RUBENS AND CUYP.
§ 1. The examination of the causes which led to the final departure of
the religious spirit from the hearts of painters, would involve
discussion of the whole scope of the Reformation on the minds of persons
unconcerned directly in its progress. This is of course impossible.
One or two broad facts only can be stated, which the reader may verify,
if he pleases, by his own labor. I do not give them rashly.
§ 2. The strength of the Reformation lay entirely in its being a
movement towards purity of practice.
The Catholic priesthood was hostile to it in proportion to the degree in
which they had been false to their own principles of moral action, and
had become corrupt or worldly in heart.
The Reformers indeed cast out many absurdities, and demonstrated many
fallacies, in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. But they
themselves introduced errors, which rent the ranks, and finally arrested
the march of the Reformation, and which paralyze the Protestant Church
to this day. Errors of which the fatality was increased by the
controversial bent which lost accuracy of meaning in force of
declamation, and turned expressions, which ought to be used only in
retired depth of thought, into phrases of custom, or watchwords of
attack. Owing to which habits of hot, ingenious, and unguarded
controversy, the Reformed churches themselves soon forgot the meaning of
the word which, of all words, was oftenest in their mouths. They forgot
that [Greek: pistis] is a derivative of [Greek: peithomai], not of
[Greek: pisteuô], and that "fides," closely connected with "fio" on one
side, and with "confido" on the other, is but distantly related to
"credo."[1]
§ 3. By whatever means, however, the reader may himself be disposed to
admit, the Reformation _was_ arrested; and got itself shut up into
chancels of cathedrals in England (even those, generally too large for
it), and into conventicles everywhere else. Then rising between the
infancy of Reformation, and the palsy of Catholicism;--between a new
shell of half-built religion on one side, daubed with untempered mortar,
and a falling ruin of outworn religion on the other, lizard-crannied,
and ivy-grown;--rose, on its independent foundation, the faithless and
materialized mind of modern Europe--ending in the rationalism of
Germany, the polite formalism of England, the careless blasphemy of
France, and the helpless sensualities of Italy; in the midst of which,
steadily advancing science, and the charities of more and more widely
extended peace, are preparing the way for a Christian church, which
shall depend neither on ignorance for its continuance, nor on
controversy for its progress; but shall reign at once in light, and
love.
§ 4. The whole body of painters (such of them as were left) necessarily
fell into the rationalistic chasm. The Evangelicals despised the arts,
while the Roman Catholics were effete or insincere, and could not retain
influence over men of strong reasoning power.
The painters could only associate frankly with men of the world, and
themselves became men of the world. Men, I mean, having no belief in
spiritual existences; no interests or affections beyond the grave.
§ 5. Not but that they still painted scriptural subjects. Altar-pieces
were wanted occasionally, and pious patrons sometimes commissioned a
cabinet Madonna. But there is just this difference between the men of
this modern period, and the Florentines or Venetians--that whereas the
latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject, the
Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane.
Leonardo is only to be seen in the Cena; Titian only in the Assumption;
but Rubens only in the Battle of the Amazons, and Vandyck only at court.
§ 6. Altar-pieces, when wanted, of course either of them will supply as
readily as anything else. Virgins in blue,[2] or St. Johns in red,[3] as
many as you please. Martyrdoms also, by all means: Rubens especially
delights in these. St. Peter, head downwards,[4] is interesting
anatomically; writhings of impenitent thieves, and bishops having their
tongues pulled out, display our powers to advantage, also.[5]
Theological instruction, if required: "Christ armed with thunder, to
destroy the world, spares it at the intercession of St. Francis."[6]
Last Judgments even, quite Michael-Angelesque, rich in twistings of
limbs, with spiteful biting, and scratching; and fine aërial effects in
smoke of the pit.[7]
§ 7. In all this, however, there is not a vestige of religious feeling
or reverence. We have even some visible difficulty in meeting our
patron's pious wishes. Daniel in the lion's den is indeed an available
subject, but duller than a lion hunt; and Mary of Nazareth must be
painted, if an order come for her; but (says polite Sir Peter), Mary of
Medicis, or Catherine, her bodice being fuller, and better embroidered,
would, if we might offer a suggestion, probably give greater
satisfaction.
§ 8. No phenomenon in human mind is more extraordinary than the junction
of this cold and worldly temper with great rectitude of principle, and
tranquil kindness of heart. Rubens was an honorable and entirely
well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, simple and temperate in
habits of life, high-bred, learned, and discreet. His affection for his
mother was great; his generosity to contemporary artists unfailing. He
is a healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased--Animal--without any
clearly perceptible traces of a soul, except when he paints his
children. Few descriptions of pictures could be more ludicrous in their
pure animalism than those which he gives of his own. "It is a subject,"
he writes to Sir D. Carleton, "neither sacred nor profane, although
taken from Holy Writ, namely, Sarah in the act of scolding Hagar, who,
pregnant, is leaving the house in a feminine and graceful manner,
assisted by the patriarch Abram." (What a graceful apology, by the way,
instantly follows, for not having finished the picture himself.) "I have
engaged, as is my custom, a very skilful man in his pursuit to finish
the landscapes solely to augment the enjoyment of Y. E.!"[8]
Again, in priced catalogue,--
"50 florins each.--The Twelve Apostles, with a Christ. Done by my
scholars, from originals by my own hand, each having to be retouched by
my hand throughout.
"600 florins.--A picture of Achilles clothed as a woman; done by the
best of my scholars, and the whole retouched by my hand; a most
brilliant picture, and full of many beautiful young girls."
§ 9. Observe, however, Rubens is always entirely honorable in his
statements of what is done by himself and what not. He is religious,
too, after his manner; hears mass every morning, and perpetually uses
the phrase "by the grace of God," or some other such, in writing of any
business he takes in hand; but the tone of his religion may be
determined by one fact.
We saw how Veronese painted himself and his family, as worshipping the
Madonna.
Rubens has also painted himself and his family in an equally elaborate
piece. But they are not _worshipping_ the Madonna. They are _performing_
the Madonna, and her saintly entourage. His favorite wife "En Madone;"
his youngest boy "as Christ;" his father-in-law (or father, it matters
not which) "as Simeon;" another elderly relation, with a beard, "as St.
Jerome;" and he himself "as St. George."
§ 10. Rembrandt has also painted (it is, on the whole, his greatest
picture, so far as I have seen) himself and his wife in a state of ideal
happiness. He sits at supper with his wife on his knee, flourishing a
glass of champagne, with a roast peacock on the table.
The Rubens is in the Church of St. James at Antwerp; the Rembrandt at
Dresden--marvellous pictures, both. No more precious works by either
painter exist. Their hearts, such as they have, are entirely in them;
and the two pictures, not inaptly, represent the Faith and Hope of the
17th century. We have to stoop somewhat lower, in order to comprehend
the pastoral and rustic scenery of Cuyp and Teniers, which must yet be
held as forming one group with the historical art of Rubens, being
connected with it by Rubens' pastoral landscape. To these, I say, we
must stoop lower; for they are destitute, not of spiritual character
only, but of spiritual thought.
Rubens often gives instructive and magnificent allegory; Rembrandt,
pathetic or powerful fancies, founded on real scripture reading, and on
his interest in the picturesque character of the Jew. And Vandyck, a
graceful dramatic rendering of received scriptural legends.
But in the pastoral landscape we lose, not only all faith in religion,
but all remembrance of it. Absolutely now at last we find ourselves
without sight of God in all the world.
§ 11. So far as I can hear or read, this is an entirely new and
wonderful state of things achieved by the Hollanders. The human being
never got wholly quit of the terror of spiritual being before. Persian,
Egyptian, Assyrian, Hindoo, Chinese, all kept some dim, appalling record
of what they called "gods." Farthest savages had--and still have--their
Great Spirit, or, in extremity, their feather idols, large-eyed; but
here in Holland we have at last got utterly done with it all. Our only
idol glitters dimly, in tangible shape of a pint pot, and all the
incense offered thereto, comes out of a small censer or bowl at the end
of a pipe. Of deities or virtues, angels, principalities, or powers, in
the name of our ditches, no more. Let us have cattle, and market
vegetables.
This is the first and essential character of the Holland landscape art.
Its second is a worthier one; respect for rural life.
§ 12. I should attach greater importance to this rural feeling, if there
were any true humanity in it, or any feeling for beauty. But there is
neither. No incidents of this lower life are painted for the sake of the
incidents, but only for the effects of light. You will find that the
best Dutch painters do not care about the people, but about the lustres
on them. Paul Potter, their best herd and cattle painter, does not care
even for sheep, but only for wool; regards not cows, but cowhide. He
attains great dexterity in drawing tufts and locks, lingers in the
little parallel ravines and furrows of fleece that open across sheep's
backs as they turn; is unsurpassed in twisting a horn or pointing a
nose; but he cannot paint eyes, nor perceive any condition of an
animal's mind, except its desire of grazing. Cuyp can, indeed, paint
sunlight, the best that Holland's sun can show; he is a man of large
natural gift, and sees broadly, nay, even seriously; finds out--a
wonderful thing for men to find out in those days--that there are
reflections in water, and that boats require often to be painted upside
down. A brewer by trade, he feels the quiet of a summer afternoon, and
his work will make you marvellously drowsy. It is good for nothing else
that I know of: strong; but unhelpful and unthoughtful. Nothing happens
in his pictures, except some indifferent person's asking the way of
somebody else, who, by their cast of countenance, seems not likely to
know it. For farther entertainment perhaps a red cow and a white one; or
puppies at play, not playfully; the man's heart not going even with the
puppies. Essentially he sees nothing but the shine on the flaps of their
ears.
§ 13. Observe always, the fault lies not in the thing's being little, or
the incident being slight. Titian could have put issues of life and
death into the face of a man asking the way; nay, into the back of him,
if he had so chosen. He has put a whole scheme of dogmatic theology into
a row of bishops' backs at the Louvre. And for dogs, Velasquez has made
some of them nearly as grand as his surly kings.
Into the causes of which grandeur we must look a little, with respect
not only to these puppies, and gray horses, and cattle of Cuyp, but to
the hunting pieces of Rubens and Snyders. For closely connected with the
Dutch rejection of motives of spiritual interest, is the increasing
importance attached by them to animals, seen either in the chase or in
agriculture; and to judge justly of the value of this animal painting it
will be necessary for us to glance at that of earlier times.
§ 14. And first of the animals which have had more influence over the
human soul, in its modern life, than ever Apis or the crocodile had
over Egyptian--the dog and horse. I stated, in speaking of Venetian
religion, that the Venetians always introduced the dog as a contrast to
the high aspects of humanity. They do this, not because they consider
him the basest of animals, but the highest--the connecting link between
men and animals; in whom the lower forms of really human feeling may be
best exemplified, such as conceit, gluttony, indolence, petulance. But
they saw the noble qualities of the dog, too;--all his patience, love,
and faithfulness; therefore Veronese, hard as he is often on lap-dogs,
has painted one great heroic poem on the dog.
§ 15. Two mighty brindled mastiffs, and beyond them, darkness. You
scarcely see them at first, against the gloomy green. No other sky for
them--poor things. They are gray themselves, spotted with black all
over; their multitudinous doggish vices may not be washed out of
them,--are in grain of nature. Strong thewed and sinewed, however,--no
blame on them as far as bodily strength may reach; their heads
coal-black, with drooping ears and fierce eyes, bloodshot a little.
Wildest of beasts perhaps they would have been, by nature. But between
them stands the spirit of their human Love, dove-winged and beautiful,
the resistless Greek boy, golden-quivered; his glowing breast and limbs
the only light upon the sky,--purple and pure. He has cast his chain
about the dogs' necks, and holds it in his strong right hand, leaning
proudly a little back from them. They will never break loose.
§ 16. This is Veronese's highest, or spiritual view of the dog's nature.
He can only give this when looking at the creature alone. When he sees
it in company with men, he subdues it, like an inferior light in
presence of the sky; and generally then gives it a merely brutal nature,
not insisting even on its affection. It is thus used in the Marriage in
Cana to symbolize gluttony. That great picture I have not yet had time
to examine in all its bearings of thought; but the chief purpose of it
is, I believe, to express the pomp and pleasure of the world, pursued
without thought of the presence of Christ; therefore the Fool with the
bells is put in the centre, immediately underneath the Christ; and in
front are the couple of dogs in leash, one gnawing a bone. A cat lying
on her back scratches at one of the vases which hold the wine of the
miracle.
§ 17. In the picture of Susannah, her little pet dog is merely doing his
duty, barking at the Elders. But in that of the Magdalen (at Turin) a
noble piece of bye-meaning is brought out by a dog's help. On one side
is the principal figure, the Mary washing Christ's feet; on the other, a
dog has just come out from beneath the table (the dog under the table
eating of the crumbs), and in doing so, has touched the robe of one of
the Pharisees, thus making it unclean. The Pharisee gathers up his robe
in a passion, and shows the hem of it to a bystander, pointing to the
dog at the same time.
§ 18. In the Supper at Emmaus, the dog's affection is, however, fully
dwelt upon. Veronese's own two little daughters are playing, on the
hither side of the table, with a great wolf-hound, larger than either of
them. One with her head down, nearly touching his nose, is talking to
him,--asking him questions it seems, nearly pushing him over at the same
time:--the other, raising her eyes, half archly, half dreamily,--some
far-away thought coming over her,--leans against him on the other side,
propping him with her little hand, laid slightly on his neck. He, all
passive, and glad at heart, yielding himself to the pushing or
sustaining hand, looks earnestly into the face of the child close to
his; would answer her with the gravity of a senator, if so it might
be:--can only look at her, and love her.
§ 19. To Velasquez and Titian dogs seem less interesting than to
Veronese; they paint them simply as noble brown beasts, but without any
special character; perhaps Velasquez's dogs are sterner and more
threatening than the Venetian's, as are also his kings and admirals.
This fierceness in the animal increases, as the spiritual power of the
artist declines; and, with the fierceness, another character. One great
and infallible sign of the absence of spiritual power is the presence of
the slightest taint of obscenity. Dante marked this strongly in all his
representations of demons, and as we pass from the Venetians and
Florentines to the Dutch, the passing away of the soul-power is
indicated by every animal becoming savage or foul. The dog is used by
Teniers, and many other Hollanders, merely to obtain unclean jest; while
by the more powerful men, Rubens, Snyders, Rembrandt, it is painted only
in savage chase, or butchered agony. I know no pictures more shameful to
humanity than the boar and lion hunts of Rubens and Snyders, signs of
disgrace all the deeper, because the powers desecrated are so great. The
painter of the village ale-house sign may, not dishonorably, paint the
fox-hunt for the village squire; but the occupation of magnificent
art-power in giving semblance of perpetuity to those bodily pangs which
Nature has mercifully ordained to be transient, and in forcing us, by
the fascination of its stormy skill, to dwell on that from which eyes of
merciful men should instinctively turn away, and eyes of high-minded men
scornfully, is dishonorable, alike in the power which it degrades, and
the joy to which it betrays.
§ 20. In our modern treatment of the dog, of which the prevailing
tendency is marked by Landseer, the interest taken in him is
disproportionate to that taken in man, and leads to a somewhat trivial
mingling of sentiment, or warping by caricature; giving up the true
nature of the animal for the sake of a pretty thought or pleasant jest.
Neither Titian nor Velasquez ever jest; and though Veronese jests
gracefully and tenderly, he never for an instant oversteps the absolute
facts of nature. But the English painter looks for sentiment or jest
primarily, and reaches both by a feebly romantic taint of fallacy,
except in one or two simple and touching pictures, such as the
Shepherd's Chief Mourner.
I was pleased by a little unpretending modern German picture at
Dusseldorf, by E. Bosch, representing a boy carving a model of his
sheep-dog in wood; the dog sitting on its haunches in front of him,
watches the progress of the sculpture with a grave interest and
curiosity, not in the least caricatured, but highly humorous. Another
small picture, by the same artist, of a forester's boy being taught to
shoot by his father,--the dog critically and eagerly watching the
raising of the gun,--shows equally true sympathy.
§ 21. I wish I were able to trace any of the leading circumstances in
the ancient treatment of the horse, but I have no sufficient data. Its
function in the art of the Greeks is connected with all their beautiful
fable philosophy; but I have not a tithe of the knowledge necessary to
pursue the subject in this direction. It branches into questions
relating to sacred animals, and Egyptian and Eastern mythology. I
believe the Greek interest in _pure_ animal character corresponded
closely to our own, except that it is less sentimental, and either
distinctly true or distinctly fabulous; not hesitating between truth and
falsehood. Achilles' horses, like Anacreon's dove, and Aristophanes'
frogs and birds, speak clearly out, if at all. They do not become feebly
human, by fallacies and exaggerations, but frankly and wholly.
Zeuxis' picture of the Centaur indicates, however, a more distinctly
sentimental conception; and I suppose the Greek artists always to have
fully appreciated the horse's fineness of temper and nervous
constitution.[9] They seem, by the way, hardly to have done justice to
the dog. My pleasure in the entire Odyssey is diminished because Ulysses
gives not a word of kindness or of regret to Argus.
§ 22. I am still less able to speak of Roman treatment of the horse. It
is very strange that in the chivalric ages, he is despised; their
greatest painters drawing him with ludicrous neglect. The Venetians, as
was natural, painted him little and ill; but he becomes important in the
equestrian statues of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, chiefly, I
suppose, under the influence of Leonardo.
I am not qualified to judge of the merit of these equestrian statues;
but, in painting, I find that no real interest is taken in the horse
until Vandyck's time, he and Rubens doing more for it than all previous
painters put together. Rubens was a good rider, and rode nearly every
day, as, I doubt not, Vandyck also. Some notice of an interesting
equestrian picture of Vandyck's will be found in the next chapter. The
horse has never, I think, been painted worthily again, since he
died.[10] Of the influence of its unworthy painting, and unworthy use, I
do not at present care to speak, noticing only that it brought about in
England the last degradations of feeling and of art. The Dutch, indeed,
banished all deity from the earth; but I think only in England has
death-bed consolation been sought in a fox's tail.[11]
I wish, however, the reader distinctly to understand that the
expressions of reprobation of field-sports which he will find scattered
through these volumes,--and which, in concluding them, I wish I had time
to collect and farther enforce--refer only to the chase and the turf;
that is to say, to hunting, shooting, and horse-racing, but not to
athletic exercises. I have just as deep a respect for boxing, wrestling,
cricketing, and rowing, as contempt of all the various modes of wasting
wealth, time, land, and energy of soul, which have been invented by the
pride and selfishness of men, in order to enable them to be healthy in
uselessness, and get quit of the burdens of their own lives, without
condescending to make them serviceable to others.
§ 23. Lastly, of cattle.
The period when the interest of men began to be transferred from the
ploughman to his oxen is very distinctly marked by Bassano. In him the
descent is even greater, being, accurately, from the Madonna to the
Manger--one of perhaps his best pictures (now, I believe, somewhere in
the north of England), representing an adoration of shepherds with
nothing to adore, they and their herds forming the subject, and the
Christ being "supposed" at the side. From that time cattle-pieces become
frequent, and gradually form a staple art commodity. Cuyp's are the
best; nevertheless, neither by him nor any one else have I ever seen an
entirely well-painted cow. All the men who have skill enough to paint
cattle nobly, disdain them. The real influence of these Dutch
cattle-pieces, in subsequent art, is difficult to trace, and is not
worth tracing. They contain a certain healthy appreciation of simple
pleasure which I cannot look upon wholly without respect. On the other
hand, their cheap tricks of composition degraded the entire technical
system of landscape; and their clownish and blunt vulgarities too long
blinded us, and continue, so far as in them lies, to blind us yet, to
all the true refinement and passion of rural life. There have always
been truth and depth of pastoral feeling in the works of great poets and
novelists; but never, I think, in painting, until lately. The designs of
J. C. Hook are, perhaps, the only works of the kind in existence which
deserve to be mentioned in connection with the pastorals of Wordsworth
and Tennyson.
We must not, however, yet pass to the modern school, having still to
examine the last phase of Dutch design, in which the vulgarities which
might be forgiven to the truth of Cuyp, and forgotten in the power of
Rubens, became unpardonable and dominant in the works of men who were at
once affected and feeble. But before doing this, we must pause to settle
a preliminary question, which is an important and difficult one, and
will need a separate chapter; namely, What is vulgarity itself?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] None of our present forms of opinion are more curious than those
which have developed themselves from this verbal carelessness. It
never seems to strike any of our religious teachers, that if a child
has a father living, it either _knows_ it has a father, or does not:
it does not "believe" it has a father. We should be surprised to see
an intelligent child standing at its garden gate, crying out to the
passers-by: "I believe in my father, because he built this house;" as
logical people proclaim that they believe in God, because He must
have made the world.
[2] Dusseldorf.
[3] Antwerp.
[4] Cologne.
[5] Brussels.
[6] Brussels.
[7] Munich.
[8] Original Papers relating to Rubens; edited by W. Sainsbury.
London, 1859: page 39. Y. E. is the person who commissioned the
picture.
[9] "A single harsh word will raise a nervous horse's pulse ten beats
a minute."--Mr. Rarey.
[10] John Lewis has made grand sketches of the horse, but has never,
so far as I know, completed any of them. Respecting his wonderful
engravings of wild animals, see my pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism.
[11] See "The Fox-hunter's Death-bed," a popular sporting print.