FRENCH SCHOOL
“Art is the child of Nature; yes.
Her darling child in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude.
All her majestic loveliness
Chastened and softened and subdued
Into a more attractive grace,
And with a human sense imbued.”
We now come to the French school. Art is so woven into French life, and
it is so much part of the spirit of the nation that we cannot conceive
of France without art. In the days of Charlemagne architecture already
flourished, and in painting, modern art was born with the Clouets.
François Clouet (1510–1572) was the son, the grandson, the nephew of
painters. He had a native skill and delicacy of handling that came to
him by the grace of inheritance, and that gave him a singular mastery of
detail. It was in portraits that the Clouets excelled; and the two
portraits in our Gallery (660 and 1190), one a man’s portrait and the
other, a boy’s, are very good examples of François Clouet’s art. They
are masterpieces of observation and style. They might pass for the works
of some Flemish painter. The painstaking accuracy of their detail, the
illusive quality of their expression are peculiarly Northern, and we
must always remember that the Clouets were of Flemish descent. The heads
are detached against a sea-green background, a tint much affected by the
whole Clouet school.
Then let us pass to Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), who has been called
“the painter of intellect.” His culture lifted him high above the
ordinary intellectual level of the public. Born in Normandy of a noble
family, he went to Paris when he was a lad of eighteen. A friend showed
him a collection of prints from Italy, and from that moment his soul was
fired with the longing to go to Rome. He steeped himself in the
classics. “He understood the ancients so well,” says Sir Joshua
Reynolds, “that he acquired the habit of thinking their way.” At last he
set forth and he reached Lyons, where the poet Marino employed him and
finally took him to Rome. Nicolas Poussin continued to live there till
his death, with the exception of a few years; these he spent in Paris in
the service of Louis XIII. The King appointed him his “Painter in
Ordinary.” After three years, disgusted with the intrigues and
jealousies of the gay capital, he rejoined his wife, returning to the
city of his dreams. There he continued to reside for the rest of his
life. He died in 1665.
Nicolas Poussin adored books; he loved to look at sculpture. His
knowledge and his feeling for Greek mythology surpassed those of every
other painter. In his landscapes there is a dignified reserve; indeed
reserve in landscape painting is too much the note of his art. In
“Cephalus and Aurora” (65) the Greek mythology inspires every incident
of the picture. A little Cupid is holding up before Cephalus the
portrait of his wife Procris, and the hunter is trying to disengage
himself from the embrace of Aurora. Behind is the white-winged Pegasus,
beside him a river god sleeps, Apollo’s horses melt into the shapes of
the clouds. This love of classic learning is at once the strength and
the weakness of Nicolas Poussin’s art. In his two Bacchanalian Dances
(42 and 62), accounted among the best things he ever did, all the
ancient comedy is revived. The pictures are full of riotous frolic, full
of varied incident, and they reveal the ideal of the Greek philosopher,
Epicurus, that pleasure is the aim of life.
Nicolas Poussin adopted his wife’s brother, Gaspard Dughet (1613–1675),
who took the name of Poussin and became his pupil. There is a sense of
infinity in Gaspard Poussin’s pictures. In “The Sacrifice of Isaac” (31)
we feel the solemnity of the scene. The father is trudging up the hill
bearing a lighted torch, the son is carrying the wood for the sacrifice,
all nature is sombre; it seems to understand and to watch the tragedy of
the deed about to be enacted. In “The Calling of Abraham” (1159) we have
a magnificent study of sky, and it is Gaspard Poussin’s skies that I
want you to note. They give distinction to his pictures, they suggest
the Infinite. I think in all the pictures by him in the National Gallery
you will find that the skies are the keynote to the nobility of his
conception.
Very different from the learned Nicolas Poussin was Claude Gelée, known
as Claude Lorraine (1600–1682). He was very ignorant; he scarcely knew
how to read or how to sign his name, and yet what poems of light are his
pictures! The son of poor parents, he was born at Champagne, in the
department of the Vosges, in the year 1600. His parents apprenticed him
to a pastry cook, and the pastry cooks of Lorraine were very famous in
those days. When he had learned his trade he went to seek employment at
Rome, and there became the servant of a landscape painter. He was his
factotum, prepared his meals, ground his colours, and got from him his
first instruction in art. Before long he found himself his assistant,
for his master had been commissioned to adorn the palace of the popes.
We can imagine how the little pastry cook was happy at his work. Then he
returned to Nancy in Lorraine and apprenticed himself to a decorative
painter of some celebrity in order to learn figure painting.
Before two years were over Claude was back again in Italy, the land of
light, the country of enchantment, that had laid its spell upon him.
Sandrart, a German painter, tells us many details concerning him—how
Claude would be out in the open air before daybreak, stay there till
nightfall, learning to depict “with a scrupulous adherence to nature’s
model the changing faces of dawn, the rising and setting sun, as well as
the hours of twilight.” He spent many years in this mode of study;
sometimes, Sandrart says, he met him at Tivoli painting the well-known
waterfalls. His landscapes are of a golden world under a golden sky. It
is not for us to enter into controversy with Mr. Ruskin, who places
Turner so far above the Frenchman; but is there not place for both these
supreme painters in the world of art? Claude was a dreamer. His calm
skies glow with a glory seldom seen on sea or land; his great palaces
form the entrance of visionary seaports filled with visionary ships; his
waves, illumined by the fire of the sky, lead us away in imagination to
a fairy world. He has painted landscapes lit by the noon-day sun and by
the pearly light of morning, and all he paints declares the beauty of
light. His aerial perspective, which is perhaps his greatest charm,
lends a vast horizon to the scenes.
If Claude was not always true to actual nature, he was always true to
dream-nature. He is a great composer of landscape; his ideal pictures
may not be representations of what is, but of what might be; they are
the outcome of his memory and of his broodings. Goethe has said that
“Claude used his knowledge of the material world to express the world in
his own soul.” We have many pictures by him in the National Gallery.
There are the two pictures, “The Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca” (12) and
the “Queen of Sheba” (14). These are hung between two Turners, the “Sun
Rising in a Mist” (479) and “Dido Building Carthage” (498). It was the
express wish of the English painter that these pictures should be hung
together, to form his appeal beyond the tomb, challenging the world to
choose between the truth as he saw it and as Claude depicted it.
Claude’s two pictures have been greatly injured by restoration; still I
think that they are noble pictures, true to classical tradition.
Let us look at “A Seaport at Sunset” (5). It is a fine and
characteristic work with its Italian architecture, its ships lying at
anchor, and, in the middle distance, the declining sun nearly level with
the horizon. “Landscape with Figures” (19), representing the story of
Narcissus and Echo, is full of charm. It is radiant with pearly light,
and its foreground is occupied by a transparent, shadowy pool in which
Narcissus is admiring his own image. Mr. Ruskin finds great fault with
the drawing of the trees. “Seaport: the Embarkation of St. Ursula” (30)
is a picture full of delightful freshness. It is the early hour of the
day when Ursula, a Sicilian princess, is starting with her maidens on a
journey to the shrines of the saints before her marriage to a prince of
Britain. We think as we look at it of Claude’s early rambles, when he
studied nature at all hours of the day. I cannot speak to you more of
this great artist. He died in Rome in 1682, and he was buried at La
Trinita dei Monti. He was much appreciated a few generations ago. His
serenity, his wide distances, all imbued with the charm of light,
exercised a witchery over tired spirits.