Modern Painters Volume I Part 33

-- 5. Peculiar confusion of both in the rocks of Salvator.

And the circular and sweeping strokes or stains which are dashed at random over their surfaces, only fail of destroying all resemblance whatever to rock structure from their frequent want of any meaning at all, and from the impossibility of our supposing any of them to be representative of shade. Now, if there be any part of landscape in which nature develops her principles of light and shade more clearly than another, it is rock; for the dark sides of fractured stone receive brilliant reflexes from the lighted surfaces, on which the shadows are marked with the most exquisite precision, especially because, owing to the parallelism of cleavage, the surfaces lie usually in directions nearly parallel. Hence every crack and fissure has its shadow and reflected light separated with the most delicious distinctness, and the organization and solid form of all parts are told with a decision of language, which, to be followed with anything like fidelity, requires the most transparent color, and the most delicate and scientific drawing. So far are the works of the old landscape-painters from rendering this, that it is exceedingly rare to find a single pa.s.sage in which the shadow can even be distinguished from the dark side--they scarcely seem to know the one to be darker than the other; and the strokes of the brush are not used to explain or express a form known or conceived, but are dashed and daubed about without any aim beyond the covering of the canvas. "A rock," the old masters appear to say to themselves, "is a great irregular, formless, characterless lump; but it must have shade upon it, and any gray marks will do for that shade."

-- 6. And total want of any expression of hardness or brittleness.

-- 7. Instances in particular pictures.

Finally, while few, if any, of the rocks of nature are untraversed by delicate and slender fissures, whose black sharp lines are the only means by which the peculiar quality in which rocks most differ from the other objects of the landscape, brittleness, can be effectually suggested, we look in vain among the blots and stains with which the rocks of ancient art are loaded, for any vestige or appearance of fissure or splintering. Toughness and malleability appear to be the qualities whose expression is most aimed at; sometimes sponginess, softness, flexibility, tenuity, and occasionally transparency. Take, for instance, the foreground of Salvator, in No. 220 of the Dulwich Gallery.

There is, on the right-hand side of it, an object, which I never walk through the room without contemplating for a minute or two with renewed solicitude and anxiety of mind, indulging in a series of very wild and imaginative conjectures as to its probable or possible meaning. I think there is reason to suppose that the artist intended it either for a very large stone, or for the trunk of a tree; but any decision as to its being either one or the other of these must, I conceive, be the extreme of rashness. It melts into the ground on one side, and might reasonably be conjectured to form a part of it, having no trace of woody structure or color; but on the other side it presents a series of concave curves, interrupted by cogs like those of a water-wheel, which the boldest theorist would certainly not feel himself warranted in supposing symbolical of rock. The forms which this substance, whatever it be, a.s.sumes, will be found repeated, though in a less degree, in the foreground of No. 159, where they are evidently meant for rock.

-- 8. Compared with the works of Stanfield.

-- 9. Their absolute opposition in every particular.

Let us contrast with this system of rock-drawing, the faithful, scientific, and dexterous studies of nature which we find in the works of Clarkson Stanfield. He is a man especially to be opposed to the old masters, because he usually confines himself to the same rock subjects as they--the mouldering and furrowed crags of the secondary formation which arrange themselves more or less into broad and simple ma.s.ses; and in the rendering of these it is impossible to go beyond him. Nothing can surpa.s.s his care, his firmness, or his success, in marking the distinct and sharp light and shade by which the form is explained, never confusing it with local color, however richly his surface-texture may be given; while the wonderful play of line with which he will vary, and through which he will indicate, the regularity of stratification, is almost as instructive as that of nature herself. I cannot point to any of his works as better or more characteristic than others; but his Ischia, in the present British Inst.i.tution, may be taken as a fair average example. The Botallack Mine, Cornwall, engraved in the Coast Scenery, gives us a very finished and generic representation of rock, whose primal organization has been violently affected by external influences. We have the stratification and cleavage indicated at its base, every fissure being sharp, angular, and decisive, disguised gradually as it rises by the rounding of the surface and the successive furrows caused by the descent of streams. But the exquisite drawing of the foreground is especially worthy of notice. No huge concave sweeps of the brush, no daubing or splashing here. Every inch of it is brittle and splintery, and the fissures are explained to the eye by the most perfect, speaking light and shade,--we can stumble over the edges of them. The East Cliff, Hastings, is another very fine example, from the exquisite irregularity with which its squareness of general structure is varied and disguised. Observe how totally contrary every one of its lines is to the absurdities of Salvator. Stanfield's are all angular and straight, every apparent curve made up of right lines, while Salvator's are all sweeping and flourishing like so much penmanship. Stanfield's lines pa.s.s away into delicate splintery fissures. Salvator's are broad daubs throughout. Not one of Stanfield's lines is like another. Every one of Salvator's mocks all the rest. All Stanfield's curves, where his universal angular character is ma.s.sed, as on the left-hand side, into large sweeping forms, are convex. Salvator's are every one concave.

-- 10. The rocks of J. D. Harding.

The foregrounds of J. D. Harding and rocks of his middle distances are also thoroughly admirable. He is not quite so various and undulating in his line as Stanfield, and sometimes, in his middle distances, is wanting in solidity, owing to a little confusion of the dark side and shadow with each other, or with the local color. But his work, in near pa.s.sages of fresh-broken, sharp-edged rock, is absolute perfection, excelling Stanfield in the perfect freedom and facility with which his fragments are splintered and scattered; true in every line without the least apparent effort. Stanfield's best works are laborious, but Harding's rocks fall from under his hand as if they had just crashed down the hill-side, flying on the instant into lovely form. In color also he incomparably surpa.s.ses Stanfield, who is apt to verge upon mud, or be cold in his gray. The rich, lichenous, and changeful warmth, and delicate weathered grays of Harding's rock, ill.u.s.trated as they are by the most fearless, firm, and unerring drawing, render his wild pieces of torrent sh.o.r.e the finest things, next to the work of Turner, in English foreground art.

J. B. Pyne has very accurate knowledge of limestone rock, and expresses it clearly and forcibly; but it is much to be regretted that this clever artist appears to be losing all sense of color and is getting more and more mannered in execution, evidently never studying from nature except with the previous determination to Pynize everything.[59]

-- 11. Characters of loose earth and soil.

-- 12. Its exceeding grace and fulness of feature.

Before pa.s.sing to Turner, let us take one more glance at the foregrounds of the old masters, with reference, not to their management of rock, which is comparatively a rare component part of their foregrounds, but to the common soil which they were obliged to paint constantly, and whose forms and appearances are the same all over the world. A steep bank of loose earth of any kind, that has been at all exposed to the weather, contains in it, though it may not be three feet high, features capable of giving high gratification to a careful observer. It is almost a fac-simile of a mountain slope of soft and decomposing rock; it possesses nearly as much variety of character, and is governed by laws of organization no less rigid. It is furrowed in the first place by undulating lines, by the descent of the rain, little ravines, which are cut precisely at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave ridges scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beautifully sharp in their chiselling. Where a harder knot of ground or a stone occurs, the earth is washed from beneath it, and acc.u.mulates above it, and there we have a little precipice connected by a sweeping curve at its summit with the great slope, and casting a sharp dark shadow; where the soil has been soft, it will probably be washed away underneath until it gives way, and leaves a jagged, hanging, irregular line of fracture; and all these circ.u.mstances are explained to the eye in sunshine with the most delicious clearness; every touch of shadow being expressive of some particular truth of structure, and bearing witness to the symmetry into which the whole ma.s.s has been reduced. Where this operation has gone on long, and vegetation has a.s.sisted in softening the outlines, we have our ground brought into graceful and irregular curves, of infinite variety, but yet always so connected with each other, and guiding to each other, that the eye never feels them as _separate_ things, nor feels inclined to count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to the other; they are not repet.i.tions of each other, but are different parts of one system.

Each would be imperfect without the one next to it.

-- 13. The ground of Teniers.

Now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the particulars wherein this fine character of curve consists, and to show in definite examples, what it is which makes one representation right, and another wrong. The ground of Teniers for instance, in No. 139 in the Dulwich Gallery, is an example of all that is wrong. It is a representation of the forms of shaken and disturbed soil, such as we should see here and there after an earthquake, or over the ruins of fallen buildings. It has not one contour nor character of the soil of nature, and yet I can scarcely tell you why, except that the curves repeat one another, and are monotonous in their flow, and are unbroken by the delicate angle and momentary pause with which the feeling of nature would have touched them, and are disunited; so that the eye leaps from this to that, and does not pa.s.s from one to the other without being able to stop, drawn on by the continuity of line; neither is there any undulation or furrowing of watermark, nor in one spot or atom of the whole surface, is there distinct explanation of form to the eye by means of a determined shadow.

All is mere sweeping of the brush over the surface with various ground colors, without a single indication of character by means of real shade.

-- 14. Importance of these minor parts and points.

-- 15. The observance of them is the real distinction between the master and the novice.

Let not these points be deemed unimportant; the truths of form in common ground are quite as valuable, (let me antic.i.p.ate myself for a moment,) quite as beautiful, as any others which nature presents, and in lowland landscape they present us with a species of line which it is quite impossible to obtain in any other way,--the alternately flowing and broken line of mountain scenery, which, however small its scale, is always of inestimable value, contrasted with the repet.i.tions of organic form which we are compelled to give in vegetation. A really great artist dwells on every inch of exposed soil with care and delight, and renders it one of the most essential, speaking and pleasurable parts of his composition. And be it remembered, that the man who, in the most conspicuous part of his foreground, will violate truth with every stroke of the pencil, is not likely to be more careful in other parts of it; and that in the little bits which I fix upon for animadversion, I am not pointing out solitary faults, but only the most characteristic examples of the falsehood which is everywhere, and which renders the whole foreground one ma.s.s of contradictions and absurdities. Nor do I myself see wherein the great difference lies between a master and a novice, except in the rendering of the finer truths, of which I am at present speaking. To handle the brush freely, and to paint gra.s.s and weeds with accuracy enough to satisfy the eye, are accomplishments which a year or two's practice will give any man; but to trace among the gra.s.s and weeds those mysteries of invention and combination, by which nature appeals to the intellect--to render the delicate fissure, and descending curve, and undulating shadow of the mouldering soil, with gentle and fine finger, like the touch of the rain itself--to find even in all that appears most trifling or contemptible, fresh evidence of the constant working of the Divine power "for glory and for beauty," and to teach it and proclaim it to the unthinking and the unregardless--this, as it is the peculiar province and faculty of the master-mind, so it is the peculiar duty which is demanded of it by the Deity.

-- 16. The ground of Cuyp.

-- 17. And of Claude.

-- 18. The entire weakness and childishness of the latter.

-- 19. Compared with the work of Turner.

It would take me no reasonable nor endurable time, if I were to point out one half of the various kinds and cla.s.ses of falsehood which the inventive faculties of the old masters succeeded in originating, in the drawing of foregrounds. It is not this man, nor that man, nor one school nor another; all agree in entire repudiation of everything resembling facts, and in the high degree of absurdity of what they subst.i.tute for them. Even Cuyp, who evidently saw and studied _near_ nature, as an artist should do--not fishing for idealities, but taking what nature gave him, and thanking her for it--even he appears to have supposed that the drawing of the earth might be trusted to chance or imagination, and, in consequence, strews his banks with lumps of dough, instead of stones.

Perhaps, however, the "beautiful foregrounds" of Claude afford the most remarkable instances of childishness and incompetence of all. That of his morning landscape, with the large group of trees and high single-arched bridge, in the National Gallery, is a pretty fair example of the kind of error which he constantly falls into. I will not say anything of the agreeable composition of the three banks, rising one behind another from the water. I merely affirm that it amounts to a demonstration that all three were painted in the artist's study, without any reference to nature whatever. In fact, there is quite enough intrinsic evidence in each of them to prove this, seeing that what appears to be meant for vegetation upon them, amounts to nothing more than a green stain on their surfaces, the more evidently false because the leaves of the trees twenty yards farther off are all perfectly visible and distinct; and that the sharp lines with which each cuts against that beyond it, are not only such as crumbling earth could never show or a.s.sume, but are maintained through their whole progress ungraduated, unchanging, and unaffected by any of the circ.u.mstances of varying shade to which every one of nature's lines is inevitably subjected. In fact, the whole arrangement is the impotent struggle of a tyro to express, by successive edges, that approach of earth which he finds himself incapable of expressing by the drawing of the surface.

Claude wished to make you understand that the edge of his pond came nearer and nearer: he had probably often tried to do this with an unbroken bank, or a bank only varied by the delicate and harmonized anatomy of nature; and he had found that owing to his total ignorance of the laws of perspective, such efforts on his part invariably ended in his reducing his pond to the form of a round O, and making it look perpendicular. Much comfort and solace of mind, in such unpleasant circ.u.mstances, may be derived from instantly dividing the obnoxious bank into a number of successive promontories, and developing their edges with completeness and intensity. Every school-girl's drawing, as soon as her mind has arrived at so great a degree of enlightenment as to perceive that perpendicular water is objectionable, will supply us with edifying instances of this unfailing resource; and this foreground of Claude's is only one out of the thousand cases in which he has been reduced to it. And if it be asked, how the proceeding differs from that of nature, I have only to point to nature herself, as she is drawn in the foreground of Turner's Mercury and Argus, a case precisely similar to Claude's, of earthy crumbling banks cut away by water. It will be found in this picture (and I am now describing nature's work and Turner's with the same words) that the whole distance is given by retirement of solid surface; and that if ever an edge is expressed, it is only felt for an instant, and then lost again; so that the eye cannot stop at it and prepare for a long jump to another like it, but is guided over it, and round it, into the hollow beyond; and thus the whole receding ma.s.s of ground, going back for more than a quarter of a mile, is made completely _one_--no part of it is separated from the rest for an instant--it is all united, and its modulations are _members_, not _divisions_ of its ma.s.s. But those modulations are countless--heaving here, sinking there--now swelling, now mouldering, now blending, now breaking--giving, in fact, to the foreground of this universal master, precisely the same qualities which we have before seen in his hills, as Claude gave to his foreground precisely the same qualities which we had before found in _his_ hills,--infinite unity in the one case, finite division in the other.

-- 20. General features of Turner's foreground.

Let us, then, having now obtained some insight into the principles of the old masters in foreground drawing, contrast them throughout with those of our great modern master. The investigation of the excellence of Turner's drawing becomes shorter and easier as we proceed, because the great distinctions between his work and that of other painters are the same, whatever the object or subject may be; and after once showing the general characters of the particular specific forms under consideration, we have only to point, in the works of Turner, to the same principles of infinity and variety in carrying them out, which we have before insisted upon with reference to other subjects.

-- 21. Geological structure of his rocks in the Fall of the Tees.

-- 22. Their convex surfaces and fractured edges.

-- 23. And perfect unity.

-- 24. Various parts whose history is told us by the details of the drawing.

The Upper Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire, engraved in the England series, may be given as a standard example of rock-drawing to be opposed to the work of Salvator. We have, in the great face of rock which divides the two streams, horizontal lines which indicate the real direction of the strata, and these same lines are given in ascending perspective all along the precipice on the right. But we see also on the central precipice fissures absolutely vertical, which inform us of one series of joints dividing these horizontal strata; and the exceeding smoothness and evenness of the precipice itself inform us that it has been caused by a great separation of substance in the direction of another more important line of joints, running in a direction across the river.

Accordingly, we see on the left that the whole summit of the precipice is divided again and again by this great series of joints into vertical beds, which lie against each other with their sides towards us, and are traversed downwards by the same vertical lines traceable on the face of the central cliff. Now, let me direct especial attention to the way in which Turner has marked over this general and grand unity of structure, the modifying effects of the weather and the torrent. Observe how the whole surface of the hill above the precipice on the left[60] is brought into one smooth, unbroken curvature of gentle convexity, until it comes to the edge of the precipice, and then, just on the angle, (compare -- 2,) breaks into the multiplicity of fissure which marks its geological structure. Observe how every one of the separate blocks, into which it divides, is rounded and convex in its salient edges turned to the weather, and how every one of their inward angles is marked clear and sharp by the determined shadow and transparent reflex. Observe how exquisitely graceful are all the curves of the convex surfaces, indicating that every one of them has been modelled by the winding and undulating of running water; and how gradually they become steeper as they descend, until they are torn down into the face of the precipice.

Finally, observe the exquisite variety of all the touches which express fissure or shade; every one in varying directions and with new forms, and yet throughout indicating that perfect parallelism which at once explained to us the geology of the rock, and falling into one grand ma.s.s, treated with the same simplicity of light and shade which a great portrait painter adopts in treating the features of the human face; which, though each has its own separate chiaroscuro, never disturb the wholeness and grandeur of the head, considered as one ball or ma.s.s. So here, one deep and marked piece of shadow indicates the greatest proximity of the rounded ma.s.s; and from this every shade becomes fainter and fainter, until all are lost in the obscurity and dimness of the hanging precipice and the shattering fall. Again, see how the same fractures just upon the edge take place with the central cliff above the right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is told us by the confusion of debris acc.u.mulated in its channel. In fact, the great quality about Turner's drawings which more especially proves their transcendent truth, is the capability they afford us of reasoning on past and future phenomena, just as if we had the actual rocks before us; for this indicates not that one truth is given, nor another, not that a pretty or interesting morsel has been selected here and there, but that the whole truth has been given, with all the relations of its parts; so that we can pick and choose our points of pleasure or of thought for ourselves, and reason upon the whole with the same certainty which we should after having climbed and hammered over the rocks bit by bit. With this drawing before him, a geologist could give a lecture upon the whole system of aqueous erosion, and speculate as safely upon the past and future states of this very spot, as if he were standing and getting wet with the spray. He would tell you, at once, that the waterfall was in a state of rapid recession; that it had once formed a wide cataract just at the spot where the figure is sitting on the heap of debris; and that when it was there, part of it came down by the channel on the left, its bed being still marked by the delicately chiselled lines of fissure. He would tell you that the foreground had also once been the top of the fall, and that the vertical fissures on the right of it were evidently then the channel of a side stream. He would tell you that the fall was then much lower than it is now, and that being lower, it had less force, and cut itself a narrower bed; and that the spot where it reached the higher precipice is marked by the expansion of the wide basin which its increased violence has excavated, and by the gradually increasing concavity of the rocks below, which we see have been hollowed into a complete vault by the elastic bound of the water. But neither he nor I could tell you with what exquisite and finished marking of every fragment and particle of soil or rock, both in its own structure and the evidence it bears of these great influences, the whole of this is confirmed and carried out.

-- 25. Beautiful instance of an exception to general rules in the Llanthony.

With this inimitable drawing we may compare the rocks in the foreground of the Llanthony. These latter are not divided by joints, but into thin horizontal and united beds, which the torrent in its times of flood has chiselled away, leaving one exposed under another, with the sweeping marks of its eddies upon their edges. And here we have an instance of an exception to a general rule, occasioned by particular and local action.

We have seen that the action of water over any surface _universally_, whether falling, as in rain, or sweeping, as a torrent, induces convexity of form. But when we have rocks _in situ_, as here, exposed at their edges to the violent action of an eddy, that eddy will cut a vault or circular s.p.a.ce for itself, (as we saw on a large scale with the high waterfall,) and we have a concave curve interrupting the general contours of the rock. And thus Turner (while every edge of his ma.s.ses is rounded, and, the moment we rise above the level of the water, all is convex) has interrupted the great contours of his strata with concave curves, precisely where the last waves of the torrent have swept against the exposed edges of the beds. Nothing could more strikingly prove the depth of that knowledge by which every touch of this consummate artist is regulated, that universal command of subject which never acts for a moment on anything conventional or habitual, but fills every corner and s.p.a.ce with new evidence of knowledge, and fresh manifestation of thought.

-- 26. Turner's drawing of detached blocks of weathered stone.

The Lower Fall of the Tees, with the chain-bridge, might serve us for an ill.u.s.tration of all the properties and forms of vertical beds of rock, as the upper fall has of horizontal; but we pa.s.s rather to observe, in detached pieces of foreground, the particular modulation of parts which cannot be investigated in the grand combinations of general ma.s.s.

The blocks of stone which form the foreground of the Ulleswater are, I believe, the finest example in the world of the finished drawing of rocks which have been subjected to violent aqueous action. Their surfaces seem to palpitate from the fine touch of the waves, and every part of them is rising or falling in soft swell or gentle depression, though the eye can scarcely trace the fine shadows on which this chiselling of the surface depends. And with all this, every block of them has individual character, dependent on the expression of the angular lines of which its contours were first formed, and which is retained and felt through all the modulation and melting of the water-worn surface. And what is done here in the most important part of the picture, to be especially attractive to the eye, is often done by Turner with lavish and overwhelming power, in the acc.u.mulated debris of a wide foreground, strewed with the ruin of ages, as, for instance, in the Junction of the Greta and Tees, where he has choked the torrent bed with a ma.s.s of shattered rock, thrown down with the profusion and carelessness of nature herself; and yet every separate block is a study, (and has evidently been drawn from nature,) chiselled and varied in its parts, as if it were to be the chief member of a separate subject; yet without ever losing, in a single instance, its subordinate position, or occasioning, throughout the whole acc.u.mulated mult.i.tude, the repet.i.tion of a single line.

-- 27. And of complicated foreground.

I consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new conception, applied and exerted in the drawing of every member of a confused and almost countlessly-divided system, about the most wonderful, as well as the most characteristic pa.s.sages of Turner's foregrounds. It is done not less marvellously, though less distinctly, in the individual parts of all his broken ground, as in examples like these of separate blocks. The articulation of such a pa.s.sage as the nearest bank, in the picture we have already spoken of at so great length, the Upper Fall of the Tees, might serve us for a day's study, if we were to go into it part by part; but it is impossible to do this, except with the pencil; we can only repeat the same general observations, about eternal change and unbroken unity, and tell you to observe how the eye is kept throughout on solid and retiring surfaces, instead of being thrown, as by Claude, on flat and equal edges. You cannot find a single edge in Turner's work; you are everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back on these you cannot tell how--never taking a leap, but progressing imperceptibly along the unbroken bank, till you find yourself a quarter of a mile into the picture, beside the figure at the bottom of the waterfall.

-- 28. And of loose soil.