The Book of Art for Young People Part 8

Topographical paintings, drawings, and prints took the place now filled by the photograph and the postcard. Turner found employment enough making water-colour sketches to be engraved for such topographical publications. But sketches that might be mere hack-work became under his fingers magically lovely. We may follow him to many a corner of England, Wales, and Scotland, sketching architecture, mountain, moor, mists, and lakes. His earliest sketches are rather stiff and precise. But he developed with rapidity, and soon painted them in tones of blue and grey, so soft that the stars and the horizons merge into one lovely indefiniteness. Not till much later is there a touch of brighter colour in them such as fires the 'Temeraire,' but in all there is the same spirit of poetry. Turner longed to be a poet, although he could hardly write a correct sentence even in prose. But he was a poet in his outlook upon life; he seldom painted a scene exactly as he saw it, but transfused it by an imaginative touch into what on rare occasions, with perfect conjuncture of mist and weather, it might possibly become. He gave extra height to church spires, or made precipices steeper than they were, thus to render the impression of the place more explicit than by strict copying of the facts. Yet he could be minutely accurate in his rendering of all effects of sky, cloud, and atmosphere when he chose.

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 repet.i.tion 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical 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 ill.u.s.trating 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 G.o.ds.

The picture is the purest phantasy, even more like a fairy-tale than the story it ill.u.s.trates. 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.m.u.tty 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 subst.i.tute 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 t.i.tian. The taste of one age is not the taste of another. Who can surely p.r.o.nounce 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 t.i.tle 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 repet.i.tion. 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.sy 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, t.i.tian, 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 n.o.bility 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?

THE END

_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_

AESOP'S FABLES

ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES

ARABIAN NIGHTS

BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES

SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON