Aestheticism in Art. William Hogarth

× 367 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

      Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, Portrait of Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo, c. 1509. Oil on canvas, 81.2 × 66.3 cm. The National Gallery, London.

      When the oval has a little more of the cone added to it than the egg, it becomes more distinctly a compound of those two most simple and varied figures. Take, for example, the shape of the pineapple, which nature has particularly distinguished by bestowing rich Mosaic-like ornaments upon it, composed of contrasted serpentine lines and the pips, as the gardeners call them, which are still varied by two cavities and one round eminence in each.

      Could a more elegant and simple form than this have been found, it is probable that the judicious architect, Sir Christopher Wren, would not have chosen pineapples for the two terminations of the sides of the front of St Paul’s. Furthermore, perhaps the globe and cross, though a finely varied figure, which terminates the dome, would not have had the preference of situation if a religious motive had not been the occasion.

      Thus we see simplicity gives beauty even to variety, as it makes it more easily understood. It should be ever studied in all works of art, as it serves to prevent perplexity in forms of elegance.

      Of Intricacy

      The active mind is ever bent to be employed. Pursuing is the business of our lives, and even abstracted from any other view, gives pleasure. Every arising difficulty, that for a while attends and interrupts the pursuit, gives a sort of spring to the mind, enhances the pleasure and turns what would otherwise be toil and labour into sport and recreation.

      Wherein would consist the joys of hunting, shooting, fishing, and many other favourite diversions, without the frequent turns, difficulties, and disappointments that are daily met with in the pursuit? How joyless does the sportsman return when the hare has not had fair play! How lively and in high spirits he is, even when an old cunning one has baffled and out-run the dogs!

      This love of pursuit, merely as pursuit, is implanted in our nature and designed, no doubt, for necessary and useful purposes. Animals evidently have it by instinct. The hound dislikes the game he so eagerly pursues and even cats will risk losing their prey for the opportunity to chase it over again. It is a pleasing labour of the mind to solve the most difficult problems; allegories and riddles, trifling as they are, afford the mind amusement. With what delight follows the well-connected thread of a play or novel which ever increases as the plot thickens and ends, most pleasingly, when said plot is most distinctly unravelled!

      The eye has this sort of enjoyment in winding walks, serpentine rivers, and all sorts of objects whose forms are composed principally of what I call the waving and serpentine lines.

      Intricacy in form, therefore, I shall define to be that peculiarity in the lines which compose it, which leads the eye on a wanton kind of chase, and from the pleasure given to the mind, entitling it to be called beautiful. It may be justly said that the cause of the idea of grace more immediately resides in this particular principle than in any of the other five, with the exception of variety, which indeed includes this and all the others.

      Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, The Three Ages of Man, c. 1512–1514. Oil on canvas, 90 × 150.7 cm. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

      That this observation may appear to have a real foundation in nature, every assistance will be required, which the reader himself can call to his aid in addition to what will here be suggested to him.

      To set this matter in a somewhat clearer light, the familiar instance of a common jack with a circular fly may serve our purpose better than a more elegant form.

      Now as we read, a ray may be imagined to be drawn from the centre of the eye to the letter it looks at first and to move successively with it from letter to letter, the whole length of the line. However, if the eye stops at any particular letter A, to observe it more than the rest, these other letters will grow more and more imperfect to the sight, the further they are situated on either side of A, as is expressed in the figure. When we endeavour to see all the letters in a line equally perfect at one view, as it were, this imaginary ray must course it to and fro with great celerity. Thus, though the eye, strictly speaking, can only pay due attention to these letters in succession, there is an amazing ease and swiftness with which it performs this task, enabling us to see considerable spaces with sufficient satisfaction at one sudden view.

      Hence, we shall always suppose some such principal ray moving along with the eye, and tracing out the parts of every form we mean to examine in the most perfect manner. And if we follow the course anybody in motion takes with exactness, this ray is always meant to move with the body.

      That it is accounted so, when it is at rest, appears by the ribbon, twisted round a stick, represented on one side of this figure, which has been a long established ornament in the carvings of frames, chimney-pieces, and door cases. The carvers called the stick and ribbon an ornament, and when the stick through the middle is omitted it is called the ribbon edge. Both can be seen in almost every house of fashion.

      But the pleasure it gives the eye is even livelier when in motion. I can never forget the frequent and strong attention I paid to it when I was very young, and that its beguiling movement gave me the same kind of sensation that I have since felt at seeing a country-dance. It is probable, though, that perhaps the latter might be somewhat more engaging, particularly when my eye eagerly pursued a favourite dancer, through all the windings of the figure, who at the time was as bewitching to the sight as the imaginary ray we were speaking of, dancing with her all the time.

      This single example might be sufficient to explain what I mean by the beauty of a composed intricacy of form and how it may be said with propriety to lead the eye on a kind of chase.

      But the hair of the head is another very obvious example, which, being designed chiefly as an ornament, proves more or less so according to the form it naturally takes or is put into by art. The most amiable in itself is the flowing curl. The many waving and contrasted turns of naturally intermingling locks ravish the eye with the pleasure of the pursuit, especially when they are put in motion by a gentle breeze. The poet knows it, as well as the painter, and both have described the wanton ringlets waving in the wind.

      Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (?), 1774. Oil on wood, 67 × 53 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.