Lectures on Art by Washington Allston
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14 Lectures on Art
By
Washington Allston
Edited by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
MDCCCL.
Preface by the Editor.
Upon the death of Mr. Allston, it was determined, by those who had
charge of his papers, to prepare his biography and correspondence, and
publish them with his writings in prose and verse; a work which would
have occupied two volumes of about the same size with the present. A
delay has unfortunately occurred in the preparation of the biography
and correspondence; and, as there have been frequent calls for a
publication of his poems, and of the Lectures on Art he is known to
have written, it has been thought best to give them to the public in
the present form, without awaiting the completion of the whole
design. It may be understood, however, that, when the biography
and correspondence are published, it will be in a volume precisely
corresponding with the present, so as to carry out the original
design.
I will not anticipate the duty of the biographer by an extended notice
of the life of Mr. Allston; but it may be interesting to some readers
to know the outline of his life, and the different circumstances under
which the several pieces in this volume were written.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON was born at Charleston, in South Carolina, on the
5th of November, 1779, of a family distinguished in the history of
that State and of the country, being a branch of a family of the
baronet rank in the titled commonalty of England. Like most young
men of the South in his position at that period, he was sent to New
England to receive his school and college education. His school days
were passed at Newport, in Rhode Island, under the charge of Mr.
Robert Rogers. He entered Harvard College in 1796, and graduated in
1800. While at school and college, he developed in a marked manner
a love of nature, music, poetry, and painting. Endowed with senses
capable of the nicest perceptions, and with a mental and moral
constitution which tended always, with the certainty of a physical
law, to the beautiful, the pure, and the sublime, he led what many
might call an ideal life. Yet was he far from being a recluse, or from
being disposed to an excess of introversion. On the contrary, he was
a popular, high-spirited youth, almost passionately fond of society,
maintaining an unusual number of warm friendships, and unsurpassed by
any of the young men of his day in adaptedness to the elegancies and
courtesies of the more refined portions of the moving world. Romances
of love, knighthood, and heroic deeds, tales of banditti, and stories
of supernatural beings, were his chief delight in his early days. Yet
his classical attainments were considerable, and, as a scholar in the
literature of his own language, his reputation was early established.
He delivered a poem on taking his degree, which was much admired in
its day.
On leaving college, he returned to South Carolina. Having determined
to devote his life to the fine arts, he sold, hastily and at a
sacrifice, his share of a considerable patrimonial estate, and
embarked for London in the autumn of 1801. Immediately upon his
arrival, he became a student of the Royal Academy, of which his
countryman, West, was President, with whom he formed an intimate and
lasting friendship. After three years spent in England, and a shorter
stay at Paris, he went to Italy, where he spent four years devoted
exclusively to the study of his art. At Rome began his intimacy with
Coleridge. Among the many subsequent expressions of his feeling toward
this great man, none, perhaps, is more striking than the following
extract from one of his letters:--"To no other man do I owe so much,
intellectually, as to Mr. Coleridge, with whom I became acquainted
in Rome, and who has honored me with his friendship for more than
five-and-twenty years. He used to call Rome the silent city; but I
never could think of it as such while with him; for, meet him when and
where I would, the fountain of his mind was never dry, but, like the
far-reaching aqueducts that once supplied this mistress of the world,
its living stream seemed specially to flow for every classic ruin over
which we wandered. And when I recall some of our walks under the pines
of the Villa Borghese, I am almost tempted to dream that I have once
listened to Plato in the groves of the Academy." Readers of Coleridge
know in what estimation he held the qualities and the friendship of
Mr. Allston. Beside Coleridge and West, he numbered among his friends
in England, Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, Sir George Beaumont, Reynolds,
and Fuseli.
In 1809, Mr. Allston returned to America, and remained two years
in Boston, his adopted home, and there married the sister of Dr.
Channing. In 1811, he went again to England, where his reputation as
an artist had been completely established. Before his departure, he
delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge.
During a severe illness, he removed from London to Clifton, at which
place he wrote "The Sylphs of the Seasons." In 1813, he made his
first, and, with the exception of "Monaldi," twenty-eight years
afterwards, his only publication. This was a small volume, entitled
"The Sylphs of the Seasons, and other Poems," published in London;
and, during the same year, republished in Boston under the direction
of his friends, Professor Willard of Cambridge and Mr. Edmund T. Dana.
This volume was well received, and gave him a place among the first
poets of his country. The smaller poems in that edition extend as far
as page 289 of the present volume.
Beside the long and serious illness through which he passed, his
spirit was destined to suffer a deeper wound by the death of Mrs.
Allston, in London, during the same year. These events gave to his
mind a more earnest and undivided interest in his spiritual relations,
and drew him more closely than ever before to his religious duties.
He received the rite of confirmation, and through life was a devout
adherent to the Christian doctrine and discipline.
The character of Mr. Allston's religious feelings may be gathered,
incidentally, from many of his writings. It is a subject to be treated
with the reserve and delicacy with which he himself would have had it
invested. Few minds have been more thoroughly imbued with belief in
the reality of the unseen world; few have given more full assent to
the truth, that "the things which are seen are temporal, the things
which are not seen are eternal." This was not merely an adopted
opinion, a conviction imposed upon his understanding; it was of the
essence of his spiritual constitution, one of the conditions of his
rational existence. To him, the Supreme Being was no vague, mystical
source of light and truth, or an impersonation of goodness and truth
themselves; nor, on the other hand, a cold rationalistic notion of an
unapproachable executor of natural and moral laws. His spirit rested
in the faith of a sympathetic God. His belief was in a Being as
infinitely minute and sympathetic in his providences, as unlimited
in his power and knowledge. Nor need it be said, that he was a firm
believer in the central truths of Christianity, the Incarnation and
Redemption; that he turned from unaided speculation to the inspired
record and the visible Church; that he sought aid in the sacraments
ordained for the strengthening of infirm humanity, and looked for the
resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
After a second residence of seven years in Europe, he returned to
America in 1818, and again made Boston his home. There, in a circle of
warmly attached friends, surrounded by a sympathy and admiration which
his elevation and purity, the entire harmony of his life and pursuits,
could not fail to create, he devoted himself to his art, the labor of
his love.
This is not the place to enumerate his paintings, or to speak of his
character as an artist. His general reading he continued to the last,
with the earnestness of youth. As he retired from society, his taste
inclined him to metaphysical studies, the more, perhaps, from their
contrast with the usual occupations of his mind. He took particular
pleasure in works of devout Christian speculation, without, however,
neglecting a due proportion of strictly devotional literature. These
he varied by a constant recurrence to the great epic and dramatic
masters, and occasional reading of the earlier and the living
novelists, tales of wild romance and lighter fiction, voyages and
travels, biographies and letters. Nor was he without a strong interest
in the current politics of his own country and of England, as to which
his principles were highly conservative.
Upon his marriage with the daughter of the late Judge Dana, in 1830,
he removed to Cambridge, and soon afterwards began the preparation of
a course of lectures on Art, which he intended to deliver to a select
audience of artists and men of letters in Boston. Four of these he
completed. Rough drafts of two others were found among his papers, but
not in a state fit for publication. In 1841, he published his tale of
"Monaldi," a production of his early life. The poems in the present
volume, not included in the volume of 1813, are, with two exceptions,
the work of his later years. In them, as in his paintings of the
same period, may be seen the extreme attention to finish, always his
characteristic, which, added to increasing bodily pain and infirmity,
was the cause of his leaving so much that is unfinished behind him.
His death occurred at his own house, in Cambridge, a little past
midnight on the morning of Sunday, the 9th of July, 1843. He had
finished a day and week of labor in his studio, upon his great picture
of Belshazzar's Feast; the fresh paint denoting that the last touches
of his pencil were given to that glorious but melancholy monument of
the best years of his later life. Having conversed with his retiring
family with peculiar solemnity and earnestness upon the obligation and
beauty of a pure spiritual life, and on the realities of the world to
come, he had seated himself at his nightly employment of reading and
writing, which he usually carried into the early hours of the morning.
In the silence and solitude of this occupation, in a moment,
"with touch as gentle as the morning light," which was even then
approaching, his spirit was called away to its proper home.
Contents
Preface By The Editor
Lectures on Art.
Preliminary Note.--Ideas
Introductory Discourse
Art
Form
Composition
Aphorisms.
Sentences Written by Mr. Allston on the Walls of His Studio
The Hypochondriac
Lectures on Art.
Preliminary Note.
Ideas.
As the word _idea_ will frequently occur, and will be found
also to hold an important relation to our present subject, we shall
endeavour, _in limine_, to possess our readers of the particular
sense in which we understand and apply it.
An Idea, then, according to our apprehension, is the highest or most
perfect _form_ in which any thing, whether of the physical, the
intellectual, or the spiritual, may exist to the mind. By form, we do not
mean _figure_ or _image_ (though these may be included in relation to the
physical); but that condition, or state, in which such objects become
cognizable to the mind, or, in other words, become objects of
consciousness.
Ideas are of two kinds; which we shall distinguish by the terms _primary_
and _secondary_: the first being the _manifestation_ of objective
realities; the second, that of the reflex product, so to speak, of the
mental constitution. In both cases, they may be said to be
self-affirmed,--that is, they carry in themselves their own evidence;
being therefore not only independent of the reflective faculties, but
constituting the only unchangeable ground of Truth, to which those
faculties may ultimately refer. Yet have these Ideas no living energy in
themselves; they are but the _forms_, as we have said, through or in which
a higher Power manifests to the consciousness the supreme truth of all
things real, in respect to the first class; and, in respect to the second,
the imaginative truths of the mental products, or mental combinations. Of
the nature and mode of operation of the Power to which we refer, we know,
and can know, nothing; it is one of those secrets of our being which He
who made us has kept to himself. And we should be content with the
assurance, that we have in it a sure and intuitive guide to a reverent
knowledge of the beauty and grandeur of his works,--nay, of his own
adorable reality. And who shall gainsay it, should we add, that this
mysterious Power is essentially immanent in that "breath of life," by
which man becomes "a living soul"?
In the following remarks we shall confine ourself to the first
class of Ideas, namely, the Real; leaving the second to be noticed
hereafter.
As to number, ideas are limited only by the number of kinds, without
direct relation to degrees; every object, therefore, having in itself
a _distinctive essential_, has also its distinct idea; while two
or more objects of the same kind, however differing in degree, must
consequently refer only to one and the same. For instance, though a
hundred animals should differ in size, strength, or color, yet, if
none of these peculiarities are essential to the species, they would
all refer to the same supreme idea.
The same law applies equally, and with the same limitation, to
the essential differences in the intellectual, the moral, and the
spiritual. All ideas, however, have but a potential existence until
they are called into the consciousness by some real object; the
required condition of the object being a predetermined correspondence,
or correlation. Every such object we term an _assimilant_.
With respect to those ideas which relate to the physical world, we
remark, that, though the assimilants required are supplied by
the senses, the senses have in themselves no _productive,
cooeperating_ energy, being but the passive instruments, or medium,
through which they are conveyed. That the senses, in this relation,
are merely passive, admits of no question, from the obvious difference
between the idea and the objects. The senses can do no more than
transmit the external in its actual forms, leaving the images in the
mind exactly as they found them; whereas the intuitive power rejects,
or assimilates, indefinitely, until they are resolved into the proper
perfect form. Now the power which prescribes that form must, of
necessity, be antecedent to the presentation of the objects which it
thus assimilates, as it could not else give consistence and unity to
what was before separate or fragmentary. And every one who has
ever realized an idea of the class in which alone we compare the
assimilants with the ideal form, be he poet, painter, or philosopher,
well knows the wide difference between the materials and their result.
When an idea is thus realized and made objective, it affirms its own
truth, nor can any process of the understanding shake its foundation;
nay, it is to the mind an essential, imperative truth, then emerging,
as it were, from the dark potential into the light of reality.
If this be so, the inference is plain, that the relation between the
actual and the ideal is one of necessity, and therefore, also, is the
predetermined correspondence between the prescribed form of an
idea and its assimilant; for how otherwise could the former become
recipient of that which was repugnant or indifferent, when the
presence of the latter constitutes the very condition by which it is
manifested, or can be known to exist? By actual, here, we do not mean
the exclusively physical, but whatever, in the strictest sense, can be
called an _object_, as forming the opposite to a mere subject of
the mind.
It would appear, then, that what we call ourself must have a
_dual_ reality, that is, in the mind and in the senses, since
neither _alone_ could possibly explain the phenomena of the
other; consequently, in the existence of either we have clearly
implied the reality of both. And hence must follow the still more
important truth, that, in the _conscious presence_ of any
_spiritual_ idea, we have the surest proof of a spiritual object;
nor is this the less certain, though we perceive not the assimilant.
Nay, a spiritual assimilant cannot be perceived, but, to use the words
of St. Paul, is "spiritually discerned," that is, by a sense, so to
speak, of our own spirit. But to illustrate by example: we could not,
for instance, have the ideas of good and evil without their objective
realities, nor of right and wrong, in any intelligible form, without
the moral law to which they refer,--which law we call the Conscience;
nor could we have the idea of a moral law without a moral lawgiver,
and, if moral, then intelligent, and, if intelligent, then personal;
in a word, we could not now have, as we know we have, the idea of
conscience, without an objective, personal God. Such ideas may well be
called revelations, since, without any perceived assimilant, we find
them equally affirmed with those ideas which relate to the purely
physical.
But here it may be asked, How are we to distinguish an Idea from a mere
_notion_? We answer, By its self-affirmation. For an ideal truth, having
its own evidence in itself, can neither be proved nor disproved by any
thing out of itself; whatever, then, impresses the mind _as_ truth, _is_
truth until it can be _shown_ to be false; and consequently, in the
converse, whatever can be brought into the sphere of the understanding, as
a dialectic subject, is not an Idea. It will be observed, however, that we
do not say an idea may not be denied; but to deny is not to disprove. Many
things are denied in direct contradiction to fact; for the mind can
command, and in no measured degree, the power of self-blinding, so that it
cannot see what is actually before it. This is a psychological fact, which
may be attested by thousands, who can well remember the time when they had
once clearly discerned what has now vanished from their minds. Nor does
the actual cessation of these primeval forms, or the after presence of
their fragmentary, nay, disfigured relics, disprove their reality, or
their original integrity, as we could not else call them up in their
proper forms at any future time, to the reacknowledging their truth: a
_resuscitation_ and result, so to speak, which many have experienced.
In conclusion: though it be but one and the same Power that prescribes
the form and determines the truth of all Ideas, there is yet an
essential difference between the two classes of ideas to which we have
referred; for it may well be doubted whether any Primary Idea can ever
be fully realized by a finite mind,--at least in the present state.
Take, for instance, the idea of beauty. In its highest form, as
presented to the consciousness, we still find it referring to
something beyond and above itself, as if it were but an approximation
to a still higher form. The truth of this, we think, will be
particularly felt by the artist, whether poet or painter, whose mind
may be supposed, from his natural bias, to be more peculiarly capable
of its highest developement; and what true artist was ever satisfied
with any idea of beauty of which he is conscious? From this
approximated form, however, he doubtless derives a high degree of
pleasure, nay, one of the purest of which his nature is capable;
yet still is the pleasure modified, if we may so express it, by an
undefined yearning for what he feels can never be realized. And
wherefore this craving, but for the archetype of that which called it
forth?--When we say not satisfied, we do not mean discontented, but
simply not in full fruition. And it is better that it should be
so, since one of the happiest elements of our nature is that which
continually impels it towards the indefinite and unattainable. So
far as we know, the like limits may be set to every other primary
idea,--as if the Creator had reserved to himself alone the possible
contemplation of the archetypes of his universe.
With regard to the other class, that of Secondary Ideas, which we
have called the reflex product of the mind, their distinguishing
characteristic is, that they not only admit of a perfect realization,
but also of outward manifestation, so as to be communicated to others.
All works of imagination, so called, present examples of this. Hence
they may also be termed imitative or imaginative. For, though they
draw their assimilants from the actual world, and are likewise
regulated by the unknown Power before mentioned, yet are they but the
forms of what, _as a whole_, have no actual existence;--they are
nevertheless true to the mind, and are made so by the same Power which
affirms their possibility. This species of Truth we shall hereafter
have occasion to distinguish as Poetic Truth.
Introductory Discourse.
Next to the developement of our moral nature, to have subordinated the
senses to the mind is the highest triumph of the civilized state. Were
it possible to embody the present complicated scheme of society, so as
to bring it before us as a visible object, there is perhaps nothing
in the world of sense that would so fill us with wonder; for what is
there in nature that may not fall within its limits? and yet how small
a portion of this stupendous fabric will be found to have any direct,
much less exclusive, relation to the actual wants of the body! It
might seem, indeed, to an unreflecting observer, that our physical
necessities, which, truly estimated, are few and simple, have rather
been increased than diminished by the civilized man. But this is not
true; for, if a wider duty is imposed on the senses, it is only to
minister to the increased demands of the imagination, which is now so
mingled with our every-day concerns, even with our dress, houses, and
furniture, that, except with the brutalized, the purely sensuous wants
might almost be said to have become extinct: with the cultivated and
refined, they are at least so modified as to be no longer prominent.
But this refilling on the physical, like every thing else, has had its
opponents: it is declaimed against as artificial. If by artificial is
meant unnatural, we cannot so consider it; but hold, on the contrary,
that the whole multiform scheme of the civilized state is not only in
accordance with our nature, but an essential condition to the proper
developement of the human being. It is presupposed by the very wants
of his mind; nor could it otherwise have been, any more than could
have been the cabin of the beaver, or the curious hive of the bee,
without their preexisting instincts; it is therefore in the highest
sense natural, as growing out of the inherent desires of the mind.
But we would not be misunderstood. When we speak of the refined
state as not out of nature, we mean such results as proceed from the
legitimate growth of our mental constitution, which we suppose to
be grounded in permanent, universal principles; and, whatever
modifications, however subtile, and apparently visionary, may follow
their operation in the world of sense, so long as that operation
diverge not from its original ground, its effect must be, in the
strictest sense, natural. Thus the wildest visions of poetry, the
unsubstantial forms of painting, and the mysterious harmonies of
music, that seem to disembody the spirit, and make us creatures of the
air,--even these, unreal as they are, may all have their foundation
in immutable truth; and we may moreover know of this truth by its own
evidence. Of this species of evidence we shall have occasion to speak
hereafter. But there is another kind of growth, which may well be
called unnatural; we mean, of those diseased appetites, whose effects
are seen in the distorted forms of the _conventional_, having no
ground but in weariness of the true; and it cannot be denied that this
morbid growth has its full share, inwardly and outwardly, both of
space and importance. These, however, must sooner or later end as they
began; they perish in the lie they make; and it were well did not
other falsehoods take their places, to prolong a life whose only
tenure is inconsequential succession,--in other words, Fashion.
If it be true, then, that even the commonplaces of life must all in
some degree partake of the mental, there can be but one rule by which
to determine the proper rank of any object of pursuit, and that is by
its nearer or more remote relation to our inward nature. Every system,
therefore, which tends to degrade a mental pleasure to the subordinate
or superfluous, is both narrow and false, as virtually reversing its
natural order.
It pleased our Creator, when he endowed us with appetites and
functions by which to sustain the economy of life, at the same time to
annex to their exercise a sense of pleasure; hence our daily food, and
the daily alternation of repose and action, are no less grateful than
imperative. That life may be sustained, and most of its functions
performed, without any coincident enjoyment, is certainly possible.
Our food may be distasteful, action painful, and rest unrefreshing;
and yet we may eat, and exercise, and sleep, nay, live thus for years.
But this is not our natural condition, and we call it disease. Were
man a mere animal, the very act of living, in his natural or healthy
state, would be to him a continuous enjoyment. But he is also a moral
and an intellectual being; and, in like manner, is the healthful
condition of these, the nobler parts of his nature, attended with
something more than a consciousness of the mere process of existence.
To the exercise of his intellectual faculties and moral attributes the
same benevolent law has superadded a sense of pleasure,--of a kind,
too, in the same degree transcending the highest bodily sensation, as
must that which is immortal transcend the perishable. It is not for us
to ask why it is so; much less, because it squares not with the
poor notion of material usefulness, to call in question a fact that
announces a nature to which the senses are but passing ministers. Let
us rather receive this ennobling law, at least without misgiving, lest
in our sensuous wisdom we exchange an enduring gift for a transient
gratification.
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