difficult to account for the error immediately after pointed out by Sir Joshua. He says in the very next paragraph:
“Many artists, as Vasari likewise observes, have ignorantly imagined they are imitating the manner of Titian when they leave their colours rough and neglect the detail; but not possessing the principles on which he wrought, they have produced what he calls goffe pitture, absurd, foolish pictures.”—Ibid. p. 54.
Many artists have also imagined they were following the directions of Sir Joshua when they did the same thing, that is, neglected the detail, and produced the same results—vapid generalities, absurd, foolish pictures.
I will only give two short passages more, and have done with this part of the subject. I am anxious to confront Sir Joshua with his own authority.
“The advantage of this method of considering objects (as a whole) is what I wish now more particularly to enforce. At the same time I do not forget that a painter must have the power of contracting as well as dilating his sight; because he that does not at all express particulars expresses nothing; yet it is certain that a nice discrimination of minute circumstances and a punctilious delineation of them,
