In the following comments on a painting Brett exhibited at the 1873 summer exhibition, the critic for The Art-Journal sounds surprisingly like Ruskin, who also thought that the painter, having brilliantly achieved the major first step in becoming an artist — the ability to see and record the most detailed visual facts found in the natural world — now, like Turner, had to move to the higher stage which requires imagination and a sense of the human observer. Brett decided to go his own way and did so throughout his career. — George P. Landow
We are glad be able to give all but unqualified approval to J. Brett’s ‘Massa, Bay of Naples ’ (369), a complete reversal of the style adopted in a rude work of former years, titled ‘The Hedger.’ ‘Massa’ is a picture of remarkable brilliancy; it palpitates with light and heat, like nature berself when basking or rather panting under an Italian sun. The colour, too, is delicious, remarkably nder in the iridescent tones playing on the irface of the water. The flood of sunlight just across the headland, gold in its brightness and blue in the shadow of the trees, is dazzling. Mr. Brett may have painted works which have obtained more notoriety, but the intrinsic merit of this picture transcends the éclat won by eccentricity.
Bibliography
“Exhibition of the Royal Academy.” The Art-Journal. 26 (1864): 167.
Last modified 12 June 2020