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Untitled Article
Again , it is the body of man awaiting the descent of Deity to * breathe into it a living soul ; ' and the smile on the lips is but the reflection of the Spirit of Good rejoicing in the perfection of his glorious creation . * In the image of God created he him . 'We thirst for another draught from that delicious picture . There is nothing earthy about it . It is pure water from a crystal fountain . In the * Sc £ ne du deluge , ' by the same artist , some of the faults of the French school show themselves . The lives of three
generations ( and two over , for there are a grandfather , and husband , and wife , and two children ) are made to depend on one single branch of a tree . The subject is , nevertheless , powerfully dealt with . Their hope is failing them , though the tree is not splitting suddenly , but like a damp , tough , hardy oak bough , peeling and untwisting , and you know that that group of living beings
must inevitably be hurled to death in the gulf below . There is a terrible power in the strong agony in the face of the husband , and the agony of strength in the body . He is pulling at arm ' s-length his wife , who has two children clinging to her , up a precipice ; the other arm grasps for support at the failing branch ; meanwhile on his shoulders is seated the old man and his money bags . He hears the shrieks of his wife and the cries of his children on one side .
answered by the helpless , yielding , creaking tree on the other . Above and all around are the black remorseless heavens , and below a fathomless abyss of waters . But with all this , terrible as it is , there is a soil of ingenuity about it , a contrivance to make so many beings depend one after the other upon another , bringing them at last to the one oak bough , that will remind you , in its continuity of objects tending to a single point , of ' this is the house
that Jack built ! ' Good reader , do not upbraid us with hardness of heart;—look at the picture , and you will find that it is not we who are unfeeling , but that the artist has taken ' the one step . * — You are always stopped in your admiration of the modern French school by the words ' exaggeration , defective colouring , want of proportion , ' &c , &c , faults undoubtedly , but not to be compared
to the total absence of soul or expression which are found in conjunction with fine colouring and perfect anatomy , and held up to universal admiration . And colouring , after all , what is it ? Not all the colours that ever glowed upon canvass , were ever half so bright as the holly-hocks in a cottage garden . Not all the flowers that ever wantoned in the breeze or lifted up their pretty heads in
the sunshine , exquisite creatures though they be , ever produced so deep an impression as one strong human emotion vividly depicted by the art of the painter . And form ? We hate your people who while you ask them to admire a piece of poetry that comes from the canvass like a sunbeam , coolly answer , 'Yes , —but look at that little toe on the left foot , don ' t you think the nail is too large ! And then they send you to Kubens to study * breadth . ' Capital scope , certainly . And yet he was a
Untitled Article
844 A National Gallery .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 844, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/40/
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