Six Centuries of Painting Part 20

"Though he did not much attend to the works of the great historical painters of former ages, yet he was well aware that the language of the art--the art of imitation--must be learned somewhere; and as he knew he could not learn it in an equal degree from his contemporaries, he very judiciously applied himself to the Flemish school, who are undoubtedly the greatest masters of one necessary branch of art, and he did not need to go out of his country for examples of that school; from _that_ he learned the harmony of colouring, the management and disposition of light and shadow, and every means of it which the masters practised to ornament and give splendour to their works. And to satisfy himself, as well as others, how well he knew the mechanism and artifice which they employed to bring out that tone of colour which we so much admire in their works, he occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers and Van Dyck, which it would be no disgrace to the most accurate connoisseur to mistake at the first sight for the works of those masters. What he thus learned he applied to the originals of nature, which he saw with his own eyes, and imitated not in the manner of those masters but in his own.

"Whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures, it is difficult to determine; whether his portraits were most admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like representation of nature, such as we see in the works of Rubens, Ruisdael, or others of those schools. In his fancy pictures, when he had fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean and vulgar form of the woodcutter, or a child of an interesting character, as he did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he lose any of the natural grace and elegance of the other; such a grace and such an elegance as are more frequently found in cottages than in courts. This excellence was his own, the result of his particular observation and taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the Flemish school, nor indeed to any school; for his grace was not academic, or antique, but selected by himself from the great school of nature....

"Upon the whole we may justly say that whatever he attempted he carried to a high degree of excellence. It is to the credit of his good sense and judgment that he never did attempt that style of historical painting for which his previous studies had made no preparation.

"The peculiarity of his manner or style," Reynolds continues a little later, "or we may call it the language in which he expressed his ideas, has been considered by many as his greatest defect.... A novelty and peculiarity of manner, as it is often a cause of our approbation, so likewise it is often a ground of censure, as being contrary to the practice of other painters, in whose manner we have been initiated, and in whose favour we have perhaps been prepossessed from our infancy: for fond as we are of novelty, we are upon the whole creatures of habit.

However, it is certain that all those odd scratches and marks which on a close examination are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident than design; this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magic, at a certain distance a.s.sumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places; so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence under the appearance of chance and hasty negligence.

"That Gainsborough himself considered this peculiarity in his manner, and the power it possesses of exciting surprise, as a beauty in his works, I think may be inferred from the eager desire which we know he always expressed, that his pictures at the exhibition should be seen near as well as at a distance.

"The slightness which we see in his best works cannot always be imputed to negligence. However they may appear to superficial observers, painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind than any mode of high finishing or smoothness without such attention. His handling, the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work of an artist who had never learnt from others the usual and regular practice belonging to the art; but still, like a man of strong intuitive perception of what was required, he found a way of his own to accomplish his purpose."

To Reynolds's opinion of this technique as applied to portraits, we may listen with even more attention. "It must be allowed," he continues, "that this hatching manner of Gainsborough did very much contribute to the lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures; as, on the contrary, much smoothness and uniting the colours is apt to produce heaviness. Every artist must have remarked how often that lightness of hand which was in his dead-colour (or first painting) escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more precision; and another loss which he often experiences, which is of greater consequence: while he is employed in the detail, the effect of the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. The likeness of a portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of the features or any of the particular parts. Now, Gainsborough's portraits were often little more in regard to finishing or determining the form of the features, than what generally attends a first painting; but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or whole together, I have often imagined that this unfinished manner contributed even to that striking resemblance for which his portraits are so remarkable."

IV

THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Not until the year of Gainsborough's death, 1788, was there born another landscape painter. This was JOHN CROME, and he too came from the east of England, nearest to Holland, being born in Norfolk, the neighbouring county to Gainsborough's native Suffolk. Within ten years more, two still greater landscapists were born, also in the east, Constable in Ess.e.x, still closer to Sudbury, and Turner in London.

John Crome--Old Crome, as he is usually called to distinguish him from his less distinguished son, John Bernay Crome--was born at Norwich, and had to support himself most of his life by teaching drawing, not to professional pupils unfortunately; but incidentally he founded "The Norwich School" of landscape painters, who loyally carried forward the traditions he had inculcated. But having to spend his time as a drawing-master, he was not free like the old Dutch painters to put out pictures when and as often as he would, and his work in oils is therefore comparatively scarce. The three examples at the National Gallery are typical of his varied powers, _The Slate Quarries_, _Household Heath_, and _Porringland Oak_ are all of them masterpieces.

JOHN SELL COTMAN, born in 1782, was, after Crome, the most considerable of the Norwich School. He, too, was compelled to earn a livelihood by being a drawing-master, for there was not as yet a sufficient market, nor for some time later, for landscape pictures, to support existence, however humble. Cotman devoted much of his energies to water-colours, and he is better known in this branch of the art than in painting; that is the only excuse for the National Gallery in having purchased as his the very inferior picture called _A Galliot in a Gale_. The other example, _Wherries on the Yare_, is more worthy of him, though it by no means exhibits all his wonderful power and fascination.

In GEORGE MORLAND (1763-1804) we have something more and something less than a landscape painter. Landscape to him was not what it was to Wilson, Gainsborough or Crome,--the only end in view; nor was it merely a background for his subjects. But, as it generally happened, it was both. To Morland, the landscape and the figures were one and the same thing. Out of the fulness of his heart he painted pictures of _Boys Robbing an Orchard_, _Horses in a Stable_, or a _Farmer on Horseback_ staying to talk to a group of gypsies beside a wood, and whether or not the picture might be cla.s.sed as a landscape depended entirely on the nature of the scene itself. Whatever he saw or chose to see he painted with equal skill and with equal charm; and as his choice of vision lay in the simple everyday life that surrounded him, his variety is not the least of his attractions.

The fact that his mother was a Frenchwoman (his father was Henry Morland, the painter of the delightful pair of half-lengths, _The Laundry Maids_) suggests to my mind the wild surmise that she may have been the daughter of Chardin. For in the technique as well as in the temperament of Morland,--making allowance for difference of circ.u.mstances,--there is something remarkably akin to those of the great Frenchman. Both eschewed the temptation to become fashionable, both painted the humble realities of middle-cla.s.s life with a zest that could not possibly have been affected, and both painted them with much the same extraordinary charm. At his best, Morland is not much inferior to Chardin, and but for his unfortunate wildness and his susceptibility to the temptations of strong drink, he might easily have excelled the other. The feeling exhibited in two such different subjects as Lord Glenconner's _Boys Robbing an Orchard_, and _The Interior of a Stable_, in the National Gallery, certainly equals that of Chardin's most famous pieces, I mean the feeling for the particular scene he is depicting. The nearest, in fact the only, approach that Morland made to portrait painting was in such pieces as _The Fortune Teller_ in the National Gallery, which brings to mind the "Conversation Pieces," introduced by Hogarth and Highmore into English painting, but which were never widely attempted. In the Portfolio monograph "English Society in the Eighteenth Century" I tried to collect as many examples as I could of this form of art, but found it difficult to fill even a small volume, so entirely was the single figure portrait the vogue. A few notable instances are worth mentioning, if only as exceptions to the general rule. Gainsborough's _Ladies Walking in the Mall_, belonging to Sir Audley Neeld; Reynolds's large group of _The Marlborough Family_ at Blenheim, and a very early group of _The Elliott Family_, consisting of eleven figures, belonging to Lord St Germans; John Singleton Copley's _Children of Francis Sitwell, Esq._, at Renishaw; and lastly Zoffany's _Family Party_, at Panshanger.

For life-like representation of the English people we look to Hogarth and Morland, and yet nothing could be more different than the motives which inspired the two, and the way they went to work upon their subject. Hogarth was above all things theatrical, Morland natural.

Hogarth first conceived his idea, then laid his scene, and lastly peopled it with actual characters as they appeared--individually--before him. Morland simply looked about him and painted what he happened to see at the precise moment when what he saw coincided with his natural inclination, or we may even say inspiration, to paint it. It was much the same difference as between the work of Zola and that of Thomas Hardy. The one had a moral to preach, the other a story to tell.

When the most we hear of GEORGE ROMNEY nowadays is the price that has been paid for one of his portraits at Christie's, it is refreshing as well as informative to turn to the criticism of one of his greatest though not in these times so highly priced contemporaries, I mean John Flaxman. "When Romney first began to paint," he writes, "he had seen no gallery of pictures nor the fine productions of ancient sculpture; but then women and children were his statues, and all objects under the canopy of heaven formed his school of painting. The rainbow, the purple distance, or the silver lake, taught him colouring; the various actions and pa.s.sions of the human figure, with the forms of clouds, woods, and mountains or valleys, afforded him studies of composition. Indeed, his genius bore a strong resemblance to the scenes he was born in; like them, it partook of the grand and beautiful; and like them also, the bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of his fancy were occasionally overspread with mist and gloom. On his arrival in Italy he was witness to new scenes of art and sources of study of which he could only have supposed previously that something

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XLII.--GEORGE ROMNEY

THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER

_National Gallery, London_]

of the kind might exist; for he there contemplated the purity and perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, and the simplicity of Cimabue and Giotto's schools. He perceived those qualities distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewing and imitating nature; and thus his quick perception and unwearied application enabled him, by a two years' residence abroad, to acquire as great a proficiency in art as is usually attained by foreign studies of a much longer duration.

"After his return, the novelty and sentiment of his original subjects were universally admired. Most of these were of the delicate cla.s.s, and each had its peculiar character. t.i.tania with her Indian votaries was arch and sprightly; Milton dictating to his daughters, solemn and interesting. Several pictures of Wood Nymphs and Bacchantes charmed by their rural beauty, innocence, and simplicity. The most pathetic, perhaps, of all his works was never finished--Ophelia with the flowers she had gathered in her hand, sitting on the branch of a tree, which was breaking under her, whilst the moody distraction in her lovely countenance accounts for the insensibility to danger. Few painters have left so many examples in their works of the tender and delicate affections; and several of his pictures breathe a kindred spirit with the _Sigismonda_ of Correggio. His cartoons, some of which have unfortunately perished, were examples of the sublime and terrible, at that time perfectly new in English art. As Romney was gifted with peculiar powers for historical and ideal painting, so his heart and soul were engaged in the pursuit of it whenever he could extricate himself from the importunate business of portrait painting. It was his delight by day and study by night, and for this his food and rest were often neglected. His compositions, like those of the ancient pictures and ba.s.so-relievos, told their story by a single group of figures in the front, whilst the background is made the simplest possible, rejecting all unnecessary episode and trivial ornament, either of secondary groups or architectural subdivision. In his compositions the beholder was forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance: the gradations and varieties of which he traced through several characters, all conceived in an elevated spirit of dignity and beauty, with a lively expression of nature in all the parts. His heads were various--the male were decided and grand, the female lovely. His figures resembled the antique--the limbs were elegant and finely formed. His drapery was well understood, either forming the figure into a ma.s.s with one or two deep folds only, or by its adhesion and transparency discovering the form of the figure, the lines of which were finely varied with the union or expansion of spiral or cascade folds, composing with or contrasting the outline and chiaroscuro. Few artists since the fifteenth century have been able to do so much in so many different branches; for besides his beautiful compositions and pictures, which have added to the knowledge and celebrity of the English School, he modelled like a sculptor, carved ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and could make an architectural design in a fine taste, as well as construct every part of the building."

After the death of Reynolds and the retirement of Romney, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the field of portraiture was left vacant--in London at least--for JOHN HOPPNER, whose name is now generally included with those of Lawrence and Raeburn among the first six portrait painters of the British

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XLIII.--GEORGE ROMNEY

MRS ROBINSON--"PERDITA"

_Hertford House, London_]

School. His fame in recent years has certainly exceeded his merits, but it is due to him to say that he was a conscientious artist, and a firm upholder of the tradition of Reynolds, so far as in him lay. The old King had always disliked Reynolds, and Hoppner was not well enough advised to hold his tongue on the subject of the master: worse than this, he openly accepted the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and by so doing opened the door for the admission of Lawrence as royal painter much sooner than was at all necessary. The story of their rivalry is thus--in substance--sketched by Allan Cunningham, their contemporary:--The light of the Prince of Wales's countenance was of itself sufficient to guide the courtly and beautiful to Hoppner's easel.

Suffice it to say that before he was forty years of age (he was born in 1759), he had been enabled to exhibit no less than fifteen ladies of quality--for so are they named in the catalogues--a score of ladies of lower degree, and n.o.blemen unnumbered. But by this time another star had arisen, destined to outshine that of Hoppner; though some at that period, willing to flatter the older pract.i.tioner, called it a meteor that would but flash and disappear--we allude to Lawrence. Urged upon the Academy by the King and Queen, and handed up to public notice by royal favour, this new aspirant rose rapidly in the estimation of the public; and by the most delicate flattery, both with tongue and pencil, became a formidable rival to the painter whom it was the Prince's pleasure to befriend. The factions of Reynolds and Romney seemed revived in those of Hoppner and Lawrence. If Hoppner resided in Charles Street, at the gates of Carlton House, and wrote himself "portrait painter to the Prince of Wales," Lawrence likewise had his residence in the Court end of the town, and proudly styled himself--and that when only twenty-three years old--"portrait painter in ordinary to His Majesty."

In other respects, too, were honours equally balanced between them; they were both made Royal Academicians, but in this, youth had the start of age--Lawrence obtained that distinction first. Nature, too, had been kind--some have said prodigal--to both; they were men of fine address, and polished by early intercourse with the world and by their trade of portrait painting could practise all the delicate courtesies of drawing-room and boudoir; but in that most fascinating of all flattery, the art of persuading, with brushes and fine colours, very ordinary mortals that beauty and fine expression were their portions, Lawrence was soon without a rival.

The preference of the King and Queen for Lawrence was for a time balanced by the affection of the Prince of Wales for Hoppner; the Prince was supposed to have the best taste, and as he kept a court of his own filled with the young n.o.bility, and all the wits of that great faction known by the name of Whig, Hoppner had the youth and beauty of the land for a time; and it cannot be denied that he was a rival in every way worthy of contending with any portrait-painter of his day. The bare list of his exhibited portraits will show how and by whom he was supported.

It is well said by Williams, in his _Life of Lawrence_, that "the more sober and homely ideas of the King were not likely to be a pa.s.sport for any portrait-painter to the variety of ladies, and hence Mr. Hoppner for a long time almost monopolised the female beauty and young fashion of the country."

This rivalry continued for a time in the spirit of moderation--but only for a time. Lawrence, the gentler and the smoother of the two, kept silence longest; the warm nature of Hoppner broke out at last. "The ladies of Lawrence," he said, "show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespa.s.s on moral as well as professional decorum." For his own he claimed, by implication, purity of look as well as purity of style. This sarcastic remark found wings in a moment, and flew through all the coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who uttered it; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how Lawrence, limner to perhaps the purest court in Europe, came to bestow indecorous looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality of St. James's and Windsor, while Hoppner, limner to the court of a gallant young prince, who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute and the music of ladies'

feet in the dance, should to some of its gayest and giddiest ornaments give the simplicity of manner and purity of style which pertained to the Quaker like sobriety of the other. Nor is it the least curious part of the story that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of Hoppner, instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who "trespa.s.sed on moral as well as on professional decorum." After this, Lawrence had plenty of the fairest sitters.

_THE NINETEENTH CENTURY_

I

THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT

In the preceding chapters we have traced the development of painting for five centuries--from the beginning of the fourteenth, that is to say, to the end of the eighteenth--in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Spain, and lastly in France and England. In the nineteenth the story is confined to the last two alone, as with one or two minute exceptions the art of painting had by this time entirely ceased to be worth consideration in any of the others. Only in France and England, where it had been most recently established, was it to continue; and besides continuing, reach out with the most astonishing vigour to s.n.a.t.c.h at and grasp fruits that no one before would have dreamt of being within its reach.

Between France and England--if by the latter we may be taken to mean Great Britain, and include within its artists those who have acclimatised themselves within her sh.o.r.es--the honours of the achievement are pretty equally divided, though it will have to be left to individual choice to decide exactly on which side the balance of credit is due. A mere list of the greatest names is not sufficient to apportion the praise, though as a preliminary step it may be of value in clearing the issue. Let us take a dozen on either side, and see how they look.

_England._

Lawrence.

Constable.

Turner.

De Wint.

Nasmyth.

Stevens.

Whistler.

Cotman.

c.o.x.

Watts.

Rossetti.

Hunt.