for Lely’s. Walpole describes him as having been humble and modest, and
adds that with a quarter of Kneller’s vanity he might have persuaded the
world that he was as great a master. I think the anecdote told of him
greatly in his favor, that Charles II, after sitting to him, exclaimed,
on seeing the picture, “Is this like me? then, oddsfish! I am an ugly
fellow.” In such an age of flattery and falsehood it is quite
refreshing to meet with an honest painter.
To give you an idea of the deplorable state of the art of painting
toward the beginning of the eighteenth century, I will quote from Horace
Walpole, who, although by no means a good art-critic, was a man of great
taste and shrewdness. Speaking of the accession of the House of Hanover,
he says:--“We are now arrived at the period in which the arts were sunk
to the lowest ebb in Britain. From the stiffness introduced by Holbein
and the Flemish masters we were fallen into a loose and (if I may use
the word) dissolute kind of painting. Sir Godfrey Kneller still lived,
but only in name, which he prostituted by suffering the most wretched
daubings of hired substitutes to pass for his works, while at most he
gave himself the trouble of painting the face of the person who sat to
him. His successors thought they had caught his free manner when they
neglected drawing and finishing.”
Walpole goes on to deplore the frightful fashions of the period, and
remarks that Dahl, D’Agar, Richardson, Jervas, and others, “rebuffed by
such barbarous forms, and not possessing genius enough to deviate from
what they saw, clothed all their personages with a loose drapery and
airy mantles, which not only _were_ not but _could_ not be the dress of
any age or nation. All these casual and loose wrappings were imitated
from nothing; they seldom have any folds or chiaroscuro, drawing and
color being equally forgotten.”
There are hundreds of these portraits still in existence, but they are
generally relegated to attics and dark corridors of old country-seats,
and no one ever thinks of looking at them. The owner does not like to
make a bonfire of the effigies of his ancestors, but he stows them away
where they will not be seen. Setting aside all questions of art, these
insipid productions are valueless as likenesses. We feel that not only
the dresses, but the faces themselves could not be of any age or nation.
Walpole, like most men of his time, cared but little about historical or
decorative painting, and his remarks on the decadence of art relate
solely to portraiture, but there is no doubt that figure-painting had
deteriorated just as much.
George I, was totally devoid of taste, and the second George (as is well
known) hated “boetry and bainting.” The only employers of artists (I
cannot call them patrons) were country gentlemen and a few noblemen who
wanted their portraits painted. The wonder to me is, not that the
portraits of Richardson and Jervas are so bad, but that they are not
worse.
As the century proceeded, portrait-painting in England did not improve.
We find that, between 1730 and 1750, Thomas Hudson was at the head of
the profession, and no words can express better than this fact how deep
the art had sunk. The only representative of large historical painting
at the beginning of the century was Sir James Thornhill. I do not feel
for this artist the same antipathy that I do for his predecessors,
Verrio and Laguerre.
Indeed, I think that had Sir James lived at any other period he would
have become a really great artist.
He was a very fair draughtsman, and understood the art of grouping with
taste and dignity; but he had not the genius necessary to break away
altogether from the ignoble style of his day.
It would be a profitless task to enumerate the crowd of insipid foreign
painters who found a market for their work in England during the first
half of the eighteenth century. I prefer passing on at once to Hogarth,
who stands up like a giant amongst his dwarfish contemporaries. _He_ at
any rate possessed original genius, and his manual skill, though
inferior to that of the best Dutchmen, was by no means contemptible. His
portraits are amongst the best and most characteristic of the century,
and I can find nothing in his attempts at a higher kind of art, as
illustrated by his “Sigismunda” (in the National Gallery), to justify
either the savage onslaught of Walpole or the contemptuous pity of
Reynolds. On the contrary, it appears to me that this much-abused
picture is a very respectable performance, and I fail to see any
presumption in a skilful and accomplished artist like Hogarth seeking
to escape from the loathsome task of always painting scenes of vice,
misery, or folly.
Sir Joshua ought to have recollected his own “Death of Dido,” and other
attempts in what he calls “the great historical style,” before taxing
Hogarth with imprudence and presumption.
As in these lectures I have often ventured to criticise, and, as some
may think, to speak disrespectfully of our first President and his
discourses, I should like to state that though I do not admire his
pictures as universally as some do, I consider him to have been a
thorough artist; by which I mean that he was saturated with love for his
profession. To him, painting, instead of being a task, was the greatest
pleasure in life, and in pursuit of this pleasure he was indefatigable.
We owe him a deep debt of gratitude as the great regenerator of art in
this country.
The great French art-reformer, David, went back to the antique, and to
nature (who is older still); and this seems to me the more logical
method. But there is no doubt that, practically (considering Sir
Joshua’s own idiosyncrasies and the state in which he found English
portraiture), an intelligent study of the old masters was the best rope
for hauling British art off the mudbank on which she had so long been
stranded.
The name of Reynolds as a portrait-painter is almost as much respected
abroad as it is here. Most of his work is faded and otherwise much
deteriorated, but fortunately the excellent engravings of his portraits
will to all ages preserve his fame as a man of great power, taste, and
refinement.
I confess myself quite unable to appreciate Gainsborough’s pictures as
they are at present appreciated. I don’t mean to say that I undervalue
_all_ his work. I have seen heads by him which I admired exceedingly,
but I must protest against the blind fetishism which would compel us to
accept as good work any weak, trashy picture which bears his name. I
have read laudatory notices both of him and Romney which would tempt one
to say with Borachio, “See what a deformed thief this Fashion is!”
I would recommend young artists to bear in mind a pithy old saying, to
the effect that “One man may steal a horse while another may not look
over the hedge”; and to beware of treating landscape, or portraiture
either, in the Gainsborough style. Should they be misled into any thing
of the kind, they will find to their cost that the loose, flimsy manner
which is greatly admired in the fashionable painter of the last century,
will not be tolerated for one instant in a modern picture.
Amongst the early members of this Academy, Cotes, Dance, and Ramsay were
all portrait-painters, who have, in my opinion, fully as good a right
to celebrity as Gainsborough; but their merits are ignored, whilst
inferior works attributed to Gainsborough fetch thousands of pounds.
Amongst the figure-painters of the eighteenth-century academicians, I
consider Copley to have been far the best. When I compare his honest,
manly work with that of his contemporaries, Angelica Kaufman and West, I
am always struck by its immeasurable superiority. Indeed, considering
that portraiture had been the only branch of the art cultivated in
England since the days of Holbein, and bearing in mind how
figure-drawing had been neglected, I look upon Copley’s pictures with
something like admiration.
I cannot feel the same respect for Barry’s paintings at the Adelphi,
although the effort evinced in these paintings is worthy of all praise.
It was a much-needed protest against the all-absorbing fashionable
portraiture of the day; but unfortunately the artist’s drawing was
neither correct nor refined enough for this kind of work, and I fear it
must be allowed that the execution of these heroic subjects is both weak
and pretentious. In my opinion there are but two English figure-painters
of the eighteenth century whose merit would be acknowledged by an
intelligent foreign critic--by one, in short, who was ignorant of the
market value of pictures, and whose judgment was, therefore, wholly
unbiased. These two painters would be Hogarth and Copley. We will now
see what sort of artists this century of puff and powder produced in
France.
In France the seventeenth century had been a very remarkable period for
art, for it was then that Poussin, Lesueur, Claude Gelée, and Lebrun all
lived and died. Thus, while in England all historical and landscape
painting was a complete blank, France produced some of the greatest
artists that have ever lived. They (at least three of them, Poussin,
Lesueur, and Claude) were great in the largest sense of the word.
Classic, religious, and landscape painting must always, _ceteris
paribus_, take precedence of homely genre and prosaic portraiture.
Invention is a higher quality than power of imitation, particularly
when, as in the case of these three painters, the inventive power flowed
without effort and was exercised with rare taste and judgment. With
these three great artists I coupled Lebrun, not because I consider him
by any means their equal, but because he was the founder of a good deal
of the art which found favor in France during the eighteenth century. It
is with this century that we have to deal; so, without further preamble,
I will begin with Jean Jouvenet.
This artist (but little known out of France) narrowly escaped becoming a
great painter. His early pictures have a good deal of Poussin’s
classical manner about them. Lebrun thought so highly of the young
artist that he employed him as an assistant in the large battle-pieces
he was executing for Louis XIV at Versailles.
Here he no doubt acquired a good deal of Lebrun’s vigor and facility,
but lost the pure taste and classical feeling he had derived from
Poussin. He was a very prolific painter, and all his works are either
life-size or larger than life. They are remarkably well drawn and
vigorously colored, but they lack the one quality which makes Lesueur’s
work so attractive, viz., simplicity and reverential feeling.
It is by no means necessary that the painter of religious subjects
should be an ascetic, nor even what is commonly called a religious man,
but it is necessary that he should import into his work some of the
spirit of Christianity, just as it is necessary for the painter of pagan
heroes and nymphs to imbue himself with the spirit of classical art
until it becomes a second nature to him.
In Jouvenet’s numerous pictures of New Testament subjects the action is
too violent, and the painter has evidently thought more about displaying
his own skill than doing justice to his subject.
In Rubens’ Biblical pictures we often find the same kind of vulgar
bustle and common types, but every thing is pardoned to Rubens on
account of his brilliant color.
Jouvenet’s color, though fairly good, was not of that transcendent
quality which would condone his very unbiblical style of composition.
With all his faults, Jouvenet is rather a favorite of mine. I like his
thoroughly masculine style of work, and I admire his indomitable pluck
and industry. It is related of him that some ten years before his death
he became afflicted with paralysis, which completely crippled his right
arm. He then took to painting with his left, and on recovering partially
the use of his right fingers he used to hold his brush in his right hand
and guide it with his left. It is said that the work thus done is hardly
inferior to what he produced before his paralysis. Contrast this
devotion and love for his art with the tradesman-like indifference of
the English face-painters, of the Knellers, the Jervases, and the
Richardsons, and others who, as soon as they had acquired wealth,
shirked work as much as possible.
Antoine Watteau is another artist of great power and originality, who
made a very marked impression on the Continental schools of the
eighteenth century. Although he died at the early age of thirty-seven he
became quite a _chef d’école_. Lancret was the best of his imitators,
but dexterous and clever as Lancret’s pictures are, they hardly equal
the best of Watteau’s. We have often read and heard about the humble
beginnings of artists, who subsequently became famous, but the poverty
and squalor of Watteau’s student life have, I should think, never been
rivalled. He left his native town, Valenciennes, for Paris without money
and with hardly a rag to cover him. With difficulty he obtained work at
a kind of sign-painter’s, whose principal business was in the religious
votive picture line. A number of young students were employed by this
dealer, and quantity was more insisted on than quality. Watteau got
three francs a week, and as he was an excellent workman he had a bowl of
soup given him every day. He did not stay very long with this man, but
for many years his poverty compelled him to work for others. During all
this time he never ceased taking every opportunity of sketching from
nature, and thus laid the foundations of his subsequent extraordinary
facility. Ultimately he was fortunate enough to meet with the best kind
of patron, not a pompous big-wig who condescended to sit for his
portrait, but a gentleman who possessed a first-class collection of
drawings by the old masters, and who allowed Watteau to sketch and copy
to his heart’s content. This completed our artist’s education. He formed
his style of color on P. Veronese and Rubens, but his elegant and
_spirituel_ drawing and the crisp dexterity of his touch were all his
own. It may surprise some to hear that the painter of the frivolous,
masquerading scenes and of the foppish humors of his day was of a mild
and rather melancholy disposition, longing for the quiet of a country
life, and the unsophisticated joys of a poultry-yard and cabbage-garden.
Watteau’s fame increased after his death, when it was found that not one
of his numerous imitators could equal him. This fame was completely
swept away by the great classical wave which deluged France toward the
close of the century. This wave in its turn receded, and Watteau is now
again at high-water mark.
The able French critic, M. Villot, asks apropos of this flux and reflux
of popular estimation--“Pourquoi ne pas rendre justice en tout temps
(quel que soit le genre, quelle que soit la forme) à l’originalite, à la
force, au sentiment, en un mot au vrai génie?” The answer is, Who is to
determine what “vrai génie” is? It is just because the art-world in the
time of David could see no genius in Watteau that they treated his work
with the most ignominious contempt, and it is because the present French
school is intensely anticlassical that the paintings of the first Empire
are looked upon with loathing. I am afraid that fashion rules public
opinion in art as much as she does in dress.
There are very few artists and still fewer critics who can (like M.
Villot) give an unprejudiced opinion about two such dissimilar painters
as Watteau and David.
They (like politicians) take either one side or the other. They are
swayed by party, and we all know what that means. We all know the
respectful homage paid by Liberals to Conservatives, and _vice versâ_.
I now come to the painters who are most typical of the eighteenth
century. These were the brothers Vanloo and Boucher. I group them
together, as their style and the subjects they treated were so similar
that for my purpose these three or four painters may be treated as one.
Gifted with a marvellous facility of brush, with great industry, and
with no scruples about purity of style, these facile decorative painters
got through an incredible amount of work. Boucher especially fairly
glutted the market with pictures and drawings of every conceivable
subject, and as (although a man of pleasure) he made it a rule to work
ten hours a day, it may be understood that a good deal of this work was
mechanical and commonplace.
The color of all the pictures of this school is as fictitious as the
drawing, but for all that it is not disagreeable from a decorative point
of view; and none but very clever men could have ignored nature with so
little impunity. When I was a student in Paris, the traditions of the
David school had not died out, and to call an artist a Boucher or a
Vanloo was the _ne plus ultra_ of insult. Old David himself, however,
seems to have been more just to Boucher, for when one of his fanatical
classical followers was railing against that master, “I can tell you,”
says David, “that it is not given to every one to be a Boucher.” No
doubt he was right. It is _not_ given to every one to produce over
10,000 works of art, none of which can be said to be much below
mediocrity, and some greatly above it.
Boucher, and even the much-abused Vanloo, were infinitely better
painters in every respect than any artist Italy could produce at this
period. They at any rate had a style of their own, which is more than
can be said for Maratti, Pomponi, and the other miserable followers of
the once great Italian school.
The style was neither noble nor pure, but it was all the better suited
for the decoration of Louis XV apartments. Another figure-painter
contemporary with Boucher and the Vanloos was Greuze.
This artist is a very striking illustration of the power of fashion over
the popularity of a painter. It is not many years ago since a good
specimen of Greuze was worth more than a fine Rembrandt or Van der
Helst. This strange Greuze mania lasted a few years, and then happily
died gradually away.
There is a certain prettiness about his female heads, and I have seen
portraits by him which were remarkably good; but his pictures, such as
“The Malédiction paternelle” and the “Fils puni,” are a curious mixture
of nambypambyism and melodrama.
There were two popular engravings of these pictures, which in Louis
Philippe’s time were great favorites with the lower bourgeoisie; and it
was curious to note how universally they were disliked by all artists,
and how universally admired by all retired grocers, pork-butchers, and
shopkeepers in general.
His _chef-d’œuvre_ is supposed to be the “Cruche cassee” at the
Louvre; and during the Greuze epidemic, hundreds of copies were made of
this (to me) rather offensive picture.
I shall reserve David and his school for my next lecture, but before
finishing what I have to say about the French artists of the eighteenth
century, I wish to mention the portrait-painter Rigaud, and one or two
landscape-painters. Portrait-painting in France was never debased to a
trade as it was in England. Many of the historical painters I have
mentioned executed portraits, and very fine ones too, but the best
portraitist of the century was Hyacinthe Rigaud. His full-length of
Louis XIV is really a grand work. His biographer informs us that he
worked with his brush for sixty-two years, and averaged thirty portraits
a year during the whole of that period. In addition to this he made a
point of retouching the numerous copies and replicas which were made of
his royal portraits. He painted five kings and innumerable princes and
scions of royal blood. Probably no artist ever lived who painted so many
great personages, or who gave such general satisfaction. No man,
however, could possibly get through such a colossal amount of work
without the quality suffering, and there is in Rigaud’s portraits of
minor personages a monotony and mechanical sameness which is very
tiresome, although I never yet saw a portrait by Rigaud which was ill
drawn or badly posed.
It appears that this excellent artist distinguished himself in early
life by his careful academical studies--studies which he continued long
after he became well known as a portrait-painter; and the good results
of this training are evident from the masterly treatment of the hands
and all the accessories in his portraits. It is strange that Sir Joshua
Reynolds, who was liberal enough (at any rate toward artists who were no
longer living), should never have mentioned the portraits of Rigaud.
Another excellent French painter of the eighteenth century was Joseph
Vernet, the father of Carle and grandfather of Horace Vernet. His views
of the seaports of France are evidence of his honest style of work and
indefatigable industry. An able French critic, speaking of these and
other numerous sea-pieces by Vernet, remarks that although he may not
have the delicacy of touch possessed by Vandevelde, nor the glowing
color of Claude, yet no landscape painter ever was more thorough and
uniformly good than Vernet. His figures are always admirably arranged,
and painted with great skill, and his way of viewing nature was simple,
unaffected, and broad. Unfortunately his pictures have become very dark
and brown, and the hanging of all the seaport views together in one
gallery is not a happy arrangement. One’s first impression, on entering
the room, is that they are a collection of old maps, and it is only
after close and patient examination that their good qualities became
apparent.
Hubert Robert was another of the conscientious and indefatigable workers
of the eighteenth century, whose pictures are hardly known at all in
England. His forte was the delineation of old Roman buildings, and the
Louvre possesses several examples of his careful, honest work. On
account of his great reputation as an architect, he was much employed by
Louis XV at Versailles, in designing the garden terraces and park
buildings, and it was probably on this account that he was looked upon
as a Royalist, and thrown into prison at the time of the great
Revolution. There he remained for ten months, employing his time in
sketching and painting his fellow-prisoners. Although he expected every
day to be carted off to the guillotine, the pictures and portraits which
he executed at this terrible time show no sign of careless haste or
nervous indecision. They are extremely valuable as being true records of
the scenes which took place in the prisons, but they are seldom seen in
public galleries, as they were given by the painter to his companions in
misfortune, and are treasured as heirlooms by their descendants.
When I mention that our painter was sixty years old at the time, I think
it will be conceded that he was made of the right stuff.
Having exhausted what I can afford time to say about the French schools
of the eighteenth century, I would gladly pick out a few Italian
painters of merit of that period, but I find it utterly impossible to
do so. They were a race of bad copyists, without a spark of originality
or independence of feeling. They had traditional receipts for covering
large wall-spaces with figures in the Pietro di Cortona and Carlo
Maratti style; and as the century wore on, these “pasticcios” became
more and more insipid and commonplace. It is better by far to have a
style of one’s own, though it be frivolous like Watteau’s, or artificial
like Boucher’s, than to go on manufacturing pictures by routine. The
only exception I know of to the universal decrepitude of the Italian
eighteenth-century painters is Canaletti. He may not have been a great
genius, but, at any rate, he was not an imitator of others, and his
canal views of Venice are a great deal more truthful than any I have
ever seen.
I am aware that his way of painting a ripple on the water was too
mechanical, but his buildings are admirable; and whenever I go to Venice
I am always more reminded of Canaletti’s pictures than of Turner’s. I am
not expressing the heretical opinion that Canaletti was a greater
_artist_ than Turner. I am merely stating, as a matter of fact, that
Canaletti’s Venice is much more like the real place than Turner’s; and
it appears to me that an architectural painter should (of all painters)
adhere strictly to local truth.