Part 18 (2/2)

RICHARD AND SAMUEL REDGRAVE

It is said that Sir Joshua at an Acadereatest landscape painter of the day,” to which Wilson, in his blunt, grureatest portrait painter, too” In Gainsborough's own time, the world of Art patrons seem to have earded his landscape art Beechey said that ”in Gainsborough's house in Pall Mall the landscapes stood ranged in long lines fro-room, and that those who came to sit to him for his portraits, on which he was chiefly occupied, rarely deigned to honour them with a look as they passed theium Reynolds had pronounced on his landscapes and rustic children, these came to be considered his finest works, and it is usual now to speak of him as a landscape rather than as a portrait painter But it is e more truly of his talent than Sir Joshua; and without wishi+ng to place him above Reynolds in that painter's peculiar branch, it is certain that Gainsborough, in his finest portraits, forinal, and produced works that are every orthy to take rank with those of the great President They contrast with the latter in being more silvery and pure, and in the absence of that iures are surrounded by air and light, and his portraits generally are easy and graceful without affectation

[Illustration: THE MARKET-CART

_Gainsborough_]

Reynolds says: ”It is difficult to deterh's portraits were most admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like representation of Nature,”--a strange judgment, written more with a view to a well-rounded period than to any true criticism on his rival's landscape art It is certainly true that Gainsborough put aside altogether the early foundation of Dutch landscape on which he had begun to build, and took an entirely original view of Nature, both as to treat Yet in the sense in which the artists of our day paint ”portrait-like representations of Nature,” Gainsborough's art was anything but portrait-like It has been objected to the great Italian landscape painters that they did not discried in a ”painter's tree” There is far more variety in those of our native artist, yet it would puzzle a critic to say what his trees really are, and to point out in his landscapes the distinctive differences between oak and beech, and elrounds, have neither forins of his brooks or pools a feord-shaped dashes tell of reeds and rushes; on the banks of his road-side so sun-ray, but he cared little to go into botanical minutiae, or to enable us to tell their kind His rocks are certainly not truly stratified or geologically correct--how should they be?--he studied the-room from broken stones and bits of coal The truth is, however, that he gave uscould do As the great portrait painter looks beyond the features of his sitter to give thehi; so the great landscape painter will at all tireater truths of his art It olden sunset or the breezy noon, the soleht, or the silvery freshness of ht and shade, floating rapidly away, that makes the meanest and most commonplace view at times startle us onder at its beauty, when treated by the true artist

And did he study such s and weeds in his painting-room? Vain idea! these were but the _mehts he had fed on in many a lonely walk and leisure --brooded on with a nature tuned to the harree to receive and retain iifted with the power to place vividly before us by his art objects which had so delighted and pleased hiot out of stones and coals; let him try how his s and dry ree, how this man had won the mastery of paint and canvas and turned their dross into the fine gold of true Art

But in the history of British Art, the great h is, to have broken us entirely loose from old conventions Wilson had turned aside froher qualities of Italian art; but Gainsborough early discarded all he had learned froave hi and minute execution, but he resolutely cast them aside lest any idol should interfere between hi likeness in his landscapes to those of Rubens; but this arosethe parts in the whole, than to any i It is like the recollection of some sweet melody which the musician weaves into his theme, all unconscious that it is a memory and not a child of his own creation

The pictures of Gainsborough, on the whole, stand better far than those by Reynolds ”Landscape with Cattle,” a picture belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne, is lovely for colour and freshness; it has been lined and repaired, but evidently had parted widely in the lights Could any closeness of individual iht of this picture? It somewhat reh sucked the honey and left the comb of the master! Viewed near, this picture is so in execution; the colour obtained by semi-transparents, as yellow-ochre, terra-verte, and ultramarine; while viewed at a proper distance, it is in perfect har the landscapes of this painter, much must, however, be allowed for the present state of some of his works Many are covered with a dark-brown varnish, obscuring the silvery freshness of their first state This has cracked up in the darks and quite changed the-Place_, as well as others in the National collection, are in a very different condition to that in which they left the easel The world, however, has become so conservative, and has such belief in the picture-vaolden tones,” that so they must remain It would be most impolitic to touch them until they have become too dark to be seen at all

_A Century of Painters of the English School_ (London, 1866)

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

(_TINTORET_)

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

It is more difficult for me to speak to you of the Venetian painters than of any others Before their pictures one has no desire to analyze or reason; if one does this, it is by compulsion The eyes enjoy, and that is all: they enjoy as the Venetians enjoyed in the Sixteenth Century; for Venice was not at all a literary or critical city like Florence; there painting was nothingpleasure, the decoration of a banqueting-hall or of an architectural alcove In order to understand this you must place yourself at a distance, shut your eyes and wait until your sensations are dulled; then your mind performs its work

There are certain families of plants, the species of which are so closely allied that they resemble more than they differ from each other: such are the Venetian painters, not only the four celebrities, Giorgione, titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, but others less illustrious, Palma ”il vecchio,” Bonifazio, Paris Bordone, Pordenone, and that host enumerated by Ridolfi in his _Lives_, contereat iovine,”

Zelotti, Bazzaco, Padovinano, Bassano, Schiavone, Moretto, and eneral and common type; the individual and personal traits reether and by turns in the Ducal Palace, but by the involuntary concord of their talents their pictures make an harmonious whole

At first our eyes are astonished; with the exception of three or four halls, the apartments are low and s it[28] are gilded habitations, insufficient for the figures that dwell therein; but after a ures Power and voluptuousness blaze there, unbridled and superb In the angles nude h relief that at the first glance one takes them for statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their shoulders writhe On the ceiling a Mercury, entirely nude, is alantic Neptune urges before hih the waves; his foot presses the edge of his chariot; his enormous and ruddy body is turned backwards; he raises his conch with the joy of a bestial God; the salt wind blows through his scarf, his hair, and his beard; one could never i it, such a furious _elan_, such an overflowing of anian flesh, such a triumph of free and shaht What an injustice to li ofthe eye! They have also painted grandeur and heroisetic and active body has attracted thes, they have their colossi also Their drawing, even without colour, is capable by itself of expressing all the solidity and all the vitality of the hurisailles_ by Veronese--five or six wo and of such a frahs and arms would stifle a warrior in their enomy is so siins like Raphael's Venuses and Psyches

[Illustration: BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

_Tintoret_]

The ures of Venetian art, the reat draped old s of the Archipelago, Barbaresque sultans who, trailing their silken simars, receive tribute and order executions The superb wohters of the Republic, like that Catherina Cornaro frohters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors and captains; their bodies, reddened by the sun and wind, have dashed against the athletic bodies of janizaries; their turbans, their pelisses, their furs, their sword-hilts constellated with precious stones,--all the led on their bodies with the floating draperies of antiquity and with the nudities of Pagan tradition Their straight gaze is still tranquil and savage, and the pride and the tragic grandeur of their expression announce the presence of a life in whichno other thought than that of being master so that he should not be a slave, and to kill so that he should not be killed Such is the spirit of a picture by Veronese which, in the Hall of the Council of the Ten, represents an old warrior and a young woory, but we do not trouble ourselves about the subject The man is seated and leans forward, his chin upon his hand, with a savage air; his colossal shoulders, his ar encircled with a cnemis of lions' heads protrudes from his ahtful brow, and his traits of a wearied lion, he has the appearance of a Pacha who is tired of everything She, with downcast eyes, places her hands upon her soft breast; her ht up with pearls; she see the will of her ly empurpled in the shadow that encircles thes have been taken into an interior rooo to find the curator of the Museum; we tell him in bad Italian that we have no letters of introduction, nor titles, nor any rights whatsoever to be admitted to see them Thereupon he has the kindness to conduct us into the reserved hall, to lift up the canvases, one after the other, and to lose two hours in showing thereater pleasure in Italy; these canvases are now standing before our eyes; we can look at them as near as we please, at our ease, and we are alone There are soiants by Tintoret, with their skin wrinkled by the play of the muscles, Saint Andrew and Saint Mark, real colossi like those of Rubens There is a Saint Christopher by titian, a kind of bronzed and bowed Atlas with his four liht of a world, and on his neck by an extraordinary contrast, the tiny, soft, and laughing _barace of a flower Above all, there are a dozen s by Tintoret and Veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknoorld, a paradise of delights situated beyond all iination and all dreams

When the Old Man of the Mountain transported into his hare youths to render them capable of extreme devotion, doubtless it was such a spectacle that he furnished

Upon the coast at theof Bacchus, and Venus, with a crown of gold, has coe Here is the subli out of the water, vivified by the sun and touched with shadows The Goddess is floating in liquid light and her twisted back, her flanks and her curves are palpitating, half enveloped in a white, diaphanous veil With ords can we paint the beauty of an attitude, a tone, or an outline? Who will describe the healthy and roseate flesh under the aauze? How shall we represent the soft plenitude of a living for body? Truly she is swiht like a fish in its lake, and the air, filled with vague reflections, ee en Italie_ (Paris, 1866)