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The  drawings  of  Claude 


Presented  to  the 

LIBRARY  of  the 
UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO 

by 

MRS.    H..J.    CODY 


HER  ELEVEN  AUGUST   15,  1907  ONE  SHILLING  NfeV 

Special  Number  of  THE  SHILLING 
BURLINGTON  and  Fine  Art  Chronicle 


THE     DRAWINGS     OF 

CLAUDE 


With  an   Essay  by 


ROGER  E.  FRY 

And    Notes   on   the    Drawings    reproduced. 


FOUR    COLLOTTPE   FACSIMIL6S 
ANT)  SIXT86N  FULL-TAGS  TLAT8S 


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O  O 

will    appear    in    the   September  number    of  THE 
BURLINGTON    MAGAZINE  : 

Art  in  the  Modern  Theatre, 

By   HAROLD    CHILD. 

J 

The  (^ase  for  Modern  'Painting, 

By   A    MODERN    PAINTER. 

No.  V  —  German  Aspirations. 

How  'Dutch  Painters  Sold  their 

B      Dr.    W.    MARTIN. 


GEO.     KAGE 

IS    AN    EXPERT    RESTORER 

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Manufacturer  of  Hand-Made   Mounts  of   Drawing   Paper  only      The   Finest 
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Every  Description  of  Art  Restored  and  Framed ;  the  best  and  cheapest  and  the  6ne  old  style. 

Studios  mid  Manufactory :  133  Hornsey  Rd.,  Holloway,  London. 


The  S  fires  of  Rome, 

By  J.    TAVENOR-PERRY. 

Recent  Additions  to  the  Collec- 
tion of  Mr.  H.  £.  Frick.  Article  i. 


THE     BUSHEY    SCHOOL    OF    PAINTING, 


BUSHEY,  HERTS. 


figure  and  Animal  Painting  from  ihc  doing  model. 


Principal  :— 

MISS     LUCY     KEMP- WELCH,     R.B.A. 


Asst.  Master:    ROWLAND   WHEELWRIGHT.  R.B.A 


AT    ALL    BOOKSELLERS    AND    LIBRARIES. 

Demy  Svo,  xviii  +  404  pp.,  123.  net.     NOW  READY. 
THE   LIFE   OF 

SIR  TOBIE  MATTHEW,  Knight 

(BACON'S   ALTER    EGO) 

By  his  Kinsman,  ARNOLD  HARRIS  MATHEW 

(de  jure  EARL   OF    LAXDAFK). 
Numerous  Portraits   from   scarce  prints   and  facsimiles. 

This  biography,  compiled  exclusively  from  original  and  chiefly  unexplored  documents 
preserved  among  the  Domestic  and  State  Papers  of  the  Sixteenth  and  Seventeenth 
Centuries,  gives  for  the  first  time  the  life  of  a  famous  wit  of  the  age  of  Bacon  and 
Suckling— who  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  remarkable,  talented,  and  picturesque 
characters  of  his  time.  Sir  Toble  cut  a  very  prominent  figure  at  the  court  of  Charles  1., 
insinuating  himself  into  the  most  private  cabals,  and  during  a  long  life  played  a  brilliant 
part  upon  the  world's  stage. 


Just  Out.    Royal  &<uo,    tvith  Eight  Full-page  Illustrations  in  three  states, 
Prospectus  on  application. 

WHISTLER:  Notes  and  Footnotes 
and  other  Memoranda. 


By    A.    E.    QALLATIN. 


Several  of  these  essays  have  Whistler  for  their  subject,  while  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and 
Purvis  de  Chavannes  as  caricaturists  ;  Bernard  Hoittet  de  Monvel,  Aubrey  Beardsley. 
Everett  Shinn,  and  Childe  Hassam  suggest  the  range  ol  the  other  papers.  The  illus- 
trations include  some  unpublished  drawings  by  Whistler. 


Medium  4to.      15s.   net. 


STRANG  (William,  A.R  A.),  Ballads  ff  Etchings 

A  liook   of  Ballads  by  ALICK  SAKCIANT.     With  Five  Etchings 
hv  \VII.I.IAM   STRAXG,  A.R. A. 


LONDON:    ELKIX   MATHEWS,    VIGO    STREET,   W. 


F.W.  PHILLIPS 

Antiquary, 
The  Manor  House,  HITCHIN,  HERTS 


Persian,  RhoUian. 
flnatoHan,  &  hispano 
roauro  faience.   . 


ILLUSTRATION  : 

A    LARGE    LUSTRED    PERSIAN    TILE, 
size  14  in.  by  19^  in.,  with  inscription  — 

"  In  the  name  of  God,  the  Merciful,  the  Clement, 
the  building  of  this  dwelling  'was  commenced  r>v 
the  Most  Mighty  Sultan,  The  Victorious  Abu  Said, 
Bahadar  Khan,  'whose  kingdom  God  make  stand. 
Written  by  Neri-Eddis  Muhammed  in  the  year  860 
or  A.D.  1444." 

Price    £4O. 


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ROSSETTI,    BURNE-JONES.     A   Representative 

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LANDSCAPE  STUDY  BY  CLAUDE 
IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  GALLERIES, 
OXFORD 


CLAUDE 
BY  ROGER  E.   FRY 


N  spite  of  all  the  attacks 
of  critics,  in  spite  of  all 
the  development  of  high 
flavour  and  emphasis  of 
romantic  landscape,  which 
might  well  have  spoilt 
us  for  his  cool  simplicity,  Claude  still 
lives,  not,  indeed,  as  one  of  the  gods 
of  the  sale-room,  but  in  the  hearts  of  con- 
templative and  undemonstrative  people. 
This  is  surely  an  interesting  and  encourag- 
ing fact.  It  means  that  a  very  purely 
artistic  and  poetical  appeal  stills  finds  its 
response  in  the  absence  of  all  subsidiary 
interests  and  attractions.  The  appeal  is, 
indeed,  a  very  limited  one,  touching  only 
certain  highly  self-conscious  and  sophisti- 
cated moods,  but  it  is,  within  its  limits,  so 
sincere  and  so  poignant  that  Claude's  very 
failings  become,  as  it  were,  an  essential 
part  of  its  expression.  These  failings  are, 
indeed,  so  many  and  so  obvious  that  it  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at  if,  now  and  again, 
they  blind  even  a  sensitive  nature  like 
Ruskin's  to  the  fundamental  beauty  and 
grandeur  of  Claude's  revelation.  But  we 
must  be  careful  not  to  count  as  failings 
qualities  which  are  essential  to  the  parti- 
cular kind  of  beauty  that  Claude  envisages, 
though,  to  be  quite  frank,  it  is  sometimes 
hard  to  make  up  one's  mind  whether  a 
particular  characteristic  is  a  lucky  defect 
or  a  calculated  negation.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  peculiar  gaucherie  of  his 
articulations.  Claude  knows  less,  perhaps, 
than  any  considerable  landscape  painter — 
less  than  the  most  mediocre  of  modern 
landscapists — how  to  lead  from  one  object 
to  another.  His  foregrounds  are  covered 
with  clumsily  arranged  leaves  which  have 
no  organic  growth,  and  which,  as  often 
as  not,  lie  on  the  ground  instead  of  spring- 
ing from  it.  His  trees  frequently  isolate 
themselves  helplessly  from  their  parent 

THK  SHILLING  BURLINGTON,  No.  n,  Vol.  I— August,  1907. 


soil.  In  particular,  when  he  wants  a 
repoussoir  in  the  foreground  at  either 
end  of  his  composition  he  has  recourse  to 
a  clumsily  constructed  old  bare  trunk, 
which  has  little  more  meaning  than  a 
stage  property.  Even  in  his  composition 
there  are  na'ivetes  which  may  or  may 
not  be  intentional  :  sometimes  they  have 
the  happiest  effect,  at  others  they  seem 
not  childlike  but  childish.  Such,  for 
instance,  is  his  frequent  habit  of  dividing 
spaces  equally,  both  vertically  and  horizon- 
tally, either  placing  his  horizontal  line 
half-way  up  the  picture,  or  a  principal 
building  on  the  central  vertical  line.  At 
times  this  seems  the  last  word  of  a  highly 
subtilized  simplicity,  of  an  artifice  which 
conceals  itself ;  at  others  one  cannot  be 
sure  it  is  not  due  to  incapacity.  There 
is,  in  fact,  a  real  excuse  for  Ruskin's 
exaggerated  paradox  that  Claude's  drawings 
look  like  the  work  of  a  child  of  ten. 
There  is  a  whole  world  of  beauty  which 
one  must  not  look  for  at  all  in  Claude. 
All  that  beauty  of  the  sudden  and  unex- 
pected revelation  of  an  unsuspected  truth 
which  the  Gothic  and  Early  Renaissance 
art  provides  is  absent  from  Claude.  As 
the  eye  follows  his  line  it  is  nowhere 
arrested  by  a  sense  of  surprise  at  its 
representative  power,  nor  by  that  peculiar 
thrill  which  comes  from  the  communi- 
cation of  some  vital  creative  force  in  the 
artist.  Compare,  for  instance,  Claude's 
drawing  of  mountains,  which  he  knew 
and  studied  constantly,  with  Rembrandt's. 
Rembrandt  had  probably  never  seen 
mountains,  but  he  obtained  a  more  intimate 
understanding  by  the  light  of  his  inner 
vision  than  Claude  could  ever  attain  to  by 
familiarity  and  study.  We  need  not  go 
to  Claude's  figures,  where  he  is  notoriously 
feeble  and  superficially  Raphaelesque,  to 
find  how  weak  was  his  hold  upon  character 

FF  439 


Claude 


in  whatever  object  he  set  himself  to 
interpret.  In  the  British  Museum  there 
is  a  most  careful  and  elaborate  study  of 
the  rocky  shores  of  a  stream.  Claude  has 
even  attempted  here  to  render  the  contorted 
stratification  of  the  river-bed,  but  without 
any  of  that  intimate  imaginative  grasp  of 
the  tension  and  stress  which  underlie  the 
appearance  which  Turner  could  give  in  a 
few  hurried  scratches.  No  one,  we  may 
surmise,  ever  loved  trees  more  deeply  than 
Claude,  and  we  know  that  he  prided 
himself  on  his  careful  observation  of  the 
difference  of  their  specific  characters  ;  and 
yet  he  will  articulate  their  branches  in 
the  most  haphazard,  perfunctory  manner. 
There  is  nothing  in  all  Claude's  innumer- 
able drawings  which  reveals  the  inner  life 
of  the  tree  itself,  its  aspirations  towards 
air  and  light,  its  struggle  with  gravitation 
and  wind,  as  one  little  drawing  by  Leonardo 
da  Vinci. 

All  these  defects  might  pass  more  easily 
in  a  turbulent  romanticist,  hurrying  pell  mell 
to  get  expressed  some  moving  and  dramatic 
scene,  careless  of  details  so  long  as  the 
main  movement  were  ascertained,  but  there 
is  none  of  this  fire  in  Claude.  It  is  with 
slow  ponderation  and  deliberate  care  that  he 
places  before  us  his  perfunctory  and 
generalized  statements,  finishing  and  polish- 
ing them  with  relentless  assiduity,  and 
not  infrequently  giving  us  details  that  we 
do  not  desire  and  which  add  nothing  but 
platitude  to  the  too  prolix  statement. 
I:: All  this  and  much  more  the  admirer 
of  Claude  will  be  wise  to  concede  to  the 
adversary,  and  if  the  latter  ask  wherein  the 
beauty  of  a  Claude  lies  he  may  with  more 
justice  than  in  any  other  case  fall  back  on 
the  reply  of  one  of  Du  Maurier's  aesthetes, 
'  in  the  picture.'  For  there  is  assuredly  a 
kind  of  beauty  which  is  not  only 
compatible  with  these  defects  but  perhaps 
in  some  degree  depends  on  them.  We 

440 


know  and  recognize  it  well  enough  in 
literature.  To  take  a  random  instance. 
Racine  makes  Titus  say  in  'Berenice':  '  De 
mon  aimable  errfiur  je  suis  desabuse.'  This 
may  be  a  dull,  weak  and  colourless  mode  of 
expression,  but  if  he  had  said  with  Shake- 
speare, '  Now  old  desire  doth  in  his  death-bed 
lie,  and  young  affection  gapes  to  be  his 
heir,'  we  should  feel  that  it  would 
destroy  the  particular  kind  of  even  and 
unaccented  harmony  at  which  Racine 
aimed.  Robert  Bridges,  in  his  essay  on 
Keats,  very  aptly  describes  for  literature 
the  kind  of  beauty  which  we  find  in 
Shakespeare  :  '  the  power  of  concentrating 
all  the  far-reaching  resources  of  language  on 
one  point,  so  that  a  single  and  apparently 
effortless  expression  rejoices  the  aesthetic 
imagination  at  the  moment  when  it  is 
most  expectant  and  exacting.'  That, 
ceteris  paribus,  applies  admirably  to  certain 
kinds  of  design.  It  corresponds  to  the 
nervous  touch  of  a  Pollajuolo  or  a 
Rembrandt.  But  Claude's  line  is  almost 
nerveless  and  dull.  Even  when  it  is  most 
rapid  and  free  it  never  surprises  us  by  any  in- 
timate revelation  of  character,  any  summary 
indications  of  the  central  truth.  But  it  has 
a  certain  inexpressive  beauty  of  its  own. 
It  is  never  elegant,  never  florid,  and,  above 
all,  never  has  any  ostentation  of  cleverness. 
The  beauty  of  Claude's  work  is  not  to  be 
sought  primarily  in  his  drawing  :  it  is 
not  a  beauty  of  expressive  parts  but 
the  beauty  of  a  whole.  It  corresponds  in 
fact  to  the  poetry  of  his  century — to  Milton 
or  Racine.  It  is  in  the  cumulative  effect 
of  the  perfect  co-ordination  of  parts  none 
of  which  is  by  itself  capable  of  absorbing 
our  attention  or  fascinating  our  imagina- 
tion that  the  power  of  a  picture  by  Claude 
lies.  It  is  the  unity  and  not  the  content 
that  affects  us.  There  is,  of  course,  content, 
but  the  content  is  only  adequate  to  its 
purpose  and  never  claims  our  attention  on 


VIEW  OF  A  TOWN.     FROM  THE  DRAWING 
BY  CLAUDE  IN    THE  UNIVERSITY 
GALLERIES,  OXFORD 


its  own  account.  The  objects  he  presents 
to  us  have  no  claim  on  him  but  as  parts 
of  a  scheme.  They  have  no  life  and  pur- 
pose of  their  own,  and  for  that  very  reason 
it  is  right  that  they  should  be  stated  in 
vague  and  general  terms.  Particularization 
would  spoil  the  almost  literary  effect  of 
his  presentment.  He  wishes  a  tree  to 
convey  to  the  eye  only  what  the  word 
'  tree '  might  suggest  at  once  to  the  inner 
vision.  We  think  first  of  the  mass  of 
waving  shade  held  up  against  the  brilliance 
of  the  sky,  and  this,  even  with  all  his  detailed 
elaboration,  is  about  where  Claude,  whether 
by  good  fortune  or  design,  leaves  us.  It 
is  the  same  with  his  rocks,  his  water,  his 
animals.  They  are  all  made  for  the  mental 
imagery  of  the  contemplative  wanderer, 
not  of  the  acute  and  ardent  observer.  But 
where  Claude  is  supreme  is  in  the  mar- 
vellous invention  with  which  he  combines 
and  recombines  these  abstract  symbols  so 
as  to  arouse  in  us  more  purely  than  nature 
herself  can  the  mood  of  pastoral  delight. 
That  Claude  was  deeply  influenced  by 
Virgil  one  would  naturally  suppose  from 
his  antiquarian  classicism,  and  a  drawing 
in  the  British  Museum  shows  that  he  had 
the  idea  of  illustrating  the  Aeneid.  In 
any  case  his  pictures  translate  into  the 
language  of  painting  much  of  the  senti- 
ment of  Virgil's  Eclogues,  and  that  with 
a  purity  and  grace  that  rival  his  original. 
In  his  landscapes  Meliboeus  always  leaves 
his  goats  to  repose  with  Daphnis  under 
the  murmuring  shade,  waiting  till  his 
herds  come  of  themselves  to  drink  at  the 
ford,  or  in  sadder  moods  of  passionless 
regret  one  hears  the  last  murmurs  of  the 
lament  for  Gallus  as  the  well-pastured 
goats  turn  homewards  beneath  the  evening 
star. 

Claude  is  the  most  ardent  worshipper 
that  ever  was  of  the  genius  loci.  Of  his 
landscapes  one  always  feels  that  '  some  god 


Claude 

is  in  this  place.'  Never,  it  is  true,  one  of 
the  greater  gods  :  no  mysterious  and  fear- 
ful Pan,  no  soul-stirring  Bacchus  or  all- 
embracing  Demeter ;  scarcely,  though  he 
tried  more  than  once  deliberately  to 
invoke  them,  Apollo  and  the  Muses,  but 
some  mild  local  deity,  the  inhabitant  of  a 
rustic  shrine  whose  presence  only  heightens 
the  glamour  of  the  scene. 

It  is  the  sincerity  of  this  worship,  and 
the  purity  and  directness  of  its  expression, 
which  makes  the  lover  of  landscape  turn 
with  such  constant  affection  to  Claude, 
and  the  chief  means  by  which  he  com- 
municates it  is  the  unity  and  perfection 
of  his  general  design  ;  it  is  not  by  form 
considered  in  itself,  but  by  the  planning 
of  his  tone  divisions,  that  he  appeals,  and 
here,  at  least,  he  is  a  past  master.  This 
splendid  architecture  of  the  tone  masses 
is,  indeed,  the  really  great  quality  in  his 
pictures  ;  its  perfection  and  solidity  are 
what  enables  them  .to  bear  the  weight  of 
so  meticulous  and,  to  our  minds,  tiresome 
an  elaboration  of  detail  without  loss  of 
unity,  and  enables  us  even  to  accept  the 
enamelled  hardness  and  tightness  of  his 
surface.  But  many  people  of  to-day, 
accustomed  to  our  more  elliptical  and 
quick-witted  modes  of  expression,  are  so 
impatient  of  these  qualities  that  they  can 
only  appreciate  Claude's  greatness  through 
the  medium  of  his  drawings,  where  the 
general  skeleton  of  the  design  is  seen 
without  its  adornments,  and  in  a  medium 
which  he  used  with  perfect  ease  and 
undeniable  beauty.  Thus  to  reject  the 
pictures  is,  I  think,  an  error,  because  it 
was  only  when  a  design  had  been  exposed 
to  constant  correction  and  purification  that 
Claude  got  out  of  it  its  utmost  expressive- 
ness, and  his  improvisations  steadily  grow 
under  his  critical  revision  to  their  full 
perfection.  But  in  the  drawings,  at  all 
events,  Claude's  great  powers  of  design 

443 


Claude 


are  readily  seen,  and  the  study  of  the 
drawings  has  this  advantage  also,  that 
through  them  we  come  to  know  of  a 
Claude  whose  existence  we  could  never 
have  suspected  by  examining  only  his 
finished  pictures. 

In  speaking  of  the  drawings  it  is  well 
to  recognize  that  they  fall  into  different 
classes  with  different  purposes  and  aims. 
We  need  not,  for  instance,  here  consider 
the  records  of  finished  compositions  in  the 
'  Liber  Veritatis.'  There  remain  designs  for 
paintings  in  all  stages  of  completeness,  from 
the  first  suggestive  idea  to  the  finished 
cartoon  and  the  drawings  from  nature. 
It  is,  perhaps,  scarcely  necessary  to  remark 
that  it  would  have  been  quite  foreign  to 
Claude's  conception  of  his  art  to  have 
painted  a  picture  from  nature.  He,  him- 
self, clearly  distinguished  sharply  between 
his  studies  and  his  compositions.  His 
studies,  therefore,  were  not  incipient 
pictures,  but  exercises  done  for  his  own 
pleasure  or  for  the  fertility  they  gave  to 
his  subsequent  invention,  and  they  have 
the  unchecked  spontaneity  and  freedom  of 
hand  that  one  would  expect  in  such  un- 
reflecting work.  These  studies  again  fall 
into  two  groups  :  first,  studies  of  detail, 
generally  of  foliage  or  of  tree  forms,  and 
occasionally  of  rocks  and  flowers  ;  and 
secondly,  studies  of  general  effects.  Of 
the  studies  of  detail  I  have  already  said 
something.  They  have  the  charm  of  an 
easy  and  distinguished  calligraphy,  and  of 
a  refined  selection  of  the  decorative  possi- 
bilities of  the  things  seen,  but  without 
any  of  that  penetrating  investigation  of 
the  vital  nature  of  the  thing  seen  which 
gives  its  chief  beauty  to  the  best  work  of 
this  kind. 

It  is,  indeed,  in  the  second  group  of 
studies  from  nature  that  we  come  from 
time  to  time  upon  motives  that  startle  and 
surprise  us.  We  find  in  these  a  sus- 

444 


ceptibility  to  natural  charms  which,  in 
its  width  of  range  and  freedom  from 
the  traditional  limitations  of  the  art  of 
landscape,  is  most  remarkable.  Here 
we  find  not  only  Claude  the  prim  seven- 
teenth-century classic,  but  Claude  the 
romanticist,  anticipating  the  chief  ideas 
of  Corot's  later  development1,  and  Claude 
the  impressionist,  anticipating  Whistler 
and  the  discovery  of  Chinese  landscape, 
as,  for  instance,  in  the  marvellous 
aperfu  of  a  mist  effect,  which  we  reproduce 
(plate  xiv)2.  Or,  again,  in  a  view  which  is 
quite  different  from  any  of  these,  but 
quite  as  remote  from  the  Claude  of  the 
oil-paintings,  in  the  great  view  of  the 
Tiber  (Plate  xiii),  a  masterpiece  of  hurried, 
almost  unconscious  planning  of  bold 
contrasts  of  transparent  gloom  and 
dazzling  light  on  water  and  plain.  This, 
indeed,  is  so  modern  in  manner  that  one 
might  mistake  it  at  first  glance  for  a 
water-colour  drawing  by  Mr.  Steer. 

The  impression  one  gets  from  looking 
through  a  collection  of  Claude's  drawings 
like  that  at  the  British  Museum  is  of  a 
man  without  any  keen  feeling  for  objects 
in  themselves,  but  singularly  open  to  im- 
pressions of  general  effects  in  nature, 
watching  always  for  the  shifting  patterns 
of  foliage  and  sky  to  arrange  themselves 
in  some  beautifully  significant  pattern  and 
choosing  it  with  fine  and  critical  taste. 
But  at  the  same  time  he  was  a  man  with 
vigorous  ideas  of  the  laws  of  design  and 
the  necessity  of  perfectly  realized  unity, 
and  to  this  I  suppose  one  must  ascribe  the 
curious  contrast  between  the  narrow  limits 
of  his  work  in  oil  as  compared  with  the 
wide  range,  the  freedom  and  the  profound 
originality  of  his  work  as  a  draughtsman. 

'As,  for  instance,  in  a  wonderful  drawing,  On  the  Banks  of 
the  Tiber,  in  Mr.  Headline's  collection. 

s  It  is  not  impossible  that  Claude  got  the  hint  for  such  a 
treatment  as  this  from  the  impressionist  efforts  of  Graeco- 
Roman  painters.  That  he  studied  such  works  we  know  from 
a  copy  of  one  by  him  in  the  British  Museum. 


LANDSCAPE  STUDY  BY  CLAUDE 

IN  THE  UNIVERSITY   GALLERIES,  OXFORD 


Claude 


Among  all  these  innumerable  effects  which 
his  ready  susceptibility  led  him  to  record 
he  found  but  a  few  which  were  capable  of 
being  reduced  to  that  logical  and  mathema- 
tical formula  which  he  demanded 
before  complete  realization  could  be 
tolerated.  In  his  drawings  he  composes 
sometimes  with  strong  diagonal  lines 
(Ripa  Qrande,  pi.  i),  sometimes  with 
free  and  unstable  balance.  In  his  pictures 
he  has  recourse  to  a  regular  system  of 
polarity,  balancing  his  masses  carefully  on 
either  side  of  the  centre,  sometimes  even 
framing  it  in  like  a  theatrical  scene  with 
two  repoussoirs  pushed  in  on  either  side. 
One  must  suppose,  then,  that  he  approached 
the  composition  of  his  pictures  with  a 
certain  timidity,  that  he  felt  that  safety 
when  working  on  a  large  scale  could  only 
be  secured  by  a  certain  recognized  type 
of  structure,  so  that  out  of  all  the  various 
moods  of  nature  to  which  his  sensitive 
spirit  answered  only  one  lent  itself  to  com- 
plete expression.  One  wishes  at  times 
that  he  had  tried  more.  There  is  in  the 
British  Museum  a  half-effaced  drawing  on 
blue  paper,  an  idea  for  treating  the  Noli 
me  tangre  which,  had  he  worked  it  out, 
would  have  added  to  his  complete 
mastery  of  bucolic  landscape  a  masterpiece 
of  what  one  may  call  tragic  landscape. 
It  is  true  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  figures 
are  in  themselves  totally  inadequate,  but 
they  suggested  an  unusual  and  intense  key 
to  the  landscape.  On  the  outskirts  of  a 


dimly  suggested  wood,  the  figures  meet 
and  hold  converse  ;  to  the  right  the  mound 
of  Calvary  glimmers  pale  and  ghost-like 
against  the  night  sky,  while  over  the 
distant  city  the  first  pink  flush  of  dawn 
begins.  It  is  an  intensely  poetical  con- 
ception. Claude  has  here  created  a 
landscape  in  harmony  with  deeper,  more 
mystical  aspirations  than  elsewhere,  and, 
had  he  given  free  rein  to  his  sensibilities, 
we  should  look  to  him  even  more  than 
we  do  now  as  the  greatest  inventor  of  the 
motives  of  pure  landscape.  As  it  is,  the 
only  ideas  to  which  he  gave  complete 
though  constantly  varied  expression  are 
those  of  pastoral  repose. 

Claude's  view  of  landscape  is  false  to 
nature  in  that  it  is  entirely  anthropocentric. 
His  trees  exist  for  pleasant  shade ;  his 
peasants  to  give  us  the  illusion  of  pastoral 
life,  not  to  toil  for  a  living.  His  world 
is  not  to  be  lived  in,  only  to  be  looked  at 
in  a  mood  of  pleasing  melancholy  or  suave 
reverie.  It  is,  therefore,  as  true  to  one 
aspect  of  human  desire  as  it  is  false  to  the 
facts  of  life.  It  may  be  admitted  that  this 
is  not  the  finest  kind  of  art — it  is  the  art 
of  a  self-centred  and  refined  luxury  which 
looks  on  nature  as  a  garden  to  its  own 
pleasure-house — but  few  will  deny  its 
genial  and  moderating  charm,  and  few  of  us 
live  so  strenuously  as  never  to  feel  a 
sense  of  nostalgia  for  that  Saturnian 
reign  to  which  Virgil  and  Claude  can 
waft  us. 


<*>  NQTES  ON  THE  DRAWINGS  REPRODUCED 


HE  present  series  of  sketches 
and  studies  by  Claude  serves 
a  double  purpose.    In  the  first 
place  it  will  illustrate  in  some 
measure  the  course  of  Claude's 
development  from  early  man- 
hood to  old  age.    Incidentally, 
^______   _      too,  it  illustrates  the  remarkable 

manner  in  which  Claude  anticipated  the  landscape 
work  of  almost  all  the  masters  of  the  art  who 


succeeded  him.  Commenting  on  the  drawings,  it 
is  easy  to  discuss  these  two  aspects  of  the  master's 
art  at  the  same  time  ;  indeed,  by  so  doing,  we  are 
materially  aided  in  gaining  a  clear  idea  of  the 
course  of  his  progress. 

The  history  of  art  as  a  whole  bears  a  singular 
relation  to  the  development  of  great  individual 
artists.  The  great  artist  has  his  primitive  period,  in 
which  his  work  is  stiff  and  precise,  just  as  painting 
itself  was  stiff  and  precise  almost  to  the  close  of 

447 


${otes  on  the  'Drawings  "Reproduced 


the  fifteenth  century.  He  then  enters  upon  the 
period  in  which  his  works  are,  perhaps,  most 
perfect,  when  the  precision  of  his  youth  is  tem- 
pered with  the  freedom  of  perfected  skill.  An 
analogous  stage  is  reached  by  every  school  of  art 
in  its  maturity.  Last,  as  the  artist  approaches 
old  age,  his  work,  if  he  be  a  great  man,  becomes 
emancipated  from  all  current  rules  and  theories 
of  conception  and  technique.  His  composition 
becomes  unrestrained,  his  handling  more  loose. 
A  similar  character  will  be  found  in  all  schools 
of  painting  that  have  passed  their  period  of  full 
strength.  The  painters  who  have  not  originality 
copy  their  predecessors ;  those  who  have  origin- 
ality express  themselves  with  more  fluency  but 
with  less  sharpness  of  vision. 

The  sketches  of  Claude  are  of  the  utmost  variety, 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  seem  to  anticipate  from 
time  to  time  the  qualities  obtained  by  many  of 
his  successors.  We  shall  not,  therefore,  be  far 
wrong,  perhaps,  if  we  conclude  that  their  relative 
chronological  order  is  analogous  to  that  of  the 
dates  at  which  the  respective  artists  whom  he 
resembles  lived  and  worked,  and  to  conclude  that 
a  drawing  resembling  a  work  of  Gainsborough  is 
later  than  one  which  resembles  the  work  of 
Poussin  ;  and  that  a  drawing  which  recalls  the 
Impressionists  of  the  nineteenth  century  comes 
later  still.  Such  dated  sketches  as  we  possess  on 
the  whole  bear  out  this  assumption,  though  it 
must  always  be  remembered  that  the  assumption 
applies  only  to  sketches  and  studies  from  nature. 
Claude  the  sketcher  is,  in  fact,  a  different  person 
from  Claude  the  designer  of  classical  compositions; 
and  the  principle  which  guides  us  in  dating  the 
former  class  of  work  is  not  applicable  to  the  latter.1 

I. 

That  the  first  sketch  of  shipping  represents 
Claude's  style  at  the  very  opening  of  his  career  in 
Rome  is  indicated,  not  only  by  a  certain  tentative 
quality  in  the  workmanship,  but  also  by  external 
evidence.  Among  not  the  least  interesting  draw- 
ings in  Mr.  Heseltine's  splendid  collection  are 
certain  pages  of  blue  paper  from  one  of  Claude's 
early  sketch-books,  and  on  the  back  of  one  of 
them  (No.  3)  is  a  study  of  a  boat,  the  deck  covered 
with  the  sailors  and  awning,  and  with  the  inscrip- 
tion '  Etude  faite  a  Ripa  Grande.'  The  coincidence, 
both  of  the  subject  and  of  the  inscription,  with 
the  drawing  in  the  British  Museum,  together  with 
the  resemblance  to  his  countryman  Callot  which 
we  notice  in  the  figures,  makes  it  clear  that  we 
have  here  an  example  of  Claude's  earliest  style. 
Those  who  know  his  history  will  remember  how 
largely  marine  subjects  figured  during  the  first 
portion  of  his  career,  so  that  on  all  grounds  we 
may  assume  that  this  drawing  represents  his 

1  To  those  who  wish  to  make  a  more  detailed  study  of  Claude 
the  little  biography  by  Mr.  Edward  Dillon,  published  in  Messrs. 
Methuen's  half-crown  series,  can  be  heartily  recommended. 

448 


powers  at  the  time  he  settled  in  Rome,  after  his 
Wander] ahre,  that  is  to  say,  about  the  year  1630. 
We  do  not,  of  course,  see  here  the  same  mastery 
of  aerial  perspective  which  we  find  in  the  latter 
drawings ;  the  contrast  between  the  boats,  the 
buildings  and  the  sky  behind  them  is  too  forced  ; 
yet  already  we  may  trace  that  feeling  for  effects  of 
misty  sunlight  which  Claude  afterwards  developed. 

II 

The  next  study  is  one  of  those  sketches  to  which 
a  reproduction  cannot  do  full  justice.  The  trees 
are  sketched  in  a  reddish-brown  pigment  which 
conveys  by  itself  the  impression  of  strong  illumi- 
nation, while  in  the  background  one  or  two  touches 
of  cooler  grey  give  the  hills  by  contrast  a  tone  of 
rich  purple.  This  device,  by  which  an  effect  of 
rich  colour  is  suggested  without  the  use  of  colour, 
is  one  that  we  often  find  in  Claude's  work.  He 
will  make  his  drawing  in  some  warm  tone  of 
brown,  and  then  delicately  work  over  the  distance 
in  black  and  white,  gaining  from  the  play  of  the 
cool  tone  with  the  warm  one  a  richness  and  sub- 
tlety comparable  with  that  of  an  elaborate  oil 
painting.  A  similar  effect  is  occasionally  found 
in  the  sketches  of  other  great  masters,  but  it  was 
used  most  consistently  perhaps  by  Gainsborough, 
whose  landscape  studies  almost  always  convey 
the  sense  of  fine  colour  without  the  use  of  a  single 
positive  hue. 

Ill 

The  third  drawing  is  a  thing  of  special  interest 
in  the  study  of  Claude.  Not  only  may  it  be 
taken  as  an  example  of  his  studies  of  the  ruins  of 
Rome  which  were  the  foundation  of  the  classical 
architecture  introduced  into  his  mythological 
pictures,  not  only  is  it  an  admirable  example  of 
his  art,  but  it  is  also  interesting  in  relation  to  his 
accuracy  as  a  topographical  draughtsman.  It  is 
evident  that  the  building  on  the  right  of  the 
drawing"  is  the  arch  of  Constantine,  its  base  heaped 
with  grass-grown  rubbish  on  which  sheep  are 
grazing.  When  we  look  at  the  distance,  however, 
we  begin  to  find  ourselves  in  a  difficulty.  The 
buildings  on  the  hill  to  the  left  may,  by  some 
stretch  of  the  imagination,  be  taken  to  represent 
the  temple  of  Venus  and  Rome,  and  the  basilica 
of  Constantine ;  but  the  houses  which,  as  we 
know  from  other  contemporary  evidence,  sur- 
rounded them  in  Claude's  day  are  all  obliterated, 
and,  instead  of  the  centre  of  a  still  populous 
Rome,  we  are  presented  with  a  scene  of  utter 
desolation.  That  the  interval  between  the  fore- 
ground and  the  middle  distance  should  be  filled 
by  a  pool  of  water  is  another  concession  to  the 
demands  of  the  picturesque.  As  all  who  know 
Rome  will  recognize,  its  place  in  the  Rome  of 
reality  is  occupied  by  the  slope  which  leads  up  to 
the  arch  of  Titus.  At  the  foot  of  that  slope  nearest 
to  the  arch  of  Constantine  lie  the  remains  of  the 
fountain  of  the  Meta  Sudans,  while  on  the  far  side 


• 
<*r 


SUNSET.     FROM  THE  DRAWING  BY  CLAUDE 
IN    THE    UNIVERSITY    GALLERIES,    OXFORD 


on  the  drawings 


of  the  slope  the  basilica  of  Constantine  overlooks 
the  forum  where,  some  thirty  or  forty  feet  below 
the  Renaissance  level  of  the  ground,  modern 
archaeological  enterprise  has  discovered  traces  of 
the  pool  round  which  the  earliest  settlements  on 
the  site  of  Rome  were  built.  Claude's  drawing, 
therefore,  cannot  be  regarded  as  in  any  way  an 
accurate  representation  of  Rome  as  it  was  in  his 
day ;  it  is  merely  an  improvisation  on  a  Roman 
theme,  an  essay  on  the  desolation  of  Italy,  rather 
than  a  view  of  a  real  place.  In  the  precision  of 
the  pen-work  and  the  care  with  which  the  details 
of  the  arch  of  Constantine  are  interpreted,  we 
recognize  some  survival  from  the  manner  of  his 
earliest  time,  in  which  he  relied  almost  entirely 
upon  careful  work  with  the  pen.  In  this  drawing, 
however,  the  dryness  of  this  early  manner  is 
mitigated  by  masterly  use  of  the  brush,  so  that 
the  outlines  of  the  distance  are  blended  by  delicate 
tones  with  the  paper  on  which  they  are  drawn, 
while  the  wiry  harshness  of  the  stronger  pen  lines 
in  the  foreground  is  modified  by  lavish  use  of 
wet  colour  so  skilfully  varied  in  quality  that  it  is 
everywhere  transparent  and  luminous. 

IV 

Having  said  thus  much  as  to  the  degree  of  accu- 
racy we  may  expect  from  Claude  as  a  topographer, 
it  would  be  rash  to  speak  too  positively  as  to  the 
place  depicted  in  the  next  sketch.  The  varied 
species  of  the  trees  perhaps  indicate  rather  the 
neighbourhood  of  a  city  and  of  gardens,  but  even 
then  we  have  no  means  of  deciding  the  locality. 
We  must  content  ourselves  with  noticing  how 
clear  and  fresh  is  the  impression  of  sunlight  con- 
veyed, how  direct  and  simple  the  method  of  ex- 
pression, how  free  from  all  the  then  prevalent 
notions  of  manipulating  nature.  It  is,  indeed, 
just  the  sort  of  study  that  might  have  been  made 
by  some  good  English  artist  in  the  early  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  except  that  the  articula- 
tion of  the  boughs  is  not  observed  as  a  modern 
master  would  observe  it. 


In  the  olive  garden  represented  in  the  following 
drawing  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  nature 
in  a  more  serious  mood.  This  is  one  of  the 
sketches  in  which  Claude  has  worked  in  black 
and  white  on  the  top  of  a  drawing  made  in  brown, 
producing  that  impression  of  rich  sober  colour 
to  which  we  have  previously  referred,  but  thereby 
making  the  effect  something  which  the  camera 
cannot  reproduce.  Nevertheless,  the  engraving 
may  give  some  idea  of  the  beauty  of  this  sketch. 
It  is  a  cloudy  evening,  but  a  burst  of  sunlight  has 
broken  through  the  clouds  and  has  for  a  moment 
turned  to  splendour  a  scene  of  no  great  intrinsic 
attraction.  It  is  with  the  name  of  Rubens  and 
with  the  stormy  days  of  autumn  that  we  associate 


these  sudden  splendours  rather  than  with  the  spirit 
of  Claude  and  the  tranquil  sky  of  Italy. 

VI 

The  little  sketch  which  forms  part  of  the  collec- 
tion of  drawings  in  the  Oxford  University  Galleries 
conveys  the  same  impression,  blended,  it  is  true, 
with  a  more  tempestuous  wind  and  a  wider  horizon. 
In  connexion  with  this  study,  it  may  not  be  amiss 
to  mention  the  four  drawings  at  Oxford  which 
are  reproduced  in  facsimile.  Of  these,  the  two 
views  of  towns  are  perhaps  the  earliest  in  date. 
Both  exhibit  in  perfection  the  qualities  on  which 
Claude's  mastery  of  landscape  is  based,  his  feeling 
for  the  modelling  of  the  ground,  his  love  of 
winding  lines  which  lead  the  eye  insensibly  yet 
with  infinite  variety  from  the  foreground  into  the 
distance,  that  preference  for  country  once  popu- 
lated by  man  but  now  almost  deserted  which  is 
the  keynote  of  so  much  of  his  most  intimate  work. 
As  with  Piranesi,  the  figures  who  move  in  the 
landscapes  of  Claude  are  rarely  contemporary 
with  the  buildings  around  them.  Like  Claude 
himself,  they  are  but  spectators  of  the  ruins  of 
former  grandeur,  they  seem  to  lead  only  a  butter- 
fly existence  under  its  shadow.  It  will  be 
noticed  how  in  these  drawings  the  touch  of 
Claude  has  become  more  free  ;  the  pen  line  is 
no  longer  hard  and  crisp  but  is  delicately  blurred 
either  by  working  on  paper  already  damped,  or 
by  a  subsequent  softening  with  the  brush.  This 
quality  is  specially  noticeable  in  the  romantic 
study  of  a  woodland  glade  where  an  opening 
reveals  to  us  an  expanse  of  calm  water  bounded 
far  away  by  a  low  range  of  hills  over  which  the 
sun  is  setting.  Here  (as  in  No.  XVI)  three-quarters 
of  the  composition  are  only  a  framework  for  an 
exquisite  passage  of  distance.  We  may  note  how 
careful  the  artist  has  been  to  subdue  the  incisive- 
ness  of  his  pen  stroke  by  blurring  it  everywhere  in 
the  shadows,  so  that  no  importunate  detail  may 
distract  our  eyes  from  the  passage  he  desires  to 
emphasize.  The  treatment,  in  fact,  is  really  the 
same  as  that  employed  in  the  fourth  drawing, 
where  a  shadowed  watercourse  flows  out  into  a 
quiet  lake  :  a  sketch  in  which  both  brush  and 
chalk  are  used  together  to  produce  strength  of 
tone  and  soft  play  of  light  without  the  intrusion 
of  any  sharp  lines  to  detract  from  the  effect  of 
misty  evening  light  under  which  the  scene  is 
viewed. 

VII 

If  we  now  turn  to  the  next  illustration,  a  study 
of  a  tree  fallen  into  a  river,  made  during  one  of 
Claude's  excursions  to  Tivoli,  we  shall  notice  how 
the  general  mass  and  sweep  of  the  foliage, 
together  with  the  forms  of  the  landscape  in  the 
background,  are  blocked  out  with  loose  strokes  of 
the  brush,  but  the  portion  of  the  subject  which 
the  artist  was  most  keenly  bent  on  recording,  the 
bough  trailing  in  the  water,  is  drawn  with  the 

45 * 


3\(otes  on  the  'Drawings  Reproduced 


pen,  vigorously  yet  with  an   eye  for   detail  and 
structure  which  Claude  does  not  always  show. 

VIII 

In  this  study  we  see  an  increased  complexity  of 
method.  The  subject  seems  first  to  have  been 
faintly  indicated  with  the  brush,  then  to  have 
been  carried  out  in  black  chalk,  and  finally 
once  more  strengthened  with  a  few  vigorous 
touches  of  wet  colour.  It  is  thus  analogous  to  the 
landscape  studies  of  Gainsborough  in  method  as 
well  as  in  feeling  and  execution.  Indeed,  it 
resembles  Gainsborough  so  closely  in  its  tech- 
nique that  it  might  well  pass  for  a  study  by  him, 
although  a  student  who  is  intimately  acquainted 
with  Gainsborough  would  probably  find  it 
difficult  to  give  the  drawing  a  date,  since  the 
close  reliance  upon  nature  which  underlies  it  is 
found  only  in  Gainsborough's  early  work,  while 
the  exquisite  freedom  of  touch  and  breadth  of 
style  which  it  displays  were  achieved  by  him  only 
in  middle  life,  when  he  had  few  or  no  oppor- 
tunities of  working  in  the  open  air.  The  drawing 
cannot  claim  to  be  a  complete  composition,  or  to 
be  a  thing  of  extraordinary  beauty,  yet  it  is  the 
work  of  a  master  in  that  it  expresses  perfectly  the 
things  it  sets  out  to  express,  the  mysterious  charm 
of  a  road  running  deep  between  tree-clad  banks,  a 
charm  obtained  by  that  elimination  of  unnecessary 
detail  which  is  the  hall-mark  of  all  good  crafts- 
manship. 

IX 

If  the  drawing  of  the  hollow  road  might  be 
compared  with  Gainsborough,  this  sepia  sketch 
of  rocks  and  trees  might  with  equal  justice  be 
compared  with  the  works  of  the  English  water- 
colourists  of  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  exhibits  just  the  same  facile,  confident 
use  of  the  medium,  just  the  same  perception  of  the 
obvious  relations  of  sunshine  and  shadow.  Per- 
haps it  might  be  charged  with  the  same  defect, 
namely  a  certain  materialism  of  attitude  which  is 
content  with  a  clever  record  of  some  casual 
natural  effect,  and  does  not  attempt  to  be  more 
than  clever.  Had  Gainsborough  or  Rembrandt 
approached  such  a  subject,  he  would  infallibly 
have  endowed  it  with  some  new  quality  of  air  or 
distance  or  mystery  which  would  make  the  rocks 
and  trees  symbols  of  something  much  more  than 
they  actually  are,  would  have  enveloped  them  in 
the  atmosphere  of  a  wider  and  more  significant 
universe,  and  we  should  forget  that  there  was  such 
a  thing  as  skilful  manipulation  of  wet  colour  in  our 
delight  at  the  profound  sensation  with  which  the 
drawing  inspired  us.  This  materialism  is  not 
uncommon  in  Claude's  work,  and  goes  far  to  ex- 
plain the  faults  of  his  pictures.  It  is  evident  that 
he  was  by  nature  a  man  of  profound  feeling,  but 
his  feeling  was  superior  to  his  character.  When 
his  inspiration  was  uninterrupted  he  could  be  a 
fine  emotional  artist,  but  his  mind  was  not 

45  2 


strong  enough  to  resist  the  allurements  of  facile 
success,  the  criticism  of  a  less  gifted  friend,  or  the 
tastes  of  a  patron.  Men  of  great  independence  of 
mind,  like  Rembrandt,  constantly  make  mistakes, 
but  they  do  so  deliberately,  as  an  inventor  may 
sometimes  waste  his  time  in  following  up  a  false 
scent.  The  failings  of  Claude  cannot  be  assigned 
to  any  such  honourable  cause. 

X 

In  the  sketch  which  follows,  we  see  Claude 
working  untrammelled,  with  a  good  taste  and  pro- 
fundity that  are  almost  worthy  of  Rembrandt. 
The  slightly  conventional  silhouette  of  the  foliage 
to  the  left  is  the  one  passage  in  which  we  can  still 
recognize  his  limitations,  but  the  suggestion  of 
the  great  wall  rising  on  the  right  and  screening  all 
but  a  glimpse  of  the  sunlit  hills  in  the  distance 
has  a  boldness  and  massiveness  that  are  rare  in  the 
landscape  design  of  any  country  or  of  any  period. 
Translated  into  solid  paint,  it  would  need  the 
genius  of  a  Rembrandt  to  match  the  play  of 
broken  tones  and  reflected  lights  which  make 
this  sketch  a  little  masterpiece  of  chiaroscuro.  It 
is,  indeed,  in  company  with  the  work  of  Rem- 
brandt that  it  deserves  to  be  studied. 

XI 

If  dignity  was  the  keynote  of  the  previous 
drawing,  then  the  keynote  of  the  present  one  is 
romance.  The  famous  picture  of  The  Enchanted 
Castle  in  the  Wantage  collection  is  Claude's 
supreme  achievement  as  a  painter  in  oil,  and  in 
itself  is  sufficient  to  place  him  among  the  great 
creative  landscape  artists.  Yet  such  a  drawing  as 
that  before  us,  if  small  things  may  be  compared 
with  great,  may  fitly  be  compared  with  the 
Wantage  picture.  Here  Claude  transports  us 
into  an  ideal  Italy — not  the  Italy  of  wide  plains, 
white  walls  and  quiet  sunshine  that  we  find  in 
his  paintings,  as  in  those  of  his  great  follower, 
Corot,  but  an  Italy  which  we  might  hope  to 
discover  even  now,  in  some  remote  district  from 
which  the  stirr  and  stress  of  active  life  have  long 
passed  away.  We  feel  that  if  we  could  but  leave 
railways  and  all  other  means  of  conveyance  far 
behind,  and  follow  the  less  travelled  stretches  of 
the  Italian  coast  line,  we  might  in  some  fortunate 
moment  come  across  just  such  a  quiet  little  bay, 
with  just  such  jutting  cliffs,  with  just  such  a  little 
mouldering  tower  on  the  far  headland,  and  with 
just  such  an  uncertain  sky  brooding  over  it  all.  A 
few  of  the  felicitous  little  studies  by  Guardi  of  islets 
forgotten  among  the  Venetian  lagoons  touch  the 
same  lonely  note.  The  best  landscape  painters 
of  Holland  try  for  it,  but  with  infrequent  success. 
It  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  few  veins  of  landscape 
sentiment  which  might  still  be  explored  with 
profit. 

XII 

In  this  broadly  executed  sketch  of  Tivoli,  we  see 
Claude  once  more  anticipating  the  style  of  later 


',    JT  *  ' 


PLATE   I.      STUDY   OF   SHIPPING.      FROM   THE 
DRAWING   BY  CLAUDE   IN   THE   BRITISH   MUSEUM 


PLATE   II.      STUDY   OF   TREES   AND   HILLS.      FROM 
THE   DRAWING   BY  CLAUDE    IN   THE   BRITISH    MUSEUM 


PLATE    III.      THE   ARCH   OF  CONSTANTINE.      FROM 
THE   DRAWING   BY   CLAUDE   IN   THE   BRITISH   MUSEUM 


PLATE   IV.      STUDY   OF    SUNLIT   TREES.      FROM 

THE   DRAWING   HY   CLAUDE   IN    THE    BRITISH    MUSEUM 


PLATE   V.      A   GARDEN   AT   SUNSET.      FROM    THE 
DRAWING   BY  CLAUDE   IN   THE   BRITISH    MUSEUM 

PLATE  VI.        A  WINDY  EVENING,        FROM  THE  DRAWING 
BY  CLAUDE  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY   GALLERIES,  OXFORD 


B 
• 


PLATE   VII 


PLATE  VIII 


PLAfE  Vll.      A  TREE   IN    THE   RIVER   AT   TIVOLl.      FROM 
THE   DRAWING  BY   CLAUDE   IN    THE   BRITISH    MUSEUM 

PLATE  vm.    A  ROAD  BETWEEN  HIGH  BANKS.     FROM 

THE   DRAWING    BY   CLAUDE   IN   THE   BRITISH    MUSEUM 


1'I.ATE   IX.       STUDY   OK   ROCKS   AND   TREES.      FROM 
THE   DRAWING   BY   CLAUDE    IN  THE   BRITISH   MUSEUM 


- 


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$(otes  on  the  Drawings  Reproduced 


masters.  On  this  occasion  the  analogy  is  with 
Girtin  and  Crome,  in  whose  art  we  see  the  same 
large,  solemn  view  of  nature  expressed  with  the 
same  force  and  simplicity  of  means.  One  cannot 
help  feeling  a  regret  that  Claude  should  not  have 
attempted  to  carry  out  in  the  more  solid  and 
substantial  medium  of  oil  some  of  these  broad 
conceptions  which  he  realized  so  completely  in 
water-colour.  Whatever  our  admiration  for  his 
skill  as  an  oil  painter,  we  cannot  help  recognizing 
that  his  brush-work  is  somewhat  petty,  that  his 
masses  are  too  frequently  broken  up,  too  consis- 
tently fretted  with  small  details,  so  that  it  is  only  on 
rare  occasions,  as  in  the  superb  Ads  and  Galatea 
at  Dresden,  that  we  find  him  dealing  with  large 
things  in  a  large  way  ;  and,  even  there,  the  fashion 
of  the  day  or  the  imperfection  of  his  taste  admits 
the  introduction  of  importunate  little  figures  in 
the  foreground.  These  figures,  it  is  true,  are  said 
to  have  been  re-painted  with  additions  by  another 
hand,  but  the  mere  fact  of  their  being  introduced 
at  all  shows  that  the  artist  was  not  strong  enough, 
as  Crome  and  Girtin  were,  to  throw  aside  con- 
vention, and  to  leave  the  great  solitudes  of  nature 
to  tell  their  own  story. 

XIII,  XIV,  XV 

These  three  studies  introduce  us  to  an  even  more 
advanced  stage  in  the  history  of  art.  Something 
in  this  marvellous  bird's-eye  prospect  may  remind 
us  of  Rembrandt ;  something,  perhaps,  of  the 
spreading  plains  which  Turner  loved  to  paint ;  but 
the  style  is  that  of  a  generation  later  even  than 
Turner.  When  Ruskin  uttered  his  famous  de- 
nunciations of  Claude  in  '  Modern  Painters,'  he 
joined  with  them  abuse  of  what  he  termed  '  blott- 
esque landscape.'  Little,  I  think,  could  he  foresee 
that  the  loose  style  of  workmanship  which  he  then 
condemned  would,  before  the  end  of  his  life,  be 
the  generally  accepted  manner  of  artistic  sketching, 
and  that  this  seemingly  incoherent  method  of 
expression  would  be  found  more  decorative  and 
infinitely  more  suggestive  than  the  minute  state- 
ment of  details  that  he  practised  and  preached. 
In  the  house  of  art  there  are  many  mansions,  and 
we  are  being  compelled  to  recognize  more  and 
more  that  we  may  without  inconsistency  visit 
them  all.  Yet  it  is  remarkable  that  it  should  have 
been  reserved  for  Claude  to  anticipate  so  com- 
pletely a  style  of  technical  work  and  a  form  of 
artistic  vision  which  the  other  landscape  painters 
of  Europe  did  not  reach  till  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  after  his  death. 

Still  more  definitely  impressionistic  is  the  next 
study,  in  which  the  charm  of  misty  moonlight  is 
enlivened  and  contrasted  with  artificial  illumina- 
tion. It  is  a  sketch  which  could  be  hung  in  a 
show  of  modern  English  or  continental  work 
under  the  name  of  half  a  dozen  artists  one  can  re- 
member, without  the  spectator  guessing  for  a 


moment  that  the  drawing  was  two  centuries  old 
and  more. 

The  sketch  of  a  woodland  glade  with  a  vague 
country  scene  beyond  it  is  equally  modern,  and  if 
we  did  not  know  from  its  place  in  the  British 
Museum  and  its  history  that  it  was  a  work  by 
Claude,  we  might  pardonably  recognize  in  it  a 
sketch  by  Mr.  Sargent  or  Mr.  Wilson  Steer. 
Indeed,  it  is  the  existence  of  sketches  such  as  this 
that  makes  Claude  such  a  difficult  figure  to  under- 
stand. How  was  it  that  a  man  who  could  see 
nature  so  independently,  and  learn  to  report  his 
impressions  so  boldly,  did  not,  as  a  painter,  show 
a  trace  of  this  boldness  ?  We  can  only  attribute 
the  failure  to  lack  of  character.  Nevertheless,  in 
judging  his  achievement  as  a  whole,  the  extra- 
ordinary gifts  displayed  in  his  sketches  cannot  be 
set  on  one  side,  and  if  we  count  them,  we  are  almost 
compelled  to  admit  that  Claude's  natural  disposi- 
tion for  landscape  was  not  inferior  to  the  reputation 
he  once  held  in  Europe. 

XVI,  XVII 

The  three  large  drawings  which  follow  indicate 
the  use  which  Claude  made  of  the  detached  studies 
from  nature  which  we  have  been  considering. 
Nos.  XVI  and  XVII  are  both  in  Mr.  Heseltine's 
collection,  and  are  reproduced  here  by  his  kind 
permission.  The  collection  at  the  British 
Museum  is  far  larger,  but  contains  a  good  deal 
that  is  not  of  the  first  importance.  Mr.  Hesel- 
tine's collection,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  collection 
of  picked  examples,  covering  the  whole  period  of 
Claude's  career,  and  including  some  of  his  very 
earliest  known  drawings,  but  especially  strong  in 
the  work  of  his  mature  period  (1660-1665),  when 
his  art  was  at  his  best.  The  first  drawing  we  have 
to  consider,  No.  XVI,  is  of  singular  majesty  in  the 
disposition  of  its  masses,  but  we  cannot  help  feel- 
ing that  these  solemn  trees  and  rolling  foreground 
which  occupy  so  much  of  the  picture's  space  are, 
as  in  the  Oxford  drawing  already  mentioned,  only 
a  framework  for  the  exquisite  glimpse  of  the  dis- 
tance which  they  permit  us  to  see — a  quiet  sheet 
of  water,  bordered  by  low  hills  beyond  which 
sunlit  mountains  rise  sheer  into  the  evening  sky. 
The  abrupt  forms  of  these  mountains  suggest  the 
Dolomites  rather  than  the  softer  outlines  of  the 
mountains  that  look  down  on  the  Roman  Cam- 
pagna.  Here  indeed,  as  in  many  other  passages 
in  Claude's  work,  we  must  recognize  how  largely 
he  was  influenced  by  the  work  of  other  artists, 
and  how  skilfully  he  assimilated  the  hints  of 
novel  scenery  which  they  gave  to  him. 

The  next  drawing,  too  (XVII),  has  nothing  speci- 
fically Italian  about  it.  The  movement  and  nature 
of  the  cloud  forms,  the  moisture  with  which  the 
air  is  laden,  and  the  group  of  castellated  ruins  on 
the  right  to  which  the  whole  composition  sweeps 
upwards,  are  so  definitely  northern  in  character 
that  we  are  once  more  reminded  of  the  art  of 

G  G  469 


on  the  Drawings  Reproduced 


Gainsborough.  Again,  as  in  Gainsborough's  work, 
we  find  Claude  getting  a  suggestion  of  actual 
colour  by  working  in  black  and  white  on  the  top 
of  a  drawing  executed  in  brown.  As  in  the  earlier 
drawings  where  this  practice  was  noticed,  the 
effect  is  one  of  singular  richness,  so  that,  although 
the  actual  tones  before  us  are  no  more  than  grey 
and  brown,  the  mind  is  instinctively  compelled 
to  colour  the  composition  with  the  rich  t«nes  of 
sunset  in  which  the  similar  compositions  of 
Rubens  and  Gainsborough  are  enveloped.  To 
the  artist  of  to-day  such  drawings  may  not  always 
appeal  strongly,  since  the  eye  may  be  repelled  by 
much  that  is  formal  and  conventional  in  the  build- 
ing up  of  the  composition,  and  by  the  generalization 
of  natural  forms  which  made  Ruskin  so  angry. 
Yet  there  is  a  place  for  art  that  has  no  relation  to 
photographic  appearances,  just  as  there  is  a 
literature  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
statement  of  facts  such  as  may  be  found  in  the 
daily  paper  ;  and  those  who  have  still  sufficient 
imagination  to  appreciate  a  literature  which  is  not 
a  literature  of  facts  (if,  indeed,  journalism  can  be 
so  termed)  may  also  be  able  to  enjoy  the  beauty 
and  romance  of  these  drawings  of  Claude,  and  to 
make  allowance  for  their  artifice. 

XVIII 

In  the  last  subject  reproduced  no  such  allow- 
ance at  all  is  necessary.  In  this  sketch  for  a 
composition  representing  apparently  the  Tower 
of  Babel  we  are  dealing  with  a  world  which  is 
entirely  a  world  of  the  imagination.  To  this 
place  of  cloud-capped  towers  and  gorgeous 
palaces  we  need  not  apply  the  tests  of  common 
realism  any  more  than  we  apply  them  to 
Prospero's  island,  but  can  abandon  ourselves  to 


sheer  delight  in  the  prospect  of  wide  plains  and 
giant  architecture  which  stretches  before  us.  The 
artist  will  note  the  skill  with  which  the  eye  is  led 
away  across  the  level  country  to  the  huge  erection 
that  rises  literally  into  the  sky,  will  admire  the 
subtlety  with  which  the  vast  height  and  massive 
bulk  of  the  towering  buildings  on  the  right  are 
suggested,  and  will  perhaps  regret  that  Claude  did 
not  carry  out  this  stupendous  conception  in  paint. 
Yet  we  may  wonder  whether  the  realization  of 
such  an  idea  is  possible  in  paint;  whether  the 
artist  was  not  wise  to  leave  it  as  a  suggestion.  In 
painting  even  the  most  skilful  artist  is  to  some 
extent  subject  to  accidents  of  material,  to  the 
necessity  of  representing  positively  much  at  which 
a  sketch  needs  only  to  hint.  If  we  remember 
how  few  paintings  of  a  highly  imaginative  nature 
can  be  termed  unqualified  successes,  we  may 
recognize  that  Claude  was  perhaps  right  in 
leaving  this  idea  in  the  form  of  a  sketch,  where 
the  imagination  of  the  spectator,  if  attuned  to  the 
subject,  would  inevitably  supply  all  that  was 
required  to  complete  the  picture,  without  the 
help  of  any  of  those  importunate  details  which, 
when  materialized  in  an  oil  painting,  are  apt  to 
distract  the  attention  and  weaken  the  design. 

Once  more,  the  analogy  with  the  work  of 
certain  northern  artists  will  not  fail  to  strike  those 
who  are  conversant  with  the  history  of  landscape, 
but  in  this  case,  as  in  that  to  which  we  previously 
referred,  this  exotic  element  is  so  blended  and 
fused  with  the  breadth  of  view  and  stability  of 
construction  that  are  characteristic  of  all  good 
Italian  work  that  we  can  accept  it  without  the 
reservations  which  we  are  compelled  to  make 
before  the  imaginative  landscapes  of  Flanders 
and  Germany.  C.  J.  H. 


470 


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PLATE   XIV.      NOCTURNE.      FROM    THE   DRAWING 
BY   CI.Al'DK    IN    THE    BRITISH    MUSKUM 


PLATE   XV.      KAPID   STUDY   OF   TREES.      FKOM    THE 
DRAWING     BY   CLAUDE    IN   THE   BRITISH    MUSEUM 


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EXPERT  OPINIONS 
UPON  WORKS  OF 
ART 

TN  response  to  numerous  requests  it  has 
been  arranged  to  admit  purchasers 
of  the  Shilling  Burlington  to  the  privilege 
of  consulting  the  Expert  Department  of 
THE  BURLINGTON  MAGAZINE,  under  the 
same  conditions  as  those  which  apply  to 
readers  of  that  periodical. 

PRELIMINARY  INQUIRY 

i.  All  inquiries  must  be  made  in  the  first  instance  by  letter,  and 
no  fee  will  be  charged  for  this  preliminary  inquiry  to  prepaid 
annual  subscribers  whose  names  are  on  the  books  of  the  Magazine. 

a.  All  inquiries  received  from  those  who  are  not  prepaid  annual 
subscribers  must  be  accompanied  by  a  postal  order  for  five  shillings. 
No  notice  whatever  can  be  taken  of  letters  or  packages  if  this  rule 
it  disregarded. 

3.  Whenever  possible  a  clear  photograph  should  be  enclosed  wilh 
the  inquiry.    In  the  case  of  pictures  this  is  absolutely  essential. 

4.  No  work  of  art  must  under  any  circumstances  be  sent  to  the 
offices  of  the  Magazine  until  these  preliminaries  are  arranged. 

For  full    particulars    apply    to    the    Manager — 

THE  BURLINGTON  MAGAZINE, 

17  BERNERS  STREET,  W. 


THE 


BURLINGTON  MAGAZINE, 


2/6    Net. 


Contents— flugusi  P umber,  1907. 

Frontispiece  :  Landscape  Study,  from  a  Drawing  by  Claude. 

Claude— Roger  E.  Fry. 

Notes  on  the  Drawings  Reproduced. 

Bruges  and  the  Golden  Fleece  Celebrations — Francis  M.  Kelly. 

The  Early  Works  of  Velazquez,  III— Sir  J.  C.  Robinson,  C.B. 

The    New    Van    Dyck    at    the    National    Gallery  —  Lionel    Cust, 

M.V.O.,  F.S.A. 

Sixteenth-century  Embroidery  with  Emblems — M.  Jourdain. 
Notes  on  Various  Works  of  Art :    A  Picture  of  the  Tournai  School 

(C.  J.  H.)— The  Proposed  Turner  Gallery. 
Letter  to  the  Editor  (E.  J.  Van  Wisselingh). 
Art  Books  of  the  Month. 
Art  in  France.    Art  in  Germany.    Art  in  America. 


Contents— September  number,  1907. 

Colour  Plate  :  Nelly  O'Brien,  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

Art  in  the  Modern  Theatre— Harold  Child. 

The  Case  for  Modern  Painting — By  a  Modern  Painter.    No.  V — 

German  Aspirations. 

How  Dutch  Painters  Sold  their  Work— Dr.  W.  Martin. 
The  Spires  of  Rome — J.  Tavenor- Perry. 
Rembrandt  Drawings  in  the  Duke  of  Devonshire's  Collection. 
Recent  Additions  to  the  Collection  of  Mr.  H.  C.  Frick.-s-Article-I.  • 


THE  SHILLING  BURLINGTON  COUPONS. 

The  purchaser  of  this  copy  of   THE  SHILLING  BURLINGTON  has  in  his  possession 
TWO    COUPONS    -which   entitle   him   to  privileges    WORTH  MORE    THAN    THE 

TOTAL   PRICE    OF   THE    MAGAZINE. 


COUPON  A. 


See    Classified    List   at   the   end  of   the 
<±April  Number. 

This  coupon  entitles  the  holder  to  A  REDUCTION  OF  ONE  SHILLING 
in  the  price  of  any  back  number  of  THE  BURLINGTON  MAGAZINE  from  i  to  36 
inclusive  (excepting  Nos.  15,  17,  22,  23,  24,  25,  34).  It  must  be  filled  up  and 
forwarded  to  17  Berners  Street,  befon  September  i$th,  1907,  with  a  remittance. 
The  number  selected  will  be  packed  in  a  special  case  and  sent  post  free  for 
is.  gd.  The  regular  price  of  these  numbers  is  as.  gel.  post  free,  and  this  coupon 
entitles  the  holder  to  one  number  only  at  the  reduced  price. 


THE 
SHILLING    BURLINGTON. 

COUPON  A. 

Available  to  September  15  only. 
To  THE  BURLINGTON  MAGAZINE,  LTD., 

17  Bernert  Street,  London,  W. 

riease  send  to  me,  post  free,  THE  BURLING- 
TON MAGAZINE,  No.  ,  for  which  I  enclose 
is.  od. 

Name 

A  ddress  in  full „_ 


COUPON  B. 


Six  of  these  coupons  extracted  from  any  six  CONSECUTIVE  numbers  of  the 
Shilling  Burlington,  and  sent  to  the  Publishers  at  17  Berners  Street,  W.,  with 
four  penny  stamps  to  cover  packing  and  postage,  entitle  the  sender  to  a 
HAND  PRINTED  PHOTOGRAVURE  PLATE.  Any  one  of  the  three 
following  subjects  may  be  chosen  : — 

1.  The  Rokeby  Velazquez. 

2.  Lady  Betty  Hamilton — Sir  J.  Reynolds. 

3.  The  Letter  Reader — Gabriel  Mctsu. 


THE 
SHILLING     BURLINGTON 

COUPON   B. 

No.    10. 


P.&  D.  COLNAGHI  &  CO., 

'Publishers  by  Appointment  to  His  Majesty. 

Experts    and    Dealers  in   Paintings,   Drawings  and   Engravings  by  Old 
Masters  and  the   Master^  of  the   i8th  Century 

13   AND    14  PALL  MALL   EAST, 

LONDON,  S.W. 

Sstablished  Ij6o> 


•    ••••    i 


Bp  Appointment  to  Ctoeir 


majesties  CDe  Kino  and  Queen. 


WINSOR  &  NEWTON,  L 

CHOICEST  COLOURS  AND 
MATERIALS  FOR  ARTISTS. 


To   be   obtained   from    the   principal   Dealers    throughout    the    world. 


TD. 


CATALOGUES    POST    FREE. 


OFFICES 


RATHBONE  PLACE,  LONDON,  W. 


PRINTED  FOR   THE   PROPRIETORS,   THE   BURLINGTON    MAGAZINE  LTD.,   BY  SOUTHWOOD,  SMITH   AND    CO.,    LTD.,  93    AND  94    LONG    ACRE,  LONDON,    W.C., 
AND  PUBLISHED   BY  THE    BURLINGTON   MAGAZINE,   LTD.,   AT  THE   REGISTBBKD  UKFICK   OF  THK  COMPANY,    17   BKKNEKS  STRKVT,   \V. 


PLEASE  DO  NOT  REMOVE 
CARDS  OR  SLIPS  FROM  THIS  POCKET 

UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO  LIBRARY 


NC 
2-48 
G36F7 
1907 


Gelee,  Claude 

The  drawings  of  Claude