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)