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HOME   UNIVERSITY   LIBRARY 
OF   MODERN   KNOWLEDGE 


PAINTERS   AND    PAINTING 

BY  SIR  FREDERICK   WEDMORE 


LONDON 
WILLIAMS   &   NORGATE 


HENRY  HOLT  &  Co.,  NEW  YORK 
CANADA  :  WM.  BRIGGS,  TORONTO 
INDIA  :  R.  &  T.  WASHBOURNE,  LTD. 


PHOME                P 

• 

•\  f     irlUMJl                                  n 

UNIVERSITY 

LIBRARY 

OF 

MODERN  KNOWLEDGE 

Editors  : 

HERBERT    FISHER,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 

PROF.  GILBERT  MURRAY,  D.LlTT., 
LL.D.,  F.B.A. 

PROF.  J.  ARTHUR  THOMSON,  MA. 

PROF.  WILLIAM  T.  BREWSTER,  M.A. 
(Columbia  University,  U.S.A.) 

*SE 

NEW   YORK 

HENRY   HOLT  AND   COMPANY 

PAINTERS    AND 
PAINTING 


SIR  FREDERICK  WEDMORE 
ft 

AUTHOR   OF   "  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH   ART, 
"ON    BOOKS  AND  ARTS,"    "  MERYON " 


LONDON 

WILLIAMS   AND    NORGATE 


U/4 


RICHARD  CLAY  &  SONS,  LIMITED, 

BRUNSWICK  STREET,  STAMFORD  STRBBT,  S.E., 

AND  BUNQAY,  SUFFOLK. 


PREFACE 

IT  is  in  no  way  hoped  that  this  little 
book  shall  take  the  place  of  a  pocket- 
Dictionary  of  Painters — a  serviceable  work 
of  reference  whose  business  being  to  include 
the  insignificant,  is  foredoomed  to  dulness : 
has  no  chance  to  be  interesting. 

In  my  pages — occupied  with  the  perform- 
ances and  personalities  of  artists  who  are 
the  connoisseur's  delight — there  is  not  room 
for  the  inclusion  of  all  Schools ;  for  the  faint 
praise  of  the  commonplace;  for  the  grave 
condemnation  of  coteries  lifted  momentarily 
into  prominence,  and  sure  to  be  once  more 
obscure.  And  several  men,  really  great,  who 
have  been  discussed  too  much,  I  scarcely 
discuss  at  all.  My  purpose  will  have  been 
accomplished  if  this  book  shall  be  found  not 
quite  wanting  in  interest  by  those  who  know, 
and  not  quite  wanting  in  utility,  besides,  by 
those  who  do  not  know,  about  pictorial  Art. 

F.  W. 

December  191$. 


265280 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I       THE   PRIMITIVES 9 

II  DURER   AND    HOLBEIN            .             .            .             .17 

III  THE    LITTLE   MASTERS  .            .             .             .25 

IV  GREAT   PAINTERS    OF   THE    LOW    COUNTRIES    .          33 
V  LATER   DUTCH   PAINTING      .            .            .             .43 

VI  VENETIAN    MASTERS 51 

VII  THE    SPANISH    PAINTERS        .  .  .  .59 

VIII  HOGARTH    TO    ROMNEY  .  .  .  .81 

IX  TURNER   AND    CONSTABLE     .  .  .  .101 

X  THE    LATER   ENGLISH   ART  .  .  .  .113 

XI  WATER   COLOURS 123 

XII  THE   GRAND   MANNER    AND    NATTIER      .  .142 

XIII  FRENCH    EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY    ART      .  .151 

xiv     CLASSICS:  ROMANTICS         .         .         .         .177 

XV      IMPRESSIONISTS   AND    '  THE   GOOD  PAINTING  '        187 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 

INDEX  223 


VI 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

RAPHAEL:  La  Belle  Jardiniere      .....  225 

HOLBEIN  :  Portrait  of  Erasmm 227 

REMBRANDT  :  Portrait  of  the  Painter     .         .         .         .  •  229 

RUBENS  :  The  Three  Graces 231 

TITIAN  :   Venus  and  Adonis 233 

VERONESE  :  St.  Helena 235 

VELASQUEZ  :  The  Portrait  of  a  Sculptor         .         .         .  237 

HOGARTH  :  The  Shrimp  Girl 239 

"OLD"  CROME  :  Household  Heath          .         .         .        .241 

REYNOLDS  :  Portrait  of  Samuel  Johnson         .        .        .  243 

ROMNEY  :  Lad.y  Hamilton  as  Euphrosyne       .        .         .  245 

NATTIER:  Mile,  de  Clermont 247 

WATTEAU  :  Les  Champs  Elystes     .'....  249 

CHARDIN  :  Le  Benedicitt 251 

COURBET:  The   Wave 253 

BOUDIN  :  Troumlle  Harbour 255 


vii 


PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

CHAPTER   I 

THE    PRIMITIVES 

OF  all  pictorial  Arts,  major  and  minor — 
Painting  in  Oil  or  Water  Colour,  Engraving, 
Etching,  and  Lithography — it  is  Painting  that 
makes  to  the  mass  of  us  the  easiest  and  most 
fascinating  appeal.  Scarcely  less  than  the 
others  it  may  have  the  virtues  of  Design  and 
of  Draughtsmanship;  in  the  magic  of  touch 
it  is  their  equal ;  and  it  has  richly  what  they 
wholly  lack,  the  glamour  of  the  colours  of 
the  world.  For  all  that,  I  cannot  in  this 
volume  on  pictorial  artists  confine  myself 
quite  strictly  to  Paint  alone. 

Changing  circumstances,  the  passage  of 
long  time  and  of  an  endless  variety  of  men 
and  peoples,  have  allowed  the  art  of  the 
painter — the  art  of  the  etcher  and  engraver, 
too — to  become  at  last,  only  less  than  that 
of  the  writer,  the  record  of  the  past  and 


10        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

present— -the  record  of  the  visible  and  of  the 
vanished  scene.  Nor,  any  more  than  the 
great  art  of  Literature,  is  Painting — or 
pictorial  art  broadly — simply  that  record. 
Not  only  nature  and  human  nature  lie 
within  its  purview.  Conceptions  and  yearn- 
ings it  has  interpreted,  as  well  as  beings  and 
facts.  Its  themes  include  the  ardour  of 
many  a  faith,  and  the  hopes  and  the  dejections 
of  men's  dreams.  Those  who  have  practised 
it  appear  to  the  mind's  eye  in  vast  procession 
— figures  innumerable,  from  the  hours  of  an 
early  civilization  to  those  of  a  late.  For  this 
procession  begins,  it  may  be,  with  Apelles, 
whose  brush  was  used  under  the  blue  of 
Grecian  heavens,  and  it  does  not  quite  end 
with  Corot,  Courbet,  Manet,  Boudin,  whose 
eyes  were  witnesses  of  tempered  illumination, 
and  of  vaporous  dawns,  and  of  the  pearl- 
grey,  steel-grey,  oxidized  silver,  of  the  skies 
of  France. 

Amongst  the  mass  of  painters  and  engravers 
who  were  artists — who  had  individuality  and 
an  ideal,  who  were  not  mere  copyists  of  Nature 
or  of  a  few  forerunners  much  greater  than 
themselves — a  little  book  like  this  can  choose, 
for  treatment  or  for  reference,  relatively  few. 
It  is  important  that  the  selection  be,  in  nearly 


THE   PRIMITIVES  11 

every  case,  as  far  as  one  man's  judgment  can 
make  it  so,  from  among  the  best  only.  The 
reader,  too — it  is  from  among  the  best  alone 
that  must  be  drawn  those  things  that  he,  as 
plainly  as  the  writer,  should  desire  to  study. 
To  select  wisely  from  many  fields — to  select 
only  artists  who  are,  in  one  way  or  another, 
lawfully  attractive  —  is  to  engage  in  an 
exercise  that  is  in  any  case  not  duty 
alone,  or  pleasure.  It  is  certainly  nothing 
less  than  a  discipline.  To  try  to  choose 
the  best,  in  any  such  field,  is  to  administer 
to  one's  self  a  lesson  in  taste — almost  a 
lesson  in  morals. 

But,  in  the  study  of  an  art,  there  is  room 
— fairly  and  rightly  there  is  room — for  the 
display  and  the  indulgence  of  such  preference 
as  is  not  dictated  by  ignorance.  And  a 
preference  too  natural  for  the  tolerant  and 
far-sighted  to  have  any  wish  to  suppress 
it  is  the  preference,  broadly  speaking,  for 
the  modern  conception,  for  the  modern 
method.  It  is  not  mere  novelty  that  is  the 
attraction  here  —  the  attraction  we  make 
bold  to  defend.  It  is  familiarity,  or  possible 
familiarity  rather:  it  is  approachableness. 
The  artist  relatively  recent  has  the  advantage 
of  speaking  to  you  in  the  dialect  you 


12        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

know.  His  very  accent,  so  to  say,  brings 
him  nearer  to  you  than  can  the  accent  of 
his  forerunners.  Other  attractions,  of  course, 
than  that  attraction  of  familiarity,  which  is 
the  present's,  belong  to  the  work  of  the  past 
— of  the  remote  past  even — so  that  the  art 
production  of  bygone  days  is  never  hopelessly 
handicapped.  It  appeals  to  the  antiquary 
within  us — and  a  little  of  the  instinct  of  the 
antiquary  is  found  to  declare  itself  in  the 
breast  of  every  man  of  thought  who  is  no 
longer  in  extreme  youth.  It  appeals  to  the 
imagination.  To  the  craving  for  romance  it 
brings  its  own  response — it  brings  a  measure 
of  nourishment.  And,  by  the  depth  and  range 
of  its  virtues — of  which  we  cannot  fail  to 
take  account — some  of  it  is  immortal.  But 
art,  to  be  immortal,  must  be  of  full  accom- 
plishment. It  must  be  mature  and  com- 
plete. The  tentativeness  of  the  Primitive 
is  pardonably  engaging,  but  it  is  engaging 
as  the  naivete  of  a  child. 

Italy  and  the  Low  Countries  have  long 
been  held  to  be  the  seat  of  the  best  work  of 
the  Primitives ;  nor  need  this  general  opinion 
be  seriously  contested  or  reviewed,  merely 
because  of  the  circumstance  that  the  French 
early  pious  Art — that,  for  example,  of  the 


THE   PRIMITIVES  13 

now  famous  "  Maitre  de  Moulins  " — has, 
until  lately,  been  strangely  overlooked.  Cer- 
tainly, it  is  of  importance  to  remember  that 
France — the  South  of  France,  mainly — had 
her  share  in  these  beginnings ;  but,  that  being 
allowed,  it  is  to  be  conceded  that  that  share 
remains  a  relatively  small  one.  We  need  not 
insist  or  linger.  French  Art,  the  earliest 
French  Art  in  painting,  has  no  doubt  a 
character  of  its  own,  and  a  charm;  but 
in  the  justified  vision  of  impartial  eyes,  it 
does  not  bulk  so  largely — for  it  is  not  of 
the  potency,  the  irrepressible  vitality  and 
independence — as,  for  example,  in  the 
consideration  of  architecture,  does  the 
architecture  of  the  French  Renaissance.  The 
contribution  of  France  to  the  Renaissance — 
to  the  arts  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries — was  infinitely  greater  than  was  her 
contribution  to  the  beginnings.  And  France 
can  well  afford  that  the  pride  of  place  that 
for  so  long  in  this  matter  has  been  enjoyed 
by  Italy  and  Flanders  shall  yet  be  theirs, 
undisturbed. 

But  if  the  ascendancy  of  the  Low  Countries 
and  Italy  in  the  earlier  pictorial  art  is  still 
to  be  accepted,  it  should  be  recognized  that 
that  is  owing  much  less  to  what  the  earlier 


14        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

Primitives  actually  were,  than  to  what  their 
immediate  descendants  so  rapidly  became. 
The  very  early  people — who  in  this  writing 
shall  be  nameless — would  be  forgotten  if  they 
had  not  been  so  very  promptly  followed  by 
Giotto  and  Perugino  (Raphael's  master)  in 
Italy,  and  in  Flanders  by  Van  Eyck  and 
Memling. 

John  Van  Eyck's  "  Triumph  of  the  Lamb," 
at  Ghent,  was  worthy  to  engage  the  over- 
whelming admiration  of  a  far  later,  but  a 
kindred  spirit — no  other  than  Flandrin.  And 
Mending's  quaint  imaginative  history,  written 
at  Bruges  upon  the  "  Chasse  de  Ste.  Ursule," 
has  in  its  own  kind,  high  beauty  of  execution 
to  recommend  it,  as  well  asna'ivete  of  thought. 

Of  Italian  early  art,  central  Italy  was  the 
source — though  at  Padua,  in  the  North,  is 
to  be  seen  something  of  the  best  of  Giotto, 
But  it  is  generally  Florence  that  is  the  source 
and  origin — Florence,  a  little  less  austere 
than  Siena.  Fra  Angelico,  Fra  Lippo  Lippi, 
Perugino,  Francia,  Botticelli,  mark  different 
stages  of  progress  and  accomplishment.  With 
the  later  of  them — perhaps  already  with  Fra 
Lippo  Lippi  (Mr.  Browning's  poem  would  at 
all  events  teach  us  to  think  so) — the  view  of 
the  Renaissance  and  its  breadth  and  refresh- 


THE   PRIMITIVES  15 

merit  is  within  reach  :  it  is  the  dawn  of  the 
Renaissance  spirit  that  has  become  evident 
then:  Perugino,  with  his  often  accomplished 
union  of  feeling  and  of  grace,  is  the  link 
between  the  beginnings  and  Raphael.  And 
Raphael's  own  earlier  work — the  divine  "  Belle 
Jardiniere  "  of  the  Louvre  almost  included — 
is  in  part  the  result  of  his  inheritance  from 
a  past  with  which  he  was  in  youth — and  not 
in  actual  youth  alone  —  very  happily  in 
sympathy.  Youth  not  long  over,  and  his 
own  end  too  near,  Raphael  became  himself 
in  fulness — a  something  different :  not  wholly 
better  and  not  wholly  worse.  But  that  was 
the  Renaissance.  Unlike  the  earlier  work, 
his  work  of  that  time  had  the  Classics  for  its 
source.  The  day  of  the  Primitives  was  over. 
In  passing  briefly  in  review,  however,  the 
general  characteristics  of  those  earlier  labours 
— tentative,  patient,  devout — to  which  the 
name  of  "  Primitive  "  is  most  fittingly  given, 
we  must  be  struck  by  the  gentle  assiduity  of 
the  workman,  and  by  the  limitations  of  the 
themes  of  his  work.  Religious  aspiration 
and  sacred  story — the  record  of  one  order, 
only,  of  sentiment  and  fact  and  legend — 
were  enough  to  fill  or  cover  church  and 
convent  wall  with  altar-piece  and  fresco. 


16        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

But  it  is  impossible  that  they  should  have 
been  enough  to  develop  the  individuality 
of  all  the  different  minds  who  wielded  in 
Flanders  and  Italy  an  untiring  brush.  Hence, 
save  in  the  case  of  the  few  greater  men  whose 
methods  and  manners  were  their  own,  there 
is  room  for  endless  conjecture  and  never-to- 
be-settled  dispute  as  to  the  authorship  of 
how  many  a  panel  !  This  sort  of  discussion 
does  not  add  seriously  to  men's  capacity  for 
the  appreciation  of  beauty  or  of  high  accom- 
plishment ;  but  it  gives  to  the  collector — and 
especially  to  the  English  collector — a  certain 
"  sporting  "  interest  in  the  piece  which  forms 
for  the  moment  the  matter  in  debate.  There- 
fore, before  the  average  Englishman,  of 
decent  education,  but  of  no  marked  origin- 
ality of  character,  turns  into  other  channels 
the  attention  he  now  bestows  upon  the  art 
he  learnedly  gropes  amongst,  that  "sporting 
interest  " — quite  human,  but  quite  trivial — 
will  have  to  be  withdrawn ;  and  one  does  not 
know  how  or  when  this  will  be  effected. 
There  is  this  to  be  said,  however — that  at 
least  fashions  change. 

Again,  there  is  one  other  cause  that  accounts 
for  the  curious  accumulation  of  interest  in 
the  Primitives  on  the  part  of  the  ordinary 


DURER   AND   HOLBEIN  17 

cultivated  person,  who  knows  next  to  nothing 
of  the  real  secrets  of  art.  The  greater  number 
of  the  Primitives  —  and  more  particularly 
of  the  minor  Primitives  —  are  Italian.  In 
the  Low  Countries  there  are  a  few  outstand- 
ing names :  not  many.  In  Italy  there  is 
a  crowd.  And  English  people,  when  not 
romantic  in  any  other  way  whatever,  are 
apt  to  wax  spuriously  romantic  about  Italy. 
Hence  for  them,  as  regards  the  least  accom- 
plished efforts  of  t  Italian  Painting — as  regards 
work  the  gentle*  Fra  Angelico  would  not 
father,  and  Perugino  could  not  own — there 
is  to  be  added  to  that  sporting  interest  which 
counts  for  much — and  that  antiquarian 
interest  which  counts,  and  has  a  right  to 
count,  for  something — an  interest  which  some- 
times those  who  are  a  prey  to  it  suppose  to 
be  poetic.  It  is  at  all  events  sentimental. 

CHAPTER   II 

DURER   AND    HOLBEIN 

NOT  in  the  least  sentimental  is  the  interest 
that  attaches  to  the  work  of  the  advanced 
Renaissance.  To  admire  Michael  Angelo 
and  Mantegna,  Holbein  and  Durer — and 

within  the  limits  of  these  great  men's  life- 
B 


18        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

times  the  Renaissance  was  comprised — is  to 
admire  artists  who  carried  to  absolute  per- 
fection the  methods  that  their  time  and 
their  temperament  combined  most  of  all  to 
commend  to  them.  The  doing  homage  to 
them  is  no  excusable  or  inexcusable  result 
of  the  love  of  a  particular  land,  or  of  the 
attachment  to  a  particular  faith.  It  is  the 
act,  not  specially  of  saint,  not  specially  of 
sinner;  and  in  it,  Catholic  and  sceptic, 
cavalier  and  Puritan,  may  be  agreed.  It  is 
the  wholesome  recognition  of  a  Heaven-sent 
insight,  and  of  a  diligently,  dare  I  say  an 
austerely  drilled,  force. 

And  if  each  of  these  men  was  distinguished 
not  alone  by  personal  ability,  but  likewise, 
and  it  seems  in  equal  measure,  by  a  profound 
acceptance  of  Fact,  each  was  dowered,  too, 
though  in  different  degrees,  with  an  imagina- 
tion without  which  fact — much  of  fact — is 
never  properly  to  be  apprehended.  Speaking 
of  Holbein  and  Durer  more  particularly,  it 
is  the  imagination  of  Durer  that  is  the  more 
obvious ;  it  is  probably  actually  greater  than 
that  of  the  genius  who  succeeded  him.  Things 
came  to  him  as  visions,  and  as  symbols — and 
symbolism  was  a  part  of  Durer 's  tongue. 
Yet  portraiture  like  Holbein's — so  sure,  so 


DtJRER  AND   HOLBEIN  19 

delicate — is  not  to  be  produced  without  some 
capacity  of  transportation  into  the  thought 
and  being  of  another.  Imagination,  therefore, 
cannot  possibly  be  denied — can  be  denied 
no  more  than  the  capacity  for  strenuous 
labour — to  the  great  artist  who  was  painter 
enough  to  have  produced  the  picture  of  the 
Duchess  of  Sforza  in  her  comely  and  quiet 
youth,  and  draughtsman  enough  to  have 
produced  the  drawing  of  Archbishop  Warham, 
with  the  amassed  treasure  of  his  ripe  medita- 
tion and  of  his  garnered  experience.  To  live 
with  Diirer's  prints,  or  Holbein's  drawings 
and  rare  pictures,  is  to  live  with  the  work 
of  the  finest  intellects  and  of  the  most  amply 
trained  hands. 

Both  of  these  masters  of  design  were  of 
South  German  birth — Augsburg  the  town 
of  Holbein ;  Nuremberg  of  Diirer.  To  them, 
then,  as  compared  with  whoever  were  their 
contemporaries  in  the  North,  more  remote 
than  their  own,  Italy  was  accessible; 
and  Durer  certainly,  and  in  all  probability 
Holbein,  passed  over  from  the  gloomier  and 
more  sombre  to  the  gayer  and  the  brighter 
land :  enlarging  there  the  boundaries  of  their 
art,  but  retaining,  unimpaired,  the  severity 
of  their  Northern  manhood.  That  Durer 
B  2 


20        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

was  at  Venice  is  matter  of  history.     The  late 
Sir  Joseph  Crowe,  without  its  being  matter 
of    history    at    all,    came    definitely    to    the 
conclusion  that   nothing   but   direct   contact 
with  the  teeming  South — that  no  mere  study, 
however  elaborate,  of   this  or  that  imported 
instance  of  fine  Italian  artistry — could  have 
imbued  Holbein,  to  the  degree  with  which  he 
was  imbued,  with  the  Italian,  the  Renaissance 
spirit.     If  we  think — and  Diirer's  followers, 
the  Little  Masters,  help  to  make  us  think — 
that  the  Germans   are   great  ornamentists — 
that  in  the  most  luxurious  or  least  ascetic 
of  their  designs  a  spirit  of  symmetry  and  order 
is  disclosed,  as  of  a  people  not  ill-contented 
to  be  led  and  controlled — it  is  Holbein  who 
breeds   in   us   that   thought;   and   it   is   the 
Behams  and    Aldegrever    and    Jacob    Binck, 
who  worked  a  little  earlier  than  he  did,  who, 
more  than  any  others,  tend  to  confirm  us  in  it. 
Holbein,     hardly     more     than    the     great 
Dlirer,  was  ornamentist  mainly.     His — in  a 
degree  that  was  peculiar  and  memorable — was 
a  searching  knowledge  and  a  close  study  of 
actual    human    life.     His    is    the    wonderful 
portrait  of  Joseph  Maier  at   Basel ;  his  the 
realization  of  the  gravely  absorbed  counten- 
ance of  Erasmus  in  front  of  his  dark  tapestry 


DURER  AND   HOLBEIN  21 

hanging  at  the  Louvre;  and  his  the  series 
of  drawings  which,  installed  at  Windsor  from 
the  day  when  they  were  done,  chronicles, 
with  a  touch  never  hesitating  and  a  purpose 
never  insincere,  the  people  of  quality  and 
brain  about  the  Court  of  our  Henry  the 
Eighth.  These  drawings  remain  up  to  the 
present  moment  as  high  standards  of  ex- 
cellence ;  standards,  indeed,  than  which  there 
are  no  higher.  In  them  there  is  alike  not 
a  trace  of  superfluous  labour  and  not  a  trace 
of  scamped  performance.  The  art  of  Holbein, 
in  those  later  years  at  least,  wras  complete 
and  consummate,  and  it  had  almost  begun 
by  being  accomplished  and  assured.  Holbein's 
latest  years  were  never  advanced  years.  He 
was  well  under  fifty  when,  in  England — in 
the  England  of  Charles  the  First — the  plague 
took  him ;  that  plague  which  was  a  foretaste 
only  of  the  greater  pestilence  which  swept 
over  London  something  like  twenty  years 
afterwards. 

If  it  is  true  that  even  Holbein's  painting, 
although  faultless  within  the  limits  the 
narrowness  of  which  it  tacitly  avows,  must 
not  be  asked  to  supply  us  with  the  charm  of 
"  modulations  of  surface  or  subtle  contrasts 
of  colour  in  juxtaposition,"  we  must  deal 


22        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

frankly  with  the  fact  that  much  of  Durer's 
painting — and    Durer's    whole    is,    after    all, 
but  a  little — is  not  only  lacking  in  all  that 
Holbein's  lacked,  but  wants,  and  goes  without, 
even  the  modest  harmony  which  Holbein  did, 
without  visible    effort,  attain.     The    lack  of 
that  is  naturally  more  conspicuous,  or  more 
frequent,  in  Durer's  earlier  than  in  his  later 
work.     It  is  conceivably  most  traced  during 
a  period  which  witnessed  the  production  of 
what  Sir  Sidney  Colvin  calls  the  "  striking, 
restlessly   elaborated   half-length   of    Oswald 
Krell  at  Munich  " — a  period,  he  reminds  us, 
closed  by  two  examples  of  far  higher  value, 
one  of  which  is  the  Paumgartner  altar-piece 
(at   Munich  also)   with  its  romantically  at- 
tractive composition  of  the  Nativity,  and  the 
other,  "  The  Adoration  of  the   Wise   Men," 
now  housed  in  the  Uffizi  at  Florence.     Here 
there  is    more  of  harmony;    albeit    Durer's 
Germanism,   his  own  individuality,   and  the 
aims  and  the  ideals  of  his  epoch,  conspired 
to  lead  him  to  insist  ever,  in  his  painting, 
more  upon  the  faithful  reproduction  of  detail 
than  upon  unity  or  charm  of  general  effect. 

Into  the  second  and  third  decade  of  Durer's 
working  life — from  the  time  of  his  second 
visit  to  Italy — we  need  not,  with  regard  to 


DtFRER  AND   HOLBEIN  23 

his  painting,  attempt  in  this  small  book  to 
follow  him.  More  to  the  purpose  is  it  to 
insist  that  it  is  not  to  his  painted  pictures  at 
all  that  Diirer  owes  the  fame  that  is  now 
rightly  his.  He  owes  it  in  a  measure  to  his 
drawings — those  at  the  Albertina  at  Vienna, 
most  conspicuously — which  give  evidence  of 
a  fancy  prolific  and  ingenious,  and  of  a 
highly  skilled  hand.  He  owes  it  most  of  all, 
however — may  I  urge  with  earnestness  ? — 
to  his  noble  achievement  in  engraving.  There 
he  is  unhampered  by  those  problems  of 
colour  with  which  but  seldom  could  he  dex- 
terously, or  instinctively  and  spontaneously, 
deal.  There  he  is  upon  his  own  ground — on 
the  field  to  which  almost  with  Rembrandt 
he  has  equal  right.  "Black  and  White"  it 
is  called.  It  is  Line  really,  and  gradations 
of  illumination  and  darkness.  And,  though 
seemingly  circumscribed,  that,  in  reality, 
is  an  extensive  keyboard.  And  there, 
Rembrandt -like,  of  every  note  he  is  the 
master.  His  best  imagination  is  in  his  prints. 
And  in  them,  too,  is  the  most  faultless  cer- 
tainty of  his  hand.  In  his  prints  there  is 
room  for  his  symbolism — the  "Melancholia  "; 
room  for  his  piety — his  belief,  fervent  and 
innocent:  his  "Virgin  with  the  Pear," 


24        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

his  "  Virgin  by  the  City  Wall."  And  his 
Madonna,  of  course,  is  a  placid  German 
girl ;  and  his  East — well,  it  does  not  pretend 
to  be  the  East  at  all — any  more  than  does 
Rembrandt's,  or,  in  our  own  day,  Uhde's. 
His  East  is  but  the  outskirts  of  a  German 
town :  a  hill-side  town  of  forts  and  towers. 
Or — in  a  background,  as  in  the  "  Virgin  with 
the  Child  in  Swaddling  Clothes  " — it  is  a 
reminiscence  of  Venice  and  the  light  over  the 
stretched  lagoon. 

Nor  is  this  quite  the  end.  No,  it  is  not  at 
all  the  end  of  what  his  art  of  black  and  white 
allows  to  Diirer.  His  graver's  tool  is  capable 
of  setting  perfectly  before  us  the  beauty  of 
his  ornament,  as  in  the  two  Coats-of-Arms 
pieces — the  symmetry  and  balance,  the  sober 
originality  of  his  design,  as  in  his  "  Little  White 
Horse  " — and,  last,  in  his  quite  exquisite  plate 
of  "  The  Three  Genii,"  the  grace  of  eye  and 
hand,  in  a  slight  composition,  purely  decora- 
tive. Decorative  grace  does  not  get  further. 
It  is  his  own;  yet  it  is  not  unfitting  that  it 
should  reflect  and  make  plain  to  us  what  was, 
not  once  or  twice  only,  the  source  of  Diirer 's 
inspiration.  Dowered  with  the  greater  and 
the  better  of  all  the  German  qualities,  he 
yet  would  not  have  been  quite  Diirer,  quite 


THE   LITTLE   MASTERS  25 

himself,  if  he  had  not  revealed — as  in  "  The 
Three  Genii  "  he  revealed  unmistakably — 
what  was  his  debt  to  the  long  tradition  of 
Italian  charm.  The  land,  the  art,  which,  not 
seldom  only  enfeebles,  and  makes  affected, 
English  amateurs,  did  actually  nourish  Diirer 
— did  enrich  and  refine  him.  And  without 
it,  "  The  Three  Genii  "  would  hardly  have 
been. 

CHAPTER  III 

THE    LITTLE    MASTERS 

ONLY  second  in  interest  to  Albert  Diirer's 
work  is  the  abundant  and  delightful  work  of 
the  Little  Masters.  The  Little  Masters  learnt 
from  Diirer,  learnt  from  Italy,  and  had  also 
a  note,  even  many  notes,  of  their  own. 
Never  since  they  lived,  I  must  suppose,  has 
there  been  a  time  when  in  Germany  their  work 
has  been  neglected ;  and  never  yet,  I  appre- 
hend, has  there  been  a  time  in  England  when 
their  work  has  been  appreciated  properly. 

But  the  day  for  the  just  appraisement  of 
these  artists,  even  amongst  ourselves,  is 
nearer,  now,  than  we  think.  There  are  signs 
that  there  falls  upon  them  already  the  begin- 
ningof  the  advantage  which  the  lately  increased 


26        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

interest  in  the  thought  and  craftsmanship, 
the  invention  and  dexterity,  of  the  original 
engraver  must  bring  to  every  worthy  practi- 
tioner of  a  noble  art.  Honoured  at  home,  and 
now  distinctly  sought  for  by  those  American 
collectors  who  enter,  as  it  seems,  instinctively 
into  the  enjoyment  of  what  is  finely  but  never 
pettily  finished,  these  German  Little  Masters 
will  be  accorded,  perhaps  before  we  know  it, 
here  in  England,  their  "  place  in  the  sun." 
In  studying  them  a  little,  it  may  seem  to  us 
that  their  most  salient  note  is  that  of  the 
marriage  that  their  work  affords  proof  of 
between  the  art  of  Italy  and  the  art  of  the 
North ;  but  with  them,  as  with  Dlirer  himself, 
we  must  guard  against  attributing  too  great 
a  share  in  this  visible  union  to  one  side  only 
of  the  parties  to  it.  What  did  that  extra- 
ordinarily observant  and  comprehensive 
chronicler  of  the  art  of  many  a  time,  Vasari, 
say  on  that  matter  ?  We  condone  the 
curious  mistake  by  which  he  calls  Durer  a 
Fleming,  in  virtue  of  the  justice  he  is  eager  to 
render  to  him  and  to  his  school.  "  Had  this 
man,  so  nobly  endowed  by  Nature,  so  assidu- 
ous, and  possessed  of  so  many  talents,  been 
a  native  of  Tuscany  instead  of  Flanders — had 
he  been  able  to  study  the  treasures  of  Rome 


THE   LITTLE  MASTERS  27 

and  Florence  as  we  have  done — he  would 
have  excelled  us  all,  as  he  is  now  the  best  and 
most  esteemed  among  his  own  countrymen." 
And  about  the  visions  of  St.  John  in  the 
Island  of  Patmos,  drawn  by  Diirer,  so  imagina- 
tively: "The  variety  of  the  forms  which 
Albert  has  imagined  for  all  those  visionary 
animals  and  monsters  has,  indeed,  been  a 
beacon  to  many  of  our  artists,  who  have 
largely  availed  themselves  of  the  fancies  and 
inventions  of  the  master." 

The  seven  Little  Masters— "  little  "  only 
by  reason  of  the  smallness  of  the  scale  on 
which  it  pleased  them  to  carry  out  their 
conceptions  and  to  pursue  their  almost  always 
arduous  labour — are  Altdorf  er,  Sebald  Beham, 
Barthel  Beham,  Aldegrever,  Pencz,  Binck, 
and  Brosamer.  The  brothers  Beham  and 
George  Pencz  were  Nuremberg  men.  Alt- 
dorf er  came  from  Ratisbon ;  Aldegrever  from 
Soest;  Binck  from  Cologne;  Brosamer, 
perhaps  the  least  known,  probably  the  least 
important  member  of  the  group,  came  from 
or  belonged  to  Fulda.  Of  these  contempo- 
raries, Altdorfer  was  the  eldest  :  indeed,  only 
nine  years  divide  his  birthdate  from  the  birth - 
date  of  Diirer.  The  youngest  member  of  the 
group  was  twenty  years  Diirer's  junior. 


28        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

Bartsch — who  catalogued  all  these  men  with 
a  thoroughness  not  final  indeed,  but  quite 
amazing  wrhen  one  considers  the  narrow 
opportunities  of  compilation  and  comparison 
available  in  his  day — assigns  to  Altdorfer 
ninety-six  original  pieces,  irrespective  of 
woodcuts :  ninety-six  pieces  on  copper.  More 
important,  however,  than  the  number  of 
his  works  is  the  ground  that  they  covered. 
Altdorfer  was  almost  the  first  man  to  seek 
in  pure  landscape  an  interest  sufficient  to 
support  and  give  interest  to  his  design.  For 
this  branch  of  his  work,  when  on  metal  at  all, 
he  employed  and  found  convenient  the  process 
of  Etching.  Generally  the  work  of  the  Little 
Masters  is  "  burin "  work,  work  of  pure 
line.  The  etchings  of  Altdorfer  are  numerous 
and  slight,  and  in  them  eccentric  taste  is 
mixed  with  romantic  character.  Work  at 
Bremen  and  at  Berlin,  and  the  "  Battle  of 
Alexander  and  Darius  "  in  the  Pinacothec, 
Munich,  reminds  us  that  the  citizen  of  Ratisbon 
was  painter  as  well  as  engraver.  He  wras  also 
a  busy  architect  :  an  official  post  was  given 
him;  and,  for  the  last  decade  of  his  life,  it 
and  perhaps  other  architectural  concerns 
caused  him  to  lay  aside  the  burin  and  the 
etching  needle,  and  probably  also  the  brush. 


THE   LITTLE   MASTERS  29 

In  whatever  he  did  he  had  his  merits;  but 
they  were  neutralized,  sometimes  more  than 
neutralized,  destroyed,  by  his  indulged 
yearning  for  the  fantastic.  The  student  and 
collector  of  original  line  engraving  may  be 
justified  in  passing  on  quickly  from  the 
consideration  of  Altdorfer's  work  —  as  of 
Brosamer's — to  that  of  those  amongst  the 
Little  Masters  more  considerable,  and,  in  this 
medium  of  engraving,  more  finely  accom- 
plished. 

George  Pencz  and  Jacob  Binck,  considered 
in  this  connection,  occupy  a  middle  place. 
The  late  W.  B.  Scott,  who,  of  all  English 
writers,  has  written  the  best  and  the  most 
fully  on  the  group  as  a  whole,  does  not 
attach  especial  importance  to  either  of  them. 
But  perhaps  it  is  Pencz  who  in  his  subject 
pieces — he  is  not  notable  in  ornament — best 
discovers  the  flowing  grace  and  suavity  of 
Italian  design.  "He  left  the  Fatherland," 
says  Mr.  Scott,  speaking  as  with  the  sym- 
pathies of  a  German,  "  and  subjected  himself 
to  Italian  influence."  That  does  not,  however, 
altogether  put  him  out  of  Court.  I  think  the 
modification  may  be  traced  in  his  work  :  I 
think  that  one  welcomes  it.  Binck,  Mr.  Scott 
numbers  with  those  who  are  "  of  compara- 


30        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

lively  little  consequence."  I  have  said,  in 
another  place,  that  I  hope  the  excellent  Mr. 
Scott  attaches  great  weight  to  his  "  com- 
paratively"; for  otherwise  he  has  done  to 
Binck  a  rude  injustice. 

We  come  to  the  three  greatest  members  of 
the  group — the  Behams  and  Aldegrever — the 
"  greatest,"  especially,  if  it  is  for  the  volume 
and  quality  of  their  work  as  original  engravers 
that  we  are  mainly  considering  them.  The 
tradition  is  that  both  of  the  Behams  were  in 
the  studio  or  workshop  of  Diirer.  The  story 
used  to  be  that  they  were  not  brothers,  but 
cousins,  and  that  it  was  Barthel  who  was  the 
elder  of  the  two,  and  who  was  in  a  sense  the 
instructor  of  Sebald.  This  idea  of  their 
relationship — their  professional  relationship  to 
each  other — arose,  probably,  from  the  fact 
that  Hans  Sebald  did  on  occasion  copy 
Barthel's  designs.  But  it  is  W.  B.  Scott's 
probably  quite  accurate  conjecture  that 
Barthel,  going  to  Italy,  left  with  his  brother 
certain  plates  and  the  freedom  to  deal  with 
them ;  and,  the  demand  continuing  for  given 
designs,  the  edition  was  exhausted,  the  plate 
worn,  and  Sebald  minded  himself  to  reproduce 
it,  that  the  demand  might  be  met.  In  any 
case,  Sebald  was  not  "  grounded  for  lack  of 


THE   LITTLE  MASTERS  31 

matter."  He  was  profuse  in  invention;  his 
imagination  was  ever  serviceable  and  sane; 
and  his  pure  craftsmanship,  in  the  opinion 
of  many  who  know,  was  the  most  accomplished 
of  all — stands  visibly  second  not  even  to 
Durer's.  Not  ill-advised  in  the  least  was  the 
late  W.  J.  Loftie  in  concentrating  his  efforts 
mainly  on  the  collection  of  this  one  man's 
abundant  and  varied  work. 

Barthel  died  young;  but  he  had  had  time 
to  place  with  unremitting  energy  upon  the 
copper  sixty-four  spirited,  finely-thought-out 
works  of  art.  Sebald  lived  longer,  though  he 
did  not  live  to  be  old ;  but  when  he  died  there 
had  been,  according  to  Bartsch,  two  hundred 
and  fifty-nine  plates — according  to  Loftie,  two 
hundred  and  seventy-four.  Some  of  his  pieces 
are  little  German  genre-pieces — dealing,  with 
a  certain  tender  realism,  with  familiar  and 
popular  life.  Some  are  of  Allegory.  Some 
are  Ornament  entirely — ornament  finely  de- 
vised and  perfectly  executed ;  the  composition 
well-balanced,  ingenious — its  arrangement  of 
light  and  shadow  noble  or  pleasing.  Like 
Diirer,  he  had  his  Coats-of-Arms  pieces.  Like 
Dtirer  again,  he  had  his  "  Adam  and  Eve." 
Barthel  had  subjects  of  the  latter  class — nay, 
of  both  classes — and  frieze-shaped  composi- 


32         PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

tions,  tiny  as  jewellers'  work,  of  combats 
between  the  gods  of  the  sea — not  to  speak  of  a 
much  esteemed  portrait  of  Charles  the  Fifth, 
in  which  the  artist  leaves  the  realm  that  is 
his  own  essentially.  Both  of  the  Behams,  to  a 
great  extent — like  Binck  and  like  Pencz,  and, 
of  course,  Aldegrever — were  "  emancipated 
from  the  wilful  despising  of  the  graces." 

The  engraved  work  of  Aldegrever,  the 
master  of  so  charming  a  fancy,  revelling,  at  his 
best,  in  every  grace  of  flower-form,  leaf -form, 
fruit -form,  arranging  it  with  a  knowledge  and 
taste  that  are  consummate — the  engraved 
work  of  Aldegrever  stops  only  with  his  two 
hundred  and  eighty-ninth  plate.  As  a  pure 
Ornamentist,  perhaps  Aldegrever  is  the  finest 
of  all  his  group.  He  knows — but  they  all 
know — how  to  occupy  and  steadily  fill  a 
given  space,  without  crowding  it.  But  he 
knows,  as  no  one  else,  I  think,  not  only  how 
to  give  to  his  line  symmetry,  but  how  to  give 
it  the  enduring  grace  of  rhythm.  The  beautiful 
campanula -like  ornament  (Bartsch,  No.  197) 
shows  that  conclusively.  In  this  way  some 
of  Aldegrever 's  work  owns  and  brings  into 
play  that  which  is  akin  to  the  charm  of  music, 
or  to  the  subtler,  less  evanescent  charm  of 
rightly  ordered  words. 


PAINTERS  OF   LOW  COUNTRIES     33 
CHAPTER  IV 

GREAT  PAINTERS    OF   THE   LOW   COUNTRIES 

THE  great  Dutch  Painting,  and  the  great 
Flemish,  apart  from  Memling's  and  Van 
Eyck's,  was  painting  of  the  Seventeenth 
Century.  The  times  were  late  already — at 
least,  they  were  already  advanced — and  the 
genius  of  originality  and  power  vouchsafed  to 
Nuremberg  and  Augsburg  found  its  match  in 
only  two  of  the  artists  of  the  crowded  com- 
pany of  painters  who  had  their  patrons  and 
their  pupils,  their  schools  and  their  supporters, 
among  the  enriched  bourgeoisie  of  Holland 
and  the  priestly  coteries  of  Antwerp  and  of 
Brussels.  Two  only  of  these  artists  of  the 
moist  and  chilly  North  were  something  quite 
distinctly  different  from  mere  consummate 
craftsmen,  though  they  were  consummate 
craftsmen  to  boot.  The  one  was  Rembrandt; 
the  other — and  though  one  hesitates  to  seem 
to  place  him  quite  upon  the  same  level,  it  is 
necessary  to  admit  that  the  fire  and  the 
fascination  of  invention,  and  invention  in  the 
great  manner,  was  likewise  his — the  other, 
then,  was  Rubens. 

Both  of  these  painters,  whatever  may  repel 

us,  or  may  fail  at  first  to  attract  us,  in  the 
o 


34        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

work  of  the  one  or  the  other,  both  have  t'o 
be  accounted  as  immense  artists;  and  no 
two  artists — though  these  two  were  of  the 
same  period  and  the  same  latitude — no  two 
were  more  strongly  contrasted,  more  essen- 
tially different.  Had  they  anything  in  common 
but  a  facility  of  expression  ?  Nothing  that 
I  know  of,  except  a  profound  interest  in 
humanity,  and  the  physical  and  psychological 
need  of  all  creative  artists,  in  any  art  what- 
ever, for  giving  birth  to  that  which  is  within 
them  :  le  besoin  de  creer,  as  the  French  say. 
Landscape  interested  them  both  :  people, 
it  has  been  said  already,  interested  both; 
but  that  hardly  brings  them  together,  since 
in  people  it  is  only  an  unintelligent  being  who 
fails  to  be  interested.  The  world  that  each 
imagined,  and  that  each  saw,  struck  him  in 
every  hour  of  his  experience,  and  of  his  inner 
life  as  well,  entirely  differently.  The  genius 
of  the  one  was  spiritual,  essentially;  the 
genius  of  the  other  was  mundane,  carnal,  but 
in  the  grand  way. 

Rembrandt  loved  beautiful  things,  as 
Rubens  loved  beautiful  women.  Beautiful 
things  Rembrandt  collected.  Two  beautiful 
women  Rubens  married — the  second's  beauty 
was  only  excelled  by  that  of  her  own 


PAINTERS   OF   LOW   COUNTRIES     35 

sister,  the  Helena  Fourment  of  our  National 
Gallery's,  "  Chapeau  de  Poil  " — and  in  paint- 
ing these  women,  and  painting  others, 
Rubens  spent  no  small  a  portion  of  his  life. 
Looking  at  Rembrandt's  work  and  looking  at 
Rubens's,  we  conceive  that  the  Dutchman 
was  homely  and  the  Fleming  magnificent. 
A  palace  is  the  place  in  which  to  encounter 
Rubens  :  a  quiet  home,  Rembrandt.  With 
the  Fleming  there  is  an  interchange  of  stately 
courtesies  :  with  the  Dutchman,  intimacy. 
A  blare  of  trumpets  announces  Rubens's 
presence ;  but  Rembrandt  simply  holds  your 
hand.  In  defining  thus  our  possible  relation 
with  the  one  and  with  the  other,  we  get 
forward  a  step  or  two  towards  defining  the 
undefinable — their  genius. 

As  far  as  technique  is  concerned,  both  de- 
veloped upon  habitual  lines  :  in  both  the 
obvious  carefulness  of  youth  was  in  the  main 
succeeded  by  the  obviously  relished  decision 
and  mastery  of  mature  years.  In  Rem- 
brandt's work,  the  counterpart  can  be  found 
to  that  early  Virgin  of  Rubens's  in  the 
Gallery  at  Brussels  which  exhibits  the  art 
of  the  Fleming  in  its  earliest  perfection,  with 
a  finish  precise  indeed,  but  never  tortured, 
mean,  or  mechanical.  In  his  work,  too,  is  to 
o  2 


36        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

be  found  the  counterpart  or  equivalent  to 
the  assured  brush-play,  the  rapid  decisiveness, 
of  his  contemporary's  later  portraiture  or 
later  presentations  of  opulent,  abounding 
nudity.  But,  on  the  whole,  it  is  Rubens  whose 
course  is  the  more  regular.  Rembrandt  has 
a  way  of  baffling  all  critical  schemes  of 
arrangement,  all  theories  and  traditions  of 
progress,  by  suddenly,  from  time  to  time, 
springing  upon  us  a  thing  we  should  have 
associated  with  almost  another  generation  : 
twenty  years  later  that  thing  might  have  been 
painted,  or  twenty  years  earlier.  But  hardly 
— one  would  have  supposed — hardly  just  then. 
In  portraiture,  Rubens  was  interested  in 
external  splendour,  in  pomp  and  circum- 
stance, the  joy  of  being  and  the  pride  of  Life, 
rather  than  in  the  adventures  of  the  soul. 
Rembrandt,  in  portrait  work,  was  interested 
in  the  individualities  of  character,  the  intelli- 
gent naivete  of  childhood,  the  business  man's 
absorption  in  his  labours,  the  elderly  woman's 
sometimes  narrowing,  sometimes  more  philo- 
sophical and  tolerant  outlook  upon  Life. 
In  landscape,  Rubens  was  interested  in  a 
scene  that  was  peopled  :  it  might  be  a  boar- 
hunt,  or  a  civilized,  cultured  champaign,  alive 
with  the  incidents  of  agrarian  careers.  And 


PAINTERS   OF   LOW   COUNTRIES     37 

here,  what  interested  Rembrandt  was  retire- 
ment and  placidity;  the  light  and  shade  of 
the  everyday  and  uneventful  land  of  farm  and 
field,  and  barn,  canal,  and  hillock.  If  the 
scene  became,  as  now  and  again  it  did, 
dramatic  and  exciting,  it  was  because,  not 
men  and  women,  but  the  forces  of  Nature 
were  suddenly  the  persons  of  the  drama. 
More  than  one  landscape  of  Rembrandt  is  not 
so  much  the  anticipation  as  the  actual  begin- 
ning of  modern  landscape  art — more  than  of 
modern  landscape  art,  of  modern  vision. 

Rembrandt,  a  noble  colourist  where  colour- 
ist  at  all,  a  discoverer  of  faultless  harmonies 
of  gold  and  golden  brown,  of  lurking  lights, 
of  shadows  that  quiet  when  they  do  not 
menace  or  appal,  was  a  master  of  tone,  more 
pre-eminently.  Hence,  for  example,  the  tri- 
umph of  his  etchings,  which  were  the  perfec- 
tion of  tone,  of  line,  and  of  the  seizure  of 
character.  Rubens  was  colourist  always — 
that  is,  he  was  painter  essentially.  To  deprive 
him  of  colour  would  be  to  deprive  him  of 
what  one  thinks  he  must  have  found  the  most 
enjoyable  of  his  means  of  expression.  With 
him,  high  light  and  a  shadow  gentle,  modified, 
in  itself  surpassingly  luminous,  swept  over 
the  faces  of  his  blondes  of  the  bourgeoisie — 


38        PAINTERS   AND    PAINTING 

over  the  shoulders  and  haunches  of  goddesses 
opalescent  or  pearly.  His  gifts  being  what 
they  were,  and  Rembrandt's  being  what  they 
were  as  distinctly,  is  it  remarkable  at  all  that 
in  the  main  the  art  of  Rubens  should  be  Pagan 
— Pagan  gloriously — and  the  art  of  Rembrandt 
sadder,  calmer,  modestly  Christian  and  hu- 
mane ?  In  dealing  with  the  uncomely,  his 
realism  was,  it  is  true,  uncompromising.  His 
modes  were  at  fault,  but  so,  it  must  be 
confessed,  was  his  taste.  Or,  at  the  least,  he 
possessed  in  superabundance  a  kindly  tolera- 
tion of  the  plain. 

To  accept  the  plain,  not  so  much  with 
toleration  as  with  enthusiasm  and  preference, 
to  revel  in  the  physical  ugliness  so  often  the 
sign  and  the  betrayer  of  internal  degradation, 
was  one  of  the  characteristics  of  too  much,  of 
far  too  much,  of  the  Dutch  seventeenth  cen- 
tury art.  That  attitude  went,  in  its  ravenous 
eagerness,  in  its  stupid  content,  quite  beyond 
Rembrandt's  gesture  of  kindliness  and  accept- 
ance ;  and  it  defaces  and  disfigures  too  many 
a  panel  of  Teniers  and  Ostade,  of  Brauwer  and 
Bega — of  Bega,  saved  in  his  etchings,  by  the 
vivacity  of  his  truthfulness,  his  sense  of  easy, 
natural  composition,  and  the  picturesque  and 
happy  strength  of  his  chiaroscuro. 


PAINTERS   OF   LOW   COUNTRIES     39 

There  are,  in  the  Dutch  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, clever  little  painters,  very  clever  little 
painters,  of  domestic  incident  and  interior — 
sometimes  with  specialities  of  their  own,  as 
"  candle-light  Van  Schalcken,"  or  Slingeland, 
or  as  the  less  unimportant,  but  never  very 
thrilling  or  admiration-compelling,  Gerard 
Dow — who  are  not  victims  to  this  "  Realism," 
but  who  succumb  ever  to  the  more  insinuating 
temptations  of  prettiness.  They  have  had 
their  day  for  the  most  part,  and — if  prophecy 
is  safe — it  is  not  a  day  that  will  return. 

Then  there  are  the  great  examples  of  that 
Dutch  genre-painting  which  succumbs  neither 
on  the  one  hand  nor  on  the  other,  which  holds 
its  own  healthily — the  great,  the  scarcely  less 
than  noble  genre-painting  of  Terborch  and 
Metsu,  of  Nicholas  Maes,  and  De  Hooch,  and 
Jan  Vermeer  of  Delft.  The  subtlety  of  the 
first  three,  the  safe  and  solid  breadth  and 
brilliance  of  the  two  last-named  of  this  group 
— their  observation  of  humanity  and  of  still 
life  and  of  those  effects  of  fleeting  illumination 
to  which  they  attended  so  much — make  them 
sure,  in  perpetuity,  of  their  honourable  and 
pleasure -giving  place.  It  is  perhaps  in  Gerard 
Terborch  that  there  is  the  most  complete,  if 
also  the  gentlest,  grasp  of  human  character,  as 


40        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

it  is  discerned  dimly  in  a  race  undemonstrative 
and  reticent,  unstirred  and  self-contained. 

But  there  is  one  other  master  of  Genre 
remaining  to  be  named,  and  the  greatest  of 
all,  in  some  respects.  He  is  a  gentle  high 
comedian  of  painting.  And  that  is  Jan 
Steen.  Terborch's  Genre,  and  Metsu's,  in  its 
relation  of  incident,  in  its  presentation  of 
character,  has  some  affinity  with  the  fiction 
of  Anthony  Trollope.  It  is  occupied  with  the 
slow  realization  of  the  placid  truth — of  a  truth 
never,  of  course,  as  deep  as  Samuel  Richard- 
son's. But  with  the  Genre  of  Jan  Steen,  art 
is  whipped  into  piquancy,  or,  quite  as  often, 
it  spontaneously  rises  to  liveliness — some- 
times there  is  about  this  anecdote  and  episode 
painting  of  the  brilliant  Dutchman  a  reminder 
of  the  naughtiness,  the  rebellious  imagination, 
of  Sterne.  His  touch,  too,  has  Sterne's 
gaiety  and  Sterne's  feeling;  there  is  much 
in  A  Sentimental  Journey  that  Jan  Steen 
would  have  enjoyed  to  illustrate.  One  thing 
besides  Jan  Steen  possessed,  which  is  hardly 
in  our  art  of  literature  at  all.  He  had  the 
faculty  of  setting  forth,  as  nobody,  I  think, 
besides  him  has  ever  set  forth,  except  Wat- 
teau,  the  delicate,  unblemished  joyousness 
of  childhood,  the  flower-like  charm  of  its 


PAINTERS   OF   LOW   COUNTRIES    41 

irresponsible  thoughtfulness.  The  children  of 
Ostade  and  Teniers  are  dull  and  oppressed 
grubbers  among  only  material  things;  but 
the  air  in  which  Jan  Steen's  children  have 
their  being  is  light  and  clear  as  the  atmosphere 
of  France.  Of  motherly,  and  fatherly  solici- 
tude, and  childish  enjoyment,  and  happy 
family  merry-making,  Jan  Steen  is  the  painter. 
He  is  the  painter  also  of  the  intrigues  of 
licensed  comedy,  and  of  bedside  scenes  in 
which  ^Esculapius,  in  the  guise  of  a  Dutch 
physician,  deals  artfully  and  assiduously  with 
the  troubles  and  disturbances  of  the  Fair. 

In  Dutch  landscape  art,  it  is  Rembrandt — 
spoken  of  already — who  reaches  the  summit ; 
where,  however,  he  sometimes  finds  himself 
in  the  near  company  of  De  Koninck,  who  is 
now  and  then  legitimately  mistaken  for  him, 
and  in  the  near  company  of  Hobbema,  not 
finer,  indeed,  but  more  recognizably  individual 
than  the  other,  and,  at  least  in  the  "  Avenue 
at  Middelharnis,"  actually  great.  Wynants, 
with  his  humble  and  familiar  theme  of  tracks 
across  the  sandy  uplands,  has  a  simplicity  and 
truth  of  curious  charm.  And  if  his  work  and 
Hobbema's  may  be  accepted  as  the  source 
of  the  Norwich  School,  there  are  pieces  by 
Ruysdael,  who  was  a  master  also,  which 


42        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

may  be  viewed  as  in  spirit  the  "  only  be- 
getters "  of  certain  of  the  landscapes 
which,  in  mid-nineteenth  century,  the  potent 
Courbet  painted,  amongst  the  ravines  and 
running  waters  of  Franche  Comte. 

The  finest  Dutch  sea-pieces  of  the  great 
older  time  are  the  calms  of  William  Van  de 
Velde  and  of  Van  der  Capella.  To  paint  these 
was  an  achievement,  though  with  Van  der 
Capella  the  achievement  became  a  mannerism. 
It  became  so  only  because  Van  der  Capella 
limited  himself  a  little  too  resolutely,  some 
would  say  too  timidly,  to  the  thing  it  was 
agreed  by  all  men  he  was  sure  to  do  well. 
Backhuysen  has  at  times  a  quaint  and  just  ex- 
cusable fascination.  He  can  even  be  spirited. 
But  Mr.  Ruskin,  to  whom  it  has  been  so 
difficult  generally  to  do  any  justice  to  the 
Dutchmen,  was  not,  about  the  Dutchmen, 
wrong  without  intermission.  He  was  not 
wrong  substantially  in  his  estimate  of  Back- 
huysen as  a  painter  of  the  storm.  The  storm 
of  Backhuysen  is  a  storm  of  the  stage.  It 
is  a  storm  of  second-rate  and  old-world 
melodrama.  Yet  for  the  adequate  portrayal 
of  crashing  waters  and  charged  sky,  we  must 
wait,  strange  though  it  seems  to  have  to  do 
so,  for  some  few  masters  of  the  nineteenth 


LATER  DUTCH   PAINTING          43 

century,  in  French  and  English  painting. 
To  be  content,  we  have  to  wait  for  Turner 
Cotman,  Constable.  We  have  to  wait  for 
Courbet  and  for  Boudin. 

CHAPTER   V 

LATER   DUTCH    PAINTING 

AFTER  the  seventeenth  century,  Dutch 
painting  languished.  If,  from  the  eighteenth, 
mediocrity  has  now  and  then  survived,  it  is 
because  greatness  did  not  live  at  all — the 
great  did  not  exist.  There  was  heard,  in 
the  Holland  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
feeble  echo  of  voices  then  already  remote. 
The  nineteenth  century  had  to  be  reached — 
nearly  half  gone  through — before  a  new 
vigour,  something  of  a  new  inspiration,  came 
into  Dutch  painting. 

And  when  this  new  inspiration,  this  new 
force,  came,  it  must  have  been  a  little  difficult 
to  say  what  was  its  source.  The  honourable 
and  accomplished  art  of  the  large  group  of 
men  whom  Jacob  and  Mathew  Maris,  Israels, 
Bosboom,  Neuhuys,  and  Mesdag  may  best 
represent  for  us,  had  signs  of  relationship, 
undoubtedly,  with  the  elder  art  that  had 
vanished.  But  it  was  not  clearly  the  successor 


44        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

of  it :  at  least,  not  in  method.  And  England — 
rich  already,  before  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  in  landscape  art,  impressive 
and  original  (Turner's  and  Constable's,  Cot- 
man's  and  Dewint's,  not  to  speak  of  the 
earlier  productions  of  Richard  Wilson  and  of 
Gainsborough) — England,  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose,  is  answerable  much  for  the 
direction  that  modern  Dutch  art  took. 
Something  it  got  from  England,  more  from 
France — the  France  of  the  Romantics,  from 
whom  it  eliminated  generally  the  actually 
Romantic  touch — and  something  it  got  from 
its  own  older  traditions  :  a  certain  reticence 
and  reserve,  a  certain  willing,  perhaps  even 
instinctive  subordination  of  colour  to  light 
and  shade.  The  older  School  had  a  variety 
of  theme  and  treatment  which  the  newer  has 
not  equalled,  has  not  emulated. 

Of  the  six  men  I  have  mentioned — and  I 
ought,  I  think,  to  have  mentioned  Mauve 
besides — it  is  certainly  not  Mesdag,  and  it 
does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  Israels,  who  could 
put  forward  best  a  claim  to  originality.  That 
Mesdag — mainly  a  painter  of  the  sea,  and,  as 
a  painter  of  rough  seas,  very  accomplished — 
has  not  allowed  himself  to  fall  into  mannerism, 
is,  of  course,  to  his  credit.  It  is  less  to  his 


LATER  DUTCH  PAINTING         45 

credit,  or  it  is  more  to  be  remembered  as  his 
ill  fortune,  that  he  has  not  impressed  us 
with  his  own  personality.  In  Mesdag  the 
craftsman  is  in  evidence  :  the  individual  has 
been  slow  to  assert  himself.  Mesdag's  work 
is  eclectic,  as  his  own  tastes  have  been. 
Never,  perhaps,  was  there  a  painter  who  more 
thoroughly  enjoyed  than  he  did  to  surround 
himself  with  the  performances  of  gifted 
brethren.  Liberal  in  purse  and  in  feeling, 
Mesdag  amassed  the  materials  for  a  "  Tate  " 
Gallery  of  Modern  Dutch  Painting. 

Josef  Israels,  with  delicate  observation, 
and  with  what  is  called  scrupulous  fidelity, 
has  painted  the  sea;  but  his  sea,  unlike 
Mesdag's,  has  to  have  children  in  front  of  it. 
That  there  may  be  children  in  front  of  it, 
there  has  to  be  a  beach — from  all  which  one 
thing  is  quite  evident  :  Israels  is  a  painter 
of  incident,  or  of  humanity,  as  well  as  of 
landscape.  It  may  be  but  a  trifling  incident 
when  there  is  landscape — seascape — to  sup- 
port it :  the  interest  of  atmosphere,  silvery 
generally,  the  interest  of  space.  But  if  the 
incident  is,  as  it  often  is,  an  incident  of  the 
interior,  and  of  the  cottage  of  the  humble, 
then  it  is  almost  certain  to  be  more  actively 
dramatic  :  it  has  pathos  probably ;  and  the 


46        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

pathos  may  deepen  to  tragedy.  Herein,  of 
course,  perhaps  in  the  gentler  pathos  most 
of  all,  is  Israels'  most  popular  appeal.  There 
is  no  doubt  whatever  that  he  has  overdone 
it.  One  is,  before  the  end,  permissibly  weary 
of  the  minor  key,  and  of  the  muted  strings. 
I  know,  in  real  life,  absolutely  nobody,  and 
at  the  Theatre  only  one  person,  Goldsmith's 
Mr.  Croaker,  who  could  say,  genuinely,  to 
the  unfatigued  recorder  of  human  discomfort, 
"  Mr.  Israels,  it  is  a  perfect  consolation  to 
be  miserable  with  you."  For  all  that,  Israels 
is  miserable  so  very  cleverly  that  with  com- 
parative approval,  with  a  measure  of  satis- 
faction, you  can  behold  his  picture  when  it 
comes  "  a  single  spy."  What  is  annoying  is 
to  *  be  desperately  aware  of  the  imminent 
approach  of  the  "  battalions." 

Neuhuys  sees  life  more  cheerfully,  because 
he  sees  it  whole.  He  is  the  painter  not  mainly 
of  the  fisherman,  decrepit,  in  extreme  age, 
who  has  wept  already  over  the  departure  of 
every  conceivable  kinsman.  He  is  the  painter 
of  normal  human  life — of  the  commonplace 
fortunes  of  the  given  hour,  lightly  accepted, 
modestly,  even  gaily,  enjoyed — the  work  that 
has  its  interest;  the  leisure  that  comes 
pleasantly;  the  satisfied  affection.  His  art 


LATER  DUTCH  PAINTING          47 

forecasts  the  not  improbable  brightness  of 
to-morrow's  sky.  Really  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  close  observation  of  character  dis- 
played in  Neuhuys'  canvasses,  and  it  is  set 
forth  with  its  reasonable  share  of  painter's 
charm.  Very  high  beauty  of  the  face  and 
figure  is  not  for  any  Dutchman,  one  supposes — 
Nature,  experience,  has  not  supplied  him  with 
the  stimulus  to  present  it.  But  with  Neuhuys, 
as  with  Terborch,  the  painter  of  gentlewomen, 
and  Jan  Steen,  the  painter  of  soubrettes,  in 
early  days,  a  woman  is  of  decent  comeliness — 
she  is  felt  to  be  approachable.  Sometimes 
her  modest  measure  of  attractiveness  goes  yet 
a  little  further.  Into  the  countenance  there 
creeps  some  subtlety  of  expression:  a  little, 
— about  as  much  as  in  a  woman  by  Vermeer 
of  Delft,  more  than  two  hundred  years  ago. 

If  the  word  "  exquisite  "  deserves  to  be 
applied  to  any  of  these  modern  Dutch 
practitioners  of  very  sound  painting,  it  must 
be  applied,  presumably,  to  Mathew  Maris. 
Inexpressibly  dainty  is  certainly  at  times  his 
execution;  and  the  daintiness  fits  well  the 
presentation  and  realization  of  a  fancy  that 
is  dainty  too.  Mathew  Maris,  in  many  of  his 
pictures,  has  thought  in  pale  and  pleasant 
colour.  He  has  been,  as  it  were,  in  the  com- 


48        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

pany  of  harmonious  dreams.  He  is  alone, 
abstracted,  and  there  has  been  from  time  to 
time  revealed  to  him  a  world  not  ours.  Not 
ours  altogether,  quainter  and  more  precise  : 
its  epochs  mixed  a  little,  but,  after  all, 
scarcely  new  Heavens,  or  a  new  Earth. 

Mathew's  great  brother,  James,  the  Jacob 
Maris  of  Dutch  catalogues  and  criticisms, 
is  of  our  world,  or  of  the  common  world, 
absolutely;  the  world  of  his  time;  but  it  is 
of  the  world  finely  seen,  although  seen  and 
depicted  with  the  minimum  of  colour  :  it  is 
tone,  it  is  light  and  shade,  it  is  form  seen 
largely,  it  is  the  painter's  courage  that  shirks 
no  reality,  but  loves  no  ugliness,  that  con- 
tribute to  make  it  effective.  And  James 
Maris  sees  his  world  massively;  there  is 
volume  as  well  as  line  in  it.  And  the  whole 
of  it  interests  him — Amsterdam,  with  the 
movement  of  its  teeming  population;  grey 
Dordrecht,  set  beside  its  noble  breadth  of 
water ;  the  canal  and  the  canal  boat ;  the  long, 
low  land  and  the  windmills ;  the  sky,  not  often 
of  the  Dutch  Summer — not  Cuyp's  sky,  or 
Van  der  Heyden's — the  sky  of  windy  Autumn 
or  of  sullen  winter,  a  sky  of  swollen  cloud 
or  of  hard  greyness.  Precise,  and  visibly 
elaborate,  and  a  little  dry,  James  Maris  was — 


LATER  DUTCH  PAINTING          40 

or  could  be — in  his  youth  and  early  middle 
days.  He  became  broader,  richer,  fatter  in 
touch,  more  simplified  in  selection.  So 
simplified  indeed,  very  often,  that  some  con- 
siderable survey  of  his  work  might  leave  us 
not  indisposed  to  consider  him  as  mainly  a 
great  sketcher,  a  man  whose  sketches  had 
not  only  removed  the  superfluous,  but  had, 
to  boot,  evaded,  rather  than  conquered, 
difficulties  that  are  obstinate.  However  that 
may  be,  James  Maris's  work,  at  its  most 
characteristic,  has  the  impressiveness  of  unity 
and  power. 

As  regards  method,  Johannes  Bosboom — 
our  last  very  important  modern  Dutchman 
(though  we  might  perhaps  have  discoursed 
on  Anton  Mauve) — would  have  the  same  tale 
to  tell  as  Maris.  He  too,  at  the  cost  of  a 
temporary  dryness,  and  of  too  great  precision, 
and  of  detail  expressed  laboriously,  instead 
of  significantly  indicated,  got  thoroughly 
grounded,  had  the  foundation  laid  for  the 
later  freedom,  which  was  so  learned,  and  which 
seemed  so  easy.  Like  Emanuel  de  Witte, 
of  the  Dutch  seventeenth  century,  the 
interiors  of  churches,  spacious  churches,  cold 
to  the  common  eye,  were  his  habitual  theme. 

Cold  or  not  cold,  Bosboom,  often  with  but 
D 


50        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

a  few  touches,  conveys  to  you  their  interest 
and  their  charm.  What  is  their  charm  ? 
Well,  it  is  perhaps  unseizable  and  indescribable. 
It  is  not  at  all  in  their  beauty  of  detail ;  for 
beauty,  any  abounding  beauty  of  detail,  they 
often  have  not  got.  They  are  Dutch  churches, 
gaunt  and  featureless — they  are  not  English  or 
French.  And  Bosboom,  one  is  sure,  would  not 
have  had  them  other  than  they  are,  would  not 
have  spent  the  best  of  his  life  in  drawing  them 
(and  the  best  churches  of  Bosboom  are  not  oil 
paintings,  but  water-colours)  had  he  not 
understood,  and  very  readily  accepted  what 
it  was  that  alone  they  could  offer.  What 
could  they  offer  ?  That  sound  sense  of  pro- 
portion, generally,  that  governed  their  archi- 
tects from  the  first — and  their  spaciousness 
— an  interest  in  itself.  On  such  a  great  stage 
could  be  played  out  the  drama,  and  played 
out  most  effectively,  with  a  high  dignity. 
Light  and  shade  were  its  persons.  Light 
concentrated  here,  shadow  distributed  there, 
in  varying  degrees  of  closeness  and  of  mystery. 
Light  and  gloom,  space,  the  vista,  massiveness, 
volume — it  is  in  these  things,  in  their  present- 
ation with  a  simple,  undeniable  power,  that 
lies  the  charm  of  Bosboom's  church'dra wings. 
It  is  to  the  imagination  that  they  speak. 


VENETIAN  MASTERS  51 


CHAPTER   VI 

VENETIAN   MASTERS 

THE  Republic  of  Venice  was  not  a  place  for 
the  Primitives.  It  was  hardly  more  a  place 
for  them  in  the  days  of  its  early  prosperity 
than  in  those  of  its  gorgeous  decadence.  And 
yet,  whatever  was  best  in  the  Primitives  of 
the  Italian  peninsula  was  found  in  a  Vene- 
tian. Bellini  combined  faith — unquestioning 
faith,  sincerity,  and  good  intention — with 
what  some  most  admired  Primitives  lacked 
curiously  or  lacked  conspicuously:  a  high 
capacity  to  draw  and  paint.  That  com- 
bination in  him  of  the  qualities  of  worthy 
folk  a  little  earlier  than  himself,  as  early 
it  may  be,  as  Giotto,  with  qualities  vouch- 
safed in  richest  measure  to  men  of  genius 
who  were  his  immediate  successors,  unites 
Bellini  to  the  generation  that  had  passed 
and  to  the  generation  that  was  next  to  come. 
So  he  becomes  a  link.  That  does  not  prevent 
us  from  discovering  and  recognizing  that  his 
highest  attractiveness  exists  by  reason,  not 
of  his  relation  to  this  or  that  School  or  person 
or  period,  but  because  of  his  individuality, 
those  gifts  of  his  that  were  emphatically  his 

D  2 


52        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

own.  In  him  we  have  a  sedate  chronicler 
of  truth,  an  artist  dignified  and  noble,  a 
craftsman  who  had  perfected,  wellnigh  to  the 
uttermost,  the  means  which  he  was  minded 
to  employ.  Most  of  this  praise  is,  one  reflects, 
as  applicable  to  Giorgione  as  to  him  of  whom 
it  has  just  been  uttered,  and  of  Giorgione  this 
must  be  added — he  was  poetic,  profoundly. 

Yet  in  Venetian  art,  the  Bellini  and 
Giorgione,  with  all  their  virtues  and  their 
charms,  and  Carpaccio,  with  all  the  quaintness 
of  his  pictured  history,  were  in  a  sense,  but 
forerunners.  It  is  after  their  departure  from 
the  scene  that  the  curtain  rises  to  disclose 
the  very  greatest  performers :  to  show  execu- 
tants endowed  most  richly  with  staying 
power.  As,  at  some  modern  entertainment,  the 
moment  is  a  late  one  at  which  those  appear 
whose  persons  and  whose  gifts  stir  the  deepest 
or  the  most  general  enthusiasm.  The  day  is  no 
longer  young,  the  time  is  ripe,  that  produces 
Tintoret  and  Titian,  and  that  third  master 
of  stately  presentation,  Paolo  Veronese. 
Scarcely,  perhaps,  is  it  in  accordance  with  the 
newer  fashions  in  painting  to  continue  the 
simile,  and  to  connect  with  only  the  latest  and 
the  tired  hour  those  engaging  practitioners  of 
eighteenth  century  painting,  those  exponents 


VENETIAN  MASTERS  53 

of  eighteenth  century  life,  Tiepolo  and 
Longhi,  Canaletto  and  Guardi.  And  yet, 
no  fashion  that  is  to  be  respected  at  all,  can 
claim,  or  has  claimed,  for  the  Venetians  of 
an  illustrious  decadence  the  rank  and  the 
attention  properly  the  due  of  those  great 
masters  who  performed  when  art  was  at  its 
zenith — nay,  whose  capacities  of  noble  thought 
and  splendid  line  and  faultless  affluence  of 
colour  were  just  the  factors  that  permitted 
to  pictorial  art  the  level  it  once  reached. 

The  art  of  Venice  has  been  written  about 
so  much,  so  learnedly,  and  so  abundantly, 
whether  as  regards  those  manifestations  of 
its  excellence  as  remain  in  the  churches  and 
the  galleries  and  the  council  halls,  or  as  regards 
those  other  pieces  which  enterprising  purchase 
or  the  fortune  of  war,  or  other  accident,  occur- 
ring during  the  three  centuries  of  their  existence, 
has  borne  away,  it  may  be,  to  Madrid,  it  may 
be  Paris,  it  may  be  even  to  Trafalgar  Square, 
that  the  author  of  a  mere  sketch-history, 
the  opener  of  a  window  upon  the  painting 
of  the  world,  may  be  pardoned — more,  it 
is  even  to  be  hoped,  commended — if  he  is 
brief  where  others  have  been  long.  Leading 
features,  the  most  salient  traits,  are  what,  in 
the  case  of  the  Venetians,  I  shall  in  this  small 


54        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

volume  mostly  be  concerned  with.  I  shall 
invite  the  beginner  to  take  cognizance  of  the 
most  patent  differences  between  the  efforts 
of  the  artists  whose  more  subtle  unlikeness 
has  been  elsewhere,  and  by  other  hands, 
elaborately  traced. 

Mainly  there  are  to  be  considered — especially 
as  regards  the  great  period — performances 
in  religious  painting,  in  portraiture,  and  in 
decoration;  and  of  the  three  artistic  giants 
of  that  great  period,  all  are  concerned,  in 
different  degrees,  with  each  one  of  these 
branches  of  work.  Branches  they  are  which 
interlace,  however,  since  it  must  be  seen  clearly 
that  often  there  is  no  reason  whatever  why 
religious  painting  should  not  also  be  decora- 
tive ;  and  Tintoret's  "  Miracle  of  the  Greek 
Slave  "  may  be  taken  as  a  consummate 
instance  of  the  union  of  those  two  genres. 
There  is  no  inevitable  restriction  of  the  ex- 
pression of  piety — and  Tintoret's  piety  was 
dramatic  to  the  limits  of  an  easel  picture. 
Again,  the  scale  and  something  of  the  treat- 
ment of  Titian's  "  Assumption  of  the  Virgin," 
in  the  Venetian  Academy,  marks  that  out 
as  being  not  decorative  alone,  or  pious  alone, 
but  pious  and  decorative. 

The  themes  of  classical  allegory  or  myth- 


VENETIAN   MASTERS  55 

ology — Titian's  "Venus  and  Adonis,"  in  the 
National  Gallery,  is  an  example — obviously 
lend  themselves  to  treatment  upon  the  large 
or  "  decorative  "  scale.  Only  in  the  North, 
where,  often  for  mere  warmth's  sake,  rooms 
are  small,  and  thus  the  wall-space  limited  and 
quickly  absorbed,  would  even  a  Poelemberg 
think  of  depicting  the  naked  forms  of  two-inch- 
high  nymphs  or  Goddesses  in  a  landscape  per- 
haps ten  inches  broad.  The  Low  Countries  are 
the  especial  home  of  the  easel  picture.  But 
portraiture,  unless  indeed  grouped  portrait- 
ure— and  Venice  offers  us  nothing  in  por- 
traiture exactly  comparable  in  intention  or 
fact  with  that  which  Haarlem  shows  us  as  the 
best  life-work  of  Franz  Hals — portraiture, 
at  all  events  whenever  it  is  short  of  "full 
length,"  is  on  the  scale  of  an  easel  picture, 
habitually.  Therefore  Titian  —  the  great 
portraitist  of  our  group  of  the  three  giants 
of  Venetian  painting — occupied  and  covered 
the  least  space  of  the  three.  He  it  is,  of  the 
three,  who,  notwithstanding  the  execution 
by  him  of  the  two  large  and  noble  pieces  I 
happen  to  have  named,  and  others  like  them, 
in  the  course  of  the  long  years  of  his  un- 
ceasingly busy  life,  is  the  most  eligible  to  be 
compared  with  the  great  painters  of  lands  not 


56        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

his  own  :  with  Velasquez,  one  would  say,  and 
with  Rembrandt.  That  which  the  technical 
students  of  art  intend  to  indicate  when  they 
use  the  word  "  quality  " — that  is  fineness, 
in  the  best  sense,  of  texture  :  a  verisimilitude 
not  so  much  imitative  as  interpreting — is  to 
be  found,  thus  naturally,  far  more  in  Titian 
than  in  Veronese  or  Tintoret.  One  would 
not  say  for  a  moment,  Tintoret  is  without  it, 
for  Tintoret  himself  paints  portraits.  But 
he  has  it  more  rarely.  Then,  with  an  added 
richness,  he  has  noble  design,  carried  out  in 
noble  draughtsmanship,  in  lines  of  muscular 
action,  of  abounding  energy.  Veronese  paints 
pageantry,  the  stately  scene;  and  in  the 
painting  of  the  stately  scene,  design  has  its 
marked  function.  It  must  be  design  that 
dominates.  The  design  of  Veronese  is  as 
noble,  as  firmly  laid,  as  Michael  Angelo's. 
It  is,  in  itself,  not  nobler  :  but  then  it  is  less 
interfused  with,  I  would  not  for  the  world 
say  less  contaminated  with,  passion.  And 
so,  of  course,  it  has  in  a  degree  I  should  have 
called  unique  but  for  the  advent,  in  our  own 
time,  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes — it  has,  in  a  degree 
almost  unique,  the  boon  of  restfulness. 

The  Venetians  of  the  eighteenth  century — 
masters  of    a   delightful  decadence — remove 


VENETIAN  MASTERS  57 

us  from  this  high  world  of  their  elders  to  a 
world  of  everyday.  Even  Tiepolo  does  that 
to  some  extent.  I  am  not  sure  that  it  has 
not  somewhere  been  said  of  him  already 
that  he  was  not  so  much  a  poet  as  the  stage- 
manager  of  poetic  effects.  His  energy  and 
impulse,  his  command  of  sweeping  line,  leave 
him  attractive.  But  he  speaks,  rather,  the 
language  of  a  mundane  rhetoric;  a  facile, 
promptly  exercised  art  is  often  in  the  place 
of  inspiration;  he  has  not  (yet  he  does  not 
know  that  he  has  not)  "  the  broad  utterance 
of  the  early  gods."  At  the  same  time  it  is 
quite  possible,  and  would  be  quite  pleasant, 
to  justify  and  defend  the  modern  revival  of 
interest  in  him. 

Longhi,  by  the  nature  of  his  conceptions, 
by  the  scale  and  character  of  his  canvasses, 
courts  comparison  with  those  French  mas- 
ters, more  or  less  his  contemporaries,  who 
depicted  drawing-room  life,  drawing-room 
courtesy,  grace,  and  vivacity,  and  drawing- 
room  intrigue.  With  the  less  illustrious  of 
those  masters  he  can  stand  comparison  well 
enough.  It  is  only  when  his  work  is  brought 
into  juxtaposition  with  that  of  a  dominating 
genius  that  it  is  seen  as  relatively  ineffective ; 
and,  even  then,  Longhi  is  not  to  be  altogether 


58        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

ruled  out,  for  he  gives  you,  being  Venetian, 
a  variation  on  Parisian  sentiment,  and — it  is 
his  good  fortune  rather  than  his  merit,  yet  we 
count  it  to  him  for  righteousness — he  gives  you 
in  the  creatures  of  his  comedy  a  new  type, 
and,  in  the  scene  of  it,  an  unfamiliar  decor. 
Canaletto  and  Guardi,  the  two  chief  painters 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  of  the  outside  of 
Venice — the  painters,  not  of  its  buildings  only, 
but  of  its  skies  and  waters — were  less  creative 
than  Longhi,  less  creative  than  Tiepolo; 
because,  with  human  fortunes,  human  nature, 
even  human  movement,  they  were  relatively 
unconcerned.  To  them  men  and  women  were 
appropriate  and  useful  spots  and  dots  on 
the  Venetian  landscape,  and  the  action  of 
the  gondolier,  monotonous  but  graceful,  was 
the  action  that  they  principally  portrayed. 
Certainly  Canaletto  was  a  great  draughtsman ; 
but  was  not  Guardi  a  not  less  impressive  one  ? 
It  may  be  that  the  most  complete  Canaletto 
is  a  completer  thing  than  the  finest  Guardi ; 
but  how  much  more  than  the  average  Cana- 
letto has  the  average  Guardi  the  charm  of 
vividness  and  impulse,  the  suggestion  of  high 
spirits,  the  sense  of  enjoyment  on  these  free 
waters,  of  palpitating  life  in  every  fascinating 
transition  from  brilliant  light  to  obscure 


THE    SPANISH   PAINTERS          59 

shadow,  and  out  again  from  this  deep  shadow, 
into  the  sunshine  of  piazzetta  and  facade  ! 
Unless  Canaletto 's  reputation  rested  on  a  very 
few  of  his  pictures,  such  as  the  best,  for  in- 
stance, in  the  British  Royal  collections,  it  is 
surprising  to  me  that  it  was  ever  in  advance 
of  Guardi's.  Amongst  us  it  was  known  first, 
we  need  not  doubt;  and  we  are  loyal  to  our 
favourites  :  we  displace  them  reluctantly. 
There  is,  in  our  loyalty,  sometimes,  just  a 
suspicion  of  dullness,  and,  in  presence  of 
Guardi,  a  measure  of  inconstancy  to  Canaletto 
may  by  this  time  be  condoned.  The  average 
Canaletto  cannot  be  impeached  as  a  chronicle. 
Therefore  we  must  respect  it.  But  then,  the 
average  Guardi  brings  joy  to  us,  which  is 
so  much  more  than  respect.  The  average 
Canaletto  is  a  record,  and  the  average  Guardi 
a  song. 

CHAPTER   VII 

THE    SPANISH    PAINTERS 

Two  generations  ago,  a  study  of  Spanish 
painting,  undertaken  in  England,  would 
have  centred  in,  and  in  great  measure  con- 
sisted of,  a  study  of  Murillo,  popular  in  the 
treatment  of  religious  subjects,  popular  too 


60        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

in  subjects  of  the  street.  The  point  of  interest 
has  by  this  time  changed.  English  taste  in 
this  matter  has  moved  upon  the  lines  of 
continental  opinion,  nor  moved,  indeed,  so 
greatly  in  the  rear  of  it.  Velasquez  is  the 
god  of  our  idolatry,  and — not  to  speak  of 
men  now  living,  who  bring  to  him  with 
heartiness  the  tribute  of  their  allegiance — 
this  newer  attitude  had  the  promptings,  a 
generation  or  two  ago,  of  sojourners  in  Spain, 
enlightened  like  Sir  William  Stirling  Maxwell 
and  Sir  Clare  Ford. 

Not  to  conspicuous  failings  at  all  recently 
discovered  in  conception  or  execution,  but 
to  a  vein  of  sentimentality  running  through 
his  work,  is  mainly  to  be  attributed  Murillo's 
decline  in  public  favour.  It  would  be  unfair 
to  suggest  that  any  considerable  part  of 
present  lukewarmness,  displayed  to  the  suave 
master  of  Seville,  is  due  to  a  general  lessening 
of  interest  in  religious  themes — themes  which 
Murillo  treated  so  often,  and  Velasquez  so 
rarely.  With  the  position  of  scarcely  reasoned 
favour  enjoyed  by  the  Primitives — the  Italian 
Primitives,  especially,  in  our  mind's  eye  (and 
not  much  memory  and  not  much  knowledge  is 
needed  to  enable  us  to  realize  that) — it  can 
hardly  appear  to  us  that  religious  painting, 


THE   SPANISH  PAINTERS          61 

qua  religious  painting,  is  very  seriously  at  a 
discount.  Certainly  the  collector  of  either 
old  or  modern  art  is  less  occupied  with  it 
than  of  yore.  It  is  not  decoration  for  the 
dining-room  wall.  But  its  profoundest  masters 
in  the  past — of  whom  one  is  not  sure  that 
Rembrandt,  instead  of  Raphael,  may  not  be 
the  chief — retain  the  regard  of  the  thoughtful ; 
and  if  to-day  a  religious  painter  arose,  capable 
of  avoiding,  on  the  one  hand,  the  Scylla  of  the 
commonplace,  and,  on  the  other,  the  Charyb- 
dis  of  the  eccentric,  had  he  genius  as  well 
as  merely  good  will,  there  would  be,  if  not  a 
Clientele  to  buy,  at  least  a  public  to  admire. 

What  has  put  Murillo  into  the  background 
— and  perhaps  a  little  too  completely :  for  the 
painter  of  the  "Assumption  "  at  the  Louvre  had 
dignity,  solemnity  at  need,  fair  draughtsman- 
ship, feeling — and  what  has  brought  Velasquez 
to  the  front,  is  a  change  in  our  ideals.  We 
have  of  late  become  accustomed  to  demand 
no  veiled  or  sentimentalized  vision,  but,  what- 
ever may  be  the  theme,  decisiveness,  breadth, 
accent,  character.  It  is  the  happy  function 
of  the  art  of  Spain,  it  is  in  accordance  with 
the  temperament  of  her  people,  to  answer  in 
abundance  this  typically  modern  request. 

Of  the  dead  painters  of  Spain,  the  three 


62        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

who,  whether  we  like  them  altogether,  or 
have  yet  certain  reservations  in  regard  to 
their  work,  do  in  any  case  arouse  the  largest 
measure  of  contemporary  interest,  are  Velas- 
quez, El  Greco,  Goya.  Some  things  they  all 
three  have  in  common ;  all  have  in  common 
those  characteristics  which  we  have  named 
as  almost  a  condition  of  interest  to-day,  but 
each,  to  boot,  is  rich,  conspicuously  rich,  in 
individuality.  Nor  if,  instead  of  taking  as 
examples  or  tests,  the  three  great  men,  dead 
long  ago,  who  have  been  singled  out,  who 
seemed  to  claim  such  selection — if,  instead  of 
El  Greco,  Velasquez,  Goya,  we  take  a  man 
recently  dead,  dead  prematurely,  Garrido, 
delightful  painter  of  the  gay  heart  and  vivid 
life  of  childhood,  and  two  men  working  at 
this  hour  with  vigour,  fertility,  aplomb,  the 
popular  and  often  striking  Sorolla,  who 
covers  a  wide  ground,  and  Zuloaga,  who  is 
restricted,  concentrated,  unforgettable  (cer- 
tainly the  greatest  Spanish  artist  of  any 
recent  generation) — we  shall  find  that  they 
too,  all  of  them,  though  in  different  measure, 
respond  to  the  requirements  that  have  been 
indicated  as  those  of  the  newer  ideal. 

There  is  a  reason  for  a  relative  slowness  in 
assigning,    at    all    events    in    assigning    with 


THE   SPANISH   PAINTERS          63 

justice,  to  artists  their  exact,  their  at  all 
closely  defined  place  in  the  ranks  of  Spanish 
art.  No  great  civilized  land  has,  until  lately, 
been  so  little  visited  as  Spain.  Spain's  geo- 
graphical position  in  Europe  is  that  of 
Cornwall  or  of  Lincolnshire  in  the  map  of 
our  own  islands.  Lincolnshire  and  Cornwall 
are  cut  off,  because  they  lead  nowhere. 
Spain  leads  nowhere,  and  so  is  cut  off. 
And,  it  so  happens  that,  even  more  than 
Italy  itself,  Spain  requires  to  be  visited, 
beheld  and  entered  into,  before  its  art  can  be 
at  all  properly  gauged.  It  must  be  visited 
because  of  its  galleries — it  must  be  beheld 
because  of  its  people.  Immeasurable  is  the 
light  thrown  by  the  one  upon  the  other.  We 
need  not  labour  the  point;  but  the  very 
conditions  under  which  British  painting  has 
been  produced — its  scale,  the  purposes  it 
has  been  destined  to  serve — make  it  quite 
possible  (though  one  hopes  it  may  be  only  in 
the  remotest  future)  that  it  may  come  to  be 
studied  in  the  world  across  the  Atlantic  almost 
as  completely  as  in  London.  In  a  sense,  of 
course,  all  art  is  to  be  studied  best  in  the 
places  that  produced  it.  Dutch  patriotism 
has  effectually  prevented  the  Hague  and 
Amsterdam  from  becoming  superfluous.  But 


64        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

think  of  the  Rembrandts  at  St.  Petersburg  and 
Vienna  :  think  of  the  masters  of  Genre  that 
are  in  the  Peel  Collection  ! 

As  regards  fashions  in  admiration,  the  rage 
for  El  Greco,  the  weird,  enchanting  master  of 
Toledo,  is  not  only  more  recent,  but  is,  besides, 
less  widely  spread,  less  wholly  justified,  than 
is  the  fashion  for  Velasquez.  Yet  there  is 
much  to  defend  it,  and,  were  the  claims  of  El 
Greco  supported  only  with  a  wise  enthusiasm, 
and  never  fanatically  at  all,  they  would  every- 
where be  conceded.  The  book  in  which  they 
are  best  urged  is  of  but  recent  date,  and  is  the 
product  of  two  authors,  each  of  whom  has  his 
independent  say.  M.  Paul  Lafont,  curator  of 
the  Museum  of  Pau,  has  long  made  a  learned 
study  of  El  Greco's  various  labours,  what 
they  indicate,  what  they  reveal,  and  the 
relations  between  them.  And  if  there  is  in 
France  to-day  a  writer,  a  born  writer,  dis- 
tinguished above  his  fellows  by  a  measured 
picturesqueness  and  an  imagination  refined 
and  poetic,  it  is  M.  Lafont's  companion, 
M.  Maurice  Barres.  Maurice  Barres  realizes 
in  himself  the  deep  veracity  of  Buff  on 's 
saying,  "  Bien  ecrire,  tfest  bien  penser" 

Born  in  Crete,  and  of  Greek  parentage,  in 
1548,  the  artist  destined  to  be  known  to  the 


THE   SPANISH   PAINTERS          65 

Western  world  as  "El  Greco  "  joined  when  a 
youth  that  colony  of  his  compatriots — illumin- 
ators, miniaturists,  glass -workers — established 
at  Venice  under  the  shadow  of  San  Giorgio,  and 
preserving  under  Venetian  skies  something  of 
the  Byzantine  tradition.  At  Venice,  during 
a  stay  of  half  a  dozen  years  or  so,  El  Greco 
received  his  education  as  designer,  draughts- 
man, painter.  When  he  left  Venice  his 
originality  remained  undeclared,  but — mainly 
under  the  influence  of  the  genius  and  the 
practice  of  Tintoret — he  had  acquired  the  skill 
to  paint  quite  decent,  creditable  Venetian 
pictures,  which  his  public  was  prepared  to 
find  satisfactory.  Equipped  in  that  way,  he 
journeyed  into  Spain,  and  for  reasons  we  need 
not  here  pause  to  inquire  into,  fixed  himself 
at  Toledo  :  there  lived,  developed  himself, 
sprung  as  an  artist  into  individual  being  : 
there  died,  in  1614,  the  possessor  of  a  recog- 
nized rank,  a  painter  whom  Pachecho,  the 
master  of  Velasquez,  made  a  point  of  seeing, 
when  circumstances  brought  him  to  the  austere 
city  whose  people  looked  out  from  tower  and 
battlement  and  the  bridge  over  the  river  to 
the  remote  distances  of  arid  and  steep  land. 
The  character  of  Toledo,  emphatic,  rugged, 
unyielding,  attractive,  but  attractive  savagely, 


66        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

entered  into  El  Greco's  art,  and  through 
Toledo  his  own  originality  was  disengaged. 
On  Spanish  soil,  he  developed  a  style  curiously 
Spanish  in  temper,  Spanish  in  the  depths  as 
much  as  on  the  surface.  It  was  compact  of  his 
own  visionariness,  and  of  a  penetrating  observ- 
ation, and  of  an  execution  fearlessly  decisive 
and  fearlessly  austere;  and  those  even  who 
like  El  Greco's  riper  manner  least,  admit, 
generally,  that  the  actual  touch  has  interest. 
There  is  a  portrait  of  El  Greco  with  a  short 
beard,  pointed,  becoming  grey — a  serious  man 
with  a  high  brow  and  a  tall  and  compressed 
head — that,  in  a  certain  intensity  and  narrow- 
ness of  concentration,  suggests  much  of  the 
work  that  came  from  him  :  not,  indeed,  the 
t;  Profane  Love,"  which,  whenever  it  was 
actually  produced,  savours  more  of  Titian 
himself,  and  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  than 
of  Spain ;  but  many  and  many  a  portrait  of 
inquisitor,  ecclesiastic,  dignitary,  and  that 
great  monumental  composition,  a  summary, 
albeit  elaborate,  complex,  of  all  Toledan 
character,  thought,  hope — that  "  Burial  of 
the  Count  Organza  "  which  is  the  object  of 
high  interest  in  the  church  of  San  Tome. 
Here,  in  the  lower  part  of  the  composition, 
with  a  realism  unexaggerated  but  unflinching, 


THE   SPANISH  PAINTERS          67 

some  scores  of  gathered  Toledans,  of  every 
age  and  type,  are  presented,  singing  a  requiem 
over  the  body  of  a  man  who  was  one  of  them ; 
— while,  above,  the  opening  heavens  disclose 
a  beatified  company,  and  promise  to  accord 
the  worthy  who  has  left  the  earth  a  welcome 
gracious  and  radiant. 

Not  less  Toledan  really,  and  not  less  indi- 
vidual, is  a  picture  possessed  by  M.  Durand 
Ruel  :  a  view  of  the  city,  with  brilliant 
lights,  deep  shadows,  and  great  storm  clouds, 
the  scene  a  little  harsh,  a  little  weird,  and 
presented,  as  was  El  Greco's  wont,  of  course, 
with  accent  and  emphasis.  "El  Greco's 
wont ;  "  but  yet  a  habit  from  which  he  could, 
at  given  moments  and  for  given  purposes, 
detach  himself — as  in  some  measure  in  a  long 
famous  example,  a  "  Young  Woman's  Por- 
trait," that  of  the  painter's  daughter,  it  is 
commonly  thought,  which  came  to  Sir  William 
Stirling  Maxwell  from  out  of  the  Collection  of 
Louis  Philippe,  a  bust,  a  thing  of  utmost 
suavity,  and  of  the  South :  the  young  face 
of  a  pure  oval,  "  le  teint  mat,"  with  large 
eyes  opened  wide.  To  some  extent  that  work 
is  exceptional. 

Finding  ourselves  with  Velasquez,  we  are 

conscious  at  once  of  being  in  a  greater,  more 
E  2 


68        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

tolerant,  less  intense  world.  Realist  though  this 
master  may  generally  be  accounted,  his  work  is 
pervaded  by  a  courtlier,  kindlier  sense  of  things 
than  any  that  belongs  to  his  forerunners  or 
contemporaries.  "  We  can  forget  the  Inquisi- 
tion," Mr.  Charles  Ricketts  well  says,  in 
reference  to  his  tone  and  temper,  as  much 
or  more  than  to  his  mere  themes.  But,  as 
we  have  noted  in  El  Greco  that  he  was  hardly 
El  Greco  at  all  in  the  half-dozen  years  or  more 
of  his  Venetian  period,  so  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  Velasquez  of  Seville  gave  at 
least  only  partial  indication  of  the  Velasquez 
of  Madrid.  A  foretaste  of  what  was  coming, 
but  a  foretaste  only,  is  apparent  in  the 
Duke  of  Wellington's  early  "  Water  Carrier," 
that  well-authenticated,  long-accepted  canvas 
that  represents,  with  a  force  and  luminousness 
already  extraordinary,  a  man  in  tattered 
brown  doublet,  bearing  in  one  hand  the  large 
jar,  and,  with  the  other,  tendering  a  glass  of 
water  to  a  boy  beside  a  table. 

To  speak  only  of  work  that  is  in  England, 
and  to  recall  the  late  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson's 
contention  that,  in  the  outdoor  full-length 
portraits  in  which  ensemble  and  atmosphere 
and  realized  background,  a  sense  of  the 
presence  of  the  actual  ,and  the  changing 


THE   SPANISH   PAINTERS          69 

world,  must  needs  count  for  much,  there  is 
not  to  be  looked  for  that  near  and  searching 
treatment  of  the  visage  which  the  best  studies 
of  the  head — sometimes  the  head  alone — by 
Velasquez  reveal,  we  may  compare  the  Duke 
of  Westminster's  "Don  Balthasar,"  con- 
spicuous for  its  subordination  of  the  claims 
of  personal  portrayal  to  the  claims  of 
general  effect,  with  more  than  one  portrait 
of  Mariana  of  Austria,  extraordinarily  fresh 
and  vigorous  and  complete.  Greater  yet, 
one  thinks,  for  colour,  character,  and,  there 
is  no  other  word  for  it,  "  modernness  "  or 
actuality,  is  the  Apsley  House  "  Innocent  the 
Tenth."  In  it,  as  in  the  other  canvas  that 
records  the  same  sitter,  the  finest  qualities 
of  masculine  portraiture  are  combined  and 
displayed.  The  key  to  human  expression, 
painters  sometimes  assure  us,  and  mainly 
rightly  so,  is  in  the  corners  of  the  mouth; 
and  charged  with  the  love  of  life,  the  love  of 
its  good  things,  and  with  a  certain  thirst  for 
domination,  is  this  mouth  of  Innocent's.  But 
is  his  eye  less  revealing — wary  here,  and 
shrewd ;  watchful,  yet  full  of  fire  ? 

So  much  for  English  things — for  canvasses 
that  are  in  England  to-day.  So  much,  and  not 
a  word  thus  far  for  the  exceptional  "  Venus  " 


70        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

from  Mr.  Morrett's  at  Rokeby.  In  England 
Velasquez  may  be  known  not  badly.  But 
in  Madrid  many  a  picture  emphasizes  the  truth 
that  to  know  Velasquez  thoroughly,  we  must 
know  him  in  Spain. 

Our  reference  shall  be  brief,  and  shall  con- 
cern three  pictures,  of  the  most  widely  different 
aims  and  varying  appeal,  of  which  the  earliest 
is  "  Las  Lanzas  "  ("  The  Lances  "),  a  title  which 
is  a  prompt  reminder  of  one's  first  impression 
of  the  composition,  of  its  leading  pictorial 
feature.  Another  name  recalls  its  historical 
incident,  "  The  Surrender  of  Breda  " :  the 
surrender  after  a  ten  months'  siege,  which  was 
endured  until  the  garrison  and  people — like 
the  Parisians,  valiant  and  firm,  in  1871 — had 
"  finished  their  last  bread."  Then,  Justin  of 
Nassau,  the  Governor  of  the  town,  waited  upon 
Spinola,  the  Spanish  commander;  and  that 
submission,  which  his  attitude  in  the  picture 
typifies,  was  received  with  consideration  and 
the  "  stately  Spanish  grace,"  the  boon  of  which 
was  vouchsafed  also — Tennyson  reminds  us — 
to  the  vanquished  fighters  on  board  the  little 
Revenge.  Behind  and  at  the  side  of  the  two 
principal  figures,  the  soldiery  and  Spanish 
Generals,  and  Spinola's  prancing  horse,  with 
haunches  towards  us,  occupy  and  crowd  the 


THE   SPANISH   PAINTERS          71 

scene.  In  middle  distance,  a  company  of 
spearsmen  ride  along  the  land,  and  beyond 
them  a  country  of  field  and  stream  and  village, 
a  plain,  peopled  and  endless,  a  blue-green 
distance  at  once  pictorial  and  real,  stretches 
to  the  horizon.  Mr.  Brabazon  thought  "  Las 
Lanzas  "  the  greatest  Velasquez.  Passages 
in  that  work  anticipate  the  breadth  of  a 
generally  broader  time ;  and  there  is  interest 
in  remembering  that  Velasquez,  whose  sense 
of  Style  in  landscape  is  evidenced  abundantly 
by  his  rendering  of  the  Classic  or  Renaissance 
grace  of  the  Gardens  of  the  Villa  Medicis — 
two  of  such  works  are  at  Madrid,  one  with 
the  straight  lines  of  scaffolding  veiling  an  arch- 
way— had  never  really  seen  the  land  depicted 
in  the  long  stretching  background  of  "  The 
Surrender  of  Breda."  But  he  studied  bird's- 
eye  views,  topographical  records,  and  recon- 
ciled the  claims  of  fact  with  the  claims  of  art. 
As  regards  the  portrait  of  him  who  must 
have  been  for  Velasquez,  as  he  is  certainly 
for  the  public,  the  chief  personage  of  the 
scene,  Spinola,  unjustly  disgraced  not  long 
after  the  incident  which  is  on  this  canvas 
recorded,  died  before  the  painting  of  the 
picture.  But  Velasquez  had  studied  him 
well.  In  1629  he  had  travelled  with  him  to 


72        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

Italy,  by  sea,  and  the  long  hours  of  the 
voyage  are  likely  to  have  been  beguiled  by 
the  narrative  which  a  master  of  action  could 
afford  to  an  artist  who  was  something  more 
than  a  painter  of  spectacle. 

The  two  other  Prado  pictures  which  remain 
to  be  spoken  of  belong  to  the  last  period  of 
Velasquez'  practice  :  a  time  at  which  his 
hand  had  learnt  the  lesson  of  how  to  be  wholly 
economic  in  labour,  a  time  at  which  the 
fullness  of  perception  and  knowledge  was 
expressed  in  tersest  phrase.  Thus,  while 
the  modelling  of  the  head  in  the  "  Alonso 
Cano,  the  Sculptor,"  as  it  used  to  be  called — 
but  Senor  Madrazo  believes  that  the  person 
here  recorded  in  an  early  stage  of  his  struggle 
with  the  massed  clay  is  Martini  Montanez — 
is  most  completely  indicative,  the  clay  bust 
upon  which  the  modeller  is  working  is  sug- 
gested in  chief  by  canvas  dexterously  bare. 
But  what  a  grave  directness  in  the  occupied 
face ;  what  a  watchful  eye,  and  what  a 
handling,  by  the  modeller's  fingers,  of  the 
modeller's  tool;  what  a  study  in  the  simple 
severity  of  collar  and  cloak  ! 

The  painter  Mengs  remarked  of  "  The 
Tapestry  Weavers,"  a  scene  in  the  deserted 
convent  of  St.  Isabel,  that  "it  appeared  as 


THE   SPANISH   PAINTERS          73 

if  the  hand  had  had  no  part  in  it  :  it  had  been 
the  work  of  pure  thought."  The  phrase, 
like  many  a  painter's  utterance,  is,  if  momen- 
tarily impressive,  a  little  enigmatic.  "  The 
Tapestry  Weavers  "  displays  no  more  con- 
tinuity of  thought  than  fullness  of  sentiment. 
What  it  does  display  is  observation  unerring,  a 
cunning  of  the  hand  that  knows  no  possibility 
of  defeat.  The  loveliest  of  the  figures — the 
girl,  robustly  lovely,  whose  "  profile  "  we 
may  almost  contentedly  suffer  to  be  "  lost," 
in  more  than  the  sense  of  the  French  phrase, 
so  long  as  she  reveals  to  us  the  fineness  and 
the  strength  of  outstretched  arm — is  at  once 
modern  and  a  reminiscence  of  the  type  of 
Titian.  The  arrangement  of  colour,  the 
disposition  of  light  and  shade,  the  placing 
of  each  object  with  a  view  to  balance  and 
effect — these  are  as  evident  as  is  that  sense 
of  la  vie  vecue,  the  life  men  lead,  not  dream 
of,  which  is  present,  I  suppose,  in  greater  or 
in  less  degree,  in  every  canvas  that  came  from 
Velasquez'  hand.  The  truth  of  action  is 
complete  :  the  wheel  of  the  elder  woman 
moves  not  more  certainly  than  the  arm  of 
the  winding  girl,  robust  of  contour,  delicate 
of  hand.  The  realism  of  Velasquez,  as  dis- 
played in  "  The  Tapestry  Weavers,"  was 


74        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

concerned  with  three  things;  and  as  two  of 
these  things  are  character  and  beauty,  his 
is  the  realism  that  may  claim  to  be  Truth. 

Amongst  other  Spanish  painters,  Zurbaran 
was  an  artist  of  mark — of  mark  so  certainly 
that  an  "  Epiphany  "  in  the  National  Gallery, 
assumed  at  present  to  be  the  product  of  his 
brush,  has  been  held  in  the  Past  to  be  an 
early  work  of  the  great  Velasquez  himself. 
And  Ribera  too,  potent,  though  limited,  has 
a  place,  a  niche,  of  his  own.  Pictures  of 
"  pious  subjects  "  from  his  hand  may  be 
gloomy ;  but  at  least  they  are  simplified  and 
impressive.  Another  century  has  neverthe- 
less to  be  reached  before  we  are  again  arrested 
— as  with  Velasquez  :  as,  in  a  measure,  with 
El  Greco — by  a  personality  of  the  first  rank. 
And  then  it  is  a  Revolutionary,  a  painter 
indeed  who  recalls  the  old,  but  who  is  equipped 
with  the  new;  it  is  a  man  of  conceptions 
fearless,  unfettered,  and  sometimes  to  the 
point  of  irreverence :  a  man  of  abundant 
invention,  now  graceful,  now  grotesque  and 
macabre.  I  suppose  I  have  indicated  that  I 
am  coming  to  Goya,  who  looms  large  on  the 
horizon  of  Art.  He  is  a  person  that  intelligent 
people  study,  that  nearly  all  intelligent  people 
more  or  less  enjoy,  to-day. 


THE   SPANISH  PAINTERS          75 

Francisco  Jose  de  Goya  y  Lucientes — for 
picturesqueness  or  for  musical  quality,  does 
not  his  name  very  nearly  rival  the  most 
attractive  that  we  know,  that  of  the  con- 
temporary of  Goya's  latest  years,  the  painter 
Diaz  :  Narcisse  Virgile  Diaz  de  la  Peiia  ? — 
Francisco  Goya  lived  through  three  genera- 
tions, and  under  many  regimes.  Born  near 
Saragossa  in  1746,  and  dying  at  Bordeaux  in 
1828,  Goya  was  the  mutinous  protege  of  at 
least  four  Royal  patrons.  His  youthful 
talent  was  encouraged  by  Don  Louis,  brother 
of  the  then  Sovereign,  Charles  the  Third. 
The  old  King  himself,  aware,  as  a  commen- 
tator upon  Goya  has  well  pointed  out,  that 
"  without  great  subjects  a  King  is  but  a 
small  Prince,"  did,  though  Bayeu  was  his 
official  picture  painter,  scarcely  less  than 
his  share  to  contribute  to  Goya's  practice  and 
to  his  fame.  Charles  the  Fourth,  in  1789, 
gave  Goya,  in  connection  with  his  art,  a 
recognized  post,  the  emoluments  and  prestige 
of  which  the  man  of  genius  pretty  promptly 
abandoned  when  the  far  from  blameless  wife 
of  the  Sovereign — moved  thereto  by  the 
solicitations  of  the  Countess  of  Benavente, 
who  had  been  enamoured  of  Goya,  and  whom 
Goya  had  painted — banished  from  her  Court 


76        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

a  lady,  the  famous  Duchess  of  Alba,  to  whom 
the  master,  by  this  time,  was  profoundly 
attached.  The  Duchess  was  invited  to  seek 
her  country  house,  and  its  quietude;  and 
it  was  in  Goya's  company  that  she  repaired 
to  it.  Returning  later  to  Madrid,  the  painter, 
like  most,  it  seems,  of  Charles's  Court, 
thought  fit  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to 
Joseph  Bonaparte.  He  was  already  in  old 
age,  but  in  an  old  age  capable  and  energetic, 
when,  in  1814,  the  Prince  of  Asturias  came 
back  to  his  own,  and  was  crowned  as  Ferdi- 
nand the  Seventh.  "  You  have  deserved 
exile,  nay,  the  rope  itself,"  said  the  legitimate 
Sovereign ;  "  but  you  are  a  great  artist,  and 
we  will  forget  everything."  He  sat  to  Goya 
many  times.  At  the  Academy  of  San  Fer- 
nando there  is  an  equestrian  portrait.  There 
is  a  picture  at  the  Prado,  full  of  character 
and  truth,  showing  the  monarch  "hot  from 
a  gallop,"  Mr.  Rothenstein  tells  us,  and,  in 
the  distance,  his  horses  are  led  away.  Re- 
ceived again  into  favour — yet  himself  a  little 
proudly  doubting  it — and  with  health  lowered 
now,  and  power  to  some  extent  shrinking, 
Goya,  in  1822,  determined  upon  exile.  He 
settled  at  Bordeaux,  and  there,  in  the 
company  of  one  or  two  closely  attached 


THE   SPANISH   PAINTERS          77 

friends    at    all    events,    he    died    six    years 
afterwards,  eighty-two  years  old. 

Goya  was  fertility  itself,  and  flexibility 
itself;  the  range  of  his  achievement  is  even 
more  remarkable  than  is  the  span  of  time  he 
was  enabled  to  devote  to  it.  An  enemy  of 
the  Church,  as  he  knew  it  in  Spain,  in  days 
in  which  the  Inquisition  had  not  wholly  lost 
either  its  force  or  its  bigotry;  a  scoffer  at 
ecclesiasticism  so  much,  and  with  such 
bitterness  and  delight,  that  we  can  scarcely 
avoid  the  conclusion  that,  with  all  his  intelli- 
gence, he  was  partisan  and  prosecutor  rather 
than  quite  just  judge,  Goya  was  yet  not  incap- 
able of  painting  a  religious  picture  with  earnest- 
ness and  dignity.  He  was  imaginative,  in  the 
sense  that  he  was  dramatic ;  but  never  was  he 
visionary  at  all.  For  his  drama,  the  basis 
must  be  a  fact  of  which  he  had  cognizance, 
or,  at  least,  a  fact  of  which  he  could  conceive. 
Were  there  occasion  for  satire  in  the  telling 
of  his  story,  so  much  the  better  for  him,  and 
the  happier;  for  satire  he  loved,  loved  it  so 
much  that  he  was  unaware,  probably,  how 
often  he  presented  it  obscurely.  If  there 
were  not  satire  in  his  design — I  am  speaking 
of  his  groups,  not  of  his  single  figures — there 
must  be  violence  of  action,  gaiety  or  cruelty 


78        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

or  weird  terror.  His  prints  of  the  "  Disasters 
of  War  "  were  of  scenes  that  had  touched 
him  to  the  depths.  In  his  "  Caprices  " — 
the  finest  of  the  several  sets  of  etchings  or 
lithographs  with  which  he  varied  or  refreshed 
himself  from  his  labours  as  fresco  and  portrait 
painter — there  is  less  experience  and  more 
imagination;  or,  rather,  there  is  the  ex- 
perience that  has  prompted  imagination : 
the  experience,  refined  upon  and  considered, 
sometimes  consciously  worked  upon,  some- 
times put  by  until  mere  passage  of  time 
allowed  it  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  Art. 

As  for  the  "Caprices,"  very  rightly  now, 
collectors  are  insisting  upon  choosing  the 
finest  and  discarding  the  least  interesting. 
That  means,  men  have  arisen  who  decline 
the  work  as  a  volume  for  their  shelves,  but 
seek,  and  pay  high  prices  for,  the  best  subjects, 
piquant  or  beautiful,  as  prints  to  put  along 
with  Rembrandts,  Meryons,  Whistlers,  in 
their  solander-boxes. 

In  the  way  of  figure-subjects,  nothing 
interested  Goya  more  than  the  treatment  of  a 
group,  a  crowd,  a  popular  rejoicing  or  half 
impromptu  festival — "  Mat  de  Cocagne  "  for 
instance.  A  bull-fight  was  a  spectacle  with 
endless  opportunities,  ranging  from  stately 


THE   SPANISH   PAINTERS          79 

entry  to  wild  and  ignominious  or  tragic 
collapse.  Manolas  on  the  balcony,  with  their 
gallants  in  shadow  behind  them :  there  was 
occasion  for  intrigue  and  for  alluring  mystery. 
There  must  be  a  Maja  draped  and  a  Maja 
nude,  and  in  the  Maja  nude  in  the  Academy  of 
San  Fernando  there  is  more  than  a  hint — it  is 
believed — of  a  lady  of  the  great  world,  of  whom 
Goya  was  at  the  time  the  lover.  With  a 
palette  described  as  simple,  Goya  was  wont 
to  attain,  along  with  sometimes  doubtful, 
since  too  audacious  draughtsmanship,  magical 
effect.  Yet  whatever  was  the  effectiveness  of 
his  colour,  he  said — or  there  was  a  time  at 
which  he  said — that  with  light  and  shade  he 
could  do  everything.  Certainly  the  etchings 
prove — and  the  Series  of  the  "Caprices" 
proves  best  of  all — that  he  was  a  master  of 
etching.  And  his  etching  had  unusual  techni- 
cal range.  Aquatint,  added  to  Line,  often 
gave  to  it  the  particular  charm  of  drawings. 

Of  the  painted  portraits,  some  have  what 
has  been  recognized  as  a  Gainsborough-like 
charm.  That  is  in  part,  but  only  in  small 
part,  an  affair  of  the  period  and  of  the  dress. 
Others  have  as  their  characteristic  pure 
potency  of  brush-work,  or  instant  penetration 
into  complex  character.  Then  it  is  Velasquez 


80         PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

that  they  emulate,  Velasquez  to  whom  they 
declare  their  debt.  I  am  not  sure  that  the 
Prado  portrait  of  Bayeu,  the  painter — Goya's 
friend  and  a  little  his  senior — has  not  in  it 
a  suggestion  of  one  quality  or  another  of  each 
of  the  two  great  men  I  have  named.  In  that 
case,  it  is  in  its  particular  blend  of  them  that 
its  own  high  originality  is  discovered.  In- 
stantly striking,  at  the  least,  for  pose  and 
vision,  is  the  portrait  of  Asensi,  in  the  palace 
of  San  Telmo  at  Seville. 

Of  the  three  more  or  less  memorable  and 
in  different  ways  typical  Spanish  painters  of 
the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  who, 
in  an  earlier  page,  have  been  just  named, 
Garrido  has,  as  the  magnet  drawing  us  to 
him,  his  Southern  gaiety  and  sunniness, 
his  fine  capacity  for  realizing,  in  any  case, 
a  certain  side  of  the  life,  thought,  feeling, 
of  the  children  of  the  people.  And  Sorolla 
has,  as  his  characteristic,  a  range  that  is  not 
Spanish  at  all,  as  a  possession,  generally. 
Central  Europe  might  account  for  Sorolla — 
France  alone  certainly  might  account  for  the 
greater  part  of  him. 

But  the  third  artist,  Zuloaga,  only  Spain 
could  account  for.  And  Velasquez  himself, 
and  Goya  too,  sometimes  quite  as  distinctly, 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY  81 

is  an  artist  by  whose  methods  and  vision 
Zuloaga  has  been  inspired.  But  Zuloaga  has 
never  for  a  moment  been  imitator  or  copyist ; 
and  the  author  of  the  pictures  in  the  Salon 
of  1912 — the  picture  of  the  beast,  bleeding 
and  tired,  going  home  over  rough  country, 
from  the  wars  of  the  bull-fight,  and  the 
picture  of  "  My  Uncle  Daniel  and  his  Family," 
with  all  Spain  lying  beneath  them — they  are 
people  you  have  known  all  your  life,  when 
once  you  have  beheld  Zuloaga' s  canvasses — 
the  author  of  these  things,  I  say,  has  Moliere's 
right  of  old.  Material  everywhere  is  his  own, 
if  he  chooses  to  take  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HOGARTH    TO    ROMNEY 

THE  eighteenth  century  in  England,  which 
offers  us  in  Literature  an  array  of  greatness — 
heights  of  Psychology  scaled  by  Samuel 
Richardson  in  Clarissa,  the  summit  of  all 
charming  Style  in  Sterne,  the  summit  of 
Biography  in  Bos  well's  volumes,  the  summit 
of  all  dutiful  and  sturdy  human  Wisdom  in 
the  pronouncements  of  that  man  of  letters, 
noble  and  beloved,  who  was  the  theme 


82        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

of  Boswell's  portrait — that  eighteenth  cen- 
tury in  England  offers  no  really  corresponding 
heights  in  the  art  that  is  pictorial. 

Yet  in  that  art  the  English  eighteenth 
century  is  not  unworthy.  It  is  variously 
fascinating.  It  offers  us  first,  in  William 
Hogarth,  a  master  of  character,  grim  comedy, 
and  tragedy,  and  still -life  painting;  next, 
in  Richard  Wilson,  our  great  classic  land- 
scape painter — whom  later  Barret,  Palmer, 
Samuel  Finch  followed — and  then,  in  Rey- 
nolds, Gainsborough  and  Romney,  three 
portrait  painters,  each  in  his  own  way  dis- 
tinguished, each  in  his  own  way  admirable. 
In  the  eighteenth  century,  Crome  had  just 
begun — Crome,  but  not  Constable.  Last,  at 
the  very  end  of  it,  we  saw,  in  Cozens,  Turner, 
Girtin,  the  interesting  rise  of  English  Water- 
colour.  Cozens,  on  his  own  limited  lines,  was 
a  poet  simple  and  complete.  Girtin  had 
knowledge,  taste,  reticence;  and  these  com- 
bined make  charm.  The  nineteenth  century 
had  but  just  opened,  when  at  twenty-eight 
he  was  gone.  There  was  left  Turner.  The 
work  that  he  had  done  by  Girtin 's  side  should 
alone  have  been  enough  to  have  made 
Turner  lasting;  but  had  he,  like  his  friend 
died  only  two  or  three  years  after  1800,  that 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY  83 

work  would  have  been  for  the  well-equipped 
connoisseur — it  would  not  have  been  for  the 
public. 

In  two  short  paragraphs  I  have  tried  to 
summarily  name  those  English  painters  of 
the  eighteenth  century  whom  we  may  most 
enjoy  and  remember.  Admirable  all  of  them  : 
most  worthy  of  study.  But  is  it  to  be 
seriously  contended  that,  as  an  expression 
of  the  national  life  and  national  vision, 
these,  taken  together,  have  the  fullness  and 
range  of  the  men  who,  in  the  eighteenth 
century  in  France — representing  the  life  of 
France  in  all  its  phases,  from  stage  to  boudoir, 
from  cottage  to  chateau — would  have  an- 
swered to  a  similar  roll-call  ?  Watteau  we 
should  have  asked  for ;  Nattier,  and  Lancret ; 
Boucher — superficial  in  sentiment,  but  great 
in  the  facile  accomplishment  of  his  aim — 
Chardin,  strong,  tender,  and  grave,  a  very 
bulwark,  as  well  as  a  mirror  of  the  morality 
and  stability  of  his  world;  Quantin  Latour, 
incomparably  penetrating,  unsurpassably 
brilliant ;  Moreau  le  Jeune,  with  his  incarnate 
elegance ;  and  Prud'hon,  with  the  suavity  of 
his  classic  dream. 

But  we  are  amongst  Englishmen.     Let  us 

begin  with  Hogarth,  who  of  all  is  the  most 
F  2 


84        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

forcible  and  exact  exponent  of  his  own  rough 
land  and  time. 

With  Hogarth,  as  with  most  of  the  greatest 
men,  the  inquiry  would  be  an  idle  one  "  Who 
was  his  master  ?  "  Idle  at  all  events  if  it 
were  made  seriously.  A  great  man's  master 
is  generally  an  accident — an  accident  we  can 
afford  to  neglect.  Of  important  English 
painters,  Hogarth  was  substantially  the  first. 
None  of  his  elders  within  reach  of  him  were 
in  the  least  his  equal,  though  it  does  chance 
that  he  had  in  his  own  master,  Sir  James 
Thornhill,  an  artist  who  had  absorbed  and 
profited  by  great  tradition:  an  artist  who 
cared,  as  a  decorative  artist  of  real  worth  is 
bound  to  care,  for  the  solution  of  problems 
of  design,  and  for  the  effects  which  design, 
properly  guided,  may  attain.  At  Blenheim,  at 
Moor  Park,  and  in  the  Painted  Hall  at  Green- 
wich, there  is  evidence  of  Thornhill 's  style. 

Hogarth  was  engraver  as  well  as  painter, 
satirist  as  well  as  engraver.  Moralist  he 
was,  and  a  stern  one.  But  the  sternness 
of  his  morals  was  not  incompatible  with  free- 
dom of  theme  and  of  treatment.  Hogarth 
never  minced  matters.  His  was  not  the  art 
of  delicate  or  even  of  indelicate  innuendo. 
A  spade  was  indeed  a  spade  with  him.  He  had 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY  85 

a  story  to  tell  :  he  told  it  with  directness.  He 
had  a  moral  to  inculcate;  and  ruthlessly  he 
rubbed  it  in.  Rake's  progress,  harlot's  pro- 
gress— there  is  no  faltering  in  his  chronicle 
of  their  disastrous  march.  "  Marriage  a  la 
Mode  " — the  pictures  in  the  National  Gallery 
— gives  him  occasion  for  many  a  lighter  touch, 
though  he  moves  ever,  and  knows  that  he 
moves  ever,  towards  his  tragic  end.  His 
observation  was  subtle :  his  lesson  obvious. 

Hogarth's  merriest  mood  and  lightest  satire 
is  seen  in  prints  that,  without  recourse  to  the 
professional  engravers  who  gave  us  brilliantly 
their  version  of  "  Marriage  a  la  Mode,"  he 
himself  roughly  but  effectively  engraved. 
There  is  the  "  Laughing  Audience  "  for  in- 
stance, with  its  varied  guffaw,  and  its  inci- 
dental touches  of  a  Watteau-like  vivacity  and 
grace.  There  is  the  "  Sleeping  Congregation" 
— the  dulness  of  the  preacher  has  often  been 
an  acceptable  theme.  There  is  that  rich 
and  life-like  record  of  the  itinerant  players  : 
"  Strolling  Actresses  dressing  in  a  Barn." 
So  much  for  the  prints — of  which,  it  is 
permissible  to  tell  the  reader  who  is  not  yet 
a  collector,  some  of  the  quaintest,  bought 
to-day,  cost  but  a  few  shillings,  and  the  finest 
only  a  few  pounds. 


86        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

We  turn  again  to  the  paintings ;  in  part  to 
note  the  sound,  painter -like  method ;  in  part 
to  be  reminded  that  in  conversation  pieces, 
family  groups  on  a  small  scale,  and  the  most 
unambitious  portraiture,  there  is  found  often 
in  Hogarth's  work  the  maximum  of  charm. 
Take  the  broad,  simple,  vivid  sketch  of  the 
"  Shrimp-girl  " — head  and  bust — a  thing  that 
came  to  the  National  Gallery,  not  very  many 
years  ago,  from  the  Leigh  Court  collection. 
Had  Franz  Hals  painted  it,  it  would  have  been 
painted  with  no  more  masterly  dexterity,  and 
with  much  less  of  fascination. 

The  typical  landscape  painter  of  the  English 
eighteenth  century  was  Richard  Wilson.  For, 
strictly  considered,  Crome  was  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  :  twenty  years — that  is  two- 
thirds  of  his  working  life — was  in  it,  but  it 
was  the  nineteenth  century  of  the  provinces, 
and  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  more 
markedly  than  now,  the  provinces  lagged 
behind.  It  is  not  an  unfair  thing,  then — 
and  it  is  a  tempting  and  convenient  thing — 
to  speak  of  Wilson  and  "  Old  "  Crome  to- 
gether, at  least  for  a  moment.  One  was  so 
utterly  realist,  the  other  so  utterly  idealist. 
But,  pronounced  as  both  were  in  the  pursuit 
of  their  particular  plan,  Crome  was  not  realist 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY  87 

to  the  point  of  the  exclusion  of  beauty,  and 
Wilson  was  not  idealist  or  dreamer  to  the 
point  of  the  exclusion  of  truth;  and  both, 
when  in  full  practice,  had  profited  by  the 
influence — never,  of  course,  by  the  direct 
teaching  —  of  the  masters.  Poussin  and 
Claude,  in  their  surviving  work,  influenced, 
if  they  did  not  inspire,  the  one  Welsh  painter 
of  genius;  and  Crome's  methods,  as  well  as 
his  themes,  were  founded  upon  those  of 
the  great  seventeenth  century  Dutchmen. 
Without  Hobbema,  Ruysdael,  Wynants, 
ornaments  of  the  Dutch  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, could  Crome,  amidst  the  lanes  and 
heaths  and  coppices  of  Norfolk,  have  be- 
come what  he  was  ?  Perhaps  not.  But  more 
than  Hobbema,  more  than  Wynants  and 
Ruysdael,  he  added  tenderness  to  strength :  he 
kept  real,  but  he  made  comely,  his  presenta- 
tion of  the  homely  fact.  Painting  the  solid 
earth,  and  the  gnarled  tree,  and  the  rustic 
cottage  beside  the  humble  stream,  and, 
now  and  then  besides,  the  wide  waters  of 
the  Norfolk  coast,  and,  not  so  seldom,  the 
heath-covered  table-land  that  lay  upon  the 
outskirts  of  his  native  town,  he  painted  air 
and  light  as  well,  and  the  passage  over  his 
great,  broken  landscape,  of  sides  luminous  and 


88        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

changeful.  So  did  he  come  to  anticipate  the 
virtues,  some  of  the  virtues,  of  Eugene  Boudin, 
and  of  our  modern  English  water-colour 
painter,  Thomas  Collier.  Never  did  Crome 
paint  air  and  light  better  than  in  his  "  Mouse- 
hold  Heath"  of  the  National  Gallery;  and 
his  best  etching,  an  etching  that  will  live,  is 
"  Household  Heath  "  also. 

In  atmospheric  effect,  though  it  is  in  very 
different  atmospheric  effect,  lies  much  of  the 
charm  of  Richard  Wilson.  And  by  reason  of 
that  fact  the  two  come  together — for  in  en- 
abling the  man  who  saw  his  pictures  to  realize 
the  air  and  the  illumination  of  the  hour,  Wilson 
was  no  more  artificial,  no  more  stereotyped, 
than  Crome  :  he  was  only  more  restricted. 
He  had  his  favourite  and  his  happiest 
moments,  and  they  were  moments  of  cool 
morning  or  serene  evening,  generally.  Crome 
had  a  greater  range  :  seldom  did  there  arise 
an  hour,  a  scene,  that  he  was  incapable  of 
recording.  In  noting  that,  it  becomes  our 
business  to  remember  the  circumstance  that 
partly  accounts  for  it.  Crome  was  only  once 
out  of  England:  not  often  out  of  Norfolk. 
His  life  was  spent  mainly  in  a  land  of  atmo- 
spheric change,  whilst  Wilson,  long  in  actual 
habitation,  and  longer  afterwards  in  thought 


HOGARTH  TO    ROMNEY  89 

and  memory,  was  associated  with  the  land- 
scape— and  with  the  skies,  faithfully  fine — of 
central  Italy.  His  world  was  the  Roman 
Campagna,  the  winding  Tiber,  and  the  spurs 
of  the  Apennines.  For  Wilson,  England  was 
almost  non-existent,  and  even  his  own  Wales 
was  not  much  more  than  an  episode. 

While,  then,  Richard  Wilson  cannot  be 
charged  with  conventionality  in  any  rendering 
of  the  weather  and  the  atmosphere  that  he 
was  privileged  to  know,  or  that  he  most  cared 
about,  there  is  to  be  remembered  to  some 
extent  against  him  a  paucity  of  obvious  theme, 
a  repetition  of  the  same  subjects.  His 
"  Niobe,"  done  for  the  Duke  of  Cumberland 
in  1760,  when  the  painter  had  approached 
middle  age,  may  not  have  been  repeated; 
but  "  Maecenas'  Villa  "  and  "  Cicero's  Villa  " 
and  other  such  painter's  motives  which  gave 
occasion  for  the  realization  of  classic  archi- 
tecture in  classic  landscape,  abound  in  the 
volume  of  his  production.  He  began  by 
Portraiture ;  but  in  youth  he  did  not  find  him- 
self, and  the  portraits  by  which  for  a  few  years 
he  lived,  nobody  now  talks  about.  Italy, 
when  he  was  thirty-five,  opened  his  eyes, 
nourished  his  genius,  his  talent  and  his  tastes. 
Wilson  was  Classic  essentially.  Instinctively 


90        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

he  searched  for  and  discovered  symmetry 
and  style,  without  which  nothing  can  be  Classic 
at  all.  Consummate  was  his  sense  of  compo- 
sition. He  never  placed  a  figure  wrongly 
during  all  his  life,  one  may  assert;  though, 
along  with  praise  like  that,  there  must  be 
made  the  admission  that  sometimes  it  was 
a  little  too  obvious  that  he  had  placed  the 
figure  where  it  should  be.  Yet  excessive 
faultlessness  and  the  passive  error  of  the 
zeal  skilfully  exercised  and  not  so  skilfully 
concealed,  must  not  blind  us  to  the  distinc- 
tion and  dignity  of  his  performance,  or  make 
us  insensible,  or  unappreciative,  of  the 
ordered  poetry  of  his  soul.  Hogarth  and 
Wilson  were  the  first  great  English  painters. 
It  is  amusing  and  at  the  same  time  instructive 
to  reflect  that  except  their  greatness  and  their 
straight  and  sturdy  craftsmanship  they  had 
nothing  whatever  in  common.  Wide  and  long 
must  needs  be  that  road  of  Art  upon  which 
gifted  men  can  travel  always  and  meet  so 
seldom. 

Hogarth  had  not  yet  been  laid  in  Chiswick 
churchyard,  Wilson  had  still  a  quarter  of  a 
century  to  live,  and  that  master  of  a  comely 
realism  in  landscape,  John  Crome  ("  Old " 
Crome,  as  his  fellow  citizens  called  him)  was 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY          91 

not  yet  born,  when,  just  about  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  Reynolds  and  Gains- 
borough first  rose  to  distinction.  It  was 
Reynolds  who  "  arrived  "  first — a  Devonian 
who  had  travelled  in  Italy.  A  hold  over  the 
public,  acquired  quickly  after  his  return  from 
a  contact  with  what  was  left  of  the  Renais- 
sance— from  experiences  in  Venice  and  Rome 
that  were  profoundly  teaching,  that  bestowed 
upon  him  his  means,  his  necessary  equipment 
— was  never  from  that  time  relaxed,  till  he 
died,  forty  years  later.  He  was  fashionable 
just  before  Gainsborough,  and,  in  the  estima- 
tion of  the  public  and  of  the  great  world,  the 
lead  he  began  with  he  maintained. 

Reynolds,  notwithstanding  an  excursion 
or  so  into  the  realms  of  landscape  and 
allegory — a  fine  late  vision  of  Richmond  on 
the  Thames,  designs  of  the  Virtues,  destined 
to  be  put  into  glass  for  the  windows  of  the 
chapel  of  New  College,  and  the  quite  fascinat- 
ing fancy-rendering  or  allegorical  representa- 
tion of  Miss  Morris,  presented  under  the  title 
of  "  Hope  Nursing  Love  " — was  in  the  main 
frankly  a  portrait  painter. 

Gainsborough,  in  the  eastern  counties, 
before  he  was  famous,  painted  portraits  that 
he  might  merely  live,  and  landscape  that 


92        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

he  might  do  more  than  live — be  happy. 
What  a  felicity  must  have  been  his  when 
he  accomplished  his  "  Great  Cornard  Wood  " 
— that  early  Suffolk  landscape  that  is  in 
the  National  Gallery !  Removing  to  Bath 
when  he  was  beginning  to  be  encouraged, 
but  was  not  as  yet  well  known,  he  threw  him- 
self more  seriously  into  the  art  of  portraiture  : 
loved  the  character  and  grace  surrounding 
him  in  Bath — the  carrier,  the  musician,  the 
Squire's  wife,  or  the  Peer's  daughter.  But 
he  did  not  become,  and  probably  in  Bath  he 
would  never  have  allowed  himself  to  become, 
so  busy  as  to  find  closed  against  him  the  gates 
of  the  country.  Landscape  was  still  a  vivid 
interest  for  him,  though  most  of  his  landscape 
pieces  remained  unsold.  He  had  not  Rey- 
nolds's  shrewd  appreciation  of  the  main  chance, 
and  at  Bath  he  was  content  to  linger  until  his 
years  were  forty-seven.  Then — a  foundation 
member  of  the  Academy,  but  never  giving 
any  particular  attention  to  its  fortunes — he 
took  up  his  abode  in  town,  received  Royal 
patronage — as  is  shown  not  only  by  his  por- 
traits of  the  Princesses — painted  Mrs.  Siddons 
while  she  retained  the  charm  of  youth,  and 
that  diviner  portrait  of  Mary  Graham  which 
adorns  the  Scottish  National  Gallery.  There 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY  93 

is  an  old  story  of  Reynolds  visiting  him,  when 
Gainsborough  lay  on  his  death-bed.  These 
men  had  been  estranged,  as,  nearly  a  hundred 
years  after,  two  much  less  equal  rivals  for 
the  world's  regard  :  Dickens  and  Thackeray. 
To  the  courtly  President,  the  natural  man 
spoke  tenderly,  and  looked  forward  to  com- 
panionship with  him — with  him  and  Vandyke 
— in  another  world,  where  would  assert  them- 
selves no  longer  the  clashing  interests  of  this 
one. 

Gainsborough  was  a  great  unconventional 
painter,  a  genius,  and  a  simple  temperament, 
not  eager  for  money,  happy  in  work,  happy, 
too  (as  Ingres  was)  with  the  fiddle,  and  in 
light  and  pleasant  company.  It  is  not  alto- 
gether to  the  discredit  of  Reynolds — who  had 
the  incapacity  for  recklessness  of  an  ideal 
civil  servant,  and  the  method  of  a  bank 
clerk — that  he  cared  for  the  society  of  thinkers, 
that  he  was  at  bottom  far  more  intellectual 
than  emotional  or  merely  aesthetic.  His 
character  had  its  unlovely  side.  He  had 
abnormal  prudence,  and  with  a  strategist's 
assiduity  he  laid  his  plans.  Even  in  his  art, 
save  in  the  experimental  employment  of 
colour,  he  was  prudent  over  much.  But  if 
he  was  a  bourgeois,  he  was  at  all  events  a 


94        PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

weighty  bourgeois,  a  bourgeois  sagacious  and 
thoughtful.  Reynolds  put  into  his  discourses 
to  the  students  of  the  Royal  Academy,  in 
measured  language,  the  thoughts  and  pre- 
judices of  his  time,  and,  along  with  his  own 
narrowness,  many  a  shrewd  remark  that  was 
his  own  equally.  He  understood  so  great  a 
man  as  Samuel  Johnson  well  enough  to  paint 
him.  And,  annoyed  by  the  restless  mobility  of 
Garrick,  he  found  anchorage  in  the  friendship 
of  Burke. 

A.s  a  portrait  painter  it  cannot  be  said  of 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  that  he  showed  deep 
capacity  for  entrance  into  the  subtleties  of 
feminine  character.  He  arranged  his  subject 
with  dignity ;  and  his  colouring,  based  on  the 
Venetian — but  at  how  great  a  distance  from 
its  resplendent  glory  and  its  mellow  harmony  ! 
— had  merit  generally,  and  magic  never.  As 
for  the  face,  he  was  a  chronicler  of  women's 
features  much  more  than  of  their  expression. 
High  beauty  of  expression  he  must  reach, 
to  judge  from  the  engravings,  in  his  "  Lady 
Carlisle,"  and  in  that  portrait  of  the  Duchess 
of  Rutland  of  his  time  which  was  burnt,  years 
ago,  at  Belvoir.  But  these  and  a  few  others 
are  exceptions.  A  certain  animation  he 
attained  to  in  his  record  of  more  than  one 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY  95 

actress  :    notably  in  Mrs.  Abington  as  Miss 
Prue  in   "  Love  for  Love  " — Mrs.  Abington, 
that   Lady   Bancroft   of   her   day,   in   whom 
Johnson  found  so  much  to  interest  him,  and 
whom   Garrick   cordially  hated.     And  there 
are  one  or  two  delightful  portrayals  of  the 
frank  accessibility  of  Nellie  O'Brien  and  of 
Kitty  Fisher,     Subtle,  too,  for  once,   subtle 
absolutely,   and   of   inexhaustible    charm — is 
Reynolds 's  portrayal  of  the  blonde  reverie  of 
Esther  Jacobs.     He  painted  these  people  with 
less   of   responsibility,    with   a   less   weighty 
obligation,  than  that  which  is  generally  per- 
ceptible in  his  rendering  of  those  who  have 
been  brought  up  upon  the  velvet  of  the  social 
sward.     His  great  lady  was  but  seldom  visible 
to  us  in  her  habit  as  she  lived.     Nor  would  she 
be  put  into  purely  classical  draperies,  as,  a 
little  later,  she  might  have  been  put  by  Rom- 
ney.     The  dress  was  a  compromise  between 
the  actual  and  the  classic,  and,  like  a  com- 
promise very  often,  it  did  not  work.     A  gifted 
dressmaker     finds    it    hard    to    understand 
Reynolds 's  folds  and  fastenings. 

Sir  Joshua's  portraits  of  men,  and  more 
particularly  of  exceptional  men,  are  at  bot- 
tom, much  greater,  though  they  are  far  less 
popular,  than  his  portraits  of  women.  They 


96        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

are  at  once  more  matter-of-fact  and  more 
profoundly  penetrating.  Scarcely  even  could 
that  grave  Lady  Carlisle,  the  beautiful  Duchess 
of  Rutland,  the  engaging  Kitty  Fisher,  the 
quite  delightful  Esther  Jacobs,  be  placed  with- 
out some  diminution  of  attractiveness — not 
of  the  woman's  attractiveness,  but  of  the 
painter's — beside  a  perfect  Titian,  a  perfect 
Velasquez,  a  perfect  Rembrandt  or  Moroni. 
But  the  second  great  portrait  of  Johnson — 
the  Johnson  old — could  be  looked  at  with 
enthusiasm  beside  the  portrait  of  Jan  Six,  or 
the  portraits  of  the  Syndics  of  the  Cloth  Hall, 
that  are  the  treasures  of  Amsterdam.  Nor 
should  the  "  Johnson  "  stand  alone.  Strange 
to  think,  after  that,  that  to  the  greatness  of 
Rembrandt,  Reynolds  himself  was  relatively 
blind  ! 

The  last  of  the  three  men  who,  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  carried  English  por- 
traiture to  its  high  level — George  Romney 
— appears  less  frequently  virile  than  Sir 
Joshua;  and  he  lacks  Gainsborough's  char- 
acteristic charm  —  a  curious,  French-like 
subtlety  of  grace,  which,  in  all  British  Art, 
Gainsborough,  it  may  be,  shared  with  one  man 
only:  Allan  Ramsay. 

Romney's     draughtmanship,     though     on 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY  97 

broad,  classic  lines,  suave  and  agreeable,  is 
scarcely  to  be  called  learned ;  and  his  colour- 
ing, wont  to  be  simplified  for  good  or  evil — 
wont  also  to  be  hot — showed  seldom  all  the 
variety  and  range  that  a  fine  colourist  revels 
in.  He  had  his  mannerisms,  and  was  obliged 
to  have  them.  Yet  when  all  this  has  been 
admitted,  much  of  Romney's  work  must  still 
remain  to  be  enthusiastically  praised.  It  is 
in  human  nature  to  enjoy  it.  A  portrait  such 
as  that  of  Mrs.  Carwardine  shows  the  occa- 
sional fulness  of  his  appreciation  of  thoughtful 
dignity  and  high  solicitude  and  womanly 
tenderness;  and  fifty  "Lady  Hamiltons " 
make  evident  the  zest  with  which — the 
vivacity  and  suave  distinction  of  Emma 
having  once  been  felt  by  him — Romney  settled 
himself,  like  a  bee  on  a  flower,  on  beauty 
patent  and  unquestioned. 

From  Greek  Art  Romney  learnt,  much  more 
than  either  Reynolds  or  Gainsborough  had 
done,  rhythm  of  line  akin  to  that  of  happy 
verse ;  and  his  sensibility  to  such  rhythm  was 
almost  to  the  end  kept  alive  by  that  spectacle 
of  beauty  so  friendlily  vouchsafed  to  him — 
Emma  Lyon  in  captivating  movement,  and 
in  blameless  rest.  With  no  great  intricacy 
of  expression,  perhaps,  but  with  command 


98        PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

of  picturesque  and  marked  transitions,  her 
face,  as  well  as  her  figure,  allowed  her  to 
assume  with  ease  and  with  rapidity  thp 
appearance  of  emotions  not  her  own — that 
is,  she  was,  within  limits,  dramatic :  potential 
actress  as  well  as  actual  model.  And  she 
was  Romney's  friend:  a  friend  considerate 
and  sincere;  and  there  may  have  been 
hours  when  he  would  have  liked  to  be  her 
lover.  Charles  Greville  had  brought  her  to 
him  in  the  first  instance — a  dilettante  who 
imagined,  at  that  time,  when  Emma  was 
twenty-one,  that  he  could  himself  never  grow 
weary  of  her.  But  Greville  had  the  dilettante's 
instability.  It  became  agreeable  or  possible 
to  him  afterwards,  under  some  pressure  of 
money  matters,  to  transfer  her  to  his  uncle — 
an  object  of  Nature  parted  with  (but  not  even 
for  a  consideration)  like  an  object  of  Art.  In 
time  came  marriage ;  but  before  that,  Emma 
was  long  "  protected  "  by  the  Ambassador 
at  Naples — the  day  still  a  remote  one  when, 
Sir  William  having  become  a  more  or  less 
acquiescent  husband,  Nelson  should  lay  siege 
to  her  heart.  In  all  her  vicissitudes — from 
humble  days  to  days  of  exaltation — Emma's 
kindness  laid  the  refined  lusciousness  of  her 
beauty  at  the  service  of  Romney's  brush.  On 


HOGARTH  TO   ROMNEY  99 

his  canvasses  she  was  Euphrosyne  and  again 
a  Bacchante,  and  Circe,  Sensibility,  Cassandra, 
and  a  demure  spinning-girl.  Romney  pined 
in  her  absence,  and  rejoiced  on  her  return. 
Never  perhaps,  since  Andrea  del  Sarto,  was 
there  a  painter  to  whom  one  model  gave 
so  much  inspiration.  Even  when  he  made 
his  portrait  of  Miss  Lucy  Vernon  as  the 
"  Sempstress,"  Romney  could  not  banish 
Lady  Hamilton  from  his  thought 

Addicted  to  the  so  various  record  of  Lady 
Hamilton's  charm,  Romney,  it  is  little  to 
be  wondered  at,  impressed  the  public  more 
easily  as  an  imaginative  artist  who  could 
conjure  up  visions  of  grace,  than  as  a 
picturesque  chronicler  of  actual  persons, 
sitters  who  came,  with  commissions,  to  the 
studio  in  Cavendish  Square,  where,  pretty 
early  in  his  career,  was  Romney's  house  : 
that  "  privileged  and  fortunate  abode  "  as 
his  friend  Hayden  (Cowper's  biographer) 
called  it.  But  in  what  the  public  of  Romney's 
day  deemed  mostly  creative  art,  there  is 
recognized,  at  present,  the  constantly  recurring 
portraiture  of  one  flexible  being.  The  won- 
derful series  that  attest  the  painter's  pre- 
occupation with  a  particular  woman  must  not 

blind  us,  however,  to  the  more  than  occasional 
G  2 


100      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

delightfulness  of  so  many  another  record, 
simple  and  broad,  of  feminine  beauty  and 
breeding.  It  must  not  be  the  excuse  for  our 
forgetting  the  success  of  Romney  in  chroni- 
cling child-life  and  children's  individuality — 
all  that  they  have  of  their  own,  that  they  lose 
when  they  are  children  no  more.  Still  less 
must  it  be  a  barrier  to  the  loyal  recognition 
of  Romney's  triumph  with  the  heads  of 
quite  exceptional  men.  Not  even  the  best 
of  Sir  Joshua's  male  portraits,  not  even 
Gainsborough's  winning  record  of  Wiltshire, 
the  parish  clerk,  can  cast  into  the  shade 
the  tender  delicacy  of  Romney's  vision  of 
John  Wesley,  or  that  treatment,  promptly 
massive,  of  the  head  of  Isaac  Reid,  the  eigh- 
teenth-century authority  on  Shakespeare — 
a  portrait  that,  judged  by  the  mezzotint  of 
Dickinson,  has  the  decisiveness,  the  great 
square  touch,  and  more  than  the  simplicity 
and  the  economy,  instinctive  yet  learned, 
even  of  Velasquez  himself. 

It  is  possible  to  overrate  Reynolds:  it  is 
very  possible,  indeed,  to  overrate  his  Scotch 
successor,  Raeburn.  To  overrate  Romney 
may  be  an  error  of  the  future — since  the 
greatest  may  be  extolled  beyond  their  due — 
but  it  is  not  an  error  of  to-day.  For,  not- 


TURNER  AND   CONSTABI/E      101 

withstanding  Romney's  popularity,  there  is 
no  disposition  to  forget  his  deficiencies;  and 
there  is  not  absent  from  the  academic  ver- 
dict of  grudged  and  doubtful  approval  some 
phlegmatic  ignorance  and  easy  self-satisfac- 
tion, that  retards  the  universal  tribute  to 
certain  of  his  noblest  gifts. 

CHAPTER  IX 

TURNER  AND    CONSTABLE 

THE  eighteenth  -  century  production  of 
pictures  tempts  men,  in  England,  to  make 
comparisons  between  Reynolds  and  Gains- 
borough. The  nineteenth  brings  into  visible, 
provoking  rivalry  the  art  of  Turner  and 
Constable. 

These  masters  of  Landscape — each  of  whom 
knew  the  other  to  be  very  gifted,  and  each 
of  whom,  in  speaking  of  or  dealing  with 
the  other,  manifested  a  certain  coldness  and 
reserve — held  the  field,  from  the  beginning 
of  the  century,  onwards  for  many  years. 
Constable  held  it — or  shall  we  better  say, 
gradually,  painfully  won  it  ? — between  the 
century's  opening  and  1837,  when  he  died. 
Turner,  put  into  full  possession  at  an  earlier 
period  of  his  career  than  that  of  his  then  less 


102      JPAJNTERS   AND   PAINTING 

acceptable  brother -painter,  held  on — held  on 
to  his  life  at  least — till  1851;  but  it  was  the 
middle  of  the  'forties  that  saw  the  tardiest 
triumph  of  his  later  practice.  Constable  died 
first— died  earlier  by  fourteen  years  than 
Turner — but  though  Turner  lived  to  a  day 
appreciably  nearer  our  own,  it  is  not  he  who 
is  in  spirit  the  more  modern  artist. 

Seeing  that  nobody,  not  even  the  person 
to  whom  at  bottom  his  work  appeals  the  least, 
contests,  I  do  not  say  Turner's  supremacy, 
but  his  originality,  his  genius,  does  a  man 
ask,  hurriedly,  "  Why  was  not  Turner  the  more 
modern  "  ?  He  does  ask,  perhaps,  and  if  he 
does  there  is  no  obligation  to  delay  the  one 
rough  answer,  "  Turner  knew  every  Classic, 
and  every  dead  man  who  was  not  a  Classic ;  he 
knew  the  past  to  the  point  of  being  oppressed 
by  it."  Less  burdened  with  impediments, 
carrying  a  lighter  baggage,  Constable  marched 
quickly,  and,  had  his  temperament  allowed, 
would  have  marched  even  joyously,  along  the 
open  road  he  knew  to  be  his  own. 

One  result  of  this  difference  is  that,  while 
the  art  of  Turner  has  most  affected  the 
conservative  connoisseur,  the  art  of  Constable 
has  had,  in  England  and  in  France,  the  deeper 
influence  upon  the  modern  practitioner. 


TURNER  AND   CONSTABLE      103 

Turner  had  faults  and  mannerisms.  After 
his  early,  sober,  self-possessed  time  of  blue- 
grey,  neutral -tinted  drawings  of  landscape 
and  architecture — drawings  which  might  be 
mistaken  for  Girtin's — he  was,  in  turn, 
studiously  poetic  and  unconsciously  matter- 
of-fact.  He  had  his  exaggerations  of  scale; 
he  had  his  debauches  of  colour.  For  years 
and  years  during  the  very  heart  of  his  career 
— in  so  much  of  his  middle  period  :  in  all  the 
latter  part  of  it — he  was  over-elaborate,  over- 
intricate  in  theme.  He  crowded  into  a 
canvas  or  a  drawing  more  than  the  most 
widely  embracing  eye  could  possibly  discern 
in  the  natural  scene  which  he  had  set  himself 
to  depict.  A  draughtsman  of  fine  certainty, 
leaving  the  literal  truth  quite  voluntarily  when 
he  left  it  at  all — a  colourist  who  generally  could 
be  splendid  or  tender,  but  at  times  seemed 
bound  to  be  abnormal — Turner  was  wont, 
throughout  his  middle  period,  and,  to  some 
extent  indeed  during  nearly  the  whole  of  his 
life,  to  make  a  map,  to  make  a  chronicle,  to 
make  a  history;  not  merely,  and  sometimes 
not  at  all,  to  make  a  picture. 

In  his  early  time  and  in  his  latest  alone, 
and  chiefly  in  the  latter,  did  Turner,  on  occa- 
sions at  least,  content  himself  with  painting 


104      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

an  effect.  Again,  in  the  more  intricate,  but 
not  in  the  simpler  of  his  labours,  he  worked 
too  constantly  as  if  he  knew  himself  in 
the  chiding  or  the  encouraging  presence  of 
this  or  that  departed  master.  He  worked 
with  an  amazing  ingenuity,  and  with  an  all- 
embracing  variety  of  theme,  in  fetters  he 
had  forged.  His  influence,  had  he  been 
influential  amongst  the  painters  who  suc- 
ceeded him,  might  have  been  against  freedom 
— probably  would  have  been.  To  Constable 
then — though  it  may  have  been  owing  in 
part  to  the  happy  accident  of  the  exhibition 
of  his  landscapes  in  the  Salon  of  1824  or  1825 
— to  Constable,  and  not  to  Turner,  did  the 
French,  and  after  them  the  English,  look  for 
the  eye  and  hand,  the  theory  and  practice, 
that  liberated  landscape  art. 

All  this  one  may  say,  and  yet  retain  for 
Turner,  the  inventor  of  so  many  visions 
that  were  exquisite  and  scenes  that  were 
magical,  a  keen  interest,  a  deep  admiration. 
But  if  one  worships  one  must  worship  sanely  : 
one  must  guard  one's  common  sense.  Ex- 
amine that  which  is  an  instance  of  the  work 
of  Turner's  middle  period — his  middle  period 
mistake  (and  one  may  use  that  word  not  at  all 
disrespectfully) — examine  the  "  Yarmouth  " 


TURNER  AND   CONSTABLE      105 

water  colour  :  it  is  a  drawing  that  was  trans- 
lated subtly,  by  William  Miller,  into  the 
"black  and  white,"  the  infinitely  varied 
greys  rather,  of  the  line  engraver.  It  is  in 
the  England  and  Wales  series.  The  print  is 
wonderful  :  it  is  finely,  very  finely,  repre- 
sentative of  a  wonderful  drawing.  Quite 
numberless  are  the  objects  and  the  incidents, 
the  themes  and  the  events,  introduced  into 
the  picture.  In  the  very  middle,  upon  the 
stretch  of  flattened  sand  beach,  between  the 
sea  itself  and  the  pool -like  waters  where 
craft  find  shelter  by  pier  or  quayside,  stands 
a  lighthouse  or  tall  monument  that  gleams 
white  against  the  greyness  of  the  sea.  There 
is  shipping  in  the  roads.  There  is,  above  the 
far  horizon,  a  sky  of  radiance  and  a  sky 
of  promptly  threatening  storm.  The  greater 
part  of  the  town  is  in  the  distance,  to  the 
extreme  left;  where,  amongst  many  another 
building,  the  parish  church,  with  steeple  and 
vast  nave,  is  plainly  discernible.  But  scarcely 
even  as  far  as  middle  distance,  there  are 
houses  too,  many  of  them,  and  the  sails 
of  a  windmill.  What  is  the  actual  fore- 
ground ?  To  the  right  it  is  an  inroad  of 
rushing  water,  which  only  embankments  or 
a  pier  restrain.  To  the  left,  it  is  a  rounded 


106       PAINTERS   AND    PAINTING 

hill  or  broken  cliff-top,  against  which  a  man 
shelters,  with  a  large  empty  basket,  wrong 
end  uppermost,  by  the  side  of  him,  and  in 
front,  laid  out  on  the  rough  grass,  all  the 
basket  contained ;  and  not  far  from  the  man, 
still  in  the  foreground,  or  the  second  distance, 
in  a  scene  wherein  distances  are  innumerable, 
there  is  a  young  woman  tripping  gaily,  to 
secure  the  wind-menaced  things  upon  the 
grass.  Not  so  much  summarized  and  hinted 
at  as  actually  depicted  is  all  the  life  of  the 
town.  The  clever  possible,  because  it  isest 
after  all  not  an  apparently  unnatural  dis- 
position of  light  and  shade  gives  to  the  picture 
— well  ! — as  much  unity  as,  the  material  being 
what  it  is,  it  is  possible  to  give  it. 

A  drawing  of  the  earlier  middle  period, 
the  "Whitstable"  of  "The  Southern  Coast," 
assigns  to  the  arrangement  of  light  and  shade 
a  similar  function.  But  here,  the  passion  for 
intricacy  and  elaboration  not  having  gone 
as  far,  the  function  is  fulfilled  more  easily, 
with  a  happier  and  more  complete  triumph. 
The  "  Watercress  Gatherers  "  of  the  Liber 
Studiorum.  which  is  a  work  also  of  the  earlier 
middle  time,  is,  on  account  of  this  particular 
matter,  as  interesting  as  the  "Whitstable,"  and 
as  happy.  But  it  has  also  what  the  "Whit- 


TURNER  AND   CONSTABLE      107 

stable  "  could  not  have  so  well,  and  what  the 
"  Yarmouth  "  may  have  had  once  and  later 
lost — a  composition  of  line  carried  far  beyond 
meagreness,  but  never  carried  to  superfluity. 
"  Watercress  Gatherers  "  portrays,  moreover, 
and  at  a  period  not  advanced,  that  which 
occupied  Turner  very  little  in  any  time  except 
his  last :  it  portrays,  nobly,  an  "  effect." 

Portraying  an  effect,  the  fine  print  of  the 
"Watercress  Gatherers  "  serves  us  as  a  means 
of  transition  from  the  art  of  Turner  to  the  tar 
of  Constable;  for  it  was  in  effects,  in  atmo- 
spheric effects,  that  Constable  revelled.  To 
record  them  was  one  of  the  purposes  of  his 
great  modern  practice.  Long  before  him,  it 
had  been  one  of  the  purposes  of  Rembrandt, 
in  Rembrandt's  rare  Landscape;  for  Rem- 
brandt, at  his  hours,  was  as  modern  as 
Constable,  as  modern  as  the  men  whom 
Constable  inspired.  And  that,  Turner — satu- 
rated with  the  earlier  traditions,  an  adept  in 
every  classical,  that  is  in  every  accepted 
exercise,  and  original,  personal  and  inventive 
to  boot — that,  Turner  never  claimed  to  be,, 
and  never  could  be,  called. 

Constable's  art  was  less  eclectic,  and,  in 
its  nominal  theme  and  obvious  subject,  far 
less  varied.  Oftentimes,  however,  it  proved 


108      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

not  less  varied  in  its  result.  If  one  takes 
Constable,  Turner,  and  the  great  simple 
Crome — who  was  their  contemporary  in  their 
earlier  days — and  asks  oneself  which  of  the 
three  attained  the  least  completely  and 
habitually  the  aim  before  him,  it  will  have  to 
be  Constable,  probably,  who,  judged  in  this 
fashion,  will  be  deemed  to  have  been  the  least 
successful.  Constable  on  the  whole  was 
greater  as  initiator  than  as  executant :  that 
is,  no  small  proportion  of  what  were  meant 
to  be  amongst  his  more  important  pictures 
express  inadequately  his  personal  vision — 
his  way  of  looking  out  upon  the  simple 
English  land  to  which,  like  Crome's,  his 
outlook  was  confined.  For  all  that,  as  has 
been  indicated  on  an  earlier  page,  it  was  his 
particular  function  to  start  men  on  new 
tracks.  He  had  his  part  in  their  emancipa- 
tion. It  seems  he  had  it  even  when,  at  the 
end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  he  showed  in  Paris,  "  The  Haywain." 
The  generosity  of  Mr.  Henry  Vaughan — 
exercised  in  his  lifetime  :  that  is,  when  it 
cost  him  something  to  exercise  it — placed 
the  historic  composition  of  "  The  Haywain  " 
(the  waggon  crossing  the  stream)  at  the 
disposal  of  the  National  Gallery.  It  is 


TURNER  AND   CONSTABLE      109 

delicate,  perhaps  even  subtle;  wrought,  of 
course,  with  assiduity  and  knowledge,  and  a 
sense  of  the  charm  of  the  June  weather  and  of 
the  actual  scene.  But  there  are  other  pictures, 
and  some  of  them  much  smaller  and  slighter 
ones,  more  significant  and  characteristic. 
There  is  a  "Salisbury";  there  is  a  "Yar- 
mouth Jetty  " ;  somewhere  there  is  a  noble 
"  Brighton  " — just  a  sea  beach,  shelving 
steeply,  and  a  beached  boat  or  two,  and  a 
fisherman  mending  his  nets,  and  the  dramatic 
background  of  sparkling  waves,  and  a  sky 
over  which  a  west  wind  hurries  the  pace  of 
the  clouds.  The  sketches  of  Constable,  even 
more  than  the  sketches  of  Turner,  are  wont 
to  be  masterpieces. 

Turner  owed  much  to  his  engravers,  and 
his  engravers  much  to  Turner.  Of  the  truth 
of  both  statements  the  best  of  Liber  Studi- 
orum  is  the  living  proof.  As  a  mountain 
piece,  take  the  "  Saint  Gothard,"  as  a  marine 
the  "  Flint  Castle,"  with  freshening  water 
and  with  breezy  sky.  As  an  English  pastoral? 
take  "  The  Strawyard " ;  as  a  thing  nobly 
classical,  "  Woman  with  Tambourine."  But 
there  are  other  proofs,  and  in  abundance, 
of  Turner's  good  fortune  and  of  the  en- 
graver's too,  in  the  line  engravings  of  Miller 


110      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

and  the  brothers  Cooke,  and  in  the  happy 
labour  of  John  Pye,  whose  triumph  is  con- 
centrated on  one  smallish  plate,  wondrously 
luminous,  "  Pope's  Villa." 

Now,  until  recent  times,  when  Sir  Frank 
Short,  on  one  or  two  occasions,  most  of  all 
in  "A  Sussex  Down,"  has  been  admirably 
exercised  in  interpreting  him,  there  has  only 
been  one  engraver,  and  that  is  Constable's 
contemporary,  David  Lucas,  who  has  been 
notably  concerned  with  Constable,  in  any 
way.  Lucas  owed  a  little  to  Constable;  but 
Constable  has  owed  a  world  to  David  Lucas. 
It  is  by  the  two  dozen  or  so  plates  of  the 
**  English  Landscape  "  that  we  can  most  of 
us  best  know  Constable  in  our  homes,  and 
by  these  we  can  know  him  perfectly.  Con- 
stable was  a  master  of  tone  and  of  grey 
painting,  as  De  Koninck  was,  before  him, 
and  after  him  Boudin  (a  master  of  much 
besides);  and  tone  and  the  grey  painting, 
engraving,  if  the  right  kind  be  chosen,  can 
render.  David  Lucas — himself,  by  the  large 
public,  stupidly  disregarded — has,  with  the 
discerning,  been  the  great  and  the  efficient 
popularizer  of  Constable.  He  had  his  faults 
— or  his  fault.  What  is  called  the  "  sooty- 
black  "  of  his  deep  shadows,  a  black  often 


TURNER  AND   CONSTABLE      111 

effective  and  significant,  a  convention  that 
answers,  is  sometimes  overdone.  But  in 
the  treatment  generally,  what  breadth,  what 
learned  breadth,  what  understanding  of  the 
master,  of  that  which  he  accomplished,  of 
that  by  which  he  is  classed  !  "  Summer 
Morning,"  with  its  fresh  June  weather — 
Constable  declared  that  the  earliest  hours  of 
a  June  day  gave  us  the  English  landscape, 
of  wide  stretching  upland  and  placid  river,  at 
its  very  best — "Noon,"  with  the  quiet  ripe- 
ness of  the  earth;  "  Spring,"  with  the  March 
skies  of  driving  cloud  over  the  great  flat  land ; 
"  A  Sea  Beach,  Brighton,"  with  its  vivacity 
and  windy  sunshine;  "  Old  Sarum,"  with  its 
present  sunk  in  its  past,  and  its  past  appre- 
hended in  the  solitude  of  the  Downs  under  a 
darkened  sky :  these  prints  of  Lucas's,  which 
bring  all  Constable  before  us,  are  obtainable 
to-day  for  a  few  pounds  apiece.  Years  ago, 
it  was  only  a  few  shillings  And  the  progress 
must  continue.  With  the  best  of  the  Libers, 
as  representing  the  art  of  Turner,  everybody 
who  can  should  possess  these  Lucas-Constables. 
As  regards  oil  pictures  at  the  National 
Gallery,  the  "  Cornfield,"  and  not  that  alone, 
stands  for  Constable,  along  with,  and  quite 
as  much  as,  "  The  Haywain."  Notable, 


112      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

wherever  it  may  be  seen,  is  his  "  Salisbury," 
with  its  steely  greys,  its  oxidized  silver.     And 
at  the  Tate  Gallery — the  gifts  and  bequests, 
they  have  been,  often,  of  Constable's  daughter, 
Isabel   Constable,   who  was  the  sunshine  of 
his  life — there  are  oil  sketches,  vivid  impres- 
sions, in  abundance,  which  display  the  sym- 
pathetic directness  of  his  vision,  the  singular 
frankness  of  his  record.    Occasionally,  though 
very  occasionally,  he  used  water  colour ;  but 
he   never   really   mastered   its   methods,    or, 
seemingly,  really  cared  to  master  them.     As 
a   water-colour   painter,  Constable   may  be 
neglected.     But    an    occasional    drawing    in 
charcoal  displays  at  least  the  freedom  of  his 
hand,  and  his  drawings  in  the  happy  medium 
of    pencil,    which     should     be,    and     which 
fortunately  are  to  some  extent,  valued  and 
cherished,  evidence  at  once  the  fulness  and 
the  closeness  of  his  observation,  and  register 
with  equal  readiness  and  equal   charm  the 
long  curve  of  the  waggon  in  his  Suffolk  fields, 
and  the  quick  coming  and  going  of  every  kind 
of  craft  about  the   quayside  and  the   busy 
and  peopled  waters  of  the  harbour  at  Har- 
wich.    They  are  not,  like  Prout's  pencil  draw- 
ings,   of   at    least   two    generations    ago,    or 
Fulleylove's,  of  ten  or  twenty  years  since,  or 


THE  LATER  ENGLISH  ART      113 

Muirhead  Bone's  of  to-day,  realized  pictures. 
But  they  are  memoranda  agreeable  and 
accurate  :  dexterous,  spirited,  precise,  yet  free. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   LATER  ENGLISH   ART 

SUCH  an  instance  of  revolutionary  change 
as  that  which  presents  itself  in  the  art  of 
France  with  the  accession  to  influence  of  the 
classic  David,  is,  for  good  or  for  evil,  nowhere 
afforded  in  the  history  of  English  painting. 
The  strong  and  simple  naturalism  of  "Old" 
Crome  stood,  indeed,  in  decided  and  marked 
contrast  with  Richard  Wilson's  ordered 
suavity;  and  Constable,  as  we  have  seen  in 
the  last  chapter,  rebelled  at  certain  dictates 
which  Turner  still  generally  obeyed.  But 
there  was  no  approach  to  visible  or  universal 
cleavage  in  the  volume  and  construction  of 
the  English  School.  The  homely  art  of 
Morland  —  his  rusticity,  graceful,  yet  not 
unmanly  and  not  unveracious — had  affinity 
or  sympathy  with  the  naturalism  of  Gains- 
borough. It,  like  the  feebler  but  yet  elegant, 
not  unobservant  art  of  Francis  Wheatley, 
was  in  a  measure  an  echo  or  reverberation 
from  such  of  Gainsborough's  work  as  was  not 


114      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

concerned  with  portraiture,  and  the  por- 
traiture of  the  well-bred.  And  in  portraiture, 
the  first  steps  to  celebrity  of  Hoppner  and 
Lawrence  were  made  in  no  spirit  of  aggression 
— in  them  there  was  no  purpose  of  revolt 
against  the  laws  Sir  Joshua  had  tacitly  laid 
down,  or  tacitly  accepted. 

How  far  Art  of  any  kind,  pictorial  or  literary, 
is  really  refreshed  and  renewed  by  movements 
more  decided  than  any  of  these  —  by  a  re- 
versal, determined  and  avowed,  of  procedures 
heretofore  graced  with  all  the  sanctions  of 
•authority — might  be  an  interesting  subject  of 
inquiry ;  but  in  considering  English  painting, 
it  does  not  present  itself  anywhere  until  at 
least  we  reach  the  futile  insurrection  of  the 
Pre-Raphaelite,  upon  which,  in  other  quarters 
too  much  discussion  has  already  been  be- 
stowed. And  least  of  all  does  it  present  itself 
when  we  are  occupied,  as  in  the  first  page  or 
so  of  this  chapter  we  need  to  be,  with  portrait 
painters  like  those  who  were  in  fashion  in  the 
last  twenty-five  years  of  the  long  reign  of 
George  the  Third,  and,  after  his  demise,  in  the 
decade  between  1820  and  1830,  when,  Hoppner 
being  dead,  there  was  no  one  left — unless 
indeed,  it  was  John  Jackson — to  contest  the 
supremacy  of  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence. 


THE   LATER  ENGLISH  ART     115 

Lawrence's  position  of  pre-eminence  was 
alas  !  least  assailed  just  when  his  art  had 
proved  least  worthy  of  the  place  it  occupied. 
He  had  had  an  immense  talent  :  he  had  made 
the  most  of  a  youth  brilliant  and  careful. 
Lawrence  had  promised  much  and  had  per- 
formed something.  But  before  late  middle 
age  he  had  succumbed  to  the  temptations 
of  popularity  and  numberless  commissions. 
His  labours  had  become  meretricious  and 
mechanical,  pretentious  and  tricky. 

Hoppner,  with  his  Teutonic  origin,  was 
unlikely  to  have  received  the  gift  of  distinction, 
which  Lawrence  had  received,  and  rather 
richly,  but  which  he  had  not  retained.  But 
other  gifts  Hoppner  possessed,  and  they  were 
precious  ones.  His  colour  could  be  opulent, 
and,  in  its  opulence,  harmonious ;  and  unlike 
Lawrence's,  at  Lawrence's  worst,  it  could  not 
be  harsh  and  garish.  Never  perhaps  stately, 
his  performances,  especially  when  plump 
young  women  were  the  theme  of  them,  rarely 
lacked  sensuous  charm.  His  wife  was  quite 
amazingly  good-looking.  Best  of  all  he 
painted  her  in  the  "  Salad  Girl  " — a  personality 
as  attractive  as  that  of  Mrs.  Paul  Sandby, 
known  as  "  The  Nut-brown  Maid  "  in  the  print 
after  Francis  Cotes.  Were  Hoppner  and  were 

H2 


116      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

Lawrence  called  upon  to  represent  great  minds, 
exalted  souls,  it  was  but  to  make  the  spectator 
of  their  effort  envious  of  the  departed  days 
when  Reynolds  worked,  and  Gainsborough. 

In  speaking  of  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  I  mo- 
mentarily named  an  artist,  a  portrait  painter, 
not  much  remembered  to-day;   but  his  turn 
may  come,  for   sometimes  it  is  dealers  who 
start  fashions ;  and  dealers  know  that  Reynolds 
and   Gainsborough,   Romney    and    Hoppner, 
are    not   inexhaustible.     The   artist  is   John 
Jackson,  who,  beginning  under  the  influence 
of  that  Bristolian  who  was  the  paramount 
favourite  of  the  Court  and  of  Society  in  the 
later  Georgian  period,  lived  on  to  the  time  of 
William  the  Fourth.     A  capable   craftsman, 
an  executant  vigorous  and  estimable,  Jackson 
had  an  eye  for  character,  and  he  was  not 
insensible  of  the  attractions  of  beauty.     But 
there  were  two  painters,  working  at  a  time 
at    least    not    remote     from    his    own — the 
earlier  of  the  two  was  Opie,  and  the  later 
Geddes — whose   appeal   may   still   be   wider. 
Of  these  men,  indeed,  the  Scotsman,  Geddes, 
is,  as  is  perfectly  natural,  already  the  object  of 
a  cult.    Geddes,  at  least  as  etcher  and  portrait- 
painter,  is  worthy  of  admiration.     His  dry- 
points  of  landscape  suggest  themselves  to  our 


THE  LATER  ENGLISH  ART      117 

minds  as  a  link  between  Rembrandt  and 
Muirhead  Bone ;  and  a  painted  portrait  of 
his  Mother,  in  the  Scottish  National  Gallery, 
— impressive,  simple,  sound — is  as  memorable 
for  insight  as  for  execution. 

Opie,  no  more  than  Geddes,  was  portrait  - 
painter  alone.  Called,  finely,  a  painter  of 
History,  he  assuredly  had  in  his  talent  some- 
thing of  the  dramatic.  Even  as  an  illustrator 
of  Shakespeare  he  was  far  from  incapable. 
What  does  Samuel  Redgrave  mean  by  saying 
that  Opie  had  "  no  feeling  for  female  beauty"? 
Nothing,  probably,  but  that,  unlike  certain 
popularity-loving  painters,  Opie  did  not 
stand  or  fall  chiefly  by  his  rendering  of  that. 
Apart  from  such  qualities,  gifts,  or  acquire- 
ments as  could  be  manifested  on  canvas, 
Opie  had  a  capacity  denied  to  painters,  for 
the  most  part — the  capacity  for  consecutive 
thought.  Like  Sir  Joshua,  he  wrote,  and 
gave  his  excellently  ordered  lectures — not 
only  wielded  the  brush.  A  year  or  two  before 
his  death  in  middle  age,  Opie,  as  Professor  of 
Painting  at  the  Royal  Academy,  discoursed 
on  Design,  on  Invention,  on  Chiaroscuro,  on 
Colour. 

The   incident    and   genre    painter   of    the 
nineteenth  century  to  whom  it  most  behoves 


118      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

us  not  quite  to  fail  to  do  justice,  is,  of  course, 
Sir  David  Wilkie,  who  came  into  some 
prominence  about  the  time  Opie  was  dying — 
that  was  in  1807 — and  who  continued,  and 
not  wrongly,  to  fill  a  great  space  in  the 
public  eye  until  his  death,  certainly,  in  a  sense, 
premature  (he  was  but  fifty-six)  and  lament- 
ably sudden,  in  1841.  I  said,  premature  "  in 
a  sense,"  and  what  was  meant  by  the  quali- 
fication was  just  this — that  Wilkie  had  reached 
excellence  early;  that  it  is  the  opinion  of 
many,  with  a  claim  to  be  heard,  that  the 
works  even  of  the  first  eight  years  of  his 
practice  were  never  surpassed  by  him: 
some  would  say,  never  equalled.  "  Village 
Politicians  "  was  conceived  and  wrought 
while  he  was  still  a  student  at  the  Academy 
Schools.  "  The  Blind  Fiddler  "  was  painted 
when  he  was  just  of  age.  He  was  only  twenty- 
four  when  he  painted  "  The  Rent  Day " ; 
twenty-seven  when  he  painted  "  The  Village 
Festival."  Of  course  these  works,  at  all  events 
the  first  of  them,  were  more  restrained — drier, 
smaller  in  character  to  some  people — than 
those  of  a  qtiite  later  manner.  They  were 
less  ambitious;  they  were  perhaps  less  im- 
mediately impressive ;  the  ideals  of  the  better 
and  more  humane  Dutch  and  Flemish  genre 


THE  LATER  ENGLISH  ART      119 

painters — Jan  Steen  at  his  discreetest,  Teniers 
when  he  kept  company  with  the  well-behaved 
— were  those  of  David  Wilkie,  when,  with 
close  observation  and  deft  hand,  he  created 
his  pictures  of  the  popular  life  and  the  home 
life  of  Scotland. 

Wilkie's  pieces  might  have  been  illustrations 
of  penetrating  literary  fiction.  As  it  is,  they 
were  penetrating  fiction  themselves :  studies 
of  character  exact,  humorous,  homely.  In 
early  middle  life,  or  when  early  middle  life 
was  hardly  reached,  going  into  Italy,  passing 
thence  into  Spain,  there  came  before  his  mind, 
in  art  as  well  as  in  nature,  new  splendours.  By 
them,  for  a  time  at  least,  Wilkie  was  derailed, 
or  to  be  more  accurate,  desoriente — they  left 
him  without  his  compass.  Time,  longer 
time  than  was  accorded  him,  was  needed  for 
him  to  adjust  his  methods,  to  turn  altogether 
to  profit  (if  that  might  be)  instead  of  partially 
to  loss,  those  sights,  experiences,  and  fresh 
illuminations  which  others  have  utilized  more 
promptly.  A  second  occasion  this  energetic 
ever-studious  and  even  too  impressionable 
Scotsman  afforded  himself  for  visiting  the 
South.  That  was  not  long  after  the  "  John 
Knox  Preaching  "  had  been  followed  by  the 
portrait  of  the  Duke  of  Sussex,  and  the 


120      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

portrait  of  the  Duke  of  Sussex  by  that  of  the 
young  Queen  Victoria  holding  her  first  Council. 
Nor  was  it  the  South  only  :  the  near  East  he 
succeeded  in  reaching :  Smyrna,  Beyrout, 
Jerusalem  itself,  his  goal ;  and  he  went  there 
with  one  knows  not  what  ambitions.  Then 
he  yearned  for  home ;  but  sudden  illness,  the 
result  only  of  imprudent  feeding,  overcame 
him  in  the  harbour  of  Malta.  He  died 
within  an  hour  of  the  ship's  setting  sail.  That 
evening,  Wilkie's  body  was  committed  to  its 
"  vast  and  wandering  grave."  The  scene  lives 
in  our  minds  through  the  picture  which  a  few 
months  afterwards  came  into  being,  that  the 
passionate  lamentation  of  Turner  might  be 
expressed. 

The  later  years  of  Wilkie's  life,  and  the  last 
ten  years  of  the  life  of  Turner,  which  imme- 
diately followed,  saw  the  maturest  labours  of 
another  great  English  artist — a  man  who  is 
to-day  most  insufficiently  appreciated  by  the 
large  public,  the  one  great  English  painter 
of  the  nude,  William  Etty.  Born  in  York 
in  1787,  the  son  of  a  small  miller,  Etty,  when 
twelve  years  old,  was  apprenticed  to  a  printer 
at  Hull.  He  served  his  time  conscientiously, 
cultivating  in  every  spare  hour  a  gift  for 
drawing;  and  when  the  'prentice  years  were 


THE  LATER  ENGLISH  ART      121 

over,  an  uncle  in  London,  fairly  well-to- 
do,  and  stirred  by  his  entreaties,  invited  him 
to  the  capital.  Etty  took  a  drawing  to  Opie, 
who  gave  him  an  introduction  to  Fuseli,  and, 
notwithstanding  his  years  in  the  wilderness, 
at  twenty  he  was  admitted  to  the  Royal 
Academy  Schools.  He  had  first  thought  to 
paint  landscape  :  then  "  heroic  subjects  " — 
another  term,  apparently,  for  classical  his- 
tory. His  eyes  were  opened  next  to  the 
beauty  of  women,  and,  to  justify  his  painting 
of  the  nude,  it  was  to  mythology  that  he 
turned.  The  nude  of  every  kind — blonde 
and  brunette  in  every  pose  of  rest,  and  in 
some  poses  of  at  least  impending  action — 
this,  with  a  thin  sub-soil,  a  slim  foundation, 
of  ancient  fable,  he  painted  to  the  end  of  his 
days;  going  back,  a  bachelor,  to  York,  his 
native  city,  when  he  was  sixty-one,  and  dying 
there,  about  a  year  afterwards. 

More  than  the  chance  observer  of  his  work 
is  aware  of,  and  especially  in  his  earlier  and 
his  middle  days,  Etty  painted  portraits.  Now 
it  was  a  man  of  some  character — the  character 
did  not  escape  him — and  now  it  was  a  kins- 
man's baby;  and  now,  as  in  a  portrait  group 
long  gone  to  America,  it  was  a  young,  engaging 
mother,  and  her  two  children,  a  family  scene, 


122      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

natural  and  "intimate  "  as  it  could  be;  and 
now  it  was  a  "  half-length  "  of  the  daughter 
of  one  who  had  encouraged  Etty  in  difficult 
days ;  and  the  model  here  was  conspicuously 
one  whom  he  enjoyed  to  see  and  to  depict  in 
her  blonde  and  luminous  youth,  so  that  the 
canvas  owns  a  discreet  and  tranquil  gaiety, 
and  gives  occasion  for  the  employment  of  a 
characteristic  palette — his  palette  of  opal  and 
pearl. 

The  pleasantness  of  such  a  portrait  brings 
us  back  to  the  recognition  of  this  artist's 
pre-eminence  in  recording  the  colours  and 
contours  of  women  and  the  flesh.  There 
have  been  draughtsmen  more  learned, 
draughtsmen  undoubtedly  with  a  greater 
natural  aptitude  for  the  retention  and  por- 
trayal of  the  characteristics  of  form.  But  of 
the  beauty  of  women  in  texture  and  hue, 
Etty  was  a  chosen  exponent.  Living  in  our 
own  day,  he  might  have  been,  in  aim  and 
kind,  though  hardly  in  accomplishment,  less 
exceptional.  And  he  would  have  been  more 
encouraged.  Early  Victorian  sentiment  stood 
in  the  way  of  his  carrying  out,  in  a  garden- 
house  at  Buckingham  Palace,  a  scheme  of 
decoration  for  which  he  had  prepared  :  not 
many  years  ago  the  late  Sir  William  Agnew 


WATER  COLOURS  123 

showed  us  at  the  "  Old  Masters  "  a  canvas  on 
which,  in  the  garden  of  the  Hesperides,  figures 
daintily  blonde  or  splendidly  embrowned 
danced  about  the  golden  tree.  The  Buck- 
ingham Palace  work — this  work  in  its  fulness 
— might  have  been  executed,  but  was  not. 
That  is  a  loss.  Men  come  into  the  world  for 
different  ends.  The  simple,  modest,  elderly 
bourgeois,  William  Etty,  came  here,  I  must 
suppose,  so  that,  two  centuries  after  the  works 
of  Rubens,  and  with  a  suavity  that  was  not 
his  at  all,  there  might,  in  colours  incomparably 
subtle,  be  record  of  the  hues  and  texture  of 
the  flesh. 


CHAPTER    XI 

WATER   COLOURS 

OF  all  the  mediums  through  which  Art — 
pictorial  art — expresses  itself,  it  is  no  doubt 
water  colour  that  best  unites  the  suffrages 
of  the  most  different.  The  greatest  painter, 
the  most  qualified  connoisseur,  feels  and  admits 
there  are  occasions  on  which,  used  with  due 
regard  to  its  appropriate  limitations,  water 
colour  can  accomplish  or  suggest  what  nothing 
else  can.  And  at  the  same  time,  strange  to 
say,  the  veriest  tyro,  the  most  superficial 


124      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

excursionist  into  the  land  of  art,  claims  the 
right  to  enjoy  it.  It  seems  to  him — and  more 
particularly  to  her — refined  and  pretty;  and, 
being  refined  and  pretty,  it  is,  from  that  par- 
ticular point  of  view,  exactly  all  that  any  art 
can  possibly  desire  to  be. 

With  a  pride  not  altogether  unjustified, 
it  is  claimed  in  England  that  water  colour 
is  an  English  art.  It  is  an  English  art, 
specially.  But,  like  one  other  art  that 
Englishmen  have  practised  with  uncontested 
success — the  art  of  mezzotint  engraving — it 
is  not  of  English  invention.  It  is  of  English 
practice  and  perfecting.  It  is  within  the 
English  realm,  and  during  now  nearly  two 
centuries,  that  water  colour  has  been  best 
used — and  most  abused,  also. 

Water  colour  does  not  date  from  the  first 
period  of  its  English  practice — which  was 
Paul  Sandby's  time :  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Two  hundred  years 
before  that,  Durer — a  great  initiator  indeed 
—  had  made  brilliant  little  water-colours. 
And  half-way  through  the  interval  of  years 
that  divides  that  Immortal  from  the  neat 
and  ingenious  Sandby,  dainty  and  finished 
water-colours — albeit  they  were  in  some  re- 
spects rather  too  much  upon  the  lines  of  oil 


WATER  COLOURS  125 

painting  —  had  been  wrought  in  the  Low 
Countries,  by  Cornelius  Dusart  and  Adrian 
van  Ostade.  These  performances  detract 
nothing,  however,  from  the  merit  of  the  Eng- 
lish, which  came  later.  The  English  neither 
emulated  Dutch  successes  nor  consciously 
profited  by  Dutch  mistakes.  Artists  of  Eng- 
land developed  water  colour  instinctively  or 
by  reflection.  And  they  developed  it  on  the 
right  lines. 

In  Sandby  there  was  recognized  a  steady- 
going  craftsman.  Something  more  came  with 
the  advent  of  Hearne  and  Dayes.  For  those 
men  gave  to  washed  drawings,  topographical 
and  architectural,  a  little  of  the  poetry  of 
subdued,  harmonious  colour,  and  knew  how 
to  suggest  the  interest  of  atmosphere  and 
distance.  People  of  charming  taste  give  place 
in  their  turn  to  men  of  potent  genius.  There 
had  been  a  touch  of  genius,  the  solemnity  of 
the  real  poet,  in  the  blue-grey,  brown-grey 
drawings  of  John  Cozens,  who  had  worked  in 
Central  Italy  and  south  of  it,  and  given, 
with  a  dignity  and  unity  and  quiet  directness 
no  one  could  better,  his  visions  of  Psestum, 
and  oftthe  Lake  Albano,  and  of  the  stone-pine 
and  the  cypress,  the  shepherd  and  the  sheep. 
Before  the  death  of  Cozens — about  1799 — the 


126      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

more  widely  accomplished  genius  of  Girtin 
had  already  been  exercised.  It  was  not  to 
be  exercised  long.  And  by  "  Tom  Girtin 's  " 
side,  in  his  youth,  had  sat — to  copy  drawings  at 
Dr.  Monro's,  the  connoisseur's,  in  the  Adelphi 
Terrace — Turner,  who  was  to  appreciate  and 
extol  him:  Turner,  who  was  to  survive  his 
comrade  for  nearly  fifty  years,  to  practise 
the  art  in  every  fashion,  and,  having  witnessed 
the  best  performances  of  Cotman,  was  still  to 
live  to  see  the  best  performances  of  Dewint, 
and,  in  1845  or  thereabouts,  when  the  artist 
he  was  beholding  was  rather  more  than  sixty, 
the  magical  enlargement  of  the  vision  and  the 
method  of  David  Cox. 

And  now,  about  some  of  these  water- 
colour  men  of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  and  the  first  fifty  or  sixty  years  of 
the  nineteenth,  a  little  more  detail,  before 
we  can  pass  on  appropriately  to  the  few 
masters  nearly  connected  with  our  own  period, 
and  indeed  in  one  or  two  cases — in  the  ^case 
of  Thomas  Collier  and  of  John  Fulleylove,  for 
instance — actually  of  it. 

Turner  is  treated  to  some  extent  in  the 
chapter  that  is  devoted  to  himself  and  Con- 
stable. This  is  the  moment  for  talking  a 
little  about  Girtin,  whose  drawing  of  "  The 


WATER  COLOURS  127 

White  House  at  Chelsea  "  the  more  largely 
accepted  master  admired  so  much  that  when 
an  outspoken  amateur,  visiting  his  own  draw- 
ings, said  that  he  had  outside,  in  a  hackney 
coach,  "  something  finer  than  any  of  yours," 
Turner,  instead  of  taking  offence,  replied 
cheerfully  and  confidently,  "  Then  I  will  tell 
you  what  it  is  you  have.  You  have  Tom 
Girtin 's  drawing  of  '  The  White  House  at 
Chelsea.'  " 

It  is  reported  that  on  another  occasion,  the 
hermit  of  Queen  Anne  Street  said,  "  If 
Girtin  had  lived,  I  should  have  died  " — a 
remark  which  really  does  not  indicate  that 
Turner  saw  in  Girtin  almost  more  than  there 
is  to  see  in  him.  I  am  not  speaking  of  the 
actual  performances  during  the  few  years — 
as  few  almost  as  Bonington's — vouchsafed 
to  Turner's  presumed  rival :  I  am  speaking 
of  what  Turner  saw,  or  thought  he  saw,  in 
the  distance,  in  his  mind's  eye — Girtin's 
capacity  to  cover,  nobly,  so  many  a  field. 

Girtin  died  before  he  was  thirty.  With 
Turner,  when  he  was  hardly  out  of  his  'teens, 
he  took  a  long  sketching  tour  through  English 
country  town  scenes.  The  drawings  of  both 
men — but  it  was  of  a  time  before  their  topo- 
graphical designs  had  reached  to  poetical  ex- 


128      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

pression — were  engraved  in  Walker's  Itinerant. 
Girtin  must  have  gone  later  than  that  to 
Durham,  York,  and  Ripon,  to  do  the  work 
that  has  given  him  so  much  of  his  fame. 
And  it  was  immediately  upon  the  conclusion 
of  "The  Peace  of  Amiens"  (1802)  that  he 
set  out  ior  Paris,  and  made,  only  a  few 
months  before  his  death,  twenty  prints, 
potent  and  elegant,  of  Paris  architecture,  and 
of  the  stately  passage  of  the  Seine  through 
capital  and  suburb. 

Girtin — like  Turner  at  precisely  the  same 
epoch — advanced  the  use  of  colour ;  and  Girtin 
never  lived  to  a  period  when  the  use  of  it  was 
not  restrained.  With  him,  Colour  was  to  the 
end  the  reticent  handmaid  of  Design  and 
Draughtsmanship;  never  essaying  to  replace 
them,  to  be  a  substitute  for  them.  Yet  his 
colour  did  get  advantageously  beyond  the 
merely  neutral  tints — harmonious  tints,  of 
course — of  his  predecessors,  and  it  remained 
harmonious  too.  .  He  had,  with  frequent 
intricacy  of  learned  composition,  a  breadth,  a 
quietude,  splendid  and  restful. 

Turner,  in  the  long  years  that  followed,  as 
has  been  indicated  elsewhere,  carried  much 
further  intricacy  of  composition,  especially 
on  the  less  desirable  side  of  it,  mere  intricacy 


WATER   COLOURS  129 

of  detail.  But,  in  his  middle  period,  intricacy 
of  colour,  intricacy  of  illumination,  were 
also  conspicuously  his.  And  this  went  on — 
Ambition,  sometimes  triumphing,  sometimes 
overstepping  itself,  "  to  fall  on  the  other  side  " 
— until,  in  the  first  'forties  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  he  entered  upon  his  last  epoch,  and 
forestalled  to  some  extent,  if  one  may  say 
"  forestalled,"  Claude  Monet  the  Impressionist, 
and  Brabazon.  Both  these  men  owed,  and 
confessed  that  they  owed,  much  to  Turner; 
but — hard  as  may  be  the  saying  for  the 
English  amateur,  especially  for  the  English 
amateur  whose  taste  was  formed  thirty  or 
forty  years  ago — each  of  them  in  a  sense 
improved  on  Turner ;  each  did  with  ease,  and, 
partly,  thanks  to  him,  things  which  he  himself 
never  quite  so  happily  essayed,  if  he  essayed 
them  at  all. 

The  demi-god  of  English  amateurs — the 
charming,  gifted  artist  who  is  so  curiously 
assumed  by  them  to  have  been  able  to  centre 
in  himself  every  conceivable  aesthetic  virtue  and 
attractiveness — was  only  just  a  middle-aged 
man  when  there  burst  on  the  world,  to  last 
but  for  the  space  of  a  few  years,  the  brilliant, 
clean,  cold,  superbly  capable  talent  of  Richard 
Parkes  Bonington.  Born  near  Nottingham 


130      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

in  1801,  and,  when  fifteen  years  old,  already 
resident  in  Paris,  Bonington  pored  over  and 
copied,  or  not  copied,  but  made,  in  oil 
sketches,  wonderful  little  interpretations  of 
the  works  of  the  Old  Masters  at  the  Louvre. 
He  got  into  the  intimacy  of  the  Classics — a 
good  thing  always,  for  any  one.  Then  he 
became  a  student  at  the  ficole  des  Beaux 
Arts;  then  an  occasional  pupil  of  the  Baron 
Gros ;  then  a  dazzling  and  correct  dealer,  in 
oils  and  water-colour,  with  themes  of  archi- 
tecture and  landscape.  A  few  years,  and 
it  was  over;  for  in  1828  he  died.  We  had  to 
mention  him ;  and  it  was  better,  perhaps,  to 
mention  him  here  than  elsewhere ;  and  as 
long  as  his  work  lasts  he  is  certain  to  be 
honourably  known.  But  English  though  he 
was — and  not  only  by  his  birth — English  also 
in  a  measure  by  the  order  of  his  talent,  by  the 
order  of  the  themes  to  which  his  taste  often 
took  him — Bonington  in  the  English  School 
must  be  reckoned  isolated,  or  nearly  so. 
Harding,  who  in  lithography  has  interpreted 
him  so  well — and  Bonington  was  himself  a 
very  capable  original  lithographer — is  to 
some  extent  a  connecting  link.  But  the 
connection  cannot  be  carried  far. 

An    Englishman    profoundly,    though    an 


WATER   COLOURS  131 

Englishman  who,  on  two  or  three  occasions, 
at  a  time  when  the  achievement  was  not  a 
frequent  one,  had  travelled  in  France  and 
lingered  there,  was  one  of  the  two  great 
masters  of  the  Norwich  School  :  John  Sell 
Cot  man.  Cotman's  noblest  and  most  authentic 
and  authoritative  work  was  done,  in  the  main, 
in  water  colour.  There  are  very  few  ex- 
ceptions. As  an  oil  painter  his  performances 
were  infrequent,  and  there  is  no  reason  to 
consider  that  they  were  always  satisfactory. 
He  was  a  master  of  water  colour  —  as,  to 
bring  under  consideration,  for  a  moment, 
minor  mediums,  he  was  a  master  of  the 
charcoal  and  of  the  pencil  drawing.  From 
first  to  last  he  saw  his  themes  with  dignity 
and  elegance.  Almost  invariably  he  rendered 
them  with  breadth  and  power.  Working 
from  about  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  to  the  earliest  days  of  its  fifth  decade 
— he  died  in  the  first  'forties — Cotman 
painted,  or  drew,  architecture  (that  is,  the 
Gothic  churches  and  great  civic  buildings  of 
Normandy,  as  of  East  Anglia),  Landscape, 
the  landscape  of  Norfolk  and  the  landscape 
of  the  Thames  only  a  little  way  up-stream 
from  London,  and,  lastly,  in  point  perhaps  of 
frequency,  but  not  in  point  of  power  and 

I  2 


132      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

importance,  the  coast -line  of  his  native  county 
and  the  dull  thunder  of  the  falling  waters  of 
his  inhospitable  Northern  Sea. 

As  a  draughtsman  of  open  landscape  and 
of  landscape  "  effects  " — especially  in  charcoal 
— Cotman  increased  in  strength  and  in  ex- 
pressive economy  of  means  until  the  last. 
To  do  so  is,  for  an  artist  of  high  capacity, 
no  altogether  unusual  thing.  As  long  as 
capable  age  lasts  (and  Cotman  was  hardly 
old  at  all)  it  is  not  unlikely  that  in  this 
direction — the  direction  of  magical  short- 
hand— there  may  be  progress.  And  as  regards 
Cotman,  one  would  not  claim  that  the  pro- 
gress here  was  suddenly  important.  Where 
the  change  was  a  serious  one,  in  the  work  of 
Cotman — I  will  not  say  the  progress — it  was 
in  the  matter  of  colour.  But  this  change 
was  not  the  accompaniment  of  only  his  latest 
years.  It  came  about  in  early  middle  life. 
His  water-colour  drawings  of  the  quite  early 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century  have  what 
was,  for  the  period  in  question,  a  full,  a 
rather  unusually  full  measure  of  variety  and 
strength  of  hue.  Of  course  that  full  measure 
never  included  violence,  garishness,  and  never 
actual  splendour.  It  was  sobriety,  solidity, 
an  ordered  and  harmonious  beauty — neither 


WATER   COLOURS  133 

less  nor  more.  Some  of  what  were  Mr. 
James  Reeve's  possessions  of  the  earlier  dates 
(now  in  the  British  Museum  Print  Room),  and 
some  fine  things  that  still  remain  at  Norwich, 
and  the  "  Bishopgate  Bridge  "  drawing  which 
I  bought  at  Yarmouth  in  one  fortunate  hour, 
more  than  thirty  years  ago  (and  which  Mr. 
Reeve  assigns  to  about  the  year  1810),  are 
witnesses  to  this.  It  was  about  1820  or  1825 
that  Cotman,  who  had  already  been  a  little 
ahead  of  his  time,  moved  on  and  was  still 
ahead  of  it  in  method,  though  not  always 
with  the  old  success.  To  this  period,  and 
from  it  on  to  the  end,  belong  those  water- 
colours  which  are  now  splendidly  radiant — 
dreams  of  gold  and  blue,  quite  in  advance  of 
Turner  at  that  date — or  heated,  discordant, 
garish ;  and  it  is,  alas  !  a  little  more  likely 
that  they  will  be  the  latter  than  the  former. 
Of  the  latter — obviously  undesirable  :  cursed, 
so  to  say,  already  in  my  own  description  of 
them,  by  the  use  of  three  disparaging  adjectives 
— I  need  cite  no  examples.  Of  the  former, 
of  the  serenely  splendid,  let  me  cite  the  "  Blue 
Afternoon  "  and  "  Golden  Twickenham  "  that 
were  acquired  by  that  generous  collector, 
James  Pyke  Thompson,  who  gave  them  to  the 
Turner  House  at  Penarth. 


134      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

To  sum  up,  in  regard  to  Cotman,  it  will 
have  been  made  plain  already  that  while 
I  think  that  nothing  can  be  finer  in  its  own 
way  than  a  Cotman  of  the  later  time,  if  it  is 
fine  or  satisfactory  at  all,  I  think  that  the 
steady  level  of  charming  and  even  powerful 
accomplishment  is  to  be  looked  for  in  the 
work  of  the  earlier.  In  his  later  years,  in 
many  of  them,  the  great  Cot  man's  spirit 
passed  from  extremes  of  depression  to  ex- 
tremes of  exaltation.  His  nervous  system 
was  on  the  brink  of  disaster.  Turner's 
"  Elect  Cotman  !  Elect  Cotman  !  "  to  the 
authorities  of  King's  College,  who  wanted  a 
drawing-master — and  who  had  the  chance, 
and  took  it,  of  electing  a  genius — would  not 
have  been  uttered  then.  When  it  was  uttered 
there  was  still  in  Turner's  mind,  and  still  in 
great  measure  in  fact,  the  man  of  genius 
wrhose  ways  and  thoughts  and  eyes  and  hand 
were  steadily  sane. 

Samuel  Prout — great  in  his  pencil  drawings 
— has  been  overrated  as  a  water-colour  painter 
There  was  not  much  fine  colour  in  his  work, 
during  the  period  of  his  greatest  output  and 
his  greatest  contemporary  popularity;  and 
there  was  a  constantly  repeated  mannerism 
and  cleverish  trickiness  in  the  broken  line  of 


WATER   COLOURS  135 

his  camePs-hair  brush — sometimes  even  his 
reed-pen — by  which  he  rather  mechanically 
noted,  implied  or  chronicled,  the  broken  and 
worn  surface  of  his  Gothic  stones.  Also,  his 
scenes  in  colour  are  a  little  airless,  generally. 
His  colour,  or  his  application  of  it,  took  but 
scanty  heed  of  "  values  "  and  of  "  planes." 
What  is  really  good  with  him,  in  no  way 
meanly  imitative,  besides  his  pencil  drawings, 
is,  first,  his  well-considered  sketches,  with 
a  controlling  line  or  lines,  supported  by  pale 
wash  (of  that  his  admirable  drawing  of  Calais 
in  the  "  Prout  and  Hunt  "  book  of  Ruskin's 
is  a  convincing  example),  and,  second,  the 
somewhat  early  but  not  very  early  water- 
colour  English  coast-pieces,  which  have  a 
solidity,  a  massiveness,  that  resembles,  and 
brings  him  at  this  period  strangely  near  to, 
the  more  essentially  poetic  and  more  sensitive 
artist,  Cotman. 

David  Cox,  who  in  a  certain  measure  was 
inspired  in  his  old  age,  who  breathed  into 
his  drawings,  then,  his  sense  of  pathos  (the 
landscape  weeps  in  "  A  Welsh  Funeral  "),  his 
sense  of  mountain  and  of  woodland  beauty, 
his  sense  of  the  adventure  of  the  wind,  "  the 
world's  rejected  "  but  persistent  "  guest," 
that  passes  under  rain -charged  skies  and  over 


136      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

an  earth  laid  prostrate,  but  yet  not  finally 
subdued — David  Cox  spent  the  greater  part 
of  his  life  in  teaching  amiable  women,  and  in 
doing  pretty  things  :  neat,  dainty,  monstrously 
pretty  things  sometimes.  It  is  not  the  bulk 
of  his  work  that  will  endure,  but  the  excep- 
tional performance  of  his  later  time,  when  he 
rose  to  his  full  stature  and  delivered  in  no 
faltering  voice  his  message  of  simple  homeliness 
and  simple  sublimity. 

And  Mr.  Dewint's  drawings  ? — "  Mr.  De- 
wint,"  as  Henry  Vaughan  used  always  to 
say  to  me  in  talking  of  him — what  is  to  be 
the  fate  of  these  works  ?  The  large  and 
laboured  things — the  things  which  ought  not 
to  have  been  done  in  water  colour  at  all, — 
the  immense  "  Nottinghams,"  and  one  knows 
not  what  else,  tortured,  tortured,  till  all  the 
life  has  gone  out  of  them — they  must  please 
those  only  who  demand  the  painful  evidence 
of  labour,  and  not  its  dexterous  suppression. 
But  Dewint's  sketches,  whilst  they  preserve 
their  colour  fairly  intact  (Dewint's  grey  skies 
have  a  horrible  trick  of  getting  reddish,  because, 
under  exposure  to  the  light,  only  the  Indian 
red  remains,  and  the  cobalt-blue,  that  he 
united  with  it  to  make  grey,  quite  vanishes) 
they,  whilst  successfully  preserved,  will  de- 


WATER   COLOURS  137 

light  the  lovers  of  a  masterly  simplicity,  of 
the  attainment  of  an  aim  seen  clearly  from 
the  first,  and  rapidly  reached.  There  is  nothing 
very  romantic — still  less  is  there  a  suggestion 
of  the  pretty — in  the  sketches  of  Dewint. 
But  they  do  not  sing  the  praise  of  the  un- 
gainly. From  the  admiration  of  the  repul- 
sive in  nature  and  humanity — and  it  is  in 
humanity  rather  than  nature  that  the  repul- 
sive presents  itself — from  the  admiration  of 
the  repulsive,  Dewint,  like  all  sane  artists 
and  sane  critics,  was  spared. 

Dewint  gives  you  the  common  land  and 
the  more  subdued  aspect  of  the  common 
day.  Under  the  sky,  sometimes,  of  a  June 
sunshine,  much  oftener  under  the  diffused 
grey  of  the  autumn  heavens  in  which  no 
change  of  light  seems  imminent  or  hurried, 
lies,  perhaps  the  windmill  or  the  haystack,  in 
a  great  flat  land,  or  a  canal  boat  makes  its 
steady  and  slow  way  between  the  long 
stretched  banks,  or  the  scene  may  be  a 
rising  ploughed  land,  backed  by  trees  and  a 
church  tower.  All  is  touched  massively  and 
simply,  the  last  stroke  seeming  to  have 
followed  pretty  closely  on  the  first. 

I  cannot  feel  that  there  was  a  single  great 
painter  of  water  colours  between  David  Cox 


138      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

and  Dewint  on  the  one  hand  and  Hine  and 
Thomas  Collier  on  the  other.  There  were 
many  interesting  ones.  William  Callow  was 
interesting,  especially  in  that  early  day  which, 
in  his  extreme  old  age,  he  learnt  to  despise. 
How  delicate  was  his  work,  how  quiet,  how 
measured,  and  how  good,  when  it  was  ex- 
hibited at  the  rooms  of  the  Old  Water  Colour 
Society,  by  the  side  of  Prout's,  by  the  side  of 
the  nobler  of  the  David  Cox's ! 

In  this  connection,  it  is  worth  remembering 
that  while  most  of  the  earlier  practitioners  of 
water  colour  were  members  of  the  "  Old  " 
Society — the  old  Society  included  John  Varley, 
a  giant  by  reason  of  the  noble  Tightness  of 
the  broad,  yet  always  careful  sketches  of  his 
first  period  of  almost  neutral  tint — most  of  the 
later  men  of  real  distinction  belonged  to  the 
"  New  Society,"  as  it  was  called ;  subsequently 
it  became  "  The  Institute."  Callow,  like  Varley 
and  the  rest — like  Prout  and  Dewint — belonged 
to  the  "  Old  Society."  Hine  and  Thomas 
Collier — the  people  I  am  coming  to — belonged 
to  "  The  Institute,"  or  "  The  New."  So  did 
Fulleylove,  who  died  since  they  did — one  of 
the  very  finest  draughtsmen  of  Southern 
cities,  of  Classic  lands,  of  ordered  gardens 
where  the  sunlight  rests  on  the  yew  hedge 


WATER  COLOURS  139 

and  the  statuary.  And  so  did  an  artist 
whom  this  generation  has  apparently  for- 
gotten— his  drawings  rest,  one  must  suppose, 
in  but  few  hands — David  McKewan,  who, 
having  painted  commonplace,  if  not  cheap, 
catchy  landscape,  out  of  doors,  during  one 
generation,  was,  by  the  consideration  of  the 
Gods,  afflicted  with  the  most  violent  rheu- 
matism, so  that  he  never  painted  out  of  doors 
again  at  all,  but  suddenly  became  a  man  of 
genius,  and  drew,  with  breadth  and  richness, 
(on  a  rough  sugar-paper,  I  think),  the 
tapestried  interiors  of  Knole,  Cotehele,  and 
Cassiobury. 

But  it  is  time  to  speak  of  Hine  and  Collier, 
and  to  end  our  rough  survey  of  artists 
who  will  last  through  the  quality  of  their 
performances  in  a  medium  English  indeed. 

Hine  was  a  little  like  McKewan  in  this  one 
thing,  that  he  did  not  find  his  real  vocation 
until  he  was  middle-aged.  Had  he  died  at 
fifty,  nobody  living  now  would  ever  have 
heard  of  him.  By  that  time  he  appeared 
to  have  tried  everything,  and  in  nothing  had 
he  succeeded.  Then  suddenly — as  I  remember 
well  his  telling  me,  when  he  was  nearly 
eighty,  and  a  Classic  while  living — it  occurred 
to  him  to  paint  the  Downs,  the  heights  and 


140      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

hollows  of  those  rolling  Sussex  hills  amongst 
which  he  was  born.  He  painted  them  with 
knowledge  and  tenderness;  delicately  yet 
decisively  they  emerged  upon  his  drawing- 
paper  :  the  suave,  broad  sweep  of  the  silvery 
or  golden -green  chalk  down;  its  softly 
shadowed  "bottoms";  its  silence  and  its 
peace;  its  remote  background  of  pearly  or 
opalescent  sky.  No  one  had  done  the  thing 
before.  Copley  Fielding,  capable  craftsman 
enough,  but  so  much  more  of  a  drawing- 
master,  had  only  seemed  to  do  it. 

One  man  did  it  afterwards,  or  in  Hine's 
advanced  old  age;  and  that  was  Thomas 
Collier.  And  no  two  men  could  have  done 
it  in  ways  more  absolutely  different  than 
these,  who,  as  it  happens,  were  friends,  of 
different  ages :  never  master  and  pupil. 
Again,  one  must  remember  that  what  became 
the  specialty  of  Hine  never  became  more  than 
the  frequent  but  still  the  almost  accidental 
occupation  of  Collier.  To  the  Downs,  of 
which  he  felt,  and  made  us  feel,  the  firm 
structure,  as  they  stretched  themselves  from 
the  foreground  through  broken  mile  and  mile 
of  distance,  under  clouds  that  gathered  or 
clouds  that  were  spent,  Collier  did  justice, 
in  the  fashion  of  a  consummate  sketcher 


WATER  COLOURS  141 

of  effects.  Hine  painted  the  afternoon  that 
lasted;  Collier,  the  minutes  that  went. 

And  Collier  painted  too — or  "  drew,'*  as 
one  says  generally  when  water  colour  is 
the  medium — Collier  drew  as  well  and  as 
forcibly,  with  an  immediate  truth  (but  he 
put  each  touch  deliberately),  the  barge's  un- 
romantic  progress  along  the  monotonous 
mileage  of  the  Kennet  and  Avon  Canal, 
with  dark  elm  trees  in  the  flat  distance, 
a  grey  sky  over  it;  or  drew  the  more  pro- 
nounced features  of  the  upland  of  the  North ; 
or  drew  the  grey  sea-waters  beyond  the  long 
coast -line.  Of  course,  there  is  no  obvious 
violence  about  the  art  of  Collier.  But  there 
is  obvious  strength.  So  certain,  so  decided, 
is  his  hold  on  his  subject,  that  it  becomes 
a  hold  upon  the  student  of  his  work  as  well. 
His  is  an  interpretation  of  the  natural  scene 
steadily  potent,  because  at  bottom  it  is 
strangely  subtle  besides. 

I  think  we  may  have  two  or  three  great 
painters  in  water  colour  still  living  amongst 
us.  Collier,  Hine,  Fulleylove — and  why  not 
add  Brabazon  ? — are  the  last  who  have 
died. 


142       PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 
CHAPTER  XII 

THE    GRAND    MANNER AND    NATTIER 

As,  in  the  life  of  many  a  great  artist  there  is 
a  moment,  distinctly  ascertainable,  at  which 
he  throws  off  the  influences,  now  usefully 
supporting,  now  overwhelming  and  injurious, 
that  have  affected  his  earlier  work,  so,  in  the 
history  of  a  great  School  of  Painting,  in  the 
history  of  the  art  of  a  race,  there  comes  a 
time  when  the  national  production  is  exotic 
no  longer,  when  it  owns  no  accidental  bias, 
is  controlled  by  no  influence  from  without, 
but  at  once  obeys  and  reveals  the  native 
instinct,  is  original,  individual,  new. 

To  France  that  time  came — in  painting, 
even  more  than  in  architecture — in  the 
earlier  decades  of  the  eighteenth  century: 
when  Louis  Quinze  was  young,  when  Watteau 
had  left  Valenciennes.  To  say  that  there  had 
been  nothing  of  France  herself  in  the  best 
French  painting  of  the  seventeenth  century — 
in  the  designs  of  stately  dignity  we  owe  to 
Poussin  and  to  Claude — would  be,  of  course, 
to  say  too  much.  Yet  it  was  Italian 
residence,  and  the  example  of  Italian  art, 
that  shaped  these  men's  creations.  Their 
work  was  no  more  mainly  French  than, 


GRAND   MANNER  AND  NATTIER   143 

in  the  selfsame  century,  was  the  work  of 
Berghem  and  Jan  Both  mainly  or  character- 
istically Dutch.  Not  till  the  eighteenth 
century  opened  was  France  the  mistress  in 
her  own  house  of  art.  Then  it  was  French 
methods  that  carried  into  execution  French 
conceptions.  We  behold  then  for  the  first 
time,  to  the  full,  in  her  painting,  the  vivacity, 
the  easy  correctness,  the  grace  and  gaiety  and 
sensibility  of  her  spirit  :  "  V&me  franqaise  " 
— that  which  everywhere  has  made  France 
what  she  is. 

But  the  earlier  time — no  time  of  immaturity, 
let  us  remember ;  for,  though  it  did  not  give 
us  Watteau's  indescribable  charm,  it  had 
passed  long  beyond  the  stage  of  the  Primitive's 
naive  grace — that  seventeenth  century  can- 
not be  dismissed  till  to  its  character  a  word 
of  tribute  has  been  paid.  It  was  the  day  of 
the  Grand  Manner.  Wanting  though  their  art 
was  in  intimacy  and  tenderness,  wanting 
though  it  was  even  in  the  reflective  pathos, 
the  poignant  melancholy,  which  are  among 
the  most  appealing  gifts  of  him  who  was 
accounted  the  master  of  the  frivolous,  of 
the  monotonously  gay  —  I  am  talking  of 
Watteau — the  seventeenth  -  century  leaders, 
Poussin  and  Claude,  had  had  bestowed 


144      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

upon  them  in  generous  measure  the  virile 
qualities  of  creative  design.  Their  native 
dignity  had  been  fortified  by  learning,  and 
it  was  not  always  unconsciously  that  every 
work  of  theirs,  from  preparatory  drawing  to 
canvas  colossal  and  stately,  was  charged  with 
that  patent  of.  nobility  men  are  wont  to  think 
they  have  described  when  they  have  termed 
it  "  Style."  "  Style,"  though  it  is  greatly  a 
gift,  is  also  greatly  an  inheritance.  Yet  in  the 
transmission  of  it,  facility  is  never  guaranteed, 
and  it  is  often  withheld.  Poussin  and  Claude 
were  so  constituted  that  they  were  able  to 
receive  it.  They  got  it  from  the  art  of  the 
Italian  Renaissance — from  the  atmosphere  of 
the  South. 

Claude,  near  to  nature  in  his  atmospheric 
effects,  expressed,  in  Landscape,  changing 
moods.  The  serenity  of  the  morning  is 
followed  by  the  obscurity,  or  the  at  least 
threatened  obscurity,  of  midday  storm.  The 
clouds  sail  on ;  the  drover  and  the  shepherd 
of  the  Campagna  slacken  the  progress  of 
their  herds  and  flocks,  and  the  long  hours 
end  with  a  flush  of  sunset.  In  Claude's 
landscape,  to  give  it  vitality  and  signifi- 
cance, there  must  be  some  interest  of  human 
fortunes,  in  the  Present ;  and  every  fragment 


GRAND  MANNER  AND   NATTIER     145 

of  ruin  that  lifts  itself  in  Roman  regions  is 
a  reminder  to  him  of  the  Past,  and  his  art  is 
full  of  its  sentiment. 

Poussin  paints  history  more  explicitly : 
paints  with  unerring  dignity  and,  it  may 
seem  to  us,  with  a  less  praiseworthy  remote- 
ness, history  or  mythology  that  is  classical 
and  history  that  is  sacred.  To  see  both  well, 
no  one  in  Europe  is  obliged  to  take  a  further 
journey  than  that  to  the  National  Gallery 
and  the  Louvre.  The  Louvre  "  Finding  of 
Moses,"  though  very  characteristic  in  the 
deeply  considered  disposition  of  figures  and  of 
background,  and  of  all  that  that  background 
contains  to  give  to  the  composition  a  stately 
grace,  lacks,  perhaps,  that  full  measure  of 
masculine  fascination  that  is  discernible  in 
a  piece  in  Trafalgar  Square.  Mainly,  the 
interest  of  a  Claude  picture  is  to  be  found 
in  its  landscape ;  but  the  figures  count,  and 
help,  and  this  not  merely  as  elements  in  the 
composition.  To  a  greater  extent  the  interest 
of  a  Poussin  picture  is  to  be  found  in  its 
presentation  of  incident — yes,  the  incident's 
"  presentation,"  rather  than  the  incident  itself. 
To  find  interest  merely  in  the  incident  itself 
would  be  to  reduce  the  Grand  Manner  to  the 

proportions  of  Genre. 
K 


146      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

The  grand  manner,  as  applied  to  portrait, 
and  not  to  classical  landscape,  lived  on  to  a 
period  at  which  it  was  already  in  contact  with 
the  ways  of  a  newer  time,  and  the  charm  of  a 
newer  school.  Rigaud  and  Largilliere,  with 
their  "  portraits  d'apparat  " — their  stately, 
ceremonious,  but  still  sterling  records  of 
monarchs,  administrators,  warriors,  dominant 
priests — are,  in  a  certain  sense,  the  descend- 
ants and  followers  of  the  first  leaders  of 
French  art  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
it  is  to  the  general  conception  of  dignity  in 
painting  common  to  that  time  that  their  own 
is  most  akin.  The  finer  graces  of  art  were 
neither  Rigaud's  nor  Largilli&re's.  About 
Largilliere' s  portraits,  this  is  to  be  noted — 
they  are  the  portraits  of  gentlemen  and  ladies, 
when,  as  is  almost  always  the  case,  it  is  that 
that  they  intend  to  be.  An  exception  may 
be  thought  to  be  furnished,  by  one  interesting 
portrait  group  at  the  Louvre,  which  we  must 
respect  cordially.  It  is  the  group  depicting 
the  painter  and  his  wife  and  their  young 
daughter.  The  painter  is  all  right.  This 
earnest  and  judicious  man  is  by  personal 
experience,  by  talent  and  by  character,  above 
the  rank  of  his  family.  His  daughter,  indeed, 
is  harmless  and  neutral — but  that  is  not  saying 


GRAND   MANNER  AND   NATTIER     147 

much.  His  wife  is  a  sensible  but  unengaging 
lower  middle-class  housekeeper. 

Nattier,  with  whom  the  last  lights  of  the 
grand  manner  flicker  out,  would  probably 
have  hesitated  to  complete  a  portraiture  so 
prosaic  as  this  one.  Would  that  have  been 
because  he  lacked  courage,  or  because  he 
possessed  high  taste  ?  It  is  certain  that  he 
often  missed  Largilliere's  sturdy  grip  of  his 
theme.  He  was  not  bent  upon  character- 
painting.  Even  a  visible  likeness,  the  seizure 
of  which  need  not,  one  thinks,  have  presented 
many  difficulties,  was  by  Nattier  often  enough 
abandoned.  That  makes  it  a  little  hard  to 
identify  some  of  his  portraits,  although  his 
portraits  were,  for  the  most  part,  of  the 
famous.  But  the  models  of  Nattier,  when 
they  lack  individuality,  do  not  lack  indi- 
viduality to  be  deprived  of  style.  And  if 
his  pictures  are  not  often  intimate,  they  are 
never  inefficient,  in  the  presentation  of  head- 
strong Princess,  noble  dame,  illustrious  demi- 
mondaine,  as  these  are  wont  to  face  the  world 
and  play  their  parts  of  honour  and  dishonour 
on  its  stage. 

The  Louvre,  Versailles,  Chantilly,  Hertford 
House,  and  a  few  great  private  collections 
of  things  inherited  or  acquired,  in  England 

K  2 


148      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

and  France,   contain  notable  Nattiers.     The 
Louvre  contains  this  man's  conception  of  the 
Magdalen — it  is  attractively  realized,  and  in  a 
spirit  not  wanting  in  shrewdness.     That  many 
of  his  heroines  prepare  to  be  Magdalens  may 
be  the  reflection  of  the  pessimist  who  bears  in 
mind  their  aspect  or  their  history.     The  col- 
lection of  Sir  Lionel  Phillips  contains  a  noble  if 
fanciful  vision  of  one  of  them :  the  Duchesse  de 
Chateauroux.     Hertford  House    contains,    in 
the   portrait   reproduced   in   this   volume,    a 
delightful  portrayal  of  a  woman  whom  there 
has  been  ground  for  imagining  to  have  been 
the  Duchesse  de  Chateauroux  again ;   but  the 
evidence  on  the  whole  makes  for  this  picture 
being  a  second  and  different  version  of  Nattier's 
rendering  of   that  Mile,    de    Clermont — "  feu 
Mademoiselle  de  Clermont,  Princesse  du  sang, 
Surintendante   de   la   Maison   de   la   Heine," 
she   has  once   been   described — whose   suave 
and  friendly  beauty  is  admittedly  chronicled 
in  a  picture  that  was  the  Due  d'Aumale's,  a 
picture  that  is  an  ornament  of  Chantilly,  as 
that    in    English    possession   is   of   Hertford 
House.     Versailles  holds  in  greatest  number 
Nattier's  Princesses.     It  holds  them,  too,  in 
greatest    variety,    from    Marie    Adelaide   de 
France,    comely,    observant,    thoughtful,    to 


GRAND  MANNER  AND  NATTIER     149 

Louise  de  Lorraine,  lusty  and  polished,  splendid 
and  imperious. 

The  Samuel  Butler  who  was  not  the  author 
of  Hudibras — the  interesting  Butler  whose 
Erewhon  made  its  less  lasting  mark  in  the  third 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century — said  that 
a  great  portrait  was  "  always  more  a  portrait 
of  the  painter  than  of  the  painted."  That  is  an 
exaggerated  recognition  of  a  truth  not  difficult 
to  grasp,  yet  sometimes  forgotten — the  truth 
that,  even  putting  technique  apart,  if  the  model 
collaborates  with  the  painter,  the  painter,  it 
must  at  least  be  allowed,  collaborates  with  the 
model.  For  there  is,  independently  of  execu- 
tion, the  point  of  view,  the  individual  concep- 
tion of  the  thing  that  is  beheld.  Mr.  Butler 
follows  up  his  visible  exaggeration  of  the  fact, 
by  amplification  of  his  statement,  by  giving  his 
examples.  For  instance,  "  When  we  look  at 
a  portrait  by  Holbein  or  Rembrandt,  it  is  of 
Holbein  or  Rembrandt  that  we  think,  more 
than  of  the  subject  of  their  pictures."  Possibly. 
But  our  doing  so  is  only  by  reason  of  the 
performer  being  more  interesting  than  the 
person  represented.  We  have  learned  that 
he  is  illustrious ;  we  believe  that  all  his  ways 
are  important.  To  us,  then,  the  likeness  of  the 
person  he  paints  is  not  the  essential  matter ; 


150       PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

the  essential  matter  is  at  least,  in  that  case,  the 
method,  the  execution.  It  is  the  brush-work, 
perhaps — for  there  is  the  artist's  handling.  Or 
it  is  the  palette — for  there  is  the  artist's  scheme 
of  colour.  Now  Nattier's  execution,  adequate, 
brilliant,  is  yet  not  in  the  highest  degree 
masterly.  And  the  agreeable  artist,  whose 
record  of  the  individuality  of  character  is  not 
his  strong  point  at  all,  addresses  us  naturally 
with  an  authority  less  august  and  unquestioned 
than  the  authority  of  Holbein  or  Rembrandt, 
of  Titian,  of  Velasquez;  it  may  be  even  of 
Goya.  His  is  a  lighter  effort  to  a  lighter  end. 
His  own  soul  has  not  been  in  travail. 

But,  without  a  keen  or  deep  sense  of  personal 
character — at  all  events  of  the  character  of 
men — without  any  really  subtle  differentia- 
tion of  the  types  or  beauties  of  women,  whose 
fairness  and  whose  flower-like  health  he 
painted  and  enjoyed,  Nattier,  unconcerned 
often  with  the  particular  likeness,  was  never 
unconcerned  with  the  confirmation  and  en- 
forcement of  the  sex's  charm.  The  spirit  of 
womanly  beauty  is  generally  on  his  canvasses. 
He  is  the  painter,  not  of  humanity,  but  of  the 
female  sex — in  specimens  for  the  most  part 
desirable. 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY  ART    151 


CHAPTER  XIII 

FRENCH    EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   ART 

WATTEAU,  who  led  French  art  throughout 
the  most  remarkable  of  all  its  periods,  was 
nothing  less  than  one  of  the  world's  great 
masters.  He  led  French  art  not  only  in  his 
lifetime  :  his  spirit  and  the  work  he  left 
behind  him  led  it  for  two  generations  after 
his  death.  Gradually,  slowly,  the  impulse 
was  exhausted.  About  a  hundred  years  ago, 
Watteau,  and  those  to  whom  by  him  the 
Bread  of  Life  had  been  given,  were  relegated 
to  a  secondary  or  a  yet  humbler  place.  Theirs 
from  that  time,  until  the  nineteenth  century 
was  far  advanced — theirs  was  a  back  seat. 

But  the  judges  of  art — the  critics,  the 
historians,  amateurs,  practitioners;  all  but 
the  hopelessly  academic — have  now  again, 
for  some  time  now,  come  to  their  senses 
in  this  matter.  Watteau  is  no  longer 
accounted  a  trifling  entertainer,  lightly  minis- 
tering to  the  idle,  because,  viewed  super- 
ficially, he  has  the  air  of  being  only  the 
chronicler  of  a  long,  pleasant  picnic.  No,  no ; 
Watteau  has  something  else  to  do  than  merely 


152      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

to  invite  you  to  take  with  him  and  various 
ladies  of  a  "  coming-on  "  disposition,  a  circular 
tour  of  "the  enchanted  isle."  It  is  his  to 
express  perfectly,  in  terms  of  paint,  the  vision 
of  a  landscape  gracious  and  familiar,  the  pre- 
sence of  a  humanity  that  has  endless  varieties 
of  character,  experience,  feeling — the  life  of 
men  and  women  and  of  little  children,  who, 
to  adopt  to  the  matter  Balzac's  words  in 
speaking  of  the  daughter  of  Evelina  de 
Hanska,  "breathe  the  air  through  every  one 
of  their  pores,  and  all  their  soul  lives." 

The  almost  fanciful  limitations  of  Watteau's 
themes,  in  his  great  day,  when  he  was  himself 
most  truly — for  his  merely  natural  landscapes, 
and  his  military  or  camp  pieces,  are  the  work 
of  his  earlier  and  more  tentative  time — are 
the  signs  of  no  corresponding  limitations  in 
his  understanding  or  in  his  outlook  on  the 
world.  What  were  really  his  accomplishments  ? 
As  a  draughtsman  he  has  shown  himself  the 
equal  of  Raphael — the  Raphael  of  the  Classic 
period  and  of  the  Roman  labours,  of  the 
excellent  designs  to  which  the  contemporary 
engravings  of  Marc  Antonio  ensured  a  wider 
publicity  than  could,  without  these,  have 
been  theirs.  And  the  equal  of  Raphael  was, 
of  course,  the  equal  of  Ingres.  Measured  even 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY  ART     153 

against  Rembrandt  for  expressive  draughts- 
manship, Watteau  comes  off  not  badly.  He 
had  not,  indeed,  at  his  command,  apparently, 
the  magical  shorthand  of  the  mighty  Dutch- 
man. His  was  a  middle  way.  Rembrandt's 
way  altogether  would  have  been  incompatible 
with  Watteau 's  ideal  of  completeness  and 
suavity,  hardly  less  than  it  would  have  been 
with  Raphael's  great  Greek  sense  of  purely 
formal  beauty.  Beauty — though  not  so  much 
formal  beauty  as  sweetness  of  happy  life 
and  pleasure -giving  temperament — dominated 
Watteau.  The  ungainly  he  put  aside.  But 
the  merely  pretty,  the  comeliness  that  is 
facade  only,  that  has  nothing  to  reveal,  nothing 
to  be  explored,  would  have  seemed  to  him 
about  as  unsatisfactory  as  the  hideous. 

We  are  anticipating  matters  a  little ;  yet  now 
the  observation  shall  be  made :  Boucher  the 
fertile,  unfatigued  recorder  of  feminine  grace 
and  physical  perfection — Boucher  (whom  in 
England  it  has  for  generations  been  the  custom 
to  malign)  would  have  been  greater  even  than 
he  is — would  have  been  nearer  to  Watteau — 
had  he  looked  at  womankind  with  some  touch 
of  high  imagination ;  with  understanding  that 
reaches  forth  beyond  material  things.  Instead, 
however,  of  stepping,  as  it  were,  into  the  place 


154      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

of  the  poet  who  exalts  and  adores,  the  pose 
into  which  Boucher  fell,  quite  naturally,  was 
the  pose  of  an  experienced  Sultan. 

It  is  not  uninstructive  to  continue  for  a 
moment  the  comparison  between  Watteau  and 
Boucher,  by  a  reference  to  their  perception 
of  colour,  and  to  their  handling  of  it.  Rose 
and  pale  blue,  the  charming  combination,  by 
no  one  used  more  happily  than  by  Boucher, 
became  a  convention :  was  a  convention  from 
the  beginning  perhaps,  appropriate  to  the 
schemes  of  the  lighter  master,  the  more  super- 
ficial surveyor  of  the  world.  A  painter 
avowedly  decorative,  Boucher  found  that 
combination,  and  all  that  was  akin  to  it, 
adequate  to  the  expression  of  his  flowing  line, 
his  supple  grace.  He  was  right  in  finding  it 
adequate.  It  would  be  absurd  to  reproach 
a  painter  of  mainly  decorative  intention  for 
not  having  composed  a  palette  comparable 
to  that  Venetian  one,  with  its  tones  so  warm 
and  deep  and  resonant,  that  alone  could 
have  satisfied,  and  alone  sufficed  for,  Watteau, 
in  his  smaller  canvasses,  his  restricted  surfaces 
that  must  be  charged  fully,  that  must  be 
glowing  and  rich.  Still,  here  again  is  revealed 
the  difference  between  the  higher  and  more 
difficult  and  the  humbler  and  easier  ideal. 


FRENCH   18TH-CENTURY  ART     155 

"  Easier,"  but  yet  not  easy — so  that,  in  regard 
to  this  artist,  we  do  not  need  to  reach  the 
question  of  draughtsmanship  before  we  realize 
the  truth  of  the  old  eulogy:  "One  is  not 
Boucher  by  wishing  to  be."  The  palette 
of  Watteau  had  its  great,  deep  notes.  But 
in  its  lightest  tones,  in  its  whites,  for  instance 
(see  the  "  Pierrot "  at  the  Louvre),  what  variety, 
what  nobility  !  They  are  comparable  in  range 
and  tranquil  beauty  with  the  blacks  of 
Velasquez,  with  the  whites  of  Rembrandt, 
justly  enough  extolled,  and  with  those  even 
of  one  who  knew  the  range  of  white,  or  what 
we  call  white,  almost  as  Boudin  knew  the 
incomparable  range  of  greys  :  I  mean  that 
admirable  master  of  good  painting  in  France, 
Th6odule  Ribot. 

There  is  yet  a  third  matter  in  which,  com- 
parison being  made  between  Watteau  and 
Boucher,  the  result  of  it  is  in  favour  of 
Watteau.  And  that  is  the  matter  of  handling. 
Paint  may  be  laid  upon  canvas  with  what  all 
will  agree  to  be,  apart  from  actual  colour, 
very  perceptible  differences  of  charm. 
Boucher's  application  of  paint  is  neither 
conspicuously  bad  nor  conspicuously  good. 
Watteau 's  application  of  it  is  not  itself  the 
most  fascinating  of  any  that  we  know ;  but  it 


156      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

is  alert,  dexterous,  sensitive — it  predisposes  us 
to  interest  in  his  performance.  This  master  of 
draughtsmanship  is,  then,  master  of  colour; 
and  this  master  of  colour  is,  in  a  degree  that 
is  sufficient,  master  also  of  the  application 
of  paint. 

We  have  referred  already  to  Watteau's 
penetrating  insight  into  character,  into  the 
character  of  the  most  civilized,  of  those  whose 
lives  of  cultivated  pleasure,  or,  better  yet, 
artistic  work,  have  made  them  very  subtly,  one 
may  even  say  abnormally,  refined.  His  pieces 
are  not  numerous ;  his  life  was  not  long ;  and, 
beautiful  as  are  the  pictures,  one  somehow 
feels — even  before  the  "  Setting  out  for 
Cythera  "  of  Potsdam  (which  is  the  engraved 
canvas),  or  the  "  Setting  out  for  Cythera  " 
of  the  Louvre — that  the  man  was  yet  greater, 
or  not  so  much  "  greater  "  as  more  interesting 
and  complex  than  his  work  in  bulk  or  in  detail. 
He  was  irritable,  he  was  supersensitive ;  he 
was  a  creature  of  moods  and  of  fancies.  He 
had  no  physical  strength,  no  inexhaustible 
vitality.  Consumption,  or,  if  not  consumption, 
then  nerves  too  highly  strung  for  long  existence 
in  a  work-a-day  world,  carried  him  off  when 
he  was  yet  scarcely  in  sight  of  middle  age ;  and 
if  it  had  not  been  for  the  devotion  of  M.  de 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY  ART     157 

Julienne,  and  that  of  the  friendly  Abb£  who 
made  Watteau  stay  with  him  in  quietude,  at 
Nogent  on  the  Maine,  he  would — as  to  his 
physical  life — have  lasted  a  yet  shorter  time. 
Paris  exhausted  him;  but  outside  Paris  he 
could  not  have  become  what  he  was.  Artistic 
France  lived  for  two  or  even  three  generations 
after  his  death  on  the  tradition  and  the  fact 
and  the  rich  inheritance  of  his  greatness.  It 
was  not  until  the  Revolution — it  was  not  until 
the  uprising  of  the  star  of  David — that  his 
influence  was  arrested  and  his  name  dis- 
honoured. A  long  time  of  neglect.  Then,  in 
the  full  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century — or 
even  later — when  the  galvanized  Classicism 
(which  yet  had  merits  of  its  own)  had  long  had 
its  day,  Time's  revenges  became  perceptible. 

By  this  time,  Watteau  is  more  than  rein- 
stated. Almost  is  his  resurrection,  compar- 
able, if  we  may  bring  together  two  different 
worlds,  to  that  of  Jeanne  d'Arc.  In  any 
case,  by  the  whole  priesthood  of  Art,  he  has 
been  gravely  and  appropriately  canonized. 

Of  the  two  artists  who  most  resembled 
Watteau — and  both  of  them  resembled  him 
much  more  than  did  Boucher — one,  Pater, 
was  directly  his  pupil,  indebted  to  him 
most  deeply;  and  the  other,  an  older  man, 


158      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

Nicholas  Lancret,  was  a  follower  at  times 
inclined  to  dispense  and  capable  of  dispensing 
with  the  leading-strings  by  which  Pater 
— a  fellow  townsman  of  Watteau's,  since  he 
too  came  from  Valenciennes — found  it  gene- 
rally convenient  to  be  guided.  By  reason 
of  such  occasional  portraits  as  those  of  Mile. 
Camargo  and  Mile.  Salle — whose  dances  on 
the  boards  of  the  theatre  a  luminous  line  or 
two  by  Voltaire,  as  well  as  the  engravings 
after  their  portraits,  keep  in  our  memory — 
Lancret  is  entitled  to  ask  for  some  inde- 
pendent place  of  his  own.  Besides,  those 
compositions  of  his  which  illustrate  the 
Conies  of  La  Fontaine  (such  as  the  "  A 
femme  avare,  galant  escroc  ")  contain  things 
more  definitely  dramatic  than  anything  that 
Watteau  ever  did.  In  his  grasp  of  everyday 
character,  Lancret  is  firm  and  fresh.  Watteau's 
quintessence  of  refinement  was  not  for  him, 
nor  his  stately  or  elegant  reverie. 

Still,  it  is  not  Lancret's  frequent  ex- 
hibitions of  vigour,  any  more  than  Pater's 
research  after  dainty  and  pretty  invention, 
or  pretty  adaptation  from  his  master,  that 
can  suffice  to  give  to  the  begetter  of  them  the 
post  next  to  Watteau's,  in  French  eighteenth- 
century  art.  Nattier  might  claim  it  if  it 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY   ART     159 

could  be  claimed  at  all  by  one  who,  for  all 
practical  purposes,  was  portrait  painter  alone. 
But,  were  the  portrait  painter  admitted, 
Nattier  would  have  a  rival,  thanks  to  the 
brilliant  pastels  of  Quentin  La  Tour.  Boucher 
— notwithstanding  his  faults,  which  are  some- 
times shortcomings  and  sometimes  excesses — 
might  claim  it,  were  there  not  Fragonard: 
for  to  Boucher  we  owe  much.  Greuze,  with 
all  his  mannerisms,  might  claim  it,  were  there 
not  Boucher.  Fragonard  might  claim  it, 
were  there  not  Chardin.  On  the  whole,  it  is 
to  Chardin  that  it  must  be  given. 

But  before  I  go  on  to  urge  why  the  creden- 
tials and  recommendations  of  Chardin  are 
overwhelming  legitimately,  it  must  be  sought 
to  characterize,  in  a  few  words,  these  others, 
who  will  continue  to  have  honourable  fame. 

Incidentally,  in  the  use  I  have  made  of 
him  in  defining  others,  Boucher  himself  has 
been  in  a  measure  defined.  But  of  a  master 
so  prolific  and  so  individual,  the  inventor  of 
a  Genre,  and  the  popularizer  of  it,  some  little 
further  mention  should  in  fairness  be  made. 

The  Goncourts  tell  us  that  Boucher  was 
greater  as  colourist  than  draughtsman  :  they 
go  so  far  as  to  say  that  in  his  middle  time 
he  was,  as  colourist,  actually  great.  Neither 


160      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

opinion  is  one  to  which  it  is  easy  to  subscribe. 
I  find  Boucher's  colour  never  actually  great. 
At  the  best  I  find  it  pretty,  decorative,  super- 
ficially attractive ;  nor  am  I  disposed  to  accept 
as  an  explanation  of  its  presumed  failure,  of 
its  deterioration,  at  all  events,  as  time  pro- 
ceeded, the  fact  that  the  master  was  influenced 
for  evil,  was  restricted  and  narrowed,  by 
the  frequency  of  his  employment  on  designs 
to  be  executed  in  tapestry  of  Beauvais  or  the 
Gobelins.  That  he  did  so  deteriorate  may  be 
perfectly  possible ;  but  the  implied  apology  does 
not  cover  the  ground.  A  colourist,  quite  as 
much  as  a  poet,  must  be  born,  not  made 
Boucher — poor  man ! — was  only  "made  " — and 
made  rather  ineffectually.  Certain  schemes 
suited  him  :  light  schemes,  schemes  thin  and 
primitive,  the  schemes  of  the  average  dress- 
maker. They  were  gay  at  least :  happy,  but 
in  a  commonplace  way.  Boucher  had  rarely 
success  at  all  when  he  went  beyond  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Goncourts  seem  un- 
duly severe  when  they  comment  on  Boucher's 
draughtsmanship.  Of  course,  they  recognize 
cleverness,  readiness,  the  expert's  aplomb. 
They  say,  however,  that  Boucher  acquired 
a  manner;  that  his  manner  took  the  place 
of  Style.  In  his  nudes,  they  admit  the  extreme 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY   ART     161 

dexterity  of  the  turn  of    his  crayon,   which 
suggests  the  curve  of  a  surface,  which  plants, 
as  one  may  say,  a  dimple  suddenly,  as  a  swift 
finger  might  plant  a  beauty-patch  upon  real 
flesh.     But    he   had   not    "distinction":   at 
least  he  had  not  if  distinction  in  draughtsman- 
ship is  to  be  assigned  to  no  one  who  fell  short 
of    Watteau's    share    of    it.     All   things    are 
relative.     The     master     of     Valenciennes     is 
distinction     itself,    and     Boucher,    amazing, 
brilliant,  suave,  adopted  a  convention,  seemed 
seldom  to  have  grasped  the  interest  of   the 
individual,  was   content  to  have  accepted  a 
type,    plump  and  supple,  of  infinite  capacity 
of  movement,  gracious,  avenante,  and,  as  to 
years,  habitually  six-and-twenty.     Still  he  was 
wonderful  in  sculptural  roundness — for  gaiety? 
for  action,  for  swift  suggestion  of  youth  and 
health,  intact   and  unblemished.     Very  dra- 
matic,   seriously    dramatic    at    all,    Boucher 
was  not ;  which  is  why  the  pose  of  his  model 
is  more  interesting  than  her  experience,  and 
why  the  red  chalk  or  the  black  chalk  study  is 
more  engaging,  more  vital,  than  the  completed 
canvas. 

Of  his  patroness,  Madame  de  Pompadour, 
is  there  a  single  portrait  that  can  be  called 
a  masterpiece  ?  Is  there  any  portrait  by 


162      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

Boucher  which  rises  to  the  glory  of  a  chef- 
d'oeuvre  ?  One  asks  these  damaging  questions. 
One  does  it  without  the  wish  to  condemn 
him  if  the  answers  cannot  be  altogether 
satisfactory.  One  has  one's  resource — one's 
remedy.  One  leaves  the  painted  portraits, 
as  one  has  left  the  gods  and  goddesses  of  the 
mythological  canvas.  One  goes  to  the  draw- 
ing— be  it  in  sanguine  or  in  black.  One  goes 
even,  one  is  thankful  to  be  able  to  go,  to 
the  reproductions  by  Demarteau,  things  of 
Boucher's  own  century,  that  in  good  examples 
have  caught,  and  in  good  condition  retained, 
the  whole  of  his  spirit.  In  the  prints  of 
Demarteau,  a  Fleming  whom  a  Belgian  of 
Brussels  or  Liege  (M.  Leymarie)  has  daintily 
catalogued  in  a  volume  issued  by  Rapilly — 
and  some  of  the  best  of  whose  plates  the  outlay 
of  a  very  few  pounds  for  each,  and  of  a  little 
time  in  collecting  them,  will  still  make  ours — 
in  these  Demarteau  prints  the  best  of  Boucher, 
the  thing  he  did  finely,  lies  open  to  our 
view.  We  should  try  to  put  in  our  own  port- 
folios— say,  a  chosen  half-dozen.  And  these 
should  include,  if  that  may  be,  the  pretty 
rusticity  of  No.  146;  the  less  naturalistic, 
more  obviously  decorative  No.  123,  with  an 
amphora  and  the  bearer  of  the  amphora  and 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY  ART     163 

her  costume  antique  or  of  the  elder  world; 
the  allegory  with  an  aged  figure  and  young 
girls  at  his  feet ;  the  unquestioned  little  master- 
piece of  a  Venus  seen  from  behind — the  bath 
just  over  (No.  315);  and  the  domestic  subject 
of  "Les  Crepes,"  a  young  woman  :  children 
about  her,  she  leaning  forward,  and,  with 
outstretched  arm,  manoeuvring  a  pancake 
on  a  dish  on  the  low  hearth — a  design  made 
by  the  artist  in  another  mood  than  that  in 
which  he  lived  with  gods  and  goddesses  : 
Boucher  bon  enfant,  a  child  of  France,  a  child 
almost  of  the  people. 

The  mood,  the  temper,  which  was  but 
occasional  with  Boucher,  whom  the  Pompa- 
dour favoured — who  flourished  well  in  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Court  of  Louis  Quinze 
— was  a  mood,  a  temper,  a  criticism  on 
life,  or  an  exposition  of  it,  constant  in 
Chardin.  Char  din  is  the  altogether  sympa- 
thetic historian,  the  faithful  and  unwearied 
chronicler  of  the  children  of  the  middle  classes. 
The  middle  classes  had  become  important 
in  the  mid-eighteenth  century,  and  Chardin, 
as  well  as  Boucher,  belonged  to  them,  and 
Chardin  recognized  their  human  interest, 
their  value  as  subject-matter  for  his  art.  He 
was  a  healthy  optimist  :  not  in  the  least  a 

L  2 


164      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

visionary.  And  the  account  his  canvasses 
afford  of  the  home -life  of  his  humane  and 
civilized  people  is  a  veracious  chronicle  :  none 
the  less  exact  because  incidentally  it  is  a 
eulogy.  In  his  canvasses,  as  in  the  pages  of 
a  sympathetic  writer — some  master  of  poetic 
realism  (it  might  be  Rene  Bazin  or  Fra^ois 
Coppee) — there  is  exposed  to  us,  without  em- 
phasis, with  the  simplicity  that  is  artistic,  the 
deeply  studied  and  completed  picture  of  French 
frugality  and  order,  of  French  graciousness, 
of  French  affection. 

The  years  of  the  long  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  are  filled  with  the  record 
of  Jean-Baptiste-Simeon  Chardin's  work.  The 
work  was  in  oil  paint  for  the  most  part.  He 
made  practically  no  drawings.  And,  only  in 
the  later  time,  stimulated  by  the  successes  of 
La  Tour — who  was  much  more  to  Chardin  than 
the  Rosalba,  or  Perronneau — did  the  master 
historian  of  the  lives  of  the  bourgeoisie  decide 
to  work  in  pastel.  And  in  pastel,  wisely 
enough,  Chardin  did  nothing  but  portraiture. 
His  painted  portraits,  of  which,  a  few  years 
after  his  success  of  1737  with  "  La  Fontaine," 
an  interior  of  a  scullery,  he  did  a  limited 
number,  have,  with  one  or  two  exceptions, 
vanished.  Scarcely  are  the  exceptions  even 


FRENCH   18TH-CENTURY   ART      165 

sufficient  to  establish  a  standard  by  which 
work  of  this  kind,  put  forward  as  his,  is  to  be 
rejected  or  taken.  But  for  more  than  thirty 
years,  from  1737  onwards,  his  interiors  of 
homely  life  appeared,  in  numbers  sufficient 
and  not  overpowering,  with  reasonable  regu- 
larity and  precision.  Slowly  and  certainly 
there  was  built  up  the  volume  of  his  work 
upon  this  theme.  In  the  scullery,  with  "  The 
Cistern,"  he  is — he  may  be  there  too  with  the 
girl  who  is  scraping  the  vegetables  and  the 
aproned  youth  who  has  charge  of  the  wine 
bottles.  The  "  Pourvoyeuse  " — the  active 
woman  who  has  been  bustling  round  on  her 
marketing,  who  has  just  finished,  who  has 
laid  her  burden  down — is  as  paintable  an 
instance  as  can  possibly  be  wished  for  of 
the  treatment  of  the  themes  of  the  kitchen. 
Quite  admirable  is  the  provisioner's  pose,  at 
once  of  lasting  robustness  and  momentary 
relief.  In  expression  not  less  perfect  is  the 
"  Gouvernante  "  :  the  nursery  governess  full 
of  solicitude  about  the  docile  but  not  brilliant 
boy  who  stands  before  her  for  inspection, 
judgment,  kindly  remonstrance.  "  L'ficon- 
ome  "  shows  the  elderly  lady  of  the  house 
patiently  busy  over  her  calculations  with  an 
account  book.  Can  anything  of  which  that 


166      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

world  conceives  seem  more  important  than 
those  labours  ?  "La  Mere  Laborieuse " 
brings  upon  the  scene  the  mother  and  the 
child  she  is  instructing.  Then,  there  are  the 
children  at  the  table,  before  the  outspread 
meal — "  Le  Benedicite  "  it  is  called — and 
the  children  are  to  give  thanks  to  Heaven 
devoutly,  as  in  a  picture  of  Fragonard's, 
"  Dites  merci !  ",  they  are  to  give  thanks 
politely  to  their  mother.  "  Dame  prenant 
son  the  "  shows  us  a  buxom  woman  of  a 
certain  age,  planted  contentedly  before  a 
rough  earthenware  teapot.  And  the  "  Study 
of  Drawing "  shows  a  youth  bending  for- 
ward attentive,  immersed  absolutely,  in  his 
business  of  copying  the  "  Mercury "  of 
Pigalle,  a  cast  of  which  is  placed  in  front  of 
him. 

Every  incident  and  accessory  portrayed 
by  Chardin  in  this  informal  series  of  great 
range — and  I  have  mentioned,  of  course, 
but  a  part  of  it — is  portrayed  with  sym- 
pathetic truth,  arrived  at  after  observation 
elaborate  and  faultless.  The  Goncourts  hit 
the  nail  upon  the  head  when  they  point  out 
as  a  defect — it  is  a  small  one,  but  it  is 
the  one  thing  in  which  the  genre  work  of 
Chardin  is  inferior  to  the  genre  work  of 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY  ART     167 

Metsu — they  point  out  as  the  one  defect  a 
certain  inadequacy  in  the  flesh  painting,  a 
certain  want  of  lightness  and  of  transparency 
there.  But  if  the  record  of  the  face  sometimes 
in  this  respect  misses  perfection,  the  gesture  is 
of  the  last  subtlety. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  examine  all  these 
pictures  and  not  be  struck  with  the  presence 
in  many  of  them,  of  a  quality  not  hitherto 
mentioned,  their  dexterous,  modest,  yet 
broad  and  ample  record  of  "  Still  Life," 
though  still  life  in  association  here  with 
incident  or  character,  in  a  word,  with 
humanity.  To  see  the  "  Pourvoyeuse,"  for 
instance — it  is  a  conspicuous  example,  and 
again,  the  "  Fontaine  "  is  another — is  almost 
to  be  certain  that  Chardin,  at  his  hours,  would 
paint  still  life  for  its  own  sake,  and  would 
paint  it  nobly.  He  did  paint  it  nobly.  He 
painted  it  often  in  ideal  fashion.  Nothing  in 
Dutch  art — scarcely  even  the  best  practice  of 
De  Heem — is  quite  upon  the  level  of  this  still 
life  painting.  Again,  this  work  has  been  the 
inspiration  and  the  sustenance  of  modern 
men,  quite  recently,  in  France  and,  to  some 
extent,  in  England;  and  these  men,  never 
meanly  imitative,  have  really,  I  believe,  been 
the  men  —  Courbet  and  Edouard  Manet 


168      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

possibly,  Bonvin  and  Ribot  more  assuredly — 
who  in  all  the  ages  have  come  nearest  to  its 
excellence. 

Some  of  the  very  finest  Chardins,  of  still 
life,  as  of  domestic  incident  and  character 
painting,  are,  rightly  and  naturally,  at  the 
Louvre.  There,  in  the  "  Salle  Lacaze,"  where, 
in  the  matter  of  such  French  pictorial  art  of 
the  great  elder  time,  of  that  great  eighteenth 
century,  as  modern  taste  most  cordially 
approves,  a  bequest  priceless  and  opportune, 
was  lodged,  some  forty  years  ago,  there  is  to 
be  found — along  with  fine  Watteaus  and  a 
delightful  Pater  and  a  Fragonard  nymph 
whom  Cupid  playfully  assails  as  she  sprawls 
and  struggles,  her  rose  flesh  backed  by  cream- 
white  draperies :  it  is  called  "  La  Chemise 
enlevee " — a  whole  collection  of  Chardin's 
performances,  now  in  genre  painting,  tender 
and  reticent,  and  now,  in  still  life,  sober 
and  splendid.  Here  is  a  "  Benedicite  "  and 
here  a  "  House  of  Cards,"  and  here  a  jewel- 
casket,  lined  daintily,  and  here  the  pink-grey 
peaches,  softer  than  velvet,  and  the  homely 
wine  bottle,  and  here  the  silver  beaker,  that 
famous  "  Goblet  d'Argent "  which  Jules  de 
Goncourt  conveys  to  us  in  his  etching,  and 
which,  when  Chardin  painted  it  so  nobly,  may 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY  ART     169 

have  come,  not  many  years  or  days  before, 
from  the  workshop  of  Joubert. 

Nothing  obvious  at  all  brings  Char  din  and 
Fragonard  together — nothing  brings  them 
together  but  the  deep  and  private  bond  of  a 
common  hold  on  reality,  in  which  Beauty  is 
never  stupidly  denied  her  chance.  True, 
Fragonard  was  for  a  short  while  Chardin's 
pupil;  but  then  he  was  Boucher's  also;  and, 
though  individual  absolutely,  his  sentiment 
about  life,  his  way  of  considering  it,  was 
much  more  in  accord  with  that  of  the  untired 
chronicler  of  natural  joys  than  with  that  of 
the  recorder  of  the  steady  and  placid  per- 
formance of  the  everyday  task.  Besides, 
Fragonard  was  never  bourgeois,  either  for 
good  or  ill — Fragonard  was  of  Provence, 
pleasure-loving.  Born  and  bred  upon  that 
southern  hill -side  where  Grasse  sets  its  face 
to  the  sun — where,  as  in  the  land  that  Browning 
speaks  of,  a  "  footfall  "  is  enough  to  "  upturn  to 
the  warm  air  half -germinating  spices,"  where, 

"  day  by  day, 

New  pollen  on  the  lily-petal  grows, 
And,  still  more  labyrinthine,  buds  the  rose  " 

— born  there,  no   experience  of  Paris  in  his 
later  youth,  nor   of   Rome  soon   afterwards 


170      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

when,  as  the  winner  of  "the  prize  of  Rome  " 
he  journeyed  to  Italy,  counteracted  the  effect 
produced  upon  Fragonard  by  the  Provence 
which  was  the  home  of  his  soul. 

The  result  of  the  quite  temporary  Roman 
influence,  that  never  went  deep  or  far  with 
Fragonard,  is  seen  a  little  in  the  ineffectual 
tragedy  of  the  "  Callirhoe  "  of  the  Louvre — a 
tragedy  conceived  by  one  who  was  ever 
happily  incapable  of  horrors.  Afterwards, 
Fragonard  learnt  what  were  the  things  in 
which  without  effort  he  could  be  sincere  and 
personal.  He  addressed  himself  to  the  facile 
but  ingenious  painting  of  portraits;  to  the 
realization  of  the  visions  of  great  ordered 
landscape  which  he  owed  to  the  years  of  his 
youth;  to  the  painting  of  figures,  either  in 
allegorical  design,  under  which  pure  reality 
scarcely  affects  to  conceal  itself,  or  in  scenes 
of  common  life  and  of  familiar  passion,  of 
which  he  caught  the  grace  and  caught  the 
fire.  The  great  series  of  decorative  paintings, 
undertaken  in  the  first  instance  for  the 
mistress  of  a  King,  and  which  found  refuge, 
in  Fragonard's  own  later  days,  in  the  darkened 
salon  of  the  house  of  his  kinsman  at  Grasse, 
is  at  one  with  the  small  concentrated  treasure 
I  have  already  described — the  struggling 


FRENCH  18TH-CENTURY  ART     171 

nymph  and  Eros  of  the  Salle  Lacaze  —  in 
being  allegorical;  but  in  neither  case  is  the 
attraction  so  much  in  allegory  as  in  the 
evidence  of  alert  observation,  ready  grasp  of 
the  actual  when  it  has  impulse  in  it  and  that 
charm  of  vivacity  and  vividness,  of  wayward- 
ness and  of  gay  mutiny,  which  with  Fragonard 
counted  for  so  much. 

The  critical  moment  of  "  The  Contract  " — 
Genre  painting  at  its  subtlest  and  most  refined, 
Genre  painting  with  a  dramatic  perception 
delicate  as  Terborch's — is  realized  as  thoroughly 
as  is  the  sudden  impulse  and  contest  of  "  Le 
Verrou,"  or  as  are  the  impetuous  demands 
of  the  two  rival  lovers  in  "  La  Coquette 
fixee,"  which  is  Venetian,  or  vies  with  the 
Venetian  in  flow  of  form  and  liberal  grace  of 
posture. 

Of  the  French  elegance  and  French  alert- 
ness that  were  around  Fragonard  in  daily  life, 
perhaps  it  is  drawings — because,  most  often, 
they,  of  all  artists'  works,  are  the  things 
derived  from  Nature  most  directly — that, 
with  the  greatest  of  all  conceivable  correct- 
ness, register  the  charm.  A  sepia  drawing  at 
the  Louvre,  of  two  heads  bent  together — it  is 
called  "  Reading,"  and  the  heads  nestle  side 
by  side  in  the  happy  consciousness  of  the 


172      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

shared  page — convey  the  models'  elegance 
and  their  contented  absorption.  In  the 
Goncourt  collection  there  was  a  red  chalk 
drawing,  with,  it  may  be,  a  less  immediate 
sense  of  ensemble  and  of  mastery,  but  in  the 
end,  perhaps  even  more  interesting;  so  rich 
is  it  in  the  last  secrets  of  human  expression. 
It  is  a  study  of  a  young  woman  seated.  The 
head,  compactly  built,  with  the  firm  chin  cut 
sharply,  is  serenely  leant  back;  and  eyes  of 
infinite  expressiveness,  so  lively  and  so  know- 
ing, address,  as  it  were,  and  hold  in  their 
possession,  the  unseen  sharer  in  a  fascinating 
dialogue. 

Master  of  draughtsmanship,  as  draughts- 
manship expresses  itself  in  line  and  wash,  a 
painter  more  uncertain,  whose  combinations 
or  whose  schemes  of  colour  are  sometimes 
heated  and  unreal,  sometimes  a  little  thin 
and  shallow,  and  sometimes,  as  in  "  La 
Chemise  enlevee,"  faultlessly  harmonious, 
faultlessly  luminous — it  is  not  astonishing 
that  on  the  rare  occasions  when  Fragonard 
passed  to  another  medium,  and  expressed 
himself  with  the  etching  needle,  his  work 
should  have  been  remarkable,  and,  with  its 
ease  and  elegance,  curiously  complete.  I 
assume  that  he  first  took  up  the  medium  of 


FRENCH   18TH-CENTURY  ART     173 

etching   in    Venice.      There   Tiepolo,  one   at 
least  of  whose  works  it  pleased  him  to  inter- 
pret,   had   himself   etched.     But  it  was  not 
in   Venice,    it  was  in   his   later  maturity  in 
Paris,  or,  it  may  be,  later  still,  when  he  had 
withdrawn    to     Provence,     that     Fragonard 
executed  the  half-dozen  prints,  wholly  original, 
profoundly   characteristic,    which   reveal    his 
gaiety  of  conception,  his  dexterity  of  touch. 
Prosper  de  Baudicourt  has  catalogued  these 
and  the  rest,  in  his  supplement  to  the  books 
on  the  French   Painter-Engravers.     He  says 
their  characteristics — amongst  them  Fragon- 
ard's  "  pointe,  extremement  spirituelle" — have 
always    been    appreciated    by   the   amateur. 
But  the   expression   is   relative;   in  no   case 
until  lately  has  the  amateur  been  eager  to 
stake  sums  of  any  importance  on  the  adventure 
of  procuring  them — and  of   the  reality  of  a 
desire,  the  willingness  to  expend  money  is  an 
efficient,  though  not  in  all  cases  a  final,  test. 
Six  of  Fragonard's  etchings  now  appeal,  and 
surely  will  continue  to  appeal  to  the  collector. 
One  of  them,  the  "  Pare  " — it  is  a  terraced 
classic  garden — though  wrought  with  extreme 
delicacy,  is  on  a  scale  rather  too  small.     It 
is  the  Elzevir  of  etching,  and  Fragonard  has 
nowhere  the  Bodonis.     Another,   "  The  Two 


174      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

Women  on  Horseback,"  shows  two  graceful 
young  figures — one  is  behind  the  other — with 
an  excellent  seat,  upon  a  barebacked  steed, 
lifting  his  hoofs  high  in  determined  progress 
through  a  country  whose  vegetation  obstructs 
his  step.  The  four  others  are  a  set,  called 
"  Bacchanales,"  though  more  than  one  is 
entitled  to  another  appellation,  "  The  Satyr's 
Family."  These  have  grace,  spontaneity, 
character,  even  humour,  abundant  charm. 
They  have  the  fascination  of  free  movement, 
of  the  nude  figure  wholly  at  ease,  leading  its 
life.  Fragonard  has  conceived  of  these  things 
as  has  reliefs,  framed  by  and  beheld  in  the 
abundant  herbage,  the  luxuriant  grasses  of 
the  South.  It  is  the  Pagan  world,  with  its 
instinctive  joyousness  renewed,  so  gay,  so 
innocent — in  all  pictorial  art  there  can  be 
nothing  quite  like  them. 

The  imagination  of  Fragonard,  though 
reality  was  its  basis,  took  him,  as  we  have 
just  seen,  now  and  again,  to  other  times,  and 
other  worlds.  Quentin  La  Tour's  world — 
which  it  is  next  our  business  to  speak  of — was 
of  the  French  eighteenth  century  only — its 
latter  half — the  world  of  his  own  day.  He 
knew  it  absolutely,  and  he  recorded  for  us,  not 
indeed  its  social  incidents  any  more  than  its 


FRENCH   18TH-CENTURY   ART     175 

streets  or  its  landscape,  but  piece  by  piece 
in  a  long  succession  of  pastel  portraits,  now 
elaborately  completed,  now  decisively  and 
greatly  sketched,  its  characters  salient  and 
distinguished;  politicians,  writers,  courtiers, 
financiers,  advocates,  dancers,  and  actresses> 
and  noble  dames. 

I  remember  M.  Jacques  Doucet  telling  me, 
in  Paris — and  he  gave  me  an  object  lesson 
by  showing  me  examples  both  of  the  highly 
wrought  and  of  the  summary — that  the  La 
Tour  at  St.  Quentin  (where  are  exclusively  the 
collection  of  "  preparations,"  or  sketches,  left 
to  La  Tour's  native  town  by  La  Tour's 
brother)  had  been  brought  into  undue  promi- 
nence, in  relation,  that  is,  to  the  most  finished 
work,  like  the  "  Duval  d'Epinoy,  "  and  like 
the  elaborate  pastels  of  "  Marie  Lecsinska," 
and  of  the  "  Pompadour  " — is  it  not  ? — at 
the  Louvre.  I  could  not  agree  with  him 
absolutely;  although  of  course  I  am  not 
insensible  of  the  elaboration  of  these  larger 
highly  wrought  works,  and  of  the  astonishing 
triumph  over  difficulties  which  these  things 
display.  And  I  did  not  agree  with  him  quite 
to  the  full  because  I  cannot  be  the  advocate 
of  what,  in  any  art,  one  may  call  the  undue 
stretching  of  the  means  one  employs.  It 


176      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

seems  to  me  that  a  medium  must  accept  its 
conditions,  that  a  scale  must  accept  its 
limitations,  that  the  short  story  should  not 
seek  to  compass  the  effects  within  much  easier 
and  more  appropriate  reach  of  the  full-length 
novel,  and  that  a  medium  like  pastel  is  exer- 
cised best,  not  in  vying  with  the  achieve- 
ments of  oil  paint,  and  especially  the  more 
elaborate  of  them,  but  in  executing  sharply, 
clearly,  with  draughtsmanship  subtle,  econo- 
mical, considered,  the  sketch  instead  of  the 
picture. 

Therefore,  with  high  regard  for  M.  Doucet, 
a  benefactor  of  artistic  France,  a  master  of 
good  taste  in  more  arts  than  one,  I  must  still 
say  to  the  student,  "  Study  La  Tour  at  St. 
Quentin  most  of  all."  It  is  in  a  modest 
apartment — "froide  salle"  Maurice  Barres 
calls  it — of  the  Museum  in  the  grey  manu- 
facturing town  that  the  true  vision  of  the 
eighteenth-century  world  rises  most  clearly 
before  us.  There,  thanks  to  La  Tour's  deep 
insight,  and  to  his  subtle  and  decisive  hand, 
the  eighteenth- century  of  art  and  fashion 
and  Letters  —  Rousseau  and  Diderot,  the 
Camargo  and  Mile.  Fel,  live  to  this  day  their 
lives  before  us.  There  is  the  weightiness  of 
their  wisdom,  their  characteristic  bearing, 


CLASSICS:    ROMANTICS          177 

stately  or  graceful ;  there  is  the  point  of  their 
wit,  and  the  fascination  of  the  mobile  mouth 
and  gleaming  eye.  History,  social  and  per- 
sonal history,  written  by  a  contemporary, 
learned,  observant,  of  unsurpassed  penetra- 
tion, offers  to  us,  in  that  St.  Quentin  gallery, 
its  open,  unstinted  page. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

CLASSICS  :     ROMANTICS 

THE  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 
one  of  those  epochs  in  which  the  course  and 
current  of  a  nation's  life  does  influence  to 
some  extent,  though  it  cannot  long  control, 
the  current  of  its  art.  Without  the  Revolu- 
tion— without  the  struggle,  too,  to  which 
France  braced  herself  in  the  early  years  of 
the  First  Empire — there  might  never  have 
been  David.  And  without  David  something 
might  have  been  lacking  to  the  full  expression, 
in  painting,  of  French  character  and  taste. 
France  has  her  hours  of  heroic  austerity,  as 
well  as  her  hours  of  indulgence.  The  art  of 
Fragonard  and  of  Lavreince — the  art  even 
of  the  more  chastened  Moreau  le  jeune — no 

M 


178      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

one  would  describe  as  severe.  But  David's 
art,  like  France  herself,  went  back  towards 
the  ideals  of  Greece  and  Rome.  It  celebrated 
the  civic  virtues.  Of  physical  prowess  it 
made  much.  Fittingly,  David  was  hardly 
colourist  at  all.  Colour  implies  luxury. 
Fittingly,  he  was  a  stern  and  capable  draughts- 
man, whose  portraiture,  as  a  rule,  made  most 
of  worthy  people  with  a  deep  sense  of  their 
responsibilities.  But,  as  an  expression  of 
the  true  classical  spirit,  David  was  inferior 
to  Ingres.  To  him  we  will  immediately 
turn. 

With  the  long  life  of  Ingres,  which  ended 
in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
French  Classicism  made  a  dignified  course, 
and  at  all  events,  for  the  time  being,  a 
glorious  end.  Ingres  was  David's  follower. 
He  could  not  always  excel  David  in  dignified 
grace.  He  could  not,  perhaps,  have  painted 
the  portrait  of  Madame  Recamier  with  quite 
David's  simplicity — austere  simplicity — of 
charm.  Yet  his  own  simplicity  was  austere. 
Ingres  is  too  much  known  in  England  by 
a  single  piece  of  his  work,  the  beautiful 
"  Source,"  a  happy  labour  of  his  then  already 
advanced  years — a  piece  of  which  the  late  Sir 
Andrew  Clark  said  cruelly,  to  a  friend  of  mine, 


CLASSICS:    ROMANTICS          179 

that  she  was  a  young  woman  with  a  disease 
of  the  hip  joint.  That  picture,  fresh  and 
fascinating  as  those  who  do  not  live  with 
disease  find  it,  is  not  and  cannot  be  an 
instance  of  that  nobility  of  imagination  which 
lifted  Ingres  to  heights  that  David  did  not 
rise  to.  The  heroine  of  "  La  Source,"  drawn 
from  a  concierge's  daughter,  is  a  young 
woman,  discreet,  agreeable,  chaste,  without 
thinking  of  chastity :  not  much  besides.  "  A 
vegetable  soul."  But  in  the  intricate  com- 
positions of  "  The  Golden  Age,"  painted  for 
the  chateau  of  Dampi&re,  and  in  drawings  that 
are  part  of  Ingres's  bequest  to  his  native 
town  in  the  South,  Montauban,  and,  most 
conspicuously  of  all,  perhaps,  in  his  extraordin- 
arily significant  conception  of  the  young 
Christ,  full  of  conviction  and  grave  purpose, 
expounding  to  and  reasoning  with,  the 
Doctors  of  the  Jewish  Law,  Ingres's  nobility 
of  imagination  has  full  play. 

It  may  be  said,  just  incidentally,  that 
Ingres's  portraits — chiefly  of  people  of  the 
cultivated,  or  shall  we  say  the  intellectual 
middle  class  ? — are  astounding  pencil  draw- 
ings. By  reason  of  a  faultless  draughts- 
manship, their  characterization  is  the  more 
complete.  But  having  said  this,  our  thought 

M  2 


180      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

should  perhaps  return  to  the  imaginative 
work,  and  to  the  preparations  for  it — those 
wonderful  Montauban  drawings  of  strong  men 
and  slim  virgins,  their  figures  poised  per- 
fectly. They  are  denizens  of  a  Classic  world. 
But  the  little  Christ  may  remind  us  that,  un- 
like Landor  in  our  English  literature — with 
whom  in  other  ways  he  had  so  much  affinity 
— Ingres  was  not  Classic  alone.  He  could 
be  Christian,  too,  and,  in  the  modern  sense, 
religious. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  most 
genuine  and  impressive  religious  painter  of 
the  nineteenth  century  revered  Ingres,  and 
was  his  pupil.  Hippolyte  Flandrin  had  a 
fervour  and  an  unction  that  was  not  Ingres 's. 
Yet,  for  all  that,  he  inherited  from  his  master 
the  gift  of  reticence  and  wise  restraint. 
Those  of  us  who  go  to  Paris  without  ever 
visiting  the  interiors  of  the  churches  of  St. 
Germain  des  Pres  and  St.  Vincent  de  Paul, 
or  go  to  Nimes  without  visiting  a  church  he 
has  there  decorated,  cannot,  of  course,  know 
Flandrin.  To  know  him  is  to  have  at  least 
the  chance  of  doing  justice  to  his  splendid 
veneration,  his  measured,  ordered  force,  and, 
in  processional  and  decorative  painting,  the 
rhythm  and  very  beat  of  his  line. 


CLASSICS:    ROMANTICS          181 

The  enemies  of  Ingres  were  the  Romantics, 
Decamps  and  Delacroix  perhaps  principally; 
and  Ingres  inveighed  against  them  as  against 
criminals  guilty  of  treason  to  the  State.  To 
be  careless  of  a  correct  contour,  to  concen- 
trate your  thoughts  on  colour  and  action — 
that  was  to  do  nothing  less  than  to  offend 
against  morality.  Ingres  was  intransigeant, 
an  irreconcilable,  or  he  believed  that  he  was. 
In  reality,  in  his  later  practice,  a  certain 
"  spirit  of  the  time  "  obtained  over  him, 
although  he  knew  it  not,  a  little  influence, 
but  of  course  no  ascendancy:  it  did  not 
diminish  the  gulf  that  lay  between  his  serenity, 
his  ordered  calm,  and  Delacroix's  too  frequent 
violence;  but  it  did — though  he  would  have 
denied  it — contribute  its  share  to  make  some 
of  his  work  and  some  of  Delaroche's  appear 
less  obviously  antagonistic.  Delaroche,  not 
a  great  genius  perhaps,  not  strikingly  original, 
was  himself  not  an  extremist.  But  he  had 
what  Decamps  in  a  measure  and  Delacroix 
more  largely  lacked — the  French  sense  of 
order :  so  that  one  understands  that  his  large 
composition  of  the  Hemicycle  was  liked  by 
Henry  Irving,  who  had,  in  his  dressing-room 
at  the  Lyceum,  a  large  engraving  of  it,  which 
I  remember  his  telling  me  he  found  helpfully 


182      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

restful.  Those  were  days  before  the  fame  of 
the  immortal  Puvis — greatest  decorator  of  all, 
as  another  "hemicycle  "  (that  of  the  Sorbonne) 
and  the  museums  of  Amiens  and  Marseilles 
sufficiently  convince  us — had  spread  beyond 
his  own  land. 

"  Romanticism,"  the  "  Romanticism  "  of 
Painting,  survives,  if  it  survives  at  all 
effectively,  in  the  best,  or  at  all  events  in 
the  most  fascinating,  of  the  painters  of 
Barbizon.  In  the  main  it  survives  in  land- 
scape. Yet  the  landscape  of  Theodore  Rous- 
seau had,  in  truth,  Naturalism  for  its  basis. 
It  was  of  the  solid  earth  as  clearly,  though 
not  perhaps  so  entrancingly,  as  was  the 
landscape  of  Crome  and  of  John  Constable. 
But  Romance  was  in  every  canvas,  and  in 
every  touch,  of  Diaz.  Narcisse  Virgile  Diaz 
de  la  Pena — how  could  he  but  be  romantic 
and  distinguished,  with  such  a  name  ?  His 
themes,  in  landscape  proper,  were  narrowly 
limited.  Generally  there  must  be  a  rough 
foreground,  a  darkened  distance,  and,  perhaps, 
in  middle  distance,  a  glint  or  gleam  of  sunshine 
striking  some  rugged  tree  trunk.  That  is  the 
prescription  of  Fontainebleau,  the  formula 
of  Barbizon.  But  in  his  figure -pieces,  Diaz 
soars;  and  of  the  Romantic  figure -paint  ing, 


CLASSICS:    ROMANTICS          183 

his  is  that  for  which  we  remain  grateful.  His 
nymphs  and  Cupids,  rich  in  colour,  have 
suavity  and  grace  in  form  and  movement. 
A  true  and  fine  Romantic — and  yet  inspired 
by  Constable — is  certainly  Jules  Dupr6.  Both 
he  and  the  great  Englishman  revelled  in  the 
rendering  of  weather,  and,  oftener  than  not, 
Constable's  weather  and  Dupre's  was  a 
weather  of  sweeping  wind  and  laden  skies. 

Not  atmosphere,  not  clouds — the  "  irre- 
vocable travellers,"  whose  course  and  passage 
make  such  an  appeal  to  the  imagination — 
were  at  all  mainly  the  subjects  of  another 
Romantic,  or  another  painter  of  Barbizon, 
Charles  Jacque.  Jacque  was  for  long  years, 
both  in  painting  and  etching,  the  vivacious 
and  well-equipped  chronicler  of  the  pursuits 
of  the  farm,  and  of  its  creatures.  For  him, 
especially  the  chicken-run,  the  sheepfold,  and 
the  slow  journey  of  the  herd  across  the  plain. 
His  figures  have  variety,  and  truthful  action. 
Judges  applaud  his  work;  he  has  his  money 
value.  But  he  is  too  sterling  in  his  art,  too 
single-minded  in  the  manner  of  his  appeal, 
to  have  commanded,  in  any  full  degree,  the 
noisy  success  of  popularity. 

This,  if  it  has  been  attained  at  all  by  the 
Romantics  or  those  who  were  akin  to  them, 


184      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

has  been  attained  by  Corot  and  Jean  Francois 
Millet — craftsmen  and  chroniclers  as  honest 
as  the  rest;  inclined  generally  as  little  to  a 
sentiment  artificial  and  spurious;  yet  aided, 
both  of  them,  in  their  appeal  to  the  public, 
by  that  measure  of  sentiment  which  was 
really  a  part  of  themselves. 

But  here  let  us  distinguish.  Millet's  senti- 
ment began  and  ended  in  the  faithful  presenta- 
tion of  the  agricultural  poor,  in  the  suggestions 
of  their  humble  lives  and  outlooks.  He  was 
the  Crabbe,  or,  better  perhaps,  the  Bloomfield 
of  French  village  life — he  wrote  again,  in 
terms  of  paint,  The  Farmer's  Boy.  It  was 
rusticity  with  no  suggestion  of  philosophy  or 
moral  teaching.  True,  but  a  little  on  the 
surface — as  the  imagined  Realist,  in  any  Art 
is  often  found  to  be.  From  the  goal  of 
his  endeavour  to  that  of  Wordsworth's 
Michael  or  Wordsworth's  Leech  Gatherer,  the 
journey  is  too  long  and  too  impossible  to  be 
accomplished — it  is  a  journey  to  another  world. 
Millet,  on  his  own  lines,  is,  of  course,  to  be 
respected.  We  can  admire  and  be  interested 
without  raving  about  him.  And  to  the  words 
that  have  here  tried  to  briefly  trace  his  place, 
it  may  be  added  that  he  is  nowhere  more 
satisfactory  than  in  work  in  which  he  is  seen 


CLASSICS:    ROMANTICS  185 

the  least  often  :  his  treatment,  sometimes  in 
paint,  sometimes  in  crayon-drawing,  of  the 
rustic  Nude.  His  "  Goose  Girl,"  stretching 
her  limbs  to  the  quiet  stream — bathing  in  the 
privacy  of  the  woodland — has  an  honest 
charm,  a  truth  exact  and  comely,  as  notable, 
in  its  own  way,  as  that  of  the  "  Angelus,"  the 
"  Diggers,"  and  the  solitary  "  Churner." 

Now  Corot's  sentiment,  that  at  least  that 
commends  him  to  the  public,  is  the  sentiment 
of  the  landscape  painter  alone.  His  work 
expresses  his  delight,  and  the  delight  of  those 
who  follow  him,  in  the  elegant  and  the 
impalpable,  the  suave  and  the  evanescent, 
the  tender,  the  delicate,  and,  so  to  say,  the 
retiring.  Like  Hardy's  lover,  in  "  Her 
Definition,"  he  delivered  himself  in  no  "  full- 
featured  terms,  all  fitless,"  but  "perceived" 
at  a  moment — only  with  Corot  the  moment 
went  on  to  half  a  lifetime  —  how  "the  in- 
definite phrase  could  yet  define."  In  Corot 
— the  Corot  of  popularity  and  greatest  price — 
nothing  is  positive  and  fixed.  No  colour  is 
strong,  no  light  and  shade,  no  outline. 
There  is  no  noonday  to  portray.  It  is  the 
dainty  morning,  or  the  pensive  evening. 
Such  air  as  stirs  sends  but  a  shimmer  through 
the  tree's  leaves  and  lightest  branches. 


186     PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

The  most  approved  work  of  Corot  is  that 
which  is  most  lacking  in  volume  and  in  form — 
it  is  Corot's  silver-grey  dream  of  Central 
France  in  chosen  hours.  This  work  is  of  his 
later,  sometimes  even  of  his  latest  time.  But 
there  was  the  "  Corot  of  Italy."  The  Corot 
of  Italy  saw  the  castle  on  the  hillside,  and  the 
dark-haired  peasant  girl  of  the  Campagna,  and 
now  and  then — but  not  for  long  after  his 
return  from  the  South — even  a  villa  on  the 
Marne,  or  a  tranquil  street  of  Paris,  with 
sanity  and  breadth,  with  the  definiteness  and 
simplicity  of  ordinary  vision,  and  under  the 
illumination  of  the  common  day. 

One  thing  brought  from  the  South,  seen 
there,  at  least  in  his  imagination,  and  there 
absorbed,  Corot  kept  with  him  to  the  end, 
or  near  it.  That  was  a  certain  Classic  order- 
ing of  his  scene — a  scene  apt  to  be  peopled, 
too,  upon  occasion,  not  with  a  red-capped 
peasantry,  but  with  nymphs,  dancing.  In 
this  department  of  his  labour,  the  Classic  and 
Romantic  seem  to  meet.  For  these  opposing 
factions — never  at  bottom  so  hopelessly 
opposed  as  they  conceived  themselves  to  be 
— a  modus  Vivendi  has,  in  these  works,  been 
found. 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     187 
CHAPTER  XV 

IMPRESSIONISTS    AND    "  THE    GOOD    PAINTING  " 

THE  title  given  to  this  chapter  is  not  in- 
tended for  a  moment  to  suggest  that  it  is 
impossible  to  be  an  Impressionist  and  a  good 
painter.  Very  much  the  reverse.  Human 
and  individual  impressions  of  the  facts — not 
the  dead  facts  themselves — have  been  painted 
habitually,  and  throughout  many  centuries, 
by  most  of  the  painters  who  have  painted 
well.  Those  who  call  themselves  the  Im- 
pressionists are  not,  in  truth,  so  much  of 
innovators  as  they  imagine.  Yet  their  label 
may  remain.  It  does  express,  roughly,  and 
with  a  certain  convenience,  a  thought  and  aim 
that  binds  them  together.  They  do  not  garner 
specimens  of  the  world  as  the  Naturalist  knows 
it,  as  the  man  of  Science  has  reason,  tempor- 
arily, to  think  that  it  exists.  They  are 
interested  in  the  appearance  of  things.  They 
concern  themselves  with  most  of  that  which 
they  can  fairly  be  asked  to  be  concerned  with ; 
and  that  is  the  passing  show  of  our  human 
experience,  day  by  day.  The  passing  show, 
at  one  hour,  one  place,  may  be  a  show  of 
atmospheric  effect.  At  another  moment,  at 


188      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

another  spot,  it  may  be  the  movement  of  some 
stirred  crowd.  Or  it  may  be  a  revelation  of 
character,  an  exhibition  of  feeling.  Or  it  may 
be  a  line  of  race-horses  nearing  the  winning- 
post  ;  or  it  may  be  the  tempting  forms,  the 
rich  or  dainty  textures,  and  the  chromatic 
glories  of  very  pretty  hats,  stuck  up  on 
little  posts  or  rods,  in  a  French  milliner's 
window. 

But  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  words  "  the 
Good  Painting  "  ?  For  is  it  likely  that  either 
here  or  elsewhere  we  should  deliberately  be 
occupied  with  the  bad  ?  The  truth  is,  la 
bonne  Peinture,  like  "  Impressionism  "  itself,  is 
also  a  label  that  links,  that  brings  together, 
certain  men.  The  men  of  the  one  school,  or 
group — for,  really,  seen  in  proper  perspective, 
they  are  no  opposing  Schools :  it  is  by  no 
means  a  history  of  the  Classicists  and  Roman- 
ticists over  again — have  been,  mostly,  con- 
temporaries of  the  men  of  the  other.  To  take 
no  note  of  what  has  been  produced  during  the 
last  twenty  years,  a  generation,  a  generation 
and  a  half,  has  been  required  to  comprise  and 
embrace  the  labours  of  the  men  of  la  bonne 
Peinture.  It  is  a  title  that  they  did  not  them- 
selves invent.  As  regards  "  the  Good  Paint- 
ing," the  twenty  years  just  gone  need  not  be 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     189 

counted ;  for  the  men  I  indicate  by  the  term 
are  a  group  that  is  small  and  pretty  compact, 
and  the  time  of  their  work  ranges  only  from 
the  advent  of  Courbet  to  the  death  of  Boudin 
or  Ribot.  Examples,  these  masters  of  la 
bonne  Peinture  have  left  behind  them  :  ex- 
amples, but  scarcely  followers.  Impressionism, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  a  movement,  or  a  phase 
(Mr.  Walter  Sickert,  benevolently  autocratic, 
decrees  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  "  move- 
ment") ;  it  is  a  phase  then,  which  continues,  and 
is  apt  to  continue — it  would  have  been  well  if 
"  the  Good  Painting  "  could  have  continued 
also.  The  two,  between  them — the  two 
schools  or  groups,  different,  very  different  in 
certain  of  their  manifestations,  yet,  as  has  been 
declared  already,  not,  in  essentials,  opposed — 
represent,  either  by  the  actual  performances  of 
their  members  or  by  their  influence  upon  more 
recent  work,  the  progress,  illustrious  and 
triumphant,  of  the  modern  art  of  France. 

A  painter  of  Dutch  race  and  birth,  Barthold 
Jongkind,  and  a  painter  of  American  blood, 
Whistler  (both  men  practised  their  pro- 
fession for  years  in  France),  are  seen,  when 
things  are  largely  and  rightly  considered,  to 
belong  to  the  Impressionist  group.  Eugene 
Boudin,  the  greatest  painter  of  the  harbour 


190      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

and  the  coast,  the  "  master  of  the  skies,"  as 
Corot  and  Courbet  united  in  recognizing  him, 
while  not  actually  and  statedly  an  Impression- 
ist, was,  as  far  as  personality,  and  as  far,  too,  as 
aims  and  methods  of  work  are  concerned,  the 
link  between  Impressionism  and  la  bonne 
Peinture.  Courbet  had  nothing  of  Impression- 
ism except  its  frankness  and  its  breadth — of 
la  bonne  Peinture  he  had  the  strength,  the 
sterlingness,  the  unity,  the  charm  of  touch. 
The  group  of  the  bonne  Peinture  owed  much 
to  Courbet.  So  did  Whistler,  a  painter  of 
genius,  who,  with  sweets  of  his  own,  did  not 
disdain  to  sip  honey  from  many  a  flower.  So 
does  to-day  J.  W.  Morrice,  the  distinguished 
Canadian  of  Paris.  The  earlier  efforts  of 
the  Impressionists  owed  something  to  Boudin 
and  to  Jongkind.  In  considering,  carefully, 
most  of  the  eminent  artists,  ornaments  of 
their  calling,  belonging  to,  or  affiliated  with, 
one  or  the  other  of  these  groups,  it  is 
convenient  to  begin  with  a  very  giant  of 
painting — Gustave  Courbet — and  next,  per- 
haps, to  make  reference  to  Jongkind  and  to 
Boudin. 

Courbet  and  Jongkind  came  into  the  world 
together :  both  were  born  in  1819.  Courbet 
died,  not  an  old  man,  it  will  be  seen,  in 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     191 

1877.  Jongkind  lasted  to  1891,  when  at 
least  he  was  seventy-two.  But  at  that  time 
he  had  long  outlived  the  period  of  his 
noteworthy  performances.  He  had  become 
much  less  himself.  He  had  gone  to  pieces; 
his  work  was  less  characteristic  and  less 
personal,  before  old  age  reached  him  :  as 
Courbet  indeed,  in  years  which  should  still 
have  been  the  years  of  middle  life,  had  ceased, 
or  almost  ceased,  to  produce  canvasses  of 
high  value  or  of  lasting  charm.  Jongkind,  in 
all  the  latter  part  of  his  career,  was  a  genius 
off  the  line.  And  Courbet,  when  he  died  at 
La  Tour-de-Peilz,  near  Vevay,  a  broken 
exile  from  his  land  and  his  fellows,  Courbet 
had  the  pain  of  remembering  that  in  a  past 
already  seemingly  remote,  lay  the  bulk  of  his 
great  achievements. 

What,  in  a  few  words,  was  Courbet's  life- 
story  ?  And  what  the  range  of  his  labour  ? 
And  what  the  cause  of  the  vicissitudes  to 
which,  over  a  period  still  not  actually  long,  his 
fame  has  been  subjected  ? 

The  son  of  people  neither  rich  nor  penniless, 
neither  peasants  nor  gentlefolk,  Courbet  was 
born  in  a  hill-district  of  Franche-Comte, 
came  to  Paris,  was  a  painter  from  the  first, 
and  a  painter  very  much  self-taught.  He 


192      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

was  only  three-and-twenty  when  he  actually 
painted,  and  twenty-five  when  he  saw 
honourably  exhibited,  the  rich  and  forcible 
canvas,  "  Courbet  with  the  Black  Dog," 
which  his  surviving  sister  gave,  not  long  ago, 
to  the  Parisian  public,  at  the  Petit  Palais. 
Shown  at  a  time  when  the  Romantics  were 
already  in  the  ascendant,  the  picture  was  a 
blow  struck  for  Realism — and  "  blows  struck 
successfully  for  Realism  "  is  a  phrase  in  which 
I  may  sum  up  the  story  of  Courbet's  life  and 
labour.  Yet  in  calling  Courbet  a  realist,  we 
must  never  think  of  him  as  the  eccentric 
antagonist  of  the  admirable.  He  was  no 
opponent  of  poetry.  But  from  the  first  he 
seems  to  have  understood  that  in  pictorial 
design,  just  as  much  as  in  the  most  moving 
of  creative  Literature,  reality,  the  thing  seen, 
and  the  emotion  felt  or  witnessed  or  divined, 
must  be  the  basis  of  the  performance  that  is 
to  last.  Eugene  Delacroix,  who  was  a  leader 
of  the  professed  Romantics,  hated  Courbet 
sometimes,  and  sometimes  was  irresistibly 
attracted  to  him.  Not  much  of  that  which 
Delacroix  accomplished,  full  as  it  was  of 
violent  movement  and  of  obvious  effectiveness 
— touched,  too,  as  it  was,  upon  occasions, 
with  a  real  penetration  and  poetry — has  any 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     198 

chance  of  outlasting,  in  the  estimation  of  the 
wise,  that  great,  deep  Realism  of  Courbet — 
fearless  truth,  in  the  main — which  for  a  quarter 
of  a  century  he  was  uttering.  He  uttered  it 
for  the  first  time  in  a  manner  that  drew  upon 
him  for  a  while,  at  least,  universal  attention, 
in  a  large  canvas  "  After  Dinner  at  Ornans," 
a  powerful  and  subtle  portrait  group  of  Courbet 
and  his  father,  and  a  friend  who  lights  his  pipe, 
and  a  friend  who  fiddles  dreamily.  If  we  did 
not  remember  what  ridiculous  judges  practis- 
ing painters  often  are  of  other  painters'  work, 
it  might  surprise  us  to  be  told  that  before 
this  picture,  that  demi-god  of  the  Romantics, 
Eugene  Delacroix,  was  rather  coldly  reticent 
and  the  fine  master  of  Classicism,  impulsive 
and  convinced — I  mean  Ingres — lamented 
that  he  found  in  it  neither  composition  nor 
drawing.  A  literary  critic,  as  usual — it  was 
M.  Champfleury — stepped  into  the  breach. 
"It  is  long,"  said  he,  "  since  one  has  seen  so 
sudden  a  success." 

But  then,  and  for  a  good  many  years  after- 
wards, half  the  public  of  Paris,  asphyxiated 
by  the  artificial,  must  have  been  unable 
altogether  to  take  cognizance  of  the  true. 
How  otherwise  can  we  account  for  the  recep- 
tion accorded,  at  the  Salon  of  1850,  to  "  A 

N 


194      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

Funeral  at  Ornans  "  ?  What  was  there  in 
"  A  Funeral  at  Ornans  "  that  shocked,  that 
hurt,  that  must  be  met  with  a  protest  ?  To- 
day, we  cannot  even  guess.  Courbet's  reputa- 
tion has  been  high  and  low  and  high  again  in 
the  interval  since  it  was  painted.  For  myself, 
if  I  know  anything,  I  know  that  this  is  one  of 
the  great  pictures  of  the  world. 

It  has  been  said  already  that  Courbet  had 
been  in  the  main  without  teaching  from  the 
professors ;  but  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
he  had  travelled  widely,  and  had  stared 
long  and  hard  at  the  great  Masters  of  Spain, 
and  at  Rembrandt,  Hals,  Jordaens,  some  of 
the  Venetians — this,  not  to  copy  or  with  any 
servility  to  imitate,  but  to  absorb  them : 
food,  material,  encouragement,  warning, 
"  savoir  pour  pouvoir,"  he  says.  Reckoned 
an  initiator,  Courbet,  in  truth,  was  much 
more  a  restorer.  He  gave  men  back  an  in- 
heritance that  had  passed  from  them :  great 
legacies  that  they  had  never  properly  enjoyed. 
Something  of  a  malcontent  in  social  matters 
— in  his  survey  and  appreciation  of  them — 
Courbet  was,  of  the  traditions  of  art,  as  it 
were,  a  steadfast  curator,  a  Conservative 
eminently.  He  used  largely  the  old  formulae 
in  embodying  his  massive  vision.  He  saw 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     195 

the  world  in  his  own  way;  selected  his 
own  themes,  and  that  with  a  wide  choice; 
but  he  showed  no  impatience,  no  sense  of 
any  need  to  reach  eccentrically  forth  for 
means  of  expression  hitherto  unfound  and 
unknown. 

Regions  of  practice  in  which  Courbet  was 
triumphant  hardly  less  than  in  that  realm 
of  portrait  and  of  homely  incident  in  which 
we  have  thus  far  seen  him,  require  a  brief 
mention.  All  his  life  he  was  a  landscape 
painter.  In  that  early  portrait  of  himself 
that  has  been  spoken  of,  the  background  of 
Franche  Comt6  rocks  and  grottos  and  a 
hint  of  the  plain  that  lay  outstretched  beneath 
them,  had  an  interest  for  him;  and  few 
things  from  his  brush  are  more  characteristic 
than  his  embrowned  visions  of  the  uplands 
near  Besan9on,  and  their  cascades  and  the 
grey  cliffs  and  running  waters.  Here  not 
seldom  he  is  the  equal  of  Ruysdael.  Then, 
from  a  remembrance  of  the  Norman  coast, 
or  within  actual  sight  of  it,  he  built  up  his 
noble  picture  of  "  The  Wave  "  that  is  at  the 
Louvre :  a  new,  great  thing  in  painting :  a 
piece  than  which  no  sea-piece  by  Turner  or 
by  Constable,  by  Cotman  or  by  Boudin,  can 
possibly  be  more  impressive.  Again  it  must 

N  2 


196      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

be  said  quite  plainly,  "  The  Wave,"  at  the 
Louvre,  is  one  of  the  world's  masterpieces. 
Lastly — though  one  would  like  to  put  in  a 
word  for  his  portrait  of  Champfleury  (a  head 
and  bust,  at  the  Louvre  also),  so  subtle,  so  de- 
cisive, so  charged  with  character,  intelligence, 
charm — lastly,  there  are  his  Nudes.  Vulgarity 
was  not  invariably  repellent  to  him — in  a 
sense,  in  a  measure,  he  was  peuple — and,  as 
a  whole,  I  do  not  desire  to  utter  Benediction 
upon  "  The  Hammock "  or  the  "  Young 
Ladies  " — they  are  Parisian  shopwomen  of 
quite  the  second  order,  "  on  the  Banks 
of  the  Seine."  But  huddled  clothes  and 
half-undress  are  difficult  to  treat,  always. 
In  his  Nudes,  he  reverts  to  beauty.  "  Venus 
and  Psyche,"  several  bathing  subjects,  and 
"  The  Woman  with  the  Parroquet,"  are 
opulent  nudes,  splendid  in  colour  and  contour, 
alive  in  their  momentary  inaction;  alive 
yet  more  in  their  movement. 

His  lamentable  association  with  the  Com- 
mune, in  1871,  brought  about  Courbet's  ruin. 
It  is  possible  his  influence  saved  the  Louvre; 
but  he  was  debited  with  the  destruction 
of  the  Colonne  Vendome,  in  its  noble 
eighteenth  -  century  Place.  He  was  judged 
unfairly — perhaps  even  unfairly  on  that 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     197 

matter.  He  was  never  forgiven.  Probably 
he  has  his  vanity  to  thank  for  it  ;  for,  all  his 
life,  this  great  man  was  as  vain  as  Mr.  Whistler, 
and  as  anxious  that,  cost  what  it  would, 
the  world  should  be  talking  about  him. 
His  savings,  a  fortune,  though  a  small  one, 
were  swallowed  up  and  yet  insufficient  to 
clear  him  of  the  costs  exacted  from  him  in 
the  matter  of  the  Vendome  column.  He  had 
to  go  away  to  Switzerland ;  and  in  his  native 
land  it  became  a  point  of  honour  not  to 
buy  his  pictures.  Upon  the  shores  of  L6man 
he  painted  many  poor  canvasses,  and  one  or 
two  strong  ones,  such  as  the  "  Chillon."  At 
that  date,  somebody,  a  subordinate,  helped 
him  with  his  work,  far  too  often  and  too 
much.  The  little  Republic  of  the  Canton 
de  Vaud  honoured  Courbet.  The  worst  of 
his  politics  and  his  social  opinions  were  not 
in  his  new  surroundings  considered  offensive. 
But  he  was  sad  and  embittered  and  failing, 
and,  like  Jongkind  in  his  retreat  at  the  Cote 
St.  Andre  near  Grenoble,  Courbet,  at  the 
Tour-de-Peilz,  took  to  the  brandy  bottle. 
He  died,  not  old,  in  1877.  Only  he  is  an 
immortal. 

If  really  Courbet  was  the  greatest  master 
of  la  bonne  Peinture,  Manet  was  the  greatest 


198      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

Impressionist.  But  one  has  first  to  say  a 
word  in  recognition  of  Jongkind,  and  of  his 
initiative ;  and  after  that  is  uttered  it  may  be 
well  to  treat  remaining  masters  of  the  bonne 
Peinture  group. 

Jongkind,  a  native  of  Rotterdam,  estab- 
lished early  in  France,  was,  in  the  method  of 
his  labours,  above  all  things  economical. 
His  extraordinary  economy  of  means  became 
almost  exaggerated  in  several  of  his  etchings. 
In  all  but  the  happiest  of  his  oil  pictures  it 
was  a  deterrent,  making  any  general  accept- 
ance of  him  slow  to  come.  Perhaps  it  was 
least  unwelcome  in  his  broad  water-colour 
sketches  of  harbour  quays,  and  of  the  flat 
lands  in  which  only  a  windmill  lifted  itself 
over  the  level  marsh,  or  only  the  mast  and  sail 
of  a  slowly  moving  barge  rose  from  the  long, 
still  waters  of  the  straight  canal.  One  tires 
a  little  of  his  skating  scenes  and  of  his  endless 
moonlights,  in  which  I  admit  that,  with  more 
variety,  and  a  truth  seized  instantaneously, 
he  was  the  powerful  successor  of  Artus  van 
der  Neer.  He  had  no  charm  of  colour ;  but  his 
touch  was  sometimes  magical,  and  the  choice 
of  his  line  was  certain.  Boudin,  who  knew 
him  at  Honfleur,  and  in  1875  went  with  him 
to  Rotterdam,  paid  generous  tribute  to  the 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     199 

quality  of  his  productions,  and  recognized 
that  gradually  the  public  would  discern 
that  beneath  the  roughness  of  the  rind  there 
was  a  fineness  in  the  flavour  of  the  fruit. 
Not  statedly  an  Impressionist,  it  was  the 
Impressionists  with  whom  in  truth  Jongkind 
had  most  affinity. 

Jongkind's  friend  Boudin — Eugene  Boudin, 
born  at  Honfleur  in  1824,  the  son  of  the 
captain  of  a  small  steamer  plying  between 
Honfleur  and  Le  Havre — exhibited  at  the 
first  of  what  were  for  a  while  the  annual 
Shows  that  the  Impressionists  held.  At 
the  first  and  at  no  other.  Influenced  by 
the  Impressionists,  modified  by  them — their 
sympathetic  father,  in  a  sense,  since  he 
was  the  master  of  Claude  Monet  —  this 
great,  broad-minded,  sensitive,  various  artist, 
was  never  an  Impressionist  merely,  or 
an  Impressionist  actually,  shall  we  say  ? 
But,  in  all  his  mature  life — as  an  expression 
I  have  used  ("  modified  by  them  ")  must 
have  already  implied — Boudin,  a  master  of 
the  bonne  Peinture  assuredly,  stood  by  the 
Impressionists,  held  with  them  the  belief  in 
the  importance  of  open-air  labour,  the  belief 
too,  that  a  landscape  painter  has  no  more 
certainly  appealing  duty  than  that  of  never 


200      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

sacrificing  to  finish,  superfluous  and  elaborate, 
the  freshness  and  strength  of  the  first  vision. 
Boudin  reached  freedom  of  expression,  rapid 
economy  of  performance,  with  his  small, 
broad  pastels  of  the  coast,  and  the  fat 
meadows,  the  tumbling  waters,  and  the  ever- 
changing  skies,  now  radiant,  now  cloud-laden, 
long  before  the  greater  number  of  his  oil 
canvasses  or  panels  displayed  a  like  emancipa- 
tion from  more  conventional  methods.  It 
was  at  least  as  early  as  1868  that  Baudelaire, 
in  presence  of  these  pastels  of  Calvados  and 
of  the  Seine  Inf&rieure,  their  coasts  and 
ports  and  pasture  lands  and  jetties,  made 
their  eulogium  in  one  of  the  finest  passages 
of  descriptive  writing  that  French  Literature 
contains. 

At  that  time,  some  only  of  Boudin 's 
pictures  (for  Boudin  was  slow  to  develop, 
slow  to  become  himself)  had  passed  be- 
yond the  stage  of  an  uninteresting,  learned 
dryness,  and  of  an  elaboration  competent 
enough,  but  never  inspired.  The  'Seventies 
had  to  be  entered  upon,  Brittany  was  re- 
visited, and  Bordeaux  was  seen  for  the  first 
time,  before  Boudin,  in  those  smaller,  not 
necessarily  very  small  pictures  which  must 
ever  be  accounted  his  finest  ones,  showed 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     201 

us  the  endless  subtlety  and  certainty  of  his 
observation  of  an  hour.  Even  afterwards, 
there  were  wanted,  and  there  had  to  be 
supplied,  for  Exhibition  purposes,  for  the 
imaginary  needs,  it  may  be,  of  civic  galleries, 
managed  stupidly,  those  sprawling,  relatively 
empty  canvasses — those  "  great  machines  " 
he  called  them  scornfully  when  he  hated 
them — which  dealers  in  conventional  art 
think  better  worth  eight  hundred  pounds 
than  the  small,  living,  luminous  canvasses  or 
panels  which  enchant  us  with  steady,  cumu- 
lative revelation  of  the  real  Boudin's  refined, 
perfected  strength.  His  art,  most  certain  per- 
haps to  be  excellent,  most  of  all  individual,  in 
the  seven  years  beginning  with  1873,  fell 
off,  more  than  a  little,  in  the  'Eighties.  That 
is,  a  smaller  number  of  his  works  in  that 
decade  are  admirable.  He  was  changing  his 
manner.  He  revived  in  the  the  early  'Nineties, 
when,  as  the  inspired  record  in  the  National 
Gallery—"  A  Squall  from  the  West  "—itself 
sufficiently  shows  us  (but  many  smaller,  equally 
broad  visions  show  us  hardly  less  certainly), 
he  was  luminous  most  of  all.  The  'Seventies 
for  the  harbour  scenes,  the  'Nineties,  up  to 
within  a  year  of  his  death  in  1898,  for  his 
coast  pictures  and  his  cattle -peopled  pasture 


202      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

lands,  most  of  all — though  then  again  the 
harbour  scenes,  his  avant  ports  of  Havre,  his 
jetties  of  Trouville,  his  few  massed  fishing- 
boats,  became  admirable — are  the  periods  of 
his  work  for  which  we  most  seek  him. 
His  washerwomen  of  the  Touques,  pictures 
tolerably  observant,  tolerably  clever,  never 
move  us  very  much.  Not  for  Boudin,  the 
stooping  backs  of  four  middle-aged  French- 
women, their  hands  wringing  out  the  linen 
energetically,  and  they  unsuccessfully  existing 
to  absorb  unworthily  a  part  of  the  interest 
which,  with  so  great  a  painter  of  the  paysage, 
and  of  the  paysage  de  mer,  should  be  in 
paysage  alone. 

We  feel  very  differently  about  his  landscapes 
with  cattle.  Boudin's  broadly  painted  beasts, 
well  placed  throughout  his  wide,  rich  meadows, 
count  for  much  in  a  scheme  of  colour  nobly 
conceived  and  executed.  And  they  have  such 
weight,  always.  These  canvasses  will,  ere 
long,  receive  an  appreciation  markedly  in  ad- 
vance, not  only  of  the  work  of  the  first  Breton 
period — the  "  Sainte  Anne  de  la  Palud,"  for 
instance — but  of  the  "  grandes  machines," 
sometimes  pretentious,  and  of  certain  insig- 
nificant chronicles  of  the  familiar  piers,  which, 
in  his  later  life,  when  they  could  sell  his 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     203 

product,  the  dealers  snatched  from  Boudin, 
irrespective  of  their  quality.  Yet  it  is  the 
harbour  at  its  best,  the  jetty  at  its  best, 
with  massed  masts  and  gathered  crowd,  the 
freshened  seas  with  yachts  like  white  birds 
flying,  the  Channel  waters  changeful,  in  front 
of  ever-changeful  skies,  now  broken  into  grey 
and  turquoise,  now  an  impenetrable,  threaten- 
ing mystery  of  slate -colour — these  things  it 
is  by  which  Eugene  Boudin,  a  skipper's  son, 
who  loved  his  coast  profoundly  and  repre- 
sented it  with  magic  truth  in  every  guise, 
will,  most  of  all,  be  classed  and  valued. 

To  another  artist  of  our  bonne  Peinture 
group — to  a  painter  who  enjoyed  certain 
small  private  means,  it  seems,  and  so  came  into 
public  recognition  and  acceptance  long  before 
Boudin,  who  was  very  poor — Boudin  was 
indebted.  This  was  the  helpful,  worthy 
Fran§ois  Bonvin,  a  complete  draughtsman, 
but,  on  occasion,  in  his  conscientious  render- 
ing of  old  world  street  and  of  still  convent,  a 
little  dry  and  precise.  The  charm  of  the 
broad,  free  touch  and  of  the  luscious  or  the 
luminous  palette  was  not  then,  or  was  not 
always  in  these  themes,  his;  and  to  the 
method  then  and  there  employed,  it  is  not  his 
real  reputation,  but  only  a  measure  of  rather 


204      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

early  popularity,  that  may  be  due.  A  little 
later,  the  better,  quiet  Dutch  Genre  painters 
were  the  source  of  his  inspiration,  or  of  his 
capacity :  only  it  is  the  pleasant  models  of 
French  peasant  and  bourgeois  life  that  he 
appreciatively  paints.  His  youthful  cook 
maids,  demure  but  awakened,  very  open  and 
understandable,  give  a  tranquil  charm  of 
human  presence  to  his  scenes  of  the  kitchen 
and  the  larder.  Bonvin,  in  placing  them 
before  us,  occupied  contentedly,  showed  a 
touch  of  the  spirit  of  Chardin. 

No  one  would  turn  to  themes  like  these,  if, 
in  addition  to  a  healthy  appreciation  of  nice 
everyday  folk,  he  did  not  add  a  peculiar  and 
learned  apprehension  of  the  charm  of  great 
Still  Life.  With  Bonvin,  the  pose  of  the 
young  woman  who  shells  the  peas,  or  is  busy 
with  the  cauliflower,  is  observed  keenly  and 
is  sure  to  be  pleasant  and  true ;  but  the  still 
life  will  still  be  a  substantial  though  not  a 
dominating  part  of  the  interest  of  his  picture. 
And  perhaps  Bonvin  is  most  certain  to  be 
remarkable,  from  beginning  to  end  of  his 
canvas,  when  it  is  still  life  alone  with 
which  he  is  concerned.  His  still  life — unlike 
Vollon's,  which  is  generally,  and  finely,  stately 
gold  vessels  and  some  gorgeous  fruit — is 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET    205 

humble  still  life,  with  scarcely  an  exception, 
and  it  is  painted  quietly,  modestly,  withal 
fearlessly,  and  with  the  spirit  of  one  who,  in 
dealing  with  simple  matter,  lies,  as  it  were, 
under  the  spell  of  a  devout  fascination. 
Like  Rembrandt,  Bonvin  can,  by  dint  of 
sheer  sincerity,  make  uncooked  meat  quite 
possible  material  for  his  art.  It  is  so  much 
more  than  meat,  it  is  meat  surrounded  by 
atmosphere,  it  is  meat  in  relation  to  the  home. 
Or,  near  a  glowing  copper -pan,  there  is  perhaps 
a  vegetable — and  the  instruments  in  Bonvin's 
orchestra  are  delivered  of  resonant  notes.  Or, 
upon  the  kitchen  slab,  there  is  a  flat,  round, 
creamy  cheese,  cut  already,  and  a  little 
oozing.  It  is  painted  perfectly,  just  at  the 
very  moment  when  the  bonne  Brie  should  be 
eaten  with  gratitude. 

A  painter  of  wider  imagination  than  Bonvin, 
an  artist  of  readier  entrance  into  the  depths 
of  character  and  the  variations  of  mood — I 
mean  Th6odule  Ribot — had  for  the  painting 
of  still  life,  which  average  English  people 
despise  ignorantly,  a  faculty  as  great  as 
Bonvin's.  Somewhere  or  other  the  Luxem- 
bourg possesses  an  absolutely  noble  record,  by 
Ribot,  of  poached  eggs  in  perfection  :  the  yolks 
of  golden  yellow  surrounded  by  their  collars 


206      PAINTERS  AND   PAINTING 

of  translucent  white,  and  the  translucent 
white  held  up,  restrained,  by  the  dark  rigid 
saucepan  into  which,  with  just  enough  of 
firmness,  they  settle.  In  private  possession 
too,  a  large,  a  very  large  tomato,  darkly  ripe, 
has  its  place  beside  a  huge  green  pear,  a 
keeping  pear,  of  Anjou,  its  greenness  flecked 
with  gold.  And  in  the  pictures  of  domestic 
incident — a  mother  teaching  her  child  canvas 
work,  a  housewife  gravely  concerned  with 
marshalled  jugs  of  rough  earthenware,  a  little 
gate-sauce  of  a  boy  (a  cook's  apprentice  in  a 
white  apron)  or,  it  may  be  a  cellarman  who  has 
brought  up  from  the  depths  a  precious  bottle 
— this  manly  painter's  preoccupation  with 
still  life,  his  fondness  for  it,  his  true  sense  of 
its  dignity,  is  constantly  made  manifest. 

But  Ribot — much  more  than  Bonvin,  who 
dealt  for  choice  with  those  of  tranquil  mien 
and  circumspect  behaviour — Ribot  is  a  great 
character-painter.  He  knows  the  charm  and 
fun  of  boyhood,  the  early  wisdom  of  the 
serene  girl -child,  and  the  moods  in  which  she 
"inquires  curiously."  He  knows  men;  and 
he  knows,  best  of  all  perhaps,  or  at  the  least, 
as  the  result  of  knowledge,  sets  down  with 
unsurpassed  courage  and  force,  the  woman  old, 
with  character,  and  perhaps  irresistible  will, 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     207 

stamped  firmly  upon  every  inch  of  a  weather- 
worn, time-beaten  visage.  Sometimes  she 
is  decided  merely :  placid  and  contemplative. 
Sometimes  seven  devils  have  entered  into  her 
— have  not  so  much  contorted  her  features 
as  made  repugnant  and  alarming  her  expres- 
sion. Sometimes  hallucinations  have  seized 
on  her. 

Whichever  of  these  persons  he  paints,  and 
whichever  of  these  moods,  or  states  of  the 
soul,  Ribot,  from  the  time  when  he  was  in 
his  'Thirties  to  the  time  of  his  death,  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century  later,  painted 
steadily  as  a  master.  A  master  in  the 
relatively  early  days — he  was  not  a  painter  at 
all  when  he  was  actually  young — he  was  a 
master  not  less  certainly  when  age  came  upon 
him.  His  small  scale  Genre  pieces,  dignified 
and  humorous,  were  no  unworthy  precursors 
of  the  bolder  effort,  when  the  group,  or  the 
single  figure,  was  realized  more  largely — and 
when  life  seemed  always  earnest,  often 
severe,  and  now  and  then  tragic.  Do  not 
let  us  attach  too  much  importance  to  that 
which  in  certain  other  compositions,  and  in  the 
method  of  treating  them,  Ribot  owed  to  Ribera. 
"Christ  on  the  Cross,"  "  Saint  Sebastian" 
in  martyrdom,  the  "  Good  Samaritan  "  pouring 


208      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

oil  into  the  wounds  of  the  belaboured  way- 
farer— they  are  a  worthy  contribution  to  the 
sum  of  his  achievement,  but  they  are  not 
that  part  of  his  achievement  on  which  this 
master  painter,  competently  grave,  sometimes 
brusque,  could  with  justice  have  relied  for  the 
fame  which  other  branches  of  his  work  ensure. 
Ribot,  like  Boudin,  was  fashionable,  he  was 
the  desire  of  the  collector,  a  few  years  before 
his  death,  and  a  few  years  after  it.  Then 
interest  fell  away  from  him,  to  something 
novel,  and  now,  just  as  with  Boudin,  it  is 
returning  where  it  may  be  justified. 

Lupine,  Stanislas  Lupine,  "  Parisien  de 
Paris,"  affords  yet  a  third  instance  of  appre- 
ciation coming  late,  and  at  one  time,  or  in 
some  measure,  shifting.  But  then,  the  pure 
landscape  of  Lepine  suffers  naturally  enough 
the  disadvantage  of  recalling  Corot,  his  master 
— without  being  Corot.  We  must  get  Lepine 
amongst  his  special  subjects  to  see  how  un- 
surpassed, almost  how  unequalled,  he  was, 
when  it  was  those  that  he  treated.  He 
painted  old  towns  with  a  dignified  reticence 
that  yet  was  complete  truth.  He  painted 
them  very  tenderly,  in  a  low  key  of  colour  : 
Caen  and  Rouen,  and  the  pleasant  suburbs 
of  these  cities — suburbs  quiet  and  green,  and 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND    COURBET     209 

through  which  (that  was  the  case  with  the 
neighbourhood  of  Rouen  at  all  events)  a 
river  flowed  placidly.  Had  he  painted  only 
Caen  and  Rouen  and  something  of  the  Seine's 
course,  his  place  would  have  been  honourable, 
but  it  would  have  been  less  distinguished.  It 
is  his  particular  glory  to  have  painted  Paris  : 
sometimes,  and  admirably,  its  important 
monuments — Pantheon,  Pont  Neuf,  Institute 
of  France,  Henry  the  Fourth's  statue  at  the 
north-western  end  of  the  lie  de  la  Cite — and 
sometimes,  and  then  with  very  personal 
charm,  its  quiet  corners.  An  artist  who 
knows  Paris  as  few  know  it — my  friend 
Eugene  Bejot — is  the  first  to  bear  witness 
to  Lepine's  delicate  fidelity,  not  only  to  the 
character  of  buildings,  but  to  the  Parisian 
atmosphere  of  every  hour.  It  is  light  gene- 
rally, and  brisk  sometimes  :  sometimes  it  is 
sun -laden ;  often — and  then  it  is  that  it  must 
be  apprehended  and  seized  with  a  refinement 
unsurpassable — it  has  a  little  silvery  moisture, 
so  that  its  stones,  its  vistas,  and  its  distances 
are  just  perceptibly  veiled  by  that  which  has  not 
even  the  slightest  resemblance  to  a  fog,  but  is 
the  timid,  gracefully  receding  ghost  of  a  mist. 
Montmartre,  where  Lupine  lived,  was  quiet, 
green,  and  silvery  itself,  in  Lepine's  day, 


210      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

and  often  he  painted  corners  so  familiar  to 
him,  where  modest  detached  houses  looked 
out  across  a  road,  half  country  and  half 
town,  to  a  fence  perhaps,  and  to  lonely 
willows,  and  to  poplars  rising  steadily  into 
the  still  air,  or  bending  slowly  under  the 
passage  of  an  autumn  wind.  Or,  farther  yet 
from  the  heart  of  Paris,  say — not  Parisian 
at  all,  but  still  pre-eminently  French — he 
made  a  picture,  classic  in  simplicity  and 
dignity,  out  of  a  magasin  de  fourrage,  the 
mere  fodder  store.  And  it  was  painted 
broadly.  A  little  pool  was  in  the  foreground. 
In  mid-distance  the  serviceable  building 
stretched  itself,  lightly  brown,  across  the 
whole  picture;  its  lower  storey,  or  the  wall 
that  continues  it,  pierced  with  arched  outlets, 
beyond  which,  and  through  which,  some  little 
stretch  of  landscape  is  seen,  of  greyish  green, 
and  over  all  there  is  a  low  grey  sky,  unchanged 
lately,  and  to  be  unchanged  still  in  these 
quiet  afternoon  hours. 

From  Lepine  to  Manet,  from  the  most 
soothing  peaceful  fascination  of  Lepine's 
strains,  all  in  a  minor  key,  to  the  sharp,  clear, 
energetic  utterance  of  a  Manet,  the  transition 
is  abrupt.  Lupine  was  not  the  least  admirable 
of  our  school  or  group  of  "  the  Good  Painting.'? 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     211 

Manet  was  a  good  painter — at  his  best  a 
great  one — and  of  the  avowed,  pronounced 
Impressionists,  he  was  one  of  the  first.  At 
least  three  Impressionists,  famous  and  re- 
markable, are  living  to-day,  it  happens,  in 
scarcely  differing  stages  of  what  must  be 
accounted  old  age.  But,  living,  one's  remarks, 
that  they  may  be  safe,  must  be  few,  upon 
them.  Let  it  be  said,  however,  before  talking 
of  Manet  more  particularly,  that  they  are 
Degas,  Renoir,  Claude  Monet.  Nor  is  that 
quite  all  that  shall  be  said. 

Degas,  a  master  of  draughtsmanship,  has 
applied  his  knowledge  and  his  instinctive, 
natural  force,  that  he  derived  from  nobody, 
to  the  quite  faultless  record  of  form  not 
faultless  at  all.  The  search  for  beauty  of 
line,  the  visible  appreciation  of  it,  has  never 
been  his.  The  search  for  action— action  of 
the  horse,  action  of  the  plain  and  ill -shaped 
ballet -girl — has  been  continual  with  him,  and 
its  attainment  constant.  Not  in  the  least 
insensible  has  Degas  shown  himself,  in  his 
pastels,  to  arrangements  of  colour  splendid  and 
original.  Time  will  not  take  away  from  him 
the  fame  that  gathered  years  have  by  this 
time  accorded :  the  fame  of  the  observer  whose 

sight  is  penetrating  for  the  things  he  has  cared 
o  2 


212      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

to  behold :  the  fame  of  the  rather  cynical 
chronicler  whose  records  are  not  wont  to  err. 
Valuable  by  his  work — however  little  by  the 
ordinary  mortal  it  may  be  found  sympathetic 
— Degas  is  valuable,  too,  or  at  the  least, 
important,  by  his  influence.  Many  men  of 
talent  and  one  man  of  genius — Henri  de 
Toulouse  Lautrec — owe  him  a  visible  debt. 

If  one  finds  oneself  much  less  frequently, 
and  then  with  greater  reservations,  admiring 
Renoir,  that  is  perhaps  because,  to  Degas's 
indifference  to  beauty  of  form,  Renoir  adds 
his  own  very  frequent,  not  by  any  means 
constant  indifference  (one  would  even  say 
his  frequent  insensibility)  to  beauty  of  colour. 
Discords  abound  in  his  colour.  Too  many 
of  his  Nudes  suffer  the  disadvantage  of  com- 
bining heated  hues  with  ungainly  form. 
Certain  of  them  are  admirable.  And  admir- 
able also,  in  the  way  of  light,  vivacious 
chronicle,  are  many  of  Renoir's  scenes  of 
popular  rejoicing.  And  there  are  portrait  and 
Genre  pieces  in  which  this  artist,  of  whom 
fineness  of  taste  is  by  no  means  the  char- 
acteristic, has  portrayed  children  who  are 
individual,  children  who  are  likeable,  possibly 
lovable  :  certainly  not  distinguished. 

Claude    Monet    is    mainly,    in    the    broad 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     213 

sense  wholly,  a  landscape  painter.  His  pre- 
occupation, in  whatever  he  has  painted,  has 
been  the  great  question  of  colour  and  light. 
Infinite  haystacks — the  somewhat  formless 
and,  as  it  were,  accidental  haystacks,  of 
France — but  about  them  an  infinite  variety 
of  illumination,  where  it  was  possible,  a 
genuine  beauty  of  colour.  Visions  of  London 
he  has  received  and  conveyed,  and  such  as 
would  have  appealed  to  Turner — as  justified 
experiments  at  all  events — in  Turner's  great 
old  age.  And  in  France,  the  fronts  of  ornate 
Cathedrals,  the  noble  traceries  and  flam- 
boyant growths  of  church  architecture  at 
Rouen,  have  served  as  material,  as  surface, 
over  which  might  extend  itself  in  wide  variety 
Claude  Monet's  noble  vision  of  colour  and 
ight.  Claude  Monet  has  pressed  into  his 
service  many  an  object  and  theme.  He  is 
an  artist  never  restlessly,  but  always  alertly, 
interested  in  things  that  have  freshness  for 
him.  But,  if  we  were  asked  where  were  to  be 
found  the  themes  that  in  his  life,  prolonged 
and  busy,  he  had  treated  to  the  finest  pur- 
pose, we  should  have  to  say,  perhaps — at 
the  end  of  a  long  circuit  of  inquiry  amongst 
a  mass  of  worthy  achievement — that  they 
would  be  found  in  records  of  the  sparkling  sea, 


214      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

made  looking  down  from  the  high  cliffs  of 
Varangeville — made,  they  and  their  like, 
some  of  them  twenty,  some  of  them  thirty, 
some  of  them  even  forty  years  ago.  It  is 
with  an  excellent  regard  for  beauty  that  Claude 
Monet  has  studied,  during  now  not  much 
less  than  two  generations,  the  scintillations 
of  colour,  the  vibrations  of  light.  He  has 
studied  these  things  from  the  middle  life  of 
Boudin  to  more  than  the  middle  life  of 
Besnard.  Boudin  initiated  him  into  the 
mysteries  ;  and  Besnard,  folio  wing  Monet,  takes 
up  the  wondrous  tale — paints  "  Femme  qui  se 
chauffe,"  and,  at  Benares,  all  the  hues  of  India. 
The  more  one  studies  the  French  painting 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  more  one  is 
impressed  by  the  peculiar  goodness  of  the 
painting  of  the  Coast  and  Sea.  Edouard 
Manet,  himself  the  greatest  Impressionist  of 
all,  if  by  Impressionist  we  are  to  mean,  not 
only  open-air  painter,  but  learnedly  swift 
recorder  of  a  vision  that  may  soon  vanish, 
painted  the  sea  and  shore  with  an  amazing 
conviction,  and  an  authority  we  cannot  ques- 
tion. In  naming  the  epoch-making,  the  "  im- 
portant "  pictures,  that  mark  the  milestones 
upon  Manet's  way,  these  fresh  and  true 
performances,  some  of  them  scarcely  more 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     215 

than  notes  for  his  delight,  may  find  small 
place  or  none.  But  their  existence,  in  con- 
siderable quantity,  should  not  escape  us.  I 
have  seen  them,  I  remember,  at  M.  Durand- 
Ruel's  Impressionist  Exhibition  at  the  Grafton 
Galleries.  I  have  seen  them,  I  think,  at  M. 
Pellerin's,  at  Neuilly,  before  he  scattered  many 
Manets — that  he  might  buy  more  Cezanne's, 
it  is  said.  And  I  have  seen  one  lately,  at 
Baron  Denys  Cochin's  in  the  Faubourg  St. 
Germain — an  expanse  of  freshened  and  viva- 
cious waters,  and  little  boats,  perfectly  happy, 
and  an  exhilarating  breeze  from  the  West. 
But  these  are  not  the  pieces  for  the  public  of 
Exhibitions. 

Manet,  born,  in  1832,  into  the  ranks  of  the 
upper  bourgeoisie,  found  himself  for  a  while 
in  the  studio  of  Couture,  and  had  his  first 
success — it  was  accounted  then  his  eminent 
failure — with  his  great  picnic  picture,  "  Le 
Dejeuner  sur  PHerbe,"  of  1863.  He  was 
independent  from  the  beginning ;  and  to  him 
it  seemed  amazing  that  in  but  continuing  or 
reviving  the  tradition  of  Giorgione,  who 
painted,  in  his  "  Concert  in  the  Fields  "  two 
men,  attired,  and  two  women  undraped,  he 
should  have  been  suspected  of  an  intention  of 
offence.  The  picture  hag;  its  comic  side,  un- 


216      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

doubtedly,  and  to  that  Manet  was  not  quite 
alive.  It  is  a  little  amusing  to  see  Miss 
Victorine  Meurand,  Manet's  favourite  model 
of  that  day  and  afterwards,  squatting »  quite 
naked  on  the  grass,  refreshed  by  fruits  and 
altogether  joyous,  while  the  painter,  in  the 
costume  of  his  period  and  a  velvet  smoking- 
cap — lest  he  should  take  a  cold — lounges 
opposite  to  her,  with  hand  extended  and 
explanatory,  all  his  soul  busy  with  the 
task  of  persuading  a  man  friend,  who  is  by 
the  model's  side,  of  the  Tightness  of  those 
opinions  about  Art  which  he  is  at  the  moment 
expounding.  "  Amusing,"  I  have  said  :  cer- 
tainly not  offensive.  Yet  Manet  had  to  die 
before  the  grave  beauty  and  grave  truth 
and  the  curious  charm  of  the  picture — for  it 
has  these  notably — was  apprehended  by  the 
many,  as  it  had  been  from  the  first  by  the  few. 
For  myself,  to  the  "Dejeuner  sur  1'Herbe" 
I  attach  more  importance  than  to  the 
"  Olympia." 

Five  years  later,  came  "  The  Execution  of 
the  Emperor  Maximilian,"  a  thing  of  un- 
forgettable realism,  although  "  constructed  " 
from  stray  pictorial  material  supplied,  and 
from  a  narration  furnished,  and  by  the  aid  of 
the  loan,  day  after  day,  from  the  barracks,  of 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND   COURBET     217 

just  enough  private  soldiers  to  constitute  a 
firing-party.  Two  years  after  that,  came  the 
single  young  woman's  figure  on  the  couch, 
called  "  Rest  "—studied  from  Mile.  Berthe 
Morisot,  who  was  already  Manet's  follower, 
and  who  became  his  sister-in-law.  Three 
years  passed,  and  then  there  was  "  Le  Bon 
Bock  " — a  Franz  Hals,  said  Alfred  Stevens,  the 
Belgian  painter,  rather  maliciously  :  at  least 
he  said  that  the  drinker,  obese  and  genial,  was 
"drinking  Haarlem  beer,"  and  that  carried 
men's  thoughts,  and  was  meant  to  carry 
them,  to  the  bold  Haarlem  master.  "  Au 
Cafe  " — little  girl,  and  meditative  father,  and 
fat  mamma,  sitting  all  in  a  row,  with  mild 
refreshments  in  front  of  them — came  in  1878, 
and  is  a  piece  of  actual  life  also.  "  Le  Bon 
Bock  " — so  full  of  humour  and  of  force — had 
partly  reconciled  the  public,  by  this  time. 
Open-air  painting  is  at  its  best  in  1880,  with 
the  party  "At  le  Pere  Lathuile's."  The 
"  pere "  kept  a  popular  and  comfortable 
restaurant,  in  the  Avenue  de  Clichy.  An 
uglier  piece  of  realism,  as  I  have  always 
thought  it,  and  without  the  abiding  interest 
of  many  smaller  themes,  was  the  almost  too 
well-known  "  Bar  of  the  Folies  Bergere  "  of 
1882.  By  that  time  Manet's  health  was  fail- 


218      PAINTERS   AND   PAINTING 

ing;  and,  for  acceptance  or  rejection,  he  sent 
to  the  Salon  no  more.  It  is  well  to  add  that 
in  the  few  years  that  preceded  the  working  on 
"  The  Folies  Bergere  "  and  his  death,  Manet 
did  certain  flower  pieces  of  refinement  and 
vividness,  and  certain  small  fruit  pieces  of 
quality  distinguished  and  fascinating. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  so  almost  faultless 
a  recorder  of  the  thing  seen  should  have  been 
not  a  great  painter  only,  but  an  expressive 
etcher.  Nuances,  visible  nuances  in  etching 
— studied  gradations,  subtleties — were  not 
what  he  went  in  for.  But  there  is  vigour 
in  his  prints,  decision,  energy,  the  qualities 
which  were  so  much  his  own  at  all  times,  and 
the  possession  of  which  had  placed  him  rapidly 
in  sympathy  with  the  masters  of  Spain.  His 
actual  palette,  except  indeed  in  his  earliest 
time,  was  unlike  that  of  the  Spaniards — 
curiously.  It  was  of  the  very  essence  of 
Manet's  riper,  more  developed  work,  that 
much  of  it  should  be  painted  in  a  high,  clear 
key.  In  high,  clear  key  had  he  beheld  his 
themes.  In  that,  they  must  be  represented. 

On  the  last  page,  there  was  just  mentioned 
Manet's  immediate  follower,  Berthe  Morisot. 
Let  her  be  named  again,  that  two  things 
may  be  said.  First,  she  is  an  instance  of  the 


IMPRESSIONISTS,  AND  COURBET     219 

wholly  happy  exercise  of  masculine  influence 
upon  the  female  sex.  She  would  have  been 
— Heaven  knows  what :  nothing  particular, 
probably — were  it  not  for  this  great  brother- 
in-law.  Wonderful  is  the  measure  of  his 
strength  and  brilliance  that  Berthe  Morisot 
absorbed  :  wonderful  too,  the  feminine  charm 
she  added  to  the  things  she  had  received. 
Her  young  girl  with  the  butterfly  net,  in  the 
light  coppice;  her  young  girls  sitting  white 
on  the  bedside — justifiably  sanguine  as  to  the 
appearance  they  will  present  at  some  later 
stage  of  their  toilette — have  a  refinement  and 
rare  grace  that  is  Berthe  Morisot's  own.  The 
second  thing  it  is  convenient  to  say,  &  propos 
of  her,  is  that  in  French  art  it  is  she  and 
Mme.  Vig6e  Lebrun  who — in  a  minority  tiny, 
but  influential,  distinguished — proclaim,  with 
charm,  that  there  are  women  painters  who 
must  seriously  count. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

History  of  Painting  in  North  Italy.     By  CROWE  and  CAVAL- 
CASELLE.    Annotated  by  Tancred  Bozenius.    3  vols.    1912. 

Hubert  and  Jan  Van  Eyck.     By  W.  H.  T.  WEALE.     1908. 

Life  of  Durer.     By  MORITZ  THAUSING.     Translated  by  F.  A. 
EATON.     1878. 

LifeofDiirer.     By  T.  STURGE  MOORE.     1905. 

Holbein  and  His  Time.     By  WOLTMANN.     English  translation. 
1872. 

The  Little  Masters  of  Germany.    By  W.  B.  SCOTT.     1880. 
Rembrandt.     By  MICHEL.     English  translation.     1894. 
Rubens:  sa  Vie  et  ses  (Euvres.     By  MAX  ROOSES.     1903. 
Rubens.    By  EDWARD  DILLON.    1909. 
Oiorgione.     By  HERBERT  COOK.     1900. 
Giorgione.     By  LUDWIG  JUSTI.     1908. 
Titian.     By  CROWE  and  CAVALCASELLE.     1877. 
Titian.     By  CHARLES  RICKETTS.     1910. 
Guardi.    By  G.  A.  SIMONSON.     1904. 
Velasquez.    By  A.  DE  BERUETE.     1906. 
The  Art  of  Velasquez.    By  R.  A.  M.  STEVENSON.     1895. 
Velasquez  and  His  Times.     By  JUSTI.     1889. 
The  Prado  and  its  Masterpieces.    By  CHARLES  RICKETTS.    1903. 
Hogarth.    By  AUSTIN  DOBSON.     1891. 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds.     By  SIR  WALTER  ARMSTRONG.     1900. 
Gainsborough.    By  SIR  WALTER  ARMSTRONG.     1904. 
Romney.    By  HUMPHRY  WARD  and  W.  ROBERTS.     1904. 
Crome  and  John  Sell  Cotman.     By  LAURENCE  BIN  YON.     1897. 
Turner.     By  COSMO  MONKHOUSE.     1879. 
221 


222  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Notes  on  Turner's  Liber  Studiorum.  By  STOPFORD  A.  BROOKE. 
1885. 

Turner's  Liber  Studiorum.     By  W.  G.  RAWLINSON.     1906. 

The  Works  of  EusJcin.  Edited  by  E.  T.  COOK  and  A.  WEDDER- 
BURN.  39  vols.  1903. 

Constable.    By  C.  J.  HOLMES.     1902. 

Constable- Lucas.    By  FREDERICK  WEDMORE.     1904. 

Studies  in  English  Art,  1876,  and  Etchings,  1911.  By 
FREDERICK  WEDMORE. 

Short  History  of  Engraving  and  Etching.  By  A.  M.  HIND. 
1908. 

Life  of  William  Etty,  R.A.     By  A.  GILCHRIST.    1855. 

Dictionary  of  Artists  of  the  English  School.  By  REDGRAVE. 
1878. 

Nattier,  Peintre  de  la  Cour  de  Louis  Quinze.  By  PIRERE 
DE  NOLHAC.  1910. 

L'Art  du  Dix-huitieme  Siecle.  PAR  EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE 
GONCOURT.  1881. 

French  Art,  from  Watteau  to  Prud'hon.  Edited  by  J.  J« 
FOSTER.  With  Chapters  by  HENRI  FRANTZ,  ROBERT  DE 
LA  SIZERANNE,  and  FREDERICK  WEDMORE.  3  vols. 
1905. 

Gustave  Courbet,  Peintre.    By  GEORGES  RIAT.     1896. 
Edouard  Manet.    By  THEODORE  DURET.     1902. 
The  Impressionists.     By  WYNFORD  DEWHTJRST.    1904. 
Modern  Art.    By  J.  MEIER  GRAEFFE.     2  vols.     1908. 


INDEX 


ALBDORFKR,  28 
Aldegrever,  32 

Backhuysen,  42 

Bega,  38 

Beham,  Barthel,  30-32 

,  Hans  Sebald,  30-32 

Bellini,  51 
Besnard,  214 
Binck,  Jacob,  29 
Bonington,  129-130 
Bonvin,  203-205 
Bosboom,  49-50 
Boucher,  159-163 
Boudin,  199-203 
Brabazon,  129,  141 

Callow,  William,  138 
Canal  etto,  58-59 
Chardin,  163-168 
Claude,  142-145 
Collier,  Thomas,  140-141 
Constable.  101-112 
Corot,  184-186 
Cotman,  131-134 
Courbet,  190-197 
Cox,  David,  135-136 
Cozens,  John,  125 
"Old"Crome,  108,113 

David,  177-178 
Dayes,  125 
De^as,  211-212 
Delacroix,  181 
Delaroche,  181 
Demarteau,  162 
Dewint,  136-137 
Diaz,  182-183 
Dupre,  Jules,  183 
Diirer,  18-25 
Dusart,  Cornelius,  125 

Etty,  William,  120-123 

Fielding,  Copley,  140 
Flandrin,  Hippolyte,  180 


223 


Fragonard,  169-174 
Fulleylove,  138 

Gainsborough,  91-93 
Geddes,  116 
Giorgione,  52 
Giotto,  14 
Girtin,  126-128 
Goya,  75-80 
Greco,  El.  64-67 
Guardi,  58-59 

Hearne,  125 
Hine.  H.  G.,  139-140 
Hobbema,  41 
Hogarth,  83-86 
Holbein,  18-22 
Hooch,  Peter  de,  39 
Hoppner,  115-116 

Ingres,  178-181 
Israels,  45-46 

Jackson,  John,  116 
Jacque,  Charles,  183 
Jongkind,  198-199 

Lancret,  158 
Largilliere,  146 
La  Tour,  174-177 
Lawrence,  116 
Lepine,  208-210 
Longhi,  57 

Maitre  de  Moulins,  IS 
Manet,  214-218 
Maris,  Jacob,  48-49 

,  Mathew,  47 

McKewan,  David,  139-140 

Memling,  14 

Mesdag,  44 

Metsu,  39 

Millet,  Jean-Frangois,  184-185 

Monet,  212-214 

Moreau  le  jeune,  83 

Morisot,  Berthe,  219 


224  INDEX 

Morland,  George,  113  Rubens,  33-38 

Morrice,  J.  W.,  190  Ruysdael,  41 

Murillo,  60-61 

Sandby,  Paul,  124 

Nattier,  147-150  Steen,  Jan,  40-41 

Neuhuys,  46-47 

Terborch,  39 
Ome  117  Tiepolo,  57 


Pater,  158  Turner,  101-107 

Perugino,  15  Van  Eyck,  14 

Poussm,  142-145  Varley,  John,  138 

Front,  134-135  Velasquez,  67-72 

Prud'hon,  83  Vermeer  of  Delft,  39 

Puvis  de  Chavannes,  182  Veronese,  56 

Vigee-Lebrun,  219 
Raeburn,  100 

Raphael,  15  Watteau,  151-157 

Rembrandt,  33-38  Wheatley.  Francis,  113 

Renoir,  212  Whistler,  190 

Reynolds,  93-96  Wilkie,  117-120 

Ribera,  74  Wilson,  Richard,  86-87 

Ribot,  205-208  Wynauts,  41 
Rigaud,  146 

Romney,  96-101  Zuloaga,  80-81 

Rousseau,  Theodore,  182  Zurbaran,  74 


Louvre.] 


[Mansell. 


BAPHAEL  :  "  La  Belle  Jardiniere." 
225 


Louvre.]  [Mans( 

HOLBEIN  :  ''Portrait  of  Erasmus." 


Q  2 


227 


National  Gallery.]  [Medici- Bruckmann. 

KEMBRANDT  :   "  Portrait  of  the  Painter." 


229 


Prado.]  [Medici-  BrucTcmann. 

BTJBENS  :  ' '  The  Three  Graces. " 


231 


National  Gallery.]  [Mansell. 

TITIAN:  "Venus  and  Adonis." 


233 


National  Gallery.]  [Medici-BrucTcmann. 

VERONESE:  " St.  Helena." 


235 


Prado.]  \_Medici-Bruclcmann. 

VELASQUEZ  :  ' '  The  Portrait  of  a  Sculptor. " 


237 


National  Gallery.}  [Mansell. 

HOGARTH  :  "  The  Shrimp  Girl." 


239 


241 


National  Gallery.]  [Mansell. 

REYNOLDS  :  ' '  Portrait  of  Samuel  Johnson. " 


243 


National  Gallery.']  [Medici-BrucJcmann. 

BOMNEY  :   "Lady  Hamilton  as  Euphrosyne." 


245 


Wallace  Collection.] 

NATTIER:  "Mile,  de  Clennont." 


247 


249 


Louvre.]  [Alinari. 

CHAKDIN  :  "  Le  B6nedicite. " 


251 


253 


255 


Th 


e 


Home  University 

L'l  of    Modern 

ibrary    Knowledge 

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and    Specially     Written    23oo£s 

EDITORS : 

PROF.  GILBERT  MURRAY,  D.Litt.,  LL.D.,  F.B.A. 
HERBERT  FISHER,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 
PROF.  J.  ARTHUR  THOMSON,  M.A. 
PROF.  WM.  T.  BREWSTER,  M.A. 

The   Home   University   Library 

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for  a  large  section  of  the  public  who  are  interested  in  the  liberal  educa- 
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11  Here  is  the  world's  learning  in  little,  and  none  too  poor  to  give  it 
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in  leather 


History  and  (geography 


3.  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

By  HILAIRE  LsLuOC,  M.A.  (With  Maps.)  "  It  is  coloured  with  all  the 
militancy  of  the  author's  temperament." — Daily  News. 

4.  HISTORY  OF  WAR  AND  PEACE 

By  G.  H.  FERRIS.  The  Rt.  Hon.  JAMES  BRVCE  writes  :  "  I  have  read  it  with 
much  interest  and  pleasure,  admiring  the  skill  with  which  you  have  managed 
to  compress  so  many  facts  and  views  into  so  small  a  volume." 

8.  POLAR  EXPLORATION 

By  Dr  W.  S.  BRUCE,  F.R.S.E.,  Leader  of  the  "Scotia"  Expedition.  (With 
Maps.)  "A  very  freshly  written  and  interesting  narrative." — The  Times. 

12.  THE  OPENING-UP  OF  AFRICA 

BySirH.H.  JOHNSTON,  G.C.M.G.,  F.Z.S.  (With  Maps.)  "The  Home 
University  Library  is  much  enriched  by  this  excellent  work." — Daily  Mail. 

13.  MEDIAEVAL  EUROPE 

By  H.  W.  C.  DAVIS,  M.A.  (With  Maps.)  "One  more  illustration  of  the 
fact  that  it  takes  a  complete  master  of  the  subject  to  write  briefly  upon  it." — 
Manchester  Guardian. 

14.  THE  PAPACY  &  MODERN  TIMES  (7303-1870) 

By  WILLIAM  BARRY,  D.D.  "  Dr  Barry  has  a  wide  range  of  knowledge 
and  an  artist's  power  of  selection." — Manchester  Guardian. 

23.  HISTORY  OF  OUR  TIME  (1885-1911) 

By  G.  P.  GOOCH,  M.A.  "  Mr  Gooch  contrives  to  breathe  vitality  into  his  story, 
and  to  give  us  the  flesh  as  well  as  the  bones  of  recent  happenings." — Observer^ 

25.  THE  CIVILISATION  OF  CHINA 

By  H.  A.  GILES,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Chinese  at  Cambridge.  "In  all  the 
mass  of  facts,  Professor  Giles  never  becomes  dull.  He  is  always  ready  with  a 
ghost  story  or  a  street  adventure  for  the  reader's  recreation." — Spectator. 

29.  THE  DAWN  OF  HISTORY 

By  J.  L.  M  YRES,  M.  A. ,  F.S.  A. ,  Wykeham  Professor  of  Ancient  History,  Oxford. 

"There is  not  a  page  in  it  that  is  not  suggestive." — Manchester  Guardian. 

33.  THE  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND 
A  Study  in  Political  Evolution 

By  Prof.  A.  F.  POLLARD,  M.A.  With  a  Chronological  Table.  "  It  takes  its 
place  at  once  among  the  authoritative  works  on  English  history.  "—Obsemer. 

34.  CANADA 

By  A.  G.  BRADLEY.    "  The  volume  makes  an  immediate  appeal  to  the  man  who 
wants  to  know  something  vivid  and  true  about  Canada. " — Canadian  Gazette. 

37.  PEOPLES  fr*  PROBLEMS  OF  INDIA 

By  Sir  T.  W.  HOLDERNESS,  K.C.S.I.,  Permanent  Under-Secretary  of  State 
of  the  India  Office.  "  Just  the  book  which  newspaper  readers  require  to-day, 
and  a  marvel  of  comprehensiveness." — Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

42.  ROME 

By  W.  WARDE  FOWLER,  M.A.    "  A  masterly  sketch  of  Roman  character  and 
of  what  it  did  for  the  world."—  The  Spectator. 
2 


48.  THE  AMERICAN  CIVIL  WAR 

By  F.  L.  PAXSON,  Professor  of  American  History,  Wisconsin  University. 
(With  Maps.)  "  A  stirring  study." — The  Guardian. 

51.   WARFARE  IN  BRITAIN 

By  HILAIRE  BELLOC,  M.  A.  "  Rich  in  suggestion  for  the  historical  student." 
— Edinburgh  Evening  News. 

55.  MASTER  MARINERS 

By  J.  R.  SPEARS.  "A  continuous  story  of  shipping  progress  and  adventure.  . 
It  reads  like  a  romance." — Glasgow  Herald. 

61.  NAPOLEON 

By  HERBERT  FISHER,  M.A.,  F.B.A.  (With  Maps.)  The  story  of  the  great 
Bonaparte's  youth,  his  career,  and  his  downfall,  with  .some  sayings  of  Napoleon, 
a  genealogy  of  his  family,  and  a  bibliography. 

66.  THE  NAVY  AND  SEA  POWER 

By  DAVID  HANNAY.  The  author  traces  the  growth  of  naval  power  from  early 
times,and  discusses  its  principles  and  effects  upon  the  history  of  the  Western  world. 

IN  PREPARATION 

ANCIENT  GREECE.    By  Prof.  GILBERT  MURRAY,  D.Litt.,  LL.D.,  F.B.A. 
ANCIENT  EGYPT.     By  F.  LL.  GRIFFITH,  M.A. 
THE  ANCIENT  EAST.    By  D.  G.  HOGARTH,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 
A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  EUROPE.     By  HERBERT  FISHER,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 
PREHISTORIC  BRITAIN.    By  ROBERT  MUNRO,  M.A.,  M.D.,  LL.D. 
THE  BYZANTINE  EMPIRE.     By  NORMAN  H.  BAYNES. 
THE  REFORM  A  TION.    By  Principal  LINDSAY,  LL.D. 
A  SHOR  T  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  R  USSIA .    By  Prof.  MILYOUKOV. 
MODERN  TURKEY.     By  D.  G.  HOGARTH,  M.A. 
FRANCE  OF  TO-DAY.     By  ALBERT  THOMAS. 
GERMANY  OF  TO-DAY.     By  CHARLES  TOWER. 
HISTORY  OF  SCOTLAND.    By  R.  S.  RAIT,  M.A. 
SOUTH  AMERICA.     By  Prof.  W.  R.  SHEPHERD. 
LONDON.     By  Sir  LAURENCE  GOMME,  F.S.A. 

HISTORY  AND   LITERATURE   OF  SPAIN.      By  J.   FITZMAURICE- 
KELLY,  F.B.A.,  Litt.D. 


Literature  and 


2.  SHAKESPEARE 

By  JOHN  MASEP  IELD.  ' '  The  book  is  a  joy.  We  have  had  half-a-dozen  more 
learned  books  on  Shakespeare  in  the  last  few  years,  but  not  one  so  wise." — 
Manchester  Guardian. 

27.  ENGLISH  LITERA  TURE:  MODERN 

BY  G.  H.  MAIR,  M.A.     "Altogether  a  fresh  and  individual  book."—  Observer* 

35.  LANDMARKS  IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE 

By  G.  L.  STRACHEY.  "  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  how  a  better  account  of 
French  Literature  could  be  given  in  250  small  pages."—  The  Times. 

39.  ARCHITECTURE 

By  Prof.  W.  R.  LETHABY.  (Over  forty  Illustrations.)  "  Popular  guide-books 
to  architecture  are,  as  a  rule,  not  worth  much.  This  volume  is  a  welcome  excep- 
tion."— Building  News.  ' '  Delightfully  bright  reading."— Christian  World. 


By  Prof.  J.  ERSKINE  and  Prof.  W.  P.  TRENT.     "An  admirable  summary  from 
Franklin  to  Mark  Twain,  enlivened  by  a  dry  humour." — Athetueum. 


43.  ENGLISH  LITERATURE-.  MEDIEVAL 

By  Prof.  W.  P.  KER,  M.A.  "  Prof.  Ker,  one  of  the  soundest  scholars  in  English 
we  have,  is  the  very  man  to  put  an  outline  of  English  Mediseval  Literature 
before  the  uninstructed  public.  His  knowledge  and  taste  are  unimpeachable, 
and  his  style  is  effective,  simple,  yet  never  dry."—  The  Athctueunt. 

45.  THE  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE 

By  L.  PKARSALL  SMITH,  M.A.  "A  wholly  fascinating  study  of  the  different 
streams  that  went  to  the  making  of  the  great  river  of  the  English  speech." — 
Daily  Neivs. 

$2.  GREAT  WRITERS  OF  AMERICA 

By  Prof.  J.  ERSKINE  and  Prof.  W.  P.  TRENT.     " 
Franklin  to  Mark  Twain,  enlivened  by  a  dry  hun 

63.  PAINTERS  AND  PAINTING 

By  Sir  FREDERICK  WEDMORE.  (With  16  half-tone  illustrations.)  From  the 
Primitives  to  the  Impressionists. 

64.  PR  JOHNSON  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

By  JOHN  BAILEY,  M.A. 

65.  THE  LITERATURE  OF  GERMANY 

By  Professor  J.  G.  ROBERTSON,  M.  A.,  Ph.D.  A  review  of  one  of  the  greatest 
literatures  of  the  world  by  a  high  authority. 

70.   THE  VICTORIAN  AGE  IN  LITERATURE 

By  G.  K.  CHESTERTON.  "  The  Victorian  Compromise  and  its  Enemies" — 
"The  Great  Victorian  Novelists  "— "  The  Great  Victorian  Poets"— "The 
Break-up  of  the  Compromise." 

IN  PREPARATION 

ANCIENT  ART  &  RITUAL.    By  Miss  JANE  HARRISON,  LL.D.,  D.Litt. 

GREEK  LITERA  TURE.     By  Prof,  GILBERT  MURRAY,  D.Litt. 

LA  TIN  LITERA  TURE.     By  Prof.  J.  S.  PHILLIMORE. 

CHA  UCER  AND  HIS  TIME.    By  Miss  G.  E.  HADOW. 

THE  RENAISSANCE.    By  Miss  EUITH  SICHEL. 

ITALIAN  ART  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE.    By  ROGER  E.  FRY,  M.A. 

ENGLISH  COMPOSITION.     By  Prof.  WM.  T.  BREWSTER. 

LITERARY  TASTE.     By  THOMAS  SECCOMBE. 

WILLIAM  MORRIS  AND  HIS  CIRCLE.     By  A.  GLUTTON  BROCK. 

GREA  T  WRITERS  OF  RUSSIA.     By  C.  T.  HAGBERG  WRIGHT,  LL.D. 

SCAN  DIN  A  VI AN  HIS  TOR  Y  <5r»  LITERA  TURE.    By  T.  C.  SNOW,  M.A. 


Science 


7.  MODERN  GEOGRAPHY 

By  Dr  MARION  NEWBIGIN.  (Illustrated.)  "Geography,  again  :  what  a  dull, 
tedious  study  that  was  wont  to  be  1  .  .  .  But  Miss  Marion  Newbigin  in  vests  its 
dry  bones  with  the  flesh  and  blood  of  romantic  interest." — Daily  Tel',gra.ph. 

9.   THE  EVOLUTION  OF  PLANTS 


knowledge  can  make  it.  ...  Dr  Scott's  candid  and  familiar  style 
difficult  subject  both  fascinating  and  easy." — Gardeners'  Chronicle. 

4 


17.  HEALTH  AND  DISEASE 

By  W.  LESLIE  MACKENZIE,  M.D.,  Local  Government  Board,  Edinburgh. 
"  Dr  Mackenzie  adds  to  a  thorough  grasp  of  the  problems  an  illuminating  style, 
and  an  arresting  manner  of  treating  a  subject  often  dull  and  sometimes 
unsavoury. " — Economist. 

1 8.  INTRODUCTION  TO  MATHEMATICS 

By  A.  N.  WHITEHEAD,  Sc.D.,  F.R.S.  (With  Diagrams.)  "Mr  Whitehead 
has  discharged  with  conspicuous  success  the  task  he  is  so  exceptionally  qualified 
to  undertake.  For  he  is  one  of  our  great  authorities  upon  the  foundations  of 
the  science." — Westminster  Gazette. 

19.  THE  ANIMAL  WORLD 


(and  vegei 

20.  EVOLUTION 

By  Professor  J.  ARTHUR  THOMSON  and  Professor  PATRICK  GEDDES.  "A 
many-coloured  and  romantic  panorama,  opening  up,  like  no  other  book  we 
know,  a  rational  vision  of  world-development." — Belfast  News-Letter. 

22.  CRIME  AND  INSANITY 

By  Dr  C.  A.  MEKCIKR.  "  Furnishes  much  valuable  information  from  one 
occupying  the  highest  position  among  medico-legal  psychologists." — Asylum 
News. 

28.  PSYCHICAL  RESEARCH 

By  Sir  W.  F.  BARRETT,  F.R.S.,  Professor  of  Physics,  Royal  College  of 
Science,  Dublin,  1873-1910.  "What  he  has  to  say  on  thought-reading, 
hypnotism,  telepathy,  crystal-vision,  spiritualism,  divinings,  and  so  on,  will  be 
read  with  avidity." — Dundee  Courier. 

31.  ASTRONOMY 

By  A.  R.  HiNKS,  M.A.,  Chief  Assistant,  Cambridge  Observatory.  "  Original 
in  thought,  eclectic  in  substance,  and  critical  in  treatment.  .  .  .  No  better 
little  book  is  available."— School  World. 

32.  INTRODUCTION  TO  SCIENCE 

By  J.  ARTHUR  THOMSON,  M.A.,  Regius  Professor  of  Natural  History,  Aberdeen 
University.  "  Professor  Thomson's  delightful  literary  style  is  well  known ;  and 
here  he  discourses  freshly  and  easily  on  the  methods  of  science  and  its  relations 
with  philosopby,  art,  religion,  and  practical  life." — Aberdeen  Journal. 

36.  CLIMATE  AND  WEATHER 

By  Prof.  H.  N.  DICKSON,  D.Sc.Oxon.,  M.A.,  F.R.S.E.,  President  of  the 
Royal  Meteorological  Society.  (With  Diagrams.)  "  The  author  has  succeeded 
in  presenting  in  a  very  lucid  and  agreeable  manner  the  causes  of  the  movements 
of  the  atmosphere  and  of  the  more  stable  winds." — Manchester  Guardian. 

41.  ANTHROPOLOGY 

By  R.  R.  MARETT,  M.A.,  Reader  in  Social  Anthropology  in  Oxford  University. 
"  An  absolutely  perfect  handbook,  so  clear  that  a  child  could  understand  it,  so 
fascinating  and  human  that  it  beats  fiction  '  to  a  frazzle.'" — Morning  Leader. 

44.  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PHYSIOLOG  Y 

By  Prof.  J.  G.  MCKENDRICK,  M.D.  ^  It  is  a  delightful  and  wonderfully 
comprehensive  handling  of  a  subject  which,  while  of  importance  to  all,  does 
not  readily  lend  itself  to  untechnical  explanation.  .  .  .  Upon  every  page  of  it 
is  stamped  the  impress  of  a  creative  imagination." — Glasgow  Herald. 

46.  MATTER  AND  ENERGY 

By  F.  SODDY,  M.A.,  F.R.S.  "Prof.  Soddy  has  successfully  accomplished 
the  very  difficult  task  of  making  physics  of  absorbing  interest  on  popular 
lines. " — Nature. 


49-  PSYCHOLOGY,  THE  STUDY  OF  BEHAVIOUR 

By  Prof.  W.  McDouGALL,  F.R.S.,  M.B.  "A  happy  example  of  the  non- 
technical handling  of  an  unwieldy  science,  suggesting  rather  than  dogmatising. 
It  should  whet  appetites  for  deeper  study." — Christian  IV or  Id. 

53.  THE  MAKING  OF  THE  EARTH 

By  Prof.  J.  W.  GREGORY,  F.R.S.  (With  38  Maps  and  Figures.)  "A 
fascinating  little  volume.  .  .  .  Among  the  many  good  things  contained  in  the 
series  this  takes  a  high  place." — The  Athenceum. 

57.  THE  HUMAN  BODY 

By  A.  KEITH,  M.D.,  LL.D.,  Conservator  of  Museum  and  Hunterian  Professor, 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons.  (Illustrated.)  "  It  literally  makes  the  'dry  bones' 
to  live.  It  will  certainly  take  a  high  place  among  the  classics  of  popular 
science." — Manchester  Guardian. 

58.  ELECTRICITY 


62.  THE  ORIGIN  AND  NATURE  OF  LIFE 


By  Dr  BENJAMIN  MOORE,  Professor  of  Bio-Chemistry,  University  College, 
Liverpool. 

67.  CHEMISTRY 

By  RAPHAEL  MELDOLA,  F.R.S.,  Professor  of  Chemistry  in  Finsbury  Technical 
College,  London.  Presents  clearly,  without  the  detail  demanded  by  the 
expert,  the  way  in  which  chemical  science  has  developed,  and  the  stage  it  has 
reached. 

IN  PREPARATION 

THE  MINERAL  WORLD.    By  Sir  T.  H.  HOLLAND,  K.C.I.E.,  D.Sc. 

PLANT  LIFE.    By  Prof.  J.  B.  FARMER,  F.R.S. 

NERVES.    By  Prof.  D.  FRASER  HARRIS,  M.D.,  D.Sc. 

A  STUDY  OF  SEX.    By  Prof.  J.  A.  THOMSON  and  Prof.  PATRICK  GEDDES. 

THE  GROWTH  OF  EUROPE.    By  Prof.  GRENVILLE  COLE. 

OCEANOGRAPHY.    By  Sir  JOHN  MURRAY,  K.C. B.,  F.R.S. 


Philosophy  and  "Religion 


15.  MOHAMMEDANISM 

By  Prof.  D.  S.  MARGOLIOUTH,  M.A.,  D.Litt.  "This  generous  shilling's 
worth  of  wisdom.  ...  A  delicate,  humorous,  and  most  responsible  tractate 
by  an  illuminative  professor." — Daily  Mail. 

40.   THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

By  the  Hon.  BERTRAND  RUSSELL,  F.R.S.  "A  book  that  the  'man  in  the 
street '  will  recognise  at  once  to  be  a  boon.  .  .  .  Consistently  lucid  and  non' 
technical  throughout." — Christian  World. 

47.  BUDDHISM 

By  Mrs  RHYS  DAVIDS,  M.A.  "  The  author  presents  very  attractively  as  well 
as  very  learnedly  the  philosophy  of  Buddhism  as  the  greatest  scholars  of  the 
day  interpret  it."— Daily  News. 

6 


qo.  NONCONFORMITY:  Its  ORIGIN  and  PROGRESS 


tolerance." — Christian  World. 

56.  THE  MAKING  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT 

By  Prof.  B.  W.  BACON,  LL.D.,  D.D.  "Professor  Bacon  has  boldly,  and 
wisely,  taken  his  own  line,  mentioning  opposing  views  only  occasionally,  and 
has  produced,  as  a  result,  an  extraordinarily  vivid,  stimulating,  and  lucid 
book." — Manchester  Guardian. 

60.  MISSIONS:  THEIR  RISE  and  DEVELOPMENT 

By  Mrs  CREIGHTON.  "Very  interestingly  done.  ...  Its  style  is  simple, 
direct,  unhackneyed,  and  should  find  appreciation  where  a  more  fervently 
pious  style  of  writing  repels." — Methodist  Recorder. 

68.  COMPARA  TIVE  RELIGION 

By  Prof.  J.  ESTLIN  CARPENTER,  D.Litt.,  Principal  of  Manchester  College, 
Oxford. 

IN  PREPARATION 

THE  OLD  TESTAMENT.    By  Prof.  GEORGE  MOORE,  D.D.,  LL.D. 
BETWEEN  THE   OLD  AND   NEIV  TESTAMENTS.     By  R.  H. 

A  mSTORYofFREEDOMof  THOUGHT.  By  Prof.  J.  B.  BURY,  LL.D. 
A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  By  CLEMENT  WEBB,  M.A. 


Social  Science 


i.  PARLIAMENT 

Its  History,  Constitution,  and  Practice.  By  Sir  COURTENAY  P.  ILBERT, 
G.C.B.,  K. C.S.I.,  Clerk  of  the  House  of  Commons.  "  The  best  book  on  the 
history  and  practice  of  the  House  of  Commons  since  Bagehot's  'Constitution.' " 
—Yorkshire  Post. 

5.  THE  STOCK  EXCHANGE 

By  F.  W.  HIRST,  Editor  of  "  The  Economist."  "  To  an  unfinancial  mind  must 
be  a  revelation.  .  .  .  The  book  is  as  clear,  vigorous,  and  sane  as  Bagehot's '  Lom- 
bard Street,'  than  which  there  is  no  higher  compliment." — Morning  Leader. 

6.  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

By  Mrs  J.  R.  GREEN.  "  As  glowing  as  it  is  learned.  No  book  could  be  more 
timely." — Daily  News. 

10.  THE  SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT 

By  J.  RAMSAY  MACDONALD,  M.P.  ;<  Admirably  adapted  for  the  purpose  of 
exposition." — The  Times. 

11.  CONSERVATISM 


By  LORD  HUGH  CECIL,  M.A.,  M,P.    "One  of  those  great  little  books  which 
seldom  appear  more  than  once  in  a  generation. " — Morning  Post. 


16.  THE  SCIENCE  OF  WEALTH 

By  J.  A  HOBSON,  M.A.  "  Mr  J.  A.  Hobson  holds  an  unique  position  among 
living  economists.  .  .  .  Original,  reasonable,  and  illuminating.' — The  Nation. 

21.  LIBERALISM 

By  L.  T.  HOBHOUSE,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  London. 
"A  book  of  rare  quality.  .  .  .  We  have  nothing  but  praise  for  the  rapid  and 
masterly  summaries  of  the  arguments  from  first  principles  which  form  a  large 
part  of  this  book." — Westminster  Gazette. 

24.  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDUS 'TR  Y 

By  D.  H.  MACGREGOR,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Political  Economy  in  the  University 
of  Leeds.  "  A  volume  so  dispassionate  in  terms  may  be  read  with  profit  by  all 
interested  in  the  present  state  of  unrest." — Aberdeen  Journal. 

26.  AGRICULTURE 

By  Prof.  W.  SOMEKVILLE,  F.L.S.  "It  makes  the  results  of  laboratory  work 
at  the  University  accessible  to  the  practical  farmer." — Athenaum. 

30.  ELEMENTS  OF  ENGLISH  LA  W 

By  W.  M.  GELDART,  M.A.,  B.C.L.,  Vinerian  Professor  of  English  Law  at 
Oxford.  "  Contains  a  very  clear  account  of  the  elementary  principles  under- 
lying the  rules  of  English  Law." — Scots  Law  Times. 

38.   THE  SCHOOL:  An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Education. 

By  J.  J.  FINDLAY,  M.A.,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Education  in  Manchester 
University.  "  An  amazingly  comprehensive  volume.  ...  It  is  a  remarkable 
performance,  distinguished  in  its  crisp,  striking  phraseology  as  well  as  its 
mclusiveness  of  subject-matter." — Morning  Post. 

59.  ELEMENTS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY 

By  S.  J.  CHAPMAN,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Political  Economy  in  Manchester 
University.  "  Its  importance  is  not  to  be  measured  by  its  price.  Probably 
the  best  recent  critical  exposition  of  the  analytical  method  in  economic 
science." — Glasgow  Herald. 

69.  THE  NEWSPAPER 

By  G.  BINNEY  DIBBLEE,  M.A.  (Illustrated.)  The  best  account  extant  of  the 
organisation  of  the  newspaper  press,  including  Continental,  American,  and 
Colonial  journals. 

IN  PREPARATION 

POLITICAL    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND:    From  Bacon  to  Locke. 

By  G.  P.  GOOCH,  M.A. 
POLITICAL    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND:    From  Bentham  to  J.  S. 

Mill.     By  Prof.  W.  L.  DAVIDSON. 
POLITICAL    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND:     From  Herbert  Spencer 

to  To-day.    By  ERNEST  BARKER,  M.A. 
SHELLEY,  GODWIN,  AND   THEIR    CIRCLE.    By  H.  N.  BRAILS- 

THE™CRIMINAL   AND    THE   COMMUNITY.      By   Viscount  ST. 

GYRES,  M.A. 

COMMONSENSE  IN  LA  W.    By  Prof.  P.  VINOGRADOFF,  D.C.L. 
THE  CIVIL  SERVICE.    By  GRAHAM  WALLAS,  M.A. 
ENGLISH  VILLAGE  LIFE.     By  E.  N.  BENNETT,  M.A. 
CO-PARTNERSHIP    AND    PROFIT-SHARING.       By    ANEURIN 

WILLIAMS,  J.P. 

THE  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT.     By  JANE  ADDAMS  and  R.  A.  WOODS. 
GREA  T  INVENTIONS.     By  Prof.  J.  L.  MYRES,  M.A.,  F.S.  A. 
TOWN  PLANNING.    By  RAYMOND  UNWIN. 

London:    WILLIAMS  AND  NORGATE 

And  efall  Bookshops  and  Bookstalls. 


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