PAINTING. The art of painting may not improperly be defined, a mode of conveying ideas to the mind by means of a representation of the visible parts of nature. It is a language by which, though all things cannot, many at least may be expressed, in a stronger and clearer manner than can be effected by any other ; nay, it is, to its extent, a uni versal language ; though it is only in pro portion as we are accustomed to read it that we can hope to acquire ideas through its means.
The particular education of our senses or organs is undoubtedly the only mode by which those senses can be rendered serviceable to us in their full extent ; for although; in their natural and uncultivat ed state, they are enabled to present us with tolerably clear and distinct ideas of things of a simple kind, or which dif fer considerably from each other; it is far otherwise when we expect from them just ideas of things complicated, or of such as differ from each other by small, nay almost imperceptible gradations. The untutored eye readily distinguishes black from white, red from blue, and purple from green ; but is unable to detect the delicate transitions from one shade to another of the same colour, and still less the nicer variations of combined and complex colours.
The quickest of all operations is per haps that of sight, and in one moment we are enabled to see many objects ; but we cannot, as Leonardo da Vinci properly observes, distinguish and understand clearly more than one at a time. Upon the first sight of a page of a written or a printed book, though we observe it to be full of words, we do not discover the sense contained. No I to understand, we are obliged to read it ; and in case the subject be abtruse, and our compre hensions dull, it may be necessary to pe ruse it two or three times before the whole sense he clearly understood by us ; some there may be who never will com prehend it. The situation of that man who, from long habit, reads with facility and quickness, is likewise far removed from that of the beginner, who having little practice, can only read slowly and with difficulty.
We have judged it necessary to pre mise these few observations, in hOpes to correct a mistaken but prevalent notion, that although a thorough conversance with painting is required ere a person be adequate to decide discreetly as to the executive parts of a work of art, to dis tinguish the copy from the original, or the pencils of the different masters ; every man is intuitively enabled to enjoy the effect of the whole, to enter into the expression and feeling of the piece, and, in short, to judge rightly between a bad picture and a good one. Nay, a moment
is sufficient for one of these self-dubbed critics to pass an irrevocable sentence on the most extensive and studied composi tion.
In treating the subject before us, we shall not by a slow and tedious process at tempt to conduct the student of painting through the long and rugged path by which alone even a moderate degree of excellence may be attained; this would be like commencing a treatise on rheto ric with the minutia of orthography and grammar. We shall rather, by a short in quiry into the fundamental principles of the art, and a reference to the example of the greatest masters, draw his atten tion to the proper application of that me chanical skill of which we suppose him already possessed.
Invention, composition, design, expres sion, chiara obscura, and colouring, may perhaps not improperly be termed the great component parts of painting, un less indeed it be insisted that invention is rather the parent and director of the others to the proper objects of their at tainment.
We have defined painting to be a mode of communicating ideas to the mind, by means of a representation of the visible parts of nature ; and we have adopted this mode of expression, because the art can hardly be said to be confined to the mere representation of visible objects, since by delineating outward demonstra tions it is enabled to convey the ideas of internal affections and mental actions. It will necessarily follow that those subjects are the most immediately within the pro vince of our art, whose essential qualifies are as it were contained in the visible parts of things, or most capable of being expressed by objects of sight; and this, though a truism, we have thought it ne cessary to state, as experience every day shews, that ,it is not sufficiently attended to. By the essential qualities of a subject, we must be understood to mean those which give it its interest.