Seven Discourses on Art | Page 6

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