_Claude_ (French: 1600-1682). _See_ 2.
Narcissus, a beautiful youth, was beloved by the nymph Echo, but he
spurned her love, and when she pined away she was changed into a stone
which still retained the power of voice. But Narcissus, seeing his own
image reflected in a fountain, became enamoured of it, and when he
could never reach his phantom love he killed himself for grief, and the
nymphs who came to burn his body found only the "short-lived flower"
that bears his name. Here, half-hidden in the trees, we see the
Naiad hid beneath the bank,
By the willowy river-side,
Where Narcissus gently sank,
Where unmarried Echo died.
_Ionica._
This was one of Sir George Beaumont's Claudes which Constable so much
admired when he was staying at Coleorton. "I am now going," wrote
Constable to his wife, "to breakfast before the Narcissus of Claude.
How enchanting and lovely it is; far, very far surpassing any other
landscape I ever beheld" (Leslie's _Life of Constable_, 1845, p. 120).
Ruskin, on the other hand, finds fault with some of the details, as
showing Claude's ignorance of tree structure. "Take the stem of the
chief tree in Claude's Narcissus. It is a very faithful portrait of a
large boa-constrictor with a handsome tail; the kind of trunk which
young ladies at fashionable boarding schools represent with nosegays at
the top of them by way of forest scenery." Again, "Observe the bough
underneath the first bend of the great stem, ... it sends off four
branches like the ribs of a leaf. The two lowest of these are both
quite as thick as the parent stem, and the stem itself is much thicker
after it has sent off the first one than it was before. The top boughs
of the central tree, in the 'Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca' (12),
ramify in the same scientific way" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii.
sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 7, 9).