YOU have turned my thoughts much towards painting of late—I have been trying to solve this question.

What is the reason that those objects which displease us, or at best, that pass unnoticed, in nature, please us most in painting?

A deep road, a puddle of water, a bank covered with docks and briars, and an old tree or two, are all the circumstances in many a fine landscape. As clowns and half starved cattle are the figures a landscape-painter chuses for his pictures; so, rough-looking fellows wrapt up in sheets and blankets, are chosen by the history-painter, to express the greatest personages, and in the most dignified actions of their lives.

Let the following observations have what weight they may—tho’ they do not clearly answer, they seem to throw some light on this difficult question.

1. While we are uncultivated, like the Irish Oscar, if we are to be awakened, it must be by having a great stone thrown against our heads. The man of the utmost elegance and refinement may remember the time when, in reading, nothing moved him but the marvellous, and in painting, nothing pleased him but the glaring. While he was in this state, he delighted in books of chivalry and Chinese pictures—these gave place to less extravagant representations of life; and at last by much converse with men of taste, reading purer authors, and seeing better pictures, he is taught how to feel, and finds a perfect revolution even in his sensations. Those objects which once delighted him, he now despises—these, on the contrary, he formerly took no notice of, he now sees with rapture; and even goes so far as to admire the objects in nature, he has learnt to like in representation.—Now, it is this improved, tho’ artificial state of the mind that constitutes the judge of painting—and it is the judge the painter is sollicitous to please.—He is to attain this end then, by departing as much as possible from what is our natural barbarous taste, and by conforming to that we have acquired.

2. It is most certain that in all the arts we make difficulties in order to shew our skill in conquering them.—Some French writer calls this principle la difficultÈ vaincue; and this conquest is the source of much pleasure. What is it but this that induces the novellist and play-writer to embarrass their characters with difficulties and troubles? What is there but this that can make a musical canon to be thought fine in composition, or extravagant execution in performance agreeable, when the mind cannot comprehend the one, nor the ear follow the other? and, to bring it to the present subject—what is it but this that induces the painter to make use of the most unpromising objects, and produce beauty where you might expect nothing but deformity?

3. It is necessary that a painter should chuse such objects as are capable of variety either from shape or arrangement. Regular formal objects admit but little, especially those where art has the greatest share in their production, unless they are capable of motion, as ships, windmills, &c. and then they become pictoresque by a proper choice of attitude. It is curious to observe the shifts to which artists are reduced, when they are obliged to paint such objects as are in themselves unpictoresque—suppose a fine house with avenues of trees. They will vary the tint of the stones in the one, and of the leaves in the other, or by throwing in accidental shades and lights produce a variety. In like manner, portrait-painters undress the hair, loosen the coat, and wrinkle the stockings that they may produce a variety in the manner of treating a subject which wanted it in form.

Those objects which have no set form have of course most variety. A road or river may wind in any direction—trees are of all sizes and shapes, may stand here or there—loose drapery admits of a thousand folds and dispositions which the stiff modern dress is incapable of. So that the painter by taking these has ample materials for shewing his judgment in form, or skill in arrangement——for making, and overcoming difficulties—and lastly, by the uniting both these he conforms to the principles by which the cultivated taste is pleased—the ultimate end of all the fine arts.

If you are not satisfied with this solution, help me to a better—but give a fair reading to this of

Your sincere friend, &c.