Butte record., 1854-11-18
HISTORICAL PAINTING AND
SCULPTURE.

Mr.. RusBin in his Lectures on Archi-
lecture and Painting" very satisfacto
rily exposes the humbug and futility o
the modern idealstic schools. We rec
ommend his remarks TO all who feel al
inter- st in matters of art We have al
ways fit that their productions Were
cheats upon posterify and libels upon the
practical sense of our own age.
What do you at present man by his
orical painting: Nowadays, it means
the end avoring, by the power Of imagi-
nation, to portray some historical event
Of past IS. But in the middle ages.
meant representing the acts of t 'eir OWE
DAYS; and that is the only historical
painting worth a straw. OF all the wastes
time and sense which modernism has
inv mt -d--and they are many-none ar
so ridiculous as this endeavor to repre-
sent past hi tory. Whit d. you sup
pose our descendants will care for our
ina oginaii0as IF the egtnts of former
days? Sup ose the Greeks instead of
repr,s ntii G their own wa Tiors as they
fought at Nara hon, had left us nothing
but their imagipationS Of Egyptian ba =
ties; and suppose the lt@Eans, in like
manner, instead of portraits of Can
Grande and Dante, or of L~o the Tenth
and Raphael, had left us nothing but
ima nary portraits of Pericles and Mil
Tia es Whit fools We should have
t ht them: how bitterly we should
have Ieen provoked with their folly =
And that is prC cisely what our C nd
nts will feel towards u, so far as our
grand Historical and classical schools are
concerned. What d. we care, they will
say, what those nj eteenth Century
people faucied about Crock and Roman
history Ii they had left us few plain
and rational sculpiu es ard pictures Of
Il cir own bat les and their own men, in
their ever day dress, we should have
thanked them. Well, but, you will say,
we have # them portraits Of our great
men, and paintings Of our great bltlles
Yes YOU hive indeed, and that is the
only historical painting that you either
have Or can have bat you don't call
that historical painting. You don't thank
the men who do it you look down upon
them and dissu ida them from it, and tell
them they don't belong to the " grand
Schools And yet they are the only
'rue historical painters, and the only
men who will produce any effect on their
own get Grafton. or on any other. Wilkie
was an histo riCal painter, Chantrey an
historical sculpture, because they pa Mt
ed or carved the veritable things and
men they saw, not men and things as
they believed they might have been or
should have been But no one tells such
men they are historical painters, and
they are Discontinued Nth what they do,
md poor Wilkie must needs travel to
see the grand school, and initiate the
grand school, and ruin himself. And YOU
nave had multitudes Of other painters
ruined, from the beginning, by that grand
school. There was Efty, naturally as
good a p inter as ever lived, but no one
told him what to paint, and he studied
the antique, and the grand schools, and
painted dances of nymphs in red and
yellow shawls to the end of his days
Much good may they do you He is
gone TO the grave, lost mind. There
was Flaxman. another naturally great
man, with as true an eye for nature as
Raph@l-he stumbles over the blocks of
the ant que wanders in the
dirk valley Of their ruins to the onI of
his days. lie has left You few outlines
Of muscular m n straddling and irowning
behind round shields. Much good may
this do you. Another lost mind, And Of
tho C who are lost namelessly. who have
not strength enough even to make them
selves known, the roor pale students
who lie buried forever in the abysses of
the great schools, no account can b. rem
dered they are numberless. And the
wonderful thing Is, that of all those grca
men whom you nnw have CONT to cal
the great masters, there was not one
who couftssed,v did not paint his own
present world, plainly and truly. Homer
sang what he saw Phidias carved what
he saw Raphael painted the men of
his own time in tleir own caps and man
ties and every man who has arisen to
fminence in modern times has done so
by working in their wavs, and doing the
things he saw. How did Reynolds ise:
Not by painting Greek women, but bv
painting the glorions little Ladies this,