Chapter 10

ART--NICOLAS POUSSIN, 1594-1665--CLAUDE[31] LORRAINE, 1600-1682--CHARLES LE BRUN, 1619-1690--WATTEAU, 1684-1721--GREUZE, 1726-1805.

Nicolas Poussin was born at Andely in Normandy in 1594. Of his parentage little seems to have been ascertained, but it is believed that he was well educated, and his classical learning in after life was reckoned great. He was regularly trained to be a painter under a master in his native town, and afterwards in Paris.

Dissatisfied with the patronage which he received in Paris, Poussin went to Rome when he was about thirty years of age. In Rome he is said to have lived on familiar terms with a sculptor whose devotion to antique art influenced his taste, and lent it the strong classical bent which it retained. Poussin studied regularly in the school of Domenichino. After some delay in attracting public notice, 'The Death of Germanicus,' and 'The Capture of Jerusalem,' which Poussin painted for Cardinal Barberini, won general approval. In 1629, when Nicolas Poussin was in his thirty-fifth year, he married the sister of his pupil, Gaspar Dughet, who took Poussin's name, and is known as a painter, inferior to his master, by the name of Gaspar Poussin.

Nicolas Poussin returned to Paris when he was a middle-aged man, was presented to the king, Louis XIII., by Cardinal Richelieu, and offered apartments in the Tuileries, with the title of painter in ordinary, and a salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year. Poussin agreed to settle in Paris, but on his going back to Rome to fetch his wife, and on the King of France's dying, the attractions of the Eternal City proved too great for the painter, and in place of removing his home to his native country, he lived for the rest of his years in Rome, and died there in 1665, when he was seventy-one years of age. Except what can be judged of him from his work, I do not know that much has been gathered of the private character and life of Nicolas Poussin, notwithstanding that there was a biography written of him fifty years ago by Lady Calcott, and that his letters have been published in Paris. In the absence of conclusive testimony one may conclude with some probability that he was 'quiet,' like his best paintings; a man who minded his own business, and did not trouble the world by astonishing actions, good or bad.[32]

In painting his own picture, from which an engraving has been taken, Poussin's classical preferences seem to have passed into the likeness, for in the dress of the seventeenth century, the cloak (not unlike a toga), the massive hand with the heavy signet-ring resting on what looks like a closed portfolio, the painter has something of the severe air and haughty expression of an old Roman; still more, perhaps, of the French-Romans, if I may call them so, of whom revolutionary times nearly two centuries later, afforded so many examples. This is a handsome, dignified face, with austerity in its pride. The slightly curled hair is thrown back with a certain consciousness from the knit brow, and from the shoulders. There is only the faintest shadow of a moustache over the cleanly cut, firmly closed mouth.

Poussin painted largely, and his pictures have been often engraved. With harmonious composition, good drawing and colouring, his pictures alike profited and suffered from the classical atmosphere in which they had their being. They gained in that correctness which in its highest form becomes noble truthfulness, but they lost in freedom. The figures in the pictures had frequently the statuesqueness which in sculpture suits the material, but in painting is stiffness.

Nicolas Poussin had an exceptional reputation for a historical painter in his day. As a landscape painter, Mr Ruskin, while waging war with Nicolas Poussin's brother-in-law and assumed namesake, Gaspar, notably excepts Nicolas from his severest strictures, and treats his efforts in landscape painting with marked respect. At the same time, however, the critic censures the painter for a want of thorough acquaintance with nature, and the laws of nature, ignorance not uncommon in any day, and nearly universal in Nicolas Poussin's day. 'The great master of elevated ideal landscape,' Mr Ruskin calls Nicolas Poussin, and illustrates his excellence in one respect, after contrasting it with the slovenliness of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by describing the vine in Poussin's 'Nursing of Jupiter,' in the Dulwich Gallery, thus:--

'Every vine-leaf, drawn with consummate skill and untiring diligence, produces not only a true group of the most perfect grace and beauty, but one which in its pure and simple truth belongs to every age of nature, and adapts itself to the history of all time.' 'One of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced, the work of a really great mind,' Mr Ruskin distinguishes the 'Phocian' of Nicolas Poussin in the National Gallery, before proceeding to point out its faults.

Again, Mr Ruskin, writing of the street in the centre of another landscape by Nicolas Poussin, indicates it with emphasis:--'the street in the centre of the really great landscape of Poussin (great in feeling, at least) marked 260 in the Dulwich Gallery,' The criticism with which Mr Ruskin follows up this praise is so perfect a bit of word-painting, that I cannot refrain from writing it down here. 'The houses are dead square masses, with a light side and a dark side, and black touches for windows. There is no suggestion of anything in any of the spaces, the light wall is dead grey, the dark wall dead grey, and the windows dead black. How differently would nature have treated us. She would have let us see the Indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the Virgin of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the carved Roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the flapping corners of the neat blinds. All would have been there; not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not to be comprehended nor understood, but a confusion of yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far too fine for the eye to follow; microscopic in its minuteness, and filling every atom and space with mystery, out of which would have arranged itself the general impression of truth and life.' Once more, Mr Ruskin freely admits that 'all the landscape of Nicolas Poussin is imagination.'

Mr Ruskin's first definition of ideal landscape is in this manner. Every different tree and leaf, every bud, has a perfect form, which, were it not for disease or accident, it would have attained; just as every individual human face has an ideal form, which but for sin and suffering it would present: and the ideal landscape-painter has realized the perfect form, and offers it to the world, and that in a sense quite distinct from the fallacy of improving nature.

But I wish to take my readers further into imaginative landscape, and to show it to them, if possible, under additional lights. I despair of succeeding if I cannot do it by one or two simple examples. In passing through a gallery we may stop before a picture to be struck, almost startled, by the exact copy which it presents of some scene in nature; how like the clouds in the sky, the leaves on the trees, the very plumage of the birds! But pass on to another picture which may or may not have the same exact likeness, and we are possessed with quite another feeling; instead of being merely surprised by the cleverness of the imitation, we feel a thrill of delight at a reproduction of nature. In this picture there are not only the clouds we remember, but we can almost feel the shadows which they cast, and the air which stirs them. These tree-leaves are not only green, or yellow, or russet, they are tender, or crisp living leaves. One half expects to see the birds' throats swell, and hear the sweetness or the shrillness of their songs.

The first picture, with all its correctness, brightness, richness, or delicacy it may be, remains bare, hard, and barren, compared to the second. I cannot explain to my readers the cause of the difference, I can Only show it to them as they may see it for themselves, and say that I suppose it proceeds from this--that the second painter has seen farther into the heart of nature than the first, and has been able by subtler touches to make us see with his eyes.

But imaginative landscape is much more than this vivid feeling and expression of nature; there is not a cloud, or leaf, or bird too many or out of keeping with the place and the hour. The clouds are the very clouds of sunset, or sunrise, or high noon--clouds differing widely from each other, as you have no doubt observed. The trees are the beeches, or chestnuts, or pines, which would grow on the conformation of rocks, in the sheltered nook, or on the breezy upland; the birds are the linnets or the larks, the thrushes or the lapwings, which frequent these special trees, and may be seen and heard at this particular hour.

Again, landscape often tells a story, and tells it inimitably. My readers have heard of the ballad of the 'Two Corbies,' which the writer of the ballad has made to meet and tell gruesomely where and on what carrion their feast has been. Suppose the writer of the ballad had been a painter, he might have painted the story as intelligibly by the lone hill-side, the bleaching bones of the faithful hound and gallant grey, the two loathly blue-black birds satiated with their prey. There is a significant old Scotch song with a ballad ring, by Lady Nairne, two verses of which form each a complete picture not only of different seasons, but of different phases of feeling--happiness and misery.

'Bonnie ran the burnie down, Wandering and winding; Sweetly sang the birds aboon, Care never minding.

'But now the burn comes down apace, Roaring and reaming, And for the wee birdies' sang Wild howlets screaming.'

Imagine these two verses painted, and the painter, from a lack of comprehension, introducing the 'wild howlets screaming' _beside the burnie_, 'wandering and winding,' and the 'wee birdies' foolishly and inconsequently singing with their feeble song drowned in the rush of the burn (no longer a burnie), 'roaring and reaming,' when the 'spate' is spreading desolation on every side. Don't you see how the picture would be spoilt, and the story of complete contrast left untold? I have taken advisedly an extreme and, therefore an unlikely case of halting imagination. But in imaginative landscape every 'white flower with its purple stain,' every crushed butterfly, is made to play its part in the whole, and at the same time due proportion is never lost sight of, and the less is always kept subordinate to the greater.

I have already had occasion to mention examples of Nicolas Poussin in the National Gallery and in Dulwich Gallery.

Claude Gelée, better known as Claude Lorraine, was a native of Lorraine, and was born at Chateau de Chamagne in the Vosges, in 1600. His parents were in humble life, and apprenticed Claude to a baker and pastry-cook. According to some biographers the cooks of Lorraine were in such request that they occasionally repaired to Rome with their apprentices in their train to serve the successor of St Peter, and Claude was thus carried, in the way of trade, to the city which might well have been the goal of his ambition. According to other writers of art histories, Claude abandoned the kneading-trough and the oven; and it was as a runaway apprentice that by some occult means he reached Rome. And when he had arrived he entered into the service of a landscape painter of good repute, to whom he was colour-boy as well as cook. The last is the account, so far, which Claude gave of himself to a friend, and it is hardly likely either that he misrepresented his history, or that his friend invented such details, though lately French authorities have questioned the authenticity of the narrative. Claude remained for nearly the entire remainder of a long life in Rome. He only once re-visited France, while he was yet a young man, under thirty years of age, in 1625 or 1627. He is supposed to have painted his earliest pictures and executed his etchings about this time, 1630 and to have painted his best pictures fifteen years later, when he was in the maturity of his life and powers. He was counted successful during his life time, as a landscape painter, but did not amass a larger fortune than about two thousand pounds.[33] He was a slow and careful painter (working a fortnight at a picture with little apparent progress); his painstaking work, and his custom of keeping a book, in which he verified his pictures, are about the most that I can tell you of the habits of one of the foreign painters, who has been most fully represented in England, and was long in the highest favour with English lovers of art. Claude Lorraine died at Rome in the eighty-third year of his age, in 1682.

Claude Lorraine's name has become a very vexed name with art critics. There was a time when he had an unsurpassed reputation as a landscape painter. The possession of a Claude was enough to confer art glory on a country-house, and possibly for this reason England, in public and private collections, has more 'Claudes' than are held by any other country. But Claude's admirers, among whom Sir George Beaumont, the great art critic of his generation, took the lead, have had their day, and, if they have not by any means passed away, are on the wane.

The wrathful indignation of the English landscape painter, Turner, at the praise which was so glibly lavished on Claude--an indignation that caused Turner to bequeath two of his own landscape paintings to the trustees of the National Gallery, on the caustic condition that they should always be placed between the two celebrated 'Claudes,' known as 'The Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca' and 'The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba'--helped to shake the English art world's faith in its former idol. Mr Ruskin's adoption and proclamation of Turner's opinion shook the old faith still further. This reversal of a verdict with regard to Claude is peculiar; it is by no means uncommon for the decision of contemporaries to be set aside, and we shall hear of an instance presently, in the case of the painter Le Brun. In fact, it is often ominous with regard to a man's future fame, when he is 'cried up to the skies' in his own day. The probability may be that his easy success has been won by something superficial and fleeting. But Claude's great popularity has been in another generation, and with another nation. English taste may have been in fault; or another explanation seems preferable--that Claude's sense of beauty was great, with all its faults of expression, and he gave such glimpses of a beautiful world as the gazers on his pictures were capable of receiving, which to them proved irresistible.

While Claude adopted an original style as a landscape painter, so far as his contemporaries were concerned, he was to such a degree self taught, and only partially taught, that it is said he never learnt to paint figures--those in his pictures were painted by other painters, and that Claude even painted animals badly.

Mr Ruskin has been hard on Claude, whether justly or unjustly, I cannot pretend to say.

The critic denies the painter not only a sense of truth in art, but all imagination as a landscape painter 'Of men of name,' Mr Ruskin writes, 'Perhaps Claude is the best instance of a want of imagination, nearly total, borne out by painful but untaught study of nature, and much feeling for abstract beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of expression.' Mr Ruskin condemns in the strongest terms 'the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens, in which Claude, with the industry and intelligence of a Sèvres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground.' But Mr Ruskin himself acknowledges, with a reservation, Claude's charm in foliage, and pronounces more conditionally his power, when it was at its best, in skies--a region in which the greater, as well as the less, Poussin was declared to fail signally; 'a perfectly genuine and untouched sky of Claude,' Mr Ruskin writes, 'is indeed most perfect, and beyond praise, in all qualities of air; though even with him I often feel rather that there is a great deal of pleasant air between me and the firmament, than that the firmament itself is only air.'

When all has been said that can be said, let us look at a mellow or a sunny Claude on any wall where it may hang, and judge for ourselves of the satisfaction it is calculated to give.

Claude was fond of painting scenes on the Tiber and in the Roman Campagna, but while he tried to reproduce the hills and woodlands of Italy, he did not seek to paint the mountain landscapes of the Apennines.

Besides Claude's numerous works in England and scattered through other countries, some of his finest paintings are in the Doria and Sciarra palaces in Rome. He rarely put his name to his works; when he did so he signed it frequently 'Claudio,' sometimes 'Claudius.' I have spoken of his book of sketches, in which he had been wont to note on the back of the sketch the date of the completed picture, and to whom sold. This book he called the 'Libro di Verita,' or, Book of Truth, and its apparent use was to check the sale of spurious paintings in Claude's name, even during his lifetime. The 'Book of Truth' is in possession of the Duke of Devonshire, and has been employed in recent years with reference to the end for which it seemed designed, so woe to that country-house which has long pride that 'Claude' does not happen to have a place in the 'Book of Truth,' though I do not know that it is at all certain that Claude took the precaution of inscribing _every_ painting which he painted after a certain date in the 'Book of Truth.'

Claude Lorraine is well represented in the National Gallery. Engravings of his pictures are common.

Charles le Brun was born in Paris, in 1619. He was trained to be a painter, and went young to Rome, studying there for six years under the guidance of Nicolas Poussin. Le Brun returned to Paris, and, through the patronage of the Chancellor Segnier, was introduced to the court, and got the most favourable opportunities of practising his profession with worldly success. He speedily acquired a great name, and was appointed painter to the King, Louis XIV. Le Brun had enough influence with his royal master, and with the great minister Colbert, to succeed in establishing, while the painter was yet a young man, the Royal Academy of Art, of which he was the first member, and virtually the head, holding, in his own person, the directorship of the Gobelin tapestry works, which was to be the privilege of a member of the Academy. Le Brun continued in the utmost favour with the King, who, not content with employing the painter largely at Fontainebleau and in Versailles, invested him with the order of St Michael, bestowed on him letters of nobility, and visited him frequently at his work, occasions when there were not wanting adroit courtiers to liken the Grand Monarque to the Emperor Charles V., and Le Brun to Titian.

Le Brun seems to have been a man of energy, confidence, and industry, neither mentally before nor after his time, and by no means too retiring, meditative, or original, to fail to profit by his outward good fortune. He wrote, as well as painted, artistic treatises, which were received as oracular utterances, and entirely deferred to in the schools of his day. He died at Paris in 1690, when he was in his seventieth year.

Le Brun's real merits as a painter were limited to respectable abilities and acquirements, together with florid quickness and ease, and such an eye to what was splendid and scenic as suited admirably a decorator of palaces in an age which prized sumptuousness, and an exaggeration of dramatic effect, over every other quality. Nicolas Poussin's quiet refinement of style became in Le Brun what is called academic (conventionally learned), pompous, and grandiose, and men decidedly preferred the degeneration. But later critics, who have not the natural partiality of the French to the old master, return to their first loves, and condemn Le Brun's swelling violence, both in the tints and poses of his figures. Among his most famous works, which have been magnificently engraved, are his 'Battles of Alexander.'

Antoine Watteau was born at Valenciennes in 1684. A very different painter from Le Brun, he was yet as characteristic of French art in the reign of Louis XIV. I think my readers must be familiar with his name, and I dare say they associate it, as I do, not only with the fans which were painted largely after his designs, but with mock pastorals and Sèvres china. I don't know if his birth-place at Valenciennes, with its chief product of dainty lace, had anything to do with it, but the other items of poor Watteau's history are considerably removed from the very artificial grace which one connects with his name. He was the son of a carpenter, and struggled up, by the hard instrumentality of third-rate masters and of picture-dealers, to the rank which he attained among artists, taking his stand from the first, however, as the painter of well-bred, well-apparelled people--the frequenters of _bals masqués,_ and _fêtes champêtres,_ who were only playing at shepherds and shepherdesses.

Watteau was elected an Academician in 1717, when he was thirty-three years of age, and he afterwards came to England, but did not remain there. He died of consumption at Nogent-sur-Marne in 1721, when he was thirty-six years of age.[34] Watteau's gifts were his grace and brilliance on a small scale. He did not draw well; as to design, his composition may be said to be suited to such a work as the collection of 'fashionable figures,' which he engraved and left behind him. Yet, if we were to see at this moment some of his exquisite groups of ladies in sacques and Watteau hats, and cavaliers in flowing wigs and lace, cravats, I have no doubt that the most of us would admire them much, for they are exceedingly pretty, and exceeding prettiness is attractive, particularly to women. But I would have my readers to remember that this art is a finical and soulless art, after all. I would fain have them take this as their maxim, 'That the art is greatest which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.'

Jean Baptiste Greuze was born at Tournus in Burgundy in 1726. He studied painting from his youth in the studios of artists at Lyons, Paris, and Rome, and his studies resulted in his being a celebrated genre painter. He only painted one historical picture, but, with the touchy vanity which seemed natural to the man, he ranked his genre pictures as high art; and when he was placed in the ordinary list of genre painters on his election as a member of the French Academy of Painting, Greuze resented the imputation, and withdrew from the Academy. He died in 1805, aged seventy-nine years. Greuze was a showy, clever, but neither earnest nor truthful painter of domestic subjects and family pictures. His pictures of women and heads of girls, the expression in some of which has been severely condemned, are among his best known works, and by these he is represented in the National Gallery.[35]