Picturing the Thing Itself, or Not:
Defoe, Painting, Prose Fiction,
and the Arts of Describing
Maximillian E. Novak
T
his essay explores the relationship between Defoe's fiction and
painting, but, in a broader sense, I hope that my investigations have
significance for the novel in general. Since Ian Watt's paradigmatic argument that individualism and realism are the true cause of the proliferation
of novelistic texts throughout the eighteenth century, numerous alternative scripts have been proposed: the novel as continuity of romance; the
novel as continuation of the picaresque; the novel as representing a dialectic between empiricism and morality; the novel as an essentially
feminine text, and so on. Present at the heart of many of these scenarios are the fictions of Daniel Defoe: Robinson Ctusoe, Moll Flanders,
Captain Singleton, Memoirs of a Cavalier, A Journal of the Plague Year,
Colonel Jack, and Roxana. If Defoe is not discussed, the decision itself
represents a silence that demands discussion. A more customary silence
in these paradigms, however, is the lack of any discussion of realist painting, the form which, in its "faithful representing of commonplace things,"
seemed to George Eliot the closest parallel to realism in the nove1.l What
I want to do in this essay is, first, to establish Defoe's interest in painting; second, to argue that the clich6 about Defoe's realism resembling a
1 George Eliot, A&m Be&, in U b h (London: Howarden Rcss. 1899). 1248.
E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION. Volume 9, Number 1, October 19%
2 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
Dutch painting may in fact suggest that Defoe drew much from the contemporary artistic form that best represented the real; third, to maintain
that Defoe only gradually came to understand some of the advantages
of prose fiction over the established form of realist painting; and finally,
to suggest that, for Defoe, painting and prose fiction embodied methods of deception that could be turned to useful ends. More generally, I
wish to consider Defoe's sense of scene, his sense of the visual, mainly
in terms of realist painting as it developed during the seventeenth century and particularly the realistic rendering of scene which had its centre
in Holland and which here I will call Dutch painting.
I want to begin by considering what Defoe knew about painting, a matter
that has never been discussed with any care. We should remember that,
as Ian Pears has shown, during the reign of William 111, with the great
auctions of that period, paintings became an important c~rnmodity.~
For
someone who considered himself an expert on everything having to do
with the building trade, from the manufacture of bricks to the importing
of lumber to Britain, from the arrangement of gardens to the improving
of estates, it would be odd if Defoe did not have some knowledge of
paintings and the painting market. Though his proposal for an academy of
painting in the second edition of his Augusta Triumphans (1728) appeared
as a mere afterthought to the thorough discussion of an academy of
music, Defoe did not hesitate to identify himself as an expert on painting.
His interest was not so much in getting at "the thing itself," something
any writer and artist has to know to be impossible, but in the methods
of deceiving the eye and the mind into accepting the presence of the
representation as something that might have existed. I want to show how,
in mastering the kinds of illusion of the real that is part of the novelists
art, Defoe had to learn gradually that the complex system of realist
presentation in painting might be surpassed within a work of fiction.
In her book on the relationship between realist painting and the development of the cinema, Anne Hollander argued that the paintings of the
Dutch and Flemish school from the fifteenth century onward have had so
strong an influence on the ways in which we tend to see our world that
makers of motion pictures were strongly influenced by them, whether
2 See Ian Pears. Thc Discovery ofpainting: The Gmwth of Interest in the Ans in En&d,
1768 (New Haven: Yale University Ress. 1988). pp. 57-54.
I@&
DEFOE A N D THE A R T S OF DESCRIBING 3
consciously or "unconsciously." The title of her book, Moving Pictures,
refers equally to the paintings she discusses as to the various movies she
compares them to because, she argues, the peculiar use of light sets paintings in motion, light which operated equally well in the elaborate colour
effects of painting as in the black and white of the newly discovered arts
of engraving, etching, and mezzotint. Also setting these paintings in motion is a sense of narrative. Dutch paintings not only tell stories through
the frozen actions and appearances of their human figures, they create
narratives through the depiction of the numerous objects--pitchers, tables, chairs, fruit, and flowers-in their interiors and through farm yards,
churches, ships, and trees in their portrayal of the world outside.)
If we might agree with Hollander on the influence of such works
on photography and ultimately on the cinema, what, it might be asked,
was their influence on realistic prose fiction, which developed almost
simultaneously with the new realism in painting? Smollett, of course,
was the first important novelist to link the two forms in his preface
to Ferdinand Count Fathom. Breakiig with the traditional comparisons
between the novel and either drama or epic, Smollett compared it to "a
diffused picture" with characters arranged in various postures.' William
Congreve compared his novella Incognita to the drama; Fielding defined
his form of novel as a comic epic in prose. Smollen did little more than
expand the relationship of the sister arts, poetry and painting, to a general
theory of prose fiction, but he highlighted a relationship that had already
been mentioned by Fielding in his comparisons between some of his
scenes and those in the engravings of Hogarth.' And it is not difficult to
push this notion of the influence of scenes in Dutch painting further back
in time. The very common depiction of an impassioned woman writing
to her lover, a scene painted by Metsu and Vermeer, among others,
precedes by many years the Letters of a Portuguese Nun, the work that
was to begin the vogue for epistolary fiction and which was eventually
to lead to Richardson's Pamela. Years ago, E.H.Gombrich, advocating
his theory of the conventionality of visual depictions, suggested that his
ideas might be applied to the realism of picaresque novels as well as to
3 Anne Hollander, Moving Piemre$ (New York: Knopf, 1989), pp. 1-51, 11%95.
4 Tobias Smollett. Ferdinand Count Fathom, ed. lary &asley and O.M.Bmk, Ir (Athens:
University of Georgia &ss, 1988). pp. 4-5.
5 For a lhorough discussion of dw interaction behvecn Fielding and Hogarth, see Peter Ian &
Voogd, Henry Fielding and WiUiam Hog~vth:The Conrs+~es
of the Am (Ansterdam:
Rodopi. 1981).
4 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
paintings6 And I might as easily have used his arguments as my starting
point as those of Hollander.
What then was the possible influence of painting on the writer often
considered the founder of modem fictional realism, Daniel Defoe? Comparisons between Defoe's fiction and Dutch painting are common enough
and, while one derisive correlation between Defoe's satire and Dutch art
may be found as early as 1701: serious comparisons are at least as old as
the criticism of Sir Walter Scott, who elaborated on the ways in which
both Defoe and the "Flemish artists" attract us with their "skill" despite their mean and disagreeable "subject matter."8 Of course it would
be vain to search for a protagonist in Defoe's major fiction who had
any interest in painting. While it is true that Defoe has a character in
his Compleat English Gentleman reveal his ignorance by his purchases
of fake old masters, his main characters are too involved in their various activities to have the time to collect paintings. When Moll Flanders
speaks of becoming the "greatest artist of my time," she is refemng to
the art of picking pockets not of applying oil paint. Indeed, the insistence of both Moll Flanders and Roxana on their freedom from using
any "Paint" or cosmetics on their faces--on their having nothing mificia1 about themselves-makes a connection explicated at some length by
6 More typical, puhaps, is Gombrich's warning &a often whaf seams mast Ral in Dutch painting
is actually developed from some prior convention. 'The artist," he wrcie. "no less Ulan the
writer needs a vocabulary before he can embark on a 'copy of reality.'" As the fhrrc volumes of
Lkfoe's F m ' l y Inrtructor testify. Defoe appeared to have an endless fund of stolies of domestic
life to draw upon, but he also shaped his fictions from p v i o u s fictional f o m ranging from the
pimwque to the scandalous chmnicle. See E.H. Gombrich, Art ondllluim (London: Phaidon.
1968). p. 75.
7 Commcnting upon the low language and burlesque satiric technique of Defoe's True-born Engl i s h . the author of The Fernole Crilick (1701). p. 119, remarked &a the auchor was l i b the
"famous Dutch Boor-Painter" who, in order to paint Ihem better, associated with the lower orders and eventually gave all of his subjets 'the Air of a Bwr." Tk reference is probably to
Adriaen Brouwer (160516-1638). famous for his paintings of tavern sanes.
8 '7he air of writing with all the plausibility of Wth must, in almost every case, have its own
peculiar value; as we admire the paintings of some Flemish artists, wkre, though Ihe subjects
drawn are mean and disameable. and such as in nmure we would not wish to study or Iwk
close upon, yet the skill &h which they are repwnted by the painter gives an intekst to the
imitation upon canvass which the original entirely wants. But, on the 0 t h hand, when Ihe power
of exact and cireumslantial delineation is applied to objeas which we are anxiously desirous to
see in their propet shape and colours, we have a double source of plsasurc, both in the art of the
painter, and in the int-t
which we lake in the subject r e p m t e d . Thus the styk of probability
with which Lk Foe invested his nmtives, was pernaps ill bestowed, or rather wasted, upon
some of the woks which he thought proper to p d u c e , ind cannot recommend to us the subject
of Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders; but on the other hand, the same lalent thmws an air of mth
about the deliahtful histon, of Robinron Cnrroc. which we never could have believed it nassible
to have unitedwith so e x t k d i n a r y a situationas is assigned lo the huo." Sir Walter S ~ UOn
,
Novelists ond Fiction. ed. loan Williams (New Yo* Barnes and Noble. 1968). pp. 179-80.
DEFOE A N D THE ARTS OF DESCRIBING 5
Richard Haycocke in his translation and adaptation of Giovani Lamazzo's
famous treatise on ~ a i n t i n g . ~
Yet, when his writings are read carefully, Defoe appears to have shown
an interest in painting throughout his life. In Religious Courtship, despite
the use made of religious paintings by a sinister Roman Catholic husband,
one of Defoe's most reliable characters says: "I like his fancy to pictures
very well," despite deploring their use as religious icons. And the narrator
notes, as the husband is explaining the composition subjects of each
work, that they "were indeed extremely fine."1° Although his Tour thm'
the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-27) is oriented towards what he
called the more "manly" subject of economics, he does not hesitate to
engage in a bit of art criticism in his descriptions of Hampton Court,
Wilton House, and a number of other collections. But his interest started
much earlier. In the selection of short fictions he presented to his future
wife, Mary TufKley, he included one that contains the classic commentary
on realistic technique, that of Zeuxis's painting of a boy with some
grapes. Seeing some birds flying down to peck at the grapes, Zeuxis
proceeded to destroy the painting in a fit of anger, saying, "If I had
Drawne the boy as lively as the grapes, the birds would have been afraid
to touch them."I1 Significantly enough, Defoe did not include another
famous story of Zeuxis, that involving his use of five different models
for a painting of Helen of Troy. The moral of this story stresses the
necessity for achieving the ideal in art. Instead, as we might expect,
Defoe chooses one that makes a point about the depiction of the real.I2
That Defoe should have admired what Svetlana Alpers called "the art
of describing" as early as 1682 ought not come as a surprise to anyone
familiar with the corpus of his work." One of his favourite phrases in
his early writings is deceptio visus, the concept of the way the eye is
fooled by the painter. He usually applied this concept to discussions of
the ways in which his enemies created a verbal structure for the purpose
9 Giovani Lamarm, P a t e Containing rk artcr of Curious Paintinge. trans. Richard Haymke
(Oxford. 1598). pp. 129-33.
10 Religious Courtship, in The NoveLs and Miscelloncous Work of Daniel Drfw (Oxford: Tegg,
1840). 14212-20.
11 "Historical Collections," Clark Libmy Manuscript H673SM3, pp. 126-27
12 11 may be sngntficant lhal 8n hs Complmt A n o/Po,nr,nl: (1720) Defac wrongly awgns Ihe story
of Zeums's combrnrng of the five beauucs to Appelcs. suggesnng UW he arsoc~atcdZeuxls w l h
realist technique.
13 Svetlana Alpers, A n of Dcxribing: Durch A n in rk Scvenamth Ccnruv (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press. 1983). especially pp. 72-118.
6 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
of deceiving the reader." In his journal, the Review, for 16 March 1718,
he compared viewing the Jacobites, with their continual plots against the
government, to the difference effected by proper distance in a painting:
"But as of a fine Picture, when you come near to it, and take it off
from its Shades and Distances, it discovers the meer naked Clods of Oils
and Colours, nasty, shapeless, and s t i n k i n g 4 0 when you come near
this Dragon ..." and so forth.l5 The comment reveals his awareness of the
argument that some of the greatest painters require a certain distance
for the eye to put together certain effects.I6 The image of the painter or
draughtsman who can create a picture of the truth came easily to him.
Not only does he encounter a drawing master on the moon in one of his
imaginary trips there, but he frequently speaks of "Drawing an unpleasant
Picture" or employs some other graphic image for his audience.17 His
favourite phrase, however, in this regard expresses his desire to "draw
the Thing itself' so that all could see and understand.18 In an age which
privileged sight both philosophically and aesthetically, Defoe had a real
sense of the inadequacy of language to evoke a vivid meaning or scene
and longed for the power of the hieroglyph to convey meaning directly
in the form of a picture.l9
Painting and picture, when rendered effectively, had the power of
immediate communication of meaning. It was for this quality that he
praised two of Raphael's cartoons at Hampton Court, for their ability
to "strike the fancy the soonest at first vie^.'^ The great example of
the failure of the artist might be found in Defoe's oft-told account of
the painter who had to write on the canvas to indicate the nature of the
object he was attempting to depict, as in "This is the dog and this is the
man."21What one finds, then, in the early writings, is a distinct sense that
14 Sec, for example, An Essay upon Projccu, in Early Life and Earlier Wodq ed. Henry Morky
(London:Roufledge, 1889). p. 36.
15 Daniel Defoe, Review, 4. A.W. Secord (New Yo& Columbia, 1938). 6586.
16 The paradox of the artist who c&d effects only perceived from a distance was particularly
impom1 in discussions of Rembrandt. Gerard Dou was consided the antithesis of this, since
his paintings had a completely smooth surface. Scc SvUlana Alprs. Rcmbmndt'k Enterprise:
The Studio and the Market (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1988). pp. 16-18.
17 Review (28 June 1705). 2:198.
18 Pot a discussion of Defa's anempts at concrete visual representation thmugh language, see my
Dcfoc ond the N a s n ofMan (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963). p. 158.
who waned to have small drawings accompany definitions of
19 He shared this with John,&.I
words. Such an idea goes back st least to Comenius (1582-1670).
20 Daniel Defoe, Tour thm' the Whole lslond of Great Brimin, ed. G.D.H. Cole (London: Peter
Davies, 1927). 1:177.
21 Defoe sometimes used ciher animals to iUusmte his point. During 1710, in the Obscrvntor, he
DEFOE A N D THE A R T S OF DESCRIBING 7
visual description is far better rendered in a visual medium. The main
question I want to explore here is: Did he ever feel great confidence in
his ability to create a picture through language for his readers? And if he
did, when did he feel himself to be the writer we think of as the master
at creating a sense of reality? We can be sure that it was some time
before 1720 when he published his verse translation of Du Fresnoy's
De Arte Graphica with a rare signature, "D.F. Gentleman." Although
the purpose of this abstract of Du Fresnoy's principles was essentially
directed towards memorizing them, it suggests that Defoe was preparing
himself for the type of judgments he would make about paintings in
his later writings. This work appeared one year after the first volume
of Robinson Crusoe had brought him considerable fame, and it may
suggest that, by this time, he felt he could risk a publication that might
have aroused derisive attacks fmm his enemies a few years earlier.*
Before looking at the writing for evidence of his creation of vivid
pictures, I want to say a few words about his comments on collecting
and collections. As has been suggested, he made a number of derisive
remarks about those who collect paintings merely as investments and
about collectors who purchase paintings without sufficient understanding
about their quality. He clearly thought of himself as a connoisseur and
also commented on the number of paintings being bmught over from
Holland that lacked the excellence that might have been expected fmm
the best paintings of the Dutch school. In the Tour thro' the Whole Island
of Great Britain, he expressed admiration for the great Van Dyck painting
of the Pembroke family at Wilton House ("worth the labour of any lover
of art to go 500 miles to see it") as well as for a lintoretto. There is
a particularly personal element in his l i n g for the lintoretto. Not only
is this a scene of Christ's humility but it is distinguished by elements
of realist art, particularly the dog and the scene of the woman sweeping
in the background. There are similar elements in the Luca Giordano
painting of the death of Seneca at Burghley House. The figure of Seneca
is not only rendered in remarkable detail, but the dog once more serves
noted that "during the.infancy of Painting, the Winters. to Revent Peoples mistake us'd to write
under their Performsllfs, Thir is n Horse, and This ir o Dog" (p. 65). And in Ihe Review of 29
August 1710, he told of two incomptcnt painters who could wt deddc on what animsl h i r
paintings actually reprssented and wnduded their debate by calling it a '%ar-Lyon" (7263).
22 David F. Foxon throws same doubt on the. authorship of this wo*. See English %rw 17011750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University R e s . 1975). 1:135 (C-324). Foxon's only evidence is
that Defoe did not use "D.F." as initials before his wo*. In this Poxon was enthly in m r .
See John Robert Mwre. A CheeUist of the Writings of Doniel Defm, 2nd edition (Hamden,
Connecticut: Archon Bmks, 1971). pp. 7. 13. items 15, 16, and 31.
10 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
as an element of the real, no matter how emblematic it may have been
as a symbol of fidelity. Defoe had announced his identification with the
Stoics some years before, and in the brave way the philosopher continues
to philosophize as his blood is draining away, Defoe could not help but
see something of his own image. On the whole, in these brief remarks,
Defoe showed an interest in character and the ability to express the
passions as well as a rather typical preference for grand history painting.
His admiration for the Raphael cartoons at Hampton Coutt was based on
similar grounds. He found the expression on the face of the dying Ananias
and the honor of those witnessing it particularly sttiking.l) They are all
notably theatrical, but as Alpen has suggested in her study of Rembrandt,
the great realists seem to have had a weakness for theatricality." All of
these are large paintings, paintings that fill the eye and demand attention.
These comments came in the Tour thm' the Whole Island of Great
Britain, pretty much after Defoe had abandoned his attempts at prose
fiction. Yet Defoe had mastered certain aspects of his craft long before
that. He began with a capacity to render a small scene in a vivid manner.
To a certain extent, it was very much the art of tableau. In contrasting the
Tory mob that rioted in support of that highest of High Flying churchmen,
Sachevetell, with the mob that helped make the Glorious Revolution of
1688, Defoe, as he did so often, decided to tell what he called a "short
Story":
In the great Rising of the Mob at the late Revolution, they came to demolish
a Mass-house, or rather Seminary of Popery, in an old Building. I think, they
call'd Berkley House near St. John's Street-They had assaulted the House with
Stones and Staves, and such Tools as they had, but could not get the Doors
open-Some of the most forward call aloud for Crows or Sledges to split open
the Gates, away run a Knot of Fellows down towards Cow-Cross to find out
a Smith's, and bringing with them his great Hammers or Sledges, they soon
got Entrance-When they were broke in, and all Hands busie to pull down and
demolish, and as every one strove to be foremost, it was not likely the Smith
should get his Tools again. Hey, Jack says one, Tom says another; why Jack you
Dog, take care of the Sledges; cany home the Sledges, says another; you Dog
says another, you won't rob the poor Smith! Come here, let's cany home the
poor Man's Sledges; away they go, a little Troop, leave their Spoil, and cany'd
home the poor Man all his Tools, every one, he did not lose one; nay, two or
23 See Dcfce's Tour, 1:194-96,2:5W7. Defce criticired lk immoral tendency of Rubcns's paintings in the Royal Banqueting House, but since his satirical r e d sppsar in lk context of
an attack upan the tyrannic tendencies of King I s m s n, its impon seems more palitical than
aeslktic. Sec J w n Divino (London, 1706). book 1, pp. 2 4 - Z and Dcfoe's note b.
24 Alpers. Rrmbrmdr's Emrprirr. esp. pp. 34-46.
OEFOE A N 0 T H E A R T S OF DESCRIBING 11
three of them lug'd away a great Hinge, with a Piece of the Gate hanging to it,
to give the Smith the Iron for the Use of the Sledges."
Here is Defoe, the journalist, at his best, combining geographical detail,
a rendering of working men's dialogue, and the vividly imagined visual
picture of the piece of gate still attached to the hinge that the men bring
the smith in payment for the loan of his tools. If Hollander makes movement the distinguishing condition of Dutch art, Defoe's scene shares
that quality. It vibrates with a sense of genuine action through the interplay of verb and noun, of movement and object. The scene portrays
the spirit of political and class solidarity among these workers and revolutionaries who forego their opportunity to obtain the spoils from the
"Seminary of Popery" to avoid robbing the "poor Smith." Its Utopian
view of the true British workman combines a high degree of energy
with a sense of fair play and shares some of the same spirit of the
three heroic artisans in A Journal of the Plague Year who defy the rigorous quarantine law to save themselves from the pestilence. But as we
have it, Defoe's scene has more of a sense of a painting than of the material of extended narrative. Jack and Tom could conceivably be assigned
expanded roles in a longer narrative; indeed Dickens worked up a similar set of characters from a very different political perspective in Bamaby
Rudge. Tableaux such as these abound in Defoe's writings, and he retained them in his longer narratives. They show that he was able to
master the effects of visual scene in a brief prose narrative long before he was ready to extend his fictions in time and to filter scene and
event through the mind of a character. And Defoe never really abandoned these attempts at vividly realized scene; he merely reduced them
to one of a number of techniques for creating a convincing and moving
narrative.
Despite what may seem to us to be the obvious ability of the novel to
attain a degree of psychological complexity greater than what might be
achieved in the most intricate of paintings, Defoe needed time before
he felt entire confidence in prose fiction. In his early years he lamented
his inability to capture the passions in the manner of the best painters.
He remarks on one occasion, "Here I could wish to be a Painter good
enough to represent in Lively Colours, the Operations of Nature, when
25 Review (23 March 1710). 6598.
12 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y F I C T I O N
Agitated by Violent Passions, he that could Paint the Passions to the
Life, must move the same Passions in the Reader, that he Describes
with his Pen."26 Defoe adapts the concepts of Lamazzo and others on the
presentation of passions according to which seeing a representation of
anger is sufficient to arouse the same passion in the viewer.21It was only
when he finally came to write his longer fictions, in 1718, that he began
to realize some of the possibilities of his new medium. In his preface
to the Continuation of Letters of a Turkish Spy, which he published in
that year, he not only praised the rendering of Mahomet's character as
involving the most difficult treatment of the passions in a manner perhaps
surpassing painting but commented on the difficulty that the painter has
in rendering certain facial configurations without making the character
appear foolish. The fluid use of time in verbal narratives compared to
the static nature of painting now began to have its attractions for him.
Similarly, in an article written for Applebee's Journal on 30 March
1723, Defoe argued that it would be impossible for a painter to render
the emotions of a man waiting for a sentence of death. He adds that
words could not do justice to the scene either, but then, his words have
already succeeded in conjuring up the image of the unattainable:
O! that a Painter could be found, who in lively Colours could describe, on his
Cloth, the inside of the Man's Soul, in those two or three Hours; while the July
are contending with one another, whether the Man shall be a Man, or a Corpse;
an Embodyed Soul, or a dislodged Soul, and a macerated, quarterd Carcase;
whether he shall he delivered or deliver'd up; in short, whether he shall Live or
Die!
But it is not in the power of Art. it is not to be done. No Colours are lively
enough, any more than they are to paint real Light, or the full brightness of the
Sun. No, not only not Colours, but not Words. Language is deficient; nothing
can Express it. No Ideas of it can be received by any one, hut him who has
been in the same C~ndition?~
26 Review (28 June 1709, 2198.
27 Thus Defoe remarlts of Raphael's cartoons in Hampton Court on viewing St Peter passing a
sentence of death upon Ananias: "I say, these two strike the Mind with the utmost Surprize; the
Passions an so drawn to the Life, Astonishment, Tenor and Death in the Face of Annniar; Zeal
and a sacred Fire in the Eyes of the blessed Apostle; Fright and Surprize upon the Countenances
of the Beholders in the P i w of Anmias; all these describe themselves so naturally, that you
cannot but seem to discover something of the like Passions, even in seeing them" (Tour. 1:177).
28 William Lee, Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings. 3 vois (London: Hotten.
1868), 3:124. Earlier in his life. Defoe had remarked on the failure of art to creare an equivalent
for genuine pain of mind and body, but without evoking a sense of the ineffable. Thus, in
his verse satires, although he sometimes drew upon the poetic devices employed in one of the
most popular forms of political poetry composed during the Restoration--1he "lnsmcfions to a
painterm-he did not provide elaborate descriptions of individual suffering. Instead, he mercly
commented that such agony "must be Felt, it can't be Told." See lure Divino, book 1. p. 3 and
Defoe's note a.
DEFOE A N D THE A R T S O P DESCRIBING 13
Paintings of this kind, of prisoners awaiting their fate, became standard
fare for artists such as Wright of Derby at the end of the eighteenth
century, but it was in the novel, in Scott's rendering of Henry Morton
awaiting his execution in Old Mortality, for example, that the psychology
of the prisoner was best realized.
Robinson Crusoe showed how powerfully Defoe's new medium might
be used in rendering his protagonist's meditations on his situation on his
island and in contact with the things he brings from the wreck and the
objects he finds on the island. But it is no accident that the famous
description that Crusoe gives of himself in the costume he has fashioned
from the skins of the goats he has killed represents an effort at verbal
portraiture. After going through descriptions of his "high shapeless Cap,"
with a flap in the back to keep off the rain, he travels down the body to
his "Pair of some-things" that he manufactured in place of shoes. From
there he picks up the objects he carries-his saw and hatchet, the basket
he carries on his back, and the gun on his shoulder, finally coming to
his face:
As for my Face, the Colour of it was really not so Molettu-like as one might
expect from a Man not at all careful of it, and living within nine or ten Degrees
of the Equinox. My Beard I had once suffer'd to grow till it was about a Quarter
of a Yard long; but as I had both Scissars and Razors sufficient, I had cut it
pretty short, except what grew on my upper Lip, which I had trimm'd into a
large Pair of Mahomeran Whiskers, such as I had seen worn by some Turk,
who I saw at Saiiee; for the Moors did not wear such, tho' the Turks did; of
these Muschatoes of Whiskers, I will not say they were long enough to hang
my Hat upon them; but they were of a Length and Shape monstrous enough,
and such as in England would have pass'd for frightful.29
Cmsoe labels his description of himself a "Scetch," a term which, at that
time, had not yet degenerated from its specific reference to the art of
drawing and which had overtones of realist effects. But Defoe is careful
to absorb it into the context of the fiction not only by reminding the reader
of Crusoe's former life as a slave in Sallee but also by continuing the
comparison and contrast between life in Yorkshire, where such a costume
would be considered either the cause of laughter or fright, and the island,
where fashion is forced to bow to utility. On the other hand, the parallel
portrait of Friday, which may embarrass the modem reader, was a clear
effort at idealized portraiture that artists such as Reynolds considered the
29 Daniel Defce. The Lifeand Surprising Advenmrcs of Robinson Cnuoe, ed. I. Donald Cmwley
(London:Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 149-50.
14 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PICTION
proper approach to the form.30What Defoe appears to have done is to
make his colonizer grotesque and his savage handsome, generous, and
affectionate by way of making a statement about the imperial spirit.
In Franciscus Junius's The Painting of the Ancients, published in English in 1638, the author chose, as his major illustration of a dramatic
scene, the capture of a city, because it would reveal so many examples
of the passions.3l Without question, the author had in mind the most violent siege of the Thirty Years War, the sacking of Magdenburgh by
the Imperialists in 1631. His attempt to describe the various events happening simultaneously has something of the quality of modem cinema
with the eye of the viewer substituting for the camera. Defoe actually included the capture of Magdenburgh in his Memoirs of a Cavalier, but
here, as in so many scenes in A Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe tends
to retreat into the ineffable-the inability of the viewer to describe something so overwhelming. Oddly enough, it is in The Farther Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe, in depicting the anack upon a native village, that Defoe decided to render this scene. "I had heard of Oliver Cmmwell taking
Dmgheda in Ireland, and killing Man, Woman and Child: And I had read
of Count Tilly, sacking the City of Magdenburgh, and cutting the Throats
of 22000 of all Sexes: But I never had an Idea of the Thing itself before, nor is it possible to describe it, or the Horror which was upon o w
Minds at hearing it."32 This time, however, Defoe describes in detail the
terror on the faces of the victims, the supplicating posture of those begging for life, the wounds on those still alive, and the charred remains
of those caught in the fires set to the native huts by those whom CNsoe calls "English butchers." If his emphasis is still on the way in which
a viewer responds emotionally to such a scene, there is nevertheless a
vivid rendering of the confusion and horror.
Passages such as these call out for illustration, and Defoe lived to
see Robinson Crusoe published with the kind of elaborate pictures he
always longed for accompanying his words. More interesting in some
ways are the passages which evoke a scene that Dutch artists may have
captured with particular visual power. For example, Defoe's account of
the storm and shipwreck that strikes Cmsoe's ship as he approaches
Yarmouth on the way down from York may be referred to accounts of
30 Robinron Crusoc, pp. 205-5. Among his other a t m i v e features, Friday has a high forehead
and "a great Vivacity and sparkling Sharpness in his Eyes."
31 Pranciscus lunius, The Painring of rhe Ancienrs (London, 1638), pp. 69-72.
32 The Shakespeare Head Edirion of rhc NoveIs ond Sclccred Wn'rings of Daniel Defoe (Oxford:
Blackwell. 1927-20, 3:95-96. See also lunius, pp. 69-72.
DEPOE A N D THE ARTS OP DESCRIBING IS
storms in various voyages or even to Defoe's personal experience, but
in their sense of detail and in the way the eye is allowed to travel from
events on the ship to the violence of the entire scene, it resembles nothing
so much as the great scenes of ships in storm by Hendrick C. Vroom,
Ludolph Backhuysen, and Willem Van de Velde the Elder. One painting
by Simon de Vlieger, Ship in Distress offa Rocky Coast, contains almost
all the ingredients of the storm that besets Cmsoe, the monstrous waves,
the sinking ship, and the emotions of those who succeed in coming
safely to shore. The scene of a ship in storm in the Pine frontispiece to
the first edition may have been an emblematic touch that Defoe himself
requested.))
Defoe's ability to use prose fiction in a manner that allows us to
enter the mind of Crusoe to gauge his feelings of terror over a period
of time while giving a vivid picture of men struggling against the sea
more than compensates for the immediate visual effect of painting, and
I would argue that one of Defoe's discoveries in the art of writing prose
fiction was just that-that by a combination of internalization and vivid
details, he was working in a medium that was even more powerful-more
vivid-than painting.
L i e the still life, seascapes could be used to suggest the theme of
vanitas in Dutch painting as well as the fate of humankind, the rocks
against which the ships were foundering being seen as the world itself.
But by the time Defoe was writing his novels, this theme had been almost
submerged by the love of depicting real objects for their own sakes and
by the artist's pleasure in displaying painterly skill. In Roxana, Defoe
used his talents to describe the magnificent dinner that Roxana's Prince
sets for her as a prelude to a seduction:
Au Boir, says he, upon which, his Gentleman immediately brought up a little
Table, cover'd with a fine Damask Cloth, the Table no bigger than he cou'd
bring in his two Hands; but upon it was set two Decanters, one of Champaign,
and the other of Water, six Silver Plates, and a Service of fine Sweet-Meats in
fine China Dishes on a Sett of Rings standing up about twenty Inches high, one
above another; below, was three roasted Paruiges, and a Quail.%
33 Scenes of ships at sea ohen reflect ambiguous meanings. The history of the development of
the original Clark-Pine frontispiece reveals fhat subsequent illustrators wanfed either to make
the storm and the pril to the ship more obvious or to calm the seas and depict the ship
sailing safely home. See Lawrence 0.Gcedde, "Convention. Realism, and the Interpretation of
Dutch and Flemish Tempest Painting," Simiolvr 16 (1986). 13949, and cf. David Blew-, The
Illusfmtion of "Robimn CIUOL" 1719-1920 ( G e m & Cross: Colin Smythe, 199S), pp. 25-29.
34 Daniel Defoe. R o x m , ed. lane lack (London and New Yo*: Oxford University Ress. 1964),
p. 62.
DEFOE A N D THE ARTS OF DESCRIBING 17
The Prince adds a rich "Service of Plate" to the scene and gives it to
her as an additional inducement, and Roxana, who needs very little urging, gives in. I have previously read this scene in economic terms as
a fall into luxury with its concomitant moral sins, but given the frontispiece to Roxam with its figure of Roxana posing before her mirror,
the vanitas themes of still life-suggesting the emptiness of human life
and the objects with which humanity surrounds itself-would seem to
be operative. Yet it seems to me that as we read this scene, the overwhelming feeling that one has is one of admiration for the generosity
of the prince and the suggestion of the rich life that lies before Roxma. In short, it would suggest that Defoe's treatment of such a scene
shares some of the same kind of ambiguity that may be found in contemporary Dutch and French still life. The vanitas theme is still there, but
what is also present is a love of the world, its pleasures and its objects,
much as one finds in the pmnk still lifes of Willem Kalf with their ostentatious display of luxurious objects in a world dedicated to conspicuous
cons~mption.~~
Perhaps even more suggestive of contemporary painting are the series
of scenes that compose the encounter between Colonel Jack and the
woman who is to become his first wife. It is significant that in describing
his lack of interest in women, Jack notes "I had a perfect indifferency for
the whole Sex, and never till then entertain'd any Notion of them, they
were no more to me than a Picture hanging up against a Wall." With
an apartment facing her window across a narrow court, Jack sees the
woman constantly leaning on the window sill and can even observe her
as she puts on a variety of scenes to attract his attention, after her initial
attempt at pretending indifference towards men fails to entrap him:
This Camelion put on another Colour, tum'd on a sudden the gravest, severest,
majestick Madam, so that any one would have thought she was advanced in
Age in one Week, from ' h o and 'henty, to Fifty, and this she carried on with
so much Government of her self, that it did not in the least look like Art, but if
it was a Representation of Nature only, it was so like Nature itself, that no body
living can be able to distinguish; she Sung very often in her Parlour, as well by
her self as with two young Ladies, who came often to see her; I could see by
their Books, and her Guitar in her Hand, that she was Singing, but she never
open'd the Window as she was wont to do; upon my coming to my W~ndow,
she kept her own always shut, or if it was open, she would be sitting at Work
and not look up, it may be once in Half an Hour26
35 For a discussion of the ''pmnk'' still life, see lngvar Bergstram. Dutch Still Life Painting, w n s .
Christina Hedstrarn and Gerald Taylor (New Yo*: Yoseloff, 1956). pp. 260-58.
36 Daniel Defw. The Infe of Colonel k c k , ed. Samuel Monk (London: Oxford University Press.
1965). p. 190.
DEPOE A N D THE A R T S OF D E S C R I B I N G 19
As he is attracted by this new serious self-image she displays, he falls
more in love with her, and engages in the usual social activities of the
time, dancing, playing cards, dining together. But in more than one sense,
this lady's behaviour was indeed "Art," for what Jack described would
have been typical of those Dutch paintings depicting the innocent and
occasionally not so innocent amusements of ladies and gentlemen. Eventually Jack marries her only to discover that her new representation was
a study in deceit.
What is most striking about these scenes is the sense of space involved,
the small court, the seeing through windows into other rooms and observing what is happening. A "piece of perspective," Samuel Pepys called
a similar work when he saw one in the collection of Thomas Povey."
Colonel Jack has the same kind of domestic space that the Dutch painters
loved to depict, the seeing from room to room, the social activities, the
music, and the conversation. If Dutch painting itself borrowed comic
scenes from the drama, the vivid depiction in painting froze such scenes
for new uses by both novelists and dramatists.
I have selected just a few scenes from Defoe's fiction, but it should be
obvious that in almost every subject he touched, the realist painters of the
seventeenth century had been there before, whether in the seascapes and
battle pieces that inform works such as Captain Singleton and Memoirs
of a Cavalier or the many paintings of thieves and beggars that inform
Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack, which, as Sir Walter Scott suggested,
resembled the paintings of Murillo and the Spanish school?8
Even more suggestive than these subjects are some of the interior
scenes: Moll sitting with a young girl pretending to sew as the police
search for a suspect, or Roxana weeping and sorting through her rags
in a state of total "Misery and Distress" after her Brewer husband has
deserted her. She is visited by two friends who knew her when her house
was filled with pictures and mirrors. Astonished by her condition, they
sit down and say nothing while she continues to weep. Hogarth was to
depict similar scenes, but Defoe has Roxana compare it to a picture-to
actual depictions of Job being visited by his two friends."
37 Pepys a d m i d this work above all "the delicate pictures" in Povey's collation. See Samuel
Pepys, Diary, ed. William Manhews and Robert Latham (Berkeley: University of California
Press. 1970-83). 4:18.
38 Scott. pp. 8, 179.
39 See Roxonn, p. 17. Paintings of scenes from the Book of lob were not common. though Defoe
might have seen one at Wilton House by Andrea Sacchi. Nevile Wilkinson. Wlron H o w Pictuns
(London: Chiswick House Press. 1907) 2262 (item 94). Another possibility is that he was
thinking in terms of illustrations in contemporary Bibles.
20 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
At one time I intended to follow the counsel of the historian Lawrence
Stone, who advised scholars who attempt to invade another discipline to
imitate grave robbers-enter stealthily, grab whatever may be of value,
and get out before being caught. And I have done that in the past, occasionally making cautious comparisons between scenes in Robinson
Crusoe and those scenes in contempomy paintings by artists who aimed
at sublime effects, or by suggesting that certain realistic descriptions in
the novels resembled scenes in paintings. But eventually I had to ignore Stone's wise advice, for I have been caught already--caught by
my own fascination for Defoe's rendering of reality and for a period
in which writers such as Defoe were beginning to discover how much
they could learn from a form in which almost all agreed that the modems had equalled the best that the ancients might have done. Writing
in the middle of the nineteenth century, George Eliot still felt that her
admiration for "Dutch" paintings needed to be defended, since it was
a form that "many lofty-minded people despise." She then described
paintings of a woman at her spinning wheel and a village wedding, admitting that while some would find the scenes "low" and object to the
"clumsy, ugly people," she admired the fidelity of the artist to a true depiction of life." Who can doubt that if Defoe, who also felt he had to
apologize to his readers for presenting scenes that they would probably find too "low," had been able to read these lines, he would have
agreed wholeheartedly?
University of California, Los Angeles
40 Eliot, 1:246.