Never Tell Me That The _Old_ Masters Have
Exhausted The World Of Landscape Painting, At Any Rate.
Am I not
competent to judge because I am not an artist?
What! do not all
persons feel themselves competent to pronounce on the merits of
natural landscapes, and say which of two scenes is finer? And are
painters any greater artists than God? If they say that we are not
competent to judge, because we do not understand the mixing of colors,
the mysteries of foreshortening, and all that, I would ask them if
they understand how God mixes his colors? "Canst thou understand the
balancing of the clouds? the wondrous ways of Him who is perfect in
wisdom?" If, therefore, I may dare to form a judgment of God's
originals, I also will dare to judge of man's imitations. Nobody shall
impose old, black, smoky Poussins and Salvator Rosas on me, and so
insult my eyesight and common sense as to make me confess they are
better than pictures which I can see have all the freshness and bloom
of the living reality upon them.
So, also, a most glorious picture here. The Trial of John Huss before
the Council of Constance, by Lessing - one of the few things I have
seen in painting which have had power deeply to affect me. I have it
not in my heart to criticize it as a mere piece of coloring and
finish, though in these respects I thought it had great merits. But
the picture had the power, which all high art must have, of rebuking
and silencing these minor inquiries in the solemnity of its
_morale_. I believe the highest painter often to be the subject
of a sort of inspiration, by which his works have a vitality of
suggestion, so that they sometimes bring to the beholder even more
than he himself conceived when he created them.
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