And there is a picture called "The
Evening Gun" by Danby,--a ship of war on a calm, glassy tide, at sunset,
with the cannon-smoke puffing from her porthole; it is very beautiful,
and so effective that you can even hear the report breaking upon the
stillness, with so grand a roar that it is almost like stillness too. As
for Turner, I care no more for his light-colored pictures than for so
much lacquered ware or painted gingerbread. Doubtless this is my fault,
my own deficiency; but I cannot help it,--not, at least, without
sophisticating myself by the effort. The only modern pictures that
accomplish a higher end than that of pleasing the eye--the only ones that
really take hold of my mind, and with a kind of acerbity, like unripe
fruit--are the works of Hunt, and one or two other painters of the
Pre-Raphaelite school. They seem wilfully to abjure all beauty, and to
make their pictures disagreeable out of mere malice; but at any rate, for
the thought and feeling which are ground up with the paint, they will
bear looking at, and disclose a deeper value the longer you look. Never
was anything so stiff and unnatural as they appear; although every single
thing represented seems to be taken directly out of life and reality,
and, as it were, pasted down upon the canvas. They almost paint even
separate hairs. Accomplishing so much, and so perfectly, it seems
unaccountable that the picture does not live; but Nature has an art
beyond these painters, and they leave out some medium,--some enchantment
that should intervene, and keep the object from pressing so baldly and
harshly upon the spectator's eyeballs.
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