The political theory of painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt : "the body of the public"

383 Pages·1986·101.88 MB·English

by  John Barrell

The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt

•
THE POLITICAL THEORY OF PAINTING
FROM REYNOLDS TO HAZLITT
'The Body of the Public'
John Barrell
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
1986
For Tony Tanner
Copyright© 1986 by Yale University
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced
in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright
Law and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Mary Carruthers
Set in Linotron Times and printed in Great Britain at
The Bath Press, Avon
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 86-50362
ISBN 0-300--03720--1
CONTENTS
Preface Vll
Acknowledgements
lX
List of Illustrations
X
INTRODUCTION A REPUBLIC OF TASTE I
Introductory: the scope of the book 1. The discourse
of civic humanism 3. The civic humanist theory of
painting JO. The qualification for citizenship in the
republic of taste 13. Painting and public virtue 18. The
rhetorical aesthetic 23. The Judgment of Hercules 27.
Liberty and luxury: the history of painting 33. Theories
of painting in France 39. The 'privatisation' of society
and the division of labour 45. The privatisation of
virtue and of painting 54. The argument, and remarks
on the 'public' and gender 63.
I SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
Introductory: the coherence of the Discourses 69.
The Discourses and the history of painting 72. Citizen-
ship and the ability to abstract from particulars 76.
The philosophical aesthetic 82. The central form and the
body of the public 90. Form, fable, and character: the
dangers of ambiguity 99. Private art and private inter-
pretation II 2. Originality and nobility 124. The
discourse of custom 136. A customary community of
taste 141. A new code of laws 158.
II
JAMES BARRY
Introductory: Barry and Reynolds 163. Barry's
"Inquiry" 165. Public and private bodies: Grace,
Character, and Deformity 173. A democratic republic of
taste 182. The relation of form and fable 187. The well-
and ill-employed 192. The history and division of art 199.
The knowledge and character of the painter 209.
Physiognomy, individuality, and the division of
labour 214.
III A BLAKE DICTIONARY 222
Introductory: Blake and Romanticism 222. 'Original'
(I) 225. 'Character' 231. 'Individual' 237. 'Original'
(II) 244. 'Public' 253.
IV HENRY FUSELI
Introductory: the two voices of Fuseli 258. The history
of painting in Greece 262. The history of painting in
modern Europe 273. The privatisation of modern society
and the decay of 'higher art' 279. Two accounts of the
hierarchy of genres 283. 'The painter of mankind' and
'the painter of humanity' 291. The composition of a
privatised society 296.
V BENJAMIN ROBERT HA YOON AND WILLIAM
HAZLITT: TWO ENCYCLOPAEDIA ARTICLES 308
Haydon: public style and individual genius 308. The
composition of Hazlitt's article Jl4· 'The immediate
imitation ofnature' 316. The aristocracy of character 3 20.
Hazlitt and Reynolds 326. Private art and public
patronage 336. Conclusion 338.
Notes
Index
PREFACE
'THIS WHOLE BooK', wrote Blake, in the margin of his copy of Rey-
nolds's Discourses on Art, 'was Written to Serve Political Purposes'.
This book is written to reply, 'of course it was'. So what did Blake
mean? Why should he have objected to the fact that the theory of
painting set out in the Discourses was 'political'?-so were the argu-
ments set out in his own writings on art. How could the fact have
come as a surprise to him?- as we shall see, it was no secret, in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that the criticism of paint-
ing had no language to employ but a political language, and had no
ambition to develop an approach to painting which was not political.
If Reynolds and Blake had been able to imagine an approach which
was, or which claimed to be, 'non-political', they could certainly not
have imagined how such an approach could justify itself.
But Blake was using the word 'political' in a new sense; a sense
which had developed too recently to be included in Johnson's Dic-
tionary of 1755. Johnson offers two definitions of 'political': 'relating
to politicks; relating to the administration of publick affairs'; and
'cunning; skilful'. Fourteen years later, Junius wrote to Sir William
Draper that, to make good his objections to Junius's first letter, he
should have proved in his reply that all the failures of the present
administration were :owing to the malice of political writers, who will
not suffer the best and brightest of characters (meaning still the
present ministry) to take a single right step for the honour or interest
of the nation'. Junius's point is not that Draper thinks such writers
'cunning', though he certainly did think that; but that he thinks of
them-to paraphrase the appropriate definition in the OED-as
belonging to, or taking, a side in politics, and so as partisan, factious.
To accuse someone's writing of being 'political' in this sense is now,
but was not always, to disclaim that your own was 'political' in
another; it was, on the contrary, to make that very claim.
What outraged Blake was his discovery that Reynolds's theory of
painting was at the service of a particular political interest; and,
viii Preface
accordingly, in his own writings on art, he set out to do what Reynolds
had certainly thought of himself, also, as doing: to develop an
account of painting by which it would be revealed as 'for the honour
or interest of the nation', and so as 'political' in the sense of 'be-
longing to the state and the body of citizens' ( OED)-the body of the
public. It is the attempt of Reynolds, Blake and their contemporaries
to do this-and to decide, as an essential first step, who. were the
'citizens' to whom art belonged-that is the subject of this book.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Tms BOOK began as a seminar-paper on Reynolds and Johnson, writ-
ten when I first began teaching. with Norman Bryson, a course at
Cambridge on eighteenth and early nineteenth-century theories of
art and literature, and much of what I have come to think about
Reynolds, and about Hazlitt, is the result of my efforts to ans\ver Dr
Bryson 's searching criticisms. Much of what I have to say about Blake
is similarly the result of talking and teaching with David Simpson,
who read the first draft of my chapter on Blake and commented on it
with characteristic thoughtfulness. The more general argument of the
book owes much to Harriet Guest, Sam Kerridge, and Christopher
Prendergast, who patiently listened to some very rambling accounts
of what I was trying to do, and somehow managed to point them in
directions more likely to lead somewhere. There are traces,
throughout the book, of observations or information offered by Liz
Bellamy, Tim Clark, Stephen Copley, Stephen Daniels, Peter De
Bolla, Nigel Everett, John Gage, Nigel Leask, John Mullan, Nic-
holas Penny, Michael Rosenthal, Keith Snell, David Solkin, Tony
Tanner, Anne Wagner, and Tom Williamson. The final form of the
book owes a great deal to the immensely attentive report of the
anonymous reader for Yale University Press, to John Nicoll, who
encouraged and commissioned the book, to Mary Carruthers, for her
careful editing of the manuscript, to Janice Gray and Philippe Harari,
who typed the manuscript with speed as well as accuracy and to Karen
Rigby, who helped with reading the proofs. The book is dedicated to
Tony Tanner, whose friendship made my thirteen years at Cam-
bridge so oddly tolerable: I hope that to put it like that will not seem
to him too inadequate a way of acknowledging my incalculable obliga-
tions to him.
John Barrell
Brighton, April 1986.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Simon Gribelin, after Paolo de Matthaeis, The Judgment of Hercules
(28)
2. Thomas Hudson (?), Miss Irons, the late Mr A. H. Wright (67)
3. Hercules Farnese, Museo Nazionale, Naples (106)
4. Apollo Belvedere, Musei Vaticani (107)
5. Borghese Warrior, or Borghese Gladiator, Louvre, Paris (109)
6. Dying Gladiator, or Dying Gaul, Musei Capitolini, Rome (109)
7. The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Museo Nazionale, Naples (Mansell Collec-
tion) (111)
8. James Barry, Commerce or the Triumph of the Thames, reproduced by
permission of the Royal Society of Arts, London (Paul Mellon Centre)
(194)
9. James Barry, etching and engraving of Commerce (195)
IO. James Barry, Orpheus, reproduced by permission of the Royal Society
of Arts, London (213)
11. James Barry, etching and engraving of Orpheus (213)
12. James Barry, etching and engraving of Pandora (216)
13. James Barry, The Distribution of Premiums at the Society ofA rts, repro-
duced by permission of the Royal Society of Arts, London (218)
14. James Barry, etching and engraving of The Distribution of Premiums
(218)
15. Venus de'Medici, Uffizi, Florence (228)
16. Dancing Faun, Uffizi, Florence (Alinari) (235)
17. William Blake, Satan Calling up his Legions, The Victoria and Albert
Museum, London (240)
18. Benjamin Robert Haydon, illustration to his account of the contest of
Apelles and Protegenes (246)
19. William Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment, Pollok House, Glasgow
(249)
20. William Blake, Sir Jeffery Chaucer and the Nine and Twenty Pilgrims on
the Journey to Canterbury, Pollok House, Glasgow (252)
21. Laocoon, Musei Vaticani (268)
22. Luigi Schiavonetti, after Aristotile de Sangallo, after Michelangelo, the
'Cartoon of Pisa' (The Battle of Cascina) (298)
23. Simon Gribelin, after Raphael, The Death of Ananias (300)