THE grand style of Art restored; in FRESCO, or Water-colour Painting, and
England protected from the too just imputation of being the Seat and
Protectress of bad (that is blotting and blurring) Art.
In this Exhibition will be seen real Art, as it was left us by Raphael and Albert Durer, Michael Angelo, and Julio Romano; stripped from the Ignorances of Rubens and Rembrandt, Titian and Correggio;
BY WILLIAM BLAKE.
The Descriptive Catalogue, Price 2s. 6d. containing Mr. B.'s Opinions and
Determinations on Art, very necessary to be known by Artists and Connoisseurs
of all Ranks. Every Purchaser of a Catalogue will be entitled, at the time of
purchase, to view the Exhibition.
These Original Conceptions on Art, by an Original Artist, are sold only at
the Corner of BROAD STREET.
Admittance to the Exhibition 1 Shilling; an Index to the Catalogue
gratis.
Printed by Watts & Bridgewater,
Southmolton-street.
Begin Page 529
Painted by William Blake, in Water Colours, Being the Ancient Method of
Fresco Painting Restored: and Drawings, For Public Inspection, and for Sale by
Private Contract, <At N 28 Corner of Broad Street-Golden Square>t
London; Printed by D. N. Shury, 7, Berwick-Street, Soho, for J. Blake, 28,
Broad-Street, Golden-Square. 1809.
PAGE [ii]
I. One third of the price to be paid at the time of Purchase and remainder on
Delivery.
II. The Pictures and Drawings to remain in the Exhibition till its close, which
will be the 29th of September 1809; and the Picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims,
which is to be engraved, will be Sold only on condition of its remaining in the
Artist's hands twelve months, when it will be delivered to the Buyer.
PAGE [iii]
THE eye that can prefer the Colouring of Titian and Rubens to that of
Michael Angelo and Rafael, ought to be modest and to doubt its own powers.
Connoisseurs talk as if Rafael and Michael Angelo had never seen the colouring
of Titian or Correggio: They ought to know that Correggio was born two years
before Michael Angelo, and Titian but four years after. Both Rafael and Michael
Angelo knew the Venetian, and contemned and rejected all he did with the utmost
disdain, as that which is fabricated for the purpose to destroy art.
Mr. B. appeals to the Public, from the judgment of those narrow blinking
eyes, that have too long governed art in a dark corner. The eyes of stupid
cunning never will be pleased with the work any more than with the look of
self-devoting genius. The quarrel of the Florentine with the Venetian is not
because he does not understand Drawing, but because he does not understand
Colouring. How should he? he who does not know how to draw a hand or a foot,
know how to colour it.
Colouring does not depend on where the Colours
are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on Form or
Outline
Begin Page 530
On where that is put; where that is wrong, the Colouring never can be right;
and it is always wrong in Titian and Correggio, Rubens and Rembrandt. Till we
get rid of Titian and Correggio, Rubens and Rembrandt, We never shall equal
Rafael and Albert Durer, Michael Angelo, and Julio Romano.
PAGE 1
The spiritual form of Nelson guiding Leviathan, in whose wreathings are
infolded the Nations of the Earth.t
CLEARNESS and precision have been the chief objects in painting these
Pictures. Clear colours unmudded by oil, and firm and determinate lineaments
unbroken by shadows, which ought to display and not to hide form, as is the
practice of the latter Schools of Italy and Flanders.PAGE 2
The spiritual form of Pitt, guiding Behemoth; he is that Angel who,
pleased to perform the Almighty's orders, rides on the whirlwind, directing the
storms of war: He is ordering the Reaper to reap the Vine of the Earth, and the
Plowman to plow up the Cities and Towers.
This Picture also is a proof of the power of colours unsullied with oil or
with any cloggy vehicle. Oil has falsely been supposed to give strength to
colours: but a little consideration must shew the fallacy of this opinion. Oil
will not drink or absorb colour enough to stand the test of very little time
and of the air. It deadens every colour it is mixed with, at its first mixture,
and in a little time becomes a yellow mask over all that it touches. Let the
works of modern Artists since Rubens' time witness the villany of some one at
that time, who first brought oil Painting into general opinion and practice:
since which we have never had a Picture painted, that could shew itself by the
side of an earlier production. Whether Rubens or Vandyke, or both, were guilty
of this villany, is to be enquired in another work on Painting, and who first
forged the silly story and known falshood, about John of Bruges inventing oil
colours: in the mean time let it be observed, that before Vandyke's time, and
in his time all the genuine Pictures are on Plaster or Whiting grounds and none
since.
The two Pictures of Nelson and Pitt are
compositions of a mythological cast, similar to those Apotheoses of Persian,
Hindoo, and Egyptian Antiquity, which are still preserved on rude monuments,
being copies from some stupendous originals now lost or perhaps buried till
Begin Page 531
some happier age. The Artist having been taken in vision into the ancient
republics, monarchies, and patriarchates of Asia, has seen those wonderful
originals called in the Sacred Scriptures the Cherubim, which were sculptured
and painted on walls of Temples, Towers, Cities, Palaces, and erected in the
highly cultivated states of Egypt, Moab, Edom, Aram, among the Rivers of Paradise,
being originals from which the Greeks and Hetrurians copied Hercules, Farnese,
Venus of Medicis, Apollo Belvidere, and all the grand works of ancient art.
They were executed in a very superior style to those justly admired copies,
being with their accompaniments terrific and grand in the highest degree. The
Artist has endeavoured to emulate the grandeur of those seen in his vision, and
to apply it to modern Heroes, on a smaller scale.
No man can believe that either Homer's Mythology, or Ovid's, were the
production of Greece, or of Latium; neither will any one believe, that the
Greek statues, as they are called, were the invention of Greek Artists; perhaps
the Torso is the only original work remaining; all the rest are evidently
copies, though fine ones, from greater works of the Asiatic Patriarchs. The
Greek Muses are daughters of Mnemosyne, or Memory, and not of Inspiration or
Imagination, therefore not authors of such sublime conceptions. Those wonderful
originals seen in my visions, were some of them one hundred feet in height;
some were painted as pictures, and some carved as basso relievos, and some as
groupes of statues, all containing mythological and recondite meaning, where
more is meant than meets the eye. The Artist wishes it was now the fashion to
make such monuments, and then he should not doubt of having a national
commission to execute these two Pictures on a scale that is suitable to the
grandeur of the nation, who is the parent of his heroes, in high finished
fresco, where the colours would be as pure and as permanent as precious stones
though the figures were one hundred feet in height.
All Frescos are as high finished as miniatures
or enamels, and they are known to be unchangeable; but oil being a body itself,
will drink or absorb very little colour, and changing yellow, and at length
brown, destroys every colour it is mixed with, especially every delicate
colour. It turns every permanent white to a yellow and brown putty, and has
compelled the use of that destroyer of colour, white lead; which, when its
protecting oil is evaporated, will become lead again. This is an awful things
to say to oil Painters; they may call it madness, but it is true. All the
genuine old little Pictures, called Cabinet Pictures, are in fresco and not in
oil, Oil was not used except by blundering ignorance, till after Vandyke's
time, but the art of fresco painting being lost, oil became a fetter to genius,
and a dungeon to art. But one convincing proof among many others, that these
assertions are true is, that real gold and silver cannot be used with oil, as
they are in all the old pictures and in Mr. B.'s frescos.
Begin Page 532
Sir Jeffery Chaucer and the nine and twenty Pilgrims on their journey to
Canterbury.
THE time chosen is early morning, before sunrise, when the jolly company are
just quitting the Tabarde Inn. The Knight and Squire with the Squire's Yeoman
lead the Procession, next follow the youthful Abbess, her nun and three
priests; her greyhounds attend her.
|
"Of small hounds had she that she fed |
|
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"With roast flesh, milk and wastel bread." |
|
Next follow the Friar and Monk; then the Tapiser, the Pardoner, and the Somner
and Manciple. After these "Our Host," who occupies the center of the
cavalcade; directs them to the Knight as the person who would be likely to
commence their task of each telling a tale in their order. After the Host
follow the Shipman, the Haberdasher, the Dyer, the Franklin, the Physician, the
Plowman, the Lawyer, the poor Parson, the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Miller,
the Cook, the Oxford Scholar, Chaucer himself, and the Reeve comes as Chaucer
has described:
|
"And ever he rode hinderest of the rout." |
|
These last are issuing from the gateway of the Inn; the Cook and the Wife of
Bath are both taking their morning's draught of comfort. Spectators stand at
the gateway of the Inn, and are composed of an old Man, a Woman and Children.
The Landscape is an eastward view of the country, from the Tabarde Inn, in
Southwark, as it may be supposed to have appeared in Chaucer's time;
interspersed with cottages and villages; the first beams of the Sun are seen
above the horizon; some buildings and spires indicate the situation of the
great City; the Inn is a gothic building, which Thynne in his Glossary says was
the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde, by Winchester. On the Inn is inscribed its
title, and a proper advantage is taken of this circumstance to describe the
subject of the Picture. The words written over the gateway of the Inn, are as
follow:"The Tabarde Inn, by Henry Baillie, the lodgynge-house for
Pilgrims, who journey to Saint Thomas's Shrine at Canterbury."
The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all
ages and nations: as one age falls, another rises, different to mortal sight,
but to immortals only the same; for we see the same characters repeated again
and again, in animals, vegetables, minerals, and in men; nothing new occurs in
identical existence; Accident ever varies, Substance can never suffer change
nor decay.
Of Chaucer's characters, as described in his
Canterbury Tales, some of the names or titles are altered by time, but the
characters themselves for ever remain unaltered, and consequently they are the
Begin Page 533
physiognomies or lineaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never
steps. Names alter, things never alter. I have known multitudes of those who
would have been monks in the age of monkery, who in this deistical age are
deists. As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linneus numbered the plants, so
Chaucer numbered the classes of men.
The Painter has consequently varied the heads and forms of his personages
into all Nature's varieties; the Horses he has also varied to accord to their
Riders, the Costume is correct according to authentic monuments.
The Knight and Squire with the Squire's Yeoman lead the procession, as
Chaucer has also placed them first in his prologue. The Knight is a true Hero,
a good, great, and wise man; his whole length portrait on horseback, as written
by Chaucer, cannot be surpassed. He has spent his life in the field; has ever
been a conqueror, and is that species of character which in every age stands as
the guardian of man against the oppressor. His son is like him with the germ of
perhaps greater perfection still, as he blends literature and the arts with his
warlike studies. Their dress and their horses are of the first rate, without
ostentation, and with all the true grandeur that unaffected simplicity when in
high rank always displays. The Squire's Yeoman is also a great character, a man
perfectly knowing in his profession:
|
"And in his hand he bare a mighty bow." |
|
Chaucer describes here a mighty man; one who in war is the worthy attendant
on noble heroes.
The Prioress follows these with her female chaplain.
|
"Another Nonne also with her had she, |
|
|
"That was her Chaplaine and Priests three." |
|
This Lady is described also as of the first rank; rich and honoured. She has
certain peculiarities and little delicate affectations, not unbecoming in her,
being accompanied with what is truly grand and really polite; her person and
face, Chaucer has described with minuteness; it is very elegant, and was the
beauty of our ancestors, till after Elizabeth's time, when voluptuousness and
folly began to be accounted beautiful.
Her companion and her three priests were no doubt all perfectly delineated
in those parts of Chaucer's work which are now lost; we ought to suppose them
suitable attendants on rank and fashion.
The Monk follows these with the Friar. The Painter has also grouped with
these, the Pardoner and the Sompnour and the Manciple, and has here also
introduced one of the rich citizens of London. Characters likely to ride in
company, all being above the common rank in life or attendants on those who
were so.
For the Monk is described by Chaucer, as a man
of the first rank
Begin Page 534
in society, noble, rich, and expensively attended: he is a leader of the age,
with certain humourous accompaniments in his character, that do not degrade,
but render him an object of dignified mirth, but also with other accompaniments
not so respectable.
The Friar is a character also of a mixed kind.
|
"A friar there was, a wanton and a merry." |
|
[B]ut in his office he is said to be a "full solemn man:" eloquent,
amorous, witty, and satyrical; young, handsome, and rich; he is a complete
rogue; with constitutional gaiety enough to make him a master of all the
pleasures of the world.
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"His neck was white as the flour de lis, |
|
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Thereto strong he was as a champioun." |
|
It is necessary here to speak of Chaucer's own character, that I may set
certain mistaken critics right in their conception of the humour and fun that
occurs on the journey. Chaucer is himself the great poetical observer of men,
who in every age is born to record and eternize its acts. This he does as a
master, as a father, and superior, who looks down on their little follies from
the Emperor to the Miller; sometimes with severity, oftener with joke and
sport.
Accordingly Chaucer has made his Monk a great tragedian, one who studied
poetical art. So much so, that the generous Knight is, in the compassionate
dictates of his soul, compelled to cry out
|
"Ho quoth the Knyght, good Sir, no more of this, |
|
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That ye have said, is right ynough I wis; |
|
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And mokell more, for little heaviness, |
|
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Is right enough for much folk as I guesse. |
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I say for me, it is a great disease, |
5 |
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Whereas men have been in wealth and ease; |
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To heare of their sudden fall alas, |
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And the contrary is joy and solas." |
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The Monk's definition of tragedy in the proem to his tale is worth repeating:
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"Tragedie is to tell a certain story, |
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As old books us maken memory; |
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Of hem that stood in great prosperity. |
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And be fallen out of high degree, |
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Into miserie and ended wretchedly." |
5 |
Though a man of luxury, pride and pleasure, he
is a master of art and learning, though affecting to despise it. Those who can
think that the proud Huntsman, and noble Housekeeper, Chaucer's Monk, is
intended for a buffoon or burlesque character, know little of Chaucer.
Begin Page 535
For the Host who follows this group, and holds the center of the cavalcade,
is a first rate character, and his jokes are no trifles; they are always,
though uttered with audacity, and equally free with the Lord and the Peasant,
they are always substantially and weightily expressive of knowledge and
experience; Henry Baillie, the keeper of the greatest Inn, of the greatest
City; for such was the Tabarde Inn in Southwark, near London: our Host was also
a leader of the age.
By way of illustration, I instance Shakspeare's Witches in Macbeth. Those
who dress them for the stage, consider them as wretched old women, and not as
Shakspeare intended, the Goddesses of Destiny; this shews how Chaucer has been
misunderstood in his sublime work. Shakspeare's Fairies also are the rulers of
the vegetable world, and so are Chaucer's; let them be so considered, and then
the poet will be understood, and not else.
But I have omitted to speak of a very prominent character, the Pardoner, the
Age's Knave, who always commands and domineers over the high and low vulgar.
This man is sent in every age for a rod and scourge, and for a blight, for a
trial of men, to divide the classes of men, he is in the most holy sanctuary,
and he is suffered by Providence for wise ends, and has also his great use, and
his grand leading destiny.
His companion the Sompnour, is also a Devil of the first magnitude, grand,
terrific, rich and honoured in the rank of which he holds the destiny. The uses
to society are perhaps equal of the Devil and of the Angel, their sublimity who
can dispute.
|
"In daunger had he at his own gise, |
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The young girls of his diocese, |
|
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And he knew well their counsel, &c." |
|
The principal figure in the next groupe, is the Good Parson; an Apostle, a
real Messenger of Heaven, sent in every age for its light and its warmth. This
man is beloved and venerated by all, and neglected by all: He serves all, and
is served by none; he is, according to Christ's definition, the greatest of his
age. Yet he is a Poor Parson of a town. Read Chaucer's description of the Good
Parson, and bow the head and the knee to him, who, in every age sends us such a
burning and a shining light. Search O ye rich and powerful, for these men and
obey their counsel, then shall the golden age return: But alas! you will not
easily distinguish him from the Friar or the Pardoner, they also are "full
solemn men," and their counsel, you will continue to follow.
I have placed by his side, the Sergeant at
Lawe, who appears delighted to ride in his company, and between him and his
brother, the Plowman; as I wish men of Law would always ride with them, and
take their counsel, especially in all difficult points. Chaucer's Lawyer is a
character of great venerableness, a judge, and a real master of the
jurisprudence of his age.
Begin Page 536
The Doctor of Physic is in this groupe, and the Franklin, the voluptuous
country gentleman, contrasted with the Physician, and on his other hand, with
two Citizens of London. Chaucer's characters live age after age. Every age is a
Canterbury Pilgrimage; we all pass on, each sustaining one or other of these
characters; nor can a child be born, who is not one of these characters of
Chaucer, The Doctor of Physic is described as the first of his profession;
perfect, learned, completely Master and Doctor in his art. Thus the reader will
observe, that Chaucer makes every one of his characters perfect in his kind,
every one is an Antique Statue; the image of a class, and not of an imperfect
individual.
This groupe also would furnish substantial matter, on which volumes might be
written. The Franklin is one who keeps open table, who is the genius of eating
and drinking, the Bacchus; as the Doctor of Physic is the Esculapius, the Host
is the Silenus, the Squire is the Apollo, the Miller is the Hercules, &c.
Chaucer's characters are a description of the eternal Principles that exist in
all ages. The Franklin is voluptuousness itself most nobly pourtrayed:PAGE 21
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"It snewed in his house of meat and drink." |
|
The Plowman is simplicity itself, with wisdom and strength for its stamina.
Chaucer has divided the ancient character of Hercules between his Miller and
his Plowman. Benevolence is the plowman's great characteristic, he is thin with
excessive labour, and not with old age, as some have supposed.
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"He would thresh and thereto dike and delve |
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For Christe's sake, for every poore wight, |
|
|
|
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Withouten hire, if it lay in his might." |
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Visions of these eternal principles or characters of human life appear to
poets, in all ages; the Grecian gods were the ancient Cherubim of Phoenicia;
but the Greeks, and since them the Moderns, have neglected to subdue the gods
of Priam. These Gods are visions of the eternal attributes, or divine names,
which, when erected into gods, become destructive to humanity. They ought to be
the servants, and not the masters of man, or of society. They ought to be made
to sacrifice to Man, and not man compelled to sacrifice to them; for when
separated from man or humanity, who is Jesus the Saviour, the vine of eternity,
they are thieves and rebels, they are destroyers.
The Plowman of Chaucer is Hercules in his supreme eternal state, divested of
his spectrous shadow; which is the Miller, a terrible fellow, such as exists in
all times and places, for the trial of men, to astonish every neighbourhood,
with brutal strength and courage, to get rich and powerful to curb the pride of
Man.
The Reeve and the Manciple are two characters
of the most consummate
Begin Page 537
worldly wisdom. The Shipman, or Sailor, is a similar genius of Ulyssean art;
but with the highest courage superadded.
The Citizens and their Cook are each leaders of a class. Chaucer has been
somehow made to number four citizens, which would make his whole company,
himself included, thirty- one. But he says there was but nine and twenty in his
company.
|
"Full nine and twenty in a company." |
|
The Webbe, or Weaver, and the Tapiser, or Tapestry Weaver, appear to me to
be the same person; but this is only an opinion, for full nine and twenty may
signify one more or less. But I dare say that Chaucer wrote "A Webbe
Dyer," that is a Cloth Dyer.
|
"A Webbe Dyer and a Tapiser." |
|
The Merchant cannot be one of the Three Citizens, as his dress is different,
and his character is more marked, whereas Chaucer says of his rich
citizens:PAGE 24
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"All were yclothed in o liverie." |
|
The characters of Women Chaucer has divided into two classes, the Lady
Prioress and the Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of men? The
lady prioress, in some ages, predominates; and in some the wife of Bath, in
whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact; because she is also
a scourge and a blight. I shall say no more of her, nor expose what Chaucer has
left hidden; let the young reader study what he has said of her: it is useful
as a scare-crow. There are of such characters born too many for the peace of
the world. I come at length to the Clerk of Oxenford. This character varies
from that of Chaucer, as the contemplative philosopher varies from the poetical
genius. There are always these two classes of learned sages, the poetical and
the philosophical. The painter has put them side by side, as if the youthful
clerk had put himself under the tuition of the mature poet. Let the Philosopher
always be the servant and scholar of inspiration and all will be happy.
Such are the characters that compose this
Picture, which was painted in self-defence against the insolent and envious
imputation of unfitness for finished and scientific art; and this imputation,
most artfully and industriously endeavoured to be propagated among the public
by ignorant hirelings. The painter courts comparison with his competitors, who,
having received fourteen hundred guineas and more from the profits of his
designs, in that well-known work, Designs for Blair's Grave, have left him to
shift for himself, while others, more obedient to an employer's opinions and
directions, are employed, at a great expence, to produce works, in succession
to his, by which they acquired public patronage. This has hitherto been his
lot--to get patronage for
Begin Page 538
others and then to be left and neglected, and his work, which gained that
patronage, cried down as eccentricity and madness; as unfinished and neglected
by the artist's violent temper, he is sure the works now exhibited, will give
the lie to such aspersions.
Those who say that men are led by interest are knaves. A knavish character
will often say, of what interest is it to me to do so and so? I answer, of none
at all, but the contrary, as you well know. It is of malice and envy that you
have done this; hence I am aware of you, because I know that you act not from
interest but from malice, even to your own destruction. It is therefore become
a duty which Mr. B. owes to the Public, who have always recognized him, and
patronized him, however hidden by artifices, that he should not suffer such
things to be done or be hindered from the public Exhibition of his finished
productions by any calumnies in future.
The character and expression in this picture could never have been produced
with Ruben's light and shadow, or with Rembrandt's, or any thing Venetian or
Flemish. The Venetian and Flemish practice is broken lines, broken masses, and
broken colours. Mr. B.'s practice is unbroken lines, unbroken masses, and
unbroken colours. Their art is to lose form, his art is to find form, and to
keep it. His arts are opposite to theirs in all things.
As there is a class of men, whose whole delight is in the destruction of
men, so there is a class of artists, whose whole art and science is fabricated
for the purpose of destroying art. Who these are is soon known: "by their
works ye shall know them." All who endeavour to raise up a style against
Rafael, Mich. Angelo, and the Antique; those who separate Painting from
Drawing; who look if a picture is well Drawn; and, if it is, immediately cry
out, that it cannot be well Coloured-- those are the men.
But to shew the stupidity of this class of men, nothing need be done but to
examine my rival's prospectus. The two first characters in Chaucer, the Knight
and the Squire, he has put among his rabble; and indeed his prospectus calls
the Squire the fop of Chaucer's age. Now hear Chaucer.
|
"Of his Stature, he was of even length, |
|
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And wonderly deliver, and of great strength; |
|
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And he had be sometime in Chivauchy, |
|
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In Flanders, in Artois, and in Picardy, |
|
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And borne him well as of so litele space." |
5 |
Was this a fop?
|
"Well could he sit a horse, and faire ride, |
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He could songs make, and eke well indite |
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Just, and eke dance, pourtray, and well write. |
|
Was this a fop?
Begin Page 539
PAGE 29
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"Curteis he was, and meek, and serviceable; |
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And kerft before his fader at the table." |
|
Was this a fop?
It is the same with all his characters; he has done all by chance, or
perhaps his fortune, money, money. According to his prospectus he has Three
Monks; these he cannot find in Chaucer, who has only One Monk, and that no
vulgar character, as he has endeavoured to make him. When men cannot read they
should not pretend to paint. To be sure Chaucer is a little difficult to him
who has only blundered over novels and catchpenny trifles of booksellers. Yet a
little pains ought to be taken even by the ignorant and weak. He has put The
Reeve, a vulgar fellow, between his Knight and Squire, as if he was resolved to
go contrary in every thing to Chaucer, who says of the Reeve:PAGE 30
|
"And ever he rode hinderest of the rout." |
|
In this manner he has jumbled his dumb dollies together, and is praised by
his equals for it; for both himself and his friend are equally masters of
Chaucer's language. They both think that the Wife of Bath is a young beautiful
blooming damsel; and H[oppner] says, that she is the Fair Wife of Bath, and
that the Spring appears in her Cheeks. Now hear what Chaucer has made her say
of herself, who is no modest one,
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"But Lord when it remembereth me |
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Upon my youth and on my jollity, |
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It tickleth me about the heart root. |
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Unto this day it doth my heart boot, |
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That I have had my world as in my time; |
5 |
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But age, alas, that all will envenime, |
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Hath me bireft, my beauty and my pith |
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Let go; farewell: the devil go therewith, |
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PAGE 31
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The flower is gone, there is no more to tell. |
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The bran, as best, I can, I now mote sell; |
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And yet, to be right merry, will I fond, |
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Now forth to tell of my fourth husband." |
|
She has had four husbands, a fit subject for
this painter; yet the painter ought to be very much offended with his friend
H----, who has called his "a common scene," "and very ordinary
forms;" which is the truest part of all, for it is so, and very wretchedly
so indeed. What merit can there be in a picture of which such words are spoken
with truth.
Begin Page 540
But the prospectus says that the Painter has represented Chaucer himself as
a knave, who thrusts himself among honest people, to make game of and laugh at
them; though I must do justice to the painter, and say that he has made him
look more like a fool than a knave. But it appears, in all the writings of
Chaucer, and particularly in his Canterbury Tales, that he was very devout, and
paid respect to true enthusiastic superstition. He has laughed at his knaves
and fools as I do now. But he has respected his True Pilgrims, who are a
majority of his company, and are not thrown together in the random manner that
Mr. S[tothard] has done. Chaucer has no where called the Plowman old, worn out
with age and labour, as the prospectus has represented him, and says, that the
picture has done so too. He is worn down with labour, but not with age. How
spots of brown and yellow, smeared about at random, can be either young or old,
I cannot see. It may be an old man; it may be a young one; it may be any thing
that a prospectus pleases. But I know that where there are no lineaments there
can be no character. And what connoisseurs call touch, I know by experience,
must be the destruction of all character and expression, as it is of every
lineament.
The scene of Mr. S------'s Picture is by Dulwich Hills, which was not the
way to Canterbury; but, perhaps the painter thought he would give them a ride
round about, because they were a burlesque set of scare-crows, not worth any
man's respect or care.
But the painter's thoughts being always upon gold, he has introduced a
character that Chaucer has not; namely, a Goldsmith; for so the prospectus
tells us. Why he has introduced a Goldsmith, and what is the wit of it, the
prospectus does not explain. But it takes care to mention the reserve and
modesty of the Painter; this makes a good epigram enough.
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"The fox, the owl, the spider, and the mole, |
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By sweet reserve and modesty get fat." |
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But the prospectus tells us, that the painter has introduced a Sea Captain;
Chaucer has a Ship-man, a Sailor, a Trading Master of a Vessel, called by
courtesy Captain, as every master of a boat is; but this does not make him a
Sea Captain. Chaucer has purposely omitted such a personage, as it only exists
in certain periods: it is the soldier by sea. He who would be a Soldier in
inland nations is a sea captain in commercial nations.
All is misconceived, and its mis-execution is equal to its misconception. I
have no objection to Rubens and Rembrandt being employed, or even to their
living in a palace; but it shall not be at the expence of Rafael and Michael
Angelo living in a cottage, and in contempt and derision. I have been scorned
long enough by these fellows, who owe to me all that they have; it shall be so
no longer.
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I found them blind, I taught them how to see; |
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And, now, they know me not, nor yet themselves. |
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Begin Page 541
PAGE 35
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On a rock, whose haughty brow |
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Frown'd o'er old Conway's foaming flood, |
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Robed in the sable garb of woe, |
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With haggard eyes the Poet stood, |
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Loose his beard, and hoary hair |
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Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air. |
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Weave the warp, and weave the woof |
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The winding sheet of Edward's race. |
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Weaving the winding sheet of Edward's race by means of sounds of spiritual
music and its accompanying expressions of articulate speech is a bold, and
daring, and most masterly conception, that the public have embraced and
approved with avidity. Poetry consists in these conceptions; and shall Painting
be confined to the sordid drudgery of facsimile representations of merely
mortal and perishing substances, and not be as poetry and music are, elevated
into its own proper sphere of invention and visionary conception? No, it shall
not be so! Painting, as well as poetry and music, exists and exults in immortal
thoughts. If Mr. B.'s Canterbury Pilgrims had been done by any other power than
that of the poetic visionary, it would have been as dull as his adversary's.
The Spirits of the murdered bards assist in weaving the deadly woof.
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With me in dreadful harmony they join, |
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And weave, with bloody hands, the tissue of thy line. |
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The connoisseurs and artists who have made
objections to Mr. B.'s mode of representing spirits with real bodies, would do
well to consider that the Venus, the Minerva, the Jupiter, the Apollo, which
they admire in Greek statues, are all of them representations of spiritual
existences of God's immortal, to the mortal perishing organ of sight; and yet
they are embodied and organized in solid marble. Mr. B. requires the same
latitude and all is well. The Prophets describe what they saw in Vision as real
and existing men whom they saw with their imaginative and immortal organs; the
Apostles the same; the clearer the organ the more distinct the object. A Spirit
and a Vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a
nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal
and perishing nature can produce. He who does not imagine in stronger and
better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing mortal
eye can see does not imagine at all. The painter of this work asserts that all
his imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more minutely
organized than any thing seen by his
Begin Page 542
mortal eye. Spirits are organized men: Moderns wish to draw figures without
lines, and with great and heavy shadows; are not shadows more unmeaning than
lines, and more heavy? O who can doubt this!
King Edward and his Queen Elenor are prostrated, with their horses, at the
foot of a rock on which the Bard stands; prostrated by the terrors of his harp
on the margin of the river Conway, whose waves bear up a corse of a slaughtered
bard at the foot of the rock. The armies of Edward are seen winding among the
mountains.
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"He wound with toilsome march his long array." |
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Mortimer and Gloucester lie spell bound behind their king. The execution of
this picture is also in Water Colours, or Fresco.PAGE 39
In the last Battle of King Arthur only Three Britons escaped, these were
the Strongest Man, the Beautifullest Man, and the Ugliest Man; these three
marched through the field unsubdued, as Gods, and the Sun of Britain s[e]t, but
shall arise again with tenfold splendor when Arthur shall awake from sleep, and
resume his dominion over earth and ocean.
The three general classes of men who are represented by the most Beautiful,
the most Strong, and the most Ugly, could not be represented by any historical
facts but those of our own country, the Ancient Britons; without violating
costume. The Britons (say historians) were naked civilized men, learned,
studious, abstruse in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain, in their
acts and manners; wiser than after-ages. They were overwhelmed by brutal arms
all but a small remnant; Strength, Beauty, and Ugliness escaped the wreck, and
remain for ever unsubdued, age after age.
The British Antiquities are now in the Artist's
hands; all his visionary contemplations, relating to his own country and its
ancient glory, when it was as it again shall be, the source of learning and
inspiration. Arthur was a name for the constellation Arcturus, or Bootes, the
Keeper of the North Pole. And all the fables of Arthur and his round table; of
the warlike naked Britons; of Merlin; of Arthur's conquest of the whole world;
of his death, or sleep, and promise to return again; of the Druid monuments, or
temples; of the pavement of Watlingstreet; of London stone; of the caverns in
Cornwall, Wales, Derbyshire, and Scotland; of the Giants of Ireland and
Britain; of the elemental beings, called by us by the general name of Fairies;
and of these three who escaped, namely, Beauty, Strength, and Ugliness, Mr. B.
has in his hands poems of the highest antiquity. Adam was a Druid, and Noah;
also Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical
Begin Page 543
age, which began to turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal
command, whereby human sacrifice would have depopulated the earth. All these
things are written in Eden. The artist is an inhabitant of that happy country,
and if every thing goes on as it has begun, the world of vegetation and
generation may expect to be opened again to Heaven, through Eden, as it was in
the beginning.
The Strong man represents the human sublime. The Beautiful man represents
the human pathetic, which was in the wars of Eden divided into male and female.
The Ugly man represents the human reason. They were originally one man, who was
fourfold; he was self-divided, and his real humanity slain on the stems of
generation, and the form of the fourth was like the Son of God. How he became
divided is a subject of great sublimity and pathos. The Artist has written it
under inspiration, and will, if God please, publish it; it is voluminous, and
contains the ancient history of Britain, and the world of Satan and of Adam.
In the mean time he has painted this Picture, which supposes that in the
reign of that British Prince, who lived in the fifth century, there were
remains of those naked Heroes, in the Welch Mountains; they are there now, Gray
saw them in the person of his bard on Snowdon; there they dwell in naked
simplicity; happy is he who can see and converse with them above the shadows of
generation and death. The giant Albion, was Patriarch of the Atlantic, he is
the Atlas of the Greeks, one of those the Greeks called Titans. The stories of
Arthur are the acts of Albion, applied to a Prince of the fifth century, who
conquered Europe, and held the Empire of the world in the dark age, which the
Romans never again recovered. In this Picture, believing with Milton, the
ancient British History, Mr. B. has done, as all the ancients did, and as all
the moderns, who are worthy of fame, given the historical fact in its poetical
vigour; so as it always happens, and not in that dull way that some Historians
pretend, who being weakly organized themselves, cannot see either miracle or
prodigy; all is to them a dull round of probabilities and possibilities; but
the history of all times and places, is nothing else but improbabilities and
impossibilities; what we should say, was impossible if we did not see it always
before our eyes.
The antiquities of every Nation Under Heaven,
is no less sacred than that of the Jews. They are the same thing as Jacob
Bryant, and all antiquaries have proved. How other antiquities came to be
neglected and disbelieved, while those of the Jews are collected and arranged,
is an enquiry, worthy of both the Antiquarian and the Divine. All had
originally one language, and one religion, this was the religion of Jesus, the
everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus. The reasoning
historian, turner and twister of causes and consequences, such as Hume, Gibbon
and Voltaire; cannot with all their artifice, turn or twist one fact or
disarrange self evident action
Begin Page 544
and reality. Reasons and opinions concerning acts, are not history. Acts
themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of
Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the
Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your
reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. Tell
me the What; I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that
out myself, as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions,
that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable or
impossible. His opinions, who does not see spiritual agency, is not worth any
man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is improbable, must reject all
History and retain doubts only.
It has been said to the Artist, take the Apollo for the model of your
beautiful Man and the Hercules for your strong Man, and the Dancing Fawn for
your Ugly Man. Now he comes to his trial. He knows that what he does is not
inferior to the grandest Antiques. Superior they cannot be, for human power
cannot go beyond either what he does, or what they have done, it is the gift of
God, it is inspiration and vision. He had resolved to emulate those precious
remains of antiquity, he has done so and the result you behold; his ideas of
strength and beauty have not been greatly different. Poetry as it exists now on
earth, in the various remains of ancient authors, Music as it exists in old
tunes or melodies, Painting and Sculpture as it exists in the remains of
Antiquity and in the works of more modern genius, is Inspiration, and cannot be
surpassed; it is perfect and eternal. Milton, Shakspeare, Michael Angelo,
Rafael, the finest specimens of Ancient Sculpture and Painting, and
Architecture, Gothic, Grecian, Hindoo and Egyptian, are the extent of the human
mind. The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To
suppose that Art can go beyond the finest specimens of Art that are now in the
world, is not knowing what Art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the
spirit.
It will be necessary for the Painter to say something concerning his ideas
of Beauty, Strength and Ugliness.
The Beauty that is annexed and appended to folly, is a lamentable accident
and error of the mortal and perishing life; it does but seldom happen; but with
this unnatural mixture the sublime Artist can have nothing to do; it is fit for
the burlesque. The Beauty proper for sublime art, is lineaments, or forms and
features that are capable of being the receptacles of intellect; accordingly
the Painter has given in his beautiful man, his own idea of intellectual
Beauty. The face and limbs that deviates or alters least, from infancy to old
age, is the face and limbs of greatest Beauty and perfection.
The Ugly likewise, when accompanied and annexed
to imbecility and disease, is a subject for burlesque and not for historical
grandeur; the Artist has imagined his Ugly man; one approaching to the
Begin Page 545
beast in features and form, his forehead small, without frontals; his jaws
large; his nose high on the ridge, and narrow; his chest and the stamina of his
make, comparatively little, and his joints and his extremities large; his eyes
with scarce any whites, narrow and cunning, and every thing tending toward what
is truly Ugly; the incapability of intellect.
The Artist has considered his strong Man as a receptacle of Wisdom, a
sublime energizer; his features and limbs do not spindle out into length,
without strength, nor are they too large and unwieldy for his brain and bosom.
Strength consists in accumulation of power to the principal seat, and from
thence a regular gradation and subordination; strength is compactness, not
extent nor bulk.
The strong Man acts from conscious superiority, and marches on in fearless
dependance on the divine decrees, raging with the inspirations of a prophetic
mind. The Beautiful Man acts from duty, and anxious solicitude for the fates of
those for whom he combats. The Ugly Man acts from love of carnage, and delight
in the savage barbarities of war, rushing with sportive precipitation into the
very teeth of the affrighted enemy.
The Roman Soldiers rolled together in a heap before them: "Like the
rolling thing before the whirlwind;" each shew a different character, and
a different expression of fear, or revenge, or envy, or blank horror, or
amazement, or devout wonder and unresisting awe.
The dead and the dying, Britons naked, mingled with armed Romans, strew the
field beneath. Among these, the last of the Bards who were capable of attending
warlike deeds, is seen falling, outstretched among the dead and the dying;
singing to his harp in the pains of death.
Distant among the mountains, are Druid Temples, similar to Stone Hedge. The
Sun sets behind the mountains, bloody with the day of battle.
The flush of health in flesh, exposed to the
open air, nourished by the spirits of forests and floods, in that ancient happy
period, which history has recorded, cannot be like the sickly daubs of Titian
or Rubens. Where will the copier of nature, as it now is, find a civilized man,
who has been accustomed to go naked. Imagination only, can furnish us with
colouring appropriate, such as is found in the Frescos of Rafael and Michael
Angelo: the disposition of forms always directs colouring in works of true art.
As to a modern Man stripped from his load of cloathing, he is like a dead
corpse. Hence Rubens, Titian, Correggio, and all of that class, are like
leather and chalk; their men are like leather, and their women like chalk, for
the disposition of their forms will not admit of grand colouring; in Mr. B.'s
Britons, the blood is seen to circulate in their limbs; he defies competition in
colouring.
Begin Page 546
A Spirit vaulting from a cloud to turn and wind a fiery
Pegasus--Shakspeare. The horse of Intellect is leaping from the cliffs of
Memory and Reasoning; it is a barren Rock: it is also called the Barren Waste
of Locke and Newton.
THIS Picture was done many years ago, and was one of the first Mr. B. ever
did in Fresco; fortunately or rather providentially he left it unblotted and
unblurred, although molested continually by blotting and blurring demons; but
he was also compelled to leave it unfinished for reasons that will be shewn in
the following.PAGE 52
THE subject is taken from the Missionary Voyage and varied from the literal
fact, for the sake of picturesque scenery. The savage girls had dressed
themselves with vine leaves, and some goats on board the missionary ship
stripped them off presently. This Picture was painted at intervals, for
experiment, with the colours, and is laboured to a superabundant blackness; it
has however that about it, which may be worthy the attention of the Artist and
Connoisseur for reasons that follow.
THIS subject is taken from the visions of
Emanuel Swedenborgs. Universal Theology, No. 623. The Learned, who strive to
ascend into Heaven by means of learning, appear to Children like dead horses,
when repelled by the celestial spheres. The works of this visionary are well
worthy the attention of Painters and Poets; they are foundations for grand
things; the reason they have not been more attended to, is, because corporeal
demons have gained a predominance; who the leaders of these are, will be shewn
below. Unworthy Men who gain fame among Men, continue to govern mankind after
death, and in their spiritual bodies, oppose the spirits of those, who worthily
are famous; and as Swedenborg observes, by entering into disease and excrement,
drunkenness and concupiscence, they possess themselves of the bodies of mortal
men, and shut the doors of mind and of thought, by placing Learning above
Inspiration, O Artist! you may disbelieve all this, but it shall be at your own
peril.
Begin Page 547
PAGE 54
THIS Picture was likewise painted at intervals, for experiment on colours,
without any oily vehicle; it may be worthy of attention, not only on account of
its composition, but of the great labour which has been bestowed on it, that
is, three or four times as much as would have finished a more perfect Picture;
the labor has destroyed the lineaments, it was with difficulty brought back
again to a certain effect, which it had at first, when all the lineaments were
perfect.
These Pictures, among numerous others painted for experiment, were the
result of temptations and perturbations, labouring to destroy Imaginative
power, by means of that infernal machine, called Chiaro Oscuro, in the hands of
Venetian and Flemish Demons; whose enmity to the Painter himself, and to all
Artists who study in the Florentine and Roman Schools, may be removed by an
exhibition and exposure of their vile tricks. They cause that every thing in
art shall become a Machine. They cause that the execution shall be all blocked
up with brown shadows. They put the original Artist in fear and doubt of his
own original conception. The spirit of Titian was particularly active, in
raising doubts concerning the possibility of executing without a model, and
when once he had raised the doubt, it became easy for him to snatch away the
vision time after time, for when the Artist took his pencil, to execute his
ideas, his power of imagination weakened so much, and darkened, that memory of
nature and of Pictures of the various Schools possessed his mind, instead of
appropriate execution, resulting from the inventions; like walking in another
man's style, or speaking or looking in another man's style and manner,
unappropriate and repugnant to your own individual character; tormenting the
true Artist, till he leaves the Florentine, and adopts the Venetian practice,
or does as Mr. B. has done, has the courage to suffer poverty and disgrace,
till he ultimately conquers.
Rubens is a most outrageous demon, and by
infusing the remembrances of his Pictures, and style of execution, hinders all
power of individual thought: so that the man who is possessed by this demon,
loses all admiration of any other Artist, but Rubens, and those who were his
imitators and journeymen, he causes to the Florentine and Roman Artist fear to
execute; and though the original conception was all fire and animation, he
loads it with hellish brownness, and blocks up all its gates of light, except
one, and that one he closes with iron bars, till the victim is obliged to give
up the Florentine and Roman practice, and adopt the Venetian and Flemish.
Begin Page 548
Correggio is a soft and effeminate and consequently a most cruel demon,
whose whole delight is to cause endless labor to whoever suffers him to enter
his mind. The story that is told in all Lives of the Painters about Correggio
being poor and but badly paid for his Pictures, is altogether false; he was a
petty Prince, in Italy, and employed numerous journeymen in manufacturing (as
Rubens and Titian did) the Pictures that go under his name. The manual labor in
these Pictures of Correggio is immense, and was paid for originally at the
immense prices that those who keep manufactories of art always charge to their employers,
while they themselves pay their journeymen little enough. But though Correggio
was not poor, he will make any true artist so, who permits him to enter his
mind, and take possession of his affections; he infuses a love of soft and even
tints without boundaries, and of endless reflected lights, that confuse one
another, and hinder all correct drawing from appearing to be correct; for if
one of Rafael or Michael Angelo's figures was to be traced, and Correggio's
reflections and refractions to be added to it, there would soon be an end of
proportion and strength, and it would be weak, and pappy, and lumbering, and
thick headed, like his own works; but then it would have softness and evenness,
by a twelvemonth's labor, where a month would with judgment have finished it
better and higher; and the poor wretch who executed it, would be the Correggio
that the life writers have written of: a drudge and a miserable man, compelled
to softness by poverty. I say again, O Artist, you may disbelieve all this, but
it shall be at your own peril.
Note. These experiment Pictures have been bruized and knocked about, without
mercy, to try all experiments.
The subject is, Mr. Wilkin, translating the Geeta; an ideal design,
suggested by the first publication of that part of the Hindoo Scriptures,
translated by Mr. Wilkin. I understand that my Costume is incorrect, but in
this I plead the authority of the ancients, who often deviated from the Habits,
to preserve the Manners, as in the instance of Laocoon, who, though a priest,
is represented naked.PAGE 60
Begin Page 549
The above four drawings the Artist wishes were in Fresco, on an enlarged
scale to ornament the altars of churches, and to make England like Italy,
respected by respectable men of other countries on account of Art. It is not
the want of genius, that can hereafter be laid to our charge, the Artist who
has done these Pictures and Drawings will take care of that; let those who
govern the Nation, take care of the other. The times require that every one
should speak out boldly; England expects that every man should do his duty, in
Arts, as well as in Arms, or in the Senate.
THIS Design is taken from that most pathetic passage in the Book of Ruth,
where Naomi having taken leave of her daughters in law, with intent to return
to her own country; Ruth cannot leave her, but says, "Whither thou goest I
will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God: where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried;
God do so to me and more also, if ought but death part thee and me."
The distinction that is made in modern times
between a Painting and a Drawing proceeds from ignorance of art. The merit of a
Picture is the same as the merit of a Drawing. The dawber dawbs his Drawings;
he who draws his Drawings draws his Pictures. There is no difference between
Rafael's Cartoons and his Frescos, or Pictures, except that the Frescos, or
Pictures, are more finished. When Mr. B. formerly painted in oil colours his
Pictures were shewn to certain painters and connoisseurs, who said that they
were very admirable Drawings on canvass; but not Pictures: but they said the
same of Rafael's Pictures. Mr. B. thought this the greatest of compliments,
though it was meant otherwise. If losing and obliterating the outline
constitutes a Picture, Mr. B. will never be so foolish as to do one. Such art
of losing the outlines is the art of Venice and Flanders; it loses all
character, and leaves what some people call, expression: but this is a false
notion of expression; expression cannot exist without character as its stamina;
and neither character nor expression can exist without firm and determinate
outline. Fresco Painting is susceptible of higher finishing than Drawing on
Paper, or than any other method of Painting. But he must have a strange
organization of sight who does not prefer a Drawing on Paper to a Dawbing in Oil
by the same master, supposing both to be done with equal care.
Begin Page 550
The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life, is this: That the more
distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art;
and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation,
plagiarism, and bungling. Great inventors, in all ages, knew this: Protogenes
and Apelles knew each other by this line. Rafael and Michael Angelo, and Albert
Durer, are known by this and this alone. The want of this determinate and
bounding form evidences the want of idea in the artist's mind, and the t pretence of the plagiary in all
its branches. How do we distinguish the oak from the beech, the horse from the
ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we distinguish one face or countenance
from another, but by the bounding line and its infinite inflexions and
movements? What is it that builds a house and plants a garden, but the definite
and determinate? What is it that distinguishes honesty from knavery, but the
hard and wirey line of rectitude and certainty in the actions and intentions.
Leave out this l[i]ne and you leave out life itself; all is chaos again, and
the line of the almighty must be drawn out upon it before man or beast can
exist. Talk no more then of Correggio, or Rembrandt, or any other of those
plagiaries of Venice or Flanders. They were but the lame imitators of lines
drawn by their predecessors, and their works prove themselves contemptible
dis-arranged imitations and blundering misapplied copies.
THIS Drawing was done above Thirty Years ago, and proves to the Author, and
he thinks will prove to any discerning eye, that the productions of our youth
and of our maturer age are equal in all essential points. If a man is master of
his profession, he cannot be ignorant that he is so; and if he is not employed
by those who pretend to encourage art, he will employ himself, and laugh in
secret at the pretences of the ignorant, while he has every night dropped into
his shoe, as soon as he puts it off, and puts out the candle, and gets into
bed, a reward for the labours of the day, such as the world cannot give, and
patience and time await to give him all that the world can give.
FINIS.
D. N. SHURY, PRINTER,
BERWICK-STREET, SOHO, LONDON
Begin Page 551
PAGE 67
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NUMBER. |
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I. |
The Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan |
PAGE 1 |
|
II. |
The Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding Behemoth |
2 |
|
III. |
The Canterbury Pilgrims, from Chaucer |
7 |
|
IV. |
The Bard, from Gray |
35 |
|
V. |
The Ancient Britons |
39 |
|
VI. |
A Subject from Shakspeare |
51 |
|
VII. |
The Goats |
52 |
|
VIII. |
The Spiritual Preceptor |
ib. |
PAGE 68
|
IX. |
Satan calling up his Legions, from Milton |
PAGE 54 |
|
X. |
The Bramins--A Drawing |
59 |
|
XI. |
The Body of Abel found by Adam and Eve, Cain fleeing
away--A Drawing |
60 |
|
XII. |
Soldiers casting Lots for Christ's Garment--A Drawing |
ib. |
|
XIII. |
Jacob's Ladder--A Drawing |
ib. |
|
XIV. |
Angels hovering over the Body of Jesus in the Sepulchre--A
Drawing |
ib. |
|
XV. |
Ruth--A Drawing |
61 |
|
XVI. |
The Penance of Jane Shore--A Drawing |
65 |