PAINTER PUGG RECONSIDERED
107
the English gardener, as early as 1718, states in
I conographica Rustica:
"The designer of the natural garden" will not insist on some mathemati–
cal pattern with pedantic obstinacy, but "will make his design
submit
to
nature and not nature to
his design."
In other words, if he would avoid
the faults of a symmetrical garden
design
which wearies the beholder
by the continual repetition of one part by another, the gardener should
not
"impose
his will upon the landscape, but take advantage of nature's
suggestions" and
its
innumerable surprises will keep the curiosity alert,
because its very irregularity will make
it
impossible to anticipate how
and when its natural beauties will be disclosed.
This ,
in
Switzer's
opinion, was the great merit of the serpentine line. Its windings maintain
the interest as the eye follows it through its constant variability.
It was perhaps unfortunate that Hogarth opened his dissertation
with a doubtful quotation from Lamozzo, the spokesman of the Man–
nerist school: "It is reported then that Michaelangelo upon a time gave
this
observation to the painter Marcus de Sciena his Scholler; that he
should always 'make a
figure
Pyramidall, Serpent like, and multiplied
by one two and three.' In
which
precept
(in
mine opinion) the whole
mysterie of art
consisteth.
For the greatest grace and
life
that a picture
can have
is
that it expresse
Motion:
which the painters call the spirite
of the picture: Nowe there is no forme so fitte to expresse this
motion
as that of the flame of
fire ,
which according to Aristotle and to the
other Philosophers, is an elemente most active of all others: because
the forme of the flame thereof is most apt for motion; for
it
hath a
Conus
or sharpe pointe wherewith it seemeth to divide the aire, that
so it may ascende to
his
proper sphere. So that a picture having this
forme will be most beautifull."
This may have led to more confusion than clarification among
Hogarth's less sympathetic readers. H e was not a literary stylist. And
some of his homelier examples of the "s"-line of beauty (such as corsets)
or
~f
"fitness" (such as Irish chair-carriers' calves) gave his more ma–
licious
rivals ground,
in
the recollection of
his
well-known self-portrait
with his dog Trump, who oddly enough resembled his master, to scoff
at "Painter Pugg and his Ungainly Graces."
But in the ultimate accounting the value of
The Analysis is
not
limited to the role it played in the history of yesterday's taste. Dobson
sixty
years ago called
attention
to "its common sense" and "unregarded
verities." Today, when architecture, painting and sculpture, after a
long period of austere self-discipline, appear once more to be seeking
an order of forms in which to express themselves, closer to that of
nature than that of Euclidean geometry,
it
has a particular pertinence.
