If they wish to give the face expression, though
they seldom aim so high, all they can compass is a passing emotion;
and one sitter goes down to posterity with an eternal frown, another
with an eternal smile."
"Or, if he be a poet," said Sabina, "rolls his eye for ever in a fine
frenzy."
"But would you forbid them to paint passion?"
"Not in its place; when the picture gives the causes of the passion,
and the scene tells its own story. But then let us not have merely
Kean as Hamlet, but Hamlet's self; let the painter sit down and
conceive for himself a Hamlet, such as Shakspeare conceived; not
merely give us as much of him as could be pressed at a given moment
into the face of Mr. Kean. He will be only unjust to both actor and
character. If Flake paints Marie as Lady Macbeth, he will give us
neither her nor Lady Macbeth; but only the single point at which their
two characters can coincide."
"How rude!" said Sabina, laughing; "what is he doing but hinting
that La Signora's conception of Lady Macbeth is a very partial and
imperfect one?"
"And why should it not be?" asked the actress, humbly enough.
"I meant," he answered warmly, "that there was more, far more in her
than in any character which she assumes; and I do not want a painter
to copy only one aspect, and let a part go down to posterity as a
representation of the whole."
"If you mean that, you shall be forgiven. No; when she is painted, she
shall be painted as herself, as she is now.
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