It was not the drawing
of a _dessinateur_, but there was method in its badness. I remember
hearing a friend say, that, going into his studio one day, he found him
just in the act of finishing a hand. He said, "It looks very badly
drawn, but I have painted it three times before I could get it right
Once I had it well drawn, and then it looked very badly; and now it
suits me better than when it was well drawn." A neatly drawn figure
would have made as bad an appearance in one of his pictures as a dandy
in the heat and turmoil of a battle-field; yet, as they came, all the
parts were consistent with the whole, reminding one of what Ruskin says
of Turner's figures.
For vigor and dash in execution, and the trooping energy of some of his
competitions, he reminds me more of Rubens than of any other; but his
composition has a more purely imaginative cast than that of Rubens, a
purer melody, a far more refined spiritualism. Nothing was coarse or
gross, much less sensual. His was the true imaginative fusion from which
pictures spring complete, subject to no revision. Between him and Turner
there were many points of resemblance, of which the greatest was in a
common defect,--an impulsive, unschooled, unsubstantial method of
execution, contrasting strongly with the exact, deliberate, and yet,
beyond description, masterly touch of Titian and most of his school.
Pages:
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207