Alexander Cozens’s New Method: The Blot and General Nature Charles A. Cramer Born in 1717 to English parents in Peter the Great's Russia, Alexander Cozens was educated from the age of ten in London, where he 1 the late 1730s or early 1740s! In 1746 he was among the iglish artists 10 go to Italy, where he studied Joseph Ver ‘maister to Christ's Hospital in London, and by the mid1760s te was at Eton, where he taught both Sir George Beaumont and the famous autobiographer Henry Angelo, Although nine oil paintings certainty, Cozens exhibited regularly at the Society of Ans, the Free Society of Artists, and the Ros finished oils, Cozens is remembered today, but for his drawings and theories, and for his direct or indirect mained until a brief rewin to Russia in el. Between 1749 and 1754 Cozens was drawing on an be attributed to him with a Academy. Itis not for his however spl influ ice on many of the most celebrated landscape artists of the English tradition. Cozens was the author of four major treatises on what could be ealled "practical aesthetics.” In his weatise on The Shape, Skeleton and Foliage of Thirty-two Species of Trees for the Use of Painting cand Drawing (A771) he attempted forms characterizing trees for the use of landscape painters, His Principles of Beauty Relative to the Human Head (1777-78) was an exemplar of expression, consisting mostly of nineteen plates, one showing the “Simple Beauty profile (Fig. 1) and the other eighteen showing various formal ons to that profile that would serve to ome specific “character” (for example, “The 2). Another of his major weatises, The Varions fix the basic of a woman in iMose Artful he tafe 2 Cozens, The Avsful, busin engraving, trom Principles of Beauty, London, 1 pl. 16. New Haven, BeSpecies of Composition of Landscape in Natare, has survived only augments, Today, the best known of Cozens's theories is his deserip- tion of how to form landscape compositions starting from a blot. This method was first published! by Gozens it. 1759 as An Essay (o Facilitate the Inventing of Landskips, Intended for Students in the Art and again with @ more thorough theoretical apparatus in 1785 under the title A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape? W is with the lastmentioned that 1 will be principally concerned here, The blot (Figs.3, 7.8, 9) wasa sort of first indicat landseap produced in thick, black ink on white paper, from which the artist could later elaborate a f composition, In Cozens's own words, the blot is “suggestive,” “instantaneous,” and rude.” Our eyes confirm these adjectives; his blots are most surprising artistic products of the century Both the method of blotting and the product sees anomalous to the contemporaneous context of the highly rational classicism of the newly founded Royal Academy under the presidency of Joshuia Reynolds, Indeed, the method and the product are oniy slightly less suaprising when consid ered in the context of the highly inventive and fruitful school ‘of British Landscape painting around the turn of the century Symptomaticaly, art historians have had the utmost diff ceulty in dealing with Gozensand his blots, tending to displ them to nearly any period and culture other that the 1950sin France, Henri Lemaitre asserted that “Alesande Cozens's experiments of the 1740s and 50s presaged the at that we would later call “abstract,”” and also cited the influence of “the Far East” on his technique." Louis Hawes in 1969 compared Gozens’s depictions of cloudy skies to “a Clyffored Still canvas turned on its side.”® E, H. Gombrich and Henri Zerner both linked the blots to the famous psycholog- cal test introduced by Hermann Rorschach in 1921, and Zerner complemented this anachronism by citing the roots of Cozens's method in the seventeenth-century practice of Baroque artists who would “throw the first thoughts of their compositions in masses of light and shade.”® The problem nderlying these anachronistic attempts to account for Com i's work is the emphasis placed on the final formal The ines inthis essay: are further elaborated in my MD, disertaion, oral Reduction and. the Empical Meal, 1750-1904" intone. for completion by the sarmer of 17 Unies nerve indicated, translations +. Kim Sloan extensive primary in her twopart "New Chronology lr Alexander Coven uring Magri 0h, on a 97, TING TO-75 and 84-8 and inher Axara Jon Rar Cen The Paty of ami, New Haven La, ‘tse 2. Atranseipton of Givens’ New Mths in Adalph Alene and fb ert Gren, Cane, Sis, 1054, 1 Taylor, ed, NiintCetury Thos of ar, Berkeley Les Angcies/Lomon, ia in feat Leese’ [rt et the: Entre nelle method ana Cin, Pi 196, 167 tthe Ae Mth i thie ey ate taken from Le enn mates wat ba il mera (included he margins of Lele’ eprint, Leben teat the p toms ofall the aati lates accompa fn avery extensive pritry and sc tlog spect imahoble lathe genera scholatship ott eighteenth century au ell othe "Caer problem {-Darbary Maria Sufforswork on Cres i igi MENANOLK COZENS'S Sh METHOD 113, appearance of the blots, to the exclusion of the theory of artistic process that produced their forms. Recent theoretical treatments haxe not been much more successful. In a double fallacy, James B. Twitchell’s fomantic Horizons suggests that Cozens's method resulted from" ful impetuosity” (Cozens was already forty-two by the time he first codified his system of blotting in 1759) andl repeats the ‘commonplace assertion that “there is something singularly romantic about Cozens."* Even Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, in his exhaustive “Introduction 10 the New Method of Alexander Covens,” finds it necessary to account for Cozens from ‘outside his “histori ge.” Although meticulous in its primary rescarch, Lebensatejn’s first chapter concedes, “if the object that we are attempting to situate is first and foremost an object of surprise, of eccentricity, we must not forget that ‘surprise’ hee depths [fond] in which that abject is anchor 's work, it seems, theoretically and formally suggestive that at any moment, with or pethaps without the intention ofthe historian, itevades the context ofits own culture and tums up in other ¢ other places. I will argue here that itis possible to understand Cozens's technique of blotin “historical anchorage,” that of the burgeoning picturesque school of English landscape and even that of the elassically inclined Royal Academy. In faci, understanding the relation of the blot to contempors ‘ous British academic classicisin—counterintuitive asitscems— will help to restore to that most longelived of Western art styles some of the adaptive flexibility that was ce a condition ofits longevity. The displacement of Cozens from his classic ‘culture is symptomatic of the tendency of modernism and idernist historiography to arrogate all formal innovation to itself and its privileged history, leaving academic classicism an probably stale and spent art form for much af its life. My reconsideration of Cozens in this article will center on the importance of what I will call the “techniques of ger tion” proper to clasicisn in the context of eighteent century empirical epistemology (the theory of knowledge), Cozens's Naw Method is a rather disjunctive mixture of very cconerete technical issues (such as how to make drawing ink) and very abstruse philosophical issues (such as the nature of chor within it cralizae rule, slough the tert she explore is very bi European debate on the semiotics of the arcidentl, and perhape Tee acsheic than scent; Safford, “Characters in Sti, Make om Paper Enlightenment Dicowreon Naval and Attia Tach,” tural Mt 1,3 184, 248-40, i Tlemui Lemaitre, Lepage angie agua 1760-1881, Paris, ost 5. Louis Hawes, “Constable's Shy’ Sketches, oust Iie, x30, 189, 2000. 20. ‘EH. Gombrich, Art gut Mason A Sud in the Pog of Poet eymsentation Princeton, NJ. 1980, 18 Hen Zerner “Alexander Cozenset ‘mcd pour invention des page” nr. 197,140 29-82-88 T-The methodologic underpinning of thi ariel, which ean broadly he seen aa atcrapt odes sl” tenga spol of atc “pre father than taxonomy of dhe Real formal appentsnce of arte pchact issggesied in Rendall L- Walon, "Sle and the Predict and Procenes ot Artin The Canc of Sink eB La teed Kes NA. Lain, 18, A comtemporan Journal of the Wierda at James B Teel, aman Horns pcs of the Sabine in En Poy ‘and Puintng, 1770-1830, Colombia, Mo. 1983. 13K, 157. The New Me, ies, war published when Coecrwn seth in (ain 8), 2,a aera attistic genius). The concept of “generalization” links these describing Cd id hence form) and epistemoloy issue nis's interventions in both issues of common also to contemporaneous academic classical art The “Blot We will i method in order to shift our emphasis from the blot as final the “Sketch” and the Landscape Drawing. al aspects of Cozens’s process, We will then better be able to compare ttt process With the academic classical process With both, The technical aspects of blotting Cozens in five “Rules” follow tus of the Naw Method (20-31). Rt Drawing Ink.” Rule Il ells how ich would be laid over the blot to make the sketch is. Rule HI gives Rule IV how to extrapolate the ot into a landscape sketch and Rule V how to “finish” that skereb Cozens steps to the formation of a blot in Rule UL, The first ss your mind strongly with a subject,” is deferred by Cozens to “The Descriptic Kinds of Landscape € consider itbelow. The second step is described as Follows (23) 2. Take a camel's hair brush, as large as can be conve dip it in a mixture of dr hhand make all shapes and strokes upon your paper, confining and with the tion of the whole to the general subject in you Fig, 3 is an aquatint of one such blot that accompanied his re Book and ript Library, Yale Beinecke Library methodolo al text. The printmaker made every attempt to tural origin of the marks and the thick liquid sality of their medium, The third step of Rule UL s disposed to makea composition of andseape from any one of them” (24). The unfinished sketch after the blot is defined as landscape drawing without sky or keeping” (25 n). In cighteenth- and ninetcenth-century British eriticism, k indicates the “subordination of lights” in a work (Cozens’s definition, 29), or the transitional values that define a work, Cozens’s anify the lighting example of (Fig. 4, which is derived from the blot in Fig. 3) includes two nd planes defined by light 10 dark gradat plished in is permitted blot. This aspect of keeping when forming a sketch from a blot, as detailed in the third step of Rule IV, Once th semitransparent paper i Dblack drawing ink, the p properly (that is, from left 10 versa) and then should “make out and impr blot.” which is visible through the semitransparent_ paper This step translates the original “accidental” forms of the blot into the landseape components that they suggest: you should [stucly} every individval form with attention till you produce some ws the blot su The foreground color, once dry, should be reinforced and deep: ‘ened in parts—" (especially the trees and sharubs, &c.)"—with a second pass of the brush, and then the ink should be thinned a Tittle with water and the “second ground” made4 Cozens, A print representing a shetche ade onl sath a brush, from the preceding blo, aquaint, from New Method, London, 1785, pl 38. New Have Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (photo: Beinecke Library) oul, and so on for “the rest of the divisions or grounds ia the drawing” (26-27) Up to this point the sketch is broadly defined in black and white. Although the reinforcement of certain areas and the idle tones (keeping), the unfinished sketch appears mostly as a articulation of ground planes allow some definition of n ground p series of stage flats, The drawing. o made by adding the sky Keeping, which serve to “destroy flatness” (30) nishedd sketch,” isto be il the more subtle aspects of the noxphere and lighting of all the ground planes. The tarts with the thinnest mixture of ink and water, with which the practitioner is to “wash dhe whole process of “finishin landscape [all the ground planes], except those parts which in the first degree of light.” Once dry, this process is to be repeated as ofien as the ink will still mark the are intended to b Paper, each time leaving more and more parts untouched: and then a little more ink is to be added to the mixture andl in. The overriding principle to this Rule is that “whatever colour or degree of shade is in use retain it as lony the process repeated ay as you can; that is, shade as much of the drawing with it as possible before you make the tint that isin the cup darker” (28-30)—that is, work th composition, not the individual parts, The “finished sketch whole of the (Fig, 5) defines its forms purely through chiaroscuro, the description of the masses and shapes of objects through value alone (although the aquaatint differentiates the texture of the rocks with thick lines and breaks the masses of foliage with thinner lines) ighteenth-Century Classical Art Theory and Empirical Epistemology Even contextualizing the blot as a moment in an overall process rather than isolating it as a fi brief sketch of the technical aspects of Gozens's New Metlid hhas raised several points that seem directly contrary to received notions of academic classical process. Perhaps the Al formal product, this most evident include the “suggestiveness” of form that mediates hetwee the blot and the sketch (and “suggestion is, of course, a major trope of the Romantic aesthetic) and the deseription of form through “masses” rather than the tradi tional classical terrain of “line.” Nonetheless, Cozens's episte mological apparatus from the beginning is explicitly directed toward a contemporaneous classical aesthetic (2) Composing landscapes by invention, is not the art of imitating individual artificial representations of kandscape ure; it is more; it is forming on the general principles of nature, founded in unity of character, whieh in each individual composi ies, which judicious imitation would select is true simplicity; concentvin tion the be from those which are dispersed in nature Govens’s idea of “invention” is neither about the artist's fantasy (the terrain of Romanticism) nor about “individual ature” (the principles” of nature (the terrain of classicism). Unity, simplic rain of Realism), but about the “general ity, and the selection and concentrti dispersed beastiesjudicious” imitation is the aim of Cazens's new method. Compare Reynolds's ideas of the “Grand Manner the highest style of art: IF it has been proved that the Painter, by attending to the invariable and general ideas of Nature, produce[s] beauty ne must, by regarding minute particularities, and acciden: al discriminations, deviate from the universal rule, and pollute his canvass [sie] with deformity! [The artis’s} eve being enabled to distinguish the aceiden- tal deficiencies, exereseences, and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original Thus it is from a reiterated experience and a close possessed of the idea of that centsal form, if 1 may so ‘express it, from which every deviation is deformity [Perfect form is produced by leaving out particularities, and retaining only general ideas. (4,57) Is Corens’s insistence on the “general!” ax opposed (© the particular” in nature a mere concession to the rhetoric of the time, designed to lend etias to his method, or did Cozens truly direct dat method toward what we could understand as a classical aesthetic? The answer 10 this question is best explored through a consideration of the pedagogical and epistemological underpinnings of British academic classi- cism, and p ricularly through the widespread calls for 1 of Rey ‘petiods” of artistic study. Cozens directs his ‘Cozens's pedagogical aims closely parallel dl 5 Corens, A pri representing the same sketch aquatint, trom New Method, London, 1785, pl 39, New Haven, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (photo: Beinecke Library) New Method against three specific causes to which “bad, or indifferently good" artistic productions may be attributed 1. To the deficiency of'a stock of ideas originally laid up in the mind, from whieh might be selected such as suit any particular oceasion’ ishing and connecting ideas 2. To an incapacity of distin so treasured up: 3. To a want of facility, or quickness, in execution; so that the composition, how perfect soever in conception, grows faint and dies away before the hand of the artist can fix it upon the paper; or canvas, The three periods of artistic pedagogy outlined in Reynolds's second Discourse (delivered in December 1769) are nearly Identical: 1) learning “the rudiments ing, and using colours ‘the power of drave amassing a “stock of ing, mode ideas” from “perfections which lie scattered among various masters,” which are later to be “combined and varied as foceasion may require”; and, finally, 3) (conditional) “emanci tions that are incompatible with each other" (2, 25-2 Curiously, for both theorists, only one of the three aspects of ally tart. The other wo cor what the eighteenth pedagogy seems to pertain speci are the d “ century called “human understanding": for both theorists, the art product must be created by a mind possessed ofa ‘stock of ideas,” which itis capable of properly “distinguish: ing” and “combin{ing!” (or “distinguishing and connect ing” and “diseriminat[ing]") and from which might be“selected” (or “combined and varied”) such ideas as “occa sion may require” (or “ay suit any particular occasion”) Indeed, for eighteenth-century British empirical epistemol- ‘ogy in general, the ability of “distinguishing and connecting’ ideas from a “stock of defines the minimum parameters of rationality: John Locke, in his highly influential Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), had outlined three basie functions that the could apply to perceived reality (particular fof these functions was to "sort perceptions into an order stock of general ideas,” which constitutes knowledge. The first thing the mind must dois “di n fiom the welter of contextual ideas and/or »s.!? “Discerning” gives the mind a “simple idea, the fundamental unit of empirical epistemology. Once this has been achieved, the mind can do only one of two things: it ‘can put ideas together through the additive Fac separate them out through the subtractive faculty of “judge ment” (2, 11,2, 156) ‘ern’ a given idea or sense oF wit” or Wit Hies] most in the assemblage of Ideas, and patting those together with qu y, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant Pictures, and agreeable Visions in the Fancy: Judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating, carefully, one from anoth be found the least difference misled by Si another ‘There isa qualitative as well as functional difference between the two faculties: although it makes “pleasant Pictures through its additive operation, wit “misleads” i is judgment that carries the burden of “carefully” establishing truth, This qualitative difference beween the “ancy *) and “judgment” isthe foundation eightecnth-century criticism and aesthetic theory Concomitant with the mistrustful attitude toward “wit” is the denigration of metaphor (which explains one object through reference to another with whieh it has some resemblatice) as highly suspicious if also highly pleasing rhetorical device." on and punning (which oper: ong words) axe similarly regarded with suspicion: Thomas Hobbes remarks that it formal contexts, and outside familiar company, “there is no wit” (associated wi devices of allitera 1. fostue Reynolds, Letter to the file mo. $8, Nin 0,17 Reynolds Dicoures Londo, 182,458 (app. By 72: Renal Diacoure Hit Further references othe Daun be ‘tein the belo he text wih ature siting the pica couse Followed by Wark’s page imanbers sprinted 13. Locke, Bk 2. 1. se. 1 155-68, Further references wo Locke's Baas wl cee in the west in he form (2 11,1, 1SBAHS). Locke peas tat tease impressions are also epintemologially tv be conktered Mes, since Sespite thet presume extrtnental cng we relly Knew det enya they sppear tour mindy TH. Forexample, Oliver Gal he Use of Metaphors ot every etl, mn ‘apr tn fF the ree, aad ine the puttin of es ater conceit": Wonks 1, New York Chicago, 1897 1B. Thoms Hobe, esata, lndenapotiy 1994, 16 abate hap. 840 nap. 8,39 wile "taney (Hobbes tele ter Fr ALEXANDER COFENS'S NHL METHOD 117 ling of words that will not be accounted folly"! In general, any discursive or aesth additively, on the “likeness” of objects or forms, is denigrated (at least in epistemological, if not in aesthetic consider: ations), while techniques that operate subtractively, carefully establishing “difference,” are lauded. Indecd, for Locke (among others), the faculty of the additive “wit” isthe cause of both errors and madness, the opposites of rational under standing: “Mad Men ... having joined together Ideas ver ‘wrongly... mistake them for truth derly jumbling” (2, 11, 13, 161) in the stock of ideas mind, which, Locke elsewhere notes, “gives Sence [sic] to Jaxon, Demonstration to Absurdities, und Consistency to ‘Nonsense, and is the foundation of the greatest, [had almost said, ofall the Errors in the World” (2, 33, 18, 401). AAs the philosophers’ metaphors suggest (the “additive ind “subtractive” functions of the mind, the “jumbling” of ideas), the contemporaneous theory of the operation of the rind was largely materialist, Ideas were said to arise through the physical stimulus of perception and were “stored” in the ‘mind in fluid “sacs” of “animal spirit” or at the nodes of a network of nervous fibers. In turn, these ideas were thought to be connected through the stimulation of certain of these sacs or nodes, causing the “animal spit node to another, or cansing a distribution of tensions in the network of nervous fibers, making up “trains of thought"? ‘The eighteenth century formulated a dist epistemology that explored the wayin which “tra could be connected through the additive faculty of wit piloted by the subiractive “judgment,” in & way more or less conducive to rationality and to aesthetic process: the doctrine ‘of associationism, First formulated by Hobbes in his epistemo- logical-political treatise Leviathan (1651). associationism took on increasing importance to the critical and aesthetic thought of the subsequent century, as Walter Jackson Bate noted in his seminal text From Classic to Romantic ie technique that operates This creates a “disor: the 10 run from one The psychological criticism of this period was cither determined 0 often, strongly colored by the doc tine of “the association of ideas”; it may be questioned, indeed, whether any philosophical or psychological doc trine has since permeated critical thought in. so great a degree as did that of the association of ideas at this time.!™ Martin Kallich hay most thoroughly uaced the extensive influence of associationism from its roots in empirical episte- wit") an please by adorning discourse, “witha teadinis, al diretion v0 some erat Fancy icine kid of madness abo Eee Bom abe de Conia, Ea sur Foie des ronnie hemes (17a), Mk ‘hap. 2 se. 3, in Ontones phapipar de Cn Parts 19 8 the wise vit is too stg tool mens and tor jaimation,-.» Te will bately have the ability to reflect: he wil ho onl 1. Instances of this ype of expaation ince: (am Deseavtess Les faions ime Antena Pars, 16 obbect Levthen, London. i631. The: must trengh seuhetle conseratons wo this material phikephy (nerves) i ‘hat of Edmund she, A Phiten Ege te Orin of er he te Siti ad Bena (London, 1952), nx et, Landon, 750, aMhough joseph ‘Aas had teal considered the operation of artesian "anna pein aesthetic phenomena in his cause The Plenunes ol the aggnation, Spt om AN. 1 -Juy 17 TR Walter Jackson Bale. Po Clauie 0 Romantic: Pris of Taste ie ight Cibery Eagle Nee York London, 11. 8 at srt”) René118 RE ACLEETIN stanest _mology to its popular application by such critics as Istac Wats, George Turnbull, Henry Home (Lord Kames), James Be Alexander Gerard, Archibald Alison, and Francis Jeffrey" It is to this context of “associationigm” that Cozens’s and Reynolds's insistence on the proper “connections” of ideas maist be related. Since our main concern here is with aesthetic prictice, we will consolidate and explore the relevance of associationism to both the production ofart and to contempo- raneous assessments of the mind’s basically antirational ten dencies through that most famous of associat Lawrence Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (pub- lished in 1759 and 1767). The very first chapter contains a covert reference t Locke's doctrine of association 1 cites rampant associationism as the cre- ative device behind the text ist texts, stallments bewsee you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, and how they are transfused from father to son &c, &e.—and ‘great deal to that purpose:-—Well, you that nine parts in ten of a man’s se successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the diffe sand tains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going whether right or wrong, “tis not a halfpenny matter, —avray they go cluttering like hey-goaad; same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and smooth as a gardenawalk, whic they are once used 10, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them offi?” ay take my word, nel by treading the Anyone who has read Tristram Shandy will confirm that the narrative trajectory is as “cluttering” and “hey-go-mad” as “animal spirits ... set agoing.” Tristram is not even born until the fourth book of the serial publication, as he is constantly distracted by the sidetracks and groundwork neces: sary to explain his odd stance toward life and narrative. The isa precise index of the “disorderly jumbling” (as Locke put it) of Sterne/Shandy’s random mental associations. Significantly, Tristram’s odd stance toward nar specifically located 10 an exaggerated Lockean crisis of tionism, The last phrase of the above citation is directly derived from Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (2,33, 6, 396): Custom settles habits of Thinking in the Understanding which seems to be but Trains of Motion in the Animal Spirits, which once set a going continue on in the steps they have been used to, which by often treading are ‘worn into a smooth path, and the Motion in it becomes ceagy and ay it were Natural ‘There is a dangerous similarity beween the that are the resul ‘of mere atural” connections of ides ‘custom” and Locke’s just previous (hut largely unexplored) 33, 5, assertion that some ideas are “ally'd by Nature (2 19.See Martin Kallich, The Asian of Ione nd Coil They in ihtonth-Century Eland Hiss of Pagoda Ei Cticn The Tague, WAG. See also Kalltvs arcler *The Avocatonit Criss of Frances Fchesen and Davi Hoe,” Suis i Pilg Xa 0.4 10, 395-16), Determining the difference between the two formed a large part ofthe eighteenth-century epistem Tristram’s “animal spirits”—and hence his text—have de going through a particularly disjunctive association ‘fideas, His father had formed the habit of winding the clock ‘on the same night of the month that he made love to his wife. As a result of her husband’s odd association of these ideas in the dubiously rational category of “family concermments,” ‘Tristram’s “poor mother could never hear the stid clock ‘wound up, but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head—Xe vice wrsa."*! At the climax of Mt ‘Shandy’s lovemaking, then, Mrs. Shandy pops out with the apparently unrelated question, “Pray, my dear ... have you not forgot to wind up the clock?” Mr. Shandy is startled, aud as a result, the “animal spirits” that were to conduct Tr ‘ram's preembryonic HOMUNCULUS” to its place of recep- tion were “scattered and dispersed.” The homuncul rived at its destination “ruffled beyond deseript in thiy sad and disordered slate of nerves, he had laid down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of mis and fancies for nine long, long months together:”*® Again, the joke is related to Locke's pedagogy, where dire results were ‘sid to attend on the improper association of ideas, and it was accordingly the responsibility of the parents “diligently 10 ‘watch, anid carefully to prevent the undue Connexion of Ideas in the Minds of young People” (2.33, 18, 401). 1 disjunctive , inculeated. formative moment, resulted in Tristram’s own pe state of distraction and hence in his digressive style Tristram Shandy, of course, is a fictional text, but the complex stance toward and knowledge of associationism required for appreciating it establishes at once the logical extreme of and the general cultural knowledge of the associationist problem.” ‘The issue is one of tion” and the fundamental tendency of the mind to make multiple ‘onal Teaps, especially when the (additive) s uncontrolled by the (subtractive) “judgment.” This relation to the associationist problem that we should under stand the need to generalize our ideas, which, as we have seen, both Reynolds and Cozens emphasize. This necessity is predicated first of all on the overabun- and fundamental particularity of sense data and As Locke noted (2 385-86) logical project. —and tarilingly da “simple id ‘The natural tendency of the Mind being toward Knowl edge wing that, iF it should proceed by, and dwell upon only particular Things, its y nd its Work endless: Therefore to shorten its way to, clge, and to make each Perception the more com prehensive; the first Thi the easier © tion of the thingy’ th conference with others ogress would be v slow, if it does, as the Foundation of her by Contempla- would know: or larging its Knowledge, selves, that hout them, is to bind them into Bundles, and rank them so into sorts, that what Knowledge it gets of any of them, it may thereby with assurance extend mint ts 1884. Te valor the sory fie ey gradings and 38 (641-67; and “The Argument aga Genory Aesthetics” Moder Larue tmojor objection to Kalix work ta 1 Spsocaconisn” ito "clasieal™ aand so advance by larger steps in that, ich is its great Bus clsewhere shewed, is the Reason, why we collect Things under comprehensive Jdeas, with Names annexed to them, into Geneva and Speeiesic. into kinds, and sorts ness, Knowledge. This, as I have ‘The “particular” ideas of sensation are variously grouped and ranked into more comprehensive ideas; itis only Us that an inductive knowledge of horsevin-general can be achieved in licu of the particular habits and form of every specific horse ‘means of this “bundling,” various levels of knowledge ean be reached. Fig. 6 shows a graphic representation of how the ‘mind can impose a structure of general categories on its ideas, a structure corresponding to the general order of rnature thi ies the particular perceived instances, The mind at its most basic level is disorderly jumble of current pressions and the random associative deflections: ising out of those sense impressions. The duty of the mind is to reform that chaotic network of ideas into a ra pyramid of levels of knowledge, by first discerning dlstinet ideas from the complex wholes of sense perceptions, then regrouping similar ideas into bundles and ranks presided ‘ver (as we shall see) by “general ideas” dhat represent the distilled essence of the ideas falling under a given category. andl so on, utilized in, the binomial taxonomy of the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist Carl von Linnaeus, were used by Locke to rank other sorts of ideas as well, Thus, the red of a particular piece of cloth isa simple ide: Species” red, wl part of the “genus” color, which is part of the “family ‘quality, and soon (see 3,4, 16, 428), In the pursuit of knowledge, the mind will refer to its “general ideas” rather than to any given particular idea or aan exhaustive survey ofall similar particular ieleas, Now the: question becomes: How does the 1 ideas” that are the ambassadors of a bundle of similar “particular ideas"? The formation of general ideas of what. everreferential level is predicated on the function of tion." The following passage from Locke shows the relation between “abstraction” and the “general ideas that a necessary to broaden empirical knowledge and gives uss an idea of how the funetion of abstraction operates on the data of the senses (2, 11, 9, 159) The categories “species, genus, Family iis part of the ind form the “general ‘The use of Words then being to stand as outward Marks of ‘our internal Meas, and those Ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular Idi that we take in, would have a distinet Name, Names niust be endless. Te prevent this, the Mind makes the particular Ideas, received from particular Objects, to become general; which is done by considering them as they are in the Mind stich Appear ances, separate from all other Existences, and the cite sumnecs of real Existence, as Time, Place, or any other concomitant favas. This is called ABSTRACTION, whereby eas taken from particular Beings, become general Repre posing es that “it must b preology ony einioced classic rule etic an standart ef tase (aston of Hs 3), 20. Lawrence. Sterne, "Phe Life ead Opinions of Them ‘Shanes bk, cap. 18, ALEXANDER COZENS SEW MEHOD 119 sentatives ofall of the same kind, and their Names gener Names, applicable to whatever exists conformable abstract Ideas > seh, Fyen though its primary aim is (additively) to “bundle” similar simple ideas under the aegis of a representative type, the “abstractive” formation of the general idea is founded on the process of st ideas and of accidental perceived object, We are ncerned he} used {0 mark such general/abstract idea itrary (as Locke recognized), and thus there is no motive on obtaining beeweer ier (word) and signified (gen cral idea) in verbal language, and therefore there is no ‘otivation between the signifier (word) (general nature), The case is otherwise for the vista arts, where there can be conformity between the signifier (visual representation) and the signified (clea), inasmuch as the signified is itself visual, and therefore eween the signifier (visual representation) and the referent (general nature, or the ideal), Along these lines it is significant that Locke tat abstract ideas “are in the Mind sich Appearances ame marks the appearance of the inn general idea; nor is this appearance vague 11,9, 159): setion—the subtraction af context d contingent qualities from the e with the names s—the name is nd the referent The sased abstract, rel nel equivocal (2, Such precise, naked Appearances in the Mind, without considering, how, whence, or with what others they came there, the Understanding lays up (with Names commonly annexed to them) as the Standards to rank real [ie., particular] Existences into sorts [ie., general ideas], as they agree with these Patterns [ie the image-based ideas}. The “general idea,” according 10 Locke, is fo process of subtraction and is stored as an image (Indeed, the image-based model of the idea in eighteenth- century epistemology is one of the most persist characteristic tenets of the philosophy of the period.) Itis on this limited collection of “general ide fewer, and more controlled, associative deflections possible at the higher levels of the referential pyramid dhat epistemology and rational art are predicated, at and sas” andl the relatively Reynolds's Theory of “Generalization” and the Problem of Associations, Reynolds essentially took over this epistemology and applied it toa cogent art theory founded on “generalization” again, specifically responsive to the dangers of “associationisny"”—in which the only remaining problem is the “fixing” of the general idea on the canvas, a process that for Reynolds was largely mechanical. We have already noted restage pedagogy is concerned more with issues of “human und standing” than with issues of technique, Reynolds explicitly at is ti bk hap 4,38, he Bch 2 30-97120. ART BULLETIN seaKeM 1997 VOLUME LNNIN NUMIEEE 1 fanily Ge ener sews be sects species ——, ‘bundle of simple ideas’ ‘bundle of simple ideas pacar a oh hy uF bb impression) 6 Diagram of the organization of "particular nature” i general nature” according to taxonomic “general ideas applies the Lockean concept of “abstraction” 10 his theory of the ge sion of form (3, 50) [The Grand Manner painter] will permit the lower painter Tike the florist or collector of shells, to exhibit the minute discriminations, which distinguish one object of the same species from another; while he, like the philosopher, will consider nature in the abstract, and represe ‘of is figures the character ofits species [emphasis added] And for Reynolds, this lization is explicitly mobilized against the problems of associationism. ‘The goal of artis to help the audience to control the mad, disjunctive metonymie deflections of the stimulated stock of ideas, His adviee to the artist to learn from privileged past ‘works (6, 9-100) is aimed not simply at adding to the ‘tock of ideas” but also at reducing that stock to a more limited and controlled distillat jon of abstraction /gene A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the teast ancient and moglern att, will be more elevated andl fruitful in resources, in proportion to the number of ideas which hare been carefully collected and thoroughly digested. ‘The addition of other men’s judgment is so far from weakening our own, as is the opinion of many, that it will fashion and consolidate those ideas of excellence which lay in ‘embryo, frbl,illshape, and confused, but which are finished. and put in order by the authority and practice of those whose works may be said 10 have been consecrated by having stood the test of ages [emphasis added] Arts as well as the gro bject is thus to teach the audience (the general public t) to “fashion and consolidate” the particular, empirical contents of their minds, The artist is to produce images of “general nature,” which teach the audi- fe the scope and application of “general ideas,” as op- posed to images of “particular nature,” ely contrib lute to and stimulate random associative deflections, Thi then, is why Reynolds constantly inveighs against the “partic Jae" in art: [The painter will not] waste a moment upon those smaller objects which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the ind to counteract cant (3,50) is great design of speaking to jon should never be drawn aside by wifles. The mind isapt to be distracted bya multiplicity of objects; and that scale of perfection which I wish always 10 be preserved, is in the greatest danger of being totally disordered, and even inverted. (5.77) ‘The detail of particulars, which does not assist the expres- mischievous, as it dissipates the attentio frorn the principal point, (11, 192) the main chi cetistick, is worse than uscless, itis and draws it Indeed, the concept of "Geni principle which regulates every part of Ar reason that ideas of “general nature” are of crucial impor tance to Reynolds's theory, and to the eighteenth-century jional epistemology and a rational art. Follow nd the cighteenth-century empirical philoso- is “the presiding (4,5). [kis for this ing Reynolds phers, Lam contrasting “general nature” with the “particular nature” that is formed by sense perception and is problem cally inflected by the (usually) i deflec- tions of the associationist mind, General nature is the truth; and the art that exhibits it is valuable inasmuch as it helps to consolidate and order the “disorderly jumble” of particular nature in the public's mined. Cozens's Epistemology: ‘The Blot and “The Art of Seeing Properly” Above, [ have suggested a way of understanding the classicism of the late-cighteenth-century British Royal Academy that is not transhistorical but highly specific to contemporancous epistemological concerns. The empirical cont ization” preserves many of the traditional aims of classical supposedly crosscultun cal status (as we subtract out the contingent data of time place), its postulate of improving the audience of art, ‘even its insistence on formal simplicity—but at the same time itis a highly temporally and culturally specific description of how to meet those aims, With this redeseription of the idea of classicism in lateeighteenth-century Britain, we can better understand the historical intent of Cozens’s method of blowing, Asin Reynolds's Discourses, issues of human understanding — the ability of the mind to distinguish and select such ideas as suit any particular oceasion—are given a central place in Cozens’s pedagogy. After explaining what a blot is and how the idea of blotting came to him (through a casual clabora tion of stains on a piece of paper, practice later validated by his reading of Leonardo's observations on wall stains), Coz: ‘ens returns to his three “problems” (12-13) prof genera and transhistorieal ontologi- to each of these defects, the art of blotti explained, affords, in some degree increases the original stock of picturesque ideas; It soon enables the practitioner to distinguish those which 1g connected, from those which, seem not naturally related; and ig, here a remedy. For it & capable of beiIt necessarily gives a quickness and freedom of hand in expressing the parts of a composition, heyond any other method whatever Let is consider these three achievements separately. The firs lates the art of blotting to the “pieturesqne"—a connection wwe shall consider below. The third rekites to the appearance of the blot, its gestural “swiftness” and “rucle- ness," which we are ultimately attempting to account for Within the context of the contemporiry classical aesthetic of “generalization.” We shall here consider how that odd form is conducive (0 the solution of Cozens's second problem, the empirical /axsoeiationi ons” of ideas. Cozens’s first step to the formation of the blot, we will recall, was, “Possess your mind strongly with a [general] subject." The beginning artist, who may not be possessed of a 'general subject,” is referred hy Cozens to his “Descriptions. of the Kinds of Landscape Composition,” a series of sixte aquatints appended to the end of the New Method. These types represent the minimal degree of “design” that is to be introduced in the making of the blot. Although Cozens does not explicitly cite the problem, a more spontaneous blot would probably center itself on the page, avoiding the edges—not an casy beginning for a landscape composition, So the sixtecn “Descriptions of the Kinds of Landscape will be of use in furnishing the mind with an idea of a subject” (24 n). Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of these “kinds” is the generality that they represent, which is highly referentially inclusive, Type nine, for example (Fig, 7) is described as “Two hills, mountains, or rocks, near each other” (82). The words chosen to define the forms on the paper determine the significance of the details: if they at mountains, the masses of light and dark represent huge are of outcropping or vegetation; if they are rocks, then those ‘masses represent sinall geological strata or faults, As Cozens: asserts, the general forms of these blots, operating together with the intention to derive geomorphic objects from those forms, have “a direct tendency to reeal [sie] landscape ideas” (aby. Although they are obviously “gener stuggestiveness of the blot that has offered the ment to locating Cozens within his intellectual milie oral Composition Since ‘one artificial blot will suggest different ideas to differen persons” and, indeed, since “one and the same designer likewise may make a different drawing from the same blot (11), then the blot can indeed be related to a Romantic aesthetic of “suggestion.” Or, if we posit a subconscious motivation to the individual's interpretation of the blot, itis related to the Rorschachian inkblot test. Although stich associations hold out a seductive theoreti rest fo ers, their historical validity is dubious. Cozens’s of the utility of the blot is thoroughly empirical and explicitly designed 10 “order” the parts proper ‘classes,” as in Lockean empitical epistemology (HEL 10 the [1 may be remarked, that there is to be discerned, in all whole compositions inn gradation of parts, whieh may be divided into several classes; for in the class of the smaller parts, the elas of those larger dimensions, and MLENANDER CO”INS'S SEW AWEFHOM 191 so on (0 the largest. The curious spectator of landscape insensibly acquires a habit of aking notice, or observing all the parts of nature, which is strengthened by exercise. It may be perecived, that the application of this notice in his directed to the smaller parts ... from whieh itis lly transferred to the larger as we approach to age at which time we generally take notice of whole composi tions. By the means of this propensity we lay up a store of ideas in the memory, from whence the imagination selects those which are best adapted to the nature of h tions, All the particular parts of each object preserved in the memory, yet general ideas of the whole may be thrown as it were into the repository, and th retained, What Cozens is des mind, which starts with particular ideas of * which the mind of youth is naturally directed) and progres sively forms larger ideas of “wholes,” for example, gradually relating and subsuming the n ‘of leaves to the general pattern of their id growth on a branch, and then the paitern of branches 10 the general form of the tree, and soon, until the idea of the (compositional) “whole” of a species of landscape is reached that is adequate w but does not enumerate its individual paris, Reynolds imp! grad ¢ of rationality through the formation of the subtractive “judg Whereas in the second period of study, the amassing of a “stock of ideas,” the student “must ill be afraid of trusting his own judgment,” the third period ‘marks the conditional emancipation from authority: the student may “confid{e] now in his own judgment” (2, 26), This emancipation is conditional because the rules of art arc not to be dispensed! with, they have simply been internalized the judgment has been trained: the 1g oF ideas. hhas taken place; and the to make valid connections between general ide: However, where Reynolds's pedagogy is founded on the ong, laborious” training of the judgment, after which the proper art product follows almost as a matter of course, Gozens's method offers more immediate gratification. Clearly, ke a blot, and, as Cozens notes, the elaboration nto the finished landscape does not bility. This is because such elaboration is additive exercise easily performed by the fundamentally associationist mind; it does not requie any of those difficult “abstract” or “general ideas,” but only particular ideas (16): ng is the fos the same of the blot special cap On the foregoing principles, very few can have reason 10, suspect in themselves a want of capacity sufficient to apply the use of blotting to the practice of drawing, nor ean they be totally ignorant of the parts of composition inn for as they are previously prepared with ideas of parts, as before proved, so [blotting] affords an oppo calling them forth... Previous ideas, however acquired (ot which every person is possessed more or less) will asi the imagination in the use of bloting ie. composition from the blot]. « Blotting succeeds in artificially fixing the whol the general, (0 which the relatively unproblematic “stock of ideas of192. ARF NULLETIN anyReH 97 YORE particular nature” ean be referred. Indeed, Cozens describes he elaboration of the blot into the landscape drawing as the suceesive “embellishment and consolidation” of the work 13). “Embellishment” is doublless performed when the practitioner extrapolates landscape elements from the rude forms of the blot (Rule IV); and “consolidati¢ when the keeping” of the work thro werall washes (Rule V). That the blot represents the crucial general whole” is confirmed in Cozens’s deseription of the formation of the blot (6-7), where “the atention of the performer must be employed on the whole, or the general p P form of the composition, and upon this only; whilst the subordinate parts are left to the casual motion of the lnand. There is always the danger, of course, that “the person is inclined to direct his thoughts to the object, or particular yenctal disposition of the whole.” In itself, this “superabur later to be made from the blot must be done “with judl ment”—that is, the performer has in this ease destroyed th very purpose of blotting, which is to serve the function of judgment (or, rather, 10 elide its necessity) Here we can confirm the basically classical tenor of Coz cens’s epistemology of blow 1g. The proper blot will exhibit only one idea, one “whole” at a time, and thus there is no heed to reduce its deflections through the subtractive judg: A rue blot isan assemblage of dark shapes or masses made With ink... and likewise of light + produced by the paper being left blank, AIL the shapes are rude and unmeaning.... But at the same time there appears a 7 Cozens, Tio fils her, aquatint, from Ne Method, Londen, 1785, 9, New Haven, Beinecke Rare Bk Library, Vale University and Manuscript photo: Beinecke Library) general disposi iensive form (emphasis aclded Cozens always insists on this singularity of the idea or the subject suggested by the blot, as indeed he must, for ifthe same constituent mark in a blot were in the same mind at Once a group of trees and a fissure in a rock, then his blots would be ineffective, associationist, and would produce for the blot ¢ al aesthetic as Lam con: strui gest different ideas to the different wholes at once (like metaphor), and thus distract the mind, stimulating an ever expan compatible associations. If it is justifiable to consider the classical project of the time as a response to the dangers 0 jects into their “general” referem tial types), then Cozens’s blots are consistent with that project. Indeed, although the method requires no special capacities, or training on the part of the practitioner, Cozens argues that it is thoroughly consonant with the principles of artistic genius (17-20). He even avers that the practice of blotting helps to form the rational mind: the “art of blotting” is ‘extremely conducive to the acqttsition of a theory, which Will always conduct the setist in copying nature with taste and propriety.” He goes on to claim, “This theory is, in fact, the 1¢ composition, Reynolds's art process is thusreversed: instead of gradually learning to “distinguish the accidental deficiencies, exerescences, and deformities of things” through “long laborious” comparative observation of particular parts (3, 44), the artist starts with the “general” blot and learns to view particular n, reform its minute digressiveness. The practice of making physical blots enables the eye to blot “when taking views from (sia), ture av a blot and thus In short, whoever has been used to compose landscapes by blotting, can also draw from nature with practice. But he cannot artive ata power of con means of drawing views from nature, without a much greater degree of time and practice posing by invention, by the Blotting is aserted by Cozens as *, if slightly 1reptitions, way to teach the mind to “generalize” empirical objects (either the immediately perceived or the “stock of ideas” in the Classical Practice: The Blot as Technique of Generalization The argument that I have presented above, which exposes the practice of blotting as a solution to the same problem as that which Reynolds was addressin of the Grand Manner, may account for Cozens's contemporaneous context—but the solution of blotting may sill seem sup not so, Indeed, the contemporaneous meaning of to blot was to ‘edit, with strong emphasis on the subtraction of excess. The first definition for the word in Samuel Johnson's Digtionary (1755) is metaphoric: (© make writing invis- ible, by covering it with ink.” Johnson illustrates the meaning, With significant example from Alexander Pope copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, / The last and greatest art, the art to blot”! The Oxjord English Dictionary lists a specif cally cighteenth-century usage of blot as “an obliteration by way of correction.” One of its examples (expanded here give context) is from Jonathan Swift's “Author's Apology” 10 his 1704 Tale ofthe Tub: sociationist nh wethod in its to Cozens. Thisis 1g, eccentric, idiosyner 'o obliterate Even He (Swift) was then a young gentleman much in the world, and wrote to the taste of those who were like himself therefore, in order to allure them, he gave liberty to his pen, which might not suit with maturer years, or graver characters, and which he could have easily corrected with a very few blots, had he been master of his papers, fora year or two before their publication.2? We recognize several motifs in these citations: that the younger are pleased by more associative, particular, unblotted te the value ofa good texts, whereas the more mature apprec ene of tindseape the thought, he notes (10) 4 oemed int maybe aster by sujet ay ranch ot the art. may Historical hich isthe ot hecate it the wpeedien, ‘rans and complicated “Bi Therelerencessto Pope's "Fist Epil othe Jowatan Sat The Wk ALEXANDER COPENSS NeW METHOD 195 blotting: that blotting is a subtractive process applied to copious, overly free expression; and, cu Swift notes that the Tale required only “a very few blots.” would require “a year or two” to execute those blots—that i, blotting isa long, laborious task, In his Life of Johnson, John Boswell suggests the exact place of blotting in the prod literary imposture, Boscell refers to.a Mr; Eccles's appropria- tion of Henry Mackenzie's novel A Man of Feeling for his own Eceles “had been at the pains” of providing fraudulent proof of his authorship in the form of a falsified manuscript nnscribed from the fished text. As evi Processes by which he supposedly authored the novel, uscript included “blottings, interlineations, and correc that it may be shown to several people as an original Reynolds makes precisely the same triadic assessment of the functions of the mind as they are applied to particul ‘empirical data: the mind of the mature artist is “enabled to, distinguish the accidental deficiencies, exerescences, and deformities of things, from their general figures... [to] make out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original” (3, 44). “Interlineation” is a tool applicable to “deficient” nature; “correction” to “deformed” nature; and “blotting” to “exe The idea that the blot was applicable to the problem of ‘overabundant “particular” nature and the excessive associa tive deflections of the mind was not, then, idiosyncratic to Cozens but a current figure of speech at the time. In fact, we ean also account for the painterly form of the blot with reference to contemporaneous art theory. Again, curiously, it is Reynolds who can illuminate Cozens's technique of gene ization through the formal attributes of the blot. [noted that fone of the aspects of the blot that we would have to account for was its paimterliness—the definition of form through visible brushwork, 1 brushwork of chiaroscuro, ‘The painterly chiaroscuro of the bl ideas of the “linearity” and “i which should offer access to the realm of the ideal unprob- Jematized by issues of the artist's handiwork It was Heinrich Walfflin who most thoroughly inculeated the view of elassica art as inevitably characterized by a “linear” and “multiplici- tous” (as opposed to the Baroque “painterly” and “unified”) formal appearance* In the eleventh Discourse, however Reynolds follows chain of reasoning connecting the smooth (Woltiiin’s “linear”) surface to a “minute” reality of parts (Wolffin’s “multiplicity”, which is a dangerous agent of distraction, of associative deflection. Indeed, for Reynolds, the “high finish" of the linear paradoxically implies more manual labor—is less transparent to higher reality—than a painterly generalization (11, 202): of the art product. Discussing contradicts our received ispareney” of classical art, referred 0 hime in the tit pene here 26,John Boswell he Life of Jabnon, Oxon, 189, M0 (discs tele he yea 7 borrow the erm “wranspareney” signing. the exclusion of all ‘xidence of handwork fom the surface of he artoork ron Philip Jane Transpennce vt api: Koa sr ks fondements tigue de Cee torn, Tene, 16, 28 Heinrich Walfin, Kunaiehichioe Grandi 191% tnt by M.D. Hostinger in 10836 Pinplavo His. The Paden th olan of Solein Later New Vane124 ARF AULLETIN suawen 199? VOLEME LXNIN NUMBRE As [painting] is an art, [the ignorant] think they ought to be pleased in proportion as they see ostentatiously displayed; they will, from this supposition, prefer neainess, high-finishing, and gaudy colouring, to the ruth, simplic- ity, and unity of nature Here isa place, then, where the epistemological necessity “simplification"—a constant trope of the classical thetic—is connected 10 a formal product rather contr our received ideas of the classical, It is possible, in other words, to speak ofa painterly classical form; for Reynolds, the expression of the “true, simple and un performed through “few, well-chosen strokes” (11, 193 4) ied whole” is best the pleasure we receive from imitation is not increased merely in proportion as it approaches 1 minute and detailed reality; we are pleased, on the contrary, by seeing ends accomplished by seemingly inadequate me Carry this principle a step further, Suppose the elfect of imitation to he fully compassed by means still more naclequiate; let the power of a few, well-chosen strokes, which supercede labour by juelgment and direction (i.e. the direction of means to an end), produce a complete impress sare charmed with such an unexpected happiness of execu of all that the mind demands in an object; we It is of the utmost significance to remark that here visibility of the “few, welkchoven strokes” does not indi the manual labor of the painter, as is problematic in most Renaissance and academic classical “amtimechanic” theories of art and of the “liberal” status of the artist in socie Instead, these marks “supercede labour” (the labor in *high-finishing") in {vor of mental “judgment”—and we will recall the subtractive function of the “judgmen cighteenth-century epistemology, The application of paint can in this case be seen as a “directed” index of the minds judgment, as performing an elision of detal, as gliding over ‘or through the minute particularities or “accidents” overly- ing the “substantial” form of n So a “few lines or touches” are not mere manual labor are the act whereby the artist performs—and the visible guarantor of the artist's formation of—"one whole [out of] what nature had mace mukifarious” (11, 201), It is by this, and his alone, that the mechanical powe nobled and raised much above its natural rank. ‘The great advantage of this idea of a whole is, that greater quantity of ruth may be said to be contained and expressed in a few Tines or touches, than inthe most ishing of the patts where this is not regarded. laborious fi 22 Thomas Wart, Ves od Rees Ped Winds a Ne Cia ‘jd (1782), Onn LH. 1y 7-8. However the brushwork that Warton trates so mach of was not, i fact exceed by Reso but by Thema Jerva Alongh fersab’s nomensioaed in he poem, nett ‘Mehta thi work be tribe: Taady ote Poe to Me ervey be, 30, Witann Hart, “Ess on Reynold’ Dias” (1814-15), repr Te lnt ml app tobe adres ‘The important thing for Reynoldsis not what 10 represent bi what to leave out “When [the artist] knows his subject, he wi know not only what to describe, but what to omit: and this kill in leaving out, is, in all things, a great part of knowledge and wisdom" (11, 199}. “Judgment” and the “skill in leaving: out" —aspects of fundamental necessity to eighteenth: century empirical epistemology in general, and to Re theory in particular—are best performed by a few elisive/ ‘comprehensive strokes. ‘Curiously —and this fact is underrepresented in the scholar ship—contempormeous criticism makes much of Reynolds's “painterliness.” Thomas W ‘Verses on Joshua Rey nnolds’s Painted Window at New-College Oxford (1782) very ly singles out the handwork, the brushwork, as a work's ability to “reform” the viewer from capricious maze” (compare with the “ problem") of traditional Gothie stained glass to the “chaste Design” of Reynolds's classicism. The first lines of the poem ready contain a reference to Reynolds's hand (although the author ivat first reluctant to quit his seductive Gothic taste): Ah, stay thy teacherous hand, forbear to trace Those faultless forms of elegance and grace! Ah, cease to spread the bright transparet With Titian’s pencil, o'er the sp Nor steal, by strokes of artwith truth combin'd, The fond illusions of my wayward! mind! phasis added) king glass! ‘Toward the end of the poem Warton, his mind reformed, returns to the brushwork Behold, [Beauty] prints upon the crystal plain, With her own energy, th’ expressive stain! The mighty Master spreads his mimic tit More wide. . While in the warm enamel Nature lives [emphasisadded] by the e able to trace a divect causeandelfect relationship beoveen the iddeas expressed in Reynolds's Discoursesand the fact tha the English school of painting is universally reproached by foreigners with the slovenly and unfinished state in which they send their productions into the world. ..." He locates the reason for this “slovenliness” in the suggestion that was ‘widely recognized as fundamental to Reynolds's theory: “[1] the rule here objected to,—that the artful imitation of the parts injures the effect of the whole —be at once admitted, slovenliness would become another most unfinished performance would necessarily be the be In addition to the meaning of fo bora to eit, we have, Tthink, name for genius, and the in Rey, 200,397, app 2 3 Mail An ore Prag Lands Sete an ‘ante Biny, 1950 1801 Stanton Ca, 19, ea recent example oS a the pieareyqee, he follows the sssesment of Chrisp sey, The Pues: Stat «Pint of Ve, London, 1 ne The “Clade Cle” woe wally convex mitor through which the at cou rage a landscape nd bg wii asa purview. I x0 Fea bath hr egauce he detail of the compton and 10 ‘Sune the elo pata of kl peti, Se Ares ay, 31) 3-08,lost the rather painterly approach to the performance of the that Reynolds was seen as advocating, anid which is better able to account for Gozens’s proposal of the act of blotting as technique of generaliz Cozens and the Picturesque Academie classicism is not the only cont ich Cozens's Naw Method fits both theoretically and formally: In his second reference to the three achievements of blotting, Cozens refers to the “picturesque.” The tradition of the picturesque is usually described in the scholarship as the gradual emancipation of native landscape painting from the confining rules of Ni (for example, Claudean) compositional techniques, especially when that emancipation culminates in the celebration of the native English land scape." We can locate Cozens in this tradition without disrupting th classical logie that, as we have seem above, was integral to Cozens’s theory of the blot. ‘The Claudean landscape idiom represents the conventional, or the “active,” knowledge of the artist (which can more or less distort even the empirical contemplation of the land scape, as the tourist device of the “Claude Glass” dramatically demonstrates). The first achievement of blotting, we will recall, is that “it increases the original stock of picturesque ideas.” The increase in the crucial empirical stock of ideas is the result of the practitioner's efforts to extrapolate landseape mts from the rude, tn swith, “unmeaning” form, the mind ransacks its store of ideas to find a plausible meaning. The artist thus draws on his or her passive knowledge as well as his or her active (conventional) knowledge. By confronting tl ing forms of the blot, the artis is forced to aecount for compositional possibill- lies and landscape “furniture not part of the Claudean idiom, and thus Cozens's new method expands the conve tional ideas of the “picturesqui “that which is Tike a picture. In this way and in one other, Cozens's New Method can be understood as expanding the conventional landscape idiom. ‘Typical of his systematizing tendencies, Cozens published a Uweatise on The Various Species of Compasition of Landscape in Nature: 16 Subjects in four Plates together with some Observations ‘and Instructions (probably dating to the mid-1770s, as Kim Sloan suggests). The plates of that essay have been reeos- ered, and Constable himself made copies of the sixteen “species, but the accompanying text remains lost. The ides however, is almost certainly the same as that included in the New Method as “Descriptions of the various Kinds of Composi- on of Landscape.” In the Nnw Method there are again sixteen nds," nearly identical 10 the surviving plate list of the Various Species's indseape." The kinds are de- scribed in such terms as “2. The tops of hills o noun yoraneous content general academ meaning blot; conto rude, unme styles” of 3, Slan, A New Chronology: Part HI” (asi 1), 8 34, Sloan reprnces the lat sto Th nbs Nein Fes 58 fg. Ns the plate at tthe Naw Mth, MT $9, Willam Gilpin Ther Eva: On rerpie Reva om Picturigu Te ‘and on Shing Lamang, ina, YP, 94 ti 1, 87. 4.5, 35 3A. Ueda Pic, Esa on the Pictu as compared witht Sulina he lin bi, MEXANDER COZES'S NEN MEEHOD 195 the horizon below the bottom of the view" (Fig. 8); and “1 Objects, or groups of objects, placed alternately on both hands, and gradually retiring from the eve horizon above the bottom of the view” (Fig. 9). The numbe correlate to sixteen plates showing exemplary blots of these ‘ypes. The typical Claudean composition can be described ay a balanced, gradual recession into space, formed by land: scape elements projecting from the sides of the view, which culminates in a (hazy, golden) distance (Fig. 10). This most recognizable “picturesque” (“Iikea picture") composition— allowing for Claude's expansion of the leftchand side to incorporate the narrative—is probably that shown in Cozens’s cleventh “type.” If we accept the scholarly view that British landscape painting gradually liberated itself from this dog- matic type (as it was practiced by Richard Wilson and his students around midcentury), then Cozens's fifteen oth 'ypes are literally an expansion of the Clauidean convention, Type two, for example, with its high point of view and its emphasis on rugged form, is perhaps recognizable as sublime” landscape, although Cozens docs not cite it as ‘The formal products of Cores the idea that the landscape drawing is an el previous, highly generalized form, can also be accounted for through reference to picturesque theory. In plates accompa ying the first of his Thare Essays (“On Picturesque Beauty”), William Gilpin shows oso landscapes, one simple, smooth, motonous (Fig. 11), the other varied and roughened (Fig. 12). The figures illustrate 's method, especially and with landscape “furniture” the following passage: in landscape painting smooth objects would produce no composition at all. In a mountain-scene what compositio could arise from the corer of a smooth knoll coming forward on one side, intersected by a smooth knoll on the other; with a smooth plain perhaps in the middle, and a smooth mountain in the distance, The very idea is disguste ing. Picturesque composition consists in uniting in one whole a variety of parts; and these parts can only be obtained from rough objects. IF the smooth mountains, and plains were broken by different objects, the composi- ion may be good, on a supposition the great lines of it were so before." Gilpin thus draws the formal conclusion that the “pict esque” is characterized by “roughness,” differentiating. it fiom the “smooth” (which is associated with the “beauti= ful”)? This formal distinetion presages Uvedale Pric unequivocal distinction between the “picturesque” and the classical “beautiful” as the difference between “variety” and “unity” (or, rather, bets iety and the “insipidity” of led beauty). But the process that Gilpin cites as mediating Beant ant. on the ws of Styne Pets for the Pee of proving Landa, 3 wis. Landon, IS. On the Interelaton oe “Tecut inp andthe“ pictreage,” see 10, 78-7418 Far Price anon Goze and Gilpin. the pletresque ca be describe tough» dake proces of, or ava medion betwee, enealiauon andl aregation: A ‘exces of thowe qualities which ciel conse Beaty protests likewise dhe eatess of those: Which cwestitite plcturespicness, Prstores etary” 8).Tike the that difference, bears remarkable simila between the “smooth” and the “picturesque ty to Corens's method: the “picturesque” isan elaboration or ariegation of a basically monotonous form, just as Cozens’s landscape sketch is the “embellishment and consolidation of the blot. Although Gilpin cites the former fi igure is nonetheless predicated, he notes, on the general ‘great lines” of the smoot silty of the blot is dependent So for Gorens as for Gilpin, the foundation of the land: scape drawing, the underlying condition of its suc at simplicity, Mustrating a highly referen For Cor ‘general idea” of ens as for Reynolds, this “simplicity” is strongly a ‘with a broad, painterly manner, and we could w Gilpin into monotonous.” Picturesque variegation is best performed predicated on the simple whole, to which all arts must be subsumed gestures of the blot parts” to the incidental markings of the brust Conclusions: Cozens in Ci An odd conc is are perhaps of the examples of the classical ideal ghtcenth ce on oft aquiatint, from New Method, London, 2. New Haven, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Universicy photo: Beinecke Library) Founded on the crucial ¢ general al concept of ization,” the blot iscotermin n idea of a “species” of At the to describe the blot as lanelscape, one of the more general of general ideas abs a8 I act,” as we have see as we apply a Lockean, moclernist, additive-formal meaning. The picture of the 1790s, like Cozens’s New Meth highly generalized incorporates this If we return to the Royal Academy, we cat in Eact consoli= die the odd connection between the monotonous and the classical ideal Gilpin’s and Ps Opie (pr reference to the aLappears to have been the starting point for e's interventions in picturesque theory. John makes hat problem in a lecture delivered in February 1807 LAII possible license may be granted [10 the artist), and a work ele fe of the extraordinary without extravagant, provided—but y labour lies, which may well deter any provided that the tra ideas are perfectly connected, ind the whole perfectly consistent with itself; that there is11 William Gilpin, untitled “nonpicturesque” landscape. from Ther says, London Beinecke Rare Book and Man ibvary, Yale University (photo: Beinecke Librar s, London, 1792, pl eos, pages 18 and 19. New Haven, Beineck n, untitled “pieturesque Manuscript Library. Yale University (phi inecke Library)no break or opening between them, nothing of discordant nature suffered to interpose, to check the progress of the imagination, expose the illusion, and recall a different set fof principles to the mind: this is all that is meant by in the imi proba This reductive response to associationism, however, court odd problem for Opie Instances have occurred of some [artists], who have eve been yo absurd as to think colouring, chiarn seuro, and all that contributes to il in painting, as beneath their attention; who, because they have heard that nature might be improved upon in some particulars, have fondly imay- ined that their compositions approached 1 poctical in proportion as they receded fro became muddy, tame, arid: monotonous in the Williams Hit, we will recall, made the same objection to the “painterly” theory of classical generalization, tracing a direct connection between Reynolds's theory and the “slovenly and unfinished” appearance of early-ninewenth-century English painting. In his Lectures on Painting, James Barry (professor of painting at the academy, 1782-99) is less oubled by the counterassociationist epistemological logic that associates “beauty” with the “mueldy; tame, and monotonous! [T]he desideratum (at least in all mi compositions) is, that the noble mind, of ability 10 penetrate the depth, entire compass, and eapab in one view all its possible circumstances, to select and 1 igreatest consequence to its energetic and happy elucida- and 1 be able at the same time judiciously and severely to reject and suppress whatever useless exuber ances may have arisen from the heat and fertility of his ation." ist should possess a great and lity of his subject; w discer most interesting, and of the In another, though similar context, and with no sense of drama, Barry concludes that “Mere Beauty then, (though always interesting) is nousithstanding vague and indeter nate, ..°? Not only the antiacacemie Hazlitt, but even the caclemic theorists explicitly describe the classical ideal ay muda, tame, monotonous, indeterminate, and vague Reynolds's eleventh Discourse on the “technique of gener- alization” through a “few, well-chosen strokes” was delivered December 1742, the same year that Warton produced the poctic ode w Reynolds's (mediated) handwork in the New Jot Ope, Ltrs on Patng mes Barry “Lecurem not ‘Lavin, 178, 16, London, 1809, 78.17 in Phe Worf James Barry College painted windows. The academic lectures of James ave cited were delivered in the mid-1780s, andl lpin’s “Essay on Picturesque Beauty” was published in 1792. By the early nineteenth century, both Opie and Hazlitt feared that the idea of painterly generalization would be carried too far and result in muddy, unfinished productions. This sequence roughly sketches a history of painte cchniques which origi as a response 10 the midcentury associationist crisis. best illustrated in Sterne’s playful Tristram Shandy (1759-67) These techniques, which climaxed in the 1780s, required the dialectical correcti ‘variegation 1790 ineleenth century they were see conventionalized and over to this history that Cozens felt that a republication of his hod would be well received in the mid-1780; indeed, there are significant formal differences hetween the “black Sketchesand Outlines” of the 1759 Esay andl the broader, less determinate “blots” of the 1785 Nw Method 1 have at tempted here to locate the epistemology underlying the New ‘Method in the context of the late-eighteenth-century “assoc tionist problem” through specific comparison with Joshust Reynolds's epistemology and pedagogy, and to locate both textual justifications for and figurative parallels with the odd formal appearance of the blot from inside the academy andl from within the picturesque theory of the 1780s and 1790s, If thiy exploration has (justifiably, I think) somew ‘our expectations of the formal appearance of th hope it compensates by locating Cozens well within the parameters of contemporary debate and artistic process echniques of gener of picturesque in the by the early plied. I is doubtless significant Frequently Cited Sources {Conons, leader, A Nv Mead of Asitng the vation in Dring Onin ‘Cpt of Lama (1789) Dar dea ache fnvucion a Nee ve Alxaude Cans, by Jean-Chce Lsbenst, Pai, 1900, 1 Locke, John, An Evey Cinurning Haman Undersnding (100, et, Peter H. ‘iin, Oxford, 190, Reynolds, Joshua, Dass on An, ed Robert R Wark, New Haen/London, 1s Charles A. Cramer isa PhD. caraidate atthe University of Texas at Austin, specializing in aesthetic theory anu issues of elassciom and ‘modernism in art. He is currently completing. his dissertation, “Formal Reduction and the Empirical Tdeal, 1750-1914," under the sdvice of Prof. Richard Shiff [Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Tex, 78712} 2 Barry, “Lecture om Design.” in ibid, 388 Gres, An By 0788), fase tn Ska, Past Gain 1). 384