Beauties of the Dulwich picture gallery1824 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
animal appropriate artist beauty BERCHEM blend Bronzino called centre character charming child classical Claude conceive contrast Cuyp 15 Dalilah delightful depicted distance DORSET STREET ductions DULWICH DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY elegant expression exquisite extraordinary fact feeling female finer finished Flemish landscape-painters foregoing foreground Gallery genius Giorgione glowing grace grandeur GUERCINO Guido handling Hobbima Huysum imagination infant intended JACOB'S DREAM Jupiter less light looking louring lovely medium merely merit Murillo neral effect notice nymphs painted painter particular pencil perhaps pervades pict picture pleasing poetical portion possesses Poussin 69 produced purely Pynaker racter Raffaelle reader receding Rembrandt repre represents rich Rubens Ruysdael satyrs scarcely scene scenery seems single figure Sir Joshua specimen spectator spirit study and attention style sweet taste Teniers thing Titian tone of colouring trees truth ture Van Huysum Vanderwerf Vandyke Velasquez verisimilitude Veronese Vinci Watteau whole Wouvermans
Popular passages
Page 46 - I conceive it to be finer than any thing within an equal space in existence. In the upper part of the sky an intense light is bursting forth, and it descends slantwise, and widening as it descends, till it reaches the sleeping youth, gradually decreasing in splendour as it recedes from its apparent source ; and, at different intervals of this road of light, winged figures are seen descending.
Page 47 - ... are no more like mortals than they are like any thing else. They are altogether of the air, airy ; and if they must be likened to any thing, it is to birds ; though we probably gain this association simply on account of their having wings like birds — for they resemble them in nothing else: they are not flying, but gliding down perpendicularly, as if borne up on the surface of the collected rays of light ; and their outspread wings seem used only to keep them in this erect position as they...
Page 89 - ... without any of its results, good or bad. In fact, their wants and feelings are merely animal, and the expressions which these give rise to are correspondent. The delight of the one is that of the happy colt sporting on its native common ; and the sulkiness of the other is that of the ill-conditioned cub growling over its food. At the feet of the boy who is eating stands a dog, looking up expectantly ; and there is nearly as much expression in his countenance as there is in either of the others....
Page 12 - ... and sunshine. There are no marks of the pencil about it. You cannot tell how it got there,— unless, as I before said, it has been breathed there. And you cannot be sure that it will stay before you — that it is not an illusion of the mind — a vision of the golden age — and that when you take your eyes off it, it will not, when they return, have disappeared. I confess that this, and two or three others of the same kind in this collection, give me a more apt idea of the golden age of the...
Page 64 - But, as a whole, and for colouring, composition, and expression united, it is certainly an admirable work. Nothing can be more complete in itself than every separate portion of it, and at the same time each portion is finely consistent with all the others ; and it is this, in particular, which seems to entitle a work to the term classical. The centre group is finely imagined, and most happily executed. The infant, in particular, is drawn with infinite spirit, and yet with perfect nature and truth....
Page 46 - I have ever before seen depicted or described are but winged mortals ; but these angels are no more like mortals than they are like any thing else. They are altogether of the air, airy ; and if they must be likened to any thing, it is to birds ; though we probably gain this association simply on account of their having wings like birds — for they resemble them in nothing else: they are not flying, but gliding down perpendicularly, as if borne up on the surface of the collected rays of light ; and...
Page vi - ... they pursue the gracefully winding and picturesque road that leads to the village, watch (through the unclothed hedgerows) the various changes in the prospect on either hand — which they cannot do in summer, and which would scarcely look more lovely if they could ; — let them listen to the low call of the robin-redbreast, as he flits pertly from the road-side at their approach, or sings wildly sweet as he perches himself on the topmost twig of yonder thorn that has been suffered to outgrow...
Page 42 - ... of Paul Potter's, — both professing to represent the same class of scenery — and then determine whether, being, as they are, unlike each other in every particular, they can both be like nature. And yet both affect us nearly in the same manner, and nearly in the manner that nature affects us. The truth is, Wouvermans was a man of genius, and has invented a nature of his own, which is so lovely in itself, and at the same time so much in the spirit of the real nature which he imitated (not copied),...
Page 45 - All this dark part of the picture is exceedingly fine. There is an admirable keeping and consistency about it, looking at it only with a view to itself, as the immediate scene in which the awful dream takes place. But, as a contrast to heighten the impression we receive from the representation of the dream itself, its effect is prodigious. This representation occupies the centre part of the picture ; and as a delineation of super-natural appearances and things, I conceive it to be finer than any...
Page vi - ... summer. The reader must not think that I am heedlessly calling upon him to attend to these objects of external nature, instead of leading him at once to those of which we are more immediately in search. I have purposely asked him to fix the former on his memory, and to yield himself for a moment to their influence exclusively, in order that, by a pleasing and not abrupt contrast, he may be the better prepared to appreciate the blush, the bloom, the burning glow of beauty that will fall upon his...