Volume 1

The lost senses / By John Kitto.

  • John Kitto
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The lost senses / By John Kitto. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    72/224 page 58
    Many readers will consider it strange that with all this appreciation of the sublime and beau- tiful in nature on the one hand, and with a strong love for pictures on the other, I have but little regard for landscape paintings. Painted action, and the expression of human passion and circum- stance, are delightful to me; but landscapes are insipid. The reason of this probably is, that I care too much for the reality, to have much regard for the imperfect imitation ; and that, by dint of travel, my mind has become so much crowded and pre-occupied with images of natural scenery, in every variety of grandeur and beauty, as to render me rich enough in this kind of wealth, without recourse to the secondary impressions derivable from artificial sources. Even those who may be disposed to doubt that I owe to my deafness that exquisite enjoyment of the beautiful in nature which I have indicated, will be ready to admit that my enjoyment from pictures may be refereed to this source. I have no doubt on the point: for even admitting that a mind naturally active, must have taken some decided turn or other, even had deafness not been super- induced, it was, in this respect of taste, quite as likely that I should have sought my enjoyment in pictures as in books. The food which was first found for the growing pictorial appetite imposed upon me, by the circumstances which made it one of the necessities of my condition to seek gratifica- tion for the eye, was of a very humble description. Excepting an occasional painting in the window of the sole picture frame maker, and a few smirking portraits in the windows of the portrait and minia- ture painters, my only resource was in the prints,
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