Agnes Conway - The Book of Art for Young People
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Agnes Conway >> The Book of Art for Young People
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Other landscape painters have generally succeeded best with some
particular aspect of nature, and have confined themselves to that.
Cuyp excelled in painting the golden haze of sunshine, and Constable
in effects of storm and rain. But Turner attempted all. Sunset, sunrise,
moonlight, morning, sea, storm, sunshine: the whole pageantry of the
sky. He never made a repetition of the golden hazes of Cuyp, who in
his particular field stands alone; but it was a small field compared
with that of Turner, who held the mirror up to Nature in her every
mood.
Later in life, Turner travelled in France, Germany, and Italy. In
Venice his eyes were gladdened by the gorgeous colours above her
lagoons. Henceforth he makes his pictures blaze with hues scarcely
dared by painter before. But so great was his previous mastery of the
paler shades, that a few touches of brilliant colour could set his
whole canvas aflame. Even in the 'Temeraire,' the sunset occupies less
than half the picture. The cold colours of night have already fallen
on the ship, and there remains but a touch of red from the smoke of
the tug.
As Venice enriched his vision of colour, Rome stimulated him to paint
new subjects suggested by ancient history and mythology. He knew little
of Roman history or classical literature, yet enough to kindle his
imagination; witness his 'Rise and Fall of the Carthaginian Empire'
in the National Gallery. In these the figures are of no importance.
The pictures still are landscapes, but freed from the necessity of
being like any particular place. In work such as this, Turner had but
one predecessor, the French Claude Lorraine. While the Dutchmen of
the seventeenth century were painting their own country beautifully,
Claude was living in Rome, creating imaginary landscapes. He called
his pictures by the names of Scriptural incidents, and placed figures
in the foreground as small and unessential as those of Turner. These
classical landscapes, with their palaces and great flights of steps
leading down to some river's edge, and the sea in the distance covered
with boats carrying fantastic sails, never for a moment make the
impression of reality. But they are beautiful compositions, designed
to please the eye and stimulate the fancy, and are even attractive
by virtue of their novel aloofness from the actual world.
Turner set himself to rival Claude in his ideal landscapes, founded
upon the stories of the ancient world. In his picture of 'Dido building
Carthage,' he painted imaginary palaces, rivers, and stately ships,
in the same cool colouring as Claude, and bequeathed his picture to
the National Gallery, on condition that it should hang for ever between
two pictures by Claude to challenge their superiority. Opinions are
divided as to the rank of Turner's 'Carthage,' so when you go to the
National Gallery, you must look at them both and prepare to form a
preference.
Turner was incited to this rivalry with Claude by the popularity that
painter enjoyed among English collectors of the day, who were less
eager to buy Turner's great oil-paintings than those of his predecessor.
Incidentally this rivalry was the origin of the great series of
etchings executed by or for him, known as _The Book of Studies (Liber
Studiorum)_. This book was suggested by Claude's _Libri di Verita_,
six volumes of his own drawings (of pictures he himself had painted
and sold) made in order to identify his own, and detect spurious,
productions. But Turner's book was designed to show his power in the
whole range of landscape art. The drawings were carefully finished
productions, work by which he was willing to be judged, and many of
them he etched with his own hands. His favourite haunts, the abbeys
of Scotland and Yorkshire, the harbours of Kent, the mountains of
Switzerland, the lochs of Scotland, and the River Wye, he chose as
illustrating his best power over architecture, sea, mountain, and
river. He repeated several of the same subjects later in oils, such
as the pearly hazy 'Norham Castle' in the Tate Gallery.
Turner painted still another kind of imaginary landscape, not in
rivalry with any one, but to please himself. Of course you all know
the story of Ulysses and the one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, in the
_Odyssey_ of Homer? Turner chose for his picture the moment when
Ulysses has escaped from the clutches of Polyphemus, and sailing away
in his boat, taunts the giant, who stands by the water's edge, cursing
Ulysses and bemoaning the loss of his sight. Turner has used this
mythical scene as an opportunity for creating stupendous rocks never
seen by a pair of mortal eyes, and a galley worthy of heroes or gods.
The picture is the purest phantasy, even more like a fairy-tale than
the story it illustrates. He has made the whole scene burn in the red
light of a flaming sunrise, redder by far than the sunset of the old
'Temeraire.'
The story is told of a gentleman who, looking at a picture of Turner's,
said to him, 'I never saw a sunset like that.' 'No, but don't you wish
you could?' replied Turner. That is what we feel about the sunrise
in the picture of Ulysses and Polyphemus. Next to it in the National
Gallery hangs another picture called 'Rain, Steam, and Speed'--the
Great Western Railway. From the realm of the mythical, this takes us
back to the class of scenes of which the 'Fighting Temeraire' is one,
actually beheld by Turner, but magically transfigured by his brush.
A train is coming towards us over a bridge, prosaic subject enough,
especially in 1844, when railways were supposed to be ruining the
aspect of the country and were hated by beauty-loving people. But
Turner saw romance in the swift passage of a train, and painted a
picture in which smoke and rain, cloud and sunset, river and bridge,
boats and trees, are all fused in a mist, pearly and golden as well
as smutty and grey. When you look at it, you must stand away and look
long, till gradually the vision of Turner shapes itself before your
eyes and the scene as he beheld it lives again for you.
We saw how Venice opened his eyes to flaming colour. In his pictures
of Venice, her magic beauty is revealed by a delicate sympathy, that
re-creates the fairy city in her day of glory. Never tired of painting
her in all her aspects, at morning, at even, in pomp, and at peace,
a sight of his pictures is still the best substitute for a visit to
the city itself.
Other artists have interpreted scenery beautifully, and a few have
painted ideal landscapes, but who besides Turner has ever united such
diversities of power? He continued to paint water-colour sketches to
the end of his life, for these were appreciated by a public that did
not understand, and neglected to buy, his oil-paintings. He sketched
throughout France and Switzerland for various publications as he had
sketched in England. Time has not damaged these drawings, as it has
the pictures in oil, for to the end of his life Turner sometimes used
bad materials. Even the sky of the 'Fighting Temeraire' has faded
considerably since it was painted, and others of his oil-pictures are
mere shadows of their former selves. It is pathetic to look upon the
wreck of work not a century old and to wonder how much of it will be
preserved for future generations.
Turner himself deemed the 'Temeraire' one of his best pictures, and
from the beginning intended to bequeath it to the National Gallery,
refusing to sell it for any price whatever.
There's a far bell ringing,
At the setting of the sun,
And a phantom voice is singing
Of the great days done.
There's a far bell ringing,
And a phantom voice is singing
Of renown for ever clinging
To the great days done.
Now the sunset breezes shiver,
_Temeraire! Temeraire!_
And she's fading down the river,
_Temeraire! Temeraire!_
Now the sunset breezes shiver,
And she's fading down the river,
But in England's song for ever
She's the '_Fighting Temeraire_.'[4]
[Footnote 4: _The Fighting Temeraire_. Henry Newbolt.]
CHAPTER XV
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Since we began our voyagings together among the visionary worlds of
the great painters, five hundred and thirty years ago, at the accession
of King Richard II., we have journeyed far and wide, trudging from
the rock where Cimabue found the boy Giotto drawing his sheep's
likeness. The battleship of Turner has now brought us to the
mid-nineteenth century, a time within the memories of living men, and
still our journey is not ended.
Hitherto we have been guided in our general preference for certain
artists and certain pictures by the concurring opinion of the best
judges of many successive generations. But while we are looking at
modern paintings, we cannot say, as some one did, that in our opinion,
'which is the correct one,' such and such a picture is worthy to rank
with Titian. The taste of one age is not the taste of another. Who
can surely pronounce the consensus of opinion to-day? Who can guess
if it will concur with that of future decades--of future centuries?
We can but hope that learning to see and enjoy the recognized
masterpieces of the past will teach us what to like best among the
masterpieces of the present.
A great love of the Old Masters inspired the work of a group of young
artists, who, about the year 1850, banded themselves together into
a society which they called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The title
indicates their aim, which was to draw the inspiration of their art
from the fifteenth-century painters of Italy. The sweetness of feeling
in a picture such as Botticelli's 'Nativity,' the delicacy of
workmanship and beautiful painting of detail in Antonello's 'St.
Jerome' and other pictures of that date, had an irresistible
fascination for them. They fancied and felt that these artists had
attained to the highest of which art was capable, so that the best
could only again be produced by a faithful study of their methods.
The aims of the Brotherhood were not imitation of the artists but of
the methods of the past. They held that every painted object, and every
painted figure should be as true as it could be made to the object
as it actually existed, rather than to the effect produced upon the
eye, seeing it in conjunction with other objects.
These men heralded a widespread medieval revival, but all the study
in the world could not make them paint like born artists of the
fifteenth century. Yet there are those who think that much of the spirit
of beauty, which had dwelt in the soul of Botticelli and his
contemporaries, was born again in Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Their
feeling for beauty of form and purity of colour, and their aloofness
from the modern world, impart to their work an atmosphere that may
remind us of the fifteenth century, though the fifteenth century could
never have produced it.
Rossetti and Burne-Jones, indeed, never formally joined the
Brotherhood, though they were influenced by its ideals and pursued
the same strict fidelity to nature in all the accessories of a picture.
Millais and Holman Hunt, original members of the Brotherhood, painted
men and women of the mid-Victorian epoch with every detail of their
peaked bonnets and plaid shawls, and were comparatively indifferent
to beauty of form and face. But Rossetti and Burne-Jones created a
type of ideal beauty which they employed on their canvases with
persistent repetition. Burne-Jones founded his type upon the angels
of Botticelli, and his drapery is like that of the ring of dancers
in the sky in our picture of the 'Nativity.' You are probably familiar
with some of his pictures and perhaps have felt the spell of his pure
gem-like colouring and pale, haunting faces. It was the people of their
minds' eye who sat beside their easels. Rossetti lived and worked in
the romantic mood of a Giorgione, but instead of expressing the
atmosphere of his fairy city of Venice, he created one as far as
possible removed from his own mid-Victorian surroundings. His
imaginary world was peopled by women with pale faces and luxuriant
auburn hair, pondering upon the mysteries of the universe. Like
Rossetti's 'Blessed Damozel,' they look out from the gold bar of heaven
with eyes from which the wonder is not yet gone.
One of the best Pre-Raphaelite landscapes is the 'Strayed Sheep' of
Holman Hunt. The sheep are wandering over a grass hillside of the
vividest green, shot with spring flowers, and every sheep is painted
with the detail of the central sheep in Hubert van Eyck's 'Adoration
of the Lamb.' The colouring is almost as bright and jewel-like as that
of the fifteenth-century painters, for one of the theories of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was that grass should be painted as green
as the single blade--not the colour of the whole field seen immersed
in light and atmosphere, which can make green grass seem gray or even
blue.
In Brett's 'Val d'Aosta,' another Pre-Raphaelite landscape, we look
from a hill upon a great expanse of valley with mountains rising behind.
Every field of corn and every grassy meadow is outlined as clearly
as it would be upon a map. Every stick can be counted in the fences
between the fields and every tree in the hedge-rows. When we look at
the picture we involuntarily wander over the face of the country. There
is no taking in the view at a glance; we must walk through every field
and along every path.
After seeing these Pre-Raphaelite landscapes, let us imagine ourselves
straightway turning to one of the numerous scenes by Whistler of the
Thames at twilight, with its glimmering lights and ghostly shapes of
bridges and hulks of steamers. Nothing is outlined, nothing is clearly
defined, but the mystery of London's river is caught and pictured for
ever. Let us look, too, at his 'Valparaiso,' bathed in a brilliant
South American sunshine, where all is pearly and radiant with southern
light. Even here the impression is not given by the power of the sun
revealing every detail. There are few touches, but like Velasquez,
he has made every touch tell.
As the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood kindled their inspiration by the
vision of the fifteenth-century painters of Italy, so Whistler and
many other modern artists have turned to Velasquez for guidance. Till
the last half of the last century his name had been almost forgotten
outside Spain. Now, among the modern 'impressionists' so-called, he
is perhaps more studied than any other painter. When we were looking
at the pictures of this great man, we saw how he and Rembrandt were
among the earliest to learn the value of subordinating detail in the
parts to the better general effect of the whole, so as to present no
more than the eye could grasp in a comprehensive glance. Every tree
and stick in Brett's 'Val d'Aosta' is truthfully painted, but the
picture as a whole does not give the spectator the impression of truth,
for the simple reason that the eye can never see at once what Brett
has tried to make it see. All the wonderfully veracious detail in the
work of the Pre-Raphaelite does not give the impression of life. Men
like Holman Hunt, on the one hand, and on the other hand Whistler,
living and working at the same time, exhibiting their works in the
same galleries, differ even more in their ideals than Velasquez
differed from the fifteenth-century painters of Italy.
Facts such as these make the study of modern art difficult. Before
the nineteenth century, pictures of the same date in the same country
were painted in approximately the same style. But during the last fifty
years many styles have reigned together. At one and the same time
painters have been inspired by the Greek and Roman sculptors, by
Botticelli, Mantegna, Titian, Tintoret, Velasquez, Rembrandt,
Reynolds, and Turner, and the work of each is, notwithstanding,
unmistakably nineteenth century, and could never have been produced
at any other date. Every artist finds a problem of his own to solve,
and attacks it in his own way. When Whistler painted a portrait he
endeavoured to express character in the general aspect of the figure,
rather than in the face. The picture of his mother is a wonderful
expression of the sweetness and peace of old age, given by the severe
lines of her black dress and the simplicity and nobility of her pose.
The great painter Watts, who by the face chiefly sought to express
the man, never painted a full-length figure portrait. His long life,
covering nearly the whole of the century, enabled him to portray many
of the foremost men of the age--statesmen, poets, musicians, and men
of letters. In his portrait gallery their fine spirits still meet one
another face to face. But his portraits, in and through likenesses
of the men, are made to express the essence of that particular art
of which the man was a spokesman. In his portrait of Tennyson, the
bard with his laurel wreath is less Tennyson the man, if one may say
so, than Tennyson the poet. The picture might be called 'poetry,' as
that of Joachim could be called 'music,' for the violinist with his
dreamy beautiful face, playing his heart out, looks the soul of music's
self.
Watts was never a Pre-Raphaelite, clothing anew his dreams of medieval
beauty; nor a seeker after the glories of Greece and Rome, like Leighton
and Alma Tadema; nor a student of the instant's impression, like
Whistler. To penetrate beneath the seen to the unseen was the aim of
his art. He wrestled to express thoughts in paint that seem
inexpressible. When we go to the Tate Gallery in London, to the room
filled with most precious works of Watts, we feel almost overawed by
the loftiness of his ideas, though they may seem to strain the last
resources of the painter's art. One of them is a picture of 'Chaos'
before the creation of the world. Half-formed men and women struggle
from the earth to force themselves into life, as the half-wrought
statues of Michelangelo from the marble that confines them. Near by
is a picture of the 'All-pervading,' the spirit of good that penetrates
the world, symbolized as a woman gazing long into a globe held upon
her knee. Opposite is the 'Dweller in the Innermost,' with deep,
unsearchable eyes. These are pictures that constrain thought rather
than charm the eye. When the thought is less obscure, it is better
suited to pictorial utterance, and Watts sometimes painted pictures
as simple as these are difficult.
There is nothing obscure in our frontispiece picture of 'Red
Ridinghood.' It sets before us a child's version and vision of a child's
fable that is imperishable, and as such makes an immediate appeal to
the eye. She is not acting a part or posing as a princess, but is simply
a cowering little girl, frightened at the wolf and eager to protect
her basket. In her freshness and simplicity, a cottage maiden with
anxious blue eyes, most innocent and childish of children, she need
not shun proximity to Richard II., Edward VI., William of Orange, Don
Balthazar Carlos, and the Duke of Gloucester.
And thus we conclude our procession of royal children with a child
of the people. Beginning with Richard II., a portrait of a king rather
than a child, we end with a picture in which childhood merely, without
the gift of distinction or the glamour of royalty, suffices to charm
a great painter's eye and inspire his thought. With the sweetness and
grace of modern childhood filling our eyes, may we not well close this
children's book?
INDEX
'Adoration of the Lamb,' 56-59
Adoration of the Magi, treatment of, 33
'Age of Innocence,' 171
_Alice in Wonderland_, 2
'All-pervading,' the, 196
Animals, painting of, 142
Antonello of Messina, 67-69
Art, definition of, 4
Atmosphere, 10
treatment of by Dutch School, 139, 140
by Holbein, 139
by Velasquez, 156
Beauneveu, Andre, of Valenciennes, 43
Bellini, Giovanni, 98, 102
Black Death, influence of, 41
Botticelli, 70-77, 145
influence of, on Burne-Jones, 191
Brett's 'Val d'Aosta,' 192 _et seq._
Burne-Jones, 190 _et seq._
Byzantium, influence of, 19
Turkish conquest of, 20
'Chaos,' 196
Charles I. employs Rubens, 143
employs Van Dyck, 147
painted by Velasquez, 157
Charles II., 131
Charles V., King of France, 40
Charles V., Emperor, 153
Chillon, Castle of, 11
Churches, medieval grandeur of, 14
Cimabue, Vasari's account of, 24
picture in National Gallery, 25
picture in Santa Maria Novella, 25
training of Giotto, 27
Civilization, definition of, 9
Claude Lorraine, 181-183
Constable, 180
Correggio, 91
Crome, Old, 178
Cuyp, 138-142, 180
'Dido building Carthage,' 182
Don Balthazar Carlos, 154 _et seq._, 160 _et seq._
Douglas, Lady Alfred, 75
Dragons, fear of, 12
Duke of Gloucester, 170-171
Durer, 106-107
compared with Holbein, 113
Dutch expansion in the seventeenth century, 117
'Dweller in the Innermost,' 196
Edward the Confessor, story of, 32
Edward Prince of Wales, 111-115
Eighteenth century, artificiality of, 168
Erasmus, 109-110
portrait of, 114
Etching, process of, 127
Fighting _Temeraire_, 176 _et seq._
Francis of Assisi, life of, 17, 21
Franciscans, foundation of the order of, 22
'Fresco' painting, 39
Gainsborough, 173 _et seq._
Garden of Eden, 95
Giorgione, 94-98, 140
Giotto, 27, 28, 35, 50
'Golden Age,' 95-98, 142
Goldsmith, 174
Greeks, influence of, 10, 65
Henrietta Maria, 149
Henry VIII., 109 _et seq._
employs Holbein, 110
portrait of, 114
Hobbema, 141, 178
Hogarth, 166 _et seq._
Holbein, 102-115, 139, 151
'Erasmus' in collection of Charles I., 147
Holman Hunt, 190, 191
Horne, Herbert P., 74
Hubert van Eyck, 46 _et seq._, 140
Hulin, Dr., 49
Il Penseroso, 83
Impressionism, beginning of, 162
Infanta Marguerita, 161 _et seq._
James II., 149
Jerusalem Chamber, 18
view of, taken in 1486, 49
Joachim, portrait of, 195
John, Duke of Berry, 40, 42, 53
John, King of France, 40
John van Eyck, 60
compared with Durer, 107
Josse Vyt, 58
Julius II., Pope, 88
'Knight's Dream,' 78, 82-86
L'Allegro, 83
Landscape painting, beginning of, 50
Lely, Sir Peter, 131
Leonardo da Vinci, 80-81, 89-90, 110
compared with Durer, 107
'Les Meninas,' 162
Liber Studiorum, 183
Louis, Duke of Anjou, 40
Luini, Bernardino, 90-91
'Madonna of the Rocks,' 90
'Man in Armour,' 126-127
Mantegna, 69, 70, 102
'Triumphs of Caesar,' 148
Maria Theresa, 163
Marie de Medicis, 143
Mary Stuart, 149-150
Medieval detail, 37
coronation, solemnity of, 34
guilds, 44
Michelangelo, 80
influence on Reynolds, 169, 172
influence on Tintoret, 99
Millais, 190
Milton, 83
More, Sir Thomas, 109, 110
Mosque of Omar, 49
Newbolt, Henry, 187
'Night Watch,' Rembrandt's, 123-124
'Norham Castle,' 183
'Norwich School,' 178
'Pallas Athene,' 127
Perspective, 66
absence of, 55
Hubert's improvement in, 55
mastery of, in Renaissance, 67
Perugino, 79
Peter de Hoogh, 133-136
Philip IV., 154, 155
Philip the Bold, 40, 41
Philip the Good, 52
Photographs and pictures, the difference between them, 4
Portraiture, in the fifteenth century, growth of, 60
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 189 _et seq._
'Rain, Steam, and Speed,' 184
Raphael, 78-89, 140
cartoons, in collection of Charles I., 147
comparison with Giorgione, 94, 97
influence on Velasquez, 159
'Red Ridinghood,' 197
Reformation, effect of on art, 108
Rembrandt, 118-132, 135
'Anatomy,' 122, 157
compared with Peter de Hoogh, 134
compared with Van Dyck, 151
compared with Velasquez, 156
landscapes of, 139
Syndics, 130
Revelations, 57, 74
Revival of learning, 65
Reynolds, 169-175
Richard II., portrait of, 29 _et seq._
diptych, 47, 50, 139, 197
diptych in collection of Charles I., 147
Roger van der Weyden, 61
Rome, influence on Turner, 181
Rossetti, 190 _et seq._
Royal Academy, 174
Rubens, 138, 143-145
friendship with Velasquez, 157
on Charles I., 147
Ruysdael, 141
Santi, Giovanni, 79
St. Catherine, Raphael's, 85
burial of, 90
St. Catherine of Siena, 17
St. Edmund, 33
St. Francis of Assisi, 17, 21
preaching to the birds, 4, 23, 50
St. George slaying the dragon, 100-102
St. Jerome's cell, 6, 63-69
lion of, 142
St. Matthew, 46
Saskia, 121, 122 _et seq._
Savonarola, 73-76
Sistine Madonna, 85
Spain, greatness of, in sixteenth century, 153
Stained-glass windows, influence of in the fourteenth century, 36
Steen, Jan, 137, 167
'Strayed Sheep,' 191
'Surrender of Breda,' 159
Tenniel, 2
Tennyson, portrait of, 195
Terborch, 137
'Three Maries,' 46-59
compared with Botticelli's 'Nativity,' 77
compared with Raphael's 'Knight's Dream,' 85
treatment of atmosphere in, 140
Timoteo Viti, 82
Tintoret, 99-102
influence on Velasquez, 159
Titian, 98, 99, 140, 159
Turner, 176-187
sunsets of, 9
'Ulysses deriding Polyphemus,' 184
Umbrian landscape, beauty of, 79
'Valparaiso,' 193
Van Dyck, 145-152
compared with Reynolds, 170 _et seq._
comparison with Velasquez, 161
Van Eyck's influence in Germany, 105
Vasari, 23, 25
Velasquez, 153-164
compared with Reynolds, 169
influence of, 193
Venice, influence on Turner, 180, 185
influence of on Venetian artists, 93 _et seq._
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