Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/133

 possessed not any part of painting in the perfection which is to be seen in those from whom his manner is composed, though, to make amends, he possessed more parts than perhaps any other master, and all in a very high degree. The works of those of the German school have a dryness and ungraceful stiffness, not unlike what is seen amongst the old Florentines. The Flemings were good colorists, and imitated nature as they conceived it—that is, instead of raising nature, they fell below it, though not so much as the Germans, nor in the same manner. Rubens himself lived and died a Fleming, though he would fain have been an Italian; but his imitators have caricatured his manner—that is, they have been more Rubens in his defects than he himself was, but without his excellencies. The French, excepting some few of them (N. Poussin, Le Sueur, Sebastian Bourdon), as they have not the German stiffness nor the Flemish ungracefulness, neither have they the Italian solidity; and in their airs of heads and manners they are easily distinguished from the antique, how much soever they may have endeavored to imitate it."—Richardson.

THE OLD MASTERS.

"The duration and stability of the fame of the old masters of painting is sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart by every chord of sympathetic approbation."—Sir J. Reynolds.