Note 40 — Chapter VI · A.D. 1843 TO A.D. 1850.

On this picture Mr. Ruskin delivered an admirable criticism:—“Again, there is capability of representing the essential character, form, and colour of an object, without external texture. On this point much has been said by Reynolds and others; and it is, indeed, perhaps, the most unfailing characteristic of a great manner of painting. Compare a dog of Edwin Landseer with a dog of Paul Veronese. In the first, the outward texture is wrought out with exquisite dexterity of handling, and minute attention to all the accidents of curl and gloss which can give appearance of reality, while the hue and power of the sunshine, and the truth of the shadow on all these forms is necessarily neglected, and the larger relations of the animal as a mass of colour to the sky or ground, or other parts of the picture, utterly lost. This is Realism at the expense of Ideality, it is treatment essentially unimaginative.” In a note to this paper the critic added:—“I do not mean to withdraw the praise I have given, and shall always be willing to give, such pictures as the ‘Highland Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,’ and to all in which the character and inner life of the animals are developed. But all lovers of art must regret to find Mr. Landseer wasting his energies on such inanities as the ‘Shoeing,’ and sacrificing colour, expression, and action to an imitation of a glossy hide,”—“Modern Painters,” ii., 1846, p. 194. There is a grain of fallacy mixed with the noble truth of this—it did not follow that the sacrifices here enumerated were due to love for painting the horse’s glossy hide. The picture was defective as stated here, but not because of the realism it exhibited. The defects were inherent, not due to the imitation. Lacking the nobler qualities, the meaner ones became unworthily and ungracefully prominent. The superb tour de force in the painting of the feathers of “Spaniels of King Charles Breed” (see above) does not appear mean, although it is at least equal in successful imitation to the hide in question.