In alluding to the Sevillean school, we must mention a contemporary of Murillo, though somewhat his junior, of singular talent. His name is little known outside of Spain, and this is doubtless the reason why so few of his pictures have left the country. We believe it a mistake to allude to him, as is sometimes done, as one of those Spanish painters whose work is no longer of interest, such is his expression, his distinctive note, his creative boldness and individuality. We refer to Valdes Leal. His harsh outlook, his frequent inaccuracies, his thought, profound and almost always obscure, and above all, his subjects, at times macabre and bizarre, at times graceful, provide reasons for his unpopularity, no less than the still scanty knowledge we possess regarding this singular man, the circumstances of whose work and life are presented to us almost in a legendary manner, as in the case of his friend and patron, Don Juán de Mañara, who has been incarnated in the popular imagination as the Don Juán of tradition.
In Granada, Alonso Cano, as great a sculptor as painter, maintained, with other artists of lesser note and standing, a flourishing school which had links with that of Seville.
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We turn again to Madrid, to the Court where Velázquez, as we have indicated, stamped such character on painting and informed it with such excellence that artists flocked from all parts of the Peninsula to the capital. This resulted in the flourishing period of art—ending with the seventeenth century—fruitful and various, which is associated with the School of Madrid. It is not precisely the school of Velázquez, although equivocally so called. Velázquez had disciples who followed him, imitating and copying him, as his servant Pareja, the mulatto, did. But this notwithstanding, other painters of talent worked during these yearsin the capital, helping to form the school, even if they did not follow him in any decided manner. Nevertheless, he is its greatest figure, for he it was who gained the title of a school for the work of his contemporaries, and for the generation which followed him. The impulse which he gave by his technique and the composition of his palette, simple and sober, are characteristic of all this period. His son-in-law, Mazo, followed him blindly, and, working in his studio, was constantly impressed by the productions of his master, making use of the same methods—the same canvas, colours, brushes, and, giving rein to an extraordinarily imitative talent, he tried to make, and occasionally produced, actual facsimiles of his master’s works. The study of this curious problem of painting, of the distinctive note, the inclination of the time, as shown in the art of father-in-law and son-in-law, has been the subject of several works from our pen. We have not insisted on the point in these, nor have we space to do so in this brief synthesis; but we flatter ourselves that several paintings, especially those which belong to museums, have come to be more correctly attributed to Mazo rather than to Velázquez, and that those who are interested in these problems have come to distinguish the external aspect of the work of the one from that of the other, substantial and inimitable. We must remark, however, that Mazo had, besides the mere qualities of an imitator, a talent of his own of singular excellence, that of a landscape painter, which represented a relative novelty in the art of Spain at that period.
After Velázquez the most important painter of the School of Madrid is, beyond dispute, Carreño. Though his religious canvases are numerous, Carreño was, above all, a portrait painter. The relative influence of the work of Van Dyck, which extended as far as Seville, also reached Madrid, and Carreño came under it at times and discreetly made use of it. We say discreetly, for he had lost his national qualities. He borrowed from Velázquez the basic colours of his palette, but sought to enrich them with certain warm, golden tones, and he was enamoured of russets and, above all, of carmines, generally those which approximate to the colouring of the Flemings, but which appear cloying beside the works of Van Dyck. The portraits by Carreño were represented at the exhibition by that ofA Young Lady(Plate XXII.), belonging to the Duke of Medinaceli, which might almost be described as a black-and-white from its colouring and the evident purpose of the artist to preserve this tonality throughout the work; that ofThe Queen of Spain, Doña Mariana de Austria, the property of Don Ramón de la Sota, a most beautiful example, from which, without doubt, have been taken the many repetitions which are known of it besides other variants; and that ofThe Marchioness of Santa Cruz, which is of great importance and very characteristic. Of religiouspictures it is necessary to mentionThe Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Bernard, sent from Bilbao by Don Antonio Plasencia.
The two brothers Rizi, Juan and Francisco, were of Italian origin; both were decorative painters and worked in the style of Carducho and Caxes. Juan, the elder, was a monk, and was one of the prototypes of the School of Madrid, following Velázquez in his work, soberly and simply. Francisco seems at times to display the qualities of his Italian origin, and though sufficiently Spanish, gave to his creations a certain quality which may have influenced the Spanish decorative painters of the time. It is a curious problem of influence. In any case this artist, who achieved fame in his time, is an interesting study to-day, and it would seem that the critic must scrutinize the beginnings of the question before he tries to explain its results. Pereda, Collantes and Leonardo are also notable, if lacking the character of their school, which clearly shows them to be among the disciples of Carreño, among whom, perhaps, the most notable were Cerezo and Cabezalero, who unfortunately died young. Cerezo seems to be the most striking figure of those years, and his brilliant colour and fine style initiated a tendency which made for the enrichment of the Spanish palette, the sobriety of which we admire in the masters, but which degenerates into a certain poverty at times in the hands of their disciples. With Cerezo we should mention Antolínez, who also died before he reached artistic maturity.
We now reach that era of painting which flourished at the Court of Spain during the remainder of the seventeenth century. A long list of names of artists could be made, all estimable and some remarkable, who exhibited the proverbial vigour and picturesque temperament of the race, which, skilfully directed, and having received a noble and traditional tendency, commenced its onward progress without faltering. We mention, however, only Claudio Coello, who seems to close this period. A disciple of Rizi, whose decorative tendency he followed, he was more an artist in a general sense than a portrait painter, and above all he produced many religious subjects. By his workThe Sacred Form, which is kept in the Escurial, he seems to be sealed to the School of Madrid. This picture is obviously a result of the atmosphere and the taste of the period in its fidelity to character and its happy solution of problems of perspective and effects of light.
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For Spain the eighteenth century was a period of misfortune. The reasons for this are simple and evident. Grace and good taste—in the best sense of the term—lightness, came to be the characteristics of this century, and these qualities were displayed in a perfect manner in French art. And it was precisely these attributes which Spanish artists mostlacked, and still lack. They are robust, strong and sincere, but without gracefulness, facility of expression or volatility.A proposof this, it must be recalled that Spanish artistic expression appears to have been more or less influenced in its development by foreign tendencies which were allowed to work freely and with absolute spontaneity. The eighteenth century was a period in which the most powerful external influences, especially the French, the least adaptable to the Spanish temperament, had full play. These external influences were wholly ordained by the rule of the House of Bourbon, and incarnated in the first of its monarchs, Philip V, nephew of Louis XIV, who, doubtless meaning well, seemed to think it possible to transplant Versailles, with its marvellous spirit and exquisite culture, to the Castilian cities, which were still dominated by the sobriety and asceticism of the mystics of past centuries.
As regards painting, these influences commenced with the arrival at the Court of Lucas Jordán, who represented the influence of the great Italian decorative artists. Afterwards came Tiépolo, who left many marvellous works, quite inimitable by Spanish artists. The Bourbons introduced Van Loo, Ranc, Houasse and other French representatives of the art of the time; and lastly came Mengs, bringing with him a spirit wholly distinct from that of the French, a style erudite and academic which was not sufficiently powerful to create an artistic output of any importance in Spain, but which possessed much destructive power, although that was limited as regards time to about a century, during which period the national production was weak, despite the number of artists, of whom those most worthy to be mentioned are Maella, the Bayeus and Paret.
Such was the condition of Spanish painting when, without precedent, reason or motive, appeared in the province of Aragon, a region which years afterwards came to typify the resistance to foreign invasion, a figure of great significance in Spanish art, and worthy of comparison with the greatest masters of the preceding centuries—Francisco de Goya.
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The long life of Goya coincides with an epoch which divides two ages. The critic is somewhat at a loss how to place his work and personality, to conclude whether he is the last of the old masters or the first of the moderns. His greatness is so obvious, his performance so vast and its gradual evolution so manifest, that we may be justified in holding that the first portion of his effort belongs to the old order of things, while the second must be associated with the origins of modern painting. In his advance, in the manner and development of it, it is noticeable—as we have already said in certain of our works which deal with Goya—that he substituted for the picturesque, agreeable and suggestive note of his younger days, another more intense and more embracive. It wouldseem that the French invasion of the Peninsula, the horrors of which he experienced and depicted, influenced him profoundly in the alteration of his style. There is a Goya of the eighteenth century and a Goya of the nineteenth. But this is not entirely due to variation in technique, to mere artistic development, it is more justly to be traced to a change in creative outlook, in character, in view-point, which underwent a rude and violent transformation. Compare the subjects of his tapestries or of his festive canvases, joyful and gallant, facile in conception and at times almost trivial, with the tragic and macabre scenes of his old age, and with the drawings of this period and the compositions known as “The Disasters of War.”
His spirit was fortified and nourished by the warmth of his imagination, and assisted by an adequate technique, marvellously suited to the expression of his ideas, he produced the colossal art of his later years. If his performance is studied with reference to the vicissitudes and the adventures of which it is eloquent, the influence upon his works of the times in which they were created is obvious. The changes in his life, the transference from those gay and tranquil years to others full of the horrors of blood and fire, of shame and banishment, tended, without doubt, to discipline his spirit and excite his intelligence. His natural bias to the fantastic and his tendency to adapt the world to his visions seized upon the propitious occasion in a time of invasion and war to exalt itself, or, as he himself expressed it, “the dream of reason produces prodigies.”
An artist and creator more as regards expression than form, especially in the second phase of his work, unequal in achievement and at times inaccurate, he sacrificed much to divest himself of these faults. He deliberately set himself to discipline his ideas and develop that degree of boldness with which he longed to infuse them. But he was not quite able to subject himself to reality, and, as he was forgetful and indolent, that which naturally dominated him began to show itself in quite other productions of consummate mastery. This art, imaginative in expression and idea, is more striking as regards its individual and original qualities, than for any degree of discipline which it shows.
To follow Goya throughout the vicissitudes of his long life is not a matter of difficulty. The man to whom modern Spanish art owes its being was born in the little village of Fuendetodos and lived whilst a child at Saragossa. He came to Madrid at an early age, and before his thirtieth year went to Rome with the object of perfecting himself in his art. But he failed to obtain much direction at the academies in Parma, and having but little enthusiasm for the Italian masters of that time, returned to Spain, settling at Madrid. Until this time the artist had not evinced any exceptional gifts. Goya was not precocious. The first works to assist his reputation were a series of cartoons for tapestries to be woven at the Royal Factory. They were destined for the walls of the royal palaces of Aranjuez, the Escurial and the Prado, which Carlos IV desired to renovate according to the fashion of the time. These works, which brought fame to Goya, showed two distinctive qualities. One of them evinces the originality of his subjects, in which appear gallants, blacksmiths, beggars, labourers, popular types in short, who for the first time appeared in the decoration of Spanish palaces and castles, which, until then, had known only religious paintings, military scenes, the portraits of the Royal Family and stately hidalgos. Goya, in this sense, democratized art. The other note to be observed in his work is a certain distinction of craftsmanship, the alertness which it reveals, which is, perhaps, due to the lightness of his colouring. On canvases prepared with tones of a light red hue, which he retained as the basis of his picture, he sketched his figures and backgrounds with light brushes and velatures, retaining, where possible, the tone of the ground. This light touch, rendered necessary by the extensive character of the design and the rapidity with which it had to be executed, gave to the artist a freedom and quickness in all he drew, and from it his later works, much more important than these early essays though they were, profited not a little.
Already during these earlier years he had commenced to paint portraits which did much to enhance his reputation, and shortly afterwards he entered the royal service as first painter to the Court, where he addressed himself to the execution of that vast collection of works of all kinds which arouse such interest to-day. The list is interminable and embraces the portraits of Carlos IV and of the Queen Maria Louisa, those of the members of the Royal Family, of all the aristocracy, of the Albas, Osunas, Benaventes, Montellanos, Pignatellis, Fernán-Núñezs, the greatest wits and intellectuals of the day, especially those of Jovellanos, Moratin, and Meléndez Valdés, three men who profoundly influenced the thought of Goya in a progressive and almost revolutionary manner, in spite of his connection with the Court and the aristocracy. He also painted many portraits of popular persons, both men and women, among whom may be mentioned La Tirana, the bookseller of the Calle de Carretas, and that most mysterious and adventurous offemmes galantesof whom, now clothed, now nude, the artist has bequeathed to us those souvenirs which hang on the walls of the Prado Museum. In these the artist has for all time fixed and immortalized the finest physical type of Spanish womanhood, in which an occasional lack of perfect proportion is compensated for by elegance, grace, and unexaggerated curve and figure, without doubt one of the most exquisite feminine types which has been produced by any race. Besides these, the artist produced many lesser canvasescontaining tiny figures full of wonderful grace and gallantry, and having rural backgrounds, frequently of the banks of the Manzanares, and others of larger proportions and scope, among the most excellent of which is that of the family of Carlos IV, treasured in the Prado Museum as one of its most precious jewels. Along withThe Burial of the Count of Orgaz(Plate V.) andLas Meninas(Plate X.), this picture may be regarded as the most complete and astonishing which Spanish art has given us. It is not a “picture” in the ordinary sense of the word, but an absolute solution of the problem of how colour harmonies are to be attained, and a most striking essay in impressionism, in which an infinity of bold and varied shades and colours blend in a magnificent symphony.
Goya, triumphant and rejoicing in a life ample and satisfying, received on all sides the flatteries of the great, and, caressed by reigning beauties, lived in the tranquil pursuit of his art, which, though intense, was yet graceful and gallant, and, as we have said, still adhered to the manner of the eighteenth century, when a profound shock agitated the national life—the war with Napoleon and the French invasion. The first painter to the Court of Carlos IV, a fugitive, deaf, and already old, life, as he then experienced it, might have seemed to him a happy dream with a terrible awakening. His possessions, his pictures, and his models were dispersed and maltreated; the Court seemed to have finished its career, for his royal master was banished by force, many of the nobility were condemned to death, and Countesses, Duchesses and Maids of Honour vanished like the easy and enjoyable existence he had known. Above all, Saragossa, that heroic city, beleaguered on every side, was closed to him; a depleted army defended the strategical points of the Peninsula, and the people—the people whom Goya loved and who had so often served him as models for his damsels, his bull-fighters, his wenches, his little children—were wandering over the length and breadth of Spain, only to be shot as guerillas and stone-throwers by the soldiers of Napoleon. It was at this moment that the true development of the artist began. The painter, like his race, was not to be conquered. The old Goya remained, strong in the creation of a lofty art. The last twenty years of his life were full indeed, and represented its most vigorous phase, the most energetic in the whole course of his achievement. Scenes of war and disaster occupied almost the whole of this important period, full of a profound pessimism, which still does not lack a certain graceful style, and displays unceasingly some of the saddest thoughts which man has ever known. These works of Goya are not of any party, are not political nor sectarian. They are simply human. For his greatness is all-embracive and his might enduring. Typical of his work in this last respect areThe Fusiliers, of 1808, and his lesser efforts, those scenes of brigandage, madness, plagueand famine which occur so frequently in his paintings during the years which followed the war.
We do not mean to make any hard and fast assertion that Goya would not have developed in intensity of feeling if he had not personally experienced and suffered the horrors of the invasion, but merely to indicate that it was this which brought about the revulsion within him and powerfully exalted him. His last years in Madrid, and afterwards in Bordeaux, where he died, were always characterized by the note of pessimism, and at times, of horror, as is shown in the paintings which once decorated his house and are now preserved in the Prado Museum. Not a few portraits of these years also show that the artist gained in intensity and in individual style. It is precisely these works, so advanced for their time and so progressive, that provided inspiration to painters like Manet, who achieved such progress in the nineteenth century, and who were enamoured of the visions of Goya, of his technique and his methods, naturalistic, perhaps, but always replete with observation and individual expression.
We must not forget to mention that Goya produced a decorative masterpiece of extraordinary distinction and supreme originality—the mural painting of the Chapel of St. Antonio of Florida, in Madrid. Nor is it less fitting to record his fecundity in the art of etching, in which, as in his painting, it is easy to observe the development of their author from a style gallant and spirited to an interpretation of deep intensity, such as is to be witnessed in the collection of “The Caprices” and “The Follies,” if these are compared with the so-called “Proverbs” and especially with “The Disasters of War.”
The pictures representing Goya at Burlington House were composed of some twenty works. Among those which belonged to his first period were the portraits of the Marchioness of Lazan, the Duchess of Alba, lent by the Duke of Alba, “La Tirana,” from the Academy of St. Fernando, the Countess of Haro, belonging to the Duchess of San Carlos, four of the smaller paintings of rural scenes, the property of the Duke of Montellano, andAn Amorous Parley(“Coloquio Galante”), the property of the Marquis de la Romana, the prototype of the Spanish feeling for gallantry in the eighteenth century. As representative of the second phase, of that which holds a note intense and pessimistic, may be takenA Pest House, lent by the Marquis de la Romana, and those truly dramatic scenes, the property of the Marquis of Villagonzalo.
Of portraits of the artist by himself two were exhibited, one small in size painted in his youth (Plate XXVI.), in which the full figure is shown, and the other a head, done in 1815, which gives us a good idea of the expression and temperament of this extraordinary man.
The influence of the art of Goya was not immediate. A contemporary of his is to be remembered in Esteve, who assisted him and copied from him. Later, an artist of considerable talent, Leonardo Alenza, who died very young and had no time to develop his art, was happily inspired by him. With regard to Lucas, a well-known painter whose production was very large, and who flourished many years later, and is now known to have followed Goya, he can scarcely be considered as one of his continuators, but rather as an imitator—by no means the same thing. For he imitated Goya, as, on other occasions, he imitated Velázquez and other artists. Lucas is much more praiseworthy when he follows his own instincts and does original work. His pictureThe Auto de Fé, the property of M. Labat, which was shown at the London exhibition in the room dedicated to artists of the nineteenth century, is one of the best that we know of from his brush.
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If the eighteenth century was for Spanish painting an epoch of external influences, the nineteenth century, especially its second half, must be characterized as one which sought for foreign direction. During this period the greater number of painters of talent sought for inspiration from foreign masters. This was a grave mistake, not because in Spain there were artists of much ability or even good instructors, but because this exodus of Spanish painters was a sign that they had lost faith and confidence in themselves and were strangers to that native force which in the end triumphs in painting as in everything else. First Paris, then Rome, the two most important centres of the art of this period, were undoubtedly centres of a lamentable distortion of Spanish art.
The organizing committee did not wish the London exhibition to be lacking in examples of this period of prolific production, to which they dedicated a room in which were shown examples of the painters of the nineteenth century. We mention some of the many artists of talent of the Spain of those days, and indicate their individual characteristics; but we are unable to allude to their general outlook and the characterization of their schools, which we do not think existed among them to any great extent.
The most famous painter who succeeded Goya was Vincente López, better known for his portraits than for his other canvases, a skilful artist with a perfect knowledge of technique, conscientious, fecund, minute in detail, who has left us the reflection of a whole generation.
Classicism arrived in Spain with all the lustre of the triumphs of Louis David, under whose direction José de Madrazo placed himself, the first of those artists of this type to maintain a position of dignity throughout three artistic generations. He held an important place among contemporary painters at a difficult time during which, in consequence of the political disorder which reigned, the commissions usually given by the churches and religious communities ceased, private persons acquired few paintings, and the academies decreased in the number of their students. It was a time in which art offered but little wherewithal to its votaries.
But this period of paralysis was of short duration. The pictorial temperament, which inalienably belongs to Spain, and the appearance of romanticism, with a tendency conformable to the spirit of Spain, and which had for a long time given a brilliant impulse to her men of letters, revived painting, which forgot its period of exhaustion. The frigid classicism, ill-suited to the national genius, now passed away. José de Madrazo was succeeded in prestige and surpassed in ability by his son Federico de Madrazo. By his portraits he has bequeathed to us faithful renderings of all the personages of his day, which compete with those of the greater foreign portrait painters among his contemporaries.
Studying at first under classical influences, but regarded as romantics in their later development, were remarkable portrait painters like Esquivel and Gutiérrez de la Vega, and a landscape painter of especial interest, Pérez Villamil, who may in a manner be compared to the great English landscape painter Turner, though he had no opportunities for coming in contact with him or any knowledge of his work. Both men, each in his own environment, breathed the same atmosphere; and, although reared in lands remote from one another, thought in a like manner because they both reflected the period in which they lived. Becquer and others adequately maintained the descriptive note which now entered into the making of popular subjects.
Such was the condition of painting in Spain when there appeared the fruitful and extraordinarily populargenreof historical painting. In its origin it was not Spanish but was introduced from other countries, especially from France; but its Spanish affinities are manifest in its examples, most of which are canvases of great size, imposing, dramatic, and, in general, effective.
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In this period culture, which in Spain had formerly been the preserve of a limited class, now spread itself more widely, and in the sphere of art was greatly fostered by exhibitions of painting, open to all and sundry, without distinction of social status. Pictures and sculpture, which in other times had been dedicated solely to art and to religious piety, the possessions of kings and grandees, now came into public view, were alluded to in publications of all kinds, and the people, enthusiastic and critical, were brought face to face with their native art. Many artists, perceiving this, hoped to gain popular applause, and consequentlyworked upon their subjects as seemed most agreeable to the masses. The historical picture in such circumstances seemed to offer the greatest possibilities for achieving a popular reputation.
Gisbert painted the popular heroes of the past and was regarded as the representative of those revolutionary tendencies in art which were to triumph several years later. Alisal, Mercade, Palmaroli, Luis Alvarez, careful and excellent artists, painted both historical andgenrepictures. From this group arose a most remarkable figure who died whilst still very young, but who has left us a most striking example of his workmanship. This was Eduardo Rosales, the painter ofThe Death of Isabel the Catholic. Rosales represented the Spanish tradition in painting. Averse to foreign influences, he studied and found in the great masters the sources of his art, and his works, both in Spain and beyond it, excited the greatest interest in his time. The picture above mentioned, sober and simple in style, though it must be classed asgenrepainting, has still many admirable and enduring qualities. The pity is that this group of artists did not follow him; for, flattered by the public acclamation, they entered upon the second period of historical painting, less effective than the first and always conventional, which lasted many years, indeed almost to the present time. For an atmosphere inimical to the traditions of Spanish painting arose, in which this type of historical composition flourished at a time when it had been condemned and forgotten in other countries, where it was forced to give place to those tendencies in which modern painting had its origin.
Rigurosamente, a contemporary of Rosales, was another exceptional artist of unusual gifts, likewise Mariano Fortuny, who unfortunately died in his youth. Fortuny, though he may appear quite otherwise to-day, was in his own time considered a progressive innovator. When he visited Madrid for the first time, drawn thither by youthful enthusiasm, he did so with no other idea than that of copying from Velázquez. But seeing in the Prado Museum the works of Goya, which were totally new to him, he received a revelation. He copied from Goya, and later, going to Africa, he painted many studies and pictures replete with light. Light as a pictorial factor, as an element in a picture, the study of light, the reflection of it in his own works—that is the progressive element which we find in Fortuny. The rapid success of his first works, their triumph in Paris and Rome, was due to an agreeable style, gracious in touch, suggestive, which appealed to collectors and dealers. At the same time we do not believe this to have been altogether his ideal, since a few years before his death, which took place in his thirty-seventh year, we see him betaking himself to the shores of Italy, where he made new studies of light and air. Was it reserved to Fortuny to be one of those of whom it will be said thathe assisted the development of the study of atmosphere and light? We firmly believe this to be so, but the work of the critic has nothing to do with prophecy, and we must deal only with that which Fortuny has left us, which is indeed sufficient. It must not be forgotten in judging his work to-day that its defects, or what seem to be its defects, were those of his time and were not personal, and that what is personal to him was his good taste, his mastery, and a series of innovations and bold essays in colour obvious to those who study his works. Fortuny was not a Spanish painter in the sense that he did not preserve the traditions of our School. He certainly took the elements of his palette from Goya, but his traits of manner show no sign of the typical qualities of Spanish painting.
It is fitting to allude here to artists of different types and talents in some of the cities of Spain, and others living abroad, who laboured during the last years of the nineteenth century—the Madrazos, Raimundo and Ricardo, sons of Don Federico de Madrazo, who studied under the direction of Fortuny; Plasencia, Domínguez and Ferrán, who distinguished themselves in work of a decorative character in the Church of Saint Francisca the Great in Madrid; Pradilla and Villegas, who have obtained the greatest triumphs during a long career; the brothers Mélida, Enrique and Arturo, the first working in Paris for many years, and the second a famous decorative artist; Egusquiza, painter and engraver; Moreno Carbonero, who, more a historical and portrait painter, found a popularity for his pictures inspired by episodes in literature, especially those of Quixote, in which he has coincided with Jiménez Aranda. We may also mention a group of artists, all of Valencia, a city which in times past, as in the present, enjoyed notable artistic prosperity: Sala, Muñoz Degrain, Pinazo Camarlench, José Benlliure and many others. Nearly all of them were represented at the Exhibition at Burlington House in the Salon set apart for the painters of this epoch.
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In the second half of the nineteenth century the study of nature in the form of landscape arose as a creed, the artist coming face to face with the scene which he desired to transfer to his canvas. It has been said “what the landscape is, so is he who praises it.” Until then the landscape had been nothing but a background for a composition or figure, and those who called themselves landscape painters, when they undertook to paint a scene used it as a peg on which to hang poetical ideas, embellishing it, but never treating it as a true rendering of nature. Now the artist came to the country, felt the influence of nature, and faithfully copied it. The object of his work was to be as natural as possible, without embellishing or poetizing his subject, but to portray it, as one might say. This was a new idea to the painters of the time.
Pérez Villamil, a follower of romanticism in painting, also practised landscape art in Spain until it underwent the change mentioned above through the arrival of a Belgian, Charles de Haes, who succeeded Pérez Villamil as professor of landscape at the School of Painting. Haes broke with tradition. He would have no conventionalisms, no studied compositions, nor preconceptions. He took his pupils to the country and there told them to copy Nature herself, leaving them without any further inspiration than that with which God had endowed them. To-day the studies of this master and of his disciples, generally executed in strong contrasts of light, seeking, doubtless, the effectiveness thus produced, appear to us, although they have a sense of luminosity, poor in colour, obscure and hard. But what progress is represented in them in comparison with all former art! And it is clear that they express the tendency which, modern in that time, everywhere governed the advance of art.
Shortly afterwards a Spanish landscape painter, not a disciple of Haes, Martín Rico, a companion of Fortuny, but who, having lived longer than he and reached a more mature age, advanced a further step in the art of landscape painting. If the chief aim of this painter had not been the rapid translation of his gifts into money, and had he not striven to please the public, he might have achieved lasting fame.
Casimiro Saiz, Muñoz Degrain—whom we have mentioned already as a painter of the figure—Urgell, Gomar and others devoted themselves to landscape; but the most salient examples of Spanish landscape painting are to be found in the work of three artists who developed with the rapid evolution of their time—Beruete, Regoyos and Rusiñol. Of these three sincere and individual painters, Beruete, in his youth a disciple of Haes, and later of Rico, evinced a very decided modern tendency. He devoted the years of his maturity to the making of a large number of pictures of Spanish cities, especially of Castile, paintings truthful and sincere in character, and revealing a very personal outlook. Regoyos was influenced by impressionism, to which he was strongly attracted, and in the North of Spain he inspired many by his numerous works. Rusiñol is, perhaps, more a poet than a painter. He still lives and works. He used to find in the gloomy and deserted gardens of Spain subjects for his pictures. One of the most remarkable figures in Catalonia to-day, both as a litterateur and painter, he has also sought inspiration in the scenes and countryside of this, his native province.
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Spanish painting was completely modernized during the last years of the nineteenth century. Three great international events took place during that period—the three exhibitions in Paris of the years 1878, 1889 and 1900. At these Spanish painting was fully represented. At the first wasshown a varied collection of the works of Fortuny—one of the most famous artists of his time—who had died shortly before. In the second we experienced a rebuff, for a number of historical paintings of enormous proportions, full of the inspiration of the past, were not admitted, nor, indeed, were some of these worthy to hang in the exhibition. But in the years between 1889 and 1900 the development of Spanish painting was most marked, and in the last of the exhibitions alluded to the Spanish salons revealed a high level of excellence and a significant modernity. Moreover, there emerged the personality of a young painter, hitherto unknown, who by unanimous consent was regarded as well-nigh qualifying for the highest honours. This was a man whose name shortly afterwards became famous throughout the world—Joaquín Sorolla, one of those personalities who from time to time arise in Spain quite unexpectedly.
Sorolla, who was of humble origin, was born in Valencia, and in his youth was naturally influenced by the paintings of the old masters in his native city. He went to Madrid, later to Italy, and finally to Paris, where his work of a wholly realistic character was admired, for actuality was to this painter as the breath of life. A French advocate of naturalism has said “one rule alone guides the art of painting, the law of values, the manner in which the light plays upon an object, in which the light distributes colour over it; the light, and only the light is that which fixes the position of each object; it is the life of every scene reproduced in painting.” This statement Sorolla seems to have taken greatly to heart, even while he was still under the influence of old traditions and standards of thought.
Possessing a temperament of much forcefulness, and of great productive exuberance, enthusiastic about the scenery of the Mediterranean, and especially enamoured of the richness of colour of his native soil, the ruddy earth planted with orange-trees, the blue sea and the dazzling sky, Sorolla, oblivious of what he had done before, felt a powerful impulse to paint that which was rich in colour, so greatly was he moved by the eastern spirit. The coasts of Valencia, the lives of the fishermen, those children of the sea, the bullocks drawing the boats, the scenes beneath the cliffs and other analogous subjects, painted in full sunlight—the sunlight of July and August for preference—these are the subjects on which Sorolla laboured for several years, producing canvas after canvas, now famous both in Europe and America.
We do not say that this outlook is ideal, but the study of light and atmosphere was a contribution to the history of modern art, and was among the elements which will be handed down to posterity as the original note of the painters of the last years of the nineteenth century. Of these Sorollawas one of the most forceful, and we lay stress upon his work, as in our judgment its importance demands especial notice. We have not alluded to his great talent as a portrait painter, nor to the decorative works which he has dedicated to the Hispanic Society of America in New York, and which, although they are completed, are not yet installed in place. Some few years after the appearance of Sorolla, there arose almost simultaneously two Spanish painters of other tendencies, equally noteworthy, and whose names are universally known—Zuloaga and Anglada. Zuloaga must be regarded in a very different manner from Sorolla. In no sense does he go to nature merely to copy it in the manner in which it presents itself to our vision, but he seeks, both in nature and humanity, for types, for characteristic figures of a representative and realistic kind. His work has developed with robustness and force, and attracts the attention of the modern critic eager for characteristic and singular qualities. To his reception in the universal world of art it is not necessary to allude here. The reviews and periodicals of all countries have commented with praise upon the achievements of this master, who is still busily at work, constantly engaged in the representation of popular types in the characteristic costume of many regions, especially his own people, the Basques, and the Castilians, for whom he appears to have a special predilection.
Those landscapes which he takes for the backgrounds of his pictures also seem to be inspired by that love of character which animates all his productions. In his latest phase, too, he has executed numerous portraits of people of different social categories. In technique it is noticeable that Zuloaga strives to preserve those tonalities which characterize the Spanish School; and the study he has made of the works of Velázquez and Goya is manifested in the lively reminiscences of these masterpieces displayed at times in his pictures, which exhibit, nevertheless, a relative modernity.
Anglada is, in our view, completely distinct from Sorolla and Zuloaga. Enamoured of the charm of colour, his work has no connection with schools or traditions. Aloof from every influence, he aspires to nothing so much as rich colour-schemes and harmonies, and seeks inspiration in night-bound gardens, brightly illuminated, in subjects which reflect electric light, and in figures which appear all the more distinct as the background is often the sea beneath the radiance of the Mediterranean light. These unusual sources of inspiration appear strange at first sight; but it is noticeable that they manifest on the part of the painter always the same idea of seeking for rich colouring. We must regard Anglada as one of the most remarkable and most original of modern painters. It is a great pity that he was not represented at Burlington House. His absence, like that of Sert, the great decorative painter, Beltran, MiguelNieto and others, was accounted for by the fact that the pictures were received too late to be included in the Exhibition.
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The salons set apart for modern painting at the London Exhibition seem to us to have been disposed and arranged with care. There were shown in the first of these rooms works by Sorolla, his disciple Benedito, one of the most esteemed portrait painters in Madrid, Zaragoza, Moisés, Carlos Vázquez, and some landscapes by Rusiñol. The second room was in complete harmony with the first, and in it we observed the works of artists, some of whom are still young, but nevertheless masters of strong propensity and perfect equilibrium; the great composition by Gonzalo Bilbao,The Cigar-makers(Plate XXXVII.); the striking portraits of Chicharro and Sotomayor; the unmistakably Spanish canvases of Mezquita and Rodriguez Acosta; and the picturesque and suggestive note of the Valencian figures by Pinazo Martinez.
The neighbouring room was dedicated to those who may be called painters of character, for such was the exclusive note of all the works shown there. It would not be easy to say who occupied the place of honour here, Zuloaga, Romero de Torres, an artist of Cordova, who has tried to create a type of female beauty famous throughout Spain, the brothers Zubiaurre, peculiarly Basque in feeling, and now well known everywhere, Salaverria, Ortiz Echagüe, Arrúe, Juan Luis y Arteta, a delicate and emotional painter who has found on the Basque shores subjects for pictures unusually simple, in which is displayed a delicacy of technical expression together with the significance of an idea, inspired, like his subjects, by a simple poetry.
Following these, in still other rooms, were hung works similar in type, but bolder, perhaps, such as those of Solana, whose three canvases, painted in low tones, were of great interest and excited much remark in the exhibition; Vázquez Díaz, so various in his subjects, but always individual; Maeztu, the consistent exponent of a colossal and decorative style; Castelucho, Urgell, Guezala; and Astruc y Sancha, who combines caricature of consummate mastery with the painting of landscapes of manifest originality.
In another room were exhibited smaller landscapes. These included examples of Rusiñol, Beruete, Regoyos, Meifren, Forns, Raurich, Colom, Grosso and Mir. Among the work of other young painters of promise but as yet little known, we must mention the seascapes of Verdugo Landi and Nogue.
The next salon, known as the Lecture Room, formed a kind of overflow for the last, and contained pictures by Hermoso, Garnelo, Simonet, Morera, Marin Bagües, Canals, Cardona, Villegas Brieva, Oroz, Madrazo-Ochoa, Covarsi, Bermejo, and many other artists, a list of whom would be much too extensive for inclusion here.
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We do not think that the assertion that Spanish painting has been a powerful factor in the history and development of universal art will be regarded by anyone as a discovery, nor will such a statement appear as a result of patriotic enthusiasm. Spanish painting to-day follows its brilliant traditions; and although we believe this present period to be one of gestation, it occasionally reveals qualities of splendour and greatness. It is indubitably lacking in marked and decided outlook, but it is, nevertheless, universally respected and suffers, at the most, merely from the exigencies of the time. Moreover, not a few critics of distinction in the Peninsula, who concern themselves with the study of particular movements, see in it a tendency to the formation of regional groups. The central one naturally has its focus in Madrid, and radiates thence over the whole of Spain; but a large output is always forthcoming from the cities of Seville and Valencia, which appear, by the light of tradition, as the most brilliant centres of pictorial art. There are, moreover, two other regions which have produced rich and flourishing art—Catalonia and the Basque provinces, with their two capital cities, Barcelona and Bilbao.
Catalan art is no new thing in Spanish tradition, and is in a measure descended from that which was formerly the art of the Kingdom of Aragon before the national union. The Catalans have confined it entirely to their territory, have cultivated it with enthusiasm, and have created a Catalan school of Spanish Art. It is a great pity that they have not tried to preserve a more national spirit and have frequently sought inspiration from foreign sources, especially from France. But, this notwithstanding, Catalan achievement is indeed most worthy of praise.
The artistic production of the Basque provinces is forcible and original. The Basques, with a scanty pictorial tradition, have shrewdly sought for inspiration in the Spanish sphere without distinction of locality, and have produced an art of undoubted interest.
But apart from this there exists at the present time a movement of worldwide character, which seems to have a literary origin and which may, perhaps, be called, for want of a better name, the new spirit. Though still in a chaotic state, this movement, varied in its aspects, may in all lands be identified by an underlying intention to revolutionize everything, creating a new æsthetic code and turning its back on the past and on all tradition.
It is not our intention to deal with this movement or to discuss its importance. Spain does not appear to be the country best fitted to lead it. Its history seems to show that while it is ready of acceptance, it is not to behurried in its advance; nor is it eager to seize upon radical ideas. But this notwithstanding, it has painters who understand and cultivate art of this kind, and it must not be forgotten that one of the outstanding figures in the ultramodern movement is the Spaniard Picasso, who has shown once more that in all phases of artistic effort the Spanish temperament significantly reveals itself.
A. de Beruete y Moret.(Translated by Lewis Spence)