Second Discourse

Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December 11, I769, by the President.

Gentlemen,--I congratulate you on the honour which you have just
received. I have the highest opinion of your merits, and could
wish to show my sense of them in something which possibly may be
more useful to you than barren praise. I could wish to lead you
into such a course of study as may render your future progress
answerable to your past improvement; and, whilst I applaud you for
what has been done, remind you of how much yet remains to attain
perfection.

I flatter myself, that from the long experience I have had, and the
unceasing assiduity with which I have pursued those studies, in
which, like you, I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of
vanity in offering some hints to your consideration. They are
indeed in a great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same
pursuit. But the history of errors properly managed often shortens
the road to truth. And although no method of study that I can
offer will of itself conduct to excellence, yet it may preserve
industry from being misapplied.

In speaking to you of the theory of the art, I shall only consider
it as it has a relation to the method of your studies.

Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall
address you as having passed through the first of them, which is
confined to the rudiments, including a facility of drawing any
object that presents itself, a tolerable readiness in the
management of colours, and an acquaintance with the most simple and
obvious rules of composition.

This first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is
in literature, a general preparation to whatever species of the art
the student may afterwards choose for his more particular
application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colours is
very properly called the language of the art; and in this language,
the honours you have just received prove you to have made no
inconsiderable progress.

When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree
of correctness, he must then endeavour to collect subjects for
expression; to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and varied as
occasion may require. He is now in the second period of study, in
which his business is to learn all that has hitherto been known and
done. Having hitherto received instructions from a particular
master, he is now to consider the art itself as his master. He
must extend his capacity to more sublime and general instructions.
Those perfections which lie scattered among various masters are now
united in one general idea, which is henceforth to regulate his
taste and enlarge his imagination. With a variety of models thus
before him, he will avoid that narrowness and poverty of conception
which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master, and will
cease to follow any favourite where he ceases to excel. This
period is, however, still a time of subjection and discipline.
Though the student will not resign himself blindly to any single
authority when he may have the advantage of consulting many, he
must still be afraid of trusting his own judgment, and of deviating
into any track where he cannot find the footsteps of some former
master.

The third and last period emancipates the student from subjection
to any authority but what he shall himself judge to be supported by
reason. Confiding now in his own judgment, he will consider and
separate those different principles to which different modes of
beauty owe their original. In the former period he sought only to
know and combine excellence, wherever it was to be found, into one
idea of perfection; in this he learns, what requires the most
attentive survey and the subtle disquisition, to discriminate
perfections that are incompatible with each other.

He is from this time to regard himself as holding the same rank
with those masters whom he before obeyed as teachers, and as
exercising a sort of sovereignty over those rules which have
hitherto restrained him. Comparing now no longer the performances
of art with each other, but examining the art itself by the
standard of nature, he corrects what is erroneous, supplies what is
scanty, and adds by his own observation what the industry of his
predecessors may have yet left wanting to perfection. Having well
established his judgment, and stored his memory, he may now without
fear try the power of his imagination. The mind that has been thus
disciplined may be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm, and venture
to play on the borders of the wildest extravagance. The habitual
dignity, which long converse with the greatest minds has imparted
to him, will display itself in all his attempts, and he will stand
among his instructors, not as an imitator, but a rival.

These are the different stages of the art. But as I now address
myself particularly to those students who have been this day
rewarded for their happy passage through the first period, I can
with no propriety suppose they want any help in the initiatory
studies. My present design is to direct your view to distant
excellence, and to show you the readiest path that leads to it. Of
this I shall speak with such latitude as may leave the province of
the professor uninvaded, and shall not anticipate those precepts
which it is his business to give and your duty to understand.

It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life
must be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of
genius. Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new
combination of those images which have been previously gathered and
deposited in the memory. Nothing can come of nothing. He who has
laid up no materials can produce no combinations.

A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is
always apt to overrate his own abilities, to mistake the most
trifling excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new
to him for a new-found country. If by chance he passes beyond his
usual limits, he congratulates his own arrival at those regions
which they who have steered a better course have long left behind
them.

The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of
originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and
if they are found to differ in anything from their predecessors, it
is only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more
extensive therefore your acquaintance is with the works of those
who have excelled the more extensive will be your powers of
invention; and what may appear still more like a paradox, the more
original will be your conceptions. But the difficulty on this
occasion is to determine who ought to be proposed as models of
excellence, and who ought to be considered as the properest guides.

To a young man just arrived in Italy, many of the present painters
of that country are ready enough to obtrude their precepts, and to
offer their own performances as examples of that perfection which
they affect to recommend. The modern, however, who recommends
HIMSELF as a standard, may justly be suspected as ignorant of the
true end, and unacquainted with the proper object of the art which
he professes. To follow such a guide will not only retard the
student, but mislead him.

On whom, then, can he rely, or who shall show him the path that
leads to excellence? The answer is obvious: Those great masters
who have travelled the same road with success are the most likely
to conduct others. The works of those who have stood the test of
ages have a claim to that respect and veneration to which no modern
can pretend. The duration and stability of their fame is
sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the
slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart
by every tie of sympathetic approbation.

There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great
men, but how they may be studied to advantage is an inquiry of
great importance.

Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the
real dignity of the art, and who rate the works of an artist in
proportion as they excel, or are defective in the mechanical parts,
look on theory as something that may enable them to talk but not to
paint better, and confining themselves entirely to mechanical
practice, very assiduously toil on in the drudgery of copying, and
think they make a rapid progress while they faithfully exhibit the
minutest part of a favourite picture. This appears to me a very
tedious, and I think a very erroneous, method of proceeding. Of
every large composition, even of those which are most admired, a
great part may be truly said to be common-place. This, though it
takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improvement. I
consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the
student satisfies himself with the appearance of doing something;
he falls into the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting,
and of labouring without any determinate object; as it requires no
effort of the mind, he sleeps over his work; and those powers of
invention and composition which ought particularly to be called out
and put in action lie torpid, and lose their energy for want of
exercise.

It is an observation that all must have made, how incapable those
are of producing anything of their own who have spent much of their
time in making finished copies.

To suppose that the complication of powers, and variety of ideas
necessary to that mind which aspires to the first honours ill the
art of painting, can be obtained by the frigid contemplation of a
few single models, is no less absurd than it would be in him who
wishes to be a poet to imagine that by translating a tragedy he can
acquire to himself sufficient knowledge of the appearances of
nature, the operations of the passions, and the incidents of life.

The great use in copying, if it be at all useful, should seem to be
in learning to colour; yet even colouring will never be perfectly
attained by servilely copying the mould before you. An eye
critically nice can only be formed by observing well-coloured
pictures with attention: and by close inspection, and minute
examination you will discover, at last, the manner of handling, the
artifices of contrast, glazing, and other expedients, by which good
colourists have raised the value of their tints, and by which
nature has been so happily imitated.

I must inform you, however, that old pictures deservedly celebrated
for their colouring are often so changed by dirt and varnish, that
we ought not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their
reputation in the eyes of unexperienced painters, or young
students. An artist whose judgment is matured by long observation,
considers rather what the picture once was, than what it is at
present. He has acquired a power by habit of seeing the brilliancy
of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured. An exact
imitation, therefore, of those pictures, is likely to fill the
student's mind with false opinions, and to send him back a
colourist of his own formation, with ideas equally remote from
nature and from art, from the genuine practice of the masters and
the real appearances of things.

Following these rules, and using these precautions, when you have
clearly and distinctly learned in what good colouring consists, you
cannot do better than have recourse to nature herself, who is
always at hand, and in comparison of whose true splendour the best
coloured pictures are but faint and feeble.

However, as the practice of copying is not entirely to be excluded,
since the mechanical practice of painting is learned in some
measure by it, let those choice parts only be selected which have
recommended the work to notice. If its excellence consists in its
general effect, it would be proper to make slight sketches of the
machinery and general management of the picture. Those sketches
should be kept always by you for the regulation of your style.
Instead of copying the touches of those great masters, copy only
their conceptions. Instead of treading in their footsteps,
endeavour only to keep the same road. Labour to invent on their
general principles and way of thinking. Possess yourself with
their spirit. Consider with yourself how a Michael Angelo or a
Raffaelle would have treated this subject: and work yourself into
a belief that your picture is to be seen and criticised by them
when completed. Even an attempt of this kind will rouse your
powers.

But as mere enthusiasm will carry you but a little way, let me
recommend a practice that may be equivalent, and will perhaps more
efficaciously contribute to your advancement, than even the verbal
corrections of those masters themselves, could they be obtained.
What I would propose is, that you should enter into a kind of
competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a companion
to any picture that you consider as a model. After you have
finished your work, place it near the model, and compare them
carefully together. You will then not only see, but feel your own
deficiencies more sensibly than by precepts, or any other means of
instruction. The true principles of painting will mingle with your
thoughts. Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects, will be certain
and definitive; and sinking deep into the mind, will not only be
more just, but more lasting than those presented to you by precepts
only: which will, always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined.

This method of comparing your own efforts with those of some great
master, is indeed a severe and mortifying task, to which none will
submit, but such as have great views, with fortitude sufficient to
forego the gratifications of present vanity for future honour.
When the student has succeeded in some measure to his own
satisfaction, and has felicitated himself on his success, to go
voluntarily to a tribunal where he knows his vanity must be
humbled, and all self-approbation must vanish, requires not only
great resolution, but great humility. To him, however, who has the
Ambition to be a real master, the solid satisfaction which proceeds
from a consciousness of his advancement (of which seeing his own
faults is the first step) will very abundantly compensate for the
mortification of present disappointment. There is, besides, this
alleviating circumstance. Every discovery he makes, every
acquisition of knowledge he attains, seems to proceed from his own
sagacity; and thus he acquires a confidence in himself sufficient
to keep up the resolution of perseverance.

We all must have experienced how lazily, and consequently how
ineffectually, instruction is received when forced upon the mind by
others. Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been
their own teachers. We prefer those instructions which we have
given ourselves, from our affection to the instructor; and they are
more effectual, from being received into the mind at the very time
when it is most open and eager to receive them.

With respect to the pictures that you are to choose for your
models, I could wish that you would take the world's opinion rather
than your own. In other words, I would have you choose those of
established reputation rather than follow your own fancy. If you
should not admire them at first, you will, by endeavouring to
imitate them, find that the world has not been mistaken.

It is not an easy task to point out those various excellences for
your imitation which he distributed amongst the various schools.
An endeavour to do this may perhaps be the subject of some future
discourse. I will, therefore, at present only recommend a model
for style in painting, which is a branch of the art more
immediately necessary to the young student. Style in painting is
the same as in writing, a power over materials, whether words or
colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. And in
this Lodovico Carrache (I mean in his best works) appears to me to
approach the nearest to perfection. His unaffected breadth of
light and shadow, the simplicity of colouring, which holding its
proper rank, does not draw aside the least part of the attention
from the subject, and the solemn effect of that twilight which
seems diffused over his pictures, appear to me to correspond with
grave and dignified subjects, better than the more artificial
brilliancy of sunshine which enlightens the pictures of Titian.
Though Tintoret thought that Titian's colouring was the model of
perfection, and would correspond even with the sublime of Michael
Angelo; and that if Angelo had coloured like Titian, or Titian
designed like Angelo, the world would once have had a perfect
painter.

It is our misfortune, however, that those works of Carrache which I
would recommend to the student are not often found out of Bologna.
The "St. Francis in the midst of his Friars," "The
Transfiguration," "The Birth of St. John the Baptist," "The Calling
of St. Matthew," the "St. Jerome," the fresco paintings in the
Zampieri Palace, are all worthy the attention of the student. And
I think those who travel would do well to allot a much greater
portion of their time to that city than it has been hitherto the
custom to bestow.

In this art, as in others, there are many teachers who profess to
show the nearest way to excellence, and many expedients have been
invented by which the toil of study might be saved. But let no man
be seduced to idleness by specious promises. Excellence is never
granted to man but as the reward of labour. It argues, indeed, no
small strength of mind to persevere in habits of industry, without
the pleasure of perceiving those advances; which, like the hand of
a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet
proceed so slowly as to escape observation. A facility of drawing,
like that of playing upon a musical instrument, cannot be acquired
but by an infinite number of acts. I need not, therefore, enforce
by many words the necessity of continual application; nor tell you
that the port-crayon ought to be for ever in your hands. Various
methods will occur to you by which this power may be acquired. I
would particularly recommend that after your return from the
academy (where I suppose your attendance to be constant) you would
endeavour to draw the figure by memory. I will even venture to
add, that by perseverance in this custom, you will become able to
draw the human figure tolerably correct, with as little effort of
the mind as to trace with a pen the letters of the alphabet.

That this facility is not unattainable, some members in this
academy give a sufficient proof. And, be assured, that if this
power is not acquired whilst you are young, there will be no time
for it afterwards: at least, the attempt will be attended with as
much difficulty as those experience who learn to read or write
after they have arrived to the age of maturity.

But while I mention the port-crayon as the student's constant
companion, he must still remember that the pencil is the instrument
by which he must hope to obtain eminence. What, therefore, I wish
to impress upon you is, that whenever an opportunity offers, you
paint your studies instead of drawing them. This will give you
such a facility in using colours, that in time they will arrange
themselves under the pencil, even without the attention of the hand
that conducts it. If one act excluded the other, this advice could
not with any propriety be given. But if painting comprises both
drawing and colouring and if by a short struggle of resolute
industry the same expedition is attainable in painting as in
drawing on paper, I cannot see what objection can justly be made to
the practice; or why that should be done by parts, which may be
done altogether.

If we turn our eyes to the several schools of painting, and
consider their respective excellences, we shall find that those who
excel most in colouring pursued this method. The Venetian and
Flemish schools, which owe much of their fame to colouring, have
enriched the cabinets of the collectors of drawings with very few
examples. Those of Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, and the
Bassans, are in general slight and undetermined. Their sketches on
paper are as rude as their pictures are excellent in regard to
harmony of colouring. Correggio and Barocci have left few, if any,
finished drawings behind them. And in the Flemish school, Rubens
and Vandyke made their designs for the most part either in colours
or in chiaroscuro. It is as common to find studies of the Venetian
and Flemish painters on canvas, as of the schools of Rome and
Florence on paper. Not but that many finished drawings are sold
under the names of those masters. Those, however, are undoubtedly
the productions either of engravers or of their scholars who copied
their works.

These instructions I have ventured to offer from my own experience;
but as they deviate widely from received opinions, I offer them
with diffidence; and when better are suggested, shall retract them
without regret.

There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by
the vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid that I shall
repeat it too often. You must have no dependence on your own
genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if
you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their
deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labour: nothing is
to be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysical
discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will venture to
assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition
eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects
similar to those which some call the result of natural powers.

Though a man cannot at all times, and in all places, paint or draw,
yet the mind can prepare itself by laying in proper materials, at
all times, and in all places. Both Livy and Plutarch, in
describing Philopoemen, one of the ablest generals of antiquity,
have given us a striking picture of a mind always intent on its
profession, and by assiduity obtaining those excellences which some
all their lives vainly expect from Nature. I shall quote the
passage in Livy at length, as it runs parallel with the practice I
would recommend to the painter, sculptor, or architect.

"Philopoemen was a man eminent for his sagacity and experience in
choosing ground, and in leading armies; to which he formed his mind
by perpetual meditation, in times of peace as well as war. When,
in any occasional journey, he came to a straight difficult passage,
if he was alone, he considered with himself, and if he was in
company he asked his friends what it would be best to do if in this
place they had found an enemy, either in the front, or in the rear,
on the one side, or on the other. 'It might happen,' says he,
'that the enemy to be opposed might come on drawn up in regular
lines, or in a tumultuous body, formed only by the nature of the
place.' He then considered a little what ground he should take;
what number of soldiers he should use, and what arms he should give
them; where he should lodge his carriages, his baggage, and the
defenceless followers of his camp; how many guards, and of what
kind, he should send to defend them; and whether it would be better
to press forward along the pass, or recover by retreat his former
station: he would consider likewise where his camp could most
commodiously be formed; how much ground he should enclose within
his trenches; where he should have the convenience of water; and
where he might find plenty of wood and forage; and when he should
break up his camp on the following day, through what road he could
most safely pass, and in what form he should dispose his troops.
With such thoughts and disquisitions he had from his early years so
exercised his mind, that on these occasions nothing could happen
which he had not been already accustomed to consider."

I cannot help imagining that I see a promising young painter,
equally vigilant, whether at home, or abroad in the streets, or in
the fields. Every object that presents itself is to him a lesson.
He regards all nature with a view to his profession; and combines
her beauties, or corrects her defects. He examines the countenance
of men under the influence of passion; and often catches the most
pleasing hints from subjects of turbulence or deformity. Even bad
pictures themselves supply him with useful documents; and, as
Leonardo da Vinci has observed, he improves upon the fanciful
images that are sometimes seen in the fire, or are accidentally
sketched upon a discoloured wall.

The artist who has his mind thus filled with ideas, and his hand
made expert by practice, works with ease and readiness; whilst he
who would have you believe that he is waiting for the inspirations
of genius, is in reality at a loss how to beam, and is at last
delivered of his monsters with difficulty and pain.

The well-grounded painter, on the contrary, has only maturely to
consider his subject, and all the mechanical parts of his art
follow without his exertion, Conscious of the difficulty of
obtaining what he possesses he makes no pretensions to secrets,
except those of closer application. Without conceiving the
smallest jealousy against others, he is contented that all shall be
as great as himself who are willing to undergo the same fatigue:
and as his pre-eminence depends not upon a trick, he is free from
the painful suspicions of a juggler, who lives in perpetual fear
lest his trick should be discovered.