THE NATURALISTIC LANDSCAPE
We come now to the other arm of the Y, about which we spoke in a
previous chapter. Landscape had been used as a background to the
figures, until in the Seventeenth Century some artists began to make it
the chief subject of their pictures. But no sooner was landscape
painting practised as a separate art than it branched into two
directions. We followed one of these and saw how Claude Lorrain invented
the formal, or classic landscape; taking bits of nature, some from one
place, some from another, and building them up into an artificial
composition, which he made more grand by the addition of classic
architecture. It was not unlike the way in which a handsome house is
built; the materials,--stone, wood, marble, and so on--are brought
together from various places, hewed to certain shapes designed by the
architect, and then put together according to the rule or formula of
building. The main difference is that, though the classic landscape does
not represent any actual spot in nature, it still bears a resemblance to
nature. But it is nature worked over by the fancy of man, and improved
according to his own idea of what is beautiful. The artist did not
paint nature because he loved it as it is but because it furnished him
with material for making a handsome picture. And this picture-making use
of landscape continued to be popular with artists and the public well on
into the Nineteenth Century.
Meanwhile the other branch of landscape painting had been started in the
Seventeenth Century by the Dutchmen. They, as we have seen, were
interested above everything in themselves, their own lives and
surroundings. This was the state of mind of the whole people, and the
artists gave expression to it in their pictures. They too, were
picture-makers, who by their skill of painting and their love of beauty
made their pictures beautiful works of art. But the subjects that they
represented were seldom imaginary ones. They painted what they actually
saw; and with so much truth that their art has been called an art of
portraiture. They made portraits of people, portraits of the outdoor and
indoor life, and portraits of their towns and harbors, and of the
country that surrounded them. So, by comparison with the formal or
classic landscape, we may call their landscapes naturalistic, for they
represented nature as it actually appeared to their eyes.
But their art died with them. As soon as Holland had secured her
independence, her artists began to travel to foreign countries,
especially to Italy. There they set themselves to imitate the great
Italians, and so far as landscape was concerned, joined in the popular
taste for the classic kind. It was not
[Illustration: Crossing the Brook. _J. M. W. Turner._]
until a hundred years later, namely at the end of the Eighteenth
Century, that an English artist, Constable, revived the naturalistic
style of landscape. He was a miller’s son, whose boyhood had been spent
amid the simple loveliness of nature. Later he went to London and
studied painting; but while he worked in the big city, his heart was in
the country, and he suddenly made up his mind to go back to the old
scenes, and paint what he knew and loved. He had seen some of the
landscapes of the old Dutchmen, and resolved that he would do what they
had done. In his own words, he would be a “natural painter.”
It was not long before the example of Constable led some of the younger
French artists to study the old Dutch pictures in the Louvre. They were
dissatisfied with the methods of painting upheld by the older artists.
It seemed to them a waste of time to set up a model in a studio, and
then, instead of drawing it as they saw it, to correct it according to
some standard of perfection. Nor did they find any interest in putting a
number of such figures into artificial groups, in order to build up some
grand composition, supposed to represent some classical subject or story
of the old time. They were full of interest in the life of their own
time, which was the period following the Revolution, when France felt
young again and vigorous, and the young artists and poets and
fiction-writers were eager to express in their work their joy in the
reality of life. When life was so real and so full of promise, why
should they look back to the times of the great Italians and occupy
themselves with the artificial and make-believe?
Among these younger men was one, Theodore Rousseau. He was not only
independent in character and determined to see things with his own eyes
and to represent them as he saw them and felt them, but he had a great
love of nature. This led him away from the city into the country; where
he studied the skies and the trees, and all the objects of the landscape
with an ever increasing love and knowledge, until he came to know
nature, as few have done, and to feel toward it, as a man feels toward
that which he loves best in all the world. His favorite spot in nature
was that which surrounds the Palace of Fontainebleau, an ancient
residence some thirty miles from Paris, of the kings of France. It is a
rolling tract of ground, broken up with rocky glens and thick with
forest trees, especially the oak. On the outskirts of this enchanting
garden of wildness, in the little village of Barbizon, Rousseau made his
home, and around him gathered other artists, fascinated by the beauty of
nature. Among them was the Jean François Millet whose picture, _The
Sower_, we have already studied. He for the most part painted the
peasants, working in the fields or tending their flocks; but the others,
among them Dupré, Corot, and Diaz, painted the landscape, while Troyon
introduced cows into his pictures and Jacque, sheep. With all of them
the motive was to represent nature as they saw and felt it. They are
known as the Fontainebleau-Barbizon group of artists, and their example
has had very great influence on modern art. I shall speak of it
presently; meanwhile will continue the story of naturalistic landscape.
It is a very interesting fact that while these French artists were going
straight to nature for their subjects and inspiration, some American
artists, knowing nothing of the Frenchmen, were doing the same thing. A
similar love of nature and longing to paint it as they saw and felt it
drew them from the city to the beautiful spots that border on the Hudson
River. Their leader was Thomas Cole, who made his headquarters among the
hills and valleys, the waterfalls and luxuriant vegetation of the
romantic Catskills. Other names are those of Thomas Doughty, Asher B.
Durand, John F. Kensett. Sometimes they painted the grander aspects of
the scenery; the broad Hudson sweeping past its headlands, or the lakes
with their girdle of mountains; but quite as often the simpler
loveliness of smiling meadows and cosy farms. But always with the
sincere wish to represent, as faithfully as they could, the natural
beauty that they loved.
Gradually, however, as the country expanded Westward and the pioneer
spirit of the nation was aroused, American artists began to attempt
bigger subjects. Church, Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran attacked the
colossal wonders of the Yellowstone and the Rockies. It was no longer
the beauty of nature that inspired them, so much as its marvelousness
and immensity. As many people believe, they tried to do something that
is beyond the power of painting to express. For on the comparatively
tiny space of their canvasses they did succeed in expressing some of the
appearances of nature’s grandeur, but they hardly made you feel it. I
believe myself it is impossible that they should; for an artist can only
make you feel in his picture something of what he himself has felt; and
he must have thoroughly mastered his own feeling before he can express
it. But in the presence of the stupendous works of nature, as far as my
experience goes, the feeling masters ourselves. Amid the vastness of the
height and depth and breadth and the grandeur and glory and marvel of it
all, our spirit is swept out of us. We see the mighty volume of water
coming over Niagara and hear the roar of its might; but not as we gaze
into the face of a friend and listen to the voice that we have learned
to know and love so well. In the one case our feeling is all brought to
a center of attraction, in the other it is caught away and carried
beyond our comprehension. We can only lose ourselves in wonder.
Well, artists discovered the truth of this. Constable and Rousseau lead
the way, and now it is the usual habit of the landscape artists to study
nature as one studies the face and form, the expression and action of a
friend. One cannot know a number of friends as intimately as one or two.
So they have confined their pictures to the few and simple aspects of
nature; one little fragment at a time, studied with loving intimacy and
represented with the faithfulness of sincere and thorough knowledge. In
doing so, they have learned like Johannes Vermeer and other Dutch
artists of the Seventeenth Century, that much of the beauty and almost
all the expression on the face of nature are due to the effects of
natural light. Light has become the special study of the modern painters
of the naturalistic landscape. And they have carried it further than the
other artists did. Helped by the scientific men, who have examined into
the color of light, the modern artist has found out how to represent a
great variety of the effects of light: cool or warm light, the light at
a particular hour of the day, at a particular season of the year, and in
a particular kind of weather. In fact, the light that he represents in
his pictures is a faithful rendering of some one of the countless
conditions of natural light.
You remember how the light in Vermeer’s picture drew all the parts of
the composition into a harmonious whole and gave it rhythm. So too, in
these modern naturalistic landscapes the artist has ceased to depend
upon line and form in making the composition. The latter is now rather
an arrangement of masses of lighted color. We will talk more about this
when we come to color; for the present, it is enough to remember that we
must not expect to find in modern naturalistic landscapes the same
handsome patterns of composition that we find in the classical. The
modern have less dignity, but a more intimate charm. We do not stand
apart from the scene and admire it; we rather enter in to it and enjoy
it. It is something with which we are familiar in nature, but we are
made to feel a greater beauty in it through the personal feeling that
the artist has put into his work. The French have a term for this kind
of landscape, which well expresses the artist’s motive and the feelings
which his picture inspires in us. They call it the “paysage intime.”[7]
Literally translated this means “intimate landscape”; but it may be
rendered more freely a landscape in which we recognise how intimately
the artist has studied his subject.
* * * * *
I have given you a sketch of the growth of naturalistic landscape in the
Seventeenth Century up to our own day, when this branch of painting has
become fully as important as that of figure subjects. Now let me briefly
describe the change that has taken place in the motive of the landscape
painter.
The motive, or aim of the early Dutchmen was to make their pictures
resemble as much as possible the actual landscape. They were, as I have
said, “portraits” of the natural surroundings. In their desire that the
portraits should be lifelike these artists painted in as many of the
details as they could. Moreover their point of view was objective. By
“point of view” I mean the way in which they looked at the landscape;
and I call it “objective,” because they looked at it simply as an object
in front of them to be painted as nearly as possible lifelike. This is
the usual point of view of the modern photographer. You go to him to
have your portrait taken. He poses you as an object in front of his
camera. His aim is to make a portrait that will be like you, and will
also please you because it is a good-looking picture. He will do the
same for the next person that comes to him, and for the next, and so on.
All of them are simply objects to be photographed. He has no personal
feeling toward any of them; his point of view is objective. But, suppose
he makes a portrait of his own child. He will wish it to be more than a
likeness that any one would recognise. He wants it to be a reminder in
after years, when she is grown up and changed, of how she used to look
as a little one, in moments when to her mother and himself she seemed
more than ever a darling. To him, you see, she is not merely an object
to be photographed; his point of view towards his own child is not
objective; on the contrary it is influenced by his personal love for
her; the picture is to be a likeness plus something more--a reflection
of his own feeling. This personal kind of point of view is called
“subjective,” the opposite to objective. Perhaps you will understand the
difference between the two more clearly by the following sentence: “The
photographer photographs Mrs. X.” The photographer is the subject of the
verb, photographs, “Mrs. X.” is the object. In this case the object is
of more importance than the subject because it is Mrs. X. who pays the
money and has to be considered. But change the words in this way--“The
father photographs his little one.” Now, so far as the taking of the
photograph is concerned, the father is the more important. He is the
subject of the verb, the one who is going to do something and do it his
own way, so as to represent something which he, the subject, has in his
mind. His point of view is entirely his own--the subjective. Observe how
this will affect the way in which he takes the photograph.
The little one has just come in, we will say, from a romp in the meadow.
Her hair is tumbled and the light plays through the silky strands; there
is a sparkle of sunshine in her eyes; her lips are parted in a sunny
smile as she stretches out to her father a podgy hand, tightly clasping
a bunch of daisies. “Little love” he thinks to himself, “what a
picture!” He seizes his camera, and tells her to stand still a minute.
What is it, do you think that he is going to try and catch? I need
hardly say it is the radiance in her face. Perhaps her podgy hand too;
but first and chiefly that expression of happiness and love; for it is
an echo, as it were, of the happiness and love that he feels in his own
heart toward her. If he succeed, the picture will be as much an
expression of his own subjective feeling toward the child, as of the
child herself.
If you see what I mean you can now begin to understand how Constable,
and, even more, Rousseau and the other Fontainebleau-Barbizon artists
looked at nature. No longer an objective point of view, like the old
Dutchmen’s, it was a subjective one. To them nature was not merely an
object of which to make a portrait. It was something they loved, and,
because they loved it, they painted it, and in such a way that their
pictures embodied the feeling which they had for nature. They are full
of the artist’s personal feeling, or as it is sometimes called,
sentiment. A landscape of Rousseau’s sets our imagination working. It
may represent an oak tree and a rocky boulder, half hidden in ferns and
vines, some little spot in the forest of Fontainebleau. As we look at it
we become more and more conscious of the strength and vigor of the tree;
the firmness of its huge trunk, the mighty muscles of its brawny arms,
the grip which it has upon the ground, and our imagination may begin
thinking of the roots hidden below the ground. While the branches spread
out to the sunshine and the air, the unseen roots reach out and grip the
soil and grapple with the rocks, anchoring firmly the tree against the
storms of weather and time. And perhaps we begin to feel, as Rousseau
himself did, that the oak is a symbol of the might of nature; and how
she silently works on regardless of the changes that happen in the lot
of comparatively short-lived men. Or we look at one of Corot’s pictures
of the twilight, in which the trees seem to have sunk asleep in blurs of
shade against the pale, faint light that is fading from the sky; and the
hush and tenderness of the daily miracle of nature’s rest steals over
our spirits. It is as if we were listening to the pensive melody of
some sweet lyrical poem, very gently and reverently read; such a one,
perhaps, as Longfellow’s “Hymn to the Night.” On the other hand, to
receive an impression like that of Rousseau’s picture, we must choose a
poem that tells, not of rest, but of the grandeur of human effort, and
must read it in a strong voice and confidently, as if we were sure that
to be strong and faithful to the end was a grand thing.
Indeed, so many landscapes, not only by the Fontainebleau-Barbizon
artists, but also by modern men who are following in their footsteps,
are full of the suggestion of poetry, and we speak of them as poetic
landscapes. This does not mean that they illustrate any particular poem,
but that they affect one’s imagination in somewhat the same way as
poetry does. The reason is that such artists have the spirit of poets.
For nature arouses in them deep emotions, and their pictures, like the
poet’s verses, not only describe the beauty of nature, but express the
sentiment, or feeling, of their own souls.
On the other hand you must not expect to find this suggestion of poetry
in all modern naturalistic landscape. There are still artists whose
point of view, like that of the old Dutchmen, is objective. They are
content to paint the beauty of nature simply as it shows itself to their
eyes. Nor need we argue as to which is the better way, this, or the
subjective point of view. We may prefer the one or the other; though,
perhaps, it is better for us to keep our minds open to the beauties of
both.
[Illustration: Paysage. _J. B. C. Corot._]