A collection of Spanish Art at the New Gallery contains such
representation as it has been possible to acquire of Murillo, Ribera,
and Zurbaran--and even of the artists of our own century: Goya,
Madrazo, Fortuny--but nothing that vies for a moment in attractiveness
and vitality with the work of Velasquez. Unfortunately, it does not
include two of the most important of those canvases of Velasquez which
have a resting-place in England--Mr. Bankes’s priceless ‘document’
(for it is that and something besides), the first study, we mean, at
Kingston Lacy, for the great Madrid picture of ‘Las Meninas,’ and
the yet more important, because the even more exceptional and more
perfected picture, the astonishing ‘Venus,’ whose home for many years
has been at a small country house upon the borders of two counties
in the North. The sketch--the oil sketch, for Velasquez never made
preparatory drawings--the sketch of ‘Las Meninas’ would have recalled
appropriately the composition, and conveyed something of the character
of a mature masterpiece whose actual presence can never be looked for
here; and the recumbent ‘Venus’ would have shown an almost austere
artist winning for once an easy triumph in the treatment of a luxurious
theme, more properly, or more habitually, Titian’s. But, as it is,
the representation of Velasquez, in Regent Street, affords ground
for study. We could wish, for our own part, that decorative, even
symmetrical, arrangement had been discarded, and that the master’s
works, as far as they are here, had been seen close together, with no
distracting juxtaposition of paintings of a secondary rank. To have
ranged the Velasquez canvases in order of date would have been at least
to have facilitated reference and to have assisted observation.
Nothing, perhaps, is earlier, among the canvases of Velasquez now
shown, than the large, somewhat straggling picture--with perfect
composition yet to learn--of a ‘Peasant Boy Feeding Fowls.’ It comes
from Ireland, and is lent by Lady Gregory. It does not, in every
particular, want breadth of treatment: it is broader in treatment,
indeed, than some things which may presumably have been painted not
very long after it. The vigour of perception, the realistic outlook
upon life, the point of view, in fact, is hardly less characteristic
than in work avowedly mature; yet, to pass on from it to painting
of the first Madrid, rather than of the Seville, period, is to move
into the presence of a much greater accomplishment. Before taking
another step, however, it may be well to glance at one picture like
it in subject, and, it is scarcely too much to say, even richer in
handling--a picture not Velasquez’s at all, yet a link in the chain
of his history, for it is the work of his first master, whose harsh
temper drove the youth from his painting-room--Herrera el Viejo: it is
a broad and finely treated representation of a bird upon the wing--‘A
Partridge.’ This is one among the many interesting loans of Sir Clare
Ford, whose opportunities of study have been exceptional, and whose
devotion to Velasquez himself is indeed hereditary.
The Duke of Wellington is the owner of what seems to be the first
picture by Velasquez of whose history there is authentic record.
We saw it at the Royal Academy, one winter, in bygone years. It is
called the ‘Water-Carrier,’ or ‘El Corno, Aquador de Sevilla,’ and it
represents, with a force and luminousness already extraordinary, a
man in tattered brown doublet, bearing in one hand the large earthen
jar, and, with the other, tendering a glass of water to a boy standing
beside a table. It is recorded in the inventory of Buen Retiro, all
but two hundred years ago. Since then its fortunes have been various.
The picture figured amongst the _impedimenta_ of Joseph Bonaparte in
his flight from Madrid, but at the rout of Vittoria it was captured
from his carriage, and Ferdinand VII. afterwards gave it to the Great
Duke. Sir Charles Robinson contributes an illustration of the story
of Jael and Sisera, painted, possibly, about 1623--a composition in
which, it is said, there is to be discerned a portrait of the Conde
Duque Olivarez (who at that period summoned Velasquez to Madrid), and a
posthumous portrait of the Duke of Alva; and it is suggested that there
may be in this canvas an allegorical reference to the assassination of
William the Silent. Two figures are in armour. At Madrid, we believe,
there are three suits of armour of the Duke of Alva’s--there are ten of
Charles the Fifth’s. A typical group of the earlier work of the master
may be said almost to end with the presentment of the veteran ‘Spanish
Beggar,’ belonging to Sir Francis Cook, and, as it would seem, somewhat
unnecessarily questioned by such an industrious authority as Justi,
who considers that it is the work of a Fleming. Not even the most
audacious of assailants has ventured to throw doubt upon the portrait
of ‘Quevedo’--a head and shoulders, black and deep brown-grey--the poet
wearing conspicuously those thick and dark-rimmed glasses which, by
reason of too assiduous study, he is reported never for a moment after
middle life to have been able to dispense with.
With Mr. Huth’s portrait of Philip the Fourth, a full-length, life-size
figure, and with the portrait of Don Balthasar, the eldest son of
a monarch who would appear to have spent an appreciable portion of
his lifetime in the painting-room of Velasquez, the artist reaches
the hill-top--a summit, fortunately, from which, even to the end of
his days, he was not destined to descend. The ‘Don Balthasar’ is
the possession of the Duke of Westminster. It shows the child in
a costume enriched with gold and silver, mounted upon a prancing
pony, in the courtyard of the palace; and finely painted as the face
is, the picture, as a whole, illustrates the justice of Mr. R. M.
Stevenson’s contention that in the outdoor full-length portraits, in
which _ensemble_, and atmosphere, realised background even, a sense of
the presence of the actual world, must needs count for so much, there
is not to be looked for that searching and intimate treatment of
the visage which Velasquez reserved in the main for works which were
studies of the head alone.
And if the Duke of Westminster’s ‘Don Balthasar’ (not to speak of
the Queen’s well-known and splendid representation of the boy)
illustrates this--a subordination of the personal portrayal to the
general effect--so the very perfection of the study of individuality
is evidenced in one or two of the portraits of Philip’s second wife,
Mariana of Austria, and in that unsurpassable achievement, the Duke of
Wellington’s half-length, or head and shoulders, of Innocent the Tenth.
It is probable that in more than one of the portraits of Mariana--those
in which she is depicted at full-length--much of the painting of her
raiment is due to the hand of some pupil of the master’s. But by
Velasquez wholly, as we should surmise, is Sir Francis Cook’s bust of
the little lady, and this is the earliest of her portraits here, and is
succeeded by Mr. Cuthbert Quilter’s three-quarters length, and by Sir
Clare Ford’s extraordinarily fresh and vigorous and thorough rendering
of the girl in much the same manner. Greatest of all, perhaps, for
colour, character, and--there is no other word for it--‘modernness,’
or actuality, is the ‘Innocent the Tenth.’ It belongs to the Duke of
Wellington. Seven years ago we paid it, at the Old Masters, our tribute
of homage. It is one of several treatments of the same dignitary,
wrought by Velasquez after that voyage to Italy in which the artist
had Spinola for companion. But it is one of the most genuine and one
of the most intact; and perhaps it is but by an error of phrase that
it is described as a ‘repetition’ of the picture at the Hermitage. In
it, at all events, the finest qualities of masculine portraiture are
combined and displayed. It is said that the key to human expression
is most of all at the corners of the mouth. Charged with the love of
life, the love of its good things, and the love of domination, is this
mouth of Innocent’s. But is his eye less revealing?--wary, here, and
shrewd; watchful, yet full of fire. What a study of character, and what
a triumph of brush-work! A noble ‘Philip the Fourth,’ harmonious in
silver and rose-red, from the Dulwich Gallery, sets forth, certainly
not better than this does, the greatness of Velasquez’ mission, nor has
it quite as fully as this the pre-eminent decisiveness which is so much
of his charm.
(_Standard_, 30th December 1895.)