h is more truly expressive of the
infinity of foliage, than the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered
his canvas, if he had worked on it till doomsday. What Sir J. Reynolds
says of the misplaced labor of his Roman acquaintance on separate leaves
of foliage, and the certainty he expresses that a man who attended to
general character would in five minutes produce a more faithful
representation of a tree, than the unfortunate mechanist in as many
years, is thus perfectly true and well founded; but this is not because
details are undesirable, but because they are best given by swift
execution, and because, individually, they cannot be given at all. But
it should be observed (though we shall be better able to insist upon
this point in future) that much of harm and error has arisen from the
supposition and assertions of swift and brilliant historical painters,
that the same principles of execution are entirely applicable to
landscape, which are right for the figure. The artist who falls into
extreme detail in drawing the human form, is apt to become disgusting
rather than pleasing. It is more agreeable that the general outline and
soft hues of flesh should alone be given, than its hairs, and veins, and
lines of intersection. And even the most rapid and generalizing
expression of the human body, if directed by perfect knowledge, and
rigidly faithful in drawing, will commonly omit very little of what is
agreeable or impressive. But the exclusively generalizing landscape
painter omits the whole of what is valuable in his subject,--omits
thoughts, designs, and beauties by the million, everything, indeed,
which can furnish him with variety or expression. A distance in
Lincolnshire, or in Lombardy, might both be generalized into such blue
and yellow stripes as we see in Poussin; but whatever there is of beauty
or character in either, depends altogether on our understanding the
details, and feeling the difference between the morasses and ditches of
the one, and the rolling sea of mulberry trees of the other. And so in
every part of the subject. I have no hesitation in asserting that it is
_impossible_ to go too fine, or think too much about details in
landscape, so that they be rightly arranged and rightly massed; but that
it is equally impossible to render anything like the fulness or the
space of nature, except by that mystery and obscurity of execution which
she herself uses, and in which Turner only has followed her.

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