Section I. General Principles Respecting Ideas of Truth

Part II. Of Truth.

Chapter I.—Of Ideas of Truth in their connection with those of Beauty and Relation.

§ 1. The two great ends of landscape painting are the representation of facts and thoughts.

§ 2. They induce a different choice of material subjects.

§ 3. The first mode of selection apt to produce sameness and repetition.

§ 4. The second necessitating variety.

§ 5. Yet the first is delightful to all.

§ 6. The second only to a few.

§ 7. The first necessary to the second.

§ 8. The exceeding importance of truth.

§ 9. Coldness or want of beauty no sign of truth.

§ 10. How truth may be considered a just criterion of all art.

Chapter II.—That the Truth of Nature is not to be discerned by the Uneducated Senses.

§ 1. The common self-deception of men with respect to their power of discerning truth.

§ 2. Men usually see little of what is before their eyes.

§ 3. But more or less in proportion to their natural sensibility to what is beautiful.

§ 4. Connected with a perfect state of moral feeling.

§ 5. And of the intellectual powers.

§ 6. How sight depends upon previous knowledge.

§ 7. The difficulty increased by the variety of truths in nature.

§ 8. We recognize objects by their least important attributes. Compare Part I. Sect. I. Chap. 4.

Chapter III.—Of the Relative Importance of Truths:—First, that Particular Truths are more important than General Ones.

§ 1. Necessity of determining the relative importance of truths.

§ 2. Misapplication of the aphorism: "General truths are more important than particular ones."

§ 3. Falseness of this maxim, taken without explanation.

§ 4. Generality important in the subject, particularity in the predicate.

§ 5. The importance of truths of species is not owing to their generality.

§ 6. All truths valuable as they are characteristic.

§ 7. Otherwise truths of species are valuable, because beautiful.

§ 8. And many truths, valuable if separate, may be objectionable in connection with others.

§ 9. Recapitulation.

Chapter IV.—Of the Relative Importance of Truths:—Secondly, that Rare Truths are more important than Frequent Ones.

§ 1. No accidental violation of nature's principles should be represented.

§ 2. But the cases in which those principles have been strikingly exemplified.

§ 3. Which are comparatively rare.

§ 4. All repetition is blamable.

§ 5. The duty of the painter is the same as that of a preacher.

Chapter V.—Of the Relative Importance of Truths:—Thirdly, that Truths of Color are the least important of all Truths.

§ 1. Difference between primary and secondary qualities in bodies.

§ 2. The first are fully characteristic, the second imperfectly so.

§ 3. Color is a secondary quality, therefore less important than form.

§ 4. Color no distinction between objects of the same species.

§ 5. And different in association from what it is alone.

§ 6. It is not certain whether any two people see the same colors in things.

§ 7. Form, considered as an element of landscape, includes light and shade.

§ 8. Importance of light and shade in expressing the character of bodies, and unimportance of color.

§ 9. Recapitulation.

Chapter VI.—Recapitulation.

§ 1. The importance of historical truths.

§ 2. Form, as explained by light and shade, the first of all truths. Tone, light, and color, are secondary.

§ 3. And deceptive chiaroscuro the lowest of all.

Chapter VII.—General Application of the Foregoing Principles.

§ 1. The different selection of facts consequent on the several aims at imitation or at truth.

§ 2. The old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation.

§ 3. What truths they gave.

§ 4. The principles of selection adopted by modern artists.

§ 5. General feeling of Claude, Salvator, and G. Poussin, contrasted with the freedom and vastness of nature.

§ 6. Inadequacy of the landscape of Titian and Tintoret.

§ 7. Causes of its want of influence on subsequent schools.

§ 8. The value of inferior works of art, how to be estimated.

§ 9. Religious landscape of Italy. The admirableness of its completion.

§ 10. Finish, and the want of it, how right—and how wrong.

§ 11. The open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. Mountain drawing of Masaccio. Landscape of the Bellinis and Giorgione.

§ 12. Landscape of Titian and Tintoret.

§ 13. Schools of Florence, Milan, and Bologna.

§ 14. Claude, Salvator, and the Poussins.

§ 15. German and Flemish landscape.

§ 16. The lower Dutch schools.

§ 17. English school, Wilson and Gainsborough.

§ 18. Constable, Callcott.

§ 19. Peculiar tendency of recent landscape.

§ 20. G. Robson, D. Cox. False use of the term "style."

§ 21. Copley Fielding. Phenomena of distant color.

§ 22. Beauty of mountain foreground.

§ 23. De Wint.

§ 24. Influence of Engraving. J. D. Harding.

§ 25. Samuel Prout. Early painting of architecture, how deficient.

§ 26. Effects of age upon buildings, how far desirable.

§ 27. Effects of light, how necessary to the understanding of detail.

§ 28. Architectural painting of Gentile Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio.

§ 29. And of the Venetians generally.

§ 30. Fresco painting of the Venetian exteriors. Canaletto.

§ 31. Expression of the effects of age on Architecture by S. Prout.

§ 32. His excellent composition and color.

§ 33. Modern architectural painting generally. G. Cattermole.

§ 34. The evil in an archæological point of view of misapplied invention, in architectural subject.

§ 35. Works of David Roberts: their fidelity and grace.

§ 36. Clarkson Stanfield.

§ 37. J. M. W. Turner. Force of national feeling in all great painters.

§ 38. Influence of this feeling on the choice of Landscape subject.

§ 39. Its peculiar manifestation in Turner.

§ 40. The domestic subjects of the Liber Studiorum.

§ 41. Turner's painting of French and Swiss landscape. The latter deficient.

§ 42. His rendering of Italian character still less successful. His large compositions how failing.

§ 43. His views of Italy destroyed by brilliancy and redundant quantity.

§ 44. Changes introduced by him in the received system of art.

§ 45. Difficulties of his later manner. Resultant deficiencies.

§ 46. Reflection of his very recent works.

§ 47. Difficulty of demonstration in such subjects.