IV. PRE-RAPHAELITISM 159

be tempted away from this work, they have been born with comparatively little enjoyment of those evanescent effects and distant sublimities which nothing but the memory can arrest, and nothing but a daring conventionalism portray. But for this work they are not now needed. Turner, the first and greatest of the Pre-Raphaelites, has done it already; he, though his capacity embraced everything, and though he would sometimes, in his foregrounds, paint the spots upon a dead trout, and the dyes upon a butterfly’s wing, yet for the most part delighted to begin at that very point where the other branches of Pre-Raphaelitism become powerless.¹

135. Lastly. The habit of constantly carrying everything up to the utmost point of completion deadens the Pre-Raphaelites in general to the merits of men who, with an equal love of truth up to a certain point, yet express themselves habitually with speed and power, rather than with finish, and give abstracts of truth rather than total truth. Probably to the end of time artists will more or less be divided into these classes, and it will be impossible to make men like Millais understand the merits of men like Tintoret;² but this is the more to be regretted because the Pre-Raphaelites have enormous powers of imagination, as well as of realisation, and do not yet themselves know of how much they would be capable, if they sometimes worked on a larger scale, and with a less laborious finish.

136. With all their faults, their pictures are, since Turner’s death, the best-incomparably the best-on the

¹ [The words claiming Turner as the first and greatest Raphaelite were inserted in ed. 2. Ed. 1 reads:-

“But for this work they are not needed. Turner had done it before them; he, though his capacity ... yet for the most part delighting to begin at that very point where Pre-Raphaelitism becomes powerless.”]

² [Millais’ views on some of the old masters were expressed in an article entitled “Thoughts on our Art of To-day,” which is published in M. H. Spielmann’s Millais and his Works, 1898 (being there reprinted from the Magazine of Art for 1888). He considered that “Time and Varnish are two of the greatest of old masters.” He does not mention Tintoret, and seems to rank Rembrandt as first of the portrait-painters among the old masters. The paper is of interest in connexion with the passage in the text as containing Millais’ views on the subject of “breadth” and “finish.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]