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pt ^ ve ntii&tt t both riiind and hfe&ri * The love paintings fe akin to the love of nature ; it acts upon the mind in a similar mariner and in the same direction . The one , like the other , tends to purify arid refine , and , through the senses , works its * way to the imagination and the feelings , The pleasure arising
from the arrangement of colours , with all their * gradations , harmonies , and contrasts , and from forms , with their proportions and their grouping , is the same in both . And while painting holds nature with one hand , she takes history by the other . It is by her grid that we attain the power of mentally realizing the
recorded scenes of past ages , though those particular events may nevef have been the subjects of the art . Nor cin we but feel an elevating power in that idealization to which all truly great masters have ever been addicted . It is immaterial whether they painted heroes and dernigods , or saints , prophets , and martyrs ; the effect of such forms is to raise our conception of that humanity which they display in a state approaching towards its perfection . They make us feel , even with all its physicality , arid by means of its ,, physical
appearance , how divine a thing our nature is ; and man must be the purer , the nobler , and the happier for that feeling . With a religion of antiquity and of history- —a religion of national vicissitude and individual example—a religion of supernatural events arid oriental scenery—a religion of human emotions , hopes , arid actions , there is peculiar propriety in Christians availing them *
selves of the pictorial art , and employing an influence which possesses so much of congeniality and affinity with their theology . While we have spent some pleasant hours hi Exeter Hall contemplating the first attempt of this description which has beet } made , we tiiust also confess that , on two accounts , we experienced disappointment . The plan of the Exhibition is either too confined or too comprehensive to produce all the enjoymetst
Which might have been anticipated . By the principle of exclusion which has been adopted , we are deprived of many produdtioris , which would not only have been welcome fbi * the sake of relief and variety , but w 6 uld have perfectly harmonised In theif influence with the best of those which have been collected . Th 0 unity to which this pleasure is sacrificed has tibt been attained , The subjects of these paintings not only range through all ages , from patriarchal adventure to Catholic legend , but of some of
them the spirit is worse than questionable , and the harmony of tendency is as thoroughly destroyed , as if we encountered th ^ forms of Mars arid Apolfo , Hercules and Ad oft is , side by side With prophets , saints , and afigels . \ Oar 6 ther source of disappointment arose fram the inferiority of execution in many paintings to which the catalogue affixes Illustrious names , and names which have not hitherto been accustomed to break fti < 5 if promise to dtif hflp&L We do not Mea 4 i t ^ say , that fctty painting k not the original which it professes to he ,
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of ef Eteter Mil Exhibition of Paintings . aW
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 339, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/51/
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