Great Pictures, As Seen and Described Part 19

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Painted by Veronese and by Zelotti and Bazzaco under his direction.

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

ANONYMOUS

t.i.tian's magnificent pictures in the Ducal Palace were, all but one, destroyed by fire the year after his death; but his impetuous rival, Tintoretto, is abundantly represented there. With regard to _him_, as usual, our admiration for frequent manifestations of extraordinary power is but too commonly checked and chilled by coa.r.s.e, heavy painting, and the unexpressive wholly uninteresting character of many of his allegorical or celestial groups, which seem introduced merely as exercises or exhibitions of technical skill, rather than as appeals to our imagination or finer feelings.... On the whole you are again tempted to be somewhat out of conceit with Tintoretto, till you pause in the Ante Collegio, or guard-room, before a picture of his so poetically conceived and admirably wrought, indeed so pleasing in all respects, that you wonder still more at the dull, uninteresting character of so many of the others. Yes, here _Il Furioso_ Tintoretto, leaving ostentatious, barren displays of technical power, has once again had the gentleness and patience to make himself thoroughly agreeable. Ariadne, a beautiful and n.o.ble figure, is seated undraped on a rock, and Bacchus, profusely crowned with ivy, advances from the sea, and offers her the nuptial ring; whilst above, Venus, her back towards you, lying horizontally in the pale blue air, as if the blue air were her natural couch, spreads or rather kindles, a chaplet or circlet of stars round Ariadne's head. Here, those who luxuriate in what is typical, may tell us, and probably not without truth, that Tintoretto wished to convey a graceful hint of Venice crowned by beauty and blessed with joy and abundance. Bacchus arising from the sea well signifies these latter gifts, and the watery path by which they come to her; and the lonely island nymph to whom he presents the wedding-ring, may be intended to refer to the situation and original forlornness of Venice herself, when she sat in solitude amidst the sandy isles of the lagune, aloof from her parental sh.o.r.es, ravaged by the Hun or the Lombard. The pale yellow sunshine on these nude figures and their light transparent shadows, and the mild temperate blue of the calm sea and air, almost completing the most simple arrangement of the colouring of the picture, are still beautiful, and no doubt were far more so before its lamentable fading, occasioned, it seems, by too much exposure to light; you feel quite out of doors, all on the airy cliffs, as you look on it, and almost taste the very freshness of the sea-breeze.

_The Art Journal_ (London, 1857).

LA CRUCHE Ca.s.seE

(_GREUZE_)

THeOPHILE GAUTIER

One might say of Greuze, as of Hogarth, that the moral scenes which he represents appear to have been posed for and acted by excellent actors rather than copied directly from nature. This is the truth, but seen, however, through an interpretation and under a travesty of rusticity.

All is reasoned out, full of purpose, and leading to an end. There is in every stroke what the _litterateurs_ call ideas when they talk about painting. Thus Diderot has celebrated Greuze in the most lyric strain.

Greuze, however, is not a mediocre artist: he invented a _genre_ unknown before his time, and he possesses veritable qualities of a painter. He has colour, he has touch, and his heads, modelled by square plans and, so to speak, by facets, have relief and life. His draperies, or rather his rumpled linen, torn and treated grossly in a systematic fashion to give full value to the delicacy of the flesh, reveal in their very negligence an easy brush. _La Malediction Paternelle_ and _Le Fils Maudit_ are homilies that are well painted and of a practical moral, but we prefer _L'Accordee du Village_, on account of the adorable head of the _fiancee_; it is impossible to find anything younger, fresher, more innocent and more coquettishly virginal, if these two words may be connected. Greuze, and this is the cause of the renown which he enjoys now after the eclipse of his glory caused by the intervention of David and his school, has a very individual talent for painting woman in her first bloom, when the bud is about to burst into the rose and the child is about to become a maiden. As in the Eighteenth Century all the world was somewhat libertine, even the moralists, Greuze, when he painted an Innocence, always took pains to open the gauze and give a glimpse of the curve of the swelling bosom; he puts into the eyes a fiery l.u.s.tre and upon the lips a dewy smile that suggests the idea that Innocence might very easily become Voluptuousness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LA CRUCHE Ca.s.seE.

_Greuze._]

_La Cruche Ca.s.see_ is the model of this _genre_. The head has still the innocence of childhood, but the fichu is disarranged, the rose at the corsage is dropping its leaves, the flowers are only half held in the fold of the gown and the jug allows the water to escape through its fissure.

_Guide de l'Amateur au Musee du Louvre_ (Paris, 1882).

PORTRAIT OF LADY c.o.c.kBURN AND HER CHILDREN

(_REYNOLDS_)

FREDERIC G. STEPHENS

The number of Reynolds's portraits of ladies has never been given, probably it cannot be ascertained with precision; it is beyond all question marvellous, but not less so is the variety of the att.i.tudes in which he placed the sitters, that of the ideas he expressed, and of the accessories with which they are surrounded; to this end, and to show how successfully he fitted things together, background and figure, compare the portrait of _Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Derby_ splendidly engraved by W. d.i.c.kinson, with that of Lady Betty Delme. It is the same everywhere.

We believe that Reynolds, of that English school of portrait-painters of which he was the founder, was the happiest in introducing backgrounds to his works; to him we are for the most part indebted for that apt.i.tude of one to the other which has so great an effect in putting the eye and mind of the observer into harmonious relationship with what may be called the _motive_ of the portrait, which, indeed, elevates a mere likeness to the character of a picture, and affords a charming field for the display of art in pathos, which is too often neglected, if not utterly ignored, by Reynolds's successors. We think he exhibited more of this valuable characteristic than any other contemporary artist.

Lawrence aimed at it, but with effect only commensurate to his success in painting. Of old, as before the Seventeenth Century in Germany and Italy, the art of landscape-painting _per se_ was inefficiently cultivated, at least expressed with irregularity, although occasionally with force enough to show that the pathos as well as the beauty of nature were by no means unappreciated or neglected to anything like the extent which has been commonly represented by writers on Art. Reynolds probably took the hint, as he did many others of the kind, from Vandyck, and gave apt backgrounds to his figures: between these painters no one did much, or even well in the pathetic part of the achievement. Since Reynolds, none have approached him in success. It will be understood that the object of these remarks is not to suggest for the reader's consideration who painted the best landscape backgrounds as landscapes, but who most happily adapted them to his more important themes. We believe Reynolds did so, and will conclude our remarks by another example. The landscape in the distance of _The Age of Innocence_ is as thoroughly in keeping with the subject as it can be: thus here are fields easy to traverse, a few village elms, and just seen above their tops the summits of habitations,--the hint is thus given that the child, all innocent as she is, has not gone far from home, or out of sight of the household to which she belongs....

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT OF LADY c.o.c.kBURN AND HER CHILDREN.

_Reynolds._]

It has been alleged that Reynolds never, or rarely painted the landscape backgrounds to his pictures, and that they were the work of Peter Toms, R.A., one of his ablest a.s.sistants, or of others who were more potent with that branch of Art than the President himself.... It is hard to deny to the mind which conceived the ruling idea of such pictures that honour which is a.s.suredly due to some one, and to whom more probably than to the painter of the faces and designer of the att.i.tudes, which are in such perfect harmony with the subordinate elements about them as to be completed only when the alliance is made. Without this alliance, this harmony of parts, half the significance of many of Reynolds's pictures is obscured. When we have noted this the result is at least instructive, if not convincing, that one mind designed, if one hand did not invariably execute, the whole of any important portrait by our subject.

Our own belief is, that whenever the landscapes or other accessories of his productions are essential to the idea expressed by the work as a whole, then undoubtedly Reynolds wrought these minor parts almost wholly, if not entirely, with his own brushes.

Few, if any, of Reynolds's family groups equals in beauty, variety, and spirit, the famous _Cornelia and her Children_, or rather _Lady c.o.c.kburn and her three Infants_,--a work so charming, that we can well conceive the feelings of the Royal Academicians of 1774, that long-past time, when it was brought to be hung in the Exhibition, and received with clapping of hands, as men applaud a successful musical performance, or the fine reading of a poem. Every Royal Academician then present--the scene must have been a very curious one--stepped forward, and in this manner saluted the work of the President; they did so, not because it was his, but on account of its charming qualities. Conceive the painters, each in his swallow-tailed coat, his ruffles and broad cuffs, his knee-breeches, buckles, long waistcoat, and the rest of his garments of those days, thus uniting in one acclaim. The reader may judge whether or not such applause was deserved by the picture, which tells its own story. The parrot in the background was occasionally used by Reynolds; see the portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Derby, and the engraving from it by W. d.i.c.kinson.[29] It has been said that the only example of Reynolds's practice in signing pictures on the border of the robes of his sitters appears in _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_; nevertheless, this picture of _Cornelia_ shows at least one exception to that a.s.serted rule. The border of Lady c.o.c.kburn's dress in the original is inscribed in a similar manner thus:--"1775, Reynolds _pinxit_." The picture was begun in 1773, and is now in the possession of Sir James Hamilton, of Portman Square, who married the daughter of General Sir James c.o.c.kburn, one of the boys in the picture. It is noteworthy that all these children successively inherited the baronetcy; one of them--the boy who looks over his mother's shoulder--was Admiral Sir George c.o.c.kburn, Bart., on board whose ship, the _Northumberland_, Napoleon was conveyed to St.

Helena. Sir James, the eldest brother, was afterwards seventh baronet; Sir William, the third brother, was eighth baronet of the name, was Dean of York, and married a daughter of Sir R. Peel. The lady was Augusta Anne, daughter of the Rev. Frances Ascough, D.D., Dean of Bristol, married in 1769, the second wife of Sir James c.o.c.kburn, sixth baronet of Langton, in the county of Berwick, M.P. She was niece of Lord Lyttleton.

For this picture in March, 1774, Reynolds received 183 15s. This was probably the whole price, and for a work of no great size, but wealthy in matter, the amount was small indeed. It includes four portraits.

After comparison of the facts that the engravings, by C.W. Wilkin, in stipple, and by S.W. Reynolds, mezzotint, are dated, on the robe as aforesaid, "1775," and its exhibition in 1774, the year in which it was paid for, we may guess that the signature and date were added by the painter after exhibiting it, and probably while he worked on it, with the advantage of having compared the painting with others in the Royal Academy. The landscape recalls that glimpse of halcyon country of which we caught sight in _The Infant Academy_--its trees, its glowing sky, are equally adaptable to both subjects. The picture was exhibited at the British Inst.i.tution in 1843, and was then the property of Sir James c.o.c.kburn, Bart., whose portrait it contains.

_English Children as painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds_ (London, 1867).

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Rather we should say, see the engraving only. The picture is one of the very few prime works by Reynolds which has disappeared without records of its loss.

ST. CECILIA

(_RAPHAEL_)

PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY

I have seen a quant.i.ty of things here--churches, palaces, statues, fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this moment like a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a common-place book. I will try to recollect something of what I have seen; for indeed it requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. First, we went to the Cathedral, which contains nothing remarkable, except a kind of shrine, or rather a marble canopy, loaded with sculptures, and supported on four marble columns. We went then to a palace--I am sure I forget the name of it--where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of course, in a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for one you remember. I remember, however, an interesting picture by Guido, of the Rape of Proserpine, in which Proserpine casts back her languid and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left ungathered in the fields of Enna.

We saw besides one picture of Raphael--St. Cecilia; this is in another and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it; and yet it is most unlike any of those things which we call reality. It is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St.

Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead--she holds an organ in her hands--her countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its pa.s.sion and rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently point, by their att.i.tudes, towards her; particularly St. John, who, with a tender yet impa.s.sioned gesture, bends his countenance towards her, languid with the depth of his emotion. At her feet lie various instruments of music, broken and unstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak; it eclipses nature, yet has all her truth and softness.

_Letters from Italy. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley_, edited by Harry Buxton Forman (London, 1880).

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. CECILIA.

_Raphael._]

THE LAST SUPPER

(_LEONARDO DA VINCI_)

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE