David’s portrait of “Pius VII” is far better than Ingres’ best. I
consider the _chef-d’œvre_ of Ingres to be the painting which he
executed for one of the ceilings of the Louvre, representing the
“Apotheosis of Homer.” This work has been removed to where it can be
seen more comfortably, but when _in situ_ it looked very noble and
dignified, especially when contrasted with the trashy commonplace
_plafonds_ of the neighboring rooms.
Many a young student has gazed with admiration at this work until he got
a pain in his neck, and it is the powerful influence for good which the
“Apotheosis of Homer” had on the then rising generation which
constitutes Ingres’ best claim to the celebrity he enjoyed during a long
life.
Surprise has been recently expressed at Ingres’ prejudice against
anatomy. It is perfectly true that he disliked the look of a skeleton,
and small blame to him, but I don’t think he was opposed to any of the
students consulting the anatomical figure. He had never learned any
thing about either bones or muscles himself, and therefore could not see
any benefit to be derived from the study. His contempt for anatomy as an
adjunct to art was shared by a good many other French masters, nor can I
much wonder at it when I recollect the courses of anatomy we used to
attend. A professor from the Ecole de Médecine would give a dozen dry
lectures on the bones and muscles, just as if he were addressing a lot
of medical students who would be called upon in after years to perform
difficult surgical operations.
What would interest us, and be of use to us as artists, was never
mentioned.
I don’t know whether a more artistic kind of anatomy is now taught in
Paris; if not, I sympathize greatly with the students who attend the
lectures.
Another pupil of David’s who for a few years made a great sensation was
Leopold Robert, the painter of “The Pêcheurs de l’Adriatique,” “The
Moissonneurs,” and similar scenes of Italian peasant life. Two of these
pictures are now hung in the Louvre, and it is marvellous to me how they
could ever have been much admired by artists.
I am not surprised at their popularity with the general public, for they
made a very nice pair of engravings, and there is a beauty about the
women which is captivating at first sight; but the figures are all
posing, as if for a photographic group, and these once celebrated
pictures _now_ appear to me rather contemptible. L. Robert (like Gros)
committed suicide, and it was perhaps on this account that the two men
used often to be compared together, sometimes (I am ashamed to say) to
the disadvantage of Gros.
Granet is the last artist I shall mention who actually studied in
David’s atelier. He never attempted the heroic style like Girodet,
Guérin, and many others, nor did he endeavor, like Leopold Robert, to
idealize Italian fishermen and peasants. He began with architectural
interiors, and during a long life never changed his style. His figures,
generally of medium or small size, are remarkably well drawn. Their
action is perfectly natural, and they are always in their right places.
Few artists ever lived whose work was more thorough and faultless than
old Granet’s. An excellent colorist, a sound draughtsman, and by no
means deficient in poetic feeling, he had but one blemish, and that was
the habit of using bad materials.
I remember his large picture of the Mass at Assisi soon after it was
painted. The dim but glowing light of the church was admirably rendered,
but now, alas! the picture has become so black that it is difficult to
make out the figures. I believe he was in the habit of using dark-red
grounds for his pictures, and this no doubt accounts for their so
rapidly losing their brilliancy.
Granet was a native of Aix, near Marseilles, and in his old age returned
to his native town, but used to contribute regularly to the annual
exhibition in Paris; and his pictures were always admired, not only by
the public, but by all the young artists, with whom he was a great
favorite.
I trust I have shown you that David, whatever we may think of his
pictures, was at any rate a successful schoolmaster, or what the French
call a _chef d’école_, and his influence continued to be felt very
perceptibly in the second generation.
Abel de Pujol, Leon Coignet, Delaroche, Couture, Flandrin, Alaux, etc.,
were all pupils either of Guérin, Ingres, or Gros, and they all
preserved the David traditions of sound and careful drawing. Indeed,
Flandrin carried the noble draughtsmanship of his master Ingres to such
perfection that it seems to me impossible to advance any farther in this
direction.
The two great pictorial heretics of this period were Delacroix and
Decamps. The former learned his art under Guérin, and the latter under
A. de Pujol, but in their case the maxim about “training up a child in
the way he should go” certainly did not hold good, for both these great
artists threw the time-honored atelier traditions overboard, and
proceeded on diametrically opposed principles. Being both great
colorists, and both unusually gifted with true artistic feeling, they
succeeded at last in rivalling, if not eclipsing, the fame of their more
orthodox contemporaries. With Delacroix, especially, the battle was a
long one, and I well remember his “Entry of the Crusaders into
Constantinople” (perhaps the finest picture he ever painted) being
rejected at the Salon, and in the following year being hung at the top
of the gallery. Decamps was much more careful about his drawing than
Delacroix, and his pictures being always small, he did not give so much
offence to “Ces Messieurs de l’Institût.”
If I were addressing a French audience I should certainly not think of
mentioning Ary Schäffer; but as in England he enjoys a kind of
reputation, a few words about him may not be out of place. In the early
part of his career he followed in the track of Delacroix, and the
pictures he painted at this time show a great feeling for color.
All at once (after achieving considerable success in this style) he went
about on the other tack, gave up color, and took to imitating Ingres. He
was always a poor draughtsman. His “Paolo and Francesco,” and many of
his best-known religious pictures, are wretchedly drawn, but there is a
pretension to purity of style about them which takes people in. It is
not many years ago since Schäffer, on the strength of these sentimental
works of art, was considered in England to be the first of French
painters.
If we proceed to my own time, which I may call the third generation from
David, we find decidedly less of that precision of drawing for which the
French school was famous. There are, of course, exceptions, and one or
two very notable ones, but the number of weak draughtsmen amongst
painters of mature years has certainly increased. It is, however, when
we come to consider the pictures of the younger generation that we find
how very much the impulse given by David to correctness and refinement
of drawing has exhausted itself. French literature (speaking of course
generally) is either mawkishly sentimental or brutally realistic, and
these unpleasant characteristics seem to be reflected in the painting of
many of their popular artists.
Eccentricity appears now to be the surest road to fame. Formerly it
required a great deal of talent to leave successfully the beaten track,
but now the eccentric painter finds himself famous, not in spite of his
grotesque peculiarities, but on account of them. I consider the modern
French school to be in a very critical state. They have acquired color,
but at too great a sacrifice. Beauty and dignity of form, noble
composition, and all the higher qualities of art, become rarer every
year, and will, if the present downward tendency continue, soon be
extinct. Of course I am speaking of historical painting, either sacred
or profane; of the art, in short, of Girodet, Géricault, Gros, Ingres,
and Flandrin; and I think it will be generally allowed that no school
can hold its place in the art-world which allows the noblest branch of
the profession to wither and decay.
I will now proceed to consider the influence of David on other European
schools. This influence was very marked in Italy, where an uneasy
feeling that their once famous school had sunk very low had prevailed
for some time. Raphael Mengs was too feeble, and Pompeo Battoni too
meretricious, a painter to regenerate Italian art, but when David
appeared, an effort was made. The antique was again studied, the
pernicious practice of imitating the old masters was abandoned, and
Nature, the fountainhead of all art, was more conscientiously imitated.
David’s example thus produced, amongst others, Benvenuto and Camuccini,
both of whom were infinitely greater painters than had appeared in Italy
for a century. Unfortunately, the revival so successfully begun was
suffered to die out. The race of copyists became again in the ascendant,
and no doubt reaped a rich harvest when, after the great Napoleonic
wars, the Continent was overrun by wealthy dilettanti anxious to obtain
(if not a genuine Caracci or Guido) at least a good imitation of one.
The mania for collecting grimy old masters at last died out, and
considering the shameless way in which the purchasers were imposed upon,
it is a wonder that it lasted so long. When, however, this happy event
took place, and a healthier taste became fashionable, Italian artists
could not supply the demand. Small landscapes and pretty little costume
pictures were painted in abundance, but for Biblical or historical art
the public had to turn to the foreigner, to Overbeck or Cornelius.
Things are not quite so bad in Italy at the present day, but the school
is very insignificant as compared with those of France, Belgium,
England, and Germany.
In Germany the great art-revival began between 1810 and 1820. Cornelius
and Overbeck, the two founders of the modern German school of historical
painting, can neither of them be included among the followers of David,
and yet it is not improbable that had the French school remained as it
was under Boucher and Vanloo, Germany would also have been content to go
on in the vicious routine of the eighteenth century. David, therefore,
though not the progenitor, may have been the indirect cause of the
modern German school. Winkleman’s laborious researches, and the flood of
light he threw on classical art and antiquities, had fully prepared the
way for a revival; and in Cornelius, Germany found a man after her own
heart. In 1825, when he was still young, he was made Director of the
Academy at Munich, and commenced the gigantic series of mural paintings
with which his name will always be associated. He had a great number of
scholars, and his manner is more or less perceptible in all their works.
It is a manner I never _did_ like, and probably never shall. The effort
made by the artist is too evident, and all the personages seem to be
acting a part. This is particularly noticeable in Kaulbach’s and
Piloty’s large compositions. These works were greatly admired in
Germany, and are so still, but I believe their popularity is on the
wane.
As for Overbeck, he never could have become the founder of a durable
school. Ascetic, exclusive, and narrow in his art views, the only charm
of his pictures is indissolubly connected with the personal character of
the painter. His admiration for Perugino and the Umbrian school was
genuine and unbounded. He abhorred Titian and loathed Correggio. With
such ideas on art he may justly be called an anachronism, and it will be
easily understood that however leniently and even favorably we may judge
the work of an enthusiast like Overbeck, we should not be disposed to
extend the same leniency to his imitators.
We will now examine what influence the great classical revival,
inaugurated by David, had on British art. I think it must be allowed
that this influence (if it ever existed at all) was very slight. Our
artists were content to tread in the path pointed out to them by Sir J.
Reynolds, and to study with more or less intelligence the old masters.
Their knowledge of the human form was very imperfect, and there were at
that time no large ateliers where they could acquire such knowledge. The
Continent was closed to them, and they were therefore debarred from
seeing the works of David, Girodet, Guérin, and Gérard. It is probable,
too, that even had they been able to visit the Paris galleries
occasionally, they would have been greatly disgusted; for it must be
confessed that the later works of David are singularly repellent to an
eye educated on Titian and Rubens.
In England, particularly during the reign of George III, there was no
demand for large figure subjects. The government did nothing for
historical art.
The churches were ugly square boxes with whitewashed walls, sometimes
be-plastered with black or white marble commemoration tablets, but in
which paintings were tabooed. Private individuals could not, of course,
find room in their houses for large pictures; so, as a natural
consequence, the English school was forced into another direction, and
we find accordingly the best and ablest artists of this period amongst
the portrait and landscape painters.
A little of old David’s precision of drawing would not have hurt some of
them, but landscape art depends more on color and effect than on fine
perceptions of form, and careful study of the antique is obviously
unnecessary to a man whose mission it is to paint mountains and trees,
storm and sunshine.
Of the few artists who executed large figure pictures at this time I
shall say very little, for the simple reason that there is very little
to say. We all know Benjamin West’s pictures, and are fully aware of
their tameness and insipidity.
I think that West is a striking example of a man who succeeded in
impressing his character on his work. Highly respectable, prosaic,
unimaginative, and rather goody, we find all these characteristics
reproduced in his pictures, and yet many of these pictures, particularly
“Death on the Pale Horse,” created a perfect furore at the time, and the
prices the artist got for his works would be considered high even at the
present day.
Hilton was undoubtedly the best of the very few artists who endeavored
to revive large historical painting in England. He was at any rate a
good draughtsman and an accomplished painter, but his too palpable
imitation of the old masters will always prevent his taking rank with
such men as Girodet, Géricault, or Gros.
Fuseli, with all his bombast and affectation of anatomical knowledge,
showed occasionally that he possessed real genius. I know nothing finer
in the whole English school than his ghost scene of “Hamlet.” The ghost
is not one of those artificial bogies, so common in the works of Blake
and Flaxman, but a right royal ghost, who stalks with gigantic strides
across the stage. Fuseli was a very uneven painter. His pictures are
generally ludicrous, but sometimes show real talent. He wanted ballast,
and if West could have spared him a few tons of lead, both painters
would have been greatly benefited.
My present lecture is on David and his school, and therefore I might
have omitted altogether the contemporary English painters. However, as I
have mentioned some, I should be sorry to omit from my very short list
the name of Stothard. Of all the English figure-painters of this period,
Stothard had the greatest feeling for composition. With a little more
power and correctness in his drawing, he would have been an English
Prudhon. Even with all his feebleness of draughtsmanship he is to me
always attractive. There is so much _bonhomie_ about his work, such an
absence of pretence and humbug, and so evident a desire always to do his
best, that although we cannot close our eyes to his shortcomings, we may
well condone them for the sake of the good honest feeling which pervades
almost all his compositions.
I prefer to pass unnoticed one or two aspirants to high art, who in the
first half of the present century were thought a good deal of. Some
people still believe in them, but as I never did, I would, rather say
nothing about them, particularly as their work is foreign to the subject
of my lecture.
It is pleasant to turn from a kind of art with which I have no sympathy,
to more recent efforts, and to be able to speak more favorably of
English historical painting before closing my lecture.
We have had in Etty a colorist both brilliant and original; a painter
who proved that it was quite possible to excel in color without
imitating either the Venetians or Rubens; and in Dyce a draughtsman of
the most severe and refined kind, a master of composition, and a most
thorough artist.
I have often heard it remarked that Dyce’s mural paintings are very
Germanic in style, but to my thinking there is but the slightest
likeness to any work of the Munich or Dusseldorf masters. His figures
never have the labored self-conscious action which is so characteristic
of the school of Cornelius. Of course, frescoes representing King Arthur
and his knights must have a sort of family resemblance to illustrations
of the Niebelungen legends, but the resemblance is merely superficial. A
closer comparison will prove how much more true, and therefore more
dramatic, is the action in Dyce’s figures.
There is an old adage which tells us that “knowledge is power,” but in
art this hardly holds good. You may have plenty of knowledge and yet not
have power; though, on the other hand, you can hardly have true power
without knowledge.
Dyce had both in an eminent degree, whereas Schadow, Kaulbach, Piloty,
and most of the great German artists, though decidedly learned painters,
had not the power of turning their learning to good account.
It is obvious that I cannot continue my remarks down to the present
time, but I may be allowed to express an opinion that (in this Academy
at least) feeble mysticism or blatant quackery is no longer associated
with high art. We have, of course, our faults, but history-painters do
not, as formerly, lag hopelessly behind their colleagues in genre,
portrait, and landscape art.
This happy result is entirely due to a return to old David’s system of
teaching; namely, to a diligent study of the antique, supplemented by a
long course of drawing from nature. Such an excellent competition as we
recently had for the gold medal would have been simply impossible fifty
years ago.
I don’t want to flatter the rising generation, nor to tell them that
they have twice as much talent as their fathers, and ten times as much
as their grandfathers; but what I wish to point out is, that by patient
study and diligent work a much higher result can be obtained than by
spasmodic effort or crazy enthusiasm.
LECTURE V.
ON THE MODERN SCHOOLS OF EUROPE.
My first lecture of the present course will be devoted to a kind of
review of the various painting schools of modern Europe. As one of the
jurors at the Paris International Exhibition, I had a rare opportunity
of comparing one school with another, and I think that a lecture
embracing the conclusions I came to, may be more interesting to you, and
possibly more instructive, than a discourse on the works of the old
masters.
National schools of art can at this present time hardly be said to
exist, at least not in the sense in which they existed 300 years ago. In
those times the attributes and characteristics of each school were
sharply defined. The Roman, the Venetian, the Spanish, the German, and
the Flemish, were as distinct in character as it was possible to be.
Now, however, the national characteristics are very slight, and in many
countries there seem to me to be none. The French and the German are the
two great Continental schools from which the others spring. England,
Austria, Spain, and perhaps Holland, have certain features of their own;
that is, speaking generally, one would know an English, Austrian,
Spanish, or Dutch picture at once.
The Scandinavian and Danish schools are feeble offshoots of the German.
The Belgian is a vigorous branch of the French, and the Swiss is a less
robust child of the same parent.
The Italian seems to me to be a mixture of French and Spanish, with a
little of the old Italian element surviving. By the old Italian element
I do not mean a reminiscence of Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, or Titian,
but rather of Carlo Dolce or Sassoferrato.
Russian and especially American art are of a nondescript character, and
the reasons are sufficiently obvious.
A young American or Russian artist goes to Paris or Rome, and puts
himself to school under a certain master. After a time he will paint
pictures more or less like his master’s; he will exhibit them, and may
get rewards and medals for them; but he can hardly be called a
representative of the American or Russian school. No American thinks of
studying art in New York or Boston, and no Russian artist dreams of
finishing his artistic education in St. Petersburg or Moscow. There can,
therefore, be no American or Russian school properly so called.
I shall begin my lecture with a few words about our noble selves. I will
give you rather the opinion of the best French artists than my own. As
this opinion was expressed with perfect sincerity, and came from
competent and independent judges, I think we may derive a lesson from
it.
It has, I know, often been remarked that French artists appreciate best
whatever is most unlike their own work, and it was a feeling of this
kind which consoled the Belgians for the favor with which the English
galleries were regarded. I confess that there is a good deal of truth in
the remark.
English painting is so unlike French that there can be no direct rivalry
between the two schools, whereas in Belgian work the rivalry is
unpleasantly close.
I may, perhaps, be allowed to add, that for the same reason those
English painters who approximate most to the French school were
precisely those who were the least appreciated. Novelty has a great
charm, particularly to a Frenchman. If you ask a Parisian to dinner and
wish to please him, do not give him delicate little French dishes, with
light claret to drink. Give him half a codfish followed by a sirloin of
beef, with plenty of bitter ale to wash it down with, and he will bless
you and afterward cherish the memory of these _alimens vraiment
Britanniques_.
Novelty of treatment was, however, certainly not the only reason of the
success of the English school.
In the first place, it was noticed that there was a certain refinement
and elegance about the English galleries which was very pleasant to the
jaded juror who had just been wading through long rows of coarse
imitations of French art.
The English school was thought very highly of not on account of its
color, still less on account of its drawing, but chiefly for the sake of
the refined thought and invention shown in some of the pictures.
Then, again, in some cases, the novelty of the mode of execution, or the
delicacy of the color, pleased our foreign judges; but I am quite sure
that the popularity which English art has undoubtedly gained in Paris is
due more to our brains than to our brushes.
The remarks and criticisms I heard in Paris all tend to confirm the
opinion I have often expressed about the importance of originality in
painting; of every artist, in short, thinking out his subject for
himself, with nature as his only guide. Of course, novelty of treatment,
unless combined with truth, is valueless. It would not be difficult to
mention some novelties about which the remarks of my French friends
would be the reverse of complimentary.
The first quality in the pictorial rendering of a subject must be truth,
the second novelty or originality, and the third feeling or poetry.
Where these three qualities are combined in a picture, it will more than
hold its own in the eyes of competent judges against works far more
brilliantly executed.
It must not, however, be supposed that foreign artists were delighted
with _all_ they saw in the British galleries. Our old faults--namely,
indifferent drawing, and feeble, scratchy execution--were often noticed,
but were not nearly so prominent as twenty-three years ago. I have no
doubt we have improved in these respects, but I also think that our
foreign judges are apt to be much more lenient than of old as regards
drawing.