WOUVERMANS AND ANGELICO.
§ 1. Having determined the general nature of vulgarity, we are now able
to close our view of the character of the Dutch school.
It is a strangely mingled one, which I have the more difficulty in
investigating, because I have no power of sympathy with it. However
inferior in capacity, I can enter measuredly into the feelings of
Correggio or of Titian; what they like, I like; what they disdain, I
disdain. Going lower down, I can still follow Salvator's passion, or
Albano's prettiness; and lower still, I can measure modern German
heroics, or French sensualities. I see what the people mean,--know where
they are, and what they are. But no effort of fancy will enable me to
lay hold of the temper of Teniers or Wouvermans, any more than I can
enter into the feelings of one of the lower animals. I cannot see why
they painted,--what they are aiming at,--what they liked or disliked.
All their life and work is the same sort of mystery to me as the mind of
my dog when he rolls on carrion. He is a well enough conducted dog in
other respects, and many of these Dutchmen were doubtless very
well-conducted persons: certainly they learned their business well; both
Teniers and Wouvermans touch with a workmanly hand, such as we cannot
see rivalled now; and they seem never to have painted indolently, but
gave the purchaser his thorough money's worth of mechanism, while the
burgesses who bargained for their cattle and card parties were probably
more respectable men than the princes who gave orders to Titian for
nymphs, and to Raphael for nativities. But whatever patient merit or
commercial value may be in Dutch labor, this at least is clear, that it
is wholly insensitive.
The very mastery these men have of their business proceeds from their
never really seeing the whole of anything, but only that part of it
which they know how to do. Out of all nature they felt their function
was to extract the grayness and shininess. Give them a golden sunset, a
rosy dawn, a green waterfall, a scarlet autumn on the hills, and they
merely look curiously into it to see if there is anything gray and
glittering which can be painted on their common principles.
§ 2. If this, however, were their only fault, it would not prove
absolute insensibility, any more than it could be declared of the makers
of Florentine tables, that they were blind or vulgar because they took
out of nature only what could be represented in agate. A Dutch picture
is, in fact, merely a Florentine table more finely touched: it has its
regular ground of slate, and its mother-of-pearl and tinsel put in with
equal precision; and perhaps the fairest view one can take of a Dutch
painter is, that he is a respectable tradesman furnishing well-made
articles in oil paint: but when we begin to examine the designs of these
articles, we may see immediately that it is his inbred vulgarity, and
not the chance of fortune, which has made him a tradesman, and kept him
one;--which essential character of Dutch work, as distinguished from all
other, may be best seen in that hybrid landscape, introduced by
Wouvermans and Berghem. Of this landscape Wouvermans' is the most
characteristic. It will be remembered that I called it "hybrid," because
it strove to unite the attractiveness of every other school. We will
examine the motives of one of the most elaborate Wouvermans
existing--the landscape with a hunting party, No. 208 in the Pinacothek
of Munich.
§ 3. A large lake in the distance narrows into a river in the
foreground; but the river has no current, nor has the lake either
reflections or waves. It is a piece of gray slate-table, painted with
horizontal touches, and only explained to be water by boats upon it.
Some of the figures in these are fishing (the corks of a net are drawn
in bad perspective); others are bathing, one man pulling his shirt over
his ears, others are swimming. On the farther side of the river are some
curious buildings, half villa, half ruin; or rather ruin dressed. There
are gardens at the top of them, with beautiful and graceful trellised
architecture and wandering tendrils of vine. A gentleman is coming down
from a door in the ruins to get into his pleasure-boat. His servant
catches his dog.
§ 4. On the nearer side of the river, a bank of broken ground rises from
the water's edge up to a group of very graceful and carefully studied
trees, with a French-antique statue on a pedestal in the midst of them,
at the foot of which are three musicians, and a well-dressed couple
dancing; their coach is in waiting behind. In the foreground are
hunters. A richly and highly-dressed woman, with falcon on fist, the
principal figure in the picture, is wrought with Wouvermans' best skill.
A stouter lady rides into the water after a stag and hind, who gallop
across the middle of the river without sinking. Two horsemen attend the
two Amazons, of whom one pursues the game cautiously, but the other is
thrown headforemost into the river, with a splash which shows it to be
deep at the edge, though the hart and hind find bottom in the middle.
Running footmen, with other dogs, are coming up, and children are
sailing a toy-boat in the immediate foreground. The tone of the whole is
dark and gray, throwing out the figures in spots of light, on
Wouvermans' usual system. The sky is cloudy, and very cold.
§ 5. You observe that in this picture the painter has assembled all the
elements which he supposes pleasurable. We have music, dancing, hunting,
boating, fishing, bathing, and child-play, all at once. Water, wide and
narrow; architecture, rustic and classical; trees also of the finest;
clouds, not ill-shaped. Nothing wanting to our Paradise: not even
practical jest; for to keep us always laughing, somebody shall be for
ever falling with a splash into the Kishon. Things proceed,
nevertheless, with an oppressive quietude. The dancers are uninterested
in the hunters, the hunters in the dancers; the hirer of the
pleasure-boat perceives neither hart nor hind; the children are
unconcerned at the hunter's fall; the bathers regard not the draught of
fishes; the fishers fish among the bathers, without apparently
anticipating any diminution in their haul.
§ 6. Let the reader ask himself, would it have been possible for the
painter in any clearer way to show an absolute, clay-cold, ice-cold
incapacity of understanding what a pleasure meant? Had he had as much
heart as a minnow, he would have given some interest to the fishing;
with the soul of a grasshopper, some spring to the dancing; had he half
the will of a dog, he would have made some one turn to look at the hunt,
or given a little fire to the dash down to the water's edge. If he had
been capable of pensiveness, he would not have put the pleasure-boat
under the ruin;--capable of cheerfulness, he would not have put the ruin
above the pleasure-boat. Paralyzed in heart and brain, he delivers his
inventoried articles of pleasure one by one to his ravenous customers;
palateless; gluttonous. "We cannot taste it. Hunting is not enough; let
us have dancing. That's dull; now give us a jest, or what is life! The
river is too narrow, let us have a lake; and, for mercy's sake, a
pleasure-boat, or how can we spend another minute of this languid day!
But what pleasure can be in a boat? let us swim; we see people always
drest, let us see them naked."
§ 7. Such is the unredeemed, carnal appetite for mere sensual pleasure.
I am aware of no other painter who consults it so exclusively, without
one gleam of higher hope, thought, beauty, or passion.
As the pleasure of Wouvermans, so also is his war. That, however, is not
hybrid, it is of one character only.
The best example I know is the great battle-piece with the bridge, in
the gallery of Turin. It is said that when this picture, which had been
taken to Paris, was sent back, the French offered twelve thousand pounds
(300,000 francs) for permission to keep it. The report, true or not,
shows the estimation in which the picture is held at Turin.
§ 8. There are some twenty figures in the mêlée whose faces can be seen
(about sixty in the picture altogether), and of these twenty, there is
not one whose face indicates courage or power; or anything but animal
rage and cowardice; the latter prevailing always. Every one is fighting
for his life, with the expression of a burglar defending himself at
extremity against a party of policemen. There is the same terror, fury,
and pain which a low thief would show on receiving a pistol-shot through
his arm. Most of them appear to be fighting only to get away; the
standard-bearer _is_ retreating, but whether with the enemies' flag or
his own I do not see; he slinks away with it, with reverted eye, as if
he were stealing a pocket-handkerchief. The swordsmen cut at each other
with clenched teeth and terrified eyes; they are too busy to curse each
other; but one sees that the feelings they have could be expressed no
otherwise than by low oaths. Far away, to the smallest figures in the
smoke, and to one drowning under the distant arch of the bridge, all are
wrought with a consummate skill in vulgar touch; there is no good
painting, properly so called, anywhere, but of clever, dotty, sparkling,
telling execution, as much as the canvas will hold, and much delicate
gray and blue color in the smoke and sky.
§ 9. Now, in order fully to feel the difference between this view of
war, and a gentleman's, go, if possible, into our National Gallery, and
look at the young Malatesta riding into the battle of Sant' Egidio (as
he is painted by Paul Ucello). His uncle Carlo, the leader of the army,
a grave man of about sixty, has just given orders for the knights to
close: two have pushed forward with lowered lances, and the mêlée has
begun only a few yards in front; but the young knight, riding at his
uncle's side, has not yet put his helmet on, nor intends doing so, yet.
Erect he sits, and quiet, waiting for his captain's orders to charge;
calm as if he were at a hawking party, only more grave; his golden hair
wreathed about his proud white brow, as about a statue's.
§ 10. "Yes," the thoughtful reader replies; "this may be pictorially
very beautiful; but those Dutchmen were good fighters, and generally won
the day; whereas, this very battle of Sant' Egidio, so calmly and
bravely begun, was lost."
Indeed, it is very singular that unmitigated expressions of cowardice in
battle should be given by the painters of so brave a nation as the
Dutch. Not but that it is possible enough for a coward to be stubborn,
and a brave man weak; the one may win his battle by a blind persistence,
and the other lose it by a thoughtful vacillation. Nevertheless, the
want of all expression of resoluteness in Dutch battle-pieces remains,
for the present, a mystery to me. In those of Wouvermans, it is only a
natural development of his perfect vulgarity in all respects.
§ 11. I do not think it necessary to trace farther the evidences of
insensitive conception in the Dutch school. I have associated the name
of Teniers with that of Wouvermans in the beginning of this chapter,
because Teniers is essentially the painter of the pleasures of the
ale-house and card-table, as Wouvermans of those of the chase; and the
two are leading masters of the peculiar Dutch trick of white touch on
gray or brown ground; but Teniers is higher in reach, and more honest in
manner. Berghem is the real associate of Wouvermans in the hybrid school
of landscape. But all three are alike insensitive; that is to say,
unspiritual or deathful, and that to the uttermost, in every
thought,--producing, therefore, the lowest phase of possible art of a
skilful kind. There are deeper elements in De Hooghe and Gerard Terburg;
sometimes expressed with superb quiet painting by the former; but the
whole school is inherently mortal to all its admirers; having by its
influence in England destroyed our perception of all purposes of
painting, and throughout the north of the Continent effaced the sense of
color among artists of every rank.
We have, last, to consider what recovery has taken place from the
paralysis to which the influence of this Dutch art had reduced us in
England seventy years ago. But, in closing my review of older art, I
will endeavor to illustrate, by four simple examples, the main
directions of its spiritual power, and the cause of its decline.
§ 12. The frontispiece of this volume is engraved from an old sketch of
mine, a pencil outline of the little Madonna by Angelico, in the
Annunciation preserved in the sacristy of Santa Maria Novella. This
Madonna has not, so far as I know, been engraved before, and it is one
of the most characteristic of the Purist school. I believe through all
my late work I have sufficiently guarded my readers from over-estimating
this school; but it is well to turn back to it now, from the wholly
carnal work of Wouvermans, in order to feel its purity: so that, if we
err, it may be on this side. The opposition is the most accurate which I
can set before the student, for the technical disposition of Wouvermans,
in his search after delicate form and minute grace, much resembles that
of Angelico. But the thoughts of Wouvermans are wholly of this world.
For him there is no heroism, awe, or mercy, hope, or faith. Eating and
drinking, and slaying; rage and lust; the pleasures and distresses of
the debased body--from these, his thoughts, if so we may call them,
never for an instant rise or range.
§ 13. The soul of Angelico is in all ways the precise reverse of this;
habitually as incognizant of any earthly pleasure as Wouvermans of any
heavenly one. Both are exclusive with absolute exclusiveness;--neither
desiring nor conceiving anything beyond their respective spheres.
Wouvermans lives under gray clouds, his lights come out as spots.
Angelico lives in an unclouded light: his shadows themselves are color;
his lights are not the spots, but his darks. Wouvermans lives in
perpetual tumult--tramp of horse--clash of cup--ring of pistol-shot.
Angelico in perpetual peace. Not seclusion from the world. No shutting
out of the world is needful for him. There is nothing to shut out. Envy,
lust, contention, discourtesy, are to him as though they were not; and
the cloister walk of Fiesole no penitential solitude, barred from the
stir and joy of life, but a possessed land of tender blessing, guarded
from the entrance of all but holiest sorrow. The little cell was as one
of the houses of heaven prepared for him by his master. "What need had
it to be elsewhere? Was not the Val d'Arno, with its olive woods in
white blossom, paradise enough for a poor monk? or could Christ be
indeed in heaven more than here? Was he not always with him? Could he
breathe or see, but that Christ breathed beside him and looked into his
eyes? Under every cypress avenue the angels walked; he had seen their
white robes, whiter than the dawn, at his bedside, as he awoke in early
summer. They had sung with him, one on each side, when his voice failed
for joy at sweet vesper and matin time; his eyes were blinded by their
wings in the sunset, when it sank behind the hills of Luni."
There may be weakness in this, but there is no baseness; and while I
rejoice in all recovery from monasticism which leads to practical and
healthy action in the world, I must, in closing this work, severely
guard my pupils from the thought that sacred rest may be honorably
exchanged for selfish and mindless activity.
§ 14. In order to mark the temper of Angelico, by a contrast of another
kind, I give, in Fig. 99, a facsimile of one of the heads in Salvator's
etching of the Academy of Plato. It is accurately characteristic of
Salvator, showing, by quite a central type, his indignant, desolate, and
degraded power. I could have taken unspeakably baser examples from
others of his etchings, but they would have polluted my book, and been
in some sort unjust, representing only the worst part of his work. This
head, which is as elevated a type as he ever reaches, is assuredly
debased enough; and a sufficient image of the mind of the painter of
Catiline and the Witch of Endor.
[Illustration: FIG. 99.]
§ 15. Then, in Fig. 100, you have also a central type of the mind of
Durer. Complete, yet quaint; severely rational and practical, yet
capable of the highest imaginative religious feeling, and as gentle as a
child's, it seemed to be well represented by this figure of the old
bishop, with all the infirmities, and all the victory, of his life,
written on his calm, kind, and worldly face. He has been no dreamer, nor
persecutor, but a helpful and undeceivable man; and by careful
comparison of this conception with the common kinds of episcopal ideal
in modern religious art, you will gradually feel how the force of Durer
is joined with an unapproachable refinement, so that he can give the
most practical view of whatever he treats, without the slightest taint
or shadow of vulgarity. Lastly, the fresco of Giorgione, Plate 79, which
is as fair a type as I am able to give in any single figure, of the
central Venetian art, will complete for us a series, sufficiently
symbolical, of the several ranks of art, from lowest to highest.[1] In
Wouvermans (of whose work I suppose no example is needed, it being so
generally known), we have the entirely carnal mind,--wholly versed in
the material world, and incapable of conceiving any goodness or
greatness whatsoever.
[Illustration: FIG. 100. _To face page 284._]
In Angelico, you have the entirely spiritual mind, wholly versed in the
heavenly world, and incapable of conceiving any wickedness or vileness
whatsoever.
In Salvator, you have an awakened conscience, and some spiritual power,
contending with evil, but conquered by it, and brought into captivity to
it.
In Durer, you have a far purer conscience and higher spiritual power,
yet, with some defect still in intellect, contending with evil, and
nobly prevailing over it; yet retaining the marks of the contest, and
never so entirely victorious as to conquer sadness.
In Giorgione, you have the same high spiritual power and practical
sense; but now, with entirely perfect intellect, contending with evil;
conquering it utterly, casting it away for ever, and rising beyond it
into magnificence of rest.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] As I was correcting these pages, there was put into my hand a
little work by a very dear friend--"Travels and Study in Italy," by
Charles Eliot Norton;--I have not yet been able to do more than
glance at it; but my impression is, that by carefully reading it,
together with the essay by the same writer on the Vita Nuova of
Dante, a more just estimate may be formed of the religious art of
Italy than by the study of any other books yet existing. At least, I
have seen none in which the tone of thought was at once so tender and
so just.
I had hoped, before concluding this book, to have given it higher
value by extracts from the works which have chiefly helped or guided
me, especially from the writings of Helps, Lowell, and the Rev. A. J.
Scott. But if I were to begin making such extracts, I find that I
should not know, either in justice or affection, how to end.