It was to Price that Knight
dedicated and addressed The Landscape, which appeared a few months
before Price's Essay on the Picturesque. There was much in common
between the two friends and they shared an enthusiasm for picturesque
gardening and its inspiration from painting. What separates them
may be gathered, as Humphry Repton suggested, from their respective
gardens: Knight's Downton Vale (Plate 97) realized his cherished
visions of Rosa in an `awful precipice' and the `wild but pleasant
horrors' of its valley; Price's place at Foxley (Plate 98), although
romantically situated, admitted `some little sacrifice of picturesque
beauty to neatness, near the house'. Price was accordingly more
flexible than his friend. He was also more committed to making the
picturesque aesthetic precise and definite. He chose to distinguish
it from Burke's categories of the beautiful and the sublime, as
the extracts here show, but this argument was not without its awkwardnesses;
one reason that he encountered difficulties was because, unlike
Knight's Analytical Inquiry, he chose to find the quality of beauty
or the picturesque or sublime in the object rather than in the spectator's
eye and imagination.
- Editor's Note, Hunt and Willis, The Genius of the Place
from An Essay on the Picturesque (1794)
We are therefore to profit by the experience contained in pictures,
but not to content ourselves with that experience only; nor are
we to consider even those of the highest class as absolute and infallible
standards, but as the best and only ones we have; as compositions,
which, like those of the great classical authors, have been consecrated
by long uninterrupted admiration, and which therefore have a similar
claim to influence our judgment, and to form our taste in all that
is within their province. These are the reasons for studying copies
of nature, though the original is before us, that
we may not lose the benefit of what is of such great moment in all
arts and sciences, the accumulated experience of past ages; and,
with respect to the art of improving, we may look upon pictures
as a set of experiments of the different ways in which trees, buildings,
water, &c. may be disposed, grouped, and accompanied in
the most beautiful and striking manner, and in every style, from
the most simple and rural to the grandest and most ornamental: many
of those objects, that are scarcely marked as they lie scattered
over the face of nature, when brought together in the compass of
a small space of canvas, are forcibly impressed upon the eye, which
by that means learns how to separate, to select, and combine ...
No one, I believe, has yet been daring enough
to improve a picture of Claude, or at least to acknowledge it; but
I do not think it extravagant to suppose that a man, thoroughly
persuaded, from his own taste, and from the authority of such a
writer as Mr. Walpole, that an art, unknown to every age and climate,
that of creating landscapes, had advanced with master-steps to vigorous
perfection; that enough had been done to establish such a school
of landscape as cannot be found in the rest of the globe; and that
Milton's description of Paradise seems to have been copied from
some piece of modern gardening; --- that such a man, full of enthusiasm
for this new art, and with little veneration for that of painting,
should chuse to shew the world what Claude might have been, had
he had the advantage of seeing the works of Mr. Brown. The only
difference he would make between improving a picture and a real
scene, would be that of employing a painter instead of a gardener.
What would more immediately strike him would
be the total want of that leading feature of all modern improvements,
the clump; and of course he would order several of them to be placed
in the most conspicuous spots, with, perhaps, here and there a patch
of larches, as forming a strong contrast, in shape and colour, to
the Scotch firs. --- His eye, which had been used to see even the
natural groupes of trees in improved places made as separate and
clump-like as possible, would be shocked to see those of Claude,
some quite surrounded, some half concealed by bushes and thickets;
others standing alone, but, by means of those thickets, or of detached
trees, connected with other groupes of various sizes and shapes.
All this rubbish must be cleared away, the ground made every where
quite smooth and level, and each groupe left upon the grass perfectly
distinct and separate. --- Having been accustomed to whiten all
distant buildings, those of Claude, from the effect of his soft
vapoury atmosphere, would appear to him too indistinct; the painter
of course would be ordered to give them a smarter appearance, which
might possibly be communicated to the nearer buildings also. ---
Few modern houses or ornamental buildings are so placed among trees,
and partially hid by them, as to conceal much of the skill of the
architect, or the expence of the possessor; but in Claude, not only
ruins, but temples and palaces, are often so mixed with trees, that
the tops over-hang their balustrades, and the luxuriant branches
shoot between the openings of their magnificent columns and porticos:
as he would not suffer his own buildings to be so masked, neither
would he those of Claude; and these luxuriant boughs, and all that
obstructed a full view of them, the painter would be told to expunge,
and carefully to restore the ornaments they had hid. --- The last
finishing both to places and pictures is water: in Claude it partakes
of the general softness and dressed appearance of his scenes, and
the accompaniments have, perhaps, less of rudeness, than in any
other master; yet, compared with those of a piece of made water,
or of an improved river, his banks are perfectly savage; parts of
them covered with trees and bushes that hang over the water; and
near the edge of it tussucks of rushes, large stones, and stumps;
the ground sometimes smooth, sometimes broken and abrupt, and seldom
keeping, for a long space, the same level from the water: no curves
that answer each other; no resem¬blance, in short, to what he
had been used to admire; a few strokes of the painter's brush would
reduce the bank on each side to one level, to one green; would make
curve answer curve, without bush or tree to hinder the eye from
enjoying the uniform smoothness and verdure, and from pursuing,
without interruption, the continued sweep of these serpentine lines;
--- a little cleaning and polishing of the fore-ground would give
the last touches of improvement, and complete the picture.
There is not a person in the smallest degree
conversant with painting, who would not, at the same time, be shocked
and diverted at the black spots and the white spots, --- the naked
water, --- the naked buildings, --- the scattered unconnected groupes
of trees, and all the gross and glaring violations of every principle
of the art; and yet this, without any exaggeration, is the method
in which many scenes, worthy of Claude's pencil, have been improved.
Is it then possible to imagine that the beauties of imitation should
be so distinct from those of reality, nay, so completely at variance,
that what disgraces and makes a picture ridiculous, should become
ornamental when applied to nature ? ...
IT seems to me, that the neglect, which prevails
in the works of modern improvers, of all that is picturesque, is
owing to their exclusive attention to high polish and flowing lines,
the charms of which they are so engaged in contemplating, as to
make them overlook two of the most fruitful sources of human pleasure;
the first, that great and universal source of pleasure, variety,
whose power is independent of beauty, but without which even beauty
itself soon ceases to please; the other, intricacy, a quality which,
though distinct from variety, is so connected and blended with it,
that the one can hardly exist without the other.
According to the idea I have formed of it, intricacy
in landscape might be defined, that disposition of objects which,
by a partial and uncertain con¬cealment, excites and nourishes
curiosity. Variety can hardly require a definition, though, from
the practice of many layers-out of ground, one might suppose it
did. Upon the whole, it appears to me, that as intricacy in the
disposition, and variety in the forms, the tints, and the lights
and shadows of objects, are the great characteristics of picturesque
scenery; so monotony and baldness are the greatest defects of improved
places ...
PICTURESQUENESS, therefore, appears to hold a
station between beauty and sublimity; and on that account, perhaps,
is more frequently and more happily blended with them both than
they are with each other. It is, however, perfectly distinct from
either; and first, with respect to beauty, it is evident, from all
that has been said, that they are founded on very opposite qualities;
the one on smoothness, the other on roughness; --- the one on gradual,
the other on sudden variation; --- the one on ideas of youth and
freshness, the other on that of age, and even of decay ...
These are the principal circumstances by which
the picturesque is separa¬ted from the beautiful. It is equally
distinct from the sublime; for though there are some qualities common
to them both, yet they differ in many essential points, and proceed
from very different causes. In the first place, greatness of dimension
is a powerful cause of the sublime; the picturesque has no connection
with dimension of any kind (in which it differs from the beautiful
also) and is as often found in the smallest as in the largest objects.
--- The sublime being founded on principles of awe and terror, never
descends to any thing light or playful; the picturesque, whose characteristics
are intricacy and variety, is equally adapted to the grandest and
to the gayest scenery. --- Infinity is one of the most efficient
causes of the sublime; the boundless ocean, for that reason, inspires
awful sensations: to give it pictur¬esqueness you must destroy
that cause of its sublimity; for it is on the shape and disposition
of its boundaries that the picturesque in great measure must depend.
Uniformity (which is so great an enemy to the
picturesque) is not only compatible with the sublime, but often
the cause of it. That general equal gloom which is spread over all
nature before a storm, with the stillness so nobly described by
Shakespear, is in the highest degree sublime. The picturesque requires
greater variety, and does not shew itself till the dreadful thunder
has rent the region, has tossed the clouds into a thousand towering
forms, and opened (as it were) the recesses of the sky. A blaze
of light un¬mixed with shade, on the same principles, tends
to the sublime only: Milton has placed light, in its most glorious
brightness, as an inaccessible barrier round the throne of the Almighty:
For God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity.
And such is the power he has given even to its
diminished splendor,
That the brightest seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
In one place, indeed, he has introduced very
picturesque circumstances in his sublime representation of the deity;
but it is of the deity in wrath, --- it is when from the weakness
and narrowness of our conceptions we give the names and the effects
of our passions to the all-perfect Creator:
And clouds began
To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll
In dusky wreaths reluctant flames, the sign
Of wrath awk’d.
In general, however, where the glory, power,
or majesty of God are represented, he has avoided that variety of
form and of colouring which might take off from simple and uniform
grandeur, and has encompassed the divine essence with unapproached
light, or with the majesty of darkness.
Again, (if we descend to earth) a perpendicular
rock of vast bulk and height, though bare and unbroken, --- a deep
chasm under the same circumstances, are objects that produce awful
sensations; but without some variety and intricacy, either in themselves
or their accompaniments, they will not be picturesque. --- Lastly,
a most essential difference between the two characters is, that
the sublime by its solemnity takes off from the loveliness of beauty,
whereas the picturesque renders it more captivating.
According to Mr. Burke, the passion caused by
the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most
powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the
soul in which all its motions are suspended with some degree of
horror: the sublime also, being founded on ideas of pain and terror,
like them operates by stretching the fibres beyond their natural
tone. The passion excited by beauty is love and complacency; it
acts by relaxing the fibres somewhat below their natural tone, and
this is accom¬panied by an inward sense of melting and languor.
Whether this account of the effects of sublimity and beauty be strictly
philosophical, has, I believe, been questioned, but whether the
fibres, in such cases, are really stretched or relaxed, it presents
a lively image of the sensa¬tions often produced by love and
astonishment. To pursue the same train of ideas, I may add, that
the effect of the picturesque is curiosity; an effect which, though
less splendid and powerful, has a more general influence; it neither
relaxes nor violently stretches the fibres, but by its active agency
keeps them to their full tone, and thus, when mixed with either
of the other characters, corrects the langour of beauty, or the
horror of sublimity. But as the nature of every corrective must
be to take off from the peculiar effect of what it is to correct,
so does the picturesque when united to either of the others. It
is the coquetry of nature; it makes beauty more amusing, more varied,
more playful, but also,
"Less winning soft, less amiably mild."
Again, by its variety, its intricacy, its partial
concealments, it excites that active curiosity which gives play
to the mind, loosening those iron bonds with which astonishment
chains up its faculties.
Where characters, however distinct in their
nature, are perpetually mixed together in such various degrees and
manners, it is not always easy to draw the exact line of separation:
I think, however, we may conclude, that where an object, or a set
of objects, is without smoothness or grandeur, but from its intricacy,
its sudden and irregular deviations, its variety of forms, tints,
and lights and shadows, is interesting to a cultivated eye, it is
simply picturesque; such, for instance, are the rough banks that
often enclose a bye-road or a hollow lane: Imagine the size of these
banks and the space between them to be increased till the lane becomes
a deep dell, --- the coves large caverns, --- the peeping stones
hanging rocks, so that the whole may impress an idea of awe and
grandeur; --- the sublime will then be mixed with the picturesque,
though the scale only, not the style of the scenery, would be changed.
On the other hand, if parts of the banks were smooth and gently
sloping, --- or the middle space a soft close-bitten turf, --- or
if a gentle stream passed between them, whose clear unbroken surface
reflected all their varieties, --- the beautiful and the picturesque,
by means of that softness and smoothness, would then be united.
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