Wordsworth says that poets have to create the taste for their own works,
and the same is, in some degree at any rate, true of artists.
In one respect especially modern painters appear to have made a marked
advance, and one great blessing which in fact we owe to them is a more
vivid enjoyment of scenery.
I have of course no pretensions to speak with authority, but even in the
case of the greatest masters before Turner, the landscapes seem to me
singularly inferior to the figures. Sir Joshua Reynolds tells us that
Gainsborough framed a kind of model of a landscape on his table, composed
of broken stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass, which he
magnified and improved into rocks, trees, and water; and Sir Joshua
solemnly discusses the wisdom of such a proceeding. "How far it may be
useful in giving hints," he says, "the professors of landscape can best
determine," but he does not recommend it, and is disposed to think, on the
whole, the practice may be more likely to do harm than good!
In the picture of Ceyx and Alcyone, by Wilson, of whom Cunningham said
that, with Gainsborough, he laid the foundation of our School of
Landscape, the castle is said to have been painted from a pot of porter,
and the rock from a Stilton cheese.
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