minds that Mr. Ruskin's criticism' on this theory of Sir Joshua's,-which makes the essential characteristic of the grand style to be the avoidance of temporary and local circumstances and precise details-is sound and searching, and that his own definition of the grand style is as much superior to that of Sir Joshua in comprehensiveness and sound philosophy as it is in the eloquence of its expression.

Mr. Ruskin defines the grand style by four characteristics :

1st. Choice of noble subject.

2nd. Introduction into the conception of the subject of as much beauty as is consistent with truth.

3rd. Inclusion of the largest possible quantity of truth in the most perfect possible harmony.

4th. Inventiveness: that is, the work must be produced by the imagination.

The direction of the President's reasoning may however be at once explained, and in some degree justified, by the fact that he was speaking at a time when very low and unworthy ideas on art prevailed, and when there was a tendency to prize works of minute and puerile imitation far beyond their true value.

Sir Joshua's third Discourse, if read as a protest against the undue exaltation of the petty and trivial in detail, is full of useful warning and guidance to the student.

He expressly guards himself against the charge of depreciating good works in styles below the highest. "None of them," he admits, "are without their merit,

1 In his 'Modern Painters,' vol. iii. chap. i.-ED.

though none enter into competition with this universal presiding idea of the art.' The painters who have applied themselves more particularly to low and vulgar characters, and who express with precision the various shades of passion as they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the works of Hogarth), deserve great praise; but as their genius has been employed on low and confined subjects, the praise which we give must be as confined as its object. The merrymakings or quarrellings of the boors of Teniers, the same sort of productions of Brouwer or Ostade, are excellent in their kind, and the excellence and its praise will be in proportion as in their limited subjects and peculiar forms they introduce more or less of the expression of those passions as they appear in general and more enlarged nature. This principle may be applied to the battle-pieces of Bourgognone, the French gallantries of Watteau, and, even beyond the exhibition of animal life, to the landscapes of Claude Lorraine and the sea-views of Vandevelde. All these painters have, in general, the same right, in different degrees, to the name of a painter which a satirist, an epigrammatist, a sonnetteer, a writer of pastorals or descriptive poetry, has to that of a poet."

We may surely ask, on this, what would be the worth of any definition of poetry which should exclude from the rank of poet Horace, Juvenal, Dryden, Theocritus, Thomson, and Wordsworth? Sir Joshua, in fact, throughout his Discourse, confines the name of painter to the

1erve the looseness of this lan- competition with "a universal preool or style brought into I siding idea.”—ED.

painter of one class of subjects only-the high historical and religious or what he calls "the great mode of painting." To hold this up as an object of pursuit to all students alike, whatever their bent or calibre, may be in a certain sense the best mode of dignifying the art; but I must be excused for doubting if it be the most profitable and soundest teaching.

1771, ætat. 48.-[The vehement political passions of the time continued still unfavourable to the arts, if I

referred to in the note on the practice | pretty sure we shall find every Sir of 1769.

Haydon remarks of this method, "Fine proceeding;" and Beechey remarks, “This, it seems, was his most approved method-no yellow till the last colouring."

Another note, of Feb. 6th, is descriptive of the same mode, with some alteration:

"Olio. 1st. Biacca e nero. "2nd. Biacca e lacca.

Joshua which has passed through the hands of an ordinary cleaner. But restorers of experience and principle are well acquainted with Sir Joshua's method, and never use spirits or solvents on his pictures. They content themselves with restoring the surface, where it has cracked, or is flaking off.

"May, 1770. My own picture. Canvas unprimed, cera finito con vernice.” The Dilettanti picture. In fine con

"3rd. Lacca e giallo e nero, senza dition. biacca, in capivi."

"The Nisæan nymph with Bacchus, principiato con cera sola, finita con cera e capivi, per causa it cracked. Do. St. John. Offe fatta interamenti con cap. e cera. Testa sopra un fondo preparato con olio e biacca.

Lady Melbourne. Do. sopra una tela di fondo" (on unprimed cloth). Sir Charles Eastlake remarks on this note,

"These are all glazing colours," says Beechey. The method, in which Sir Joshua, when he made the first memorandum on the 22nd of January, thought himself confirmed, but which he had already modified by the 6th of February, is very distinctly indicated. 1st painting, A modelling up of the head in black and white and ultramarine (which last disappears in Feb- "When wax alone was used underruary). 2nd, The same colours (with neath, a more resinous medium being lake, in February). 3rd, Application employed above, the surface was liable of lake, yellow, black, and ultramarine to crack. With this example 'Offe's (the last abandoned in February) as a picture' (already described as 'painted glaze, in copaiba varnish, without with cera e copaiba solo, cinabro,' i. e. white, and a final re-touching with finally glazed with vermilion) appears white and the other colours. to be contrasted, that work having Beechey observes on the first me- been painted with wax and copaiba morandum : from the first."

"His vehicle was oil or balsam of copaiba. His colours were only black, ultramarine, and white, so that he finished his picture entirely in black and white, all but glazing-no red or yellow till the last, which was used in glazing, and that was mixed with Venice turpentine (the resin of the larch) and wax as a varnish. Take off that, and his pictures return to black and wd "te."

But though the surface would not crack from unequal drying, Beechey remarks that a picture "painted in balsam of copaiba and wax, upon an oil-ground, must crack and peel off in no time." And so it would, as the colours, with this waxy-resinous vehicle, would not incorporate with the oilground. The colouring matter lies in a dry film or coat on the ground, and is liable to be detached by the slightest latter state we may be accident. I have seen many of Sir

may judge by the list of Sir Joshua's sitters, which is as scanty this year as last. Probably the great rush of sitters in earlier years had something to do with the falling off apparent about this time. Success and fortune, too, may have indisposed the painter to the intense labour of former times. He might also, as is suggested by Barry, be himself desirous, at this period, of giving less time to portraits, and more to imaginative designs. Romney had, perhaps, already risen into something more like rivalry than Reynolds had yet been destined

"This," says Beechey, "is a landscape of his, in possession of Sir George Phillips (now of Mr. Baring), which appears to be painted without red-I suppose from Richmond Hill.”

With reference to the cracking of the Nisaan nymph-which is only an example of what too often occurred with

Joshua's pictures which have suffered from this cause; and when so injured, it is common to have them re-lined, in which process, if the utmost care be not employed, the use of hot irons behind to reunite the new and old canvases affects the wax vehicle, and destroys all the sharpness and brilliancy of the handling. Mr. Barker, of Wel-Sir Joshua's pictures-Sir C. Eastlake lington Terrace, St. John's Wood, has quotes from Mérimée (De la Peinture in his possession the canvases on which à l'Huile, p. 102):— Sir Joshua has tried various combina- "Cracks take place whenever the tions of colours and vehicles, with dates inner colours of the painting remain of their application. Mr. Barker pos- soft when the external layer is dry. sesses a hereditary knowledge of Sir Let drying-oil, for example, be thickly Joshua's methods, and I believe may spread on a canvas: it will be very safely be trusted with his pictures. soon dry on its surface. Let white Mr. Haines is another highly trust-lead be painted upon this: the colour worthy cleaner. Mr. Morell has re- will sink in, and will dry the sooner, lined with perfect success Lady because a portion of the oil which it Elizabeth Herbert and her son (at contained quits it to combine with the Highclere), having detached the drying-oil of the inner layer. In this painted surface entirely from the state of things, if the atmosphere be original canvas, to which it had hardly warm enough for the materials to exthe slightest adhesion. Mr. Farrer's pand, the layer of white will crack. restoration of the portrait of John The expansive tendency of the oil unHunter, however, is perhaps the derneath is greater than that of the greatest triumph of care and skill in white. When these conditions are rethis kind.-Ed. versed, when the softer layer is uppermost, it will, if it contain much oil, become wrinkled or shrivelled on the surface."-ED.

"June 12, 1770. Paese, senza rosso, con giallo, nero, e turchino (Prussian blue), e biacca."