PAINTING VERSUS ENGRAVING.
Mr. DANBY could not have done a wiser thing than to permit his " Israelites Passing the Red Sea " to be engraved; and this not
for the commonplace reason of affording the world many copies instead of one, but because by the engraving he has really added to the reputation of the painting. The way. in which this has hap- pened is curious enough ; and by matter-of-fact gentlemen will he
thought almost paradoxical, when we explain it. The reputation of the painting is augmented by the deficiency'of the engraving,—
not that the latter is wanting in excellence as a work of art, but because there are things in the painting which the engraver has found it impossible justly to express, and which from their unique quality become consequently the more estimable. The engraving, it is true, has much of the painting in it : it Ins the dreadful clouds and the still more dreadful sea ; it has Egypt far away, and the own chosen land in actual possession ; it has the Jewish Lyeurgus standing forth on the rock in the plenitude of his power; and the chariots and host of Pharaoh tossing about on the billow as if they were but the cockle-shell toys of the nursery. But the great illu- minator of all is wanting—the mighty effect of colour is away; and though the engraver has enacted all that his art permits, yet in the art itself there is that thing wanting which is to be as an equivalent for the power of colour. Those who have had an op- port unity of examining both the painting and the engraving in this instance, will feel the truth of these observations. In the latter there are the clouds, but half their hurly-burly is lost ; the waves swell to their height, but the depth of their momentary caverns is partly extinct, because mere black and white, however varied their shades, cannot reach that cunning mixture of the colours which do duty on the artist's pallet. In other partsof the picture the same thing is even more strongly felt. Where is the lowering redness, that by. one streak marks Egypt, with her pyramids, so distant that they appear no bigger than Queen Mob's
"team of little atomies?"
Where are the varying colours so combined as to show the myriads of Israelites as they stretch themselves in living- clusters along the hills and vallies of the land of their fathers ? And above all, What has become of that strange blue light—so unearthly in its tint, and so poetical in its imagination—which is in truth the very crowning radiance of the picture, but which in the engraving necessarily dwindles into a broad flare of light surrounded by darkness ?
Yet is it this very shortcoming in the engraving that adds to Mr. DANBY'S merit. The shortcoming, as we have already observed, is that of the art itself, and not of the engraver. He has done all that engraver could do within the bounds permitted him; and the consequence has been, thathe has produced a magnificent plate,— not only magnificent in itself, but magnificent as regards the origi nal picture :—and here it is that Mr. DANBY'S praise steps in, in consideration of how much of excellence remains after the deduction of that which we have shown to be necessarily absent: all that vigour of expression and poetry of sentiment which the artist in his original obtained from the contrast of colour is done away with, and yet there still remains a powerful work of genius; some of the finest features of his production are destroyed, but there still re- mains sufficient to command the attention and excite the admira- tion.
With respect to the engraving per se, we have already said enough by the way to show that we hold it in great esteem : it is not only powerfully touched, but the engraver appears to have im- bibed from time painting the true spirit in which it was conceived, and to have transfused into the copper the feeling he had of it.
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