Volume 1 — NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES (continued 3)

A portrait of special interest as having been much prized by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom it formerly belonged. When Mr. Angerstein bought it, the great Burke is said to have congratulated him on possessing Sir Joshua's "favourite picture." It is commonly called "The Portrait of Rubens," but the principal figure does not greatly resemble the well-known face of Rubens; it is more probably a portrait of Luke Vostermann, a celebrated engraver of the time. He is discoursing, it would seem, on some point of art, suggested by the little statue which a man behind is holding.

50. ST. AMBROSE AND THEODOSIUS.

Van Dyck (Flemish: 1599-1641). See under last picture.

A copy, with some variations, of a large picture by Rubens now at Vienna. The subject is that described by Gibbon (ch. xxvii.). The Emperor Theodosius, for a massacre of the inhabitants of Thessalonica, was excommunicated by Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan.

The emperor was deeply affected by his own reproaches, and by those of his spiritual father; and, after he had bewailed the mischievous and irreparable consequences of his own rash fury, he proceeded, in the accustomed manner, to perform his devotions in the great church of Milan. He was stayed in the porch by the Archbishop; who, in the tone and language of an ambassador of heaven, declared to his sovereign that private contrition was not sufficient to atone for a public fault, or to appease the justice of an offended Deity. Theodosius humbly represented that if he had contracted the guilt of homicide, David, the man after God's own heart, had been guilty not only of murder, but of adultery. "You have imitated David in his crime, imitate then his repentance," was the reply of the undaunted Ambrose.

Observe as an instance of picturesque ornament properly introduced in subordination to the figure subject, the robes of St. Ambrose. "Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Van Dyck would be very sorry to part with their figured stuffs and lustrous silks; and sorry, observe, exactly in the degree of their picturesque feeling. Should not we also be sorry to have Bishop Ambrose without his vest in that picture of the National Gallery? But I think Van Dyck would not have liked, on the other hand, the vest without the bishop. And I much doubt if Titian or Veronese would have enjoyed going into Waterloo House, and making studies of dresses upon the counters" (Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xx. § 13).

51. A JEW MERCHANT.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.

One of the "heads of the people" whom Rembrandt saw around him; for the street in which he lived at Amsterdam swarmed with Dutch and Portuguese Jews. "In rendering human character, such as he saw about him, Rembrandt is nearly equal to Correggio, Titian, Tintoret, Veronese, or Velazquez; and the real power of him is in his stern and steady touch on lip and brow,—seen best in his lightest etchings,—or in the lightest parts of the handling of his portraits, the head of the Jew in our own Gallery being about as good and thorough work as it is possible to see of his" (Academy Notes, 1859, p. 52).

52. "PORTRAIT OF GEVARTIUS."

Van Dyck (Flemish: 1599-1641). See 49.

One of the most celebrated pictures in the Gallery. The title by which it is commonly known is incorrect; the sitter being not Gaspar Gevarts or Gevartius, but Cornelius van der Geest, an amateur of the arts and a friend of Rubens and Van Dyck. It is the grave learning of a scholar, the gentle refinement of an artist—notice especially "the liquid, living lustre of the eye"—that Van Dyck here puts before us. In point of execution this picture ranks as one of the finest portraits in the world. "From it," says Mr. Watts, R.A., "the modern student will learn more than from any I am acquainted with. The eyes," he adds, "are miracles of drawing and painting. They are a little tired and overworked, and do not so much see anything as indicate the thoughtful brain behind. How wonderful the flexible mouth! with the light shining through the sparse moustache. How tremulously yet firmly painted. The ear: how set on ... so throughout there is no part of this wonderful portrait that might not be examined and enlarged upon; but I would ask my fellow-students to do this for themselves. Not a touch is put in for what is understood by 'effect.' Dexterous in a superlative degree, there is not in the ordinary sense a dexterous dab doing duty for honourable serious work: nothing done to look well at one distance or another, but to be right at every distance" (Magazine of Art, June 1889). Sir Edward Poynter is equally enthusiastic. "This wonderful portrait," he says, "is perhaps the most perfect head ever painted by this consummate painter. Not only for the brilliancy and purity of its flesh tints, the masterly drawing, and the vitality of the expression, does it rank as one of the masterpieces of portraiture existing; but for the brushwork, of which every touch expresses with supreme dexterity all the varieties of form, substance, and texture, it is unsurpassed, perhaps unrivalled, in the history of painting" (National Gallery, i. 152). Another P.R.A., Benjamin West, copied the "Gevartius," and at this day there is no picture in the Gallery more often copied by students.[82] Their preference is justified by that of the painter himself, who "used to consider it his masterpiece, and before he had gained his great reputation carried it about with him from court to court, and patron to patron, to show what he could do as a portrait painter."[83]

53. AN EVENING LANDSCAPE.

Albert Cuyp (Dutch: 1620-1691).

Cuyp was born at Dort—the son of an artist who was one of the founders of the Painters' Guild in that town. He was a deacon and elder of his church, and was a citizen of importance, holding various municipal and judicial offices. As a painter, however, he had little reputation in his own country, and, as is the case with so many of the Dutch masters, it was in England that he was first appreciated. Even in 1750 one of his pictures sold for thirty florins; in 1876 one fetched at Christie's £5040. The high esteem in which his works are thus held is justified alike by their own merits and by his important position in the history of landscape art. He is, in the first place, the principal master of pastoral landscape, "representing peasant life and its daily work, or such scenery as may naturally be suggestive of it, consisting usually of simple landscape, in part subjected to agriculture, with figures, cattle, and domestic buildings." In this respect Cuyp is an interesting case of the detachment of an artist's life. He was born and lived in troublous times; but in looking at his works one would imagine (it has been said) "that he passed his whole life in Arcadia, untroubled by any more anxious thought than whether the sun would give the effect which he required for his paintings, or the cows stay long enough for him to depict them in their natural attitudes." Dwelling on the banks of the placid Maas, he delighted also to reproduce the warm skies of summer or autumn reflected in an expanse of water overspread with marine craft. Secondly, Cuyp has been called the "Dutch Claude," for he was the first amongst the Dutch to "set the sun in the sky." "For expression of effects of yellow sunlight, parts might be chosen out of the good pictures of Cuyp, which have never been equalled in art." It is sunshine, observe, that Cuyp paints, not sun colour. "Observe this accurately. Those easily understood effects of afternoon light, gracious and sweet so far as they reach, are produced by the softly warm or yellow rays of the sun falling through mist. They are low in tone, even in nature, and disguise the colours of objects. They are imitable even by persons who have little or no gift of colour, if the tones of the picture are kept low and in true harmony, and the reflected lights warm. But they never could be painted by great colourists. The fact of blue and crimson being effaced by yellow and grey puts such effect at once out of the notice or thought of a colourist." The task of painting the sun colour was reserved for Turner; yet Cuyp's pictures had a great influence over him." He went steadily through the subdued golden chord, and painted Cuyp's favourite effect, 'sun rising through vapour,' for many a weary year. But this was not enough for him. He must paint the sun in his strength, the sun rising not through vapour. If you turn to the Apollo in the 'Ulysses and Polyphemus' (508), his horses are rising beyond the horizon—you see he is not 'rising through vapour,' but above it;—gaining somewhat of a victory over vapour, it appears. The old Dutch brewer,[84] with his yellow mist, was a great man and a good guide, but he was not Apollo. He and his dray-horses led the way through the flats cheerily, for a little time; we have other horses now flaming out 'beyond the mighty sea'" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 19; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. §§ 3, 4). Admirers of Cuyp should make a point of visiting the Dulwich Gallery, which is peculiarly rich in works by this master. In the British Museum are several of his drawings and studies.

An interesting study in what is called "truth of tone" may be made with this picture—by which is meant the "exact relation and fitness of shadow and light, and of the hues of all objects under them; and more especially that precious quality of each colour laid on which makes it appear a quiet colour illuminated, not a bright colour in shade." Now with regard to this Ruskin says, "I much doubt if there be a single bright Cuyp in the world, which, taken as a whole, does not present many glaring solecisms in tone. I have not seen many fine pictures of his which were not utterly spoiled by the vermilion dress of some principal figure—a vermilion totally unaffected and unwarmed by the golden hue of the rest of the picture; and, what is worse, with little distinction between its own illumined and shaded parts, so that it appears altogether out of sunshine—the colour of a bright vermilion in dead, cold daylight.... And these failing parts, though they often escape the eye when we are near the picture and able to dwell upon what is beautiful in it, yet so injure its whole effect that I question if there be many Cuyps in which vivid colours occur, which will not lose their effect and become cold and flat at a distance of ten or twelve paces, retaining their influence only when the eye is close enough to rest on the right parts without including the whole. Take, for instance, the large one in our National Gallery. (Seen at a distance) the black cow appears a great deal nearer than the dogs, and the golden tones of the distance look like a sepia drawing rather than like sunshine, owing chiefly to the utter want of aerial greys indicated through them" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. §§ 11, 19).

54. A WOMAN BATHING.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.

"Those who have been in Holland," says Mrs. Jameson, "must often have seen the peasant girls washing their linen and trampling on it, precisely in the manner here depicted. Rembrandt may have seen one of them from his window, and snatching up his pencil and palette, he threw the figure on the canvas and fixed it there as by a spell." More probably, however, this is one of Rembrandt's many pictures of his servant and model, Hendrickje Stoffels. "The finest of the whole series," says M. Michel, "is the study of Hendrickje in the National Gallery, the so-called 'Woman Bathing.' It bears the date 1654, and is undoubtedly a masterpiece among Rembrandt's less important works. The young woman, whose only garment is a chemise, stands facing the spectator, in a deep pool. Her attitude suggests a sensation of pleasure and refreshment tempered by the involuntary shrinking of the body at the first contact of the cold water. The light from above glances on her breast and forehead, and on the luxuriant disorder of her bright hair; the lower part of her face and her legs are in deep transparent shadow. The brown tones of the soil, the landscape background and the water, the purple and gold of the draperies, make up a marvellous setting alike for the brilliantly illuminated contour and the more subdued carnations of the model. The truth of the impression, the breadth of the careful but masterly execution, the variety of the handling, proclaim the matured power of the artist, and combine to glorify the hardy grace and youthful radiance of his creation" (Rembrandt: his Life, his Work, and his Time, ii. 70).

55. THE DEATH OF PROCRIS (see under 698).

Claude (French: 1600-1682). See 2.

"A most pathetic picture," says Constable (who made a copy of it when it was in Sir George Beaumont's possession). "The expression of Cephalus is very touching; and, indeed, nothing can be finer than the way in which Claude has told that affecting story throughout. Procris has come from her concealment to die at the feet of her husband. Above her is a withered tree clasped by ivy, an emblem of love in death,—while a stag seen on the outline of a hill, over which the rising sun spreads his rays, explains the cause of a fatal mistake.... It is the fashion to find fault with his figures indiscriminately, yet in his best time they are so far from being objectionable that we cannot easily imagine anything else according so well with his scenes; as objects of colour they seem indispensable. Wilson said to a friend who was talking of them in the usual manner, 'Do not fall into the common mistake of objecting to Claude's figures'" (Leslie's Life of Constable, 1845, p. 339).

56. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

Annibale Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). See 9.

57. THE CONVERSION OF ST. BAVON.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

Bavon, a noble of Brabant, in the seventeenth century having determined to renounce the pomps and vanities of the world (his retinue is to be seen on the right), is met on the steps of the convent church by the bishop who is to receive him into his new life. To the left his goods are being given away to the poor, and above there is a group of ladies returning thanks for the noble penitent's conversion.

58. A STUDY OF TREES.

Claude (French: 1600-1682). See 2.

This picture, when in Sir George Beaumont's collection at Coleorton, was copied by Constable and called by him "The Little Grove." In 1823 Constable wrote to a friend, "I have likewise begun 'The Little Grove' by Claude; a noonday scene 'which warms and cheers, but which does not inflame or irritate.' Through the depths of the trees are seen a waterfall and a ruined temple, and a solitary shepherd is piping to some goats and sheep:—

(Leslie's Life of Constable, 1845, p. 119.)

59. THE BRAZEN SERPENT.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

"It is interesting to observe the difference in the treatment of this subject by the three great masters, Michael Angelo, Rubens, and Tintoret.... Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents huge boa-constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them. Tintoret makes ... the serpents little flying and fluttering monsters, like lampreys with wings; and the children of Israel, instead of being thrown into convulsed and writhing groups, are scattered, fainting in the fields, far away in the distance. As usual, Tintoret's conception, while thoroughly characteristic of himself, is also truer to the words of Scripture. We are told that 'the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people'; we are not told that they crushed the people to death. And, while thus the truest, it is also the most terrific conception.... Our instinct tells us that boa-constrictors do not come in armies; and we look upon the picture with as little emotion as upon the handle of a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents, when there is no probability of serpents actually occurring" (Stones of Venice: Venetian Index, "Rocco, Scuola di San," No. 24).

61. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

Claude (French: 1600-1682). See 2.

The history of this picture is curiously interesting. It belonged to Sir George Beaumont, who valued it so highly that it was, we are told, his travelling companion. He presented it to the National Gallery in 1826, but unable to bear its loss begged it back for the rest of his life. He took it with him into the country, and on his death, two years later, his widow restored it to the nation. Sir George Beaumont was not the only artist who thought highly of this little picture. Constable, we are told, "looked back on the first sight of this exquisite work as an important epoch in his life.... It is called The Annunciation; but the spring by which the female is seated, and the action of the angel who points to the buildings in the distance, leave little doubt that Claude's intention was to represent the first flight of Hagar from the presence of her mistress" (Leslie's Life of Constable, 1845, p. 6).

62. A BACCHANALIAN DANCE.

Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593-1665). See 39.

This picture, one of Poussin's masterpieces, is probably one of four Bacchanals painted for Cardinal Richelieu:—

Keats: Endymion.

63. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

Annibale Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). See 9.

This picture was originally in the Giustiniani Palace at Rome; hence the figures are supposed to represent (as stated on the frame) Prince Giustiniani and his attendants returning from the chase.

64. RETURN OF THE ARK FROM CAPTIVITY.

Sebastien Bourdon (French: 1616-1671).

This picture was a great favourite with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom it once belonged. He cited it, together with a picture by Salvator Rosa, to the students of the Academy (Discourse xiv.) as an instance of the "poetical style of landscape," calling particular attention to the "visionary" character of "the whole and every part of the scene." The subject is the return of the ark by the Philistines to the valley of Bath-shemesh, as described in I Samuel vi. 10-14. The painter was one of the original twelve anciens of the old French Academy of painting, of which he died rector; he had formerly been painter to Queen Christina of Sweden, to whose country he had fled as a Protestant.

65. CEPHALUS AND AURORA.

Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593-1669). See under 39.

None of the "learned" Poussin's pictures in the Gallery shows so well as this how steeped he was alike in the knowledge and in the feeling of Greek mythology. Cephalus was a Thessalian prince whose love of hunting carried him away at early dawn from the arms of his wife Procris (see under 698). Hence the allegorical fable of the loves of Cephalus and Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, and her attempt to rival Procris in his affections. Cephalus here half yields to Aurora's blandishments, but a little Cupid holds up before him the portrait of his wife and recalls her love to his mind. Behind is Aurora's car, in which she is drawn by the white-winged Pegasus across the sky. But Pegasus, with that intermingling of many ideas which is characteristic of all Greek myths, is also "the Angel of the Wild Fountains: that is to say, the fastest flying or lower rain-cloud, winged, but racing as upon the earth."[85] Hence beside him sleeps a river-god, his head resting on his urn. But the mountain top is tipped with dawn; and behind, one sees a Naiad waking. Farther still beyond, in a brightening horizon, the form of Apollo, the sun-god whose advent follows on the dawn, is just apparent, his horses and his car melting into the shapes of morning clouds.[86]

66. A LANDSCAPE: AUTUMN MORNING.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

Rubens "perhaps furnishes us with the first instances of complete, unconventional, unaffected landscape. His treatment is healthy, manly, and rational, not very affectionate, yet often condescending to minute and multitudinous detail; always, as far as it goes, pure, forcible, and refreshing, consummate in composition, and marvellous in colour" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15). Notice especially the sky. "The whole field of ancient landscape art affords, as far as we remember, but one instance of any effort whatever to represent the character of the upper cloud region. That one instance is the landscape of Rubens in our own Gallery, in which the mottled or fleecy sky is given with perfect truth and exquisite beauty" (ibid., vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. ii. § 9). Rubens's skill in landscape was partly due to fondness for the scenery he depicted. This picture was painted when he was at Genoa, but it is a purely Flemish scene—a broad stretch of his own lowlands, with the castle of Stein, it is said, which was afterwards his residence, near Mechlin, in the background, with Flemish waggon and horses fording a brook, and with a sportsman in the immediate foreground, carrying an old-fashioned firelock, intent on a covey of partridges.[87] "The Dutch painters are perfectly contented with their flat fields and pollards; Rubens, though he had seen the Alps, usually composes his landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards and willows, a distant spire, a Dutch house with a moat about it, a windmill, and a ditch" (ibid., vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xiii. § 20). The Dutch painters agreed, in fact, with the Lincolnshire farmer in Kingsley's Alton Locke, whom Ruskin goes on to quote: "None o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards," but "all so vlat as a barn's vloor, for vorty mile on end—there's the country to live in!"

This picture is one of four "seasons." (Spring is in the Wallace collection at Hertford House, Summer and Winter are in the Royal collection at Windsor.) It was presented to the nation by Sir George Beaumont. The painter Haydon, describing a visit to Sir George at Coleorton, writes:

"We dined with the Claude and Rembrandt before us, breakfasted with the Rubens landscape, and did nothing morning, noon, or night but think of painting, dream of painting, and wake to paint again." The picture is referred to also by Wordsworth in a very interesting passage. "I heard the other day," he writes to Sir George Beaumont, "of two artists, who thus expressed themselves upon the subject of a scene among our lakes: 'Plague upon those vile enclosures!' said one; 'they spoil everything.' 'Oh,' said the other, 'I never see them.' Glover was the name of this last. Now, for my part, I should not wish to be either of these gentlemen, but to have in my own mind the power of turning to advantage, wherever it is possible, every object of Art and Nature as they appear before me. What a noble instance, as you have pointed out to me, has Rubens given of this in that picture in your possession, where he has brought, as it were, a whole country into one landscape, and made the most formal partitions of cultivation, hedgerows of pollard willows, conduct the eye into the depths and distances of his picture: and thus, more than by any other means, has given it that appearance of immensity which is so striking" (Memorials of Coleorton, ii. 135).

67. THE HOLY FAMILY AND ST. GEORGE.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

On the left are the usual incidents of a "Riposo," or Repose in Egypt. St. Joseph is asleep, and the mule browses on the bank of the stream, while John the Baptist and attendant angels play with the Lamb. The Holy Child is on its mother's knee, and to them St. George is presenting his proselyte, the heathen princess whom he had saved from the dragon (see under 16). The dragon, now bridled with her girdle, follows her meekly, and St. George, as he introduces her to the mysteries of Christianity, plants the banner of the Faith. With the holy mother is St. Mary Magdalen—a penitent sinner herself, like the heathen princess, whom she now ushers into the Holy Presence.

Such appears to be the subject. As for the manner in which it is treated, it is interesting to know that the figures are portraits of the painter himself and his family. Rubens "is religious, too, after his manner; hears mass every morning, and perpetually uses the phrase 'by the grace of God,' or some other such, in writing of any business he takes in hand; but the tone of his religion may be determined by one fact. We saw how Veronese painted himself and his family as worshipping the Madonna. Rubens has also painted himself in an equally elaborate piece.[88] But they are not worshipping the Madonna. They are performing the Madonna, and her saintly entourage" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 9).

68. A WOODY LANDSCAPE.

Gaspard Poussin (French: 1613-1675). See 31.

The scene is the beautiful avenue of oaks, called the "Galleria di Sopra," which skirts the upper margin of the Lake of Albano. Ruskin refers to this picture in illustration of his thesis that Turner's "truth of vegetation," in his representation of the exceeding intricacy of nature, is not to be paralleled among the old painters, and least of all in Gaspard Poussin with his regular "tree-patterns." The picture before us is "a woody landscape," which in nature would be a mass of intricate foliage—

"a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the sky.... This, as it comes down into the body of the tree, gets closer, but never opaque; it is always transparent, with crumbling lights in it letting you through to the sky; then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined foliage, all dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single leaf on the extremities: then, under these, you get deep passages of broken irregular gloom, passing into transparent, green-lighted, misty hollows ... all penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth and mystery of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close to us, some solitary spray, some wreath of two or three motionless large leaves, the type and embodying of all that in the rest we feel and imagine, but can never see.

"Now, with thus much of nature in your mind, go to Gaspard Poussin's 'View near Albano.' It is the very subject to unite all these effects, a sloping bank shaded with intertwined forest. And what has Gaspard given us? A mass of smooth, opaque, varnished brown, without one interstice, one change of hue, or any vestige of leafy structure, in its interior, or in those parts of it, I should say, which are intended to represent interior; but out of it, over it rather, at regular intervals, we have circular groups of greenish touches, always the same in size, shape, and distance from each other, containing so exactly the same number of touches each, that you cannot tell one from another. There are eight or nine and thirty of them, laid over each other like fish-scales; the shade being most carefully made darker and darker as it recedes from each until it comes to the edge of the next, against which it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and then begins to decline again, until the canvas is covered with about as much intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has in marbling a wainscot, or a weaver in repeating an ornamental pattern. What is there in this, which the most determined prejudice in favour of the old masters can for a moment suppose to resemble trees? It is exactly what the most ignorant beginner, trying to make a complete drawing, would lay down; exactly the conception of trees which we have in the works of our worst drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with the black lead and stump, and every human power exerted to make it look like a kitchen grate well polished"[89] (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 16-19).

A further "untruth of vegetation" is the perpetration of the bough at the left-hand upper corner. This is—

"a representation of an ornamental group of elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the end of them. Not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the claws of a witch, the talons of an eagle, the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage, a piece of work so barbarous in every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape painters" (ibid., § 7).

69. ST. JOHN PREACHING IN THE WILDERNESS.

Pietro Francesco Mola (Eclectic-Bologna: 1612-1668).

Mola, a native of Milan, and the son of an architect, studied first at Rome and Venice, but afterwards at Bologna—returning ultimately to Rome, where he held the office of President of the Academy of St. Luke. "There is," says Sir Frederic Burton, "a certain idyllic character in Mola's works which renders them extremely attractive and of more artistic value than the majority of works produced in his day."

The wild figure of the Baptist is well contrasted with the turbaned Pharisee and the rest of his audience:—

Drummond of Hawthornden: Flowers of Zion.

The preacher places his right hand on his heart as if to attest his own sincerity, while with his left he points to the Saviour, who is seen approaching in the distance: "This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was before me."

70. CORNELIA AND HER JEWELS.

Padovanino (Venetian: 1590-1650).

Alessandro Varotari was born at Padua, from which town he derived the name by which he is generally known. He was the son of a Veronese painter, but went early to Venice, where he became a student and imitator of the works of Titian and Paolo Veronese. His masterpiece is the "Marriage at Cana" in the Academy at Venice. He painted children well, and often introduced them into his pictures.

Cornelia, a noble Roman lady, daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus, and mother of the Gracchi, was visited by a friend, who ostentatiously exhibited her jewels. Cornelia being asked to show hers in turn, pointed to her two sons, just then returning from school, and said, "These are my jewels."

71. A PARTY OF MULETEERS.

Jan Both (Dutch: 1610-1662).

Jan Both, born at Utrecht, was one of the first "Italianisers" in landscape. He was the son of a glass painter, who gave him his first lessons in drawing; he afterwards became the pupil of Abraham Bloemaert. As soon as he was old enough to travel, he set out with his brother Andries for Italy. Unlike Rubens, who even at Genoa painted only the Netherlands, Both adopted Italian scenery as his subject. At Rome he formed his style on that of Claude. The two brothers travelled, studied, and worked in Italy together. Jan excelled in landscape; the figures and cattle in his pictures were generally sketched by Andries. After some years at Rome, the brothers worked for a time at Venice; here Andries, having dined one evening not wisely but too well, fell from his gondola into the water and was drowned. This was a terrible blow to Jan, who returned to Utrecht in despair, where he survived his brother for some years, during which Poelenburgh took the place of Andries (see No. 209). In the year 1649 Jan was one of the chiefs of the Painters' Guild at Utrecht, and the inscription on an engraved portrait of him published in 1662 speaks of him as a "good and well-respected landscape painter." Both loved to paint abruptly-rising rocks, with mountain paths fringed with trees, and cascades or lakes in the foreground. His best works are distinguished by the soft golden tones of the declining day. Several good examples of this master are to be seen at the Dulwich Gallery.

A reminiscence, doubtless, of one of Both's journeys in the Italian lake district. One may recall the reminiscence of Italy by another northern traveller—

Mignon's song in Wilhelm Meister: Carlyle's translation.

72. LANDSCAPE WITH TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.

73. THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.

Ascribed to Ercole di Giulio Grandi (Ferrarese: died 1531).

The confused character of this picture is sufficiently shown by the fact that whilst the official designation is as above, other critics have called it the "Destruction of Sennacherib." For a masterpiece by Ercole, see 1119. The ascription to him of this inferior work is decidedly doubtful.

74. A SPANISH PEASANT BOY.

Murillo (Spanish: 1618-1682). See 13.

Look at this and the other little boy near it (176), and you will see at once the secret of Murillo's popularity. "In a country like Spain he became easily the favourite of the crowd. He was one of themselves, and had all the gifts they valued. Not like Velazquez, reproducing by choice only the noble and dignified side of the national character, Murillo could paint to perfection either the precocious sentiment of the Good Shepherd with the lamb by his side, or the rags and happiness of the gipsy beggar boy" (W. B. Scott's Murillo, p. 76)—

75. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.

Domenichino (Eclectic-Bologna: 1581-1641). See 48.

Compare this conventional representation of the subject with the imaginative one by Tintoretto (16). Amongst points of comparison notice the absence of anything terrible in the dragon, the crowd of spectators (on the walls in the distance), St. George's helmet; and where is his spear?

76. CHRIST'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

After Correggio. See under 10.

This is an old copy, or perhaps a replica, of the original picture in the possession of the Duke of Wellington at Apsley House. The treatment of the subject is remarkable, and characteristic of Correggio. "The angel hovers in mid-air with marvellous ease and lightness, and though he bears the healing message of approaching bliss, he cannot restrain his sense of pity. His face is at once radiant and sorrowful, expressing the mingled feelings with which he points on the one hand to heaven, on the other to the cross and crown of thorns. Christ, effulgent in his long straight robe and shining aureole, gazes upward with mournful resignation, the spasm of agony dying out of his face. The twilight landscape is calm and melancholy. The supernatural radiance sheds but a faint light on the grass and bushes, scarcely touching the figures of the sleeping disciples, and dying out completely in the dense foliage beyond. But in the distance a band of soldiers, scarcely visible by the faint glimmer of their torches, draws near, led by Judas, and over the mountains the sky whitens with the first pale streak of dawn" (Ricci: Correggio: his Life, his Friends, and his Time, p. 231). The effect of light, Mengs points out, is peculiar: "the radiance of the Saviour's face lights up the picture. But this radiance comes from above, as if from Heaven, while the angel is illuminated by the light reflected from the Saviour." It is interesting to compare Correggio's version of the agony with the earlier one by Bellini (726) and Mantegna (1417). The earlier pictures impress us, but the manner of impression is quite different. There is no attempt either in the Bellini or in the Mantegna to win our sympathy by the beauty of the human type. This, on the other hand, is of the essence of Correggio's art. "The figure of Christ and the Angel represent the dignity of perfect humanity; and Correggio makes the pathos of the expiatory sacrifice of Calvary turn upon this consideration. This is the strictly Renaissance point of view" (J. E. Hodgson, R.A., in Magazine of Art, 1886, p. 215).

The original picture has a legend attached to it. "Correggio," says Lomazzo, "was accustomed always to value his works at a very low price, and having on one occasion to pay a bill of four or five scudi to an apothecary in his native city, he painted him 'Christ Praying in the Garden,' which he executed with all possible care." The picture was sold shortly afterwards for 500 scudi. It was subsequently in the royal collection at Madrid, and after the battle of Vittoria it was found in Joseph Bonaparte's carriage by one of Wellington's colonels. Wellington hastened to restore it to Ferdinand VII., who, not to be outdone in courtesy, presented it to the duke. The picture in our Gallery was part of the Angerstein collection.

77. THE STONING OF ST. STEPHEN.

Domenichino (Eclectic-Bologna: 1581-1641). See 48.

78.[90] LANDSCAPE WITH RUINS.

Nicolas Berchem (Dutch: 1620-1683).

Nicolas Pietersz, son of Pieter Claesz, a painter, called himself Berchem, by which name he is entered in the town records of Haarlem, and by which he signed his pictures. He married the daughter of his master, Jan Wils (No. 1007). In 1642 he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke at Haarlem. No authentic information exists about his visiting Italy, but that he had travelled in that country is clear from the views represented in his pictures, and from the character of his landscapes generally. His style resembles that of another Dutch "Italianiser," Jan Both (No. 71), and there seems to have been some rivalry between the two men. It is related that a burgomaster of Dordrecht, Van der Hulk by name, commissioned a picture from each painter, promising an additional premium to the one whose work should be thought the better. On the completion Of the pictures, the patron declared that the admirable works had deprived him of the capability of preference, and that both were entitled to the premium. The picture painted on this occasion by Berchem is the "Halt of Huntsmen," now in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. Berchem's landscapes are taken, says Dr. Richter, "from the mountainous countries of Italy, and the types and costumes of the figures therein represented are also entirely Italian, though not copied direct from nature. He probably painted most of his Italian landscapes in Holland. What characterises him principally is a brilliant and easy touch, with which he renders nature with more art than exactitude. He is more ingenious in his conceptions than profound or true." The mannerism and monotony of his works accord with what is told of his life. In 1665, when at the height of his reputation, he sold his labour to a dealer, from early in the morning to four in the afternoon, for ten florins a day. His wife, it appears, kept the purse, and is said to have doled out very scanty supplies—a precaution which was perhaps necessary, as Berchem had a weakness for Italian drawings, his collection of which sold at his death for 12,800 florins.

81. THE VISION OF ST. AUGUSTINE.

Garofalo (Ferrarese: 1481-1559).

Benvenuto Tisio, called Garofalo[91] from the village of that name on the Po to which his family belonged, was (like Sodoma) the son of a shoemaker, and having shown a strong taste for art, was apprenticed as a lad to the Ferrarese painter, Domenico Panetti. Seven years later he went to Cremona and attached himself to Boccaccino (806). He left Cremona suddenly, as described in a letter, still extant, from Boccaccino to Garofalo's father: "Had your son," he writes, "learnt good manners as thoroughly as he has learnt painting, he would scarcely have played me such a shabby trick. He has taken himself off, I know not whither, and without a word. But this may be a clue to his whereabouts, that he said, if he is to be believed, that he would see Rome." From Rome he returned to Ferrara, where he formed a warm friendship with the brothers Dossi. In 1509 he was again in Rome, where he saw and admired Michael Angelo's frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel in all the splendour of their freshness. He also greatly admired the work of Raphael; "and displayed," says Vasari, "so much diffidence as well as courtesy that he became the friend of Raphael, who, kind and obliging as he was, assisted and favoured Benvenuto much, teaching him many things." In 1511 Benvenuto was at Mantua, but in the following year he returned to Ferrara, which remained his home for the rest of his life. There, says Vasari, who was entertained by him, he lived a particularly happy and busy life, being "cheerful of disposition, mild in his converse, warmly attached to his friends, beyond measure affectionate and devoted, and always supporting the trials of his life with patient resignation." These trials were very heavy, for soon after he was forty he lost the sight of one eye; "nor was he without fear and much danger of losing the other. He then recommended himself to God, and made a vow to wear grey clothing ever after, as, in fact, he did, when by the grace of God the sight of the left eye was preserved to him so perfectly that the works executed by Garofalo in his sixty-fifth year are so well done, so delicately finished, and evince so much care, that they are truly wonderful." For the last nine years of his life he was totally blind, in which affliction he solaced himself by cultivating music. Garofalo's works are very numerous; many of them are in France and in Rome, and in our own Gallery he is well represented. "He was conscientious and truthful within his scope, and the ease and delicacy with which he carried out his smaller works could hardly be exceeded." He was an eclectic rather than an original painter, though he remained Ferrarese throughout in his system of colouring. "His fellow-countrymen have called him the 'Ferrarese Raphael,' in the same way that the Milanese have called Luini the 'Lombard Raphael,' and, if properly understood, both appellations have their meaning; for these painters occupy much the same position in their respective schools as did Raphael in the Umbrian, Andrea del Sarto in the Florentine, etc., though the individual gifts of each were of course very different." (Morelli's Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries, pp. 200-214, contains a detailed account of Garofalo. His theory that the works attributed to Ortolano are in reality early works of Garofalo is very doubtful. See on this point under 699, and cf. Venturi's criticism in the Catalogue of the Ferrarese Exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club).

A well-known incident in the life of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in Africa (A.D. 354-430), one of the "doctors" of the Christian Church whose writings have had a greater effect than those probably of any one man on the beliefs and lives of succeeding Christian ages. Whilst busied, he tells us, in writing his discourse on the Trinity, he one day beheld a child, who, having dug a hole in the sand, was bringing water, as children at the seaside do, to empty the sea into his hole. Augustine told him it was impossible. "Not more impossible," replied the child, "than for thee, O Augustine! to explain the mystery on which thou art now meditating" ("Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea," Job xi. 7-9). The painter shows the visionary nature of the scene by placing beside St Augustine the figure of St. Catherine, the patron saint of theologians and scholars, and in the background, on a little jutting cape, St. Stephen, whose life and actions are set forth in St. Augustine's writings. The saint himself receives the child's lesson with the contemptuous impatience of a scholar's ambition; but all the time the heavens whose mysteries he would fain explore are open behind him, and the angel choirs are singing that he who would enter in must first become as a little child, "for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

82. THE HOLY FAMILY.

Mazzolino (Ferrarese: 1480-1528). See 169.

For better examples of this painter, see Nos. 169 and 641.

84. MERCURY AND THE WOODMAN.

Salvator Rosa (Neapolitan: 1615-1673).

"What is most to be admired in the works of Salvator Rosa," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "is the perfect correspondence which he observed between the subjects which he chose and his manner of treating them. Everything is of a piece: his rocks, trees, sky, even to his handling, have the same wild and rude character which animates his figures." There is perhaps no painter whose life is more accurately reflected in his work than Salvator. Conspicuous in this picture are a withered tree on the right and a withered tree on the left: they are typical of the painter's blasted life, and "indignant, desolate, and degraded art." He was born near Naples, the son of an architect and land-surveyor. In early youth he forsook his father's business and began secretly to learn painting. At seventeen his father died, and Salvator, being one of a large and poor family, was thrown on his own resources. He "cast himself carelessly on the current of life. No rectitude of ledger-lines stood in his way; no tender precision of household customs; no calm successions of rural labour. But past his half-starved lips rolled profusion of pitiless wealth; before him glared and swept the troops of shameless pleasure. Above him muttered Vesuvius; beneath his feet shook the Solfatara. In heart disdainful, in temper adventurous; conscious of power, impatient of labour, and yet more of the pride of the patrons of his youth, he fled to the Calabrian hills, seeking, not knowledge, but freedom. If he was to be surrounded by cruelty and deceit, let them at least be those of brave men or savage beasts, not of the timorous and the contemptible. Better the wrath of the robber than enmity of the priest; and the cunning of the wolf than of the hypocrite." It was in this frame of mind that he sought the solitudes of the hills: "How I hate the sight of every spot that is inhabited," he says in one of his letters. It was thus that he formed the taste for the wild nature which distinguishes his landscapes. It is said indeed that he once herded for a time with a band of brigands in the Abruzzi. "Yet even among such scenes as these Salvator might have been calmed and exalted had he been, indeed, capable of exaltation. But he was not of high temper enough to perceive beauty. He had not the sacred sense—the sense of colour; all the loveliest hues of the Calabrian air were invisible to him; the sorrowful desolation of the Calabrian villages unfelt. He saw only what was gross and terrible,—the jagged peak, the splintered tree, the flowerless bank of grass, and wandering weed, prickly and pale. His temper confirmed itself in evil, and became more and more fierce and morose; though not, I believe, cruel, ungenerous, or lascivious. I should not suspect Salvator of wantonly inflicting pain. His constantly painting it does not prove he delighted in it; he felt the horror of it, and in that horror, fascination. Also, he desired fame, and saw that here was an untried field rich enough in morbid excitement to catch the humour of his indolent patrons. But the gloom gained upon him, and grasped him. He could jest, indeed, as men jest in prison-yards (he became afterwards a renowned mimic in Florence); his satires are full of good mocking, but his own doom to sadness is never repealed." It is characteristic of the man that the picture on the reputation of which he went up from Naples to Rome was "Tityus torn by the Vulture." At Rome, besides his fame as a painter, he made his mark as a musician, poet, and improvisatore. He cut a brave figure in the Carnival, and his satires were bold and biting. Partly on this account he afterwards found it well to leave Rome for Florence, where he formed one of the company of "I Percossi" (the stricken)—of jovial wits and artists—who enjoyed the hospitalities of Cardinal Carlo Giovanni de' Medici. But in spite of his merry-making he knew (as he says in a cantata) "no truce from care, no pause from woe." He ultimately died of the dropsy, having shortly before his death married the Florentine Lucrezia, who had borne him two sons. "Of all men whose work I have ever studied," says Mr. Ruskin, in summing up his career as typical of the lives which cannot conquer evil but remain at war with, or in captivity to it, "he gives me most distinctly the idea of a lost spirit. Michelet calls him, 'Ce damné Salvator,' perhaps in a sense merely harsh and violent; the epithet to me seems true in a more literal, more merciful sense,—'That condemned Salvator.' I see in him, notwithstanding all his baseness, the last traces of spiritual life in the art of Europe.... All succeeding men ... were men of the world; they are never in earnest and they are never appalled. But Salvator was capable of pensiveness, of faith, and of fear. The misery of the earth is a marvel to him; he cannot leave off gazing at it. The religion of the earth is a horror to him. He gnashes his teeth at it, rages at it, mocks and gibes at it. He would have acknowledged religion had he seen any that was true.... Helpless Salvator! A little early sympathy, a word of true guidance, perhaps, had saved him. What says he of himself? 'Despiser of wealth and of death.' Two grand scorns: but, oh, condemned Salvator! the question is not for man what he can scorn, but what he can love." At the "opposite poles of art are Fra Angelico and Salvator Rosa; of whom the one was a man who smiled seldom, wept often, prayed constantly, and never harboured an impure thought. His pictures are simply so many pieces of jewellery, the colour of the draperies being perfectly pure, as various as those of a painted window, chastened only by paleness, and relieved upon a gold ground. Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist, a man who spent his life in masquing and revelry. But his pictures are full of horror, and their colour is for the most part gloomy grey. Truly it would seem as if art had so much eternity in it that it must take its dye from the close rather than the course of life; 'in such laughter the heart of man is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness'" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv. See also vol. i. pt. i. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 9; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 21; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. viii. § 14. Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. v. § 31. For a full record of fact and romance about this painter, see Lady Morgan's interesting Life and Times of Salvator Rosa; London, 1855).

An illustration of Æsop's fable of the dishonest woodman who, hearing of the reward which an honest fellow-labourer had obtained from Mercury for not claiming either the gold or silver axe which the god first offered, threw his axe also into the water, hoping for like good fortune. Mercury—here seen standing in the stream—showed him a golden axe. He claimed it, and the god having rebuked him for his impudence, left him to lose his axe and repent of his folly. The painting of the picture is conspicuous for that want of sense for colour, noted above as fatally characteristic of Salvator:—

There is on the left-hand side something without doubt intended for a rocky mountain, in the middle distance, near enough for all its fissures and crags to be distinctly visible, or, rather, for a great many awkward scratches of the brush over it to be visible, which, though not particularly representative either of one thing or another, are without doubt intended to be symbolical of rocks. Now no mountain in full light, and near enough for its details of crags to be seen, is without great variety of delicate colour. Salvator has painted it throughout without one instant of variation; but this, I suppose, is simplicity and generalisation;—let it pass: but what is the colour? Pure sky blue, without one grain of grey, or any modifying hue whatsoever; the same brush which had just given the bluest parts of the sky has been more loaded at the same part of the pallet, and the whole mountain thrown in with unmitigated ultramarine. Now, mountains can only become pure blue when there is so much air between them that they become mere flat dark shades, every detail being totally lost: they become blue when they become air, and not till then. Consequently this part of Salvator's painting, being of hills perfectly clear and near, with all their details visible, is, as far as colour is concerned, broad, bold falsehood, the direct assertion of direct impossibility.

In connection with Salvator's want of sense for colour one should take his insensitiveness to other beauty. For instance, his choice of withered trees, which are here on both sides of us, "is precisely the sign of his preferring ugliness to beauty, decrepitude and disorganisation to life and youth" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 4; vol. v. pt. vi. ch. viii. § 7).

85. ST. JEROME AND THE ANGEL.

Domenichino (Eclectic-Bologna: 1581-1641). See 48.

For St. Jerome, see under 227. The apparition of the angel implies the special call of St. Jerome to the work of translating the Scriptures.

88. ERMINIA AND THE SHEPHERDS.

Annibale Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). See 9.

A scene from the "Jerusalem Delivered" by Carracci's contemporary, Tasso. Erminia from the beleaguered city of Jerusalem had beheld the Christian knight, Tancred, whom she loved, wounded in conflict. Disguised in the armour of her friend Clorinda, wearing a dark blue cuirass with a white mantle over it, she stole forth at night to tend him. The sentinels espy her and give her chase. But she outstrips them all, and after a three days' flight finds herself amongst a shepherd family, who entertain her kindly. The old shepherd is busily making card-baskets, and listening to the music of his children. Their fear gives place to delight as the strange warrior, having dismounted from her horse and thrown off her helmet and shield, unbinds her tresses and discloses herself a woman—

From Landseer's Catalogue, p. 214.

This picture has sometimes been ascribed to Domenichino; as the latter was occasionally employed by Annibale to execute his designs, both masters may have had a share in the work.

91. VENUS SLEEPING.

Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593-1665). See 39.

93. SILENUS GATHERING GRAPES.

Annibale Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). See 9.

Silenus in a leopard skin, the nurse and preceptor of Bacchus, the wine-god, is being hoisted by two attendant fauns, so that with his own hands he may pick the grapes. This and the companion picture, 94, originally decorated a harpsichord.

94. BACCHUS PLAYING TO SILENUS.[92]

Annibale Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). See 9.

A clever picture of contrasts. The old preceptor is leering and pampered, yet with something of a schoolmaster's gravity, "half inclining to the brute, half conscious of the god." The young pupil—like the shepherd boy in Sidney's Arcadia, "piping as though he should never be old"—is "full of simple careless grace, laughing in youth and beauty; he holds the Pan's pipe in both hands, and looks up with timid wonder, with an expression of mingled delight and surprise at the sounds he produces" (Hazlitt: Criticisms upon Art, p. 6).

These two pictures—together with the "Lot" and "Susannah" of Guido (193 and 196)—used to hang in the Lancellotti Palace in Rome. Lanzi describes our picture, No. 94, as one of the principal treasures of that collection. It is exquisitely finished, he says; the figures are "at once designed, coloured, and disposed with the hand of a great master" (Bohn's translation, iii. 79).

95. DIDO AND ÆNEAS.

Gaspard Poussin (French: 1613-1675). See 31.

Dido, Queen of Carthage, enamoured of the Trojan Æneas, the destined founder of Rome, sought to detain him by strategy within her dominions. The goddess Juno, who had espoused Dido's cause, contrived that a storm should befall when the Queen and her guests were on a hunting party (Æneid, iv. 119). In front of the cave a Cupid holds the horse of Æneas, and two others are fluttering above. High in the clouds is Juno, accompanied by Venus, who had contrived all this for Dido's undoing.

As for the execution of the picture, "the stormy wind blows loudly through its leaves, but the total want of invention in the cloud-forms bears it down beyond redemption. Look at the wreaths of cloud (?), with their unpleasant edges cut as hard and solid and opaque and smooth as thick black paint can make them, rolled up over one another like a dirty sail badly reefed"[93] (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. iv. § 23; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 18).

97. THE RAPE OF EUROPA.

Paolo Veronese (Veronese: 1528-1588). See 26 & p. xix.

(A study for a larger picture now at Vienna.) Jupiter, enamoured of Europa, a Phoenician princess, transformed himself into a white bull, and mingled with her father's herds whilst she was gathering flowers with her attendants. Europa, struck by the beauty and gentle nature of the beast, caressed him, and even mounted on his back. Two of her attendants are here assisting her, while a third remonstrates with her on her foolhardiness. Europa is replying that she has no fears. The amorous bull meanwhile is licking her foot. He is garlanded with a wreath of flowers, which is held by his master Cupid, forming thus the leading-string of Love. With the other hand Cupid has "taken the bull by the horn"; whilst above, two little winged loves are gathering fruit and scattering roses. In the middle distance Europa and the bull appear again, about to enter the sea; whilst farther on, the bull is swimming with her toward the land. For the story goes that as soon as Europa had seated herself on his back Jupiter crossed the sea and carried her safely to the island of Crete, and from this rape of Europa comes the name of the continent to which she was carried.

98. VIEW OF LA RICCIA.

Gaspard Poussin (French: 1613-1675). See 31.

This picture and the scene of it—the ancient town of Aricia, about fifteen miles from Rome, famous in Roman legend, and Horace's first stopping-place on his journey to Brindisi—are described by Ruskin in a celebrated passage of Modern Painters:—

"Whether it can be supposed to resemble the ancient Aricia, now La Riccia, close to Albano, I will not take upon me to determine, seeing that most of the towns of those old masters are quite as much like one place as another; but, at any rate, it is a town on a hill, wooded with two-and-thirty bushes, of very uniform size, and possessing about the same number of leaves each. These bushes are all painted in with one dull opaque brown, becoming very slightly greenish towards the lights, and discover in one place a bit of rock, which of course would in nature have been cool and grey beside the lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being moreover completely in shade, is consistently and scientifically painted of a very clear, pretty, and positive brick red, the only thing like colour in the picture. The foreground is a piece of road which, in order to make allowance for its greater nearness, for its being completely in light, and, it may be presumed, for the quantity of vegetation usually present on carriage-roads, is given in a very cool green grey; and the truth of the picture is completed by a number of dots in the sky on the right, with a stalk to them, of a sober and similar brown.[94]

"Not long ago, I was slowly descending this very bit of carriage road.... The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour: it was conflagration. Purple and crimson and scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock—dark though flushed with scarlet lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound; and over all, the multitudinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the Campagna melted into the sea. Tell me who is likest this, Poussin or Turner?" (vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. ii. §§ 1-3).

Ruskin further instances the picture as an example of "untruth of trees." It is an elementary law of tree structure that stems only taper when sending off foliage and sprays:—

"Therefore we see at once that the stem of Gaspard Poussin's tall tree, on the right of the 'La Riccia,' is the painting of a carrot or a parsnip, not of the trunk of a tree" (see further, ibid., vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. § 6; and cf. vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 18).

101, 102, 103, 104. THE FOUR AGES OF MAN.

Nicolas Lancret (French: 1690-1743).

Lancret, a painter of the "fêtes galantes" school, was an imitator of Watteau, but his productions lack the airy grace and touch of poetry which elevate even the most frivolous pictures of that "prince of court painters" into works of fine art. Examples of Watteau are now included among the National treasures in the Wallace collection at Hertford House. Lancret was the son of humble parents, and received his early training as an engraver. Entering subsequently the studio of Claude Gillot he came under the influence of Watteau, but his friendship with that painter was short-lived. A rivalry appears to have sprung up between them, and they remained estranged until the closing year of Watteau's life. "Lancret was a thorough bourgeois, and passed his time chiefly in Paris. He was a regular frequenter of the opera and the 'Comique,' and was a friend of the dancers La Camargo and La Sallé, whom he frequently represented in his works" (Bryan's Dictionary of Painters). In 1719 he was admitted into the Academy, and in 1735 was elected Councillor. In 1840 he married a grand-daughter of the comic poet Boursault.

These pictures, which are among the principal works of Lancret, are interesting historical records as showing the ideal of life at the French Court in the time of the regent Orleans and Louis XV. In "Infancy" (101) children, in the gayest clothes and garlanded with flowers, are at play under a stately portico—life being not so much a stage as a game, and all the men and women (in that sense) "merely players." To what should children, thus educated, grow up but to the pomps and vanity of life, as shown in "Youth" (102)? The adornment of the person is the chief occupation, it would seem, of the dwellers in "the Armida Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives, lapped in soft music of adulation, waited on by the splendours of the world." And "Manhood" (103) is like unto youth. The business of life is pleasure on the greensward, with shooting at the popinjay! "Old Age" (104) has no place in such a philosophy of life. One old man is indeed attempting a last amour. The other caresses a dog, while the old women sleep or spin. But in "Old Age" the painter changes his scene from the court to common life; the thought of old age is banished, it seems, from the high life of princes. "In short," wrote an English observer at the time when this picture was painted, "all the symptoms which I have ever met with in History, previous to all Changes and Revolutions in government, now exist and daily increase in France" (Lord Chesterfield: see Carlyle's French Revolution, bk. i. ch. ii.).

125. IZAAK WALTON (1593-1683).

Jacob Huysman (Dutch: 1656-1696).

Huysman was one of the many foreign artists who settled in England under the Stuarts. He obtained considerable employment as a portrait painter, in spite of Sir Peter Lely's rivalry; one of the portraits among the "Windsor Beauties," now at Hampton Court, was painted by him.

A portrait of the retired city hosier who became famous as the author of the Complete Angler. It was painted for his family (with whom it remained till it was presented to the National Gallery in 1838), and was engraved in one of the later editions of the book (1836). Izaak Walton—"that quaint, old, cruel coxcomb" (as Byron, who was no fisherman, called him)—lived to be ninety: his fishing did something, one may expect, to keep him in the vigorous health which is here stamped on his face. "The features of the countenance often enable us," says Zouch in the Memoirs of Izaak Walton (cited in M. E. Wotton's Word Portraits of Famous Writers, p. 323), "to form a judgment, not very fallible, of the disposition of the mind. In few portraits can this discovery be more successfully pursued than in that of Izaak Walton. Lavater, the acute master of physiognomy, would, I think, instantly acknowledge in it the decisive traits of the original,—mild complacency, forbearance, mature consideration, calm activity, peace, sound understanding, power of thought, discerning attention, and secretly active friendship. Happy in his unblemished integrity, happy in the approbation and esteem of others, he enwraps himself in his own virtue. The exaltation of a good conscience eminently shines forth in this venerable person."

127. VENICE: THE SCUOLA DELLA CARITÀ.

Canaletto (Venetian: 1697-1768).

Antonio Canale, commonly called Canaletto,[95] was born in Venice, lived in Venice, and painted Venice. His pictures (of which the one before us is among the best) are in some respects very like the place, but most of those who love it best soon find much that is wanting in Canaletto's representations. "The effect of a fine Canaletto," says Ruskin, "is, in its first impression, dioramic. We fancy we are in our beloved Venice again, with one foot, by mistake, in the clear, invisible film of water lapping over the marble steps of the foreground. Every house has its proper relief against the sky; every brick and stone its proper hue of sunlight and shade; and every degree of distance its proper tone of relieving air. Presently, however, we begin to feel that it is hard and gloomy, and that the painter, compelled by the lowness of the utmost light at his disposal to deepen the shadows, in order to get the right relation, has lost the flashing, dazzling, exulting light which was one of our chief sources of Venetian happiness. But we pardon this, knowing it to be unavoidable, and begin to look for something of that in which Venice differs from Rotterdam, or any other city built beside canals. We know that house, certainly; we never passed it without stopping our gondola, for its arabesques were as rich as a bank of flowers in spring, and as beautiful as a dream. What has Canaletto given us for them? Four black dots. Well; take the next house. We remember that too; it was mouldering inch by inch into the canal, and the bricks had fallen away from its shattered marble shafts, and left them white, skeleton-like; yet, with their fretwork of cold flowers wreathed about them still, untouched by time, and through the rents of the wall behind them there used to come long sunbeams, greened by the weeds through which they pierced, which flitted and fell, one by one, round those grey and quiet shafts, catching here a leaf and there a leaf, and gliding over the illumined edges and delicate fissures, until they sank into the deep dark hollow between the marble blocks of the sunk foundation, lighting every other moment one isolated emerald lamp on the crest of the intermittent waves, when the wild sea-weeds and crimson lichens drifted and crawled with their thousand colours and free branches over its decay, and the black, clogging, accumulated limpets hung in ropy clusters from the dripping and tinkling stone. What has Canaletto given us for this? One square red mass, composed of—let me count—five-and-fifty, no; six-and-fifty, no; I was right at first, five-and-fifty bricks, of precisely the same size, shape, and colour, one great black line for the shadow of the roof at the top, and six similar ripples in a row at the bottom! And this is what people call 'painting nature'! It is, indeed, painting nature, as she appears to the most unfeeling and untaught of mankind. The bargeman and the bricklayer probably see no more in Venice than Canaletto gives—heaps of earth and mortar, with water between—and are just as capable of appreciating the facts of sunlight and shadow, by which he deceives us, as the most educated of us all. But what more there is in Venice than brick and stone—what there is of mystery and death, and memory and beauty—what there is to be learned or lamented, to be loved or wept—we look for to Canaletto in vain" (Modern Painters, vol. i. sec. ii. pt. i. ch. vii. § 7, first edition). Canaletto's pictures of Venice in this room should be compared with Turner's. It is impossible to get a more instructive instance of the different impression made on different minds by the same scenes. Canaletto drew, says one of his admirers (Lanzi, ii. 317), exactly as he saw. Well, what he did see we have shown us here. What others have seen, those who have not been to Venice can discover from Turner's pictures, from Shelley's and Byron's verse, or Ruskin's prose. "Let the reader restore Venice in his imagination to some resemblance of what she must have been before her fall. Let him, looking from Lido or Fusina, replace, in the forest of towers, those of the hundred and sixty-six churches which the French threw down; let him sheet her walls with purple and scarlet, overlay her minarets with gold, ... and fill her canals with gilded barges and bannered ships; finally, let him withdraw from this scene, already so brilliant, such sadness and stain as had been set upon it by the declining energies of more than half a century, and he will see Venice as it was seen by Canaletto (as it might have been seen by him, Ruskin means); whose miserable, virtueless, heartless mechanism, accepted as the representation of such various glory, is, both in its existence and acceptance, among the most striking signs of the lost sensation and deadened intellect of the nation at that time.... The mannerism of Canaletto is the most degraded that I know in the whole range of art. Professing the most servile and mindless imitation, it imitates nothing but the blackness of the shadows; it gives no single architectural ornament, however near, so much form, as might enable us even to guess at its actual one; ... it gives the buildings neither their architectural beauty nor their ancestral dignity, for there is no texture of stone nor character of age in Canaletto's touch; which is invariably a violent, black, sharp, ruled penmanlike line, as far removed from the grace of nature as from her faintness and transparency: and for his truth of colour let the single fact of his having omitted all record whatsoever of the frescoes, whose wrecks are still to be found at least on one half of the unrestored palaces, and, with still less excusableness, all record of the magnificent coloured marbles" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 30). Stated in the fewest words, the difference between Canaletto and the others is this: To Canaletto Venice was a city of murky shadows, to them it is a city of enchanted colour. But his pictures satisfied the taste of his time, as the great number of them still extant testifies. Moreover his fame extended beyond his own country. There was an English resident at Venice who engaged Canaletto (who started in life at his father's profession, that of scene painter) to work for him at low prices, and then used to retail the pictures at an enormous profit to English travellers. At last Canaletto came to England himself, and was given many commissions; but after two years he returned to Venice, as it was still Venetian pictures that his patrons wanted. How completely the public taste has now changed is shown by the fact that the Venice of all the most popular painters to-day, of whatever nation, is the Venice of Ruskin and Turner. Canaletto's pictures, however, will always possess one element of interest, apart from any fluctuations in taste. Within his limits they are historical records of the appearance of Venice in his time; and as more and more of the old Venice is destroyed, Canaletto's pictures will increase in interest. For though he is mechanical, yet his mechanism is very good. He was, by the way, the first to apply the camera obscura to linear perspective, and he painted in a workmanlike manner, so that his pictures endure.[96]

An interesting piece of "old Venice." Beyond the canal is what is now the National Gallery of Venice—the Academy of Arts—but was in Canaletto's time still the Scuola della Carità, the conventual buildings of the Brotherhood of our Lady of Charity. Notice the green grass in the little square: the Campo, as it is called (the field), is now covered with flagstones (there is a sketch of this spot among the Turner drawings given by Ruskin to the University Galleries at Oxford: see Guide to the Venetian Academy, p. 34).

134. A LANDSCAPE.

Cornelius Gerritz Decker (Dutch: died 1678).

"Amongst the artists who followed the footsteps of Ruysdael and Hobbema, the one who most nearly resembled these masters was Cornelius Decker, whose works may be classed among the best Dutch landscapes" (Havard's Dutch School, p. 209). He painted at Haarlem, and studied under Salomon Ruysdael (see 1344).

135. LANDSCAPE WITH RUINS.

Canaletto (Venetian: 1697-1768). See 127.

The artist, "disgusted with his first profession (of scene painter), removed," we are told, "while still young to Rome, where he wholly devoted himself to drawing views from nature, and in particular from ancient ruins" (Lanzi, ii. 317).

137. LANDSCAPE.

Jan van Goyen (Dutch: 1596-1656).

Jan van Goyen, one of the first masters in the native Dutch art of landscape as opposed to the exotic work of the Italianisers, was born at Leyden in 1596. He studied with the elder Swanenburch, the father of Rembrandt's first master, and subsequently went to Haarlem to work under Esaias van de Velde. His position in the world of art was considerable. In 1640 he was President of the Guild of St. Luke at the Hague; his portrait was painted by Vandyck and Frans Hals; and Jan Steen was his son-in-law. His earlier extant pictures date from 1621, his latest go down to the year of his death. His production during this period of thirty-five years was immense; "a single London expert claims to have had at least three or four hundred genuine pictures by the master passing through his hands during the last thirty years." Like so many of the Dutch masters whose works are now prized, he received in his lifetime very small sums for his pictures—often not more than fifteen or twenty florins apiece. He tried to help his income by speculating in houses, and even, after the fashion of the time, in tulips. But he died insolvent. His work, however, and influence remained. His extant pictures are very numerous; and among the successors whose skill was largely formed by him are Cuyp, Jan van de Cappelle, and Salomon Ruysdael. "The subjects which he preferred were of two kinds: flat landscapes with a little broken ground in the front, a cottage, the figures of a few peasants, and a clump of trees; or, on the other hand,—and these are his best and most characteristic productions—broad views of the river scenery of Holland, a wide expanse of water under a wide sky." He was one of the first to discover a poetry in the unbroken horizons of his native land. "Where he is at his best is in the painting of the infinitely varied sky that overhangs a great Dutch river or estuary, the clouds taking at every movement new shapes or new effects of light and shade, and the water below reflecting them" (see an article on "The Landscape Painters of Holland" in The Quarterly Review, October 1891). In order to give his favourite effects, he generally placed the skyline very low in the picture, sometimes not more than a quarter of the canvas being given to the landscape. Van Goyen aimed rather at tone than at colour. "His silvery river-views, with all their delicate shades of grey, are almost studies in monochrome." In his landscapes the foliage and the herbage partake more or less of brown or gray. "No heavy, dark, no bright colour disturbs," says Sir F. Burton, "the dreamy monotone."

This work was formerly ascribed to J. Ruysdael.

138. A VIEW IN ROME.

Giovanni Antonio Panini (Roman: 1695-1768).

Panini, who obtained celebrity as a painter of architectural subjects, was born at Piacenza, and studied in Rome. His settled place of abode was that city, but for some time he lived in Paris, and in 1732 he was elected a member of the French Academy.

Roman ruins with the pyramid of Caius Cestius.

140. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

Bartholomeus van der Helst (Dutch: 1611-1670).

Of the life of Van der Helst, one of the most distinguished of the Dutch portrait painters, little is known, except that he resided constantly at Amsterdam, and was in good practice there as a portrait painter. He had a part in founding the Painters' Guild there, whilst his likeness of Paul Potter at the Hague (1654), and his partnership with Bakhuizen, who laid in the backgrounds of some of his pictures in 1668, indicate a constant companionship with the best artists of the time. His masterpiece is in the Museum at Amsterdam. It contains thirty-five portraits, whole length, and represents a banquet given by a company of the civil-guard of Amsterdam, in commemoration of the Peace of Münster, in 1648. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his Journey to Flanders and Holland, says of that work that it "is, perhaps, the first picture of portraits in the world, comprehending more of those qualities which make a perfect portrait than any other I have ever seen." Whilst delighted with Van der Helst, Sir Joshua was disappointed by Rembrandt; and certainly "Van der Helst attracts by qualities entirely differing from those of Rembrandt and Frans Hals: nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the strong concentrated light and the deep gloom of Rembrandt, and the contempt of chiaroscuro peculiar to his rival, except the contrast between the rapid sketchy touch of Hals and the careful finish of Van der Helst."

This picture is dated 1647.

146. A VIEW ON THE MAES.

Abraham Storck (Dutch: 1630-1710).

About the life of this marine painter nothing is known. His pictures usually represent views near Amsterdam, "with a variety of shipping and boats, and a number of small figures, correctly drawn, and handled with spirit. His ships are well drawn, his colouring clear and transparent, and his skies and water light and floating" (Bryan).

Rotterdam is seen in the distance.

147. CEPHALUS AND AURORA.

148. THE TRIUMPH OF GALATEA.

Agostino Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1557-1602).

Agostino was the elder brother of Annibale Carracci (see under 9) and cousin of Lodovico (see under 28). It was he who composed the well-known sonnet in which the aims of the Eclectic School are set forth. He was the most learned of the Carracci, being painter, engraver, poet, and musician, and well versed in the arts and sciences generally. His pictures are rare. The best is the "Communion of St. Jerome" in the Academy at Bologna. His prints are numerous; his engraving of Tintoretto's "Crucifixion," executed at Venice in 1589, was highly praised by that artist. In the same year Agostino returned to Bologna, and became the principal teacher in the school of the Carracci. He afterwards went to Rome to assist Annibale in the frescoes for the Farnese Palace. He executed the "Cephalus and Aurora" and "Galatea" in that series; his success excited the jealousy of Annibale, and caused a feud between the two brothers. Agostino thereupon left Rome for Parma, where he died shortly afterwards.

These are the cartoons made by Agostino for the frescoes referred to above. They formed part of Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection of drawings. In 147, Cephalus, while on a hunting expedition on Mount Hymettus, is forcibly carried off by Aurora. The aged Tithonus, her husband, is sleeping in the foreground. In 148, the sea-nymph Galatea is borne on the ocean by Glaucus, preceded by Triton blowing his horn, and surrounded by Nereids and Cupids on Dolphins.

149. A CALM AT SEA.

Willem van de Velde (Dutch: 1633-1707).

William Van de Velde, the younger, was the son of an artist of the same name, and the two together were the most famous sea-painters of their time. The father was specially commissioned by the East India Company to paint several of their ships. The son was for a time engaged in painting the chief naval battles of the Dutch. In 1675 they were both established in England, living at Greenwich, as painters to King Charles II., who granted each of them a pension of £100 a year; the father "for taking and making draughts of sea-fights"; and the son "for putting the said draughts into colours." The Vandeveldes, thus employed, "produced," says Macaulay, "for the king and his nobles some of the finest sea-pieces in the world." "The palm," says Walpole, "is not less disputed with Raphael for history than with Vandevelde for sea-pieces." But in no branch of art has the English School of this century made more conspicuous advance than in sea-painting, and those who are fresh from reminiscences of Turner or Lee, or, amongst later artists, of Hook and Moore and Brett, will hardly be inclined to agree at this day with such high praise of Vandevelde. "It is not easily understood," says Ruskin, "considering how many there are who love the sea, and look at it, that Vandevelde and such others should be tolerated. Foam appears to me to curdle and cream on the wave sides, and to fly flashing from their crests, and not to be set astride upon them like a peruke; and waves appear to me to fall, and plunge, and toss, and nod, and crash over, and not to curl up like shavings; and water appears to me, when it is grey, to have the grey of stormy air mixed with its own deep, heavy, thunderous, threatening blue, and not the grey of the first coat of cheap paint on a deal floor."

"It is not easy to understand," perhaps, but two helps towards understanding may be mentioned in Ruskin's own words. First, previous painters—including even the Venetians, sea-folk though they were—had all treated the sea conventionally. Vandevelde and his fellows, at any rate, endeavoured to study it from nature. Bakhuizen, as we shall see, like Turner after him, used to go to sea in all weathers, the better to obtain "impressions." Hence the Dutch sea-painting did mark an advance, and how great was its influence on later artists and sea-lovers we know from the case of Turner, who "painted many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde, and always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of his early study of him." And this grey and opaque rendering of the sea by the Dutch was to some extent due to natural causes. "Although in artistical qualities lower than is easily by language expressible, the Italian marine painting usually conveys an idea of three facts about the sea,—that it is green, that it is deep, and that the sun shines on it. The dark plain which stands for far-away Adriatic with the Venetians, and the glinting swells of tamed wave which lap about the quays of Claude, agree in giving the general impression that the ocean consists of pure water, and is open to the pure sky. But the Dutch painters, while they attained considerably greater dexterity than the Italian in mere delineation of nautical incident, were by nature precluded from ever becoming aware of these common facts; and having, in reality, never in all their lives seen the sea, but only a shallow mixture of sea-water and sand; and also never in all their lives seen the sky, but only a lower element between them and it, composed of marsh exhalation and fog-bank,—they are not to be with too great severity reproached for the dulness of their records of the nautical enterprise of Holland. We only are to be reproached, who, familiar with the Atlantic, are yet ready to accept with faith, as types of sea, the small waves en papillote and peruke-like puffs of farinaceous foam, which were the delight of Bakhuizen and his compeers"[97] (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. v. ch. i. § 20; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 30; On the Old Road, i. 283; Harbours of England, p. 18). The storms of Van der Velde are certainly unattractive, but the silvery daylight of his "calms at sea" gives to many of his works an enduring charm. This painter is well represented both in the Dulwich Gallery and in the Wallace collection.

150. A GALE AT SEA.

Willem van de Velde (Dutch: 1633-1707). See 149.

151. A RIVER SCENE.

Jan van Goyen (Dutch: 1596-1656). See 137.

Signed with the artist's name, and dated 1645.

152. AN EVENING LANDSCAPE.

Aart van der Neer (Dutch: 1603-1677).

This painter was a native of Amsterdam, and lived and worked there. His pictures are now much appreciated; but he died destitute, and the pictures he left behind him were valued at only three florins apiece.

Aart (Arthur) van der Neer is the Dutch painter of "the hues and harmonies of evening." Before the door of the country house are a lady and gentleman, who have come out as if to gaze on one of such effects. This is one of the largest of his pictures—which is the more valuable as the figures are by Cuyp, whose name is inscribed on the pail; but 239 is perhaps more attractive.

153. THE CRADLE.

Nicolas Maes (Dutch: 1632-1693).

Maes (or, in more modern form, Maas), was a pupil of Rembrandt, and ranks high among Dutch masters, being distinguished from many of the genre painters by his richer colouring. "He assimilated the principles of his master," says Sir. F. Burton, "without adopting his subjects. In the class of pictures by which he is best known, namely, indoor scenes taken from ordinary life, he unites subtlety of chiaroscuro, vigorous colour, and great mastery in handling, with that true finish which never becomes trivial. The figures are finely drawn, and their action is perfect. Harmonies of red and black prevail in these works—sometimes pervading the picture in subdued tones; sometimes brought out in full contrasting force against white. The smaller pictures by Maes in this Gallery are among the finest examples of the former mode of treatment." Maes entered Rembrandt's studio in 1650 and remained there four years. He then returned to Dort, his native town, where he lived till 1678. In that year he moved to Amsterdam, where he remained to the end of his life, and was employed by most of the distinguished persons of his time. In these latter years he was mostly engaged in portraits. His earlier portraits (of which No. 1277 is a good specimen) are worthy of a pupil of Rembrandt. The later portraits are so different in style and inferior in quality that some critics ascribe them to the painter's son or some other artist of the same name. "Maes's favourite colour," says Havard, "was red. No artist uses this colour with more boldness or more success than he does in his earlier works [note, e.g. the crimson curtain which forms the background in 1277]. For this reason doubts have been raised if he ever painted the series of large bewigged portraits which have been attributed to him, sombre and morose faces, uniformly set against a dark background. It is difficult to imagine the brilliant painter of 'The Cradle' forgetting his skill in light and shade and his love of nature, to give himself up, as in these commonplace productions, to mannerism and affectation" (The Dutch School, p. 100).

154. A MUSIC PARTY.

David Teniers, the younger (Flemish: 1610-1694).

Teniers, though a Fleming by birth, belongs rather to the Dutch School in style—being one of the principal genre painters, of whom most of the other leading masters are Dutch. His art stands, however, in direct relation to that of the Flemish painters preceding him, through the want of spiritual motive common to him and to them. But Teniers and the genre painters carry this banishment of spiritual motive a step further. "Rubens often gives instructive and magnificent allegory. Rembrandt, pathetic or powerful fancies, founded on real Scripture-reading, and on his interest in the picturesque character of the Jew. And Van Dyck, a graceful rendering of received Scriptural legends. But (with Teniers) ... we lose, not only all faith in religion, but all remembrance of it. Absolutely now at last we find ourselves without sight of God in all the world.... Farthest savages had, and still have, their Great Spirit, or, in extremity, their feather-idols, large-eyed; but here in Holland we have at last got utterly done with it all. Our only idol glitters dimly, in tangible shape of a pint pot, and all the incense offered thereto comes out of a small censer or bowl at the end of a pipe." The place of Teniers in art history is, therefore, so far as the ideals of art go, that he is, par excellence, "the painter of the pleasures of the ale-house and card-table" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. §§ 10, 11; ch. viii. § 11). He did, indeed, occasionally venture on the ground of religious painting; but his essays in this sort are absurd. His devotion to genre entirely hit the taste of his time, and his fame was rapid and enduring. He was taught the rudiments of art by his father, David Teniers, the elder, a mediocre painter of small rustic subjects (see 949); but his real masters were Rubens and Brouwer, though he did not actually study with them. In 1633, at the age of twenty-three, he received the dignity of master. Four years later he married the daughter of Velvet Breughel, the former ward of Rubens, who acted as witness at the marriage ceremony. His talents were in universal request. The Archduke Leopold-William, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, appointed him his private painter, and gave him an office in his household. Queen Christina of Sweden and King Philip IV. of Spain were amongst his patrons. He gave Don Juan of Austria lessons in painting, and this prince painted the portrait of Teniers's son, and presented it to the master as a token of his regard. In 1644 he was chosen to preside over the Antwerp Guild of Painters. In 1647 he took up his abode in Brussels. His country-seat at Perck (see 817) was a constant resort of the Spanish and Flemish nobility. Shortly after the death of his first wife in 1656 he married Isabella de Fren, daughter of the Secretary of the Council of Brabant, and he strove his utmost to prove his right to armorial bearings. The king declared his readiness to grant the request, but only on condition that Teniers should give up selling his pictures. Teniers did not accept the condition, and transferred his energies to procuring a charter for an Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp to which artists should alone be admitted, whereas the former Guild of St. Luke made no distinction between art and handicraft.