ART--NICOLAS POUSSIN, 1594-1665--CLAUDE[31] LORRAINE, 1600-1682--CHARLES
LE BRUN, 1619-1690--WATTEAU, 1684-1721--GREUZE, 1726-1805.
Nicolas Poussin was born at Andely in Normandy in 1594. Of his parentage
little seems to have been ascertained, but it is believed that he was
well educated, and his classical learning in after life was reckoned
great. He was regularly trained to be a painter under a master in his
native town, and afterwards in Paris.
Dissatisfied with the patronage which he received in Paris, Poussin went
to Rome when he was about thirty years of age. In Rome he is said to
have lived on familiar terms with a sculptor whose devotion to antique
art influenced his taste, and lent it the strong classical bent which it
retained. Poussin studied regularly in the school of Domenichino. After
some delay in attracting public notice, 'The Death of Germanicus,' and
'The Capture of Jerusalem,' which Poussin painted for Cardinal
Barberini, won general approval. In 1629, when Nicolas Poussin was in
his thirty-fifth year, he married the sister of his pupil, Gaspar
Dughet, who took Poussin's name, and is known as a painter, inferior to
his master, by the name of Gaspar Poussin.
Nicolas Poussin returned to Paris when he was a middle-aged man, was
presented to the king, Louis XIII., by Cardinal Richelieu, and offered
apartments in the Tuileries, with the title of painter in ordinary, and
a salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year. Poussin agreed to settle
in Paris, but on his going back to Rome to fetch his wife, and on the
King of France's dying, the attractions of the Eternal City proved too
great for the painter, and in place of removing his home to his native
country, he lived for the rest of his years in Rome, and died there in
1665, when he was seventy-one years of age. Except what can be judged of
him from his work, I do not know that much has been gathered of the
private character and life of Nicolas Poussin, notwithstanding that
there was a biography written of him fifty years ago by Lady Calcott,
and that his letters have been published in Paris. In the absence of
conclusive testimony one may conclude with some probability that he was
'quiet,' like his best paintings; a man who minded his own business, and
did not trouble the world by astonishing actions, good or bad.[32]
In painting his own picture, from which an engraving has been taken,
Poussin's classical preferences seem to have passed into the likeness,
for in the dress of the seventeenth century, the cloak (not unlike a
toga), the massive hand with the heavy signet-ring resting on what looks
like a closed portfolio, the painter has something of the severe air and
haughty expression of an old Roman; still more, perhaps, of the
French-Romans, if I may call them so, of whom revolutionary times
nearly two centuries later, afforded so many examples. This is a
handsome, dignified face, with austerity in its pride. The slightly
curled hair is thrown back with a certain consciousness from the knit
brow, and from the shoulders. There is only the faintest shadow of a
moustache over the cleanly cut, firmly closed mouth.
Poussin painted largely, and his pictures have been often engraved. With
harmonious composition, good drawing and colouring, his pictures alike
profited and suffered from the classical atmosphere in which they had
their being. They gained in that correctness which in its highest form
becomes noble truthfulness, but they lost in freedom. The figures in the
pictures had frequently the statuesqueness which in sculpture suits the
material, but in painting is stiffness.
Nicolas Poussin had an exceptional reputation for a historical painter
in his day. As a landscape painter, Mr Ruskin, while waging war with
Nicolas Poussin's brother-in-law and assumed namesake, Gaspar, notably
excepts Nicolas from his severest strictures, and treats his efforts in
landscape painting with marked respect. At the same time, however, the
critic censures the painter for a want of thorough acquaintance with
nature, and the laws of nature, ignorance not uncommon in any day, and
nearly universal in Nicolas Poussin's day. 'The great master of elevated
ideal landscape,' Mr Ruskin calls Nicolas Poussin, and illustrates his
excellence in one respect, after contrasting it with the slovenliness of
Sir Joshua Reynolds, by describing the vine in Poussin's 'Nursing of
Jupiter,' in the Dulwich Gallery, thus:--
'Every vine-leaf, drawn with consummate skill and untiring diligence,
produces not only a true group of the most perfect grace and beauty, but
one which in its pure and simple truth belongs to every age of nature,
and adapts itself to the history of all time.' 'One of the finest
landscapes that ancient art has produced, the work of a really great
mind,' Mr Ruskin distinguishes the 'Phocian' of Nicolas Poussin in the
National Gallery, before proceeding to point out its faults.
Again, Mr Ruskin, writing of the street in the centre of another
landscape by Nicolas Poussin, indicates it with emphasis:--'the street
in the centre of the really great landscape of Poussin (great in
feeling, at least) marked 260 in the Dulwich Gallery,' The criticism
with which Mr Ruskin follows up this praise is so perfect a bit of
word-painting, that I cannot refrain from writing it down here. 'The
houses are dead square masses, with a light side and a dark side, and
black touches for windows. There is no suggestion of anything in any of
the spaces, the light wall is dead grey, the dark wall dead grey, and
the windows dead black. How differently would nature have treated us.
She would have let us see the Indian corn hanging on the walls, and the
image of the Virgin of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with
the doves upon them, and the carved Roman capital built into the wall,
and the white and blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the
windows, and the flapping corners of the neat blinds. All would have
been there; not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not
to be comprehended nor understood, but a confusion of yellow and black
spots and strokes, carried far too fine for the eye to follow;
microscopic in its minuteness, and filling every atom and space with
mystery, out of which would have arranged itself the general impression
of truth and life.' Once more, Mr Ruskin freely admits that 'all the
landscape of Nicolas Poussin is imagination.'
Mr Ruskin's first definition of ideal landscape is in this manner. Every
different tree and leaf, every bud, has a perfect form, which, were it
not for disease or accident, it would have attained; just as every
individual human face has an ideal form, which but for sin and suffering
it would present: and the ideal landscape-painter has realized the
perfect form, and offers it to the world, and that in a sense quite
distinct from the fallacy of improving nature.
But I wish to take my readers further into imaginative landscape, and to
show it to them, if possible, under additional lights. I despair of
succeeding if I cannot do it by one or two simple examples. In passing
through a gallery we may stop before a picture to be struck, almost
startled, by the exact copy which it presents of some scene in nature;
how like the clouds in the sky, the leaves on the trees, the very
plumage of the birds! But pass on to another picture which may or may
not have the same exact likeness, and we are possessed with quite
another feeling; instead of being merely surprised by the cleverness of
the imitation, we feel a thrill of delight at a reproduction of nature.
In this picture there are not only the clouds we remember, but we can
almost feel the shadows which they cast, and the air which stirs them.
These tree-leaves are not only green, or yellow, or russet, they are
tender, or crisp living leaves. One half expects to see the birds'
throats swell, and hear the sweetness or the shrillness of their songs.
The first picture, with all its correctness, brightness, richness, or
delicacy it may be, remains bare, hard, and barren, compared to the
second. I cannot explain to my readers the cause of the difference, I
can Only show it to them as they may see it for themselves, and say
that I suppose it proceeds from this--that the second painter has seen
farther into the heart of nature than the first, and has been able by
subtler touches to make us see with his eyes.
But imaginative landscape is much more than this vivid feeling and
expression of nature; there is not a cloud, or leaf, or bird too many or
out of keeping with the place and the hour. The clouds are the very
clouds of sunset, or sunrise, or high noon--clouds differing widely from
each other, as you have no doubt observed. The trees are the beeches, or
chestnuts, or pines, which would grow on the conformation of rocks, in
the sheltered nook, or on the breezy upland; the birds are the linnets
or the larks, the thrushes or the lapwings, which frequent these special
trees, and may be seen and heard at this particular hour.
Again, landscape often tells a story, and tells it inimitably. My
readers have heard of the ballad of the 'Two Corbies,' which the writer
of the ballad has made to meet and tell gruesomely where and on what
carrion their feast has been. Suppose the writer of the ballad had been
a painter, he might have painted the story as intelligibly by the lone
hill-side, the bleaching bones of the faithful hound and gallant grey,
the two loathly blue-black birds satiated with their prey. There is a
significant old Scotch song with a ballad ring, by Lady Nairne, two
verses of which form each a complete picture not only of different
seasons, but of different phases of feeling--happiness and misery.
'Bonnie ran the burnie down,
Wandering and winding;
Sweetly sang the birds aboon,
Care never minding.
'But now the burn comes down apace,
Roaring and reaming,
And for the wee birdies' sang
Wild howlets screaming.'
Imagine these two verses painted, and the painter, from a lack of
comprehension, introducing the 'wild howlets screaming' _beside the
burnie_, 'wandering and winding,' and the 'wee birdies' foolishly and
inconsequently singing with their feeble song drowned in the rush of the
burn (no longer a burnie), 'roaring and reaming,' when the 'spate' is
spreading desolation on every side. Don't you see how the picture would
be spoilt, and the story of complete contrast left untold? I have taken
advisedly an extreme and, therefore an unlikely case of halting
imagination. But in imaginative landscape every 'white flower with its
purple stain,' every crushed butterfly, is made to play its part in the
whole, and at the same time due proportion is never lost sight of, and
the less is always kept subordinate to the greater.
I have already had occasion to mention examples of Nicolas Poussin in
the National Gallery and in Dulwich Gallery.
Claude Gelée, better known as Claude Lorraine, was a native of Lorraine,
and was born at Chateau de Chamagne in the Vosges, in 1600. His parents
were in humble life, and apprenticed Claude to a baker and pastry-cook.
According to some biographers the cooks of Lorraine were in such request
that they occasionally repaired to Rome with their apprentices in their
train to serve the successor of St Peter, and Claude was thus carried,
in the way of trade, to the city which might well have been the goal of
his ambition. According to other writers of art histories, Claude
abandoned the kneading-trough and the oven; and it was as a runaway
apprentice that by some occult means he reached Rome. And when he had
arrived he entered into the service of a landscape painter of good
repute, to whom he was colour-boy as well as cook. The last is the
account, so far, which Claude gave of himself to a friend, and it is
hardly likely either that he misrepresented his history, or that his
friend invented such details, though lately French authorities have
questioned the authenticity of the narrative. Claude remained for nearly
the entire remainder of a long life in Rome. He only once re-visited
France, while he was yet a young man, under thirty years of age, in 1625
or 1627. He is supposed to have painted his earliest pictures and
executed his etchings about this time, 1630 and to have painted his best
pictures fifteen years later, when he was in the maturity of his life
and powers. He was counted successful during his life time, as a
landscape painter, but did not amass a larger fortune than about two
thousand pounds.[33] He was a slow and careful painter (working a
fortnight at a picture with little apparent progress); his painstaking
work, and his custom of keeping a book, in which he verified his
pictures, are about the most that I can tell you of the habits of one of
the foreign painters, who has been most fully represented in England,
and was long in the highest favour with English lovers of art. Claude
Lorraine died at Rome in the eighty-third year of his age, in 1682.
Claude Lorraine's name has become a very vexed name with art critics.
There was a time when he had an unsurpassed reputation as a landscape
painter. The possession of a Claude was enough to confer art glory on a
country-house, and possibly for this reason England, in public and
private collections, has more 'Claudes' than are held by any other
country. But Claude's admirers, among whom Sir George Beaumont, the
great art critic of his generation, took the lead, have had their day,
and, if they have not by any means passed away, are on the wane.
The wrathful indignation of the English landscape painter, Turner, at
the praise which was so glibly lavished on Claude--an indignation that
caused Turner to bequeath two of his own landscape paintings to the
trustees of the National Gallery, on the caustic condition that they
should always be placed between the two celebrated 'Claudes,' known as
'The Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca' and 'The Embarkation of the Queen of
Sheba'--helped to shake the English art world's faith in its former
idol. Mr Ruskin's adoption and proclamation of Turner's opinion shook
the old faith still further. This reversal of a verdict with regard to
Claude is peculiar; it is by no means uncommon for the decision of
contemporaries to be set aside, and we shall hear of an instance
presently, in the case of the painter Le Brun. In fact, it is often
ominous with regard to a man's future fame, when he is 'cried up to the
skies' in his own day. The probability may be that his easy success has
been won by something superficial and fleeting. But Claude's great
popularity has been in another generation, and with another nation.
English taste may have been in fault; or another explanation seems
preferable--that Claude's sense of beauty was great, with all its faults
of expression, and he gave such glimpses of a beautiful world as the
gazers on his pictures were capable of receiving, which to them proved
irresistible.
While Claude adopted an original style as a landscape painter, so far as
his contemporaries were concerned, he was to such a degree self taught,
and only partially taught, that it is said he never learnt to paint
figures--those in his pictures were painted by other painters, and that
Claude even painted animals badly.
Mr Ruskin has been hard on Claude, whether justly or unjustly, I cannot
pretend to say.
The critic denies the painter not only a sense of truth in art, but all
imagination as a landscape painter 'Of men of name,' Mr Ruskin writes,
'Perhaps Claude is the best instance of a want of imagination, nearly
total, borne out by painful but untaught study of nature, and much
feeling for abstract beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of
expression.' Mr Ruskin condemns in the strongest terms 'the mourning and
murky olive browns and verdigris greens, in which Claude, with the
industry and intelligence of a Sèvres china painter, drags the laborious
bramble leaves over his childish foreground.' But Mr Ruskin himself
acknowledges, with a reservation, Claude's charm in foliage, and
pronounces more conditionally his power, when it was at its best, in
skies--a region in which the greater, as well as the less, Poussin was
declared to fail signally; 'a perfectly genuine and untouched sky of
Claude,' Mr Ruskin writes, 'is indeed most perfect, and beyond praise,
in all qualities of air; though even with him I often feel rather that
there is a great deal of pleasant air between me and the firmament, than
that the firmament itself is only air.'
When all has been said that can be said, let us look at a mellow or a
sunny Claude on any wall where it may hang, and judge for ourselves of
the satisfaction it is calculated to give.
Claude was fond of painting scenes on the Tiber and in the Roman
Campagna, but while he tried to reproduce the hills and woodlands of
Italy, he did not seek to paint the mountain landscapes of the
Apennines.
Besides Claude's numerous works in England and scattered through other
countries, some of his finest paintings are in the Doria and Sciarra
palaces in Rome. He rarely put his name to his works; when he did so he
signed it frequently 'Claudio,' sometimes 'Claudius.' I have spoken of
his book of sketches, in which he had been wont to note on the back of
the sketch the date of the completed picture, and to whom sold. This
book he called the 'Libro di Verita,' or, Book of Truth, and its
apparent use was to check the sale of spurious paintings in Claude's
name, even during his lifetime. The 'Book of Truth' is in possession of
the Duke of Devonshire, and has been employed in recent years with
reference to the end for which it seemed designed, so woe to that
country-house which has long pride that 'Claude' does not happen to have
a place in the 'Book of Truth,' though I do not know that it is at all
certain that Claude took the precaution of inscribing _every_ painting
which he painted after a certain date in the 'Book of Truth.'
Claude Lorraine is well represented in the National Gallery. Engravings
of his pictures are common.
Charles le Brun was born in Paris, in 1619. He was trained to be a
painter, and went young to Rome, studying there for six years under the
guidance of Nicolas Poussin. Le Brun returned to Paris, and, through the
patronage of the Chancellor Segnier, was introduced to the court, and
got the most favourable opportunities of practising his profession with
worldly success. He speedily acquired a great name, and was appointed
painter to the King, Louis XIV. Le Brun had enough influence with his
royal master, and with the great minister Colbert, to succeed in
establishing, while the painter was yet a young man, the Royal Academy
of Art, of which he was the first member, and virtually the head,
holding, in his own person, the directorship of the Gobelin tapestry
works, which was to be the privilege of a member of the Academy. Le Brun
continued in the utmost favour with the King, who, not content with
employing the painter largely at Fontainebleau and in Versailles,
invested him with the order of St Michael, bestowed on him letters of
nobility, and visited him frequently at his work, occasions when there
were not wanting adroit courtiers to liken the Grand Monarque to the
Emperor Charles V., and Le Brun to Titian.
Le Brun seems to have been a man of energy, confidence, and industry,
neither mentally before nor after his time, and by no means too
retiring, meditative, or original, to fail to profit by his outward good
fortune. He wrote, as well as painted, artistic treatises, which were
received as oracular utterances, and entirely deferred to in the schools
of his day. He died at Paris in 1690, when he was in his seventieth
year.
Le Brun's real merits as a painter were limited to respectable abilities
and acquirements, together with florid quickness and ease, and such an
eye to what was splendid and scenic as suited admirably a decorator of
palaces in an age which prized sumptuousness, and an exaggeration of
dramatic effect, over every other quality. Nicolas Poussin's quiet
refinement of style became in Le Brun what is called academic
(conventionally learned), pompous, and grandiose, and men decidedly
preferred the degeneration. But later critics, who have not the natural
partiality of the French to the old master, return to their first loves,
and condemn Le Brun's swelling violence, both in the tints and poses of
his figures. Among his most famous works, which have been magnificently
engraved, are his 'Battles of Alexander.'
Antoine Watteau was born at Valenciennes in 1684. A very different
painter from Le Brun, he was yet as characteristic of French art in the
reign of Louis XIV. I think my readers must be familiar with his name,
and I dare say they associate it, as I do, not only with the fans which
were painted largely after his designs, but with mock pastorals and
Sèvres china. I don't know if his birth-place at Valenciennes, with its
chief product of dainty lace, had anything to do with it, but the other
items of poor Watteau's history are considerably removed from the very
artificial grace which one connects with his name. He was the son of a
carpenter, and struggled up, by the hard instrumentality of third-rate
masters and of picture-dealers, to the rank which he attained among
artists, taking his stand from the first, however, as the painter of
well-bred, well-apparelled people--the frequenters of _bals masqués,_
and _fêtes champêtres,_ who were only playing at shepherds and
shepherdesses.
Watteau was elected an Academician in 1717, when he was thirty-three
years of age, and he afterwards came to England, but did not remain
there. He died of consumption at Nogent-sur-Marne in 1721, when he was
thirty-six years of age.[34] Watteau's gifts were his grace and
brilliance on a small scale. He did not draw well; as to design, his
composition may be said to be suited to such a work as the collection of
'fashionable figures,' which he engraved and left behind him. Yet, if we
were to see at this moment some of his exquisite groups of ladies in
sacques and Watteau hats, and cavaliers in flowing wigs and lace,
cravats, I have no doubt that the most of us would admire them much, for
they are exceedingly pretty, and exceeding prettiness is attractive,
particularly to women. But I would have my readers to remember that this
art is a finical and soulless art, after all. I would fain have them
take this as their maxim, 'That the art is greatest which conveys to the
mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of
the greatest ideas.'
Jean Baptiste Greuze was born at Tournus in Burgundy in 1726. He studied
painting from his youth in the studios of artists at Lyons, Paris, and
Rome, and his studies resulted in his being a celebrated genre painter.
He only painted one historical picture, but, with the touchy vanity
which seemed natural to the man, he ranked his genre pictures as high
art; and when he was placed in the ordinary list of genre painters on
his election as a member of the French Academy of Painting, Greuze
resented the imputation, and withdrew from the Academy. He died in 1805,
aged seventy-nine years. Greuze was a showy, clever, but neither earnest
nor truthful painter of domestic subjects and family pictures. His
pictures of women and heads of girls, the expression in some of which
has been severely condemned, are among his best known works, and by
these he is represented in the National Gallery.[35]