This will not do. Again, Sir Joshua lays it down without any qualification that
“The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, peculiarities, and details of every kind.” Page 58.
Yet at p. 82 we find him acknowledging a different opinion.
“I am very ready to allow” (he says, in speaking of history-painting) “that some circumstances of minuteness and particularity frequently tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and to interest the spectator in an extraordinary manner. Such circumstances therefore cannot wholly be rejected; but if there be anything in the Art which requires peculiar nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of these minute, circumstantial parts, which, according to the judgment employed in the choice, become so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur.”
That’s true; but the sweeping clause against “all particularities and details of every kind” is clearly got rid of. The undecided state of Sir Joshua’s feelings on this subject of the incompatibility between the whole and the details is strikingly manifested in two short passages which follow each other in the space of two
