Part 21 (1/2)
What shall we say of the physiogno charures? Such a ould alone suffice for the glory of a museu of genius
Every moment of the painter was consecrated to the various h Charles I never desisted fro his leisure in his studio,--the habitual _rendez-vous_ of the young gentlemen and the beauties of fashi+on The establishuests becoly Hired musicians were instructed to divert his aristocraticthe hours of work Thus he was enabled to attract and hold at his home the very best society in London Every day at his table sat nuuests chosen froled with the greatest personages Carried into the ind of this light world so full of entertainment, Van Dyck hastened to enjoy all the pleasures and exhaust all the delights, without considering his strength, or hoarding his health
The King would never let hi the pictures of his children
On his side, Van Dyck brought to this task all his art, we ht say all his heart Doubtless, he derived froence for the graces of childhood Also, when he occupied hi those delicious faces of rosy and chubby babies, in thestuffs, he found colours of incoree carries within himself the ideal type whose expression he pursues without pause This search ienius: originality Thus we recognize at the first glance the giants that sprang froures hich Raphael has peopled his is and race of form and charm of colour; his portion is not to be scorned The exuberant nature of Rubens betrays itself in his least ies of his innumerable pictures share in conizable everywhere
Anthonius Van Dyck obeys, likewise, the coinality, which in hiance and distinction Distinction,--that is the gift _par excellence_, the do quality of this artist, that which constitutes his individuality, that which lorious works, fros of the pupil of Rubens to those ies of Charles I, his fahest spheres of society or whether he coeoisie_ of Antwerp, the model receives from Van Dyck's brush the most aristocratic mien One would insist that the painter spent his life only in a world of gentlemen and patricians
Never does he surprise even the men that he knows the best, his most intimate friends, in the familiar carelessness of their daily occupations Rarely, very rarely, does it coroup them in some intimate interior scene Everybody is ive his or her descendants the most exalted idea of his or her station and ar, not one dares to show hiood nature of daily life Nothing alters their i troubles the unalterable placidity of their physiognomy Let others paint the people of taverns, the world of _kermesses_ and peasants! Van Dyck wished to be and to live for ever the painter of aristocracy
_Antoine Van Dyck--sa vie et sonnoeuvre_ (Paris, 1882)
THE FIGHTING TeMeRAIRE TUGGED TO HER LAST BERTH TO BE BROKEN UP, 1838
(_TURNER_)
JOHN RUSKIN
”The flag which braved the battle and the breeze No longer owns her”
Exhibited at the Acadeue Of all Turner's pictures in the National Gallery this is perhaps the most notable For, _first_ it is the last picture he ever painted with _perfect_ power--the last in which his execution is as firm and faultless as inexquisite precision, such as those of the htly at once When he painted the _Temeraire_ Turner could, if he liked, have painted the _shi+pwreck_ or the _Ulysses_ over again; but when he painted the _Sun of Venice_, though he was able to do different, and in sos, he could not have done _those_ again His period of central power thus begins with the _Ulysses_ and closes with the _Temeraire_ The one picture, it will be observed, is of sunrise, the other of sunset The one of a shi+p entering on its voyage, and the other of a shi+p closing its course for ever The one, in all the circumstance of the subject, unconsciously illustrative of his own life in its triumph, the other, in all the circumstances of its subject, unconsciously illustrative of his own life in its decline Accurately as the first sets forth his escape to the wild brightness of nature, to reign amidst all her happy spirits, so does the last set forth his returning to die by the shore of the Tha been painted in Turner's full power, the _Tee pictures the best preserved _Secondly_, the subject of the picture is, both particularly and generally, the noblest that in an English National Gallery could be The _Temeraire_ was the second shi+p in Nelson's line at the Battle of Trafalgar; and this picture is the last of the group which Turner painted to illustrate that central struggle in our national history The part played by the _Teenerally, she is a type of one of England's chief glories It will be always said of us, with unabated reverence, ”They built shi+ps of the line” Take it all in all, a shi+p of the Line is the arious animal, has ever produced By his than shi+ps of the line; he can make poems and pictures, and other such concentrations of what is best in hi out, with alternate strokes and reeet or produce, the shi+p of the line is his first work And as the subject was the noblest Turner could have chosen so also was his treat human pain, this is, I believe, the most pathetic that was ever painted The utiven to a landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin; but no ruin was ever so affecting as this gliding of the vessel to her grave A ruin cannot be so, for whatever memories may be connected with it, and whatever witness it lory of er, and associated itself with their acts, as a shi+p of battle can The uidance, double the interest of the vessel: nor less her organized perfectness, giving her the look, and partly the character of a living creature, that may indeed be maimed in limb or decrepit in frame, but must either live or die, and cannot be added to nor di can And this particular shi+p, crowned in the Trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory--prevailing over the fatal vessel that had given Nelson death--surely, if ever anything without a soul deserved honour or affection, ed them here Those sails that strained so full bent into the battle--that broad bow that struck the surf aside, enlarging silently in steadfast haste full front to the shot--resistless and without reply--those triple ports whose choirs of flavoice to rise any land--those sides that ith the long runlets of English life-blood, like press planks at vintage, gleaoodly cri foaainst the war-ruin, shaking out their ensigns through the thunder, till sail and ensign drooped--steeped in the death-stilled pause of Andalusian air, burning with its witness-clouds of huht have been left in our thoughts, solish waters? Nay, not so We have stern keepers to trust her glory to--the fire and the worht tre
Perhaps, where the low gate opens to soarden, the tired traveller ed wood; and even the sailor's child ht-dew lies deep in the war-rents of the wood of the old _Temeraire_ And, _lastly_, the pathos of the picture--the contrast of the old shi+p's past glory with her present end; and the spectacle of the ”old order” of the shi+p of the line whose flag had braved the battle and the breeze, yielding place to the new, in the little stea--these pathetic contrasts are repeated and enforced by a technical _tour de force_ in the treatment of the colours which is without a parallel in art And the picture itself thus coination and in skill The old masters, content with one siradations and varied touches of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other They gave the warold, but they did not give those gray passages about the horizon, where, seen through its dying light, the cool and the glooather themselves for their victory But in this picture, under the blazing veil of vaulted fire, which lights the vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of darkness out of which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and the dull booht are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment, as you look, you will fancy soht has risen over the vastness of the departing form (Compiled from _Modern Painters_, Vol I pt ii
Sec I ch vii -- 46 _n_, Sec II ch i -- 21; _Harbours of England_, p 12; and _Notes on the Turner Gallery_, pp 75-80)
[Illustration: THE FIGHTING TeMeRAIRE
_Turner_]
Finally a feords about the history of the picture itself ested to Turner by Clarkson Stanfield (who hiar_) They were going down the river by boat, to dine, perhaps, at Greenwich, when the old shi+p, being tugged to her last berth at Deptford, caht ”There's a fine subject, Turner,” said Stanfield This was in 1838 Next year the picture was exhibited at the Academy, but no price was put upon it A would-be purchaser offered Turner 300 guineas for it He replied that it was his ”200 guinea size”
only, and offered to take a commission at that price for any subject of the same size, but with the _Temeraire_ itself he would not part
Another offer was subsequently ain Turner declined He had already st those to be bequeathed to the nation; and in one of the codicils to his will, in which he left each of his executors a picture to be chosen by them in turn, the _Teht choose[30]
Edward T Cook, _A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery_
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Mr W Hale White recently drew up for Mr Ruskin, fro history of the _Temeraire_ To him and to Mr
Ruskin I am indebted for permission to insert the history here It will be seen that Turner was right in calling his picture the _Fighting Tee the title in the engraving to the _Old Te:--
”The _Teun at Chatham, July, 1793, and launched on the 11th September, 1798 She was named after an older _Temeraire_ taken by Admiral Boscawen from the French in 1759, and sold in June, 1784 The Chatham _Temeraire_ was fitted at Plymouth for a prison shi+p in 1812, and in 1819 she beca shi+p and was sent to Sheerness She was sold on the 16th August, 1838, to Mr J Beatson for 5,530 The _Tear on the 21st October, 1805 She was next to the _Victory_, and followed Nelson into action; commanded by Captain Elias Harvey, with Thomas Kennedy as first lieutenant Her maintopmast, the head of her mizzenmast, her foreyard, her starboard, cathead and bumpkin, and her fore and main topsail yards were shot away; her fore and main masts so wounded as to render theh in several places Her rigging of every sort was cut to pieces; the head of her rudder was taken off by the fire of the _Redoutable_; eight feet of the starboard side of the lower deck abreast of the alleries on both sides carried away Forty-six men on board of her were killed, and seventy-six wounded The _Temeraire_ was built with a beakhead, or, in other words, her upper works were cut off across the catheads; a peculiarity which can be observed in Turner's picture It was found by experience in the early part of the French war that this uns to the enemy's fire, and it was afterwards abandoned It has been objected,” adds Mr White, ”that the ht gun shi+p; but the truth is that when the vessel was sold she was juryrigged as a receiving shi+p, and Turner, therefore, was strictly accurate Heheavier masts and yards in her; but he painted her as he saw her This is very iets rid of the difficulty which I myself have felt and expressed, that it was very i triined Turner intended us to believe she was sold, and answers also the criticisht of the masts and yards and the size of the hull” Part of the _Temeraire_, Mr White tells me, is still in existence Messrs Castle, the shi+pbuilders of Millbank, have the two figures of Atlas which supported the sterngallery