Never did any one think less of a style or attain it more consummately.
He was far too much occupied with the divining of the qualities of light
and atmosphere that enveloped his subjects, and with stating those
truths in the most direct and poignant way to have time to spare on mere
adornments and artifices that amuse us in the work of lesser men. Every
stroke in Velasquez means something, records an observation. You never
see a splodge of light that entertains you for a moment and relapses
into _chic_ as you analyse it; even the most elusive bits of painting
like the sword-hilt in the "Admiral Pulido" are utterly just, and
observed as the light flickers and is lost over the steel shapes. No one
ever had the faculty of observing the true character of two diverse
forms at the same time as he did. If you look at any quilted sleeve you
will feel the whole texture of the material and recognise its own shape,
and yet under it and through it each nuance of muscle and arm-form
reveals itself. It is no light praise, mind you, when one says that
every touch is the record of a tireless observation--you have only to
look at a great Sir Joshua to see that quite half of every canvas is
merely a recipe, a painted yawn in fact, as the intensity of his vision
relaxed; but in a Velasquez your attention is riveted by the passionate
search of the master and his ceaseless absorption in the thing before
him--and this is all the more astounding because the work is hardly ever
conceived from a point of view of bravura; there is nothing
over-enthusiastic, insincerely impetuous, but a quiet suave dignity
informing the whole, and penetrating into the least detail of the
canvas.
There is one quality Velasquez never falters in; from earliest days he
is master of his medium; he understands its every limitation, realises
exactly how far his palette is capable of rendering nature; and so you
are never disturbed in your appreciation of his pictures by a sense that
he is battling against insuperable difficulties, severely handicapped by
an unsympathetic medium; but rather that here is the consummate workman
who, gladly recognising the measure of his freedom within the four walls
of his limitations, illustrates for you that fine old statement, "Whose
service is perfect freedom."
_C. W. Furse._