Lectures on Landscape | Page 3

in America,
and other countries without any history. It is not of the slightest use.
Niagara, or the North Pole and the Aurora Borealis, won't make a
landscape; but a ditch at Iffley will, if you have humanity in
you--enough in you to interpret the feelings of hedgers and ditchers,
and frogs.
8. Next, here is one of the most beautiful landscapes ever painted, the
best I have next to the Greta and Tees.
The subject physically is a mere bank of grass above a stream with
some wych-elms and willows. A level-topped bank; the water has cut
its way down through the soft alluvion of an elevated plain to the
limestone rock at the bottom.
Had this scene been in America, no mortal could have made a
landscape of it. It is nothing but a grass bank with some not very pretty
trees scattered over it, wholly without grouping. The stream at the
bottom is rocky indeed, but its rocks are mean, flat, and of a dull
yellow color. The sky is gray and shapeless. There's absolutely nothing
to paint anywhere of essential landscape subject, as commonly
understood.
Now see what the landscape consists in, which I have told you is one of

the most beautiful ever painted by man. There's first a little bit of it left
nearly wild, not quite wild; there's a cart and rider's track through it
among the copse; and then, standing simply on the wild moss-troopers'
ground, the scattered ruins of a great abbey, seen so dimly, that they
seem to be fading out of sight, in color as in time.
These two things together, the wild copse wood and the ruin, take you
back into the life of the fourteenth century. The one is the border-riders'
kingdom; the other that of peace which has striven against
border-riding--how vainly! Both these are remains of the past. But the
outhouses and refectory of the abbey have been turned into a farmhouse,
and that is inhabited, and in front of it the Mistress is feeding her
chickens. You see the country is perfectly quiet and innocent, for there
is no trace of a fence anywhere; the cattle have strayed down to the
riverside, it being a hot day; and some rest in the shade and two in the
water.
They could not have done so at their ease had the river not been
humanized. Only a little bit of its stony bed is left; a mill weir, thrown
across, stays the water in a perfectly clear and delicious pool; to show
how clear it is, Turner has put the only piece of playing color in all the
picture into the reflections in this. One cow is white, another white and
red, evidently as clean as morning dew can wash their sides. They
could not have been so in a country where there was the least coal
smoke; so Turner has put a wreath of perfectly white smoke through
the trees; and lest that should not be enough to show you they burnt
wood, he has made his foreground of a piece of copse just lopped, with
the new fagots standing up against it; and this still not being enough to
give you the idea of perfect cleanliness, he has covered the stones of
the river-bed with white clothes laid out to dry; and that not being
enough yet, for the river-bed might be clean though nothing else was,
he has put a quantity more hanging over the abbey walls.
9. Only natural phenomena in their direct relation to humanity--these
are to be your subjects in landscape. Rocks and water and air may no
more be painted for their own sakes, than the armor carved without the
warrior.

But, secondly. I said landscape is to be a passionate representation of
these things. It must be done, that is to say, with strength and depth of
soul. This is indeed to some extent merely the particular application of
a principle that has no exception. If you are without strong passions,
you cannot be a painter at all. The laying of paint by an insensitive
person, whatever it endeavors to represent, is not painting, but daubing
or plastering; and that, observe, irrespective of the boldness or
minuteness of the work. An insensitive person will daub with a camel's
hair-brush and ultramarine; and a passionate one will paint with mortar
and a trowel.
10. But far more than common passion is necessary to paint landscape.
The physical conditions there are so numerous, and the spiritual ones so
occult, that you are sure to be overpowered by the materialism, unless
your sentiment is strong. No man is naturally likely to think first of
anatomy in painting a pretty woman; but he is very apt to do so in
painting a mountain. No