Читать книгу Art in Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 132

In the context of contemporary globalization, art historians have introduced the concept of the ‘colonial picturesque’ to describe one of the ways in which art was made to serve the cause of empire. Landscape painting, it is argued, sought in effect to domesticate, or at least to render into familiar terms, what were actually often radically unknown or hostile environments, thereby helping to ideologically legitimize the presence of Europeans in them. William Beckford (often known as Beckford of Somerley to differentiate him from his cousin, the writer William Beckford of Fonthill cf. IIA10) was a wealthy plantation owner in Jamaica. In the mid‐1770s he engaged the artist George Robertson to paint pictures of his Jamaican estates, representing them as pastoral, even Arcadian scenes of plenty. Subsequently, however, Beckford incurred debts and had to forfeit his estates and leave the island. It was during this time that he wrote his description of Jamaica and its sugar plantations, in an attempt to recover his fortunes. What is noticeable about his account – in addition, that is, to his relatively untroubled acceptance of slavery – is the way Beckford continually treats the natural environment of Jamaica as a subject for artistic representation, invoking the picturesque nature of the landscape, and frequently making cross‐references to ostensibly similar sites in Britain or Europe, and to paintings by European artists. The present extracts are taken from A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica, vol. 1, London, 1790, pp. 7–13, 181–2 and 214.

The first appearance of Jamaica presents one of the most grand and lively scenes that the creating hand of Nature can possibly exhibit: mountains of an immense height seem to crush those that are below them; and these are adorned with a foliage as thick as vivid, and no less vivid than continual. The hills, from their summits to the very borders of the sea, are fringed with trees and shrubs of a beautiful shape, and undecaying verdure; you perceive mills, works, and houses, peeping among their branches, or buried amidst their shades.

The sea is, in general, extremely smooth and brilliant; and, before the breeze begins to ripple its glassy surface, is so remarkably transparent, that you can perceive (as if there were no intervening medium) the rocks and sands at a considerable depth; the weeds and coral that adorn the first, and the stars and other testaceous fishes that repose upon the last.

Every passing cloud affords some pleasing variation; and the glowing vapours of the atmosphere, when the sun arises or declines, and when the picturesque and fantastic clouds are reflected in its polished bosom, give an enchanting hue, and such as is only particular to the warmer climates, and which much resemble those saffron skies which so strongly mark the Campania of Rome, and the environs of Naples.

There are many parts of the country that are not much unlike to, nor less romantic than, the most wild and beautiful situations of Frescati, Tivoli, and Albano; and the want of those picturesque and elegant ruins which so much ennoble the landscapes of Italy are made some amends for, in the painter’s eye, by the appearance, the variety, and the number of the buildings. […]

From many situations you have views so much diversified, that, wherever you turn, a new prospect delights the eye, and occasions surprise by the magnificence of the objects, by the depths of shadow or bursts of light, by the observation of gloomy dells or woody plains, of mountain‐torrents, of winding‐streams; of groups of negroes, herds of cattle, passing wains; and by the recurrence of every rural object that imagination can form, or attention discriminate.

The timber‐trees in the mountains are large and lofty; and the cotton‐trees in particular, both there and upon the plains, are of a very beautiful and magnificent growth, and are rendered strikingly picturesque by the numberless withes that depend from branch to branch, and by the variety of creeping or stationary plants (deleterious indeed, to their health and vegetation, but from which no painter would wish to see them disengaged) which attach themselves to the trunks and extremities. […]

The docks and weeds of which the foregrounds in Jamaica are composed, are the most rich and beautiful productions of the kind I have ever seen; and the banks of the rivers are fringed with every growth that a painter would wish to introduce into this agreeable part of landscape; and those borders which Claude Lorrain, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa, took apparently so much pleasure and pains to enrich, are there excelled by the hand of Nature alone: nor do I conceive it possible for any artist to invent, by a sedulous collection of the most choice and beautiful parts of her productions, more enchanting scenes than can be observed in the dells and vallies, and on the margins of the rivers, in that beautiful and romantic country.

The cascades, the torrents, the rivers, and the rills, are enchantingly picturesque in their different features, and exchange the sublimity or repose of their scenes, according to the variations of the seasons, or the turmoils of the elements; and these variations, I should conceive, few climates afford in competition with that I have ventured to describe. The colours of Loutherbourg are better calculated for the expression of such varieties than those, I should imagine, of any modern artist; and he might there meet with several falls, the surrounding scenery of which might eclipse the boasted waters of Schaffhausen, the brilliancy of Pisvâche, and the gloom of Terni.

From the rocks, in general, but from those in particular that help to form the Bay of Bluefields, may be made the most rich and beautiful studies; and indeed it is hardly possible to describe the variety and softness of their tints, the boldness of their masses, the projection of their shades, the various and picturesque accompaniments of trees that rise and spread from, of shrubs that partially hide, of bushes that creep over, or plants and weeds that luxuriantly adorn, their broken basements; and which basements are worn into caverns, or hollows, by the irritation of the tides, which leave, as a recompence for the intrusions they have made, a deposit of beautiful and various dyes; of such dyes as the most celebrated artist might be proud to imitate, and the imitation of which would require the eye of judgment and execution not to disgrace.

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As I have before noticed the tinted beauties of the rocks of Bluefield, I shall now suppose myself to be seated upon the most elevated part of this romantic hill, and looking down upon all the beauties of the scene below.

The hill upon this road, a little beyond the watering‐place (which is supplied with one of the most brilliant and limpid streams of which imagination can possibly form a just idea, and which in point of keeping is hardly inferior to the boasted quality of that of the Thames), is very particularly and strikingly romantic; and the precipices towards the sea are painfully tremendous, as in some places the road is extremely narrow; and there are but few intervening shrubs to give the eye a confidence, and to break the giddy distance of the depth below.

As you look back upon the country through which you had lately passed; the solemn woods and the painted rocks, over which is seen to wander an infinite variety of creeping shrubs; and the winding road, the sinking hills, the level plains, the dotted town, and spiral masts; the swelling bay and sandy shores, and the distant mountains softened in the horizon – all together form an amphitheatre of beauty and extent that is seldom examined, and little known; and which puts me much in mind, in some particular and different parts, of one of those large and magnificent pictures of Claude Lorrain.

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There are but few images in nature that are more congenial to the contemplative man, who delights in the silence and solemnity of that hour when all passions of the mind, excepting sorrow, appear to be asleep, than a solitary walk amidst the bamboo‐canes, when the moon‐beam darts partially here and there amidst their shadows, when the dew‐drops glitter on the leaves, and not a sound is heard, save the plaintive whispers of the plantain and banana trees that wave with drowsy murmur around the watchman’s hut, and seem to invite with gentle blandishment to social conversation or repose.

I have frequently dwelt upon these seeming retreats of innocent retirement, and upon the situations of their inhabitants, oblivious of the world, its contentions and disappointments, its suspenses and its cares, until I could almost fancy that, instead of the hovel of a slave, I was reflecting upon the habitation of a hermit.