Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), February 15, 1845, vol. 1, no. 7, p. ??

[page 99, column 1, continued:]

LETTERS FROM A LANDSCAPE PAINTER. — By the author of Essays for Summer Hours. Boston, James Munroe, & Co., 1845.

There are many commendable things in this little volume, and many that are very far from being either commendable or excusable. The author has done himself an injury by substituting his profession in the place of his proper name. The letters of a Landscape Painter must provoke a critical examination of their merits as the production of an artist; and we have a right to expect in them fine descriptions of landscapes, and fine criticisms on art. But on these points Mr. Lanman, the author of the “Letters,” is least capable. His remarks on painters are generally very inaccurate, or wholly unmeaning, and his descriptions of scenery are cold and colorless — they have neither outlines nor fillings up. He Indulges continually in that style called by an English critic, the treble X. Every picture that he sees is the very best that he has ever seen, and moreover the best, as he verily believes, that anybody has ever seen. This is not the way in which men who have seen much usually express themselves; neither is it the manner of a cautious deliberate observer, who knows how ridiculously a critic appears who commits himself by giving a decided opinion upon a subject of which he is not himself a master. For instance: after quoting some very common blank verses by Lewis L. Noble, Mr. Lanman asks, “Can anything be more completely exquisite than the few lines that I have marked? Is there anything in Dana, Bryant, or Longfellow, that can eclipse them? or in the very best of England's modern poets? There may be, but I have never been able to discern them, although I almost know by heart the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wilson, Cowper, Goldsmith, Beattie, Shelly, ‘,Scott, Rogers, Campbell, and Mrs. Hemans.” In speaking of Huntington, the painter, he says “the shepherd boy of the Campagna, which we think is equal to Murillo's beggar boy, was painted in the incredible short period of four hours. If this fact and this picture do not prove Huntington to be a wonderful genius, we do not know what could do so.”

Neither do we. But still we do not think that the “shepherd boy” proves Mr. Huntington a genius. It bears no more resemblance to Murillo's beggar boy than it does to the Logos of Leonardo da Vinci; and, we do not see what right Mr. Lanman has to institute a comparison between these pictures, for we believe he has seen but one of them; and being a painter himself he must know that any picture painted in four hours must be a daub, as the “shepherd boy” is; and a very disagreeable one too. It is, probably, all that the painter meant to make it, a sketch, which he would hardly care to see exhibited as a test of his wonderful genius. In a laudation of Durand he describes one of his large landscapes and says “the great triumph of this picture is in the water.” Nearly all who have seen the painting referred to, feel that its great defect is the water, which has a hard basaltic appearance, and is, in fact, inferior in this respect to all of his landscapes. The remarks on Page and Inman are the purest rigmarole; although Mr. Lanman is hardly chargeable with their folly, since he does but echo the words of other writers more pretending titan himself. Inferior artists find themselves unequal to coping with nature, they leave out of their representations, therefore, the parts which they cannot imitate, and call their daubs an elevation of nature, — the grand style: they paint the most exaggerated and meaningless faces, and call them an intellectualisation: they give a caricature of humanity, and it is a representation of the soul. The errors afloat on this subject, which we have imbibed from the English, have spoilt many a good artist, and kept him in rags and poverty, when he might have earned reputation and wealth by following his instincts. Every man has a character of his own; his spiritual being impresses itself upon his carcass, as it does in a great measure upon his clothes. We can distinguish any of our intimate friends by their gait, when walking, without seeing their faces; our very intimate friends we recognize by the manner of wearing their hats, or swinging their arms; or the tread of their feet. If, then, a man's mind impresses itself upon his merely accidental habiliments, how much more does it give its own character to his face, which is always the companion of his soul, and whose flexibility is such that the slightest emotion of his spirit is moulded upon it. The only thing to be aimed at in giving a copy of a man's face is truth; any departure from the exact lineaments of a man's countenance must cause a false impression of his character; to paint his forehead too high is as great a wrong to him as to paint it to r low. Some artists give all their women red cheeks and scarlet lips, [page 100:] and yet there is not one in a thousand that has either, the consequence is that women so misrepresented look as though they were rouged. A New York artist, now in Europe, once painted the portrait of a young lady for her lover, who said when he saw it that it gave him a disagreeable feeling, he could not tell why, but it reminded him of a courtesan. Somebody remarked to him that it was probably the color in the cheeks, and he exclaimed “that's it!” But this is what they call idealizing. Some painters give their portraits a smirking expression, which every body feels at the first glance is a lie, because no one could sit with a smiling face for a picture; and a smile is no more the natural look of any person than a frown. Inman's portrait of Nicholas Biddle has this fault, and a very great one it is in such a man's face. The only true expression of any one's countenance is in perfect repose. People lately deceased always look more familiar than when alive, excepting after a wasting disease, because the features then settle into the habitual, not the accidental mould, which they have received from the mind. It is this state of perfect repose which gives the appearance of historical dignity to Vandyke's portraits, and it is the want of it that gives to the portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence, and the English school of portraiture, the character of affectation, which makes his lords and ladies look more like green-room heroes and heroines than real nobilities.

Mr. Lanman has carried his theory of ideal perfection to a very absurd excess in his present volume, as we will convince him; we are not much acquainted with his works on canvass, but we have no doubt that he practices the same principles with his brush as with his pen. Perhaps a word of timely advice may open his eyes to his false theory, and lead him to do better hereafter. One of his letters is called a week in a fishing smack, and it professes to give six days’ experience in a vessel of that description. Part of the time was spent in Nantucket, an out-of-the-way place, sufficiently quaint, and not requiring the smallest degree of idealizing to make any account of it tolerably interesting to a stranger.

Mr. Lanman goes “strolling about the town,” as he says, “studying the great and solemn drama of life while playfully acting a subordinate part myself.” What Mr. Lan-man saw in the town he does not tell us, nor how the great and solemn drama of life was performed in that remote part of the world. Perhaps the inhabitants were not aware who it was that was playfully acting a subordinate part among them. Playfully, if you please, Messieurs, only playfully, not really acting a subordinate part. Oh, no!

“This morning, as it happened,” continues Mr. Lanman, “I went into the public grave yard, (there are half a dozen public grave-yards in Nantucket,) and spent an hour in conning over the rude inscriptions to the memory of the departed, (to whose memory should they have been made, but to the departed?) In that city of the dead, I saw a number of the living walking to and fro, but there was one who attracted my particular attention. He was a seaman of noble presence, seated upon an unmarked mound, with his feet resting upon a smaller one beside it, his head reclined upon one hand, while the other was occasionally passed across his face, as if wiping away a tear. I hailed him with a few kind questions, (rather, obtrusive, we think,) and my answer was the following brief tale. ‘Yes, sir, four years ago I shipped aboard that whaler yonder, (all the grave-yards in Nantucket are so situated that no whaler can be seen from either of them,) leaving behind me in a sweet little cottage of my own, a dear, first-rate mother, a good wife, and an only boy. They were all in the enjoyment of good health, and happy; and when we were under sail, and I saw from the mast head, [column 2:] how kindly they waved their handkerchiefs beside my door, (there is not a house on the island so situated that such a performance could be witnessed from the mast-head of a ship under a sail,) I too was happy, even in my hour of grief. Since that time, I have circumnavigated the globe, and every rare curiosity I could obtain, was intended for my darling ones at home. Last Saturday our ship returned. And while yet a league from port, I was again at the mast-head, looking with an anxious heart towards my nest on the shore. (Two leagues front port there happens to be a sand-bar, which prevents a ship from approaching nearer until her cargo is discharged into lighters, which generally occupies eight or ten days; and the only “nests” upon the shore are those that the gulls build in the cliff.) I saw that the blinds were closed, and that all around was very still; but they were only gone a visiting, thought I, and rejoiced at heart. (He had no need to think about the matter at all, for the pilot must have been on board some hours, and he had only to inquire after his wife and family, to hear all the particulars.) I landed, flew to my dwelling, and found it locked. (The first man he met would have told him that his house was shut up, and recommended him to go to one of his uncles or cousins, and saved him from flying to his cottage.) The flagging in my yard attracted my notice, and I thought it strange that the rank grass had been suffered to grow over it so thickly. The old minister passed by my gate, and running to him with extended hand, I inquired for my family. ‘ Oh, Mr. B.,’ said he, you must bless the Lord, he gave them to you, and he hath taken them away.’ And as the thought stole into my brain, my suffering, sir, was intense, and I longed to die. And there they are, my wife and darling child, and a step or two beyond, my dear old mother. Peace to their memories. As for me, I am a victim to blight and desolation, and that sacred song, which my mother used to be so fond of singing on Sabbath evenings long ago; that song I can understand now:

‘I would not live alway; I ask not to stay

Where storm after storm rises dark o’er the way;

The few lurid mornings that dawn on us here,

Are enough for We's woes, full enough for its cheer.’

(This Song was written by Bishop Onderdonk of Pennsylvania, and we are inclined to think that the stamen with a noble presence who was a victim to blight and desolation, was mistaken in thinking that he had heard his “first-rate mother” sing it long ago. It was probably some other song, or some other person. So, too, we think there must be some mistake about the old minister, as all the ministers in Nantucket for the last ten years have been quite young men.) In a few days I mean to deliver up my property to the seaman's Friend Society, and then launching upon the deep once more, become, and forever, a wanderer from my native land. Such is the simple story I heard in the Nantucket grave-yard, and have pondered much upon the world of woe which must be hidden in the breast of that old mariner. May the tale not have been recorded in vain!”

We join in this last aspiration very heartily. May it not. Of course no such tale was ever told to Mr. Lanman, and of course he never “pondered much” about it, or he would not have written it. It is not only physically, but morally impossible. But it is exactly in accordance with Mr. Lanman's principles in art, and precisely the kind of writing which we should expect from a man who could pen such dreadful nonsense as this: “Painting as he does, with great rapidity, we find that his (Inman's) drawing is seldom as correct as it should be. He manifests a refined and exalted taste in the arrangement of his portraits, and generally in his miscellaneous designs. But, after all, he has painted some poor pictures, [page 105:] and this is an evidence of the fact, that he is a man of uncommon genius, and not talent. There is a wonderful spirit in his heads, and, unlike his rival, Page, he portrays the mind, which, after all, is a greater triumph of art, and far more important in a portrait, than the mere shell of humanity as delineated by Page.”

The first letter in the collection is the best, it has the most unequivocal marks of being honestly written, and introduces us to a scene which needed none of the embellishments of fancy. Peter Hummel, the vagabond bark-gatherer, is very happily sketched, and evidently from nature; the draughts of fishes appear almost miraculous, but we do not pretend to question their truth. The letter from Burlington is also in good taste, inasmuch as it treats of facts, and gives us scraps of information which we do not find floating in the current of daily news. There is almost too great a disposition to glorify the gentlemen whose names are mentioned, but as nothing but good, and what is true is said of them, of course nobody will take offence. Mr. Peck may not be ambitious of distinction, as a “giver of glorious dinners,” and probably he will be as much surprised as any of his friends to see himself compared to Roscoe, whom Mr. Lanman evidently knows nothing about, except what he gathered from the Sketch-Book, or he would not call him a merchant of the first-rank. If any gentleman in Burlington can be compared with Roscoe, it is Mr. Marsh, who does, in fact, occupy a position very similar to that which Roscoe filled in Liverpool, being a lawyer, a legislator, a lecturer, an author, an amateur in art, and the possessor of the best collection of books in the place.

One of the unpleasant things about Mr. Lanmau's book is its didacticism; he seems to labor under an impression that he is especially called upon to extract a solemn reflection out of every incident, and to find a sermon in every stone that he stumbles upon. But sermons and solemn reflections are just the things that the world can best afford to do without at the present day. It is preeminently an enquiring age; nothing is so much needed as facts; mankind are beginning to perceive that nothing finds its way to the heart so readily as a truth, and if those who have an opportunity to go about, and a desire to make a book, would honestly set down a plain account of what they see, rather than what they think, the fruit of their labors would be much better received by the world.

We would recommend Mr. Bryant's letters from the South as a model for all young travellers who have a design of publishing a book, or else the Irish Sketch-Book of Mr. Michael Angelo Titmarsh; but the first will be found a safer model, for the style of Mr. Titmarsh is altogether inimitable, and his humor not a thing to be thought of by any one besides himself.

The most commendable thing in the Letters of a Landscape Painter, is the excellence of their aim. The author models himself after the best masters to be found, and his presumptions are evidence that he feels himself capable of doing something. He goes a-trouting, like Izaak Walton, and makes nothing of sleeping in the open air, with a vagabond hunter for his companion; he foots it across mountains with a rifle on his back with the spirit of Kit North; he goes out in a fishing smack to Nantucket, as Walter Scott went to the Hebrides, and wherever he stops, he contrives to fall into good rather than flashy company. All these signs are favorable for a young amateur, and did we not dislike affectation of all kinds, and affectations of piety the most of all, we would not give it as our opinion that he says his prayers too often; or rather that he says he says them. There are some [column 2:] things which a man might as well keep to himself, and the frequency with which he says his prayers is the chief of them. It is an act so purely personal, that we see no necessity for trumpeting it, and the command of our Savior is so explicit in respect of that act which no christian is supposed to neglect, that we do not see why it should be so often disregarded.

We understand that Mr. Lanman is quite a young man, and that he has abandoned both painting and writing for trade; of course he knows best himself, whether he acts wisely in so doing. He will probably not make a worse merchant for having painted pictures and published books. Men of his age have done much worse things than either, and succeeded well in business after all. It is not likely that this will be the last time that we shall hear from him, but when he comes out again it will be in a better shape than he appears in now. Young authors, like other young men, have their wild oats to sow, and the sooner they get rid of them the better, and the ranker the crop the greater the hope of improvement.