[History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia Volume IV. (of XXI.) by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link bookHistory Of Friedrich II. of Prussia Volume IV. (of XXI.) CHAPTER VI 3/8
Painter Pesne, a French Immigrant, or Importee, of the last reign, a man of great skill with his brush, whom History yet thanks on several occasions, was sent for; or he heard of the incident, and volunteered his services.
A Portrait of little Fritz drumming, with Wilhelmina looking on; to which, probably for the sake of color and pictorial effect, a Blackamoor, aside with parasol in hand, grinning approbation, has been added,--was sketched, and dexterously worked out in oil, by Painter Pesne.
Picture approved by mankind there and then.
And it still hangs on the wall, in a perfect state, in Charlottenburg Palace; where the judicious tourist may see it without difficulty, and institute reflections on it. A really graceful little Picture; and certainly, to Prussian men, not without weight of meaning.
Nor perhaps to Picture-Collectors and Cognoscenti generally, of whatever country,--if they could forget, for a moment, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the learned babble of the Sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer; and think, "Why it is, probably, that Pictures exist in this world, and to what end the divine art of Painting was bestowed, by the earnest gods, upon poor mankind ?" I could advise it, once, for a little! Flaying of Saint Bartholomew, Rape of Europa, Rape of the Sabines, Piping and Amours of goat-footed Pan, Romulus suckled by the Wolf: all this, and much else of fabulous, distant, unimportant, not to say impossible, ugly and unworthy, shall pass without undue severity of criticism, in a Household of such opulence as ours, where much goes to waste, and where things are not on an earnest footing for this long while past! As Created Objects, or as Phantasms of such, pictorially done, all this shall have much worth, or shall have little.
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