New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1882-05-14

and methods must surely be able to bring him in'o
some sort Of relation TO art itself. Lot MN ''no
| warning by Mr.. Hamcrton's own iahoio "
profit in the least rs an artist by his own So u,
! nsly complete apparatus of art-iearhihs,
a,tbor of " Etching and Etchers" is chlidishiy III
capahe of producing an etching that can DC caiieu
respectable For indeed is there any reason peic'e
| hand why we sholld expect theory anu p'"''''V "
70 together in his case more than IN any o'u.f' Du,
| for ali that IL is somehow natnral 10 DC u''0
into thinking that the knowledge of how other pso-
rI, have worked can help us to work like them, or,
| at least TO work 10 p-oft. How many artists nave
wasted their time and distorted their own native
talent in hurting the will O the wsp of Titans Sc
crot-l II seems 10 Us that aithis talk in Mr. Hamer
toms book in his cLaptar on Painting in OIL aoout
the ralettes and ths methods" OF palnters-o'"
masters and modern Ones-iS worse tlah -so
| less, il is absolutely misleading. fut h'O ,io
hands Of Tom Dick, or Harry the pa!et'e se' W
Titan or RubeGscan the most dligent risc OF tha'
palette mako a Titan or q Rubeps Of the boy Nay,
if he persist in using it, will he not be sure 10 rln
his own future a paiuterf Ii is une 'na' MI
tIamcrton nowhere says nor even implies 'haI INC
knowledge how n great artist set hls paIe''e can
make another man an artist Wear only ourselves
warning the young reader of snch clever pook as
this against taking it too seriously thinking the
on his way to the mastery of art Tor himself "o
have jrSt been reading how own Copiey worried
himself for years in the search for Iitians secret
1t is pitiful 10 read it, for what couId Me-
hard, mechanical man Of talent as be was
have done with it, had he found i'll Alsion, III 'he
same way, dreamed of the secret, and perhaps was
sometimes half-pcrsuaded by his friends to believe
that he had found it. man of much native talent
the late Henry Peter Gray. was haunted oil his iile
by the longing. and wasted his tine IN the pro-
duction Of pictures that might have been good
Grays had the artist been content to follow his own
motions. but which. IT turned out were nothing
better than poor parodies of Titians way OF dong
it."
The chapter in this book that we had expected to
find most interesting, that on " Wood Engraving"
is very thin and unsatisfactory. Mr.. Hamerton Is,
it seems to us. unjust to Bcwick. He does not H.
deed deny him the of artist but he says, more
than once that he has been exalted too
high as an artist which would be all very well If
Mr.. Hamertcn did not go to give, as usual, his
very easy reason for the falSity Of the estimate.
"Theyn lhis admirers) rank him too high" he
says, because he never saw things ID tbelr true
relation to another, because he had no concep-
ton of visual effect he could take bird or fish
and copy its feathers or its scales and give quite
accurately the beautiful curves of its outline but
he had 10 make a group and set it in a landscape,
he had no other notion of managing such piece Of
work than simply doing one thing after another, as
if each had been alone" lie speaks in precisely the
same way of Albert Durer: HE never drew things
in their mutual relations as we see them when
we see several things at once; he drew first
one thing, as If it had been isolated
object and then another thing till his paper plate
was covered" The answer TO this is that this was
Bewick's way, and this was Durer's way, and that
if we are simply to make artistic greatness depend
on conformity we shall have pretty account to set
tie with the world. This was the way these men had
of thinking or rather of expressing their thinking,
and they shared it In common with their time, or
with their counrymen, VIC should say, because we
often find different ways of doing things contem-
poraneous in different countIies-as Durer ard
Raphael, the antIpodes of each other In artistic
treatment. though each recognized,when they came
to see each others work, the genius of the other.
No doubt there are hundreds of inferior artists
to-day who understand the laws of synthesis and
the rules of composition better than Durer Giotto
or Hobein, Just as there are plenty of poets who
serve as bombast to our Sunday newspapers and
MAGAZINES who understand the laws" better than
Homer or Dante, but their knowledge does not
make them better poets. Just so Mr.. HamertOn dis
credits himself by saying that Raphael was not
painter-and ten fifteen years ago there was
notion of that sort going-but who painted the
Portrait of q Lady" in the Tribune. and the
Portrait of julius IL" and Mr.. Morris Moore's
Apollo and Marsyas" = Are these merely " draw
incs deicately painted" only painted drawing in
which the design is colored exactly on the same
principle as the colored wOodcuts made at
Epinal for Children though of course with
far superior skll"Y Purer Phistlnism than this
would be hard to find, yet we have only to reInem-
Der that the writer Of these sentences Is the same,
who can write of Landseer as painter with respect
" He was a slight but very brilliant painter, who
had gained absolute mastery over bis particu
lar kind of art. With Titan he had nothing to do.
but YOU NAV trace his descent from Rubens" Facils
desccns,s indeed And, further on" the painting
even Of Raphael and Leonardo is unripe though not
their drawings the painting of Titan and Velasquez
is ripe amongmoderns the work of Landsecr is quite
ripe in its own KIND though it is not rich fruit
etc. etc" Now ask TO what good end is all
this writngY How it ccnfuses the mind of the
learner! Surely tho work of mon like Raphael,
Durer Hobein, and even Bewck was "quite ripe
in its own kind" and no good comes of writing so
as to make it appear if that kind not pre-
cious kind, if greatness were inconsistent with
the practice of any great man. How easy ii would
be to turn the table and to show that if the paint
ing of the early Italians be ridiculed by com
pairing it to cheap painted w0od-cuts sold at
try fairs the glorious painting of Velasquez can
be rdiculed as truthfully by comparing it to the
daubing Of a country house-painter on n sign.
Some of the finest minds of our day look upon the
painting of Raphael and Leonardo, of Durcr and of
Holbcin as the highest attainment in the art
of painting, and so it is In its kind,
but our position is that that kind
is no way inferior, in large-minded
way of looking at the subject, to the painting of
VelasQuez.. and Titan and Rubcns, in its kind. Mr.
Rnskin says of Bewick: The execution Of the
pluInage in Bewck's birds is the most mastery
thing ever yet done in wood cutting it is worked