But if the South lets
in warmth or heat, it also lets in hardness. The more the orange tree is
luxuriant in growth, the less it is loose in outline. And it is exactly
where the sea is slightly warmer than marble that it looks slightly
harder. This, I think, is the one universal power behind the AEsthetic
and Pre-Raphaelite movements, which all agreed in two things at least:
strictness in the line and strength, nay violence, in the colour.
Rossetti was a remarkable man in more ways than one; he did not succeed
in any art; if he had he would probably never have been heard of. It was
his happy knack of half failing in both the arts that has made him a
success. If he had been as good a poet as Tennyson, he would have been a
poet who painted pictures. If he had been as good a painter as
Burne-Jones, he would have been a painter who wrote poems. It is odd to
note on the very threshold of the extreme art movement that this great
artist largely succeeded by not defining his art. His poems were too
pictorial. His pictures were too poetical. That is why they really
conquered the cold satisfaction of the Victorians, because they did mean
something, even if it was a small artistic thing.
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