he will not have learned to select from nature. He has more than once
enforced this doctrine, because it is new. He recommends, even in
borrowing, however, an immediate recurrence to the model, that every
thing may be finished from nature. Hence he proceeds to give some
directions for placing the model and the drapery--first to impress upon
the model the purpose of the attitude required--next, to be careful not
to alter drapery with the hand, rather trusting, if defective, to a new
cast. There is much in being in the way of accident. To obtain the
freedom of accident Rembrandt put on his colours with his palette-knife;
a very common practice at the present day. "Works produced in an
accidental manner will have the same free unrestrained air as the works
of nature, whose particular combinations seem to depend upon accident."
He concludes this Discourse by more strenuously insisting upon the
necessity of ever having nature in view--and warns students by the
example of Boucher, Director of the French Academy, whom he saw working
upon a large picture, "without drawings or models of any kind." He had
left off the use of models many years. Though a man of ability, his
pictures showed the mischief of his practice. Mr Burnet's notes to this
Discourse add little to the material of criticism; they do but reiterate
in substance what Sir Joshua had himself sufficiently repeated. His
object seems rather to seize an opportunity of expressing his admiration
of Wilkie, whom he adduces as a parallel example with Raffaelle of
successful borrowing. It appears from the account given of Wilkie's
process, that he carried the practice much beyond Raffaelle. We cannot
conceive any thing _very_ good coming from so very methodical a manner
of setting to work. Would not the fire of genius be extinguished by the
coolness of the process? "When he had fixed upon his subject, he thought
upon _all_ pictures of that class already in existence." The after
process was most elaborate. Now, this we should think a practice quite
contrary to Raffaelle's, who more probably trusted to his own conception