Gray Is At This Moment In Florence, Though He Is Soon Coming To Rome.
He
has made some copies from Titian, one of which I saw.
It was a Madonna and
child, in which the original painting was rendered with all the fidelity
of a mirror. So indisputably was it a Titian, and so free from the
stiffness of a copy, that, as I looked at it, I fully sympathized with
the satisfaction expressed by the artist at having attained the method of
giving with ease the peculiarity of coloring which belongs to Titian's
pictures.
An American landscape painter of high merit is G. L. Brown, now residing
at Florence. He possesses great knowledge of detail, which he knows how to
keep in its place, subduing it, and rendering it subservient to the
general effect. I saw in his studio two or three pictures, in which I
admired his skill in copying the various forms of foliage and other
objects, nor was I less pleased to see that he was not content with this
sort of merit, but, in going back from the foreground, had the art of
passing into that appearance of an infinity of forms and outlines which
the eye meets with in nature. I could not help regretting that one who
copied nature so well, should not prefer to represent her as she appears
in our own fresh and glorious land, instead of living in Italy and
painting Italian landscapes.
To refer again to foreign artists - before I left Florence I visited the
annual exhibition which had been opened in the Academy of the Fine Arts.
There were one or two landscapes reminding me somewhat of Cole's manner,
but greatly inferior, and one or two good portraits, and two or three
indifferent historical pictures.
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