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    faded they may have become through lapse of centuries or modern illusage ; a third , is possessed of a secret for making a varnish , which beats glass out of the market for clearness and durability ; it is warranted " neither to discolour , bloom , nor crack : " so that those pictures which are so fortunate as to get a few coatings of the said varnish will be astonishingly improved in all respects , and in all probability last for ever . The well-informed , however , are seldom , we trust , induced by pretensions of this order , to intrust their pictures to hands guiltless of Artprinciples , and to operators who have no explanation to give of the special treatment each particular picture , or class of pictures , seems to require .

    The judicious collector rather dreads the cleverness of quacks , who would make one common receipt suffice for all the productions of genius , so manifold and infinitely various in their nature as works of genius ever are . The professors of picture-restoration are very numerous in London , familiarly known b y the sign hung out at their doors ; generally , an old portrait one half clean , the other half dirty , as a specimen to convince the unwary connoisseur that the proprietor of the shop can restore pictures . The mere fact of hanging out a specimen of picture-cleaning to attract the attention of passers-by , is perhaps not necessarily a proof of the shopkeeper ' s inability to equal his professions ; but there is a something in this

    fashion of advertising which makes the prudent connoisseur question the spirit and artistic faculty of the proprietor ; and reflection usually leads to the conclusion that the show-picture is a sign of the shopkeeper ' s incapacity . Many who have had the guardianship of pictures , have preferred to leave them to the ordinary decay arising from neglect , to risking their utter destruction , by what seemed to them the uncertain process of cleaning . Instances , on the other hand , are not wanting of those , who , with unpardonable haste , have called in the common enemy , in the person of one of these picture-owners , whose operations ( saving a miracle ) were conducted at the expense of the picture itself ; not intentionally nor malignantly , no doubt , for where there is neither the faculty to distinguish , nor the taste to appreciate , there can be no accountability for injury , and the excuse is ignorance .

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    CHAPTER IX . THE EESTOEEE . In contemplating a face , or number of faces , successfully exhibiting delicate sentiments and deep passions , we are struck with the story they tell , or the moral they combine to represent , and we marvel at the skill of the artist who could , so to speak , create anew the life , by the aid of simple lines and colours . We should marvel more did our reflections lead us to consider each particular part of the process by which the life-like forms came fashioned from the painter ' s hand . It were instructive to contemplate the process , from the laying of the first broad general grounds of colour , to the critical and final retouchings , by which the niceties of

    expression were arrived at , and which were the finish of the work and the evidence of mastery . It is these finishing touches , the " glazings , " " scumblings , " " blendings , " " pointings , " whether considered as mere texture , or as intellectual refinements , which tax the Restorer ' s art and claim his vigilance . The Sculptor wastes away the rude block till he has accomplished the desired form . Not so with the pencil ; the painter builds up his forms from a blank surface , and hides , as he progresses , all the preliminary layers upon which the external colours depend for durability and lustre . And hence not only the meaning and spirit of the work must be understood , the Restorer must also be familiar with the nature of the materials and the manner of their employment .

    The Restorer should also be deeply read in those established principles which test the truth and goodness of pictorial representations . He should understand linear perspective , that he may know where its laws have been adhered to , and where ignored . He should be acquainted with aerial perspective , that he may in certain works appreciate its many and various beauties . He should be master of anatomy , that he may be careful not to injure the works of those artists which exhibit an accurate acquaintance of the human figure . He should understand the principles of colouring , so far ns they have been ascertained , that he may be free from the danger of injuring beauties founded on principles , and at the same time be in a position , to understand , and respect , if not to admire , works painted without any definite knowledge of colours . The practical Restorer should study to

    the end that hit * mind may become us it were an index of the various styles of painting practised by the masters whose works are his care . Be the style of a painter simple or complex , graceful or ungraceful , it should be registered in its place . It is for the Restorer to have no bias . It is for him to trace with untiring industry , and unerring precision , the many fine distinctions in each particular work he may have to treat . He ought to comprehend not only the meaning and spirit of each work , but be able to trace , bit by bit , with microscopic exactness , the means and the method which the artist employed to accomplish it . It is not enough for the Restorer to know the results , he must also penetrate their causes—that the effects may not suiFer . It would seem that nothing less than o master mind could achieve the successful treatment of a master work , but it comes

    out in the end , that a Restorer of inferior power profiting by the creations of the artist , may be able to appreciate their excellencies though unable to produce them : just u « the critic discovers in . another the qualities he could

    never have invented himself . In a word , the Restorer has wholly to devote himself to the study of pictures until he has made himself as familiar with the productions of many pencils as the ambitious painter does with a few select examples . Thus , it is quite possible to conceive an accomplished Restorer , fulfilling the high functions of conserper to the Arts , content with that capacity ^ and devoting all his energies , with frank good will and hearty self-respect , to the preservation of the works of others . It is easy to define accurately all that a Restorer should know , and how he might acquire his information .

    He should be willing to forego any reputation he might himself achieve as a painter for the general good of art— -content to be the servant and the friend of painters , not their rival . He should be favourable to the growth and exchange of congenial sympathies , and he might well become an adviser to them in some minor practical difficulties often experienced by creative genius . There is nothing which a painter is required to know of the mechanical part of his art , which a Restorer is not required to know also . The painter not unfrequently works in ignorance of the mechanical department of hjs art . Through the neglect of what he is too apt to think unworthy of his attention , the rationale of his materials and their uses , he often labours in vain and grasps at last but that transient reputation , which only lives , like the actors' and the musicians ' , in the breath of memory and by the tongue of report .

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    CHAPTER X . PROFESSIONAL ADVISERS . The possessor of a gallery of paintings undoubtedly ought to be familiar with their necessities , and should never be compelled to follow , unconditionally , the dictum of others . If he consult a number of eminent painters , as to the condition of his pictures , they will probably indulge in vague generalities about art , with very insufficient reference to the peculiarities of the pictures in question . Your painters , for the most part , are too much taken up with their own productions , to enter into a minute particularization of the works of others . Indeed , it could be shown , by a general reference to the best pictures of the English school , that even the ablest of

    its masters have paid little or no attention to pictures with respect to then * preservation and durability . All lovers of art regret the present condition of the chief works of Sir Joshua Reynolds , to which may be added many of Romney ' s , nearly the whole of Hopner ' s , and even some of the best portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence ; which last are deficient in deep flesh shadows , the asphaltum and lake having partially disappeared . The contempt of chemical laws in the founders of the English school is much to be wondered at , but the continued neglect by living artists , of a study so evidently called for , is without excuse . Painters of the present day seem to vie with each other in a reckless use of materials , which cannot be expected

    to last more than a few years . Moreover , painters strictly confine themselves to favourite styles . Mr . Dashing , for instance , plasters on the colour in heaps . He has an extraordinary liking for the picturesque , such as dark lanes , ruined edifices , and wild , barren , deserted places . He has no rival in the art of rendering ragged and jagged appearances of nature ; he most delights in the disordered and unaccountable ; and the choice of subject seems to have dictated to him the choice of style , and to have made it necessary for him to employ a trowel , where artists of the old schools used pencils . Mr . Dashing ' s peculiar taste , however , induces him to look with contempt on the works of those old painters who delighted in rendering

    common objects in a commonplace manner . He thinks those four pictures by Greemer , representing the " Seasons , " very absurd productions . The churches , cottages , and trees , in which you may count every brick , stone , tile , and leaf , together with the crowds of people , dressed as they were in Greemer ' s time , and occupied , according to their respective stations in life , and in such matters as the particular season or time of day would seem to call for , he gazes at as minor details , insignificant facts , unworthy the notice of an artist and a poet . Then what interest can there possibly be

    found in those stark-stiff saints , by Albert Durer ? On the other hand , ( to show that there is not always unanimity of feeling in artists , ) Mr . Hairbreadth is in downright ecstasies with pains-taking , plodding Greemer , and begs of the fortunate owner the liberty to make a copy of the German master-piece , vowing he never contemplated so rare a specimen before . Dashing can only attribute the choice of pictures made by his friend Hairbreadth to sheer affectation . Hairbreadth , in return , bestows a look of despair on his reckless friend , who , despising the examples of the early masters of painting , has struck out an entirely new walk of art , expressly

    for himself . Surely the connoisseur , consulting two painters of such opposite tendencies , with the desire of obtaining information about the condition of u mixed collection of pictures , would he disappointed . One produces a score of sheep with as many strokes of the pencil , and trusts to accidental splashes of colour for the representation of trees ; the other beatpw * a month in the elaboration of a wisp of hay , and thinks Gerard Dow must have laboured under excitement when he painted the handle of a besom in fourteen days . Therefore it is that they never agree aljo ^ t anything in connexion with art , though in most other matter * they seUU > ffi differ . Then there is Mr . William Tintoretto , the famous colourat , « rhfc > on being consulted about anything connected with old painting * , taHfcii ~

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    i February 26 , 1853 . ] THE . LEADER . 213

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 26, 1853, page 213, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1975/page/21/