PLATE XXXII. "THE MASTER OF ST BARTHOLOMEW" TWO SAINTS National Gallery, LondonPLATE XXXII."THE MASTER OF ST BARTHOLOMEW"TWO SAINTSNational Gallery, London
deficient that the genius of Albert Dürer and Holbein was miserably cramped and hindered in development by the poverty and littleness of surrounding circumstances. It is known that of all the German princes no one but the Elector Frederick the Wise ever gave Albert Dürer a commission for pictures, while a writing addressed by the great painter to the magistracy of Nuremberg tells us that his native city never gave him employment even to the value of 500 florins. At the same time his pictures were so meanly paid, that for the means of subsistence, as he says himself, he was compelled to devote himself to engraving. How far more such a man as Dürer would have been appreciated in Italy or in the Netherlands is further evidenced in the above-mentioned writing, where he states that he was offered 200 ducats a year in Venice and 300 Philips-gulden in Antwerp, if he would settle in either of those cities. And Holbein fared still worse: there is no evidence whatever that any German prince ever troubled himself at all about the great painter while at Basle, and his art was so little cared for that necessity compelled him to go to England, where a genius fitted for the highest undertakings of historical painting was limited to the sphere of portraiture. The crowning impediments finally, which hindered the progress of German art, and perverted it from its true aim, were the Reformation, which narrowed the sphere of ecclesiastical works, and the pernicious imitation of the great Italian masters which ensued.
Lucas Cranach, born in 1472, received his first instructions in art from his father, his later teaching probably from Matthew Grunewald. In some instances he attained to the expression of dignity, earnestness and feeling, but generally his characteristics are a naïve andchildlike cheerfulness and a gentle and almost timid grace. The impression produced by his style of representation reminds one of the "Volksbücher" and "Volkslieder." Many of his church pictures have a very peculiar significance: in these he stands forth properly speaking as the painter of the Reformation. Intimate both with Luther and Melanchthon, he seizes on the central aim of their doctrine, viz., the insufficiency of good works and the sole efficacy of faith. His mythological subjects appeal directly to the eye like real portraits; and sometimes also by means of a certain grace and naïveté of motive. We may cite as an instance the Diana seated on a stag in a small picture at Berlin, No. 564.The Fountain of Youth, also at Berlin, No. 593, is a picture of peculiar character; a large basin surrounded by steps and with a richly adorned fountain forms the centre. On one side, where the country is stony and barren, a multitude of old women are dragged forward on horses, waggons or carriages, and with much trouble are got into the water. On the other side of the fountain they appear as young maidens splashing about and amusing themselves with all kinds of playful mischief; close by is a large pavilion into which a herald courteously invites them to enter and where they are arrayed in costly apparel. A feast is prepared in a smiling meadow, which seems to be followed by a dance; the gay crowd loses itself in a neighbouring grove. The men unfortunately have not become young, and retain their grey beards. The picture is of the year 1546, the seventy-fourth of Cranach's age.
Albert Altdorferwas born 1488 at Altdorf, near Landshuth, in Bavaria, and settled at Ratisbon, where he died 1528. He invested the fantastic tendency of the time with a poetic feeling—especially in landscape—andhe developed it so as to attain a perfection in this sort of romantic painting that no other artist had reached. In his later period he was strongly influenced by Italian art. Altdorfer's principal work is in the Munich Gallery, and is thus described by Schlegel:—
"It represents the Victory of Alexander the Great over Darius; the costume is that of the artist's own day, as it would be treated in the chivalrous poems of the middle ages—man and horse are sheathed in plate and mail, with surcoats of gold or embroidery; the chamfrons upon the heads of the horses, the glittering lances and stirrups, and the variety of the weapons, form altogether a scene of indescribable splendour and richness.... It is, in truth, a little world on a few square feet of canvas; the hosts of combatants who advance on all sides against each other are innumerable, and the view into the background appears interminable. In the distance is the ocean, with high rocks and a rugged island between them; ships of war appear in the offing and a whole fleet of vessels—on the left the moon is setting—on the right the sun rising—both shining through the opening clouds—a clear and striking image of the events represented. The armies are arranged in rank and column without the strange attitudes, contrasts, and distortions generally exhibited in so-called battle-pieces. How indeed would this have been possible with such a vast multitude of figures? The whole is in the plain and severe, or it may be the stiff manner of the old style. At the same time the character and execution of these little figures is most masterly and profound. And what variety, what expression there is, not merely in the character of the single warriors and knights, but in the hosts themselves! Here crowds of black archers rush down troop after troop fromthe mountain with the rage of a foaming torrent; on the other side high upon the rocks in the far distance a scattered crowd of flying men are turning round in a defile. The point of the greatest interest stands out brilliantly from the centre of the whole—Alexander and Darius both in armour of burnished gold; Alexander on Bucephalus with his lance in rest advances before his men and presses on the flying Darius, whose charioteer has already fallen on his white horses, and who looks back upon his conqueror with all the despair of a vanquished monarch."
Albert Dürer(1471-1528), by his overpowering genius, may be called the sole representative of German art of his period. He was gifted with a power of conception which traced nature through all her finest shades, and with a lively sense, as well for the solemn and the sublime, as for simple grace and tenderness; above all, he had an earnest and truthful feeling in art united with a capacity for the most earnest study. These qualities were sufficient to place him by the side of the greatest artists whom the world has ever seen.
One of the earliest portraits by Albert Dürer known to us is that of his father, Albert Dürer, the goldsmith, dated 1497, in our National Gallery. In the year 1644, another version of this picture, which was engraved by Hollar, was in the collection of the Earl of Arundel, and is now in that of the Duke of Northumberland, at Syon House. Of about the same time—that is to say, before 1500—are the portraits of Oswald Krell, at Munich, of Frederick the Wise, at Berlin, and of himself, at the Prado.
Several of Albert Dürer's pictures of the year 1500 are known to us. The first and most important is his own portrait in the Munich Gallery, which representshim full face with his hand laid on the fur trimming of his robe.
His finest picture of the year 1504 is anAdoration of the Kings, originally painted for Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, subsequently presented by the Elector Christian II. to the Emperor Rudolph II., and finally, on the occasion of an exchange of pictures, transferred from Vienna to Florence, where it now hangs in the Tribune of the Uffizi. The heads are of thoroughly realistic treatment; the Virgin a portrait from some model of no attractive character; the second King a portrait of the painter himself. The landscape background exactly resembles that in the well-known engraving of S. Eustace, the period of which is thus pretty nearly defined. It is carefully painted in a fine body of colour.
In 1505 Dürer made a second journey into Upper Italy, and remained a considerable time at Venice. Of his occupations in this city the letters written to his friend Wilibald Pirckheimer which have come down to us give many interesting particulars. He there executed for the German Company a picture known asThe Feast of Rose Garlands, which brought him great fame, and by its brilliant colouring silenced the assertion of his envious adversaries "that he was a good engraver, but knew not how to deal with colours." In the centre of a landscape is the Virgin seated with the Child and crowned by two angels; on her right is a Pope with priests kneeling; on her left the Emperor Maximilian I. with knights; various members of the German Company are also kneeling; all are being crowned with garlands of roses by the Virgin, the Child, S. Dominick—who stands behind the Virgin—and by angels. The painter and his friend Pirckheimer are seen standing in thebackground on the right; the painter holds a tablet with the inscription, "Albertus Dürer Germanus, MDVI" This picture, which is one of his largest and finest, was purchased from the church at a high price by the Emperor Rudolph II. for his gallery at Prague, where it remained until sold in 1782 by the Emperor Joseph II. It then became the property of the Præmonstratensian monastery of Stratow at Prague, where it still exists, though in very injured condition and greatly over-painted. In the Imperial Gallery at Vienna may be seen an old copy which conveys a better idea of the picture than the original.
With these productions begins the zenith of this master's fame, in which a great number of works follow one another within a short period. Of these we first notice a picture of 1508, in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna, painted for Duke Frederick of Saxony, and which afterwards adorned the gallery of the Emperor Rudolph II. It representsThe Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Saints. In the centre of the picture stand the master and his friend Pirckheimer as spectators, both in black dresses. Dürer has a mantle thrown over his shoulder in the Italian fashion, and stands in a firm attitude. He folds his hands and holds a small flag, on which is inscribed, "Iste faciebat anno domini 1508 Albertus Dürer Alemanus." There are a multitude of single groups exhibiting every species of martyrdom, but there is a want of general connection of the whole. The scenes in the background, where the Christians are led naked up the rocks, and are precipitated down from the top, are particularly excellent. The whole is very minute and miniature-like; the colouring is beautifully brilliant, and it is painted (the accessories particularly) with extraordinary care.
To 1511 belongs also one of his most celebrated pictures,The Adoration of the Trinity, which is also at Vienna, painted for the chapel of the Landauer Brüderhaus in Nuremberg. Above in the centre of the picture are seen the First Person, who holds the Saviour in his arms, while the Holy Spirit is seen above; some angels spread out the priestly mantle of the Almighty, whilst others hover near with the instruments of Christ's passion. On the left hand a little lower down is a choir of females with the Virgin at their head; on the right are the male saints with St John the Baptist. Below all these kneel a host of the blessed of all ranks and nations extending over the whole of this part of the picture. Underneath the whole is a beautiful landscape, and in a corner of the picture the artist himself richly clothed in a fur mantle, with a tablet next him with the words, "Albertus Dürer Noricus faciebat anno a Virginis partu, 1511." It may be assumed beyond doubt that he held in particular esteem those pictures into which he introduced his own portrait.
In the Vienna Gallery is also a picture of the year 1512, the Virgin holding the naked Child in her arms. She has a veil over her head and blue drapery. Her face is of the form usual with Albert Dürer, but of a soft and maidenly character; the Child is beautiful—the countenance particularly so. It is painted with exceeding delicacy of finish.
Two altar-pieces of his earliest period must be mentioned. One is in the Dresden Gallery, consisting of three pictures painted in tempera on canvas, representing the Virgin, S. Anthony, and S. Sebastian respectively. Although this is probably one of his very earliest works, it is remarkable for the novelty of its treatment and its independence of tradition.
The other, a little later, is in the Munich Gallery (Nos. 240-3), painted at the request of the Paumgartner family, for S. Catherine's Church at Nuremberg, was brought to Munich in 1612 by Maximilian I. The subject of the middle picture is the Nativity; the Child is in the centre, surrounded by little angels, whilst the Virgin and Joseph kneel at the side. The wings contain portraits of the two donors under the form of S. George and S. Eustace represented as knights in steel armour, each with his standard, and the former holding the slain dragon.
The year 1526 was distinguished by the two pictures of the four Apostles: John and Peter, Mark and Paul; the figures are the size of life. These, which are the master's grandest work, and the last of importance executed by him, are now in the Munich Gallery. We know with certainty that they were presented by Albert Dürer himself to the council of his native city in remembrance of his career as an artist, and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period. In the year 1627, however, the pictures were allowed to pass into the hands of the Elector Maximilian I. of Bavaria. The inscriptions selected by the painter himself might have given offence to a Catholic prince, and were therefore cut off and joined to the copies by John Fischer, which were intended to indemnify the city of Nuremberg for the loss of the originals. These copies are still in the collection of the Landauer Brüderhaus at Nuremberg.
These pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred the mind of Albert Dürer, and are executed with overpowering force. Finished as they are, they form the first complete work of art produced by Protestantism. As the inscription taken from theGospels and Epistles of the Apostles contains pressing warnings not to swerve from the word of God, nor to believe in the doctrines of false prophets, so the figures themselves represent the steadfast and faithful guardians of that holy Scripture which they bear in their hands. There is also an old tradition, handed down from the master's own times, that these figures represent the four temperaments. This is confirmed by the pictures themselves; and though at first sight it may appear to rest on a mere accidental combination, it serves to carry out more completely the artist's thought, and gives to the figures greater individuality. It shows how every quality of the human mind may be called into the service of the Divine Word. Thus in the first picture, we see the whole force of the mind absorbed in contemplation, and we are taught that true watchfulness in behalf of the Scripture must begin by devotion to its study.
S. John stands in front, the open book in his hand; his high forehead and his whole countenance bear the impress of earnest and deep thought. This is the melancholic temperament, which does not shrink from the most profound inquiry. Behind him S. Peter bends over the book, and gazes earnestly at its contents—a hoary head, full of meditative repose. This figure represents the phlegmatic temperament, which reviews its own thoughts in tranquil reflection. The second picture shows the outward operation of the conviction thus attained and its relation to daily life. S. Mark in the background is the man of sanguine temperament; he looks boldly round, and appears to speak to his hearers with animation, earnestly urging them to share those advantages which he has himself derived from the Holy Scriptures. S. Paul, on the contrary, in the foreground,holds the book and sword in his hands; he looks angrily and severely over his shoulder, ready to defend the Word, and to annihilate the blasphemer with the sword of God's power. He is the representative of the choleric temperament.
We know of no important work of a later date than that just described. His portrait in a woodcut of the year 1527 represents him earnest and serious in demeanour, as would naturally follow from his advancing age and the pressure of eventful times. His head is no longer adorned with those richly flowing locks, on which in his earlier days he had set so high a value, as we learn from his pictures and from jests still recorded of him. With the departure of Hans Holbein to England in 1528 and the death of Albert Dürer in the same year, that excellence to which they had raised German art passed away, and centuries saw no sign of its revival.
OfHans Holbein, born at Augsburg in 1498, we shall have more to say in a later chapter, when considering the origins of English portraiture. But as in the case of Van Dyck, and in fact of every great portrait painter, his excellence in this particular branch of his art was but one result of his being a born artist and first exercising his talents in a much wider field. In Holbein the realistic tendency of the German School attained its highest development, and he may, next to Dürer, be pronounced the greatest master in it. While Dürer's art exhibits a close affinity with the religious ideas of the Middle Ages, Holbein appears to have been imbued with more modern and more material sentiments, and accordingly we find him excelling Dürer in closeness and delicacy of observation in the delineation of nature. A proof of this is afforded by the evidence of Erasmus, who said that as regards the portraits painted of him byboth these artists, that by Holbein was the most like. In feeling for beauty of form, also in grace of movement, in colouring, and in the actual art of painting—in which his father had thoroughly instructed him—Holbein is to be placed above Dürer. That he did not rival the great Italians of his time in "historical" painting can only be ascribed to the circumstances of his life in Germany, where such subjects were not in fashion.
Of his pictures executed before he left his native country the greater number are at Basle and Augsburg, and are therefore less familiar to the general public than his later works. A notable exception is the famousMeyer Madonna, the original of which is at Darmstadt, but a version now relegated, somewhat harshly, to the "copyist" is in the Dresden Gallery, and certainly exhibits as much of the spirit of the master as will serve for an example of his powers. It represents the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, standing in a niche, with the Child in her arms, and with the family of the Burgomaster Jacob Meyer of Basle kneeling on either side of her. With the utmost life and truth to nature, which brings these kneeling figures actually into our presence, says Kugler, there is combined in a most exquisite degree an expression of great earnestness, as if the mind were fixed on some lofty object. This is shown not merely by the introduction of divine beings into the circle of human sympathies, but particularly in the relation so skilfully indicated between the Holy Virgin and her worshippers, and in her manifest desire to communicate to those who are around her the sacred peace and tranquillity expressed in her own countenance and attitude, and implied in the infantine grace of the Saviour. In the direct union of the divine with the human, and in their reciprocal harmony, there isinvolved a devout and earnest purity of feeling such as only the older masters were capable of representing.
Another of his most beautiful pictures painted in Germany is the portrait of Erasmus, dated 1523. This was sent by Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, at Chelsea, with a letter recommending Holbein to his care, and as it is still in this country—in the collection of the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle—it is not perhaps too much to hope that it may one of these days find its way into the National Gallery—perhaps when the alterations to the front entrance are completed. This picture has for a very long time been regarded as one of Holbein's very finest portraits. Mr W. Barclay Squire, in the sumptuous catalogue of the Radnor collection compiled by him, quotes the opinion of Sir William Musgrave, written in 1785, "I am not sure whether it is not the finest I have seen"; and that of Dr Waagen, "Alone worth a pilgrimage to Longford. Seldom has a painter so fully succeeded in bringing to view the whole character of so original a mind as in this instance. In the mouth and small eyes may be seen the unspeakable studies of a long life ... the face also expresses the sagacity and knowledge of a life gained by long experience ... the masterly and careful execution extends to every portion ... yet the face surpasses everything else in delicacy of modelling."
Cruel, indeed, was England to have transplanted the one artist who might have saved Germany from the artistic destitution from which she has suffered ever since!
PLATE XXXIII.—HANS HOLBEIN PORTRAIT OF CHRISTINA, DUCHESS OF MILAN National Gallery, LondonPLATE XXXIII.—HANS HOLBEINPORTRAIT OF CHRISTINA, DUCHESS OF MILANNational Gallery, London
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Whenwe consider the peculiar beauty of the architecture and ecclesiastical sculpture in France during the Middle Ages and the period of the renaissance, and of the enamels, ivories, and other small works of art, it is wrong to regret that painting was not also practised by the French as assiduously as it was in Italy. For there can be no doubt that in being confined to one channel the artistic impulses of a people cut deeper than if dissipated in various directions. We may suppose, indeed, that if those of the French had found their outlet in painting alone, we should have pictures of wonderful beauty, of a beauty moreover of a markedly different kind from that of the Italian or Spanish or Netherlandish pictures. But on the other hand we should have perhaps lost the amazing fascination of Chartres, and the delights of Limoges enamel and ivories.
As it happens, the earliest mention to be made of painting in France is the arrival of Leonardo da Vinci at Amboise in 1516, whither he had come from Milan in the train of the young king François I. Unfortunately he was by this time sixty-four years old, and in less than three years he died. At about the same time there was a court painter in the employment of François—underthe official designation ofvarlet de chambre—namedJehan Clouet, who is supposed to have been of Flemish extraction. Nothing very definite is known about him or his work, but he had a sonFrançois Clouet, who seems to have been born at about the time of Leonardo's arrival, and who succeeded to his father's office. At the funeral of François I. in 1547 he was ordered to make aneffige du dict feu roy, and he continued to be the official court painter to Henri II. (whose posthumous portrait he was also ordered to paint), François II., and Charles IX. He died in 1572. Every portrait of this period is attributed to him, just as was the case with Holbein in England. Neither of the two examples at the National Gallery can be safely ascribed to him. The little head of the Emperor Charles V., king of Spain, at Hereford House, is identical in style and in dimensions with that of Francis I., king of France, in the Museum at Lyons, which is attributed to Jean Clouet. Both may have been painted when Charles V. passed through Paris in 1539, but whether by Jean or one of his disciples cannot be said with certainty.
Not until the very end of the sixteenth century were born Claude Gellée and Nicholas Poussin, the only two Frenchmen who were painters of considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. Nor did either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of their lives and painting their best works in Italy and under Italian influence.
Nicholas Poussinwas born at Villiers near Les Andelys on the banks of the Seine, in 1594, where he studied for some time under Quentin Varin till he was eighteen. After this he was in Paris, but in 1624 he went to Rome where he lived with Du Quesnoy. His firstsuccess was obtained by the execution of two historical pieces which were commissioned by Cardinal Barberini on his return from an Embassy to France. These wereThe Death of GermanicusandThe Capture of Jerusalem. His next works wereThe Martyrdom of S. Erasmus,The Plague at Ashdod, of which a replica is in the National Gallery, andThe Seven Sacramentsnow at Belvoir Castle. By these he acquired such fame that on his return to Paris in 1640, Louis XIII. appointed him royal painter, and in order to keep him at home provided him with apartments in the Tuileries and a salary of £120 a year. Within two years, however, Poussin was back in Rome, and after twenty-three years' unbroken success died there in 1665 in his seventy-second year.
Poussin was a most conscientious painter, devoting himself seriously in his earlier years to the study both of the antique and of practical anatomy. Besides being the intimate friend of Du Quesnoy, he was a devout pupil of Domenichino, for whom he had the greatest reverence. It is not surprising therefore to find in his earlier works, such as thePlague at Ashdod, a certain academic dulness and lack of spontaneity. He was not the forerunner of a new epoch, but one of the last upholders of the old. He was trying to arrest decay, to infuse a healthier spirit into a declining art, so that he errs on the side of correctness. The influence of Titian, however, was too strong for him to remain long within the narrowest limits, as may be seen in theBacchanalian Dance, No. 62 in the National Gallery, which was probably one of a series painted for Cardinal Richelieu during the short time that Poussin was in Paris in 1641. In this and in No. 42, theBacchanalian Festivalas well as inThe Shepherds in Arcadia, in the Louvre, we get a surprisingly strong reminiscence ofTitian, more especially in the brown tones of the flesh and the deep blue of the sky.
As the result of conscientious study of the human body the figures in these pictures are full of life—for correctness of drawing is the first requisite of lively painting without which all the others are useless. The fact that over two hundred prints have been engraved after his pictures is a proof of his popularity at one time or another, and though at the present time his reputation is not as widely recognised as in former years, it is certainly as high among those whose judgment is independent of passing fashions. As evidence of the soundness of his principles, the following is perhaps worth quoting:—
"There are nine things in painting," Poussin wrote in a letter to M. de Chambrai, the author of a treatise on painting, "which can never be taught and which are essential to that art. To begin with, the subject of it should be noble, and receive no quality from the person who treats it; and to give opportunity to the painter to show his talents and his industry it must be chosen as capable of receiving the most excellent form. A painter should begin with disposition (or as we should say, composition), the ornament should follow, their agreement of the parts, beauty, grace, spirit, costume, regard to nature and probability; and above all, judgment. This last must be in the painter himself and cannot be taught. It is the golden bough of Virgil that no one can either find or pluck unless his lucky star conducts him to it."
Gaspar Poussin, whose name was really Gaspard Dughet, was brother-in-law of Nicholas, and acquired his name from being his pupil. He was nineteen years his junior, and survived him by ten years. He was bornin Rome of French parents, and died there in 1675, and though he travelled a good deal in Italy he never appears to have visited France. His Italian landscapes are very beautiful, and we are fortunate in the possession of one which is considered his best, No. 31 in the National Gallery,Landscape with Figures,Abraham and Isaac. Scarcely less fine is theCalling of Abraham, No. 1159, especially in the middle and far distance. The sacred figures, it may as well be said, are of little concern in the compositions, though useful for purposes of identifying the pictures.
Claude Gellée, nowadays usually spoken of as Claude, was born at Chamagne in Lorraine in 1600. Accordingly he has been styled Claude Lorraine, le Lorraine, de Lorrain, Lorrain, or Claudio Lorrenese with wonderful persistency through the ages, though there was no mystery about his surname and it would have served just as well. He was brought up in his father's profession of pastrycook, and in that capacity he went to Rome seeking for employment. As it happened he found it in the house of a landscape painter, Agostino Tassi, who had been a pupil of Paul Bril, and he not only cooked for him but mixed his colours as well, and soon became his pupil. Later he was studying under a German painter, Gottfried Wals, at Naples. A more important influence on him, however, was that of Joachim Sandrart, one of the best of the later German painters, whom he met in Rome.
Claude's earliest pictures of any importance were two which were painted for Pope Urban VII. in 1639, when he was just upon forty years old. These are theVillage Danceand theSeaport, now in the Louvre. TheSeaport at SunsetandNarcissus and Echoin the National Gallery (Nos. 5 and 19) are dated 1644—theformer on the canvas and the latter on the sketch for it in theLiber Veritatis, where it is stated that it was painted for an English patron.
TheLiber Veritatis, it should be observed, is the title given to a portfolio of over two hundred drawings in pen and bistre, or Indian ink, which is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. Most of these were made from pictures which had been painted, not as sketches or designs preparatory to painting them, and in some instances there are notes on the back of them giving the date, purchaser, and other particulars relating to them. So great was the vogue for Claude's landscapes in England during the eighteenth century that as early as 1730 or 1740 a good many of his drawings, which had been collected by Jonathan Richardson, Dr. Mead and others, were engraved by Arthur Pond and John Knapton; and in 1777 a series of about two hundred of the Duke of Devonshire's drawings was published by Alderman Boydell, which had been etched and mezzotinted by Richard Earlom, under the title ofLiber Veritatis. This was the model on which Turner founded the publication of his own sketches under the title ofLiber Studiorum. Thus, if Claude exerted little influence on the art of his own country, it can hardly be said that he exerted none elsewhere, for Turner was by no means the first Englishman to fall under his spell. Richard Wilson, the first English landscape painter, was undoubtedly influenced by him, both from an acquaintance with his drawings in English collections and from the study of his works when in Rome.
In this connection we may consider the two landscapes, numbered 12 and 14 in the National Gallery Catalogue, as our most important examples by this master, for Turner bequeathed to the nation his twomost important picturesThe Sun Rising Through a VapourandDido Building Carthage, on condition that they should be hung between these two by Claude. The Court of Chancery could annul the condition, but they could not nullify the effect of Claude's influence on Turner or alter the judgment of posterity with regard to the relations of the two painters to each other and to art in general, and the Director has wisely observed the wishes of Turner in still hanging the four pictures together, the Court of Chancery notwithstanding. Both of Claude's are inscribed, besides being signed and dated, as follows:
Both pictures are familiar in various engravings of them, and though the present fashion leads many people in other directions, there can be no doubt that the appreciation of Claude in this country is never likely to die out, and is only waiting for a turn of the wheel to revive with increased vigour.
Meantime, however, France was not entirely destitute of painters, and though without Claude, Poussin or Dughet, who preferred to exercise their art in Rome, she anticipated England by over a century in that most important step, the foundation of an Academy of Painting. Not many of the names of its original members ever became famous—as may be said in our own country—but among them wasSebastien Bourdon(1616-1671), whose work was so much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Bourdon, also, wandered away from France; within four years after the foundation of theAcademy, namely, in 1652, he went to Stockholm, and was appointed principal painter to Queen Christina. On her abdication, however, in 1663, he returned to Paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting landscapes, and historical subjects.The Return of the Ark from Captivity, No. 64 in the National Gallery Catalogue, was presented by that distinguished patron of the arts, Sir George Beaumont, to whom it was bequeathed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as being one of his most treasured possessions. "I cannot quit this subject," he writes in the fourteenth Discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one isJacob's Dream, by Salvator Rosa, and the other,The Return of the Ark from Captivity, by Sebastian Bourdon. With whatever dignity those histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear by no means adapted to receive them. A ladder against the sky has no very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic ideas, and the Ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the painters."
Eustache le Sueur, born in the same year as Sebastien Bourdon (1616), was another of the originalmembers of the Academy, and was employed by the King at the Louvre. His most famous work was the decorations of the cloister at the monastery of La Chartreuse (now in the Louvre) of which Horace Walpole speaks so ecstatically in the preface to the last volume of theAnecdotes of Painting. "The last scene of S. Bruno expiring" (he writes) "in which are expressed all the stages of devotion from the youngest mind impressed with fear to the composed resignation of the Prior, is perhaps inferior to no single picture of the greatest master. If Raphael died young, so did Le Sueur; the former had seen the antique, the latter only prints from Raphael; yet in the Chartreuse, what airs of heads! What harmony of colouring! What aërial perspective! How Grecian the simplicity of architecture and drapery! How diversified a single quadrangle though the life of a hermit be the only subject, and devotion the only pathetic!"
Philippe de Champaignewas another of the original members. He was born at Brussels in 1602, and did not come to Paris till 1621, where he was soon afterwards employed in the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace. But he was chiefly a portrait painter, his principal works being the fine full-length of Cardinal Richelieu, and another of his daughter as a nun of Port Royal, both of which are in the Louvre. There are four in the Wallace Collection, but perhaps the most familiar to the English public is the canvas at the National Gallery (No. 798), painted for the Roman sculptor Mocchi, to make a bust from, with a full face and two profiles of Richelieu. As a portrait this is exceedingly interesting, the more so from having an inscription over one of the heads, "de ces deux profiles cecy est le meilleur." The full length of the Cardinalpresented by Mr. Charles Butler in 1895 (No. 1449), is a good example, which cannot however but suffer by juxtaposition with more accomplished works.
But it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that portrait painting in France became anything like a fine art, and even then it did not get beyond being formal and magnificent. The two principal exponents wereHyacinthe RigaudandNicolas Largillière, both of whose works have a sort of grandeur but little subtlety or charm.
Rigaud was born in 1659, at Perpignan in the extreme south of France, and studied at Montpelier in his youth, then at Lyons on his way to Paris—much as a Scottish artist might have studied first at Glasgow, then at Birmingham on his way to London. On the advice of Lebrun he devoted himself specially to portrait painting, which he did with such success that in 1700 he was elected a member of the Academy. He painted Louis XIV. more often than Largillière or any other painter, and in his later years (he lived till 1743) Louis XV. his great-grandson. He is said to have shared with Kneller the distinction, such as it may be, of having painted at least five monarchs.
Rigaud is best known in these days by the fine prints after his portraits by the French engravers. Of his brushwork we are only able to judge by the two doubtful versions at the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection respectively, of the fine portrait at Versailles ofCardinal Fleury. The group ofLulli and the Musicians of the French Court, which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1906 is not by him, and it is difficult to understand why the public money should have been wasted on it, or at least on the inscription attributing it to him.
Nicolas de Largillière was three years older than Rigaud and survived him by another three. He was born in Paris in 1656 and died six months before completing his ninetieth year. Early in life he went as a pupil to Antwerp, under Antoine Goubeau, and he is said to have worked in England as an assistant to Sir Peter Lely during the later years of that master. On his return to France he was received into the Royal Academy—in 1686.
In the Wallace Collection is an interesting example of his work, the large group of the French Royal Family, in which four living generations are portrayed and the bronze effigies of two more. Henri IV. and Louis XIII., the grandfather and father of the reigning monarch, Louis XIV., the Dauphin his son, the Duc de Bourgogne his grandson, and the Duc d'Anjou, his great-grandson—afterwards Louis XV., are all included in this formal group, which is a useful lesson in history as well as in painting.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
AntoineWatteauwas born at Valenciennes in 1684, and died near there about thirty-seven years later of consumption. Valenciennes really belonged to Flanders, and had only lately been annexed to France, so that Watteau owed something of his art to Flemish rather than to French sources. At the same time it cannot be said that his development would have been the same if he had gone to Brussels or Antwerp instead of to Paris to study, for though the works of Rubens andVan Dyck were from his earliest years his chief attraction, the influence of the French artist Claude Gillot, as well as that of Audran, the keeper of the Luxembourg Palace, without doubt exerted a very decided help in determining the future course of his work.
When living with Audran, Watteau had every opportunity for studying the works of the older masters, especially those of Rubens, whose decorations, executed for Marie de Medici, had not at that time been removed to the Louvre. Besides copying from these older pictures, Watteau was employed by Audran in the execution of designs for wall decorations, etc.
Watteau's two earliest pictures still in existence are supposed to be theDépart de Troupeand theHalte d'Armée, which were the first of a series of military pictures on a small scale. To an early period also belong theAccordée de Village, at the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, theMariée de Villageat Potsdam, and theWedding Festivitiesin the Dublin National Gallery.
In 1712 other influences began to work upon him. In this year he came into contact with Crozat, the famous collector, in whose house he became familiar with a fresh batch of the Flemish and Italian masterpieces. It was at this time that he was approved by the Royal Academy, though he took five years over his Diploma picture, "Embarquement pour l'Île de Cythère," which is now in the Louvre. Meantime the influence of Rubens and the Italian masters—especially the Venetians, had greatly widened and deepened his art, and these influences, acting on his peculiarly sensitive temperament and poetical spirit, had a magical effect, transforming the actual scenes of Paris and Versailles, which he painted into enchanted places in
PLATE XXXIV.—ANTOINE WATTEAU L'INDIFFÉRENT Louvre, ParisPLATE XXXIV.—ANTOINE WATTEAUL'INDIFFÉRENTLouvre, Paris
fairyland, as he transformed the formal actual painting of the period of Louis XIV. into the romantic school of the eighteenth century in France. The setting of the famous pictures in the Wallace Collection, catalogued asThe Music-PartyorLes Charnes de la Vie(No. 410), is a view of the Champs Elysées taken from the gallery of the Tuileries. Who would have thought it? And what does it matter, except to show how entirely Watteau revolutionized the pompous and prosaic methods of his time by investing the actual with poetry and romance.
Two other pictures at Hertford House, Nos. 389 and 391, were painted in the Champs Elysées, and the figures are, for the most part, the same in both, all three of these pictures are fine examples of the artist's power of broad and spirited treatment, combined with extreme delicacy and refinement of conception.
Three other pictures at Hertford House are equally delightful examples of another class of subject, namely groups of figures dressed in the parts of actors in Italian comedy. From a note in the Catalogue we learn that a company of Italian comedians were in Paris in the sixteenth century, but were banished by Louis Quatorze in 1697 for a supposed affront to Madame de Maintenon. In 1716, however, they were recalled by the Regent, the Duc d'Orléans, and became once more the delight of Paris. Several of the figures in the Italian comedy had already passed into French popular drama, and in Watteau's time there seems to have been a fluctuating company, according as one actor or actress or another developed a part, and to Pantalone, Arlecchino, Dottore and Columbina were now added Pierrot—or Gilles—Mezetin, a sort of double of Pierrot, Scaramouche and Scapin. The vague webof courtship, dalliance, intrigue and jealousy called up by these characters attracted Watteau to employ them in his compositions, and to make them also the medium of the more sincere sentiments of conjugal love and friendship,—as inThe Music Lesson,Gilles and his FamilyandHarlequin and Columbine, at Hertford House. All of these three were engraved in Watteau's life-time or shortly after his death, and the verses sub-joined to the engravings are a charming rendering of the sentiment underlying the pictures.
InThe Music Lessonwe see the half length figures of a lady, seated, reading a music book, and of a man playing a lute opposite to her. Another man looks at the book over the lady's shoulder, and two little children's faces appear at her knee. The verses are as follows:—
Pour nous prouver que cette belleTrouve l'hymen un nœud fort douxLe peintre nous la peint fidelleÀ suivre le ton d'un Époux.Les enfants qui sont autour d'elleSont les fruits de son tendre amourDont ce beau joueur de prunellePouvait bien goûter quelque jour.
InGilles and his Familywe have a three-quarter length full-face portrait of le Sieur de Sirois, a friend of Watteau, with these verses under the engraving:—
Sous un habit de mezzetinCe gros brun au riant visageSur la guitarre avec sa mainFait un aimable badinage.Par les doux accords de sa voixEnfants d'une bouche vermeilleDu beau sexe tant à la foisIl charme les yeux et l'oreille.
In the littleLady at her Toilet(No. 439) we see the influence of Paul Veronese, though it is probable that this was not painted until he visited London in the later part of his short life. For there is a similar piece calledLa Toilette du Matinwhich was engraved by a French artist who had settled in England, Philip Mercier, and on whose work the influence of Watteau is very noticeable.
Le Rendez-vous de Chasse(No. 416), which is of the same size, and in character similar toLes Amusements Champêtres(No. 391), is the last by Watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. It was painted in 1720, the year before his death, when his health prevented him from making any sustained effort. It is said to have been a commission from his friends M. and Mme. de Julienne, in whose shooting-box at Saint Maur, between the woods of Vincennes and the river, he went to repose from time to time.
Nicholas Lancretwas only by six years Watteau's junior, so that he can hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an imitator of Watteau. He was the pupil of Claude Gillot, and afterwards his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should have been formed between Lancret and Watteau, or that it should have been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's style—seeing how successful the imitation was. Two of the pictures by Lancret at Hertford House, Nos. 422,Conversation Galanteand 440,Fête in a Wood, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his career, the imitation became. The latter is theBal dans un Boiswhich was exhibited at the Place Dauphiné, and was complained of by Watteau on account of its close resemblance to his own work.
Another in the Wallace Collection belongs to the same early period of Watteau's influence. TheItalian Comedians by a Fountain(No. 465), being attributed to Watteau in the sale, in 1853, at which it was bought for Lord Hertford. His lordship was particularly anxious to secure this picture, "BetweenyouandI," he writes, with the quaint regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the Victorian nobility, "(and to no other person but you should I make thisconfidence), I must have the Lancret called Watteau in the Standish Collection. So I depend upon you forgetting it for me. I need not beg you not to mention a word about this toanybody, eitherbeforeorafterthe sale." And again, "Idependupon your getting the Lancret (Watteau in the Catalogue) for me. I have no doubt it will sell for a good sum, most likely more than it is worth, but wemusthave it ... I leave it to you, but I must have it, unless by some unheard of chance it was to go beyond 3000 guineas." He was fortunate indeed in getting it for £735.
Mademoiselle Camargo Dancing(No. 393), andLa Belle Grecque(No. 450), in the Wallace Collection, are good examples of the Comedian motive treated with more actuality, yet with no less grace. The four little allegorical pieces in the National Gallery,The Four Ages of Man, are more lively if less romantic, being composed more for the characters illustrating the subject than for poetical setting.
Jean Baptise Joseph Paterwas actually a pupil of Watteau. He was ten years his junior, but was equally unhappy on account of his health, and died at forty. Like Lancret, he incurred Watteau's displeasure for a similar reason, though in his case it was rather the fear of what he would do than what he did that wasthe cause of Watteau's displeasure. At the same time, the names of both Lancret and Pater are inseparable from that of Watteau in the history of painting, and, both in their choice of subject and their treatment of it, they are hardly distinguishable to the casual observer. Watteau, it need hardly be said, was far above the other two, but it was fortunate indeed that his romantic genius had two such gifted imitators as Lancret and Pater—or to put it the other way, that they had such a master to imitate, without whom neither their work nor their influence would have been nearly as great as it was.
François Boucher, though doubtless influenced by Watteau, more especially at the outset of his brilliant career, was nevertheless independent of him in carrying forward the art painting in his country, choosing rather to revert to the patronage of the Court like his predecessors Le Brun, Rigaud, and Largillière than to devote himself to the expression of his own ideas and feelings. Being a pupil of François Le Moine, whose principal work was the decoration of Versailles, it is not unnatural that Boucher should have succumbed to the influence of Royalty, especially when exerted in his favour by as charming and as powerful an agent as Madame de Pompadour. Another early influence which shaped his artistic tendencies as well as his fortunes was that of Carle van Loo, in whose honour his countrymen coined the verbvanlotiser—to frivol agreeably—- on account of the popularity which he achieved as a painter of elegant trifles. There is a picture by Carle van Loo in the Wallace Collection entitledThe Grand Turk giving a Concert to his Mistress(No. 451), painted in 1737, which is a fair example of his proficiency in this direction, and there are one or two portraits scattered about the country which he painted when overhere for a few months towards the end of his life. He died in Paris on the 15th July 1765, and Boucher was immediately appointed his successor as principal painter to Louis XV.
Madame de Pompadour was more than a patron to him, she was a matron! She made an intimate friend and adviser of him, and it is to her that he owed most of his advancement at Court, which continued after her death. The full-length portrait of her at Hertford House (No. 418) was commissioned by her in 1759, and remained in her possession till her death in 1764. It was purchased by Lord Hertford in 1868 for 28,000 francs. In the Jones Collection at the South Kensington Museum is another portrait of her, and a third in the National Gallery at Edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. The two magnificent cartoons on the staircase at Hertford House, called theRising and Setting of the Sun, she begged from the king. These were ordered in 1748 as designs to be executed in tapestry at the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins, by Cozette and Audran, according to the catalogue of the Salon in 1753 when they were exhibited. They are characterised by the brothers de Goncourt asle plus grand effort du peintre, les deux grandes machines de son œuvre; and the writer of the catalogue of Madame de Pompadour's pictures when they were sold in 1766 testifies thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "J'ai entendu plusieurs fois dire par l'auteur qu'ils étaient du nombre de ceux dont il était le plus satisfait." They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid 20,200 francs for them in 1855.
Even without thesechefs d'œuvrethe Wallace Collection is richer than any other gallery in the works of Boucher, with twenty-four examples (in all), of whichfew if any are of inferior quality. But it must be confessed that the abundance of Boucher's work does not enhance its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with Watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great painter. With all his skill and charm, that is to say, there is not one of his canvases that we could place beside a picture by Watteau on anything like equal terms. Superficially it may be equally or possibly more attractive, but inwardly there is no comparison. Let us hear what Sir Joshua Reynolds has to say of him:—
"Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of extempore invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished pictures! The late Director of their Academy, Boucher, was eminent in this way. When I visited him some years since in France, I found him at work on a very large picture without drawings or models of any kind. On my remarking this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young, studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but he had left them off for many years.... However, in justice, I cannot quit this painter without adding that in the former part of his life, when he was in the habit of having recourse to nature, he was not without a considerable degree of merit—enough to make half the painters of his country his imitators: he had often grace and beauty, and good skill in composition, but I think all under the influence of a bad taste; his imitators are, indeed, abominable."
Twenty-one years elapsed between the birth of Boucher and the next painter of anything like his ability, namely,Jean Baptiste Greuze. He was a native of Tournous, near Macon, and lived to seethe century out, dying in 1805, at the age of seventy-eight. His popularity is nowadays due chiefly to his heads of young girls, which he painted in his later life with admirable skill, but with a sentimentality that almost repels. The famous example in the National Gallery is more free from the sickly sweetness that spoils most of them, and reminds us that he could paint more serious works, and paint them exceedingly well. He first came into notice by pictures likeLa Lecture du Bible,La Malédiction Paternelle, orLe Fils Puni, which are now to be seen—though generally passed by—at the Louvre, and his style was imitated in later years in England by Wheatley and others of that school with more or less success. It was a great blow to him, and one which seriously affected his career when the Academy censured his Diploma picture,The Emperor Severus reproaching Caracalla. But for this we might have had more than these sentimental young ladies from a hand that was undoubtedly worthy of better things. However, as Lord Hertford admired them sufficiently to include no less than twenty-one of them in his collection, we ought not to be severe in criticising them, and we may quote the description ofThe Souvenir(No. 398) given by John Smith, in his Catalogue Raisonné in 1837, as showing the esteem in which it was held.
"The Souvenir.An interesting female, about fifteen years of age, pressing fondly to her bosom a little red and white spaniel dog; the pet animal appears to remind her of some favourite object, for whose safety and return she is breathing an earnest wish; her fair oval countenance and melting eyes are directed upwards, and her ruby lips are slightly open; her light hair falls negligently on her shoulder, and is tastefully braided