represented. But there were reasons for this. The undoubted pictures
from his brush which are privately owned in England, and to some of
which we have already alluded, are well-known and have figured in recent
exhibitions of Spanish art, so that it was not deemed necessary to
expose them again; while of those in Spain, the greater part is housed
in the Prado Museum (and could not of course be sent to England), and
those belonging to private persons are very scarce.
The examples from English collections were the magnificent portrait of
_Juán de Pareja, the Painter_, from Longford Castle; the bust of _A
Spanish Gentleman_, the property of the Duke of Wellington;
_Calabacillas_, _the Buffoon_ (Plate IX.) which has recently passed into
Sir Herbert Cook’s collection; _The Kitchen Maid_, in Sir Otto Beit’s
collection--all representative of a period of the artist--as well as the
portrait of _Don Baltasar Carlos, Infante of Spain_, which His Majesty
the King of England lent from Buckingham Palace.
Of this last special mention must be made. In our judgment it is an
undoubted Velázquez and, moreover, a most beautiful example. Every part
of the armour, of the legs, of the body, and, above all, the adjustment
of the figure and the design are typical of Velázquez. How has it come
to be regarded in England as a work of Mazo, where the master is so
justly esteemed and where, owing, doubtless to enthusiasm for Velázquez,
nearly all the pictures of Mazo are attributed to Velázquez? Or is it
that some have arrived at false conclusions concerning Mazo and
Velázquez, and when they are confronted by an original and undoubted
Velázquez, are dubious of it because it does not appear sufficiently
typical of Mazo? It has not, to the best of our belief, elsewhere been
observed that the head of this portrait is somewhat faint and flat.
From Spain there were sent _The Hand of an Ecclesiastic_, lent by His
Majesty the King of Spain, a fragment, without doubt, from a portrait of
which the remainder was lost in the burning of the Alcazar of Madrid.
The special interest of the said fragment is that the hand holds a paper
on which is the signature of Velázquez, assuredly, one of the three
authentic signatures of this artist which remain to us, the others being
found on the portrait of _Philip IV_, in the National Gallery, London,
and that of _Pope Innocent X_, in the Doria Gallery at Rome. Concerning
the portrait of _Pulido Pareja_ in the National Gallery, London, we have
already written at some length on another occasion, with the intention
of proving that this portrait is by Mazo, and that the signature is
consequently apocryphal. The _Portrait of the Artist_, from the Fine Art
Museum, Valencia, is a beautiful example, if somewhat damaged and
blackened, and the other three works shown have been more frequently
exhibited and studied than those which are of undoubted authenticity.
Among others of outstanding interest is the _Head of a Cleric_, the
property of the Count of Fuenclara, which, although its attribution is
not unquestioned, is remembered above all as a beautiful piece of work.
* * * * *
We must now commence the rather complex study of those paintings which
compose the Madrid School. We say complex, because, composed as it was
of painters who came from one or the other part of the Peninsula, it
does not possess a precise and regional character, but is the resultant
of the work of many artists whose names we must not forget, as, for
example, Carducho, Caxes and Nardi, of Italian origin, who, or perhaps
their fathers, were brought to Spain as decorative painters. It seems
natural that they should have had imitators or disciples, as it was
precisely in the country of their adoption that artists of this genre
were awanting. But, on the contrary, they were absorbed by the
environment, and produced and achieved a sober and realistic style,
forgetful of the circumstances of their apprenticeship, and, we may say,
hispanicised.
Velázquez was the chief representative of the Madrid school, its
creator, and, more, its prototype, marking the apogee of Spanish
painting. His aim was always to simplify, a purpose which is clearly
obvious from the methods he employed from his youth to his last work,
constantly simplifying his technique and, consequently, his palette. To
the study of his palette alone we have dedicated a work of a purely
technical character (of which THE STUDIO of November 1920 printed an
extract) which space does not permit us to reproduce here, but which we
take occasion to refer to since the simplification of the palette of
this artist, the creator of a school, must be regarded as of
exceptional importance, as characteristic of almost all later Spanish
artistic achievement, endowing it with great individuality and
distinguishing it from all other schools. This circumstance is worthy of
recognition by all who wish to arrive at the true significance of
Spanish painting, so far as its outward manifestations are concerned.
Before dealing with the continuators of Velázquez, we must briefly refer
to painting in Andalusia, where Murillo appears as a great force in
Seville, years after Velázquez had been so in Madrid. Murillo, at first
a disciple of his kinsman Castillo, was soon afterwards a follower of
Pedro Moya. The painter passed during his youth through a whole gamut of
influences, that of Van Dyck especially, alternating at times with that
of Ribera. At twenty-four he was in Madrid, where Velázquez worked and
taught, though only for a short time. When he returned to Seville he did
not forget the lessons of Velázquez, and from this period date those
popular figures, full of character, which began to bring him fame.
Later, Murillo altered his methods, and for the rest of his life
employed a style suave and soft as the Andalusian accent, graceful and
suggestive. His religious works, his _Virgins_, and, above all, his
_Conceptions_ were soon famous, and, an incessant worker, he left a
multitude of paintings which bear a personal and unmistakable stamp, and
reveal an adequate technique, ample in treatment, in a tonality of
varying greys, warm and glowing and without exaggeration.
But in truth the art of Murillo is of less interest than formerly, owing
to present-day preferences, which seek spirituality in art, a force and
even a restlessness which we do not find in the work of this artist. But
his fame in his own day was very great, and for a long time he was
considered as the foremost of Spanish painters. What gave him such a
great reputation? The illustrious Spanish critic, Señor Cossío, has
asked the same question regarding the causes underlying a style so
direct and simple. Murillo’s subject-matter, says Señor Cossío, in the
background as in the thing portrayed, represents always the soft and
agreeable side of life. In the sphere of spontaneous creation, in that
which does not require profundity, nor reflection, Murillo always exerts
an irresistible attraction. His _Conceptions_ are beautiful but
superficial. There is in them no more skilful groundwork, dramatic
impulse, nor exaltation than appears at first sight. To comprehend and
enjoy them it is not necessary to think, their contemplation leaves the
beholder tranquil, they do not possess the power to distract, they have
no warmth, nor that distinction which makes a work unique, and as they
hold just that degree of cultured mediocrity which in thought and
feeling is the patrimony of the majority of people, they are able to
please accordingly. If there be added to this a pious and poetic
sentiment and the celestial and suave expression of his figures, it is
easy to understand the great, indisputable and just popularity which
Murillo has enjoyed. Velázquez thought profoundly, but with ideality;
Murillo has not idealism, nor is he profound. Both are realists, and if
one represents the masculine feeling in Spanish painting, the other
shows at its highest the feminine tendency.
At the Royal Academy seven pictures of Murillo, some of real importance,
were shown. Amongst these religious subjects predominated, _San Leandro_
and _San Buenaventura_, from the Museum of Seville, and _The Triumph of
the Holy Eucharist_, lent by Lord Faringdon. Among the portraits were
that of the artist, the property of Earl Spencer; _Gabriel Esteban
Murillo_, sent by the Duke of Alba and Berwick; and _Don Diego Félix de
Esquivel y Aldama_, from a private collection in Madrid.
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.
* * * * *
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
years in 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 of _A 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 of _The 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 of _The
Marchioness of Santa Cruz_, which is of great importance and very
characteristic. Of religious pictures it is necessary to mention _The
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 work _The 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.
* * * * *
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 most
lacked, and still lack. They are robust, strong and sincere, but without
gracefulness, facility of expression or volatility. _A propos_ of 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.
* * * * *
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 would seem 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.