even with pleasure, our books, which are the portraits of our minds, in the hands of our fellow men, why grudge them the picture of our countenance, if it contribute anything to their satisfaction. ”

“ Hence it is that connoisseurs will frequently be found to approach nearer the truth, in forming their estimate, than artists; the former adopt the impartial feelings of the public, while the latter allow themselves to be influenced by motives of envy or of prejudice. ”

“ All connoisseurs amongst you, and even amongst us, agree in despising our enchanted, or supernatural scenery; which, they say, is trifling, absurd, extravagant, abounding in conceits and boyish tricks; that operating chiefly by surprize, it has little or no effect, after a first or second inspection, and consequently can afford no pleasure to the owner: yet our best Artists, who have no excessive reverence for the decrees of connoisseurs [29] , and who think the owner is not the only person to be entertained, often introduce it ”

“ For myself, I would rather incur the contempt of connoisseurs than my own; the repreach of defective taste is more endurable than the reproach of insincerity. Suppose I am deficient in the requisite knowledge and sensibility, shall I be less so by pretending to admire what really gives me no exquisite enjoyment? Will the pleasure I feel in pictures be enhanced because other men consider me right in my admlration, or diminished because they consider me wrong? ”