_Claude_ (French, 1600-1682). _See_ 2.
This seaport--inscribed in the right corner _La Reine de Saba va
trouver Salamon_,--is one of Claude's masterpieces. Like its companion,
the picture was painted in 1648 for the Duke of Bouillon. "The
spectator," says Sir Edward Poynter, "may almost imagine that he feels
the freshness of the early morning, and the breeze which sends the
crisp waves rolling in from the open sea, while the limpid purity of
the sunlit atmosphere and the sparkle of the sun on the water, not
only invite sympathy with the more exquisite aspects of nature, which
is, perhaps, the highest achievement of this art, but are expressed
with a simplicity and perfection of execution which surpass all the
works of other painters in which similar effects have been attempted"
(_The National Gallery_, i. 192). The picture which Turner selected to
vie with this is not one of his best, but Ruskin makes a point out of
Claude's poverty of invention in the details. The queen is starting for
a distant expedition, and was going in great state (she went "with a
very great company, and camels that bare spices, and gold in abundance,
and precious stones"); yet the prominent incident in the picture is the
carrying of one schoolgirl's trunk. She is going by sea, and is setting
out in the early morning (for the sun is represented only a little
above the horizon);[55] yet has no wraps, nor even a head-dress. For
the rest, Ruskin notices the tameness of Claude's waves and a certain
conventionality in his treatment of ships and seaports generally. "A
man accustomed to the broad, wild sea-shore, with its bright breakers,
and free winds, and sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless
power, can scarcely but be angered when Claude bids him stand still on
some paltry chipped and chiselled quay, with porters and wheel-barrows
running against him, to watch a weak, rippling, bound and barriered
water, that has not strength enough in one of its waves to upset the
flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of spray over the
confining stone"[56] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i.
ch. vii. § 5). Claude's ships, too, and his conception of seaports
generally, show a strange want of true imagination:
"His ships, having hulls of a shape something between a
cocoanut and a high-heeled shoe, balanced on their keels on
the top of the water, with some scaffolding and cross-sticks
above, and a flag at the top of every stick, form perhaps the
_purest_ exhibition of human inanity and fatuity which the arts
have yet produced. The harbours also, in which these model
navies ride, are worthy of all observation for the intensity
of the false taste which, endeavouring to unite in them the
characters of pleasure-ground and port, destroys the veracity
of both. There are many inlets of the Italian seas where sweet
gardens and regular terraces descend to the water's edge; but
these are not the spots where merchant vessels anchor, or where
bales are disembarked. On the other hand, there are many busy
quays and noisy arsenals upon the shores of Italy; but queens'
palaces are not built upon the quays, nor are the docks in any
wise adorned with conservatories or ruins. It was reserved
for the genius of Claude to combine the luxurious with the
lucrative, and rise to a commercial ideal, in which cables are
fastened to temple pillars, and lighthouses adorned with rows
of bean-pots" (_Harbours of England_, pp. 17, 18). Notice,
lastly, the "atrocious error in ordinary perspective" in the
quay on the left of which the figure is sitting with his hand
at his eyes[57] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch.
v. § 5, pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. ii. § 1).