I Have
Heard That Powers, Who Possesses Great Mechanical Skill, Has Devised
Several Methods Of His Own For Giving Precision And Perfection To The
Execution Of His Works.
It may be that my unlearned eyes are dazzled by
this perfection, but really I can not imagine any thing more beautiful of
its kind than his statue of the Greek slave.
Gray is at this moment in Florence, though he is soon coming to Rome. He
has made some copies from Titian, one of which I saw. It was a Madonna and
child, in which the original painting was rendered with all the fidelity
of a mirror. So indisputably was it a Titian, and so free from the
stiffness of a copy, that, as I looked at it, I fully sympathized with
the satisfaction expressed by the artist at having attained the method of
giving with ease the peculiarity of coloring which belongs to Titian's
pictures.
An American landscape painter of high merit is G. L. Brown, now residing
at Florence. He possesses great knowledge of detail, which he knows how to
keep in its place, subduing it, and rendering it subservient to the
general effect. I saw in his studio two or three pictures, in which I
admired his skill in copying the various forms of foliage and other
objects, nor was I less pleased to see that he was not content with this
sort of merit, but, in going back from the foreground, had the art of
passing into that appearance of an infinity of forms and outlines which
the eye meets with in nature. I could not help regretting that one who
copied nature so well, should not prefer to represent her as she appears
in our own fresh and glorious land, instead of living in Italy and
painting Italian landscapes.
To refer again to foreign artists - before I left Florence I visited the
annual exhibition which had been opened in the Academy of the Fine Arts.
There were one or two landscapes reminding me somewhat of Cole's manner,
but greatly inferior, and one or two good portraits, and two or three
indifferent historical pictures. The rest appeared to me decidedly bad;
wretched landscapes; portraits, some of which were absolutely hideous,
stiff, ill-colored, and full of grimace.
Here at Rome, we have an American sculptor of great ability, Henry K.
Brown, who is just beginning to be talked about. He is executing a statue
of Ruth gleaning in the field of Boaz, of which the model has been ready
for some months, and is also modelling a figure of Rebecca at the Well.
When I first saw his Ruth I was greatly struck with it, but after visiting
the studios of Wyatt and Gibson, and observing their sleek imitations of
Grecian art, their learned and faultless statues, nymphs or goddesses or
gods of the Greek mythology, it was with infinite pleasure that my eyes
rested again on the figure and face of Ruth, perhaps not inferior in
perfection of form, but certainly informed with a deep human feeling which
I found not in their elaborate works.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 109 of 206
Words from 56138 to 56656
of 107287
