POETIC PAINTING AND SCULPTURE.

"Our poesy is as a gum which oozes

From whence 'tis nourished."

THE Word Poetry, may be made to take so wide a range in its signification, that it is necessary to be as definite as possible, when applying the term to works of art; we therefore beg to be understood, as referring principally to a certain imaginative temperament in the artist, which raises his work beyond a close imitation of life, distinguishing it from mere skilful mechanism, and the various principles of taste, which are transferable from master to pupil, and whose diversity forms and divides the schools. Thus, a taste for colour, composition, and effect of light and shade, may be exhibited in pictures of exceeding beauty; yet those pictures, in their subjects and treatment, may rather delight the eye as accurate delineations of nature, than excite the fancy particularly, or come within the circle of what is generally called poetic. Imagination is stimulated by the study of Nature, but its inbred and independent character is imparted to every object it moulds or colours,

"And gives to every power a double power,

Above their functions and their offices-
It adds a precious seeing to the eye."

The greatest works of painter or sculptor with which we are acquainted, are indebted, for the halo of glory which surrounds them, to this intellectual attribute. Let the connoisseur rave as he will about what he calls texture and touch, there is nothing to be compared to the delight afforded to the mind by an elevated style of art, which places all the means used in a subordinate position, and produces in the thoughts an ecstasy, associated with the best and loftiest emotions, of which human beings are capable.* At the same time, we admit the necessity of an accompanying feeling and taste for those minor accomplishments, and an artist-like execution of them, otherwise the pleasure of the amateur is likely to be qualified with a portion of disappointment as considerable as that of a musician would be, who listened to a composition of Handel, performed by an unpractised hand.

So nice a balance is required of the various faculties which make up the mind of a really great artist-the combination of enlarged imagi native powers, and a dexterous, industrious, and tasteful application of the materials, being the grand desideratum-that it is not surprising so few genuine poetical painters and sculptors have existed. It happens, not unfrequently, with a prodigal imagination, revelling in the undisciplined exercise of its capabilities-wild above rule and art-to be carried with impulsive energy beyond all reasonable limits. So long

An eminent living writer and poet, but neither artist nor connoisseur, was present with us at a private exhibition of some very fine copies, from Michael Angelo's Prophets and Sibyls. Every person in the room seemed struck with awe at the extreme majesty of the figures; but he sat apart, and actually cried with the emotions produced by the sublime of painting. How noble a thing is art in this exalted aspect! we envy not the man who laughs at, or who cannot understand all this. He may exclaim in mockery, what a noble thing to cry at a picture! cannot he go deeper than this? The living and the dead are but as pictures.

as the fancy and the implements are at work, it matters little what is the subject, according to the notions of this kind of enthusiast. What will the reader think of a painter representing the Blessed Virgin performing a dance with the Prince of Darkness, or of another delineating the Ghost of a Flea? These are instances of imagination run to seed. Some there are, or have been rather (the present generation of artists being remarkable for sobriety of fancy), still forgetting propriety of subject, who plunge into an element adapted only to the appliances and means of the writer, and become unintelligible or offensive to the sense, through which the artist must ever appeal to the mind. From this Limbo, wherein the unsound conceit is imparadised, to the highest Heaven of invention, the path is marked by numerous degrees-a hundred mirrors, each stained with its peculiar colour, and all held up to nature, dazzle and perplex the taste they should instruct and guide. The fantastic, the eccentric, the grotesque, the unnatural, the horrible, may all put in their claims to the title of Poetic, and some portion of the true Hippocrene may mingle with all; but a matured taste rejects from any affinity with the genuine fountain of the Muses, whatsoever is inconsistent with fine sense or propriety of character.

FUSELI's pictures will occur to the recollection of the visitors of the Somerset House Exhibition some years ago, as illustrating a kind of nightmare of the heat-oppressed brain, rather than the healthy inspiration of the poet-there was a strange mixture in them of the ludicrous and the terrible-evidence of a wild and powerful fancy created a respect, which was marred by the eccentric mode of its operation. The capacity of FUSELI was too great to allow him to fail in depicting poetical subjects of the highest kind-his designs from Milton, for example-even something of the sublime occasionally gleamed from his pencil; but his impatient spirit spurned the control, which a refined taste would have imposed upon his wilful manner. All his learning (and he was no mean scholar), all his knowledge of the finest art, were insufficient to restrain his love of the preternatural-his relish of the terrible, within bounds. His figures look not like the inhabitants of the earth, nor seem aught that man may question-their gestures are the contortions of dumb fiends, an ominous forefinger violently points some deadly purpose. If a voluptuously-formed woman is designed, a goblin-knight hovers about, pursues-torments her. The simple sorrow feeding on the damask cheek, had no charm in itself for an imagination, which revelled in the most appalling scenes of Dante-beauty was only valued as it might set off surrounding terrors-it was a light which served but to discover sights of woe.-"Nature put him out," was the painter's apology for not consulting her more frequently than he did; his mind shrunk from her simplicity, as the Devil is said to eschew the touch of holy water-his conceptions expanded in proportion as they receded from familiar life, and seemed at home in an ideal world; but it was a world of grimace rather than of beauty. Nothing in Fuseli's pictures was adapted to the taste of the connoisseur; a few finely-imagined designs, therefore, are all that remain on the memory to warrant their admission to our Gallery of Poetic Art. Such are the Lycidas, Uriel watching the flight of Satan, The Lazar House, and nearly all the illustrations of Milton.

It is melancholy to think what the SHAKSPEARE GALLERY might have been, or should have been, and what it was. Scarcely one picture

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was executed in a spirit akin to that of the great poet; nor is it reasonable to expect, out of a collection containing between one and two hundred subjects, from the hands of nearly thirty artists, much of the right leaven; but the set of illustrations was remarkably deficient in imagination, originality of character, and in those essential qualities of pictorial merit which compensate to the eye for any loss to the fancy. The designs of SMIRKE, form a great exception, it is true, but their subjects are chiefly of a comic nature. Mr. Boydell, the spirited projector of this gallery, says, in his preface to the catalogue, printed May 1, 1789, "Though I believe it will be readily admitted, that no subjects seem so proper to form an English school of historical painting, as the scenes of the immortal Shakspeare; yet it must be always remembered that he possessed powers which no pencil can reach, &c. It must not then be expected, the art of the painter can ever equal the sublimity of our poet. The strength of Michael Angelo, united to the grace of Raphael, would here have laboured in vain. It is therefore hoped, that the spectator will view these pictures with this regard, and not allow his imagination, warmed by the magic powers of the poet, to expect from painting what painting cannot perform." The worthy alderman should have confined his apology to the pictures in his catalogue, which, for the most part, certainly stood in need of it; and not have troubled himself to extend his excuse to the art itself. Painting or sculpture require no vindication upon such grounds. They possess poets of their own, whose works are sufficiently vivid with poetic fire, to kindle the imagination, which, it is advised, the spectator of the Shakspeare gallery should keep as cool as possible. It is sorry work for art, when there is much to forgive. If it be not triumphant, it is worthless.

The only men of genius, in the list of Alderman Boydell's selection, are BARRY, STOTHARD, OPIE, REYNOLDS, ROMNEY, FUSELI, and SMIRKE above mentioned; that is, seven out of eight-and-thirty! Nor can it be declared the powers of these are altogether of a Shakspearian kind. Of BARRY it has been truly said he possessed a grasp of mind, and this grasp represents the poetical quality of his pictures, as far as intention or design goes-it is clearly evident from his works, he was an original and profound thinker; but the eye seeks in them vainly for some charm, either of form, expression, or colour, by which it associates the design of the artist with the beauty or grandeur of nature in its external aspect. We are also occasionally shocked by absurdities, such as the unlooked-for appearance of Dr. Burney, "accoutred as he was" in cocked-hat, wig, &c., plunging among the river nymphs,

"In the waters which flow by Somerset House,"

or by an assembly of painters seated at their easels in the clouds. It is true, the "old masters" gave their angels violins to play upon; but however outré this taking scripture at its word, on the part of the painters, may be to our reformed notions, it was in perfect keeping with the faith of the Roman Church, and the taste for allegory of the fifteenth century. Barry's contribution to the Shakspeare gallery, taken from CYMBELINE, where Iachimo issues from the trunk, is finely conceived. If Sir Joshua had painted the Imogen, we might have had nothing to wish for. STOTHARD was undoubtedly poetical-grace, sweetness, simplicity, refined taste, female beauty, all his own, yet reminding us of

the antique, must accord, more or less, with judicious selections from our great dramatic poet. The elegant invention of this distinguished artist was exercised upon three subjects only, from Shakspeare, and those not best adapted for the display of his peculiar style; whilst others, filled canvass after canvass, and occupied with their mawkish productions three-fourths of a collection intended to illustrate the greatest poet of England, and to exhibit the strength of British art. REYNOLDS, genius as he was, could not adapt his extraordinary and beautiful skill, as a painter, to the text of our poet. The impulse which guided him to such truth of character, and startling reality, when painting from nature, his constant custom, forsook him when his mind was left to roam about the ideal world, in search of abstract personation. He wanted a SIDDONS seated before him on his throne to inspire, to elevate his touch to the poetry of art; and with a sitter whose characteristics he was scrupulous to seize, whether that sitter were Goldsmith or Burke, a charming woman or a dear little child, he became a poet himself-exquisite in taste, delicious in colour unequalled in the vivid effect of individual nature.

The Death of Dido is one of the most splendid pictures in existence; but its ideality lies in the distribution of light and richness of colour rather than in expression and character. Cymon and Iphigenia is miraculously fine here again, the fascination is involved in the brilliant colouring of the fair maid's naked form, reposing beneath a wide-spreading beech-tree-a living soul seems to breathe through the glowing skin; perfect harmony lulls the mind to a state of placid satisfaction; the sun's rays struggle through the trees, as if to gaze with Cymon, but they are less bright than Iphigenia-what a gallant poet was Sir Joshua! OPIE threw a strength of character and a breadth into his pictures, which might well illustrate some of the heated encounters in the historical plays. ROMNEY'S Infant Shakspeare, attended by Nature and the Passions, contains much grandeur of design, and a feeling for beauty. NORTHCOTE's Burial of the Princes in the Tower, from Richard III., is well known, and has been deservedly extolled.

The public, as ignorant of the profound beauties of Shakspeare, as of the highest capabilities of art, might have been satisfied with this pictorial elucidation of the poet's conceptions. Many of the painters, now totally forgotten, were then in the full bloom of fashionable patronage, and no doubt were considered by many quite competent to the task assigned them of doing justice to Shakspeare. Some of the most talented in the second class o. artists were encumbered by their study of the various schools of Italian art, and venerating Raphael and Michael Angelo, more than they respected nature, were infatuated by the ambition of reviving a style of art, which was valuable only if accompanied by the genius which invented it. They fashioned the body anew, but were unable to restore the soul. In the pictures of men of genius we see something great or lovely we cannot find elsewhere; the inferior works contain only a degenerated variety of the indigenous flower.

Invention is of no school, Academies can neither create nor destroy its finely-touched quality, and wherever it appears, wonder and delight rise to do it honour-a host of admirers, a swarm of imitators follow in its wake. The homage literally paid to CIMABUE, when he revived painting, and when the picture he first produced at Florence was carried from his house in procession to the Church of the Virgin, attended

by a band of performers on musical instruments, and amidst the loudest applauses of the citizens, is bestowed, in various degrees and diversity of manner, upon novelty of every kind. If the landscapes of CLAUDE, SALVATOR, OF TITIAN, REMBRANDT, and the POUSSINS, may be termed poetic-and who would withhold from them the beautiful epithet ?what phrase shall be applied to the ambitious and magnificent works of some of the landscape-painters of our own times and country? "One pursues the vast alone :" a daring ingenuity propels mechanism and science into the world of ideality-a gigantic conception is built up of infinitesimal particles-the fancy wanders uncontrolled amidst interminable architectural piles of poetic perspective, immeasurably multiplied and stretched to infinity-palace rises above palace, whose marble floor contains a city's entire population, whose golden roofs and battlements pierce beyond the highest of heaven's clouds:

"Not Babylon,

Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
Equall'd in all their glory, to inshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat

Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury.'

Innumerable touches of sparkling light, and splendid colour, express the movement of an army, the panic of Belshazzar's court, or the annihilation of a world. A sulphurous light indicates the immediate presence of an avenging or a protecting God, to smite Nineveh, or to aid Joshua by a miracle. Wonder-exciting, novel, comprehensive in design, minute and exact in detail, a series of biblical pictures appealed at once to the imagination, and the religious faith of the British public. Poetry in art was identified with the marvellous-the simplicity of nature was for the time superseded by the illusion of scenic splendour, as better illustrating the text of scripture, and the inventive powers of the fancy.

Much true poetic feeling, revealing itself in beautifully-painted landscape of a solemn tone of colouring, appropriate to subjects of awful sentiment, has been shown to us in the works of DANBY, being equally elevated in design with those alluded to above, and less equivocal in their claims upon the admiration of the connoisseur. Such are the grand pictures exhibited at the Academy, of The Destruction of Pharaoh's Host in the passage of the Red Sea, The Opening of the Sixth Seal, from Revelations, and Sunset after a Wreck at Sea.

A third, a still mightier master of the magical powers of landscape, whose genius disdains shadow as a source of excitement, radiates before the eye in a universal spread of sunshine. The sentiment of historical or poetical subject is unfolded by the visionary charm of atmospherical colour. Thus, in the large picture, which may be considered a chef-d'œuvre of the artist,* The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, the splendour, the luxury, the sinking grandeur of Carthage, are finely expressed by the brilliancy of the setting sun, which gilds with a transient lustre the architectural glories of the city, and beautifully illustrates the moral state of an enervated race. CLAUDE himself, in his most classic compositions, has not surpassed the great

This picture was exhibited at the Academy, in 1817. Will Mr. Turner test his reputation by that year's produce, or by his freaks of fancy in the last exhibition?