The Beautiful, the Sublime & the Picturesque

J.M.W. Turner, Calais Pier, with French Poissards Preparing for Sea, an English Packeet Arriving, 1803

Claude (Lorrain), Jacob with Laban and his Daughters, 1676, 72 x 94 Claude (Lorrain), Jacob with Laban and his Daughters, 1676, 72 x 94.5 cm,

Thomas Gainsborough, Cornard Wood, near Sudbury, Suffolk, 1748

Jonathan Richardson, Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715) and Two Discourses (1719), one on the art of criticism, the other on connoisseurship Francis Hutcheson Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1726) Willliam Hogarth , Analysis of Beauty (1753) Edmund Burke, Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) Alexander Gerard, An Essay on Taste (1759) Henry Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism (1762) William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, &c. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the Year 1770 (published in 1782) J.M.W..Turner, The Beauties of England and Wales and Byrne’s Britannia Depicta (1803). Rivers of England (1824) and The Picturesque Views of England and Wales (1827).

The beautiful

Edmund Burke on Beauty (from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin Of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757; Second edition, 1759) ON the whole, the qualities of beauty, as they are merely sensible qualities, are the following: First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright, but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. These are, I believe, the properties on which beauty depends; properties that operate by nature, and are less liable to be altered by caprice, or confounded by a diversity of tastes, than any other.

W. M. J. Turner, Pope’s Villa at Twckenham, 1808, oil on canvas,92 W.M.J.Turner, Pope’s Villa at Twckenham, 1808, oil on canvas,92.5 x 120.6 cm, private collection

The sublime

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure. […] When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience. […] The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment: and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin Of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757; Second edition, 1759

To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. Those despotic governments which are founded on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin Of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757; Second edition, 1759

J.M.W.Turner, The Passage of the St Gothard, 1803

J.M.W.Turner, The Deluge, 1805, oil on canvas, 142,9 x 235,6 cm, Tate Britain

John Martin, The End of the World, or he Great Day of His Wrath, 1851-3, oil on canvas, 197 × 303 cm, Tate Britain

Henry Fuseli, Lady Macbeth, 1784, oil on canvas, 221 x 160 cm., Louvre

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781, oil on canvas, 101 Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781, oil on canvas, 101.6 × 127 cm (Detroit)

The picturesque

Why does an elegant piece of garden ground make no figure on canvas Why does an elegant piece of garden ground make no figure on canvas? The shape is pleasing; the combination of the objects, harmonious; and the winding of the walk in the very line of beauty. All this is true; but the smoothness of the whole, tho right, and as it should be in nature, offends in picture. Turn the lawn into a piece of broken ground: plant rugged oaks instead of flowering shrubs: break the edges of the walk: give it the rudeness of a road: mark it with wheel-tracks; and scatter around a few stones, and brushwood; in a word, instead of making the whole smooth, make it rough and you make it also picturesque. William Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, 1792.

William Gilpin, illustration for Observations on the River Wye, 1772

Salvator Rosa, Romantic landscape with Mercury and Argus (c. 1655-1660)

George Morland, Before a Thunderstorm (1791)

Sir Uvedale Price, Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared With The Sublime and The Beautiful (1794) From all that has been stated in the last chapter, picturesqueness appears to hold a station between beauty and sublimity; and, on that count, perhaps, is more frequently, and more happily blended with them both, than they are with each other. It is, however, perfectly distinct from either. Beauty and picturesqueness are indeed evidently founded on very opposite qualities; the one on smoothness, the other on roughness; the one on gradual, the other on sudden variation; the one on ideas of youth and freshness, the other on those of age, and even of decay. But as most of the qualities of visible beauty are made known to us through the medium of another sense, the sight itself is hardly more to be considered than the touch, in regard to all those sensations which are excited by beautiful forms; and the distinction between the beautiful and the picturesque will, perhaps, be most strongly pointed out by means of the latter sense. Sir Uvedale Price, (1747–1829), by Sir Thomas Lawrence

Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797), Landscape with a rainbow, 1794

Wright of Derby, Cottage on Fire, 1793

Wright of Derby, Bridge through a Cavern, Moonlight, 1791

George Morland, The Wreckers, c. 1790-1799 150. 4 x 206 George Morland, The Wreckers, c. 1790-1799 150.4 x 206.4 cm, oil on canvas, National Galleries of Canada

Wright of Derby, Caernarvon Castle by Moonlight, c.1780-85

J.M.W.Turner, Caernarvon Castle circa 1798

Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in the Place of the Sun, ca.1765

Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump 1768, oil on canvas, 183 × 244 cm

Additional material

Jacob with Laban and his Daughters, Dulwich Gallery description Claude Lorrain (c.1605/5-82) is celebrated as one of the greatest of all landscape painters, creating compositions that were more beautiful and harmoniously organised than what could be seen in nature itself. As landscape painting was considered a less distinguished genre of art in the 17th century (than for example religious or historical painting), Claude often featured a biblical or mythological theme to lend more prestige to his work and allow for the expression of poetic ideas. This painting depicts the biblical story of Jacob who had promised to work as a shepherd for his uncle Laban for seven years in order to be given permission to marry Laban’s daughter Rachel. Laban, however, tricked Jacob when his wedding finally arrived by disguising his elder daughter Leah as Rachel. Claude illustrates the moment where Laban demands another seven years' labour from Jacob before he can finally marry his beloved Rachel. Despite the drama of the events unfolding, Claude evokes a landscape of natural harmony beneath a tranquil blue sky. The impression of an expansive vista is created by alternating shades of pale silvery blue, green, yellow and violet-grey that recede into the landscape. These horizontal bands of colour are contrasted with the vertical forms of the central tree, the round tower - and even the elongated forms of the central figures - providing stability to the composition. Claude invested meticulous care in building up his paint surfaces; he applied numerous very thin, semi-transparent layers of paint to vary the tones and colours continuously over the surface of his paintings, an approach that had the effect of creating an extraordinary sense of luminosity and atmosphere in his landscapes. Unfortunately Claude's techniques appear to have made his work particularly susceptible to a chemical deterioration known as blanching, which can be seen in the pale, milky appearance of this painting.

Nicolas Poussin, L’Hiver, ou Le Déluge, 1660-64 (Louvre)

Thomas Lawrence, Elizabeth Farren, Later Countess of Derby, 1790 Joshua Reynolds, Lady Bampfylde 1776-7

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe in 1759, 1770

Joseph Wright of Derby, Experiment with an Air Pump, 1768

Section 27: The Sublime and Beautiful Compared ON closing this general view of beauty, it naturally occurs, that we should compare it with the sublime; and in this comparison there appears a remarkable contrast. For sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small: beauty should be smooth and polished; the great, rugged and negligent; beauty should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great in many cases loves the right line, and when it deviates it often makes a strong deviation: beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy: beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and even massive. They are indeed ideas of a very different nature, one being founded on pain, the other on pleasure; and however they may vary afterwards from the direct nature of their causes, yet these causes keep up an eternal distinction between them, a distinction never to be forgotten by any whose business it is to affect the passions. In the infinite variety of natural combinations, we must expect to find the qualities of things the most remote imaginable from each other united in the same object. We must expect also to find combinations of the same kind in the works of art. […]