MRS. JAMESON'S MEMOIRS AND ESSAYS.
Tuts agreeable volume contains six papers. 1. "The House of Titian": a miscellaneous article, which certainly tells the legal story of the great painter's domicile, and describes a pilgrimage made to it by Mrs. Jame- son, but which also diverges into a great many other subjects connected with art, more especially in relation to the Venetian school of colour- ing, and to nature as observed in the atmosphere and concomitants of Venice. 2. A sketch of the public career and character of Adelaide Kemble : which is a fair critical estimate, in a large and genial spirit, of the youngest of the Kemble family ; but, being written to accompany " a series of drawings executed for the Marquis of Titchfield, representing Miss Kemble in all the characters in which she appeared," it is perhaps a fully favourable picture, as if Mrs. Jameson had borrowed something from the flattering limning of the pictorial art. 3. "The Xanthian Marbles" : a not very striking account Of the antiquities brought from Asia Minor by Sir Charles Fellows ; the general falling' into common- place references to the departed greatness of the country, the particular exhibiting too much of the catalogue. 4. Is a brief notice of the 'life of the American painter Washington Allston, with a criticism on his genius and a list of his works. It is pleasantly written, and inform- ing; but has this defect—it leaves us with the general impression of a great genius, without acquainting us with his exact school, or his grade in reference to other artists; a fault, by the by, characteristio of the panegyrical school of criticism, more especially, in reference to art. 5. " Woman's Mission and Woman's Position" is a severe but mea- sured and feminine attack upon the workl-on account of woman's posi- tion in society and the difficulty she has in supporting herself : but it is mere attack ; nothing practical is suggested, still less any specific mode of remedy pointed out, unless it be the following. " Either let the man in all the relations of life be held the natural guardian of the woman—constrained to fulfil that trust—responsible to society for her well- being and her maintenance; or, if she be liable to be thrust from the sanctuary of home to provide for herself through the exercise of such faculties as God has given her, let her at least have fair play: let it not be avowed in the same breath, that protection is necessary to her and that it is refused to her; and while we send her forth into the desert, and bind the burden on her back, and hPut the staff into her hand,—let not her steps be beset, her limbs fettered, and er eyes blindfolded." 6. " On the relative Social Position of Mothers and Governesses," in a practical point of view is the ablest paper of the whole ; searching and sensible both in its particular advice and its general suggestions, and although going deeply into the subject, yet having nothing too remote for common use.
These essays are characterized by a refined and discriminating intel- lect, enriched, not spoiled, by German studies ; and a style inclined to the diffuse, arid sometimes falling from reflection into reverie, but never de- generating into mere verbiage. The judgments are generally just, though with a conventional inclination to the favourable, which personal know- ledge or mixing much in " society " generally produces. It is partly this circumstance not operating in so remote a subject, partly the great- ness of the subject itself, that render the paper on Titian the most inte- resting in the book. The brief comparison between Titian and Raphael is a piece of delicate criticism : the description of the principles of colour- ing as displayed at Venice by Nature herself, and transferred by Titian to his canvass, is entitled to the praise of true invention, and as a con- tribution or help to the important "art of seeing nature" : the remarks on modern imitation of ancient styles, especially by the modern German schools, are distinguished by a profounder because a still larger truth. We take a few extracts from these topics.
PERFECTION IN ART.
I know that there are critics who look upon Raphael as having secularized and Titian as having sensualized art: I know it has become a fashion to prefer an old Florentine or Umbrian Madonna to Raphael's Galatea; and an old German, hard- visaged, wooden-limbed Saint, to Titian's Venus. Under one point of view, I quite agree with the critics alluded to. Suchpreference commands our approbation and our sympathy, if we look to the height of the aim proposed, rather than to the completeness of the performance, -as -such. But-here I am not considering art with reference to its aims or its associations, religious or classic; nor with refer- ence to individual tastes, whether they lean to piety or poetry, to the real or the ideal; nor as the reflection of any prevailing mode of belief or existence; but simply as anr—as the Muta Poems, the interpreter between Nature and Man; giving back to us her forms with the utmost truth of imitation, and at the same time clothing them with a high significance derived from the human purpose and
intellect. If, human ntellect. If„ for instance, we are to consider painting as purely religious, we must go back to the infancy of modern art, when the expression of sentiment was all in all, and the expression of life in action nothing,—when, reversing the aim of Greek art, the limbs and form were defective, while character, as it is shown in physiognomy, was delicately felt and truly rendered. And if, on the other band, we are to consider art merely as perfect imitation, we must go to the Dutchmen of the seventeenth century. Art is only perfection when it fills as with the idea of perfection—when we are not called on to supply deficiencies, or to set limits to our demands; and this lifting up of the heart and soul, this fulness of satisfiiction'and delight, we find in the works of Raphael and Titian.
VENETIAN HAIR.
Every one must remember in the Venetian pictures, not only the peculiar luxuriance, but the peculiar colour of the hair, of every golden tint from a rich full shade of auburn to a sort of yellow flaxen hue,—or rather, not flaxen, but like raw, silk, such as we have seen ke peasants in Lombardy carrying over their arifm, or on their heads, in great, shining, twisted heaps. I hatshometitnes- it asked with wonder, whether thosepale golden masses of hair, the true " dims'? tint, could have, been always natural ? On the contrary, it was oftener artificial—the colour, not the hair. In the days of the elder Palma and Giorgione, yellow hair was the fashion, and the paler the tint the more admired. The women had a method of discharging the natural colour by first washing their tresses in some chemical preparation, and then exposing them to the sun. I have seen a curious old Venetian print, perhaps satirical, which represents this process. A lady is seated on the roof or balcony of her house, wearing a sort of broad-brimmed hat without a crown:. the long hair is drawn over these wide brim; and spread out in the sunshine, while the face is Completely shaded. How they contrived to escape a brain fever or a coup de soled is. a wonder: and truly, of all the multi- farious freaks of fashion and vanity, I know none more strange than this,—unless it be the contrivance of the women of Antigua, to obtain a new natural com- plexion. I have been speaking here of the people; but any one who has looked up at a Venetian lady standing on her balcony, in the evening light, er peeping out from the window of her gondola, must be struck at once with the resemblance in colour and countenance to the pictures he has just seen in churches and galleries.
VENETIAN ATMOSPHERE.
I am acquainted with an English artist who, being struck by the vivid tints of some stuffs which he saw worn by the women, and which appeared to him pre- cisely the same as those he admired in Titian and Paul Veronese, purchased some pieces of the same fabric, and brought them to England: but he soon found that for his purpose he ought to have brought the Venetian atmosphere with him. When unpacked in London, the, reds seemed as dingy, and the yellows as dirty, and the blues as smoky, as our own.
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