"PRAY, Mr. Opie,① may I ask what you mix your colours with?" said a brisk dilettante② student to the great painter. "With Brains , sir," was the gruff reply-and the right one. It did not give much of what we call information; it did not expound the principles and rules of art: but, if the inquirer had the commodity referred to, it would awaken him; it would set him a-going, a-thinking, and a-painting to good purpose. If he had not the wherewithal, as was likely enough, the less he had to do with colours and their mixture the better.
Many other artists, when asked such a question, would have either set about detailing the mechanical composition of such and such colours, in such and such proportions, compounded so and so; or perhaps they would have shown him how they laid them on: but even this would have left him at the critical point. Opie preferred going to the quick and the heart of the matter: "With Brains, sir."Sir Joshua Reynolds③ was taken by a friend to see a picture.
He was anxious to admire it, and he looked over it with a keen and careful but favourable eye. "Capital composition; correct drawing; the colour and tone excellent: but-but-it wants-it wants-That!" snapping his fingers; and wanting "that," though it had everything else, it was worth nothing.
Again: Etty,④ who was appointed teacher of the students of the Royal Academy, had been preceded by a clever, talkative, scientific expounder of ?sthetics,⑤ who had delighted to tell the young men how everything was done-how to copy this, and how to express that. A student went up to the new master: "How should I do this, sir?" "Suppose you try."-Another: "What does this mean, Mr. Etty?" "Suppose you look." "But I have looked." "Suppose you look again."And they did try, and they did look, and look again; and they saw and achieved what they never could have done, had the how or the what (supposing that possible, which it is not in its full and highest meaning) been told them, or done for them. In the one case, sight and action were immediate, exact, intense, and secure; in the other, mediate, feeble, and lost as soon as gained.
But what are "Brains"? what did Opie mean? And what is Sir Joshua"s "That"? what is included in it? And what is the use or the need of trying and trying, of missing often before you hit, when you can be told at once and be done with it? or of looking, when you may be shown? Everything depends on the right answers to these questions.
What the painter needs, in addition to, and as the complement of, the other elements, is genius and sense; what the doctor needs, to crown and give worth and safety to his accomplishments, is sense and genius: in the first case, more of this than of that; in the second, more of that than of this. These are the "Brains" and the "That."And what is genius? and what is sense? Genius is a peculiar in-born aptitude, or tendency, to any one calling or pursuit over allothers ……It was as natural, as inevitable, for Wilkie⑥ to develop himself into a painter, and into such a painter as we know him to have been, as it is for an acorn when planted to grow up an oak.
But genius, and nothing else, is not enough, even for a painter; he must likewise have sense; and what is sense? Sense drives, or ought to drive, the coach: sense regulates, combines, restrains, commands, all the rest-even the genius; and sense implies exactness and soundness, power and promptitude of mind.
But it may be asked, how are the brains to be strengthened the sense quickened, the genius awakened, the affections raised-the whole man turned to the best account? You must invigorate the containing and sustaining mind; you must strengthen him from within, as well as fill him from without; you must discipline, nourish, edify, relieve and refresh his entire nature; and how?