THE MARKET-CART
(_GAINSBOROUGH_)
RICHARD AND SAMUEL REDGRAVE
It is said that Sir Joshua at an Academy dinner gave "the health of Mr.
Gainsborough, the greatest landscape painter of the day," to which
Wilson, in his blunt, grumbling way, retorted, "Ay, and the greatest
portrait painter, too." In Gainsborough's own time, the world of Art
patrons seem to have employed his talents as a portrait painter, but to
have disregarded his landscape art. Beechey said that "in Gainsborough's
house in Pall Mall the landscapes stood ranged in long lines from his
hall to his painting-room, and that those who came to sit to him for his
portraits, on which he was chiefly occupied, rarely deigned to honour
them with a look as they passed them." After his death, however, and the
eulogium Reynolds had pronounced on his landscapes and rustic children,
these came to be considered his finest works, and it is usual now to
speak of him as a landscape rather than as a portrait painter. But it is
more than doubtful whether Wilson did not judge more truly of his talent
than Sir Joshua; and without wishing to place him above Reynolds in that
painter's peculiar branch, it is certain that Gainsborough, in his
finest portraits, formed a style equally original, and produced works
that are every way worthy to take rank with those of the great
President. They contrast with the latter in being more silvery and pure,
and in the absence of that impasto and richness in which Reynolds
indulged, but his figures are surrounded by air and light, and his
portraits generally are easy and graceful without affectation....
[Illustration: THE MARKET-CART.
_Gainsborough_]
Reynolds says: "It is difficult to determine whether Gainsborough's
portraits were most admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his
landscapes for a portrait-like representation of Nature,"--a strange
judgment, written more with a view to a well-rounded period than to any
true criticism on his rival's landscape art. It is certainly true that
Gainsborough put aside altogether the early foundation of Dutch
landscape on which he had begun to build, and took an entirely original
view of Nature, both as to treatment and handling. Yet in the sense in
which the artists of our day paint "portrait-like representations of
Nature," Gainsborough's art was anything but portrait-like. It has been
objected to the great Italian landscape painters that they did not
discriminate between one tree and another, but indulged in a "painter's
tree." There is far more variety in those of our native artist, yet it
would puzzle a critic to say what his trees really are, and to point out
in his landscapes the distinctive differences between oak and beech, and
elm. The weeds, too, in his foregrounds, have neither form nor species.
On the margins of his brooks or pools a few sword-shaped dashes tell of
reeds and rushes; on the banks of his road-side some broad-leaved forms
catch the straggling sun-ray, but he cared little to go into botanical
minutiæ, or to enable us to tell their kind. His rocks are certainly not
truly stratified or geologically correct--how should they be?--he
studied them, perhaps, in his painting-room from broken stones and bits
of coal. The truth is, however, that he gave us more of Nature than any
merely imitative rendering could do. As the great portrait painter looks
beyond the features of his sitter to give the mind and character of the
man, often thereby laying himself open to complaint as to his mere
_likeness_ painting; so the great landscape painter will at all times
sink individual imitation in seeking to fill us with the greater truths
of his art. It may be the golden sunset or the breezy noon, the solemn
breadth of twilight, or the silvery freshness of morn--the something of
colour, of form, of light and shade, floating rapidly away, that makes
the meanest and most commonplace view at times startle us with wonder at
its beauty, when treated by the true artist.
And did he study such merely from broken stones and pieces of coal, from
twigs and weeds in his painting-room? Vain idea! these were but the
_memoria technica_, that served to call up in his mind the thoughts he
had fed on in many a lonely walk and leisure moment, when they of common
clay plodded on and saw nothing--brooded on with a nature tuned to the
harmonies of colour and of form, organized in a high degree to receive
and retain impressions of beauty; and gifted with the power to place
vividly before us by his art objects which had so delighted and pleased
himself. Does any one think otherwise--let him try what can be got out
of stones and coals; let him try how his memory will aid him, with such
feeble helps as broken twigs and dry mosses, and then he may be able to
appreciate, in a degree, how this man had won the mastery of paint and
canvas and turned their dross into the fine gold of true Art.
But in the history of British Art, the great merit of Gainsborough is,
to have broken us entirely loose from old conventions. Wilson had turned
aside from Dutch art to ennoble landscape by selecting from the higher
qualities of Italian art; but Gainsborough early discarded all he had
learned from the bygone schools, and gave himself up wholly to Nature;
he was capable of delicate handling and minute execution, but he
resolutely cast them aside lest any idol should interfere between him
and his new religion. There may be traced a lingering likeness in his
landscapes to those of Rubens; but this arose more from his
generalization of details, his sinking the parts in the whole, than to
any imitation of the great Fleming. It is like the recollection of some
sweet melody which the musician weaves into his theme, all unconscious
that it is a memory and not a child of his own creation.
The pictures of Gainsborough, on the whole, stand better far than those
by Reynolds. "Landscape with Cattle," a picture belonging to the Marquis
of Lansdowne, is lovely for colour and freshness; it has been lined and
repaired, but evidently had parted widely in the lights. Could any
closeness of individual imitation give the truth, beauty of colour, and
luminous sunlight of this picture? It somewhat reminds one of
Zuccarelli, but how completely has Gainsborough sucked the honey and
left the comb of the master! Viewed near, this picture is somewhat loose
in texture, and hesitating in execution; the colour obtained by
semi-transparents, as yellow-ochre, terra-verte, and ultramarine; while
viewed at a proper distance, it is in perfect harmony.
In examining the landscapes of this painter, much must, however, be
allowed for the present state of some of his works. Many are covered
with a dark-brown varnish, obscuring the silvery freshness of their
first state. This has cracked up in the darks and quite changed them.
The _Market-Cart_ and the _Watering-Place_, as well as others in the
National collection, are in a very different condition to that in which
they left the easel. The world, however, has become so conservative, and
has such belief in the picture-vamper's "golden tones," that so they
must remain. It would be most impolitic to touch them until they have
become too dark to be seen at all.
_A Century of Painters of the English School_ (London, 1866).
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE
(_TINTORET_)
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
It is more difficult for me to speak to you of the Venetian painters
than of any others. Before their pictures one has no desire to analyze
or reason; if one does this, it is by compulsion. The eyes enjoy, and
that is all: they enjoy as the Venetians enjoyed in the Sixteenth
Century; for Venice was not at all a literary or critical city like
Florence; there painting was nothing more than the complement of the
environing pleasure, the decoration of a banqueting-hall or of an
architectural alcove. In order to understand this you must place
yourself at a distance, shut your eyes and wait until your sensations
are dulled; then your mind performs its work....
There are certain families of plants, the species of which are so
closely allied that they resemble more than they differ from each other:
such are the Venetian painters, not only the four celebrities,
Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, but others less illustrious,
Palma "il vecchio," Bonifazio, Paris Bordone, Pordenone, and that host
enumerated by Ridolfi in his _Lives_, contemporaries, relatives, and
successors of the great men, Andrea Vicentino, Palma "il giovine,"
Zelotti, Bazzaco, Padovinano, Bassano, Schiavone, Moretto, and many
others. What first appeals to the eye is the general and common type;
the individual and personal traits remain for a time in shadow. They
have worked together and by turns in the Ducal Palace, but by the
involuntary concord of their talents their pictures make an harmonious
whole.
At first our eyes are astonished; with the exception of three or four
halls, the apartments are low and small. The Hall of Council of the Ten
and those surrounding it[28] are gilded habitations, insufficient for
the figures that dwell therein; but after a moment one forgets the
habitation and sees only the figures. Power and voluptuousness blaze
there, unbridled and superb. In the angles nude men, painted caryatides,
jut out in such high relief that at the first glance one takes them for
statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their
shoulders writhe. On the ceiling a Mercury, entirely nude, is almost a
figure by Rubens, but of a more gross sensuality. A gigantic Neptune
urges before him his sea-horses which plash through the waves; his foot
presses the edge of his chariot; his enormous and ruddy body is turned
backwards; he raises his conch with the joy of a bestial god; the salt
wind blows through his scarf, his hair, and his beard; one could never
imagine, without seeing it, such a furious _élan_, such an overflowing
of animal spirit, such a joy of pagan flesh, such a triumph of free and
shameless life in the open air and broad sunlight. What an injustice to
limit the Venetians to the painting of merely happy scenes and to the
art of simply pleasing the eye! They have also painted grandeur and
heroism; the mere energetic and active body has attracted them; like
the Flemings, they have their colossi also. Their drawing, even without
colour, is capable by itself of expressing all the solidity and all the
vitality of the human structure. Look in this same hall at the four
_grisailles_ by Veronese--five or six women veiled or half-nude, all so
strong and of such a frame that their thighs and arms would stifle a
warrior in their embrace, and, nevertheless, their physiognomy is so
simple or so proud that, despite their smile, they are virgins like
Raphael's Venuses and Psyches.
[Illustration: BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
_Tintoret._]
The more we consider the ideal figures of Venetian art, the more we feel
the breath of an heroic age behind us. Those great draped old men with
the bald foreheads are the patrician kings of the Archipelago,
Barbaresque sultans who, trailing their silken simars, receive tribute
and order executions. The superb women in sweeping robes, bedizened and
creased, are empress-daughters of the Republic, like that Catherina
Cornaro from whom Venice received Cyprus. There are the muscles of
fighters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors and captains; their
bodies, reddened by the sun and wind, have dashed against the athletic
bodies of janizaries; their turbans, their pelisses, their furs, their
sword-hilts constellated with precious stones,--all the magnificence of
Asia is mingled on their bodies with the floating draperies of antiquity
and with the nudities of Pagan tradition. Their straight gaze is still
tranquil and savage, and the pride and the tragic grandeur of their
expression announce the presence of a life in which man was concentrated
in a few simple passions, having no other thought than that of being
master so that he should not be a slave, and to kill so that he should
not be killed. Such is the spirit of a picture by Veronese which, in the
Hall of the Council of the Ten, represents an old warrior and a young
woman; it is an allegory, but we do not trouble ourselves about the
subject. The man is seated and leans forward, his chin upon his hand,
with a savage air; his colossal shoulders, his arm, and his bare leg
encircled with a cnemis of lions' heads protrudes from his ample
drapery; with his turban, his white beard, his thoughtful brow, and his
traits of a wearied lion, he has the appearance of a Pacha who is tired
of everything. She, with downcast eyes, places her hands upon her soft
breast; her magnificent hair is caught up with pearls; she seems a
captive awaiting the will of her master, and her neck and bowed face are
strongly empurpled in the shadow that encircles them.
Nearly all the other halls are empty; the paintings have been taken into
an interior room. We go to find the curator of the Museum; we tell him
in bad Italian that we have no letters of introduction, nor titles, nor
any rights whatsoever to be admitted to see them. Thereupon he has the
kindness to conduct us into the reserved hall, to lift up the canvases,
one after the other, and to lose two hours in showing them to us.
I have never had greater pleasure in Italy; these canvases are now
standing before our eyes; we can look at them as near as we please, at
our ease, and we are alone. There are some browned giants by Tintoret,
with their skin wrinkled by the play of the muscles, Saint Andrew and
Saint Mark, real colossi like those of Rubens. There is a Saint
Christopher by Titian, a kind of bronzed and bowed Atlas with his four
limbs straining to bear the weight of a world, and on his neck by an
extraordinary contrast, the tiny, soft, and laughing _bambino_, whose
infantine flesh has the delicacy and grace of a flower. Above all, there
are a dozen mythological and allegorical paintings by Tintoret and
Veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a
veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a
paradise of delights situated beyond all imagination and all dreams.
When the Old Man of the Mountain transported into his harem his sleeping
youths to render them capable of extreme devotion, doubtless it was such
a spectacle that he furnished.
Upon the coast at the margin of the infinite sea, serious Ariadne
receives the ring of Bacchus, and Venus, with a crown of gold, has come
through the air to celebrate their marriage. Here is the sublime beauty
of bare flesh, such as it appears coming out of the water, vivified by
the sun and touched with shadows. The goddess is floating in liquid
light and her twisted back, her flanks and her curves are palpitating,
half enveloped in a white, diaphanous veil. With what words can we paint
the beauty of an attitude, a tone, or an outline? Who will describe the
healthy and roseate flesh under the amber transparency of gauze? How
shall we represent the soft plenitude of a living form and the curves of
limbs which flow into the leaning body? Truly she is swimming in the
light like a fish in its lake, and the air, filled with vague
reflections, embraces and caresses her.
_Voyage en Italie_ (Paris, 1866).
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Painted by Veronese and by Zelotti and Bazzaco under his direction.
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE
ANONYMOUS
Titian's magnificent pictures in the Ducal Palace were, all but one,
destroyed by fire the year after his death; but his impetuous rival,
Tintoretto, is abundantly represented there. With regard to _him_, as
usual, our admiration for frequent manifestations of extraordinary power
is but too commonly checked and chilled by coarse, heavy painting, and
the unexpressive wholly uninteresting character of many of his
allegorical or celestial groups, which seem introduced merely as
exercises or exhibitions of technical skill, rather than as appeals to
our imagination or finer feelings.... On the whole you are again tempted
to be somewhat out of conceit with Tintoretto, till you pause in the
Ante Collegio, or guard-room, before a picture of his so poetically
conceived and admirably wrought, indeed so pleasing in all respects,
that you wonder still more at the dull, uninteresting character of so
many of the others. Yes, here _Il Furioso_ Tintoretto, leaving
ostentatious, barren displays of technical power, has once again had the
gentleness and patience to make himself thoroughly agreeable. Ariadne, a
beautiful and noble figure, is seated undraped on a rock, and Bacchus,
profusely crowned with ivy, advances from the sea, and offers her the
nuptial ring; whilst above, Venus, her back towards you, lying
horizontally in the pale blue air, as if the blue air were her natural
couch, spreads or rather kindles, a chaplet or circlet of stars round
Ariadne's head. Here, those who luxuriate in what is typical, may tell
us, and probably not without truth, that Tintoretto wished to convey a
graceful hint of Venice crowned by beauty and blessed with joy and
abundance. Bacchus arising from the sea well signifies these latter
gifts, and the watery path by which they come to her; and the lonely
island nymph to whom he presents the wedding-ring, may be intended to
refer to the situation and original forlornness of Venice herself, when
she sat in solitude amidst the sandy isles of the lagune, aloof from her
parental shores, ravaged by the Hun or the Lombard. The pale yellow
sunshine on these nude figures and their light transparent shadows, and
the mild temperate blue of the calm sea and air, almost completing the
most simple arrangement of the colouring of the picture, are still
beautiful, and no doubt were far more so before its lamentable fading,
occasioned, it seems, by too much exposure to light; you feel quite out
of doors, all on the airy cliffs, as you look on it, and almost taste
the very freshness of the sea-breeze.
_The Art Journal_ (London, 1857).
LA CRUCHE CASSÉE
(_GREUZE_)
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
One might say of Greuze, as of Hogarth, that the moral scenes which he
represents appear to have been posed for and acted by excellent actors
rather than copied directly from nature. This is the truth, but seen,
however, through an interpretation and under a travesty of rusticity.
All is reasoned out, full of purpose, and leading to an end. There is in
every stroke what the _littérateurs_ call ideas when they talk about
painting. Thus Diderot has celebrated Greuze in the most lyric strain.
Greuze, however, is not a mediocre artist: he invented a _genre_ unknown
before his time, and he possesses veritable qualities of a painter. He
has colour, he has touch, and his heads, modelled by square plans and,
so to speak, by facets, have relief and life. His draperies, or rather
his rumpled linen, torn and treated grossly in a systematic fashion to
give full value to the delicacy of the flesh, reveal in their very
negligence an easy brush. _La Malédiction Paternelle_ and _Le Fils
Maudit_ are homilies that are well painted and of a practical moral, but
we prefer _L'Accordée du Village_, on account of the adorable head of
the _fiancée_; it is impossible to find anything younger, fresher, more
innocent and more coquettishly virginal, if these two words may be
connected. Greuze, and this is the cause of the renown which he enjoys
now after the eclipse of his glory caused by the intervention of David
and his school, has a very individual talent for painting woman in her
first bloom, when the bud is about to burst into the rose and the child
is about to become a maiden. As in the Eighteenth Century all the world
was somewhat libertine, even the moralists, Greuze, when he painted an
Innocence, always took pains to open the gauze and give a glimpse of the
curve of the swelling bosom; he puts into the eyes a fiery lustre and
upon the lips a dewy smile that suggests the idea that Innocence might
very easily become Voluptuousness.
[Illustration: LA CRUCHE CASSÉE.
_Greuze._]
_La Cruche Cassée_ is the model of this _genre_. The head has still the
innocence of childhood, but the fichu is disarranged, the rose at the
corsage is dropping its leaves, the flowers are only half held in the
fold of the gown and the jug allows the water to escape through its
fissure.
_Guide de l'Amateur au Musée du Louvre_ (Paris, 1882).
PORTRAIT OF LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN
(_REYNOLDS_)
FREDERIC G. STEPHENS
The number of Reynolds's portraits of ladies has never been given,
probably it cannot be ascertained with precision; it is beyond all
question marvellous, but not less so is the variety of the attitudes in
which he placed the sitters, that of the ideas he expressed, and of the
accessories with which they are surrounded; to this end, and to show how
successfully he fitted things together, background and figure, compare
the portrait of _Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Derby_ splendidly
engraved by W. Dickinson, with that of Lady Betty Delmé. It is the same
everywhere.
We believe that Reynolds, of that English school of portrait-painters of
which he was the founder, was the happiest in introducing backgrounds to
his works; to him we are for the most part indebted for that aptitude of
one to the other which has so great an effect in putting the eye and
mind of the observer into harmonious relationship with what may be
called the _motive_ of the portrait, which, indeed, elevates a mere
likeness to the character of a picture, and affords a charming field for
the display of art in pathos, which is too often neglected, if not
utterly ignored, by Reynolds's successors. We think he exhibited more of
this valuable characteristic than any other contemporary artist.
Lawrence aimed at it, but with effect only commensurate to his success
in painting. Of old, as before the Seventeenth Century in Germany and
Italy, the art of landscape-painting _per se_ was inefficiently
cultivated, at least expressed with irregularity, although occasionally
with force enough to show that the pathos as well as the beauty of
nature were by no means unappreciated or neglected to anything like the
extent which has been commonly represented by writers on Art. Reynolds
probably took the hint, as he did many others of the kind, from Vandyck,
and gave apt backgrounds to his figures: between these painters no one
did much, or even well in the pathetic part of the achievement. Since
Reynolds, none have approached him in success. It will be understood
that the object of these remarks is not to suggest for the reader's
consideration who painted the best landscape backgrounds as landscapes,
but who most happily adapted them to his more important themes. We
believe Reynolds did so, and will conclude our remarks by another
example. The landscape in the distance of _The Age of Innocence_ is as
thoroughly in keeping with the subject as it can be: thus here are
fields easy to traverse, a few village elms, and just seen above their
tops the summits of habitations,--the hint is thus given that the child,
all innocent as she is, has not gone far from home, or out of sight of
the household to which she belongs....
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN.
_Reynolds._]
It has been alleged that Reynolds never, or rarely painted the landscape
backgrounds to his pictures, and that they were the work of Peter Toms,
R.A., one of his ablest assistants, or of others who were more potent
with that branch of Art than the President himself.... It is hard to
deny to the mind which conceived the ruling idea of such pictures that
honour which is assuredly due to some one, and to whom more probably
than to the painter of the faces and designer of the attitudes, which
are in such perfect harmony with the subordinate elements about them as
to be completed only when the alliance is made. Without this alliance,
this harmony of parts, half the significance of many of Reynolds's
pictures is obscured. When we have noted this the result is at least
instructive, if not convincing, that one mind designed, if one hand did
not invariably execute, the whole of any important portrait by our
subject.