Banish stays, which murder not only yourselves, but the races coming after you.
Banish waist-bands and petticoats, which are deforming your hips. Look to the waist and hips of the Venus of Milo for my meaning.
Live for yourselves, and for the future. Be the founders of virtuous and wise Titans. Saturn is not nearly dead yet, and Rhea is still kind, if you will. But as Jove fought for life, so must you. On the milk of goats he grew strong to defy Father Time, the devourer. Be strong to defy the laughter and the sneers. Set up an Image of Life and worship this only, for this is the earth-symbol of God.
Art, in the general acceptance of the term, is all that is apart from mechanical dexterity; as the man is not his brain or heart or muscles, but the immeasurable force which controls and moves all these parts, so Art is that immeasurable force that appeals to and speaks through all our senses. Truth is the primary principle of art; the lever of life, the mainspring of society. If we are not true to ourselves, we cannot be true to one another; therefore, our plans must come to naught. Madame Modjeska, one of the greatest of living actresses, is said to be able to do two things at once—to present to the public a face expressive of the most intense agony, shedding tears, andseeminglywriting a letter which is breaking her heart, andactuallymaking comic caricatures on the sheet of note-paper. Admiring this gifted woman as I do, this is a knowledge to shudder over. I hope it cannot be true, for if I thought of art reaching this doubtful state of perfection, I could never again see all the agony of that acting, only the mockery of the caricatures. Falsehoodis not power; it may impose, but unless the actor, or the poet, or the painter, can lose himself or herself in the part with which they are involved, all the rest is only nerve-twisting, meaning nothing, conveying nothing.
Beauty is the embodiment of truth, as man palpable is the embodiment of soul. Falsehood may come draped in the appearance of truth, which is beauty, but that only testifies to the rigid impersonation of truth; falsehood, being hideous, has to come like truth before it can impose.
Beauty being thus the incarnation of truth, and the mission of art being to present this body to the senses, it becomes the stern duty of artists to find out what she is before they attempt to reproduce her. Hence also art takes its proper position in the world; hence its utility to society.
Truth is the binder of society, the leader upwards; Beauty, the form of that divine force; Art, the interpretation of that holy principle; Honour, Faith, Trust, Love which casteth out fear—all are outsprings from the spirit of Truth, which Art has to present to the people, and teach them to see and love.
Beauty, therefore, is the chief quality of art, and while the standard of beauty rests in our eyes—a perfectly formed face often appearing repulsive, and a figure seemingly faultless devoid of grace, whilst the expression and the action transform the plain face and common figure into beauty and grace—so old age can be as beautiful as early youth, and the ugliness of power made to embody rugged grandeur.
But although we create our own ideal of beauty, it is the mission of the painter, poet, sculptor, novelist, and dramatist to educate the world, and refine and elevate their creations and ideals; and this mission is not fulfilled in the mind thatmerely reports the tittle-tattle of everyday life and no more, or that relates the improbable adventures, frivolities, and vices of a fashionable upper ten thousand, nor the burlesque or comic opera, that turns to buffoonery all those sentiments which tend to melt or ennoble in the language and moral of the tragedy, from which they draw their ribald nonsense. Nor is it fulfilled in the poem that only deals in mystery and new-forged words, that mean nothing unless the suggestion of a harmonious sound—unless the reader fills it up with his own suppositions; or, if meaning anything, only suggestions which the writer is too cowardly to tell out openly and therefore knavishly sends forth to engender its own poison under its specious and subtle mufflings of musical jargon.
Nor is this mission fulfilled in the picture that speaks a soft, hazy blending of harmonious tints, because a weaver can do and mean as much with his loom, or the display of a dexterous manipulation learnt, as any other dexterity in craft, by rule. Neither is it fulfilled in the scant imitation of a bit of nature, although here more than in the meaningless blendings, because any old stump lying by the roadside, with its moss and time-dressing, must look beautiful, although with no great credit because of no great effort of the imitator, and presenting none of his mind, which is the vital force we look to for elevation.
We turn to the Greeks for our ideas of refinement. They have left nearly perfect forms in ornament, architecture, and sculpture, and they have also left examples, in their habits and mode of living, that they were simple to severity. When I speak thus I except the debauched followers of Bacchus and Venus; for these poets, like Anacreon, belong to the declineof Greek life, and therefore must only be looked at as the foul fungi and rotten growths bred from decay.
The early Greeks fulfilled their mission, because they gave us beautiful forms to look upon, beautiful lines, beautiful curves; the Egyptians and Assyrians fulfilled their mission, because they gave us massive forms and gorgeous tints; the savage tribes fulfil their mission in their fantastic images of terror; the early painters fulfilled their mission, because they sought to raise up feelings of devotion, or pity, or horror in the spectator; the modern painters, bowing down to the golden calf, paint what will suit best, and sink their art into a trade and traffic.
Give painters commissions, is one suggestion to create high art; so far, good for the buyer. Painters must live, as preachers must live, and the labourer is worthy of his hire; but the painter who is also a preacher ought not to think of the price of his picture. Robert Burns had the true estimate of his poetry. We cannot judge a picture by its price. If it is a true effort, it is part of the painter’s soul, which cannot be bought. Let him not say it is worth 400l.or 3l.; rather say it is not money-worth; take it and give me what I need to live: it is mine for ever, because I made it, and I only give it up to hang on your walls, in that I need your help to be able to live and work.
Ornament or decoration being one of the many outcomes of art-teaching which can be applied to the continuance and comfort of ordinary life, we take it up in its broadest meaning. To ornament our persons rightly, first studying the laws of health, cleanliness, and sympathetic attraction; to bring grace into our language, and actions, and morals; after we have administered to the sense of sight and smell, that wemay always be lovers and ideals to our wives, banishing from us utterly all habits and liberties that tend to destroy the lovely gloss of that first love; words that may lower or corrupt; jests that may rub off the modesty of first friendship; actions that may tend to deaden the finer romance of the tender dream; all these come within the category of Decoration, and require to be carefully studied.
To ornament our house discreetly, so that we may always find a pleasure in the sitting down, a harmony all over that will soothe us after our day’s work; a quietcolourlesspatterned paper will be as cheap as a gaudy glaring, and willcomfortyou where the other will not;—a knowledge of how little is wanted to make life pleasant, a method to get true style, and save money, an idea of the decoration or useful laws of colour;—a taste in the way of books and dress and behaviour, a generalblandness, which etiquette aims at, improving the hightone, which some aristocrats have, and some must pretend to learn, and which may be acquired by any one studying the first law of Christianity, which selfishness, and coarseness, and falseness cannot successfully imitate or keep up for long, no matter what title comes before or after their names, or the pedigree they may be able to tot up, or the appearance their tailor or dressmaker may give to them;—which only require the instincts of honour and truth to do it all to perfection. It does not really matter whether you use your bread or fork or knife at the orthodox moment; if you can keep down the scoff or the sneer where another has tripped. The fork or knife mistakes only want a hint to rectify, the sneer or scoff cannot be rectified, for the one has been the want of knowledge, while the other has beenthe want of soul: the one is anovice, to be trained; the other acad, to be kicked.
That there are tastes acquired, and instincts born in us, we all have hourly and abundant proofs.
But the love of ornament I take to be an instinct bred in the bone and born with the breath. We have records when and how the world began, but never a record of the beginning of ornament.
Adam saw that Eve was fair to look upon, and she, I doubt not, long before the serpent tempted her, knew of a method to deck up her tresses so as to increase the fascination.
In this world, and age, and short life, when science has taught us the fallacy of our eyesight, and the imperfection of those organs which the Creator gave to us and called good; when knowledge must be concentrated and bottled into the mind like a quintessence, over-proof, we have no time for wandering amongst words; with our girls, scientific and exact, Cupid must learn to be brief with what he has to tell and not dally with soft nothings. Language must be chosen for its directness rather than for its elegance, if the speaker would not be flung aside like the useless rubbish his weak flourishes have made him.
Pure ornament, like pure language, should be simple in its construction and expression, clear in its meaning, with just sufficient embellishment about it to interest the imagination, leaving the intention honestly revealed to the passing glance. The truest lines of grace are the plainest; the most majestic designs are those freest from detail; the greatest charm about the disposal of drapery is in the fewest folds, big folds, falling straight; the best dressed men or women are thosecostumed the quietest. The sign of a lady and gentleman is simple, unaffected ease—an ease which embraces the comfort of all round so completely that the effort cannot be observed, only the effect, which is kindness and equality. The cynic cannot be a lady or a gentleman, for the province of a cynic is to wound, therefore what cynics gain through being feared they must lose in one boon, that of being loved.
Culture or education does not make a lady or a gentleman; much oftener it makes prigs and insufferable pedantic bores, by rendering the woman and man—through her or his very surfacecrammingof technical names and scientific phrases, without the more complete training of restraint or the polish of consideration—offensive by the air of utter knowledge they put on during conversation, or worse than offensive by the patronising leniency they assume towards the ignorance supposed to be around them.
I have seen fearsome clowns whose boorishness raised all the brute within me before I had talked to them five minutes, to whom Euclid was a relaxation, and a volume of Tyndall or Huxley regarded in the form of light literature.
The utility, or rather the necessity, for ornament runs like an artery throughout our lives, not only in our houses, and dresses, and persons, and possessions, but in our morals and manners; hence my passing observation upon the latter, first:
The savage, with his tattoo and war instruments, attaches a religious importance to it. The lines in the face of the Maori, which mean each curve a grade in his knighthood, or caste dignity, until the face and the body are covered with symmetrical designs, tell to the initiated a family history of sustained honours and glory; and this is the utility of theornaments of the Maori: indeed, it ought to be the intention of ornament, as of all arts, to serve another purpose than mere show, which is only the flashing of a paste brilliant.
From the days when man, like Jacob, set up his immortal stone, to the classic altars of gold which the Greeks and Romans set before the statues of their gods, it marks an epoch, and points towards an aim.
I cannot conceive man content with his rough tanned skins, and his knobbed branch club, or sharp stone fixed into an uncarved handle; void of the instinct of decoration, his woman, like himself, squatting in the sun, without any other intention than to eat, fight, and sleep. No race on earth has been so low, no time so primitive, that love did not lighten it—love the subduer, the purifier, the knight creator. And love never yet shot his arrow where squalid contentment reigned.
The women wove their mats, and the men cut out the handles of their tomahawks. The moist-eyed young Kotori listened to the pipe of the stalwart Toa, and thought of flowers to adorn her braided locks. And the warrior plucked the tendril from the tree as he passed through the forest, and wound it round his brows that the maiden might like him all the better. Cupid first, and afterwards Mars, breathed into the spirit of man the stern necessity of ornament.
Primitive man then looked straight at nature in his adorning of his surroundings. Inspired by love, he became more sympathetic in his tendencies, courteous to the female, zealous of his self-constituted rights, like the Count Falko in that matchless German poem-story of Sintram, more appreciative of the beautiful about him. Fruit attracted him by its colouring, and bloom, and shape, when before he had only thought upon its taste; he fondled the dog which before heonly noticed by his rigid discipline; and from the twisting of the real leaves and flowers round himself and his accoutrements, he grew to imitate them in relief and colours, so that he might have the remembrance always with him when the originals lay withered into dust; bringing to the wigwam, wharè, hut, or palace, the green of June in the white sheet of December, stamping on the icy heart of winter the glowing monogram of festive summer.
So with his animals. The favourite dog was immortalised in this rude, primitive way; the wild beast whom he had fought and conquered single-handed, as David did the lion—boasting about it at camp-meetings, taking it as his ensign, with the motto, ‘I did it all.’ So every man became his own sculptor, historian, poet, and herald; and when language failed, he attempted, by carved ornament and painted symbol, to fill out the want.
I like a consistent boaster. He is honest if not modest, and honesty is far to be preferred to that contemptible mock-modesty which inclines a man to hide what he must have been proud to inherit. Hereward the Wake, in Charles Kingsley’s romance, is a fresh boisterous character whom we must like better when he rode sarkless out to meet the foe than Hereward the false lover and astute politician, who could forsake the woman who had suffered by his side.
I cannot appreciate the poet who is so modest that he requires pressing to read his manuscript. He must have felt that he was doing something worthy of being read or listened to, or surely he would never have wasted his time over the elaboration of the thought; and thinking this, he is an impostor to pretend to cover that honest outcome of his pride and not seek his reward.
Does not the painter paint his picture to be seen, and can anyone admire the modesty that will not hold it up to the passer-by?
Give me the Hereward of the brush and pen; the man who button-holes you like Coleridge, and, shutting his eyes, recites all the ideas which he thinks are fine; the Swinburne who can see his own beauties and not be ashamed to point them out; the Walt Whitman who sings abouthimself; the man who works for praise and is not ashamed to ask for his reward.
Is it subtlety to mask over your meaning with words? Is it the mark of high-toned education and refinement to pretend to comprehend this category of manufactured and meaningless words, this jingling of obscurities?
Is it a sign of ignorance to frankly confess that this sort of thing is beyond you? Then I don’t admire subtlety; I don’t pretend to be high-toned, I glory in my ignorance. ‘Sartor Resartus’ does not seem to me to have any special mission. There are strong passages in it, disconnected pieces that I look upon as a vocabulary, and use accordingly; but the author to me represents neither a seer, a prophet, nor a moral teacher, but only a used-up, tobacco-smoking, ill-natured old man, who ill-used himself, his wife, his friends, and did nothing beyond stringing together a few volumes of vivid expressions to enlighten the nineteenth century. But he understood the ornamental part of language, and for that I like him, if for nothing more.
To leave a modern savage and return to man the primitive. War taught him the utility of ornament, how to make objects and curves to inspire the foeman with horror; and in this we see the first departure from direct nature watching, to invention;the lion or boar was not fearful enough, so he combined their ferociousness and made a mixture.
Religion stepped in next with stiff rules and unalterable decrees, and man no longer sought to imitate nature, but gazed beyond her to the mystic symbol of the unseen. An error in the first instance, in the ornamental expression of her imagery, became a fixed law, as in Egypt and India, where century after century the lines were repeated without the slightest variation, and a conventional false symbol served instead of the clumsy but truthful imitation of the savage.
The Greeks stand the exception to all the barbarism of the world about them; they rose to perfection by quick degrees, and that is about all we can say of their art history. They were refined and simple in their manners, rigid in their habits, before the Olympian court was arranged into order or Homer had invented poetry. Hardy health was their aim and stalwart beauty their standard. The flowing grace of their own unfettered limbs taught them the purity of true art lines. Vintage time was a joyous season to be remembered during winter, so they raised pillars to mark their joy, and cut upon them memories of the vine leaves and honeysuckle which they had watched clinging over their porches in the golden hours.
Very early in the world’s history man found the use of metals, and learned by mingling to harden them. The first statues and ornaments were formed by hammering the metals and beating them into plates and cords to lay upon or twist round blocks of wood and stone—a slow, hard, laborious process with little effect. These were the days when Vulcan and his demons burrowed in the earth’s vaults to forge the armour of Mars.
Gods with glass eyes and the stiffest of limbs yet bore a resemblance to human beings. Egypt was working away content with her foldless draperies and indiscriminate finishing of detail, handing down from father to son their arts and sciences—everything hereditary, from the many grades of the priesthood to the low office of the accursed dissector of the sacred body to be embalmed; building her mighty monuments and laying on her rigid tyrannic colours—the harmony of law that was right by chance.
Phœnicia was waking up and gaining a name amongst nations; the dyed stuffs and embossed golden cups and clean-cut coins of Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage, which sent out laden ships and grew rich through industry.
Greece was striding on through wars and revolutions and conquests, art and ornament grew strong and refined, and thus became daily a stricter necessity. Their own habits were simple, but their gods were extravagantly administered to. Homer taught them to sing, and to work broadly and delicately.
Homer, the grand old man, the blind beggar who could look with those spirit eyes into centuries, who assembled the gods in order, placed the immortal stragglers in poetic arrangement, utilised the court of love to his own imperial cadence, and became the father, not of his own tribes only, but of all nations. What had their battles done but for his pen? Helen were a forgotten sin, Troy a fleck of white dust—all the heroes of that deathless romance only the vanished marshalling of an ant-hill; for what are we after our lives have gone unless the poet or the novelist creates us afresh and gives us actions that will not die? What is our pain or our pleasure to the partner of it all? We cannot feel theirs, they cannot know ours. My sorrow will not let me judge of yours, for I lookupon yours from the outside—a sight, the glimpse of a covered volcano—while mine is here where I can see it no more than you can, but my living soul is writhing in the flames. Will my pain give me yours? No! and so the griefs and passions of two centuries dead and unchronicled cannot stir a thought.
The writer lives and cries: ‘Come out, O Lazarus! shake from you the dead cerements, live as you lived, think again; and as you think so shall your thoughts be fixed and roll through Time.’
Homer lived and sang, and heroes rose, and virtue became tangible, and right was fixed, and wrong grew a thing. The painter and the worker in stone and metal had a theory. Beauty was fixed by the Judgment of Paris, mythology became a living creed; while he, the blind father, spake on, sang on, unheeded, yet insensibly becoming the educating founder of a school where the world must enter and learn till the end has come.
As Homer did to the Greeks, so the novelist does for us—presenting to our eyes the world we have not seen, society we may not enter, manners we could not know but for him; virtue gets the reward, vice gets the punishment, the knight of chivalry inspires us with the desire to emulate. The noble path of honour is pointed out, and we glow as we read, with the desire to follow: what sermon could teach us more? The theatre is a church of refinement and morality, teaching us how to act in this world, which, as inhabitants, we require as much as the tenets of the next, about which we know nothing: so the novel. I have read all kinds of fiction: George Eliot, who tells us things as objectionable as the author of ‘The Lady of the Camellias’; Dumas, who pointsout the virtue of fidelity even in ademi-monde, that false heroine; Zola, the needful man with the muck-rake. I have seen the novel-reader world-wise, and the philosophy-devourer a fool. Novels are the histories of humanity: they teach us a wisdom that years of sorrow only could reveal; through them we may look into the hearts of men and women and not be deceived by the smiling mask of deceit; they bring to us a world we dare not visit, telling us what we ought to know about sin and suffering; they inculcate knowledge in a pleasant way, preaching to us virtue and nobility, warning us of falsehood; in them we go out to the Valley of the Shadow of Death and are able to conquer the Monster without any risk of scars, to pass through the world and yet be pure, to know all things without tasting of the forbidden tree: and can the preacher do more?
Ornament your houses, ornament your persons, your manners, and your morals; even morality can be made very ugly if it is presented to us gaunt and square—without the undulating lines of forethought and forbearance, without the graceful folds of divine charity. I have seen morality brought out and held up such a forbidding skeleton that the soul artistically inclined shrank back aghast from the weird spectre.
Take one short half-hour to glance over your own faults of a morning, and you will be astonished at the perfection you see around you. Think but for a few moments upon the wisdom you have gained in your earth sojourn, and I defy you to open your mouths when even ignorance boasts.
It is so nice to be sure of our subject, to sit down and listen to a tinkle of babble and know what ought to be, toenter the room we have decorated and feel that there is nothing wanted, to look into the mirror and feel we are dressed, to clasp our friend by the hand and feel we are united: that this is contrast sufficient, and harmony through it all.
I have said nearly all that is required about ornament, because I intended to speak to you in a general way. True, I might tell you about the rules of the Greeks regarding ornament; how they modelled, punctured, painted, and fired their vases; how they preferred a cameo to a costly stone, a bit of mind to a rare flash; but what would that avail to what I want? I want my friends to be men and women, to have a reason for all things, to know why the scarf goes round their neck or the boots upon their feet.
I don’t want them to like Henry Irving only because he is fashionable, or to talk cant about pictures. I want them to be honest—to like, and openly say so, in their ignorance the things of ignorance, and come from the outer to the inner circle by degrees and openly. I want my friends to eat, drink, dress, and sleep as they ought to, as creatures who have inherited an immortality; who are all one (except by learning), patrician or plebeian, and who aim at refinement; not to be dazzled like weak moths by a glitter, but to enjoy the light if it is a good light, yet not to mistake the farthing dip for the electric flame; to look past the splendid expression in a poem or speech and see if the centre line is straight; see what the motive is, for that is the soul of the poem or picture.
I have met men and women with souls so colourless that, but for the bodies which gave them a place, they would never be observed; souls which could never reach a heaven or becarried the length of a hell, but with the dissolution of the carcase; which might, through an outside effort, be able to flicker up for a moment, but must eventually collapse, and be blotted out as completely as the droppings of a meteor on a midnight sky. Thereflectionof areligiousor anatheisticcolour may pass over them, as the sky colour is cast upon a fragment of jellyfish lying in a sea-side puddle, but they are no more than that shugging mass; the colour goes or the tide leaves them, and they are immediately rendered void. The Egyptian has a dog who sits waiting on souls of this description, who repeat other people’s words, who borrow brains from books, and can neither feel wicked nor good of themselves. The forty-two avengers relate their actions, the Judge weighs them in the scales: there is no heaven for them, for the heaven wants self-illuminated spirits; there is no hell for them, for they are not bad enough; so the Judge scoops up the scales and the limp soul flops into the watchdog’s open jaws, is gobbled up at a gulp, and so there is an end of that poor ghost.
The Hindoo, the Chinese, the Moor, and the Oriental like gorgeous colouring and intricate lines and twistings in their ornament, because they have been accustomed to see nature in her most lavish way. The sun never blinks his eye, or seeks to cover his full strength where they are; straight down he flings himself upon Rhea, and she, the earth, responds with the fervency of a consuming passion, or the love fever of a sea-voyage. There is no place for grey here—it must be white, yellow, red, greens of the richest, russet of the most positive, purples that are not disguised: the fumes of the panting mid-day may be pallid, yet it is not the pallor of ashes, but the gas-haze which quivers above the white intensityof the bloom. Jungles, and closely-knitted bush-tracks, where the speckled adder swelters in the rayless fire; up, down, over-laced, across, there is not an inch which is not covered with its tendril patterns—not a patch where light can pierce that has not its cluster of orange or vermilion blossoming. Life is a delirium in those tropics, the night a fever, and the day a dream; and can we expect calm thoughts to be displayed, or reposeful hues, when even the moonlight is a golden thrill, and stars are shining globes of magnifying power?
Those who live in the north, where the skies are softened veils, and the lakes are placid sheets—where the soul is braced by the north wind, and subdued by the gently wafted west—may well be refined. They are classic born, and to love the simple in ornament or life should only be the effortless yielding of their wills to the instincts of our race.
Study comfort first when you plan your ornaments: if it is a garden or a park, plant the trees that will shelter you best without hurting your health or offending the eye. Build your houses for the sake of the street, the street for the sake of the town, the town for the sake of the land in which it is cast. Assimilate your taste with the taste of other people, sacrificing a little yourself to get some things from them, but not too much; for Jerusalem was kept clean (if it ever was kept clean) by every man looking after his own doorstep.
Plan out your rooms for health: first must come cleanliness and fresh air, next grace and comfort—be comfortable before you are beautified. Get space first. Put out as much furniture and accessories as you can; no more chairs than you want for visitors, no more tables than you strictly need; look round your walls and relieve the blankness with a picture, or a plate, or a vase, or a cast, just to fill up a bareness, not to callattention. We cram on ornaments when we want to cover or screen a defect.
Have your furniture consistent with your room. If you are Orientally inclined, and like a glare, be Oriental to the uttermost—do not stop short at a footstool or a tea-cup; but if you like to rest in your houses, and to be able to think while you rest, have all things plain and sober. Homer and Milton were both blind, and the great serenity of a noble purpose shines like an unflickering alabaster lamp from both.
Do not mix things if you can avoid it; if it is a lion you are making, never blend it with an ape. Observe the flowers and fruits of a season when you plan out a scroll of flowers and fruits, and never bind winter to summer; they cannot agree, and it is better never to join than have to divorce.
Every ornament must have a backbone to start with, or it will fall to pieces as surely as a society-girl would collapse without her whalebone stays, the modern substitute for the backbone of Mother Eve.
Therefore, if you wish to exercise an influence on the world about you, and raise the ideas of beauty, seek after health first, comfort next, and beauty will follow of its own accord.
Every man and woman ought to be able to draw as well as see a straight line; should be able to take down the impression of the place they visit as well as they are able to write out descriptions of it in their letters home; they ought to study painting, and know the reason for certain colours being mixed and put on, because taste, although a natural gift, is also an acquired habit up to a point. Imagination is a universal power shared by the lower world as well asman: the dog dreams and hunts or fights, thereby proving that his brain is repainting a scene gone by.
I may describe a picture in words, and you will all see the image of it vividly in your brains, thereby proving that you might reproduce it if you had been trained. As I briefly describe some view in words, your brains will have photographed the picture, for it is instantaneous work with the brain; and the wondrous part of it all will be, that the picture I describe and the picture I draw will not be as you think it is going to be—at least, I cannot hope to be so vivid in my word-painting, for every mind has its own way of calling up the pictures which we hear or read about, each mind taking up its own standpoint, and seeing differently the general aspect and self-constituted aspect.
In fancy I take up a piece of charcoal (the most delightful and freest of all art work), and with a few dashes of my charred vine wand may transport you to the balmy South, where ice the thickness of a sixpenny piece is a sight to boast about, and mosquitoes are an incontestable fact.
This piece of charcoal, which we take on faith to be the remains of a vine stalk, even as I name it conjures up the vineyards I have seen, and my memory is flung under avenues where the broad leaves and the purple clusters hung down, and, interlacing, broke the intensity of the mid-day glaring. I look down a clustering summit to a gleam of deep blue ocean and snow-white strand beyond. This is what the word vine has done to me, and something like this, or perhaps, if not so realistic, more beautiful, would have been the mind-picture even if I had never actually witnessed the vine lanes. Memory is brought into action in my case; in yours, who may nothave seen it all, it becomes the higher quality, creation or imagination.
The human mind is the most perfect painter we can have, without a limit to its invention or a stop to its rapidity—each word becomes a fixed photograph, instantaneously drawn out in all its parts, and coloured to the last hair-stroke.
You see it all, but take a pencil and try to make it corporeal. As you sharpen the lead it is all there, vividly distinct; but while you are thinking where to begin to reduce it into form, it becomes a slender suggestion of dancing outlines—you dash in the first stroke, and it has become an indefinite blurry mess.
That is our difficulty—the reader and myself—for I can see before me just now a full round golden moon in the softest of green-grey hazes, with the thrilling effect of the theatrical limelight all around it; not a cloud in the misty atmosphere shows above that balloon-like ball; it is lying light as a Chinese lantern on the exotic-freighted air; floating over the dim film which represents a mountain in the mid distance; pouring down a flood of white ripples on the river or lake; making a mass of indistinct shadow under the tree roots—liquid shadow where the water laps the winds, velvet shadow where the grasses and plants are all mixed up; an ebony line of carving runs up the shafts of the feathery-crowned palm and the bulby banana tree; a broad black fan drops across the outer rim of that electric circle, as the banana leaf quits the shelter of the broken shade-work and asserts its independence; the tendrils are twisting about, but a pale sparkle alone reveals them; the big spider is hanging from his lair, but a diamond point only shows us where the dew is caught upon the gossamer web—all is breadth and shadow,or glittering silver flame, but our hearts go into the shade that is manifold, into the thickness of that impalpability, and our nostrils drink in the swimming perfume of the lilies and trumpet tree; and although it is but suggested, we can see the tracing of the palm fringes overhead, we can feel the heat of that languid night.
To recapitulate. Dress for your own comfort, and you must please everyone round about you. Eat for the sake of health—that is, eat to live—and you will have sound teeth, sweet breath, and merry months. Love will come to you early and stay long beside you, for years are only grains of sand in the calculating glass of Cupid, if the hand which holds it is steady and moist. Time limps, and an hour is lingering pain; or else flies, and the brown locks change to silver in a song of joy.
THE AVENUE-HOBBEMATHE AVENUE-HOBBEMA
WE will, in this chapter, take a quick run round the walls of our great National Exhibition, at least round that portion of it where the early masters of painting are at present represented.
I am going to give my impressions about those masterpieces which have been secured by experts for the benefit and pride of the nation; speak about them without any more reverence than the modern art critic might talk about a Millais or a Leighton, or any other living master who byreason of his body being still with us, and being still able to eat and drink, places his work within reach of the everyday critic; and in this spirit of independent impartiality I wish my readers to try to follow me.
I intend to give to these old pictures all the praise that I can bestow consistently with my own art knowledge, because being one of the owners of them I do not wish to decry my own property. Indeed, as a painter I should like to make every allowance for the faults of men who, coming before the modern masters, had so many more technical difficulties to overcome than their successors had at the start of their professional education; but I wish to look at their works as the production of human beings who lived in their own times as we do in ours; in fact, I want to look straight at them, without regard for their names, and tell you, as students, the pictures which are of the greatest value to you as well as to me, and point out why, in my opinion, they are thus valuable.
Therefore, if you are not prepared to follow me in this spirit, you had better read no more of this chapter, for I may shock your sensibilities with my remarks. If you cannot look past the halo which Time has placed round the head of Raphael, for instance, and view the man in the same independent spirit in which you would look at the work of a man whom you might meet any day in the street, do not go on, for I shall only rouse in you a fury of scorn or indignant pity; and although I do not mind personally being considered a presumptuous fool and iconoclast, still I have no desire to lash anyone into fury or make him stain his soul by hatred. I would rather keep the whole world happy and at peace with me than rudely disturb the serenity of their pet delusions.
Still, in spite of my own inclination towards comfort,I must tell the truth for the sake of those who wish to see things as they really are, and not as they have been taught to believe they are. I will try to be plain if terse, and while extolling the virtues, point out the smaller vices, without considering my own private feelings in the matter.
For instance, I have been taught from my earliest years to regard Raphael as removed beyond criticism, to accept all that came from his brush as almost divine—himself as the perfect painter of perfect pictures. Judge, then, and pity my feelings, when, with a temerity approaching to the suicidal, I begin my critical and analytical remarks with the picture which, ‘by common consent, is considered to be one of the most perfect pictures in the world,’ as ‘it is also one of the noblest embodiments of Christianity.’ I refer to the ‘Ansidei Madonna,’ No. 1171,[16]purchased for the nation from the Duke of Marlborough for 70,000l.: the highest-priced old master perhaps in existence.
Let us regard this great picture quietly for a few moments, and try, if we can, to forget its price and its painter, while we analyse its composition and other artistic qualities, i.e. bring it down to the standpoint of a picture painted by a living artist, and exhibited, say, in last year’s Academy; for that is the way I am going to treat them all, for the benefit of the student who may wish to copy them as well as of the ordinary owner, who desires to learn why his representatives have paid so much for his property.
From a decorative point of view I readily admit that this is a fine work. As the design for an altar window, to be reproduced in stained glass, it seems to be much more suitable than as it is at present, inside a frame.
But it is not the finest picture in the world; it is not even the best example of the same master that we have in the National Gallery; it is greatly inferior as a painting to ‘Pope Julius II.,’ No. 27, which is, in technique, the best work we have of Raphael’s. It is not nearly so good in its design as the Garvagh ‘Madonna,’ No. 744; nor in expression can it be compared to the ‘St. Catherine of Alexandria,’ No. 168.
As a painting it is not a success; in design it is stiff and commonplace in the extreme. The throne of the Virgin Mother is an ugly dividing blot in the picture, allegorical although it may be in its accessories and details; it is a hideous box which breaks the picture into three parts, and utterly destroys all sense of unity and harmony. The emblems, although freely enough painted, are forced and badly placed. The Virgin Mother’s face has no expression, unless it be that of inane contentment. She is certainly not studying the book which she holds on her knee and fingers so affectedly. The baby Christ is well painted and good as a baby, but He is held with too careless and limp a hand by his emotionless and expressionless mother.
I have no fault to find with the figure of the good Bishop Nicholas of Bari; it is realistic and natural, and stands as a Bishop might stand if reading aloud from his prayer-book to his congregation. But St. John the Baptist is not nearly so satisfactory a piece of work; the position is strained even for ecstatic contemplation; the advanced leg does not seem to be connected enough with the body, and in its pose appears to be pointed with the exaggerated attempt at grace of a dancing master; therefore, although the general colouring ispleasing, and the manipulation of detail easily managed, without too much minuteness and labour, this picture isnot a work which I would advise students to copy, if they wish to cultivate good composition, perfect drawing, and general unity.
As to its intrinsic value, I should price it at 8,000l.instead of 70,000l., because I do not think the best picture in the world is intrinsically worth more than 10,000l., no matter how rare it may be as a picture pure and simple. In consideration of its merits, which certainly counterbalance its demerits, I would fix its price as it now stands at 500l.; but because it was painted by Raphael Santi, and therefore has its value over and above its merits as a work of art, I put it at the figure I have named—500l.for the picture and frame, and 7,500l.for the name of the painterand the antiquity of the article.
I limit the price of this work of art because, while the great bulk of the nation, to whom this Raphael belongs, are writhing under the awful ills of the direst poverty and affliction, it becomes us as units to consider whether we have a right to spend so much money upon a single picture with the starving owners of it all round us; to weigh it in the balance and think whether the spiritual or artistic pleasure which the contemplation of that work gives or may give to the educated masses is a just and fair equivalent for the starving or slaughtered thousands which the money that purchased it might have kept in comfort and life. If the work of the ever-living Raphael is not sufficient equivalent for a starved thousand or two, if it does not yield complete satisfaction to all, in their every phase of contemplation, then I hold that the dead and gone Raphael has cost the nation 62,000l.too much, which might have been expended better in other art directions.
Personally, in spite of all that I have read in praise of it, this picture does not give me complete satisfaction as an artist, and none whatever as a devotionalist. Perhaps it may affect the general masses differently, however.
Returning to my favourite, or, as I consider it, the best National Gallery example of Raphael, ‘Pope Julius II.,’ this is a work of art which may be examined by both artist and amateur with unqualified pleasure and instruction. It ranks with such realistic masterpieces as Rembrandt produced, and it is almost as unaffected as the ‘Portrait of a Tailor,’ by Moroni, No. 697.
It is painted in a rich colour scheme of red; warm, ruddy complexion, scarlet cap, and cape lined with white fur, and a soft, creamy under robe of some woolly material, with red and gold tassels on the chair behind. The hands and finger rings are splendidly painted, the expression is masterly in its combination of power and repose. Anyone can tell at a glance that this is a true likeness of the Pope, taken when he had an hour of leisure, and faithfully reproduced without any attempt to idealise. It is said not to be so well authenticated as some of the other works by this painter, but for the purpose with which I now write it is better than any of the others, and of most value as a study for the copyist.
The Garvagh Raphael, 744, ‘The Madonna, Infant Christ and St. John,’ is a picture not too dear at the price it was bought for, viz. 9,000l., for it is well worth 2,000l.more than the ‘Ansidei Madonna,’ in consideration of its superior composition, chiaroscuro, drawing, and colour. It is all beautiful and human. The comely mother with two lovely children beside her gives us the true divinity of holy maternity; the landscape behind is deliciously and tenderly painted, and theonly blemish in the composition is that discordant and mannered pillar behind the Madonna, placed there for the too obvious reason of throwing her face, with that of Christ, into better relief, as in the Ansidei picture, and, like it, spoiling the concord with its heaviness and the stiff, stage-wing-like uniformity of the two windows behind.
168, ‘St. Catherine of Alexandria,’ is a sentimental study of a robust and soft-handed young woman, with a sketchy background in umbery tones. It looks like an experiment of Raphael’s, and in pose is almost grotesque in its lackadaisical rapture, yet it is finely painted as to flesh tones and other details. So also is No. 269, ‘The Vision of a Knight,’ which is, as an example of this painter at the age of seventeen, positively marvellous; yet for all that, although the design is good, and the composition freer than the general laws at the time laid down, as a study for the young painter it is not good; it will make him too easily satisfied with himself and with his drawing. Still, it has its special interest to the painter, as revealing what Raphael could do in his early student days.
My present task, however, is not to waste time going over the indifferent works in the Gallery, but rather to point out, as they occur to me, those masterpieces, the studying of which may educate the mind of the outsider to whom Art is a mystic term, and advance the student in his education as a painter.
I therefore turn from the formal and affected Ansidei to a picture which at the present time is placed near at hand in the same room, as I think it will make your minds rebound with real relief; at any rate, I know that it will go far to educate you in the knowledge of what a good piece ofmasterly work is. I refer to No. 1315, ‘Admiral Adrian Pulido Pareja,’ by Velasquez.
For a full and sympathetic account of this great painter’s work, the student cannot do better than read ‘Annals of the Artists of Spain,’ by Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, published by John C. Nimmo, in four vols.
This portrait comes upon us like a revelation of ease and masterly handling. There is nothing like it in this respect in the whole Gallery; indeed, it was considered so life-like when it was first painted that King Philip mistook it for the man himself, and gave it a royal chiding for wasting his time at Madrid. Sir Joshua Reynolds says of this master: ‘What we are all attempting to do with great labour, Velasquez does at once.’
I fix upon this portrait because the copyist will learn more from a single figure than from a crowded composition, and the drawing out and copying of this work will do more to make a master of him than any other study.
It is like painting direct from nature, with a teacher of great experience at your elbow to prompt you as to the right brushes and colours to use. It is all fire, dash, and vigour, bold and free as the best work of our own contemporary, James McNeill Whistler. The drawing is perfect and the colours are nearly as brilliant as when they were first put on. Here, as in the works of Shakespeare, we have the ‘mirror held up to nature.’
Opposite to this work in the present arrangement of the pictures we have a companion as to size and quality, although not quite so simply treated, No. 1316, ‘An Italian Nobleman,’ by Moroni—the painter of the most perfectly natural portrait in the National Gallery, No. 697, ‘Portrait of a Tailor.’
In the ‘Italian Nobleman’ the quality is so good and unforced, the art so covered up, unobtrusive, and natural, that the student is apt to begin copying without considering the difficulties before him; therefore I would advise him or her to turn first to the Tailor’s portrait before he tackles this less perfect, yet more difficult, ‘Nobleman.’
This, the Tailor portrait, looks at you to-day as quietly and modestly as if still waiting for your instructions, with his shears in his hand, as the original must have done more than three hundred years ago; it is so highly finished in all its details, so perfect in its expression and pose, and, as I have said, so undemonstrative on the part of the master, that one is apt not to wonder he had no honour in his own country. It takes a painter of some experience to appreciate Moroni properly, as Titian did, although ordinary spectators will hardly pass it over without saying ‘How natural!’
The other pictures of this rarely gifted master all bear the same stamp-mark of matchless workmanship and power of depicting character: No. 1023, ‘Portrait of an Italian Lady,’ in red satin dress; 742, ‘Portrait of a Lawyer,’ in black velvet; 1024, ‘Portrait of an Italian Ecclesiastic;’ and 1022, ‘Portrait of an Italian Nobleman.’ While the student may satisfy his cravings with that likeness of ‘Pope Julius II.,’ No. 27, and perhaps one of Raphael’s infants, he cannot do better for himself than take the whole of the Moroni works, and follow up with what he can get of Velasquez.
While giving these hints to students about single subjects, I will run over those heads or portraits which have mostly impressed me as being more or less useful to take in this course of study for their special qualities, after which I shalltake up some of the larger compositions, and finish up with the old landscape and seascape painters.
No. 852, the ‘Chapeau de Poil,’ by Rubens. For ease and strong colouring, as well as expression, this is one of the best for a young artist whohas experience enoughwith his brush to paint it quickly. You may labour with improvement upon the portraits of Moroni, but you must work quickly and decidedly when you attempt to reproduce Velasquez or Rubens.
There are two portraits which I have always been fascinated with for their delicacy of execution. One is 585, ‘Portrait of Isotta da Rimini,’ by Piero della Francisca, and the other ‘The Doge Leonardo Loredano,’ No. 189, by Giovanni Bellini.
Both have been painted about the same period, at least within the same century, the fifteenth, and are distinguished by their high and minute finish and tenderness of outline; they are both well worth copying.
The ‘Ecce Homo,’ No. 271, of Guido Reni, is a good study of pain, and also good for the copyist because of its free and sketchy execution; it ought to be copied, as it was painted, in one working. Thus, the student who desires to be successful in his work ought to study the original well, and determine,if he possibly can, how many workings the master took to complete his work. In this case, Guido Reni began and finished his sketch at one sitting, meaning it only as a rough study for some larger work. Rubens did a number of his in the same method; indeed, if the artist is decided enough about his effects and intentions, he will endeavour to finish his work as far as possible in the one working, for oil-painting, like fresco-painting, is apt to look hard, artificial, and waxy,if worked over too much; in water-colour the artist need not place any limit to his different workings.
The best and richest colourists, with perhaps the exception of Rembrandt, finished as they went along, particularly in the flesh portions. The drapery and accessories may be retouched without so much damage, but excepting those masters who cultivated and depended upon the art of glazing,[17]most of the best men finished their backgrounds and draperies before they touched the figures, i.e. their pupils did all that was in those days considered subordinate parts, and left the flesh for the masters to do at the last: a great mistake on the part of the masters.
The other pictures of Guido Reni are not worth much consideration. His ‘The Magdalen,’ 177, is a fascinating study for young people, as it is intensely sentimental, with lavish masses of fair hair floating about, while the face expresses a sweet abandonment oflarge-eyedsorrow. I am afraid that I must echo John Ruskin’s sweeping verdict on his ‘Susannah and the Elders,’ and say also that it is ‘a work devoid alike of art and decency.’
The ‘Portrait of Himself,’ 690, by Andrea del Sarto, is a piece of rich, quiet colouring and fine drawing; so also is his other example. No. 17, ‘The Holy Family.’ He was counted one of the faultlessly correct painters of his age, and his pictures command high prices. They are excellent alike in tone and the other academical qualities which are useful to young painters who aim rather at mastering the technicaldifficulties of their art than the imitating of style; therefore, I recommend this portrait particularly as an early subject before grappling with such overpowering masters as Rembrandt, Velasquez, Murillo, or Moroni.
For a young artist wishing to form a good manner on the old masters before he takes to the new, I would recommend him to take as a course the following masters in the order in which I place them. Begin with Fra Filippo Lippi. I do not mean the whole of his compositions, but a few of the solitary figures. Take next that spiritual and melancholy picture, No. 275, ‘The Virgin and Child,’ &c., by Sandro Filipepi Botticelli, and copy it all through carefully, particularly thesoft, yet artificial, outlineswhich he gives.
Take next the Venus in that splendid masterpiece by Angelo Bronzino, No. 651, ‘All is Vanity.’ I do not know anywhere in the whole National Gallery a picture where the flesh tones on a nude figure are more perfectly painted. There is hardly any shadow at all about this figure, and hardly any positive colour, yet the flesh stands out voluptuously and softly, and the drawing is exquisite.
Next take Moroni, whom I have already described, and after working at him conscientiously, release yourselves by taking up Murillo and Correggio—his ‘Mercury instructing Cupid in the presence of Venus,’ No. 10. Rubens, copy just a little. Velasquez, copy the whole of his examples, and lastly try Rembrandt. You may then study one or two of the living masters, if you think fit,and have the time. If you have worked conscientiously with the earlier masters and in the spirit of the later ones, I can trust your own judgment to choose which modern man you are inclined to follow for a little while; but if you have got the gift of the true painter inyou at all, after the course which I have prescribed, I expect you will dash along and try for academical honours, without any further delay, by aiming at originality; for amongst the mighty circle whom I have mentioned you will have discovered a style all your own, and I predict that it will be a good style.
Hans Holbein, the younger, is a fine man to copy if you wish to get a firm grip of your subject: there is little or no sentiment about him, but what he saw he painted with fidelity and care. No. 1314, ‘The Two Ambassadors,’ is a picture which is not only interesting as a painting, but also for the uncouth historical object which occupies the centre of the foreground, a kind ofex librispuzzle, meaning the painter’s name, which does not improve the painting as a work of art, even although Shakespeare does mention it, or puzzles of the like description. It appears to me unworthy of any painter to spoil his picture with such a childish mystery as this elongated or distorted projection of a human skull, hollow-bone, orhohl beinrepresents.
I do not pretend that this is a great picture—none of Holbein’s are. Henry the Eighth was a man of strong material tendencies, who liked things tangible, and who was without a particle of imagination, tenderness, or ideality in his composition, and therefore this German materialist exactly suited him. Hans painted men and women as he saw them, without attempting much in the way of grouping or posing; he painted them hard and fast in their extravagant costumes, with all their family jewelry upon them, and as many accessories round them as he could possibly cram in, because he loved to work and did not think to spare himself a week or two longer of patient energy, care, and labour; but hepainted well what he did paint; therefore I recommend him to the young student who is disposed to become ambitious, Frenchy, dashy, and careless before he has learnt how much, or rather how little, his brushes can do to bring his ideal to fruition.
In ‘The Two Ambassadors’ the student will find all sorts of articles crammed in for the purpose of giving the painter something more to do. He had no higher aspiration than his august master had, therefore he exactly suited him, but he possessed the talent of infinite patience; and so I offer you Hans Holbein as the best mechanical workman of his country. He is a typical German in the hardy sense, as much as his countryman, Albert Dürer, was in another and a loftier sense; for they are, like the Scotch, either sure or hard-headed materialists or else seers and dreamers: often both combined.
We turn from hard Holbein to Murillo with a sigh of relief. We have done our dry-as-dust task; now let us take our fill of solid pleasure, of which there is no let in the works which this painter has given us: ‘A Spanish Peasant Boy,’ 74; ‘St. John and the Lamb,’ 176; ‘The Birth of the Virgin,’ 1257; and ‘Boys Drinking,’ 1287. I like all his pictures, but I like his boy best of all; in fact, if you want good solid practical painting—stuff which will help you on in life, and give you real comfort as a painter or as a looker-on—go either to the Dutchmen or the Spaniards.
Look at that kneeling figure, ‘A Franciscan Monk,’ 230, by Francisco Zurbaran, for chiaroscuro and bluff power; ‘The Dead Christ,’ 235, by Spagnoletto, for vigour and strength of touch; ‘The Dead Warrior,’ 741, by Velasquez. Could any man want to paint better?
For the Dutch and Flemish, turn to Gallery XII., and besatisfied that you have got real men to deal with and to copy, instead of flimsy Italian sentimentalists, like the Church-bred early masters.
Take Teniers, with his delicious silvery tones and crisp touch, the man who paid his dinner with a picture, and painted his picture first while the dinner was cooking: compare David Wilkie with him, and see how David Wilkie shrivels up with heat before the cool tones of David Teniers the younger. Consider Cuyp, with his precise touch; Van Eyck, the father of oils, with his quaint mediævalism and patient symbolism; Weyden, as in 653, with his rigid adherence to facts; Quintin Matsys, with his hard high finish; Rubens, the lavish and exuberant; Vandyke, the refined; Gerard Dow, with his exquisite delicacy; Frans Hals, with his vigorous handling and open colouring; and lastly, the greatest master of all, the immortal Rembrandt, whom, for his portraits, chiaroscuro, colour, and vigour, I cannot find words to praise enough.
No one has a right to speak as an art critic about pictures unless he can paint a picture himself, or at least is able to copy faithfully the picture which he criticises.
I trust that I may say, by way of apology for my present free criticism, without being carped at as a vain boaster, that I have painted original pictures in landscape, seascape, and composition. I can also say that I have copied some of the masters whom I recommend, and can copy any picture ever painted, provided I have the leisure; and also I can tell you, after I have copied a picture carefully, exactly how the master painted his picture, the number of times he worked over it, and sometimes also not only the time he took to do it, but also his moments of hesitation and inspiration, depression and artistic exultation. But before I can tell you allthese secrets about the mystic dead, I must first study his work by copying it; it would be only guesswork were I to content myself with looking at his canvas or panel; and what I am unable to do with my long and extensive training as a painter, I defy any non-painting art-critical dilettante to be able to do. John Ruskin qualified himself as an art critic by learning to draw and paint, and when bigotry or bilious bad temper does not interfere with his critical vision, he stands, and must for ever stand, pre-eminent amongst art critics. No human being, however gifted he may be, is able to see colours or any other merit in either a picture or a book when he has a fit of indigestion or dyspepsia. The blue appears green, the clouds heavy, the firm lines shaky, the composition vile, the chiaroscuro gloomy, and the general colours dirty and unsatisfactory. A proper pill taken in time by the critic has often saved the reputation of the painter, poet, or novelist. As one patent medicine advertisement has announced, with a wisdom which should go far with sensible thinkers to recommend the drug: ‘Dyspepsia leads more often to the divorce court than vice.’
To return, however, from these reflections to Rembrandt, the master whom I am at present examining. We have fourteen examples of this art-Shakespeare in our Gallery at present, and I only wish that we had an apartment devoted entirely to him, as we have to Turner. I should have been well content, and should never have uttered a word about the indigent poor, had the 70,000l.been spent on Rembrandts, and the ‘Ansidei Madonna’ still remained in the Marlborough or some other private gallery, because I think that the British public would then have had better value for its money.
I will grant at once that his drawing is abominable inhis larger compositions and his figures takenindividuallyare undignified and often even ludicrous, or rather they would be all this in any other painter who had not his scheme of chiaroscuro and colour-intentions, but with him I would not have them altered. As they are, they all go to complete the harmony; indeed, I believe that he gave them this grotesque appearance intentionally, because his portraits prove that no man could draw more perfectly, as no other man could use the brushes as he could.
No. 51, ‘Portrait of a Jew Merchant,’ three-quarter length; 166, ‘A Capuchin Friar;’ 190, ‘A Jewish Rabbi;’ 221, ‘His own Portrait;’ 237, ‘A Woman’s Portrait;’ 243, ‘An Old Man;’ 672, ‘His own Portrait’ (1640); 775, ‘An Old Woman’ (1634); 850, ‘A Man’s Portrait:’ all these portraits are so splendid in their qualities, and appeal at once so strongly to the sympathies of artists and ordinary sightseers, that I must leave them to speak for themselves. You look into the frames as through a window into a shady room, and see the living characters sitting before you; the texture of their clothing is reality rather than realism; there is no attempt on the part of the painter to assert himself; he has buried himself in his subject.
As for the skill involved in all this unaffected simplicity, begin to copy one of these portraits, and you will find out a portion of it, and as you finish off with your glazings then you will look vainly into your colour-box for browns and siennas and lakes to get at that translucent depth, and at your colour lists with dissatisfaction. This master will be too much for you to penetrate through all his films, yet rest content if you are able to dive a little way below the surface without stirring up the mud. James McNeill Whistler alonehas been able to approach Rembrandt in his etching qualities; no oneyethas been able to come near him in his wonderful shadows, except George Paul Chalmers.
Yet we must not forget that Time has to be taken into consideration with much of the depth and richness of the old masters. With paint we may, after a measure, imitate a painter as he left his picture when finished; but Time, the constant worker, has put on subtle gradations of glazings which no madder or brown can imitate, and this must be your consolation.
Before leaving the portraits I must call your attention to Vandyke’s masterpiece in this walk—52, ‘Portrait of a Gentleman,’ a head only, therefore we are not aggravated by the display of any of those unnaturally refined hands which disfigure so many of his full-lengths; this portrait may take its place with any other likeness in the world.
We have nothing of Michael Angelo Buonarroti in the form of painting worth looking twice at in the Gallery; he did not like oils and he did not succeed with that vehicle.
Leonardo da Vinci is represented by one specimen, 1093, ‘Our Lady of the Rocks.’ It is a heavy but fine piece of work, and well composed—all excepting the rocks, which are not good.
698, ‘The Death of Procris,’ is a masterly study of a satyr; the other portions of this picture are also fine, particularly the landscape behind.
There are two specimens of Tiepolo, Nos. 1192 and 1193, sketches for altar-pieces, than which no works in the Gallery are more useful to the young painter. His scheme of colour is low-toned and restrained, yet delightfully good and pure, while his handling is masterly and free.
Tintoretto and Titian come next; the latter is the most lavishly represented, and the former not seen at his best, even in the three specimens we have, yet they are worth looking at. Titian of course is always masterly, both in his landscape and in his figures. Tintoretto unfortunately was forced by necessity to paint too many pot-boilers, and his fame suffers accordingly.
Amongst the many masterpieces in the Gallery, for majestic composition or fine colouring, I place Fra Filippo Lippi’s ‘Vision of St. Bernard,’ 248; ‘The Circumcision of Christ,’ 1128, by Luca Signorelli; ‘Venus and Adonis,’ 34, by Titian; ‘The Crucifixion,’ 1107, by Niccolo of Fuligno; ‘The Marriage of St. Catherine,’ by Lorenzo da San Severino; ‘The Virgin and Child, with Saints and Angels,’ 1103, by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (I name this early painting for its exquisite decorative qualities and its harmonious combination of carving, gold and paint, as well as for the general design); ‘Bacchus and Ariadne,’ No. 35, by Titian; ‘Mercury, Venus, and Cupid,’ No. 10, by Correggio, for its fine drawing and colour; ‘San Arnolfina and his Wife,’ No. 186, by Jan van Eyck, for its minute detail and realism; ‘The Virgin and Child,’ 274, by Mantegna; ‘Madonna and Child, with Saints,’ 1119, by Ercole de Giulio Grandi, another rich and decorative combination of gold leaf, colour, and carving; ‘Christ at the Column,’ 1148, by Velasquez; ‘The Nursing of Hercules,’ 1313, by Tintoretto; and ‘The Raising of Lazarus,’ by Sebastiano del Piombo and Michael Angelo, No. 1. This last picture is one of the most vigorous in design and execution in the whole Gallery.
About the landscape-work of the old masters there is not very much to be said, as they are mostly conventional,and were painted in the studio from studies; therefore, nature was always falsified and improved (?) upon.
Hobbema ranks first amongst the old landscape painters for fresh, pure colour, and close adherence to nature. ‘The Avenue, Middelharnis,’ 830, is as fine a piece of work as any modern work; it is true and rigid to facts, with a fine command of drawing, perspective and colour—one of the few landscapes really worth copying in the Gallery.
Salvator Rosa is perhaps one of the most spontaneous amongst these early landscapists, and the most reckless. He painted a picture at the one working, and composed a poem afterwards by way of relaxation, and although almost as exaggerated and theatrical in his effects as Gustave Doré, yet his works have an appearance of nature about them, even if it is nature convulsed, which is often lacking about the manufactured efforts of his contemporaries, Claude Lorraine and Gaspard Poussin. ‘Mercury and the Woodman,’ 84; ‘Tobias and the Angel,’ 811; and ‘A River Scene,’ 935, are fair examples of this vigorous artist and versifier. That of ‘Mercury and the Woodman’ I like the best. Gaspard Poussin ranks between Salvator Rosa and Claude, not because he was not so good a workman, but because he was not so original in his style as either. His two best examples in the Gallery are ‘The Sacrifice of Isaac,’ 31, and ‘A Land Storm,’ 36. ‘Dido and Æneas taking shelter from the Storm,’ 95, is also a fine work.
Everyone who admires Turner must certainly honour Claude Lorraine; and as I am one of those admirers, I look upon the earlier painter of sunsets, classical temples, and artistically arranged trees with much interest. He does not, of course, paint atmosphere; only one master did this properly, and that was Turner, but he presents to us a placid andsmiling world which promotes comforting thoughts of rest and joy, and so I give him all due honour as a pretty landscape painter and also an original master. What he did came from his own invention, and if Turner painted better, that was only because he commenced where Claude, his first master, had left off.
The ‘Landscape with Figures,’ 12, and ‘Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba,’ 14, are two of Claude’s best examples. Turner was a daring man to risk the test of Time with the four pictures; at present his two look the best, but in another hundred years, while Claude’s will still appear almost as fresh, Turner’s will have vanished, as all his pictures must, and leave only a few stains and cracks behind. So much for the modern masters when they try to compete with their manufactured tube colours against the wise men of old, who ground their own paints, studied the chemistry of colours, and knew how to prepare their own canvases. A century after this, readers of old books will wonder what John Ruskin meant by praising Turner so extravagantly, when they go down to the vaults where the Trustees are vainly trying to keep the remains of those fugitive masterpieces, by secluding them from the light, while Claude Lorraine will still hang on in his old places, calm, fresh, sunny and metallic. So much for atmosphere against artifice.
HARMONYHARMONY