attempted to rival him in his moral walk.
The line of art pursued by my very ingenious predecessor
and brother Academician, Mr. Penny, is quite distinct
from that of Hogarth, and is of a much more delicate
and superior relish; he attempts the heart, and
reaches it, whilst Hogarth’s general aim
is only to shake the sides; in other respects
no comparison can be thought of, as Mr. Penny has
all that knowledge of the figure and academical skill
which the other wanted. As to Mr. Bunbury,
who had so happily succeeded in the vein of humor
and caricatura, he has for some time past altogether
relinquished it, for the more amiable pursuit
of beautiful nature: this, indeed, is not to be
wondered at, when we recollect that he has, in
Mrs. Bunbury, so admirable an exemplar of the
most finished grace and beauty continually at
his elbow. But (to say all that occurs to me on
this subject) perhaps it may be reasonably doubted,
whether the being much conversant with Hogarth’s
method of exposing meanness, deformity, and vice,
in many of his works, is not rather a dangerous,
or, at least, a worthless pursuit; which, if it
does not find a false relish and a love of and search
after satire and buffoonery in the spectator, is
at least not unlikely to give him one. Life
is short; and the little leisure of it is much
better laid out upon that species of art which
is employed about the amiable and the admirable, as
it is more likely to be attended with better and
nobler consequences to ourselves. These two
pursuits in art may be compared with two sets
of people with whom we might associate; if we
give ourselves up to the Footes, the Kenricks, &c.
we shall be continually busied and paddling in
whatever is ridiculous, faulty, and vicious in
life; whereas there are those to be found with
whom we should be in the constant pursuit and
study of all that gives a value and a dignity to human
nature.” [Account of a Series of Pictures in
the Great Boom of the Society of Arts, Manufactures,
and Commerce, at the Adelphi, by James Barry,
R.A., Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy,
reprinted in the last quarto edition of his works.]
“——It
must be honestly confessed, that in what is called
knowledge of the figure, foreigners
have justly observed,” &c.
It is a secret well known to the professors of the
art and mystery of criticism, to insist upon what
they do not find in a man’s works, and to pass
over in silence what they do. That Hogarth did
not draw the naked figure so well as Michael Angelo
might be allowed, especially as “examples of
the naked,” as Mr. Barry acknowledges, “rarely
(he might almost have said never) occur in his subjects;”
and that his figures under their draperies do not
discover all the fine graces of an Antinoues or an
Apollo, may be conceded likewise; perhaps it was more
suitable to his purpose to represent the average forms
of mankind in the mediocrity (as Mr. Burke expresses
it) of the age in which he lived: but that his