If a picture is admirable in its kind, we do not give ourselves much trouble about the subject. Could we paint as well as Hobbima, we should not envy Rembrandt: nay, even as it is, while we can relish both, we envy neither!
The Centre Room commences with a Girl at a Window, by Rembrandt. The picture is known by the print of it, and is one of the most remarkable and pleasing in the Collection. For clearness, for breadth, for a lively, ruddy look of healthy nature, it cannot be surpassed. The execution of the drapery is masterly. There is a story told of its being his servant-maid looking out of a window, but it is evidently the portrait of a mere child.—A Farrier shoeing an Ass, by Berchem, is in his usual manner. There is truth of character and delicate finishing; but the fault of all Berchem’s pictures is, that he continues to finish after he has done looking at nature, and his last touches are different from hers. Hence comes that resemblance to tea-board painting, which even his best works are chargeable with. We find here one or two small Claudes of no great value; and two very clever specimens of the court-painter, Watteau, the Gainsborough of France. They are marked as Nos. 184 and 194, Fête Champêtre, and Le Bal Champêtre. There is something exceedingly light, agreeable, and characteristic in this artist’s productions. He might almost be said to breathe his figures and his flowers on the canvas—so fragile is their texture, so evanescent is his touch. He unites the court and the country at a sort of salient point—you may fancy yourself with Count Grammont and the beauties of Charles II. in their gay retreat at Tunbridge Wells. His trees have a drawing-room air with them, an appearance of gentility and etiquette, and nod gracefully over-head; while the figures below, thin as air, and vegetably clad, in the midst of all their affectation and grimace, seem to have just sprung out of the ground, or to be the fairy inhabitants of the scene in masquerade. They are the Oreads and Dryads of the Luxembourg! Quaint association, happily effected by the pencil of Watteau! In the Bal Champêtre we see Louis XIV. himself dancing, looking so like an old beau, his face flushed and puckered up with gay anxiety; but then the satin of his slashed doublet is made of the softest leaves of the water-lily; Zephyr plays wanton with the curls of his wig! We have nobody who could produce a companion to this picture now: nor do we very devoutly wish it. The Louis the Fourteenths are extinct, and we suspect their revival would hardly be compensated even by the re-appearance of a Watteau.—No. 187, the Death of Cardinal Beaufort, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is a very indifferent and rather unpleasant sketch of a very fine picture. One of the most delightful things in this delightful collection is the Portrait (195) of the Prince of the Austurias, by Velasquez. The easy lightness of the childish Prince contrasts delightfully with the unwieldy figure of the horse, which has evidently been brought all the way from the Low Countries for the amusement of his rider. Velasquez was (with only two exceptions, Titian and Vandyke) as fine a portrait-painter as ever lived! In the centre room also is the Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, by Murillo—a sweet picture with a fresh green landscape, and the heart of Love in the midst of it.—There are several heads by Holbein scattered up and down the different compartments. We need hardly observe that they all have character in the extreme, so that we may be said to be acquainted with the people they represent; but then they give nothing but character, and only one part of that, viz. the dry, the literal, the concrete, and fixed. They want the addition of passion and beauty; but they are the finest caput mortuums of expression that ever were made. Hans Holbein had none of the volatile essence of genius in his composition. If portrait-painting is the prose of the art, his pictures are the prose of portrait-painting. Yet he is ‘a reverend name’ in art, and one of the benefactors of the human mind. He has left faces behind him that we would give the world to have seen, and there they are—stamped on his canvass for ever! Who, in reading over the names of certain individuals, does not feel a yearning in his breast to know their features and their lineaments? We look through a small frame, and lo! at the distance of three centuries, we have before us the figures of Anne Boleyn, of the virtuous Cranmer, the bigoted Queen Mary, the noble Surrey—as if we had seen them in their life-time, not perhaps in their best moods or happiest attitudes, but as they sometimes appeared, no doubt. We know at least what sort of looking people they were: our minds are made easy on that score; the ‘body and limbs’ are there, and we may ‘add what flourishes’ of grace or ornament we please. Holbein’s heads are to the finest portraits what state-papers are to history.
The first picture in the Fourth Room is the Prophet Samuel, by Sir Joshua. It is not the Prophet Samuel, but a very charming picture of a little child saying its prayers. The second is, The Education of Bacchus, by Nicholas Poussin. This picture makes one thirsty to look at it—the colouring even is dry and adust. It is true history in the technical phrase, that is to say, true poetry in the vulgate. The figure of the infant Bacchus seems as if he would drink up a vintage—he drinks with his mouth, his hands, his belly, and his whole body. Gargantua was nothing to him. In the Education of Jupiter, in like manner, we are thrown back into the infancy of mythologic lore. The little Jupiter, suckled by a she-goat, is beautifully conceived and expressed; and the dignity and ascendancy given to these animals in the picture is wonderfully happy. They have a very imposing air of gravity indeed, and seem to be by prescription ‘grand caterers and wet-nurses of the state’ of Heaven! Apollo giving a Poet a Cup of Water to drink is elegant and classical; and The Flight into Egypt instantly takes the tone of Scripture-history. This is strange, but so it is. All things are possible to a high imagination. All things, about which we have a feeling, may be expressed by true genius. A dark landscape (by the same hand) in a corner of the room is a proof of this. There are trees in the fore-ground, with a paved road and buildings in the distance. The Genius of antiquity might wander here, and feel itself at home.—The large leaves are wet and heavy with dew, and the eye dwells ‘under the shade of melancholy boughs.’ In the old collection (in Mr. Desenfans’ time) the Poussins occupied a separated room by themselves, and it was (we confess) a very favourite room with us.—No. 226, is a Landscape, by Salvator Rosa. It is one of his very best—rough, grotesque, wild—Pan has struck it with his hoof—the trees, the rocks, the fore-ground, are of a piece, and the figures are subordinate to the landscape. The same dull sky lowers upon the scene, and the bleak air chills the crisp surface of the water. It is a consolation to us to meet with a fine Salvator. His is one of the great names in art, and it is among our sources of regret that we cannot always admire his works as we would do, from our respect to his reputation and our love of the man. Poor Salvator! he was unhappy in his life-time; and it vexes us to think that we cannot make him amends by fancying him so great a painter as some others, whose fame was not their only inheritance!—227, Venus and Cupid, is a delightful copy after Correggio. We have no such regrets or qualms of conscience with respect to him. ‘He has had his reward.’ The weight of his renown balances the weight of barbarous coin that sunk him to the earth. Could he live now, and know what others think of him, his misfortunes would seem as dross compared with his lasting glory, and his heart would melt within him at the thought, with a sweetness that only his own pencil could express. 233, The Virgin, Infant Christ, and St. John, by Andrea del Sarto, is exceedingly good.—290, Another Holy Family, by the same, is an admirable picture, and only inferior to Raphael. It has delicacy, force, thought, and feeling. ‘What lacks it then,’ to be equal to Raphael? We hardly know, unless it be a certain firmness and freedom, and glowing animation. The execution is more timid and laboured. It looks like a picture (an exquisite one, indeed), but Raphael’s look like the divine reality itself!—No. 234, Cocles defending the Bridge, is by Le Brun. We do not like this picture, nor 271, The Massacre of the Innocents, by the same artist. One reason is that they are French, and another that they are not good. They have great merit, it is true, but their merits are only splendid sins. They are mechanical, mannered, colourless, and unfeeling.—No. 237, is Murillo’s Spanish Girl with Flowers. The sun tinted the young gipsey’s complexion, and not the painter.—No. 240, is The Casatella and Villa of Mæcenas, near Tivoli, by Wilson, with his own portrait in the fore-ground. It is an imperfect sketch; but there is a curious anecdote relating to it, that he was so delighted with the waterfall itself, that he cried out, while painting it: ‘Well done, water, by G—d!’—No. 243, Saint Cecilia, by Guercino, is a very pleasing picture, in his least gaudy manner.—No. 251, Venus and Adonis, by Titian. We see so many of these Venuses and Adonises, that we should like to know which is the true one. This is one of the best we have seen. We have two Francesco Molas in this room, the Rape of Proserpine, and a Landscape with a Holy Family. This artist dipped his pencil so thoroughly in Titian’s palette, that his works cannot fail to have that rich, mellow look, which is always delightful.—No. 303, Portrait of Philip the Fourth of Spain, by Velasquez, is purity and truth itself. We used to like the Sleeping Nymph, by Titian, when we saw it formerly in the little entrance-room at Desenfans’, but we cannot say much in its praise here.
The Fifth Room is the smallest, but the most precious in its contents.—No. 322, Spanish Beggar Boys, by Murillo, is the triumph of this Collection, and almost of painting. In the imitation of common life, nothing ever went beyond it, or as far as we can judge, came up to it. A Dutch picture is mechanical, and mere still-life to it. But this is life itself. The boy at play on the ground is miraculous. It is done with a few dragging strokes of the pencil, and with a little tinge of colour; but the mouth, the nose, the eyes, the chin, are as brimful as they can hold of expression, of arch roguery, of animal spirits, of vigorous, elastic health. The vivid, glowing, cheerful look is such as could only be found beneath a southern sun. The fens and dykes of Holland (with all our respect for them) could never produce such an epitome of the vital principle. The other boy, standing up with the pitcher in his hand, and a crust of bread in his mouth, is scarcely less excellent. His sulky, phlegmatic indifference speaks for itself. The companion to this picture, 324, is also very fine. Compared with these imitations of nature, as faultless as they are spirited, Murillo’s Virgins and Angels however good in themselves, look vapid, and even vulgar. A Child Sleeping, by the same painter, is a beautiful and masterly study.—No. 329, a Musical Party, by Giorgione, is well worthy of the notice of the connoisseur. No. 331, St. John Preaching in the Wilderness, by Guido, is an extraordinary picture, and very unlike this painter’s usual manner. The colour is as if the flesh had been stained all over with brick-dust. There is, however, a wildness about it which accords well with the subject, and the figure of St. John is full of grace and gusto.—No. 344, The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by the same, is much finer, both as to execution and expression. The face is imbued with deep passion.—No. 345, Portrait of a Man, by L. da Vinci, is truly simple and grand, and at once carries you back to that age.—Boors Merry Making, by Ostade, is fine; but has no business where it is. Yet it takes up very little room.—No. 347, Portrait of Mrs. Siddons, in the character of the Tragic Muse, by Sir Joshua, appears to us to resemble neither Mrs. Siddons, nor the Tragic Muse. It is in a bastard style of art. Sir Joshua had an importunate theory of improving upon nature. He might improve upon indifferent nature, but when he had got the finest, he thought to improve upon that too, and only spoiled it.—No. 349, The Virgin and Child, by Correggio, can only be a copy.—No. 332, The Judgment of Paris, by Vanderwerf, is a picture, and by a master, that we hate. He always chooses for his subjects naked figures of women, and tantalises us by making them of coloured ivory. They are like hard-ware toys.—No. 354, a Cardinal Blessing a Priest, by P. Veronese, is dignified and picturesque in the highest degree.—No. 355, The Adoration of the Shepherds, by Annibal Caracci, is an elaborate, but not very successful performance.—No. 356, Christ bearing his Cross, by Morales, concludes the list, and is worthy to conclude it.
Our intercourse with the dead is better than our intercourse with the living. There are only three pleasures in life, pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things—books, pictures, and the face of nature. What is the world but a heap of ruined friendships, but the grave of love? All other pleasures are as false and hollow, vanishing from our embrace like smoke, or like a feverish dream. Scarcely can we recollect that they were, or recall without an effort the anxious and momentary interest we took in them.—But thou, oh! divine Bath of Diana, with deep azure eyes, with roseate hues, spread by the hand of Titian, art still there upon the wall, another, yet the same that thou wert five-and-twenty years ago, nor wantest
And lo! over the clear lone brow of Tuderley and Norman Court, knit into the web and fibres of our heart, the sighing grove waves in the autumnal air, deserted by Love, by Hope, but forever haunted by Memory! And there that fine passage stands in Antony and Cleopatra as we read it long ago with exalting eyes in Paris, after puzzling over a tragedy of Racine’s, and cried aloud: ‘Our Shakspeare was also a poet!’ These feelings are dear to us at the time; and they come back unimpaired, heightened, mellowed, whenever we choose to go back to them. We turn over the leaf and ‘volume of the brain,’ and there see them face to face.—Marina in Pericles complains that
Not so from the friends above-mentioned. If we bring but an eye, an understanding, and a heart to them, we find them always with us, always the same. The change, if there is one, is in us, not in them. Oh! thou then, whoever thou art, that dost seek happiness in thyself, independent on others, not subject to caprice, not mocked by insult, not snatched away by ruthless hands, over which Time has no power, and that Death alone cancels, seek it (if thou art wise) in books, in pictures, and the face of nature, for these alone we may count upon as friends for life! While we are true to ourselves, they will not be faithless to us. While we remember any thing, we cannot forget them. As long as we have a wish for pleasure, we may find it here; for it depends only on our love for them, and not on theirs for us. The enjoyment is purely ideal, and is refined, unembittered, unfading, for that reason.
A complaint has been made of the short-lived duration of works of art, and particularly of pictures; and poets more especially are apt to lament and to indulge in an elegiac strain over the fragile beauties of the sister-art. The complaint is inconsiderate, if not invidious. They will last our time. Nay, they have lasted centuries before us, and will last centuries after us; and even when they are no more, will leave a shadow and a cloud of glory behind them, through all time. Lord Bacon exclaims triumphantly, ‘Have not the poems of Homer lasted five-and-twenty hundred years, and not a syllable of them is lost?’ But it might be asked in return, ‘Have not many of the Greek statues now lasted almost as long, without losing a particle of their splendour or their meaning, while the Iliad (except to a very few) has become almost a dead letter?’ Has not the Venus of Medicis had almost as many partisans and admirers as the Helen of the old blind bard? Besides, what has Phidias gained in reputation even by the discovery of the Elgin Marbles? Or is not Michael Angelo’s the greatest name in modern art, whose works we only know from description and by report? Surely, there is something in a name, in wide-spread reputation, in endless renown, to satisfy the ambition of the mind of man. Who in his works would vie immortality with nature? An epitaph, an everlasting monument in the dim remembrance of ages, is enough below the skies. Moreover, the sense of final inevitable decay humanises, and gives an affecting character to the triumphs of exalted art. Imperishable works executed by perishable hands are a sort of insult to our nature, and almost a contradiction in terms. They are ungrateful children, and mock the makers. Neither is the noble idea of antiquity legibly made out without the marks of the progress and lapse of time. That which is as good now as ever it was, seems a thing of yesterday. Nothing is old to the imagination that does not appear to grow old. Ruins are grander and more venerable than any modern structure can be, or than the oldest could be if kept in the most entire preservation. They convey the perspective of time. So the Elgin Marbles are more impressive from their mouldering, imperfect state. They transport us to the Parthenon, and old Greece. The Theseus is of the age of Theseus: while the Apollo Belvidere is a modern fine gentleman; and we think of this last figure only as an ornament to the room where it happens to be placed.—We conceive that those are persons of narrow minds who cannot relish an author’s style that smacks of time, that has a crust of antiquity over it, like that which gathers upon old wine. These sprinklings of archaisms and obsolete turns of expression (so abhorrent to the fashionable reader) are intellectual links that connect the generations together, and enlarge our knowledge of language and of nature. Of the two, we prefer black-letter to hot-pressed paper. Does not every language change and wear out? Do not the most popular writers become quaint and old-fashioned every fifty or every hundred years? Is there not a constant conflict of taste and opinion between those who adhere to the established and triter modes of expression, and those who affect glossy innovations, in advance of the age? It is pride enough for the best authors to have been read. This applies to their own country; and to all others, they are ‘a book sealed.’ But Rubens is as good in Holland as he is in Flanders, where he was born, in Italy or in Spain, in England, or in Scotland—no, there alone he is not understood. The Scotch understand nothing but what is Scotch. What has the dry, husky, economic eye of Scotland to do with the florid hues and luxuriant extravagance of Rubens? Nothing. They like Wilkie’s pauper style better. It may be said that translations remedy the want of universality of language: but prints give (at least) as good an idea of pictures as translations do of poems, or of any productions of the press that employ the colouring of style and imagination. Gil Blas is translateable; Racine and Rousseau are not. The mere English student knows more of the character and spirit of Raphael’s pictures in the Vatican, than he does of Ariosto or Tasso from Hoole’s Version. There is, however, one exception to the catholic language of painting, which is in French pictures. They are national fixtures, and ought never to be removed from the soil in which they grow. They will not answer any where else, nor are they worth Custom-House Duties. Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, are all good and intelligible in their several ways—we know what they mean—they require no interpreter: but the French painters see nature with organs and with minds peculiarly their own. One must be born in France to understand their painting, or their poetry. Their productions in art are either literal, or extravagant—dry, frigid fac-similes, in which they seem to take up nature by pin-points, or else vapid distorted caricatures, out of all rule and compass. They are, in fact, at home only in the light and elegant; and whenever they attempt to add force or solidity (as they must do in the severer productions of the pencil) they are compelled to substitute an excess of minute industry for a comprehension of the whole, or make a desperate mechanical effort at extreme expression, instead of giving the true, natural, and powerful workings of passion. Their representations of nature are meagre skeletons, that bear the same relation to the originals that botanical specimens, enclosed in a portfolio, flat, dry, hard, and pithless, do to flourishing plants and shrubs. Their historical figures are painful outlines, or graduated elevations of the common statues, spiritless, colourless, motionless, which have the form, but none of the power of the antique. What an abortive attempt is the Coronation of Napoleon, by the celebrated David, lately exhibited in this country! It looks like a finished sign-post painting—a sea of frozen outlines.—Could the artist make nothing of ‘the foremost man in all this world,’ but a stiff, upright figure? The figure and attitude of the Empress are, however, pretty and graceful; and we recollect one face in profile, of an ecclesiastic, to the right, with a sanguine look of health in the complexion, and a large benevolence of soul. It is not Monsieur Talleyrand, whom the late Lord Castlereagh characterised as a worthy man and his friend. His Lordship was not a physiognomist! The whole of the shadowed part of the picture seems to be enveloped in a shower of blue powder.—But to make amends for all that there is or that there is not in the work, David has introduced his wife and his two daughters; and in the Catalogue has given us the places of abode, and the names of the husbands of the latter. This is a little out of place: yet these are the people who laugh at our blunders. We do not mean to extend the above sweeping censure to Claude, or Poussin: of course they are excepted: but even in them the national character lurked amidst unrivalled excellence. If Claude has a fault, it is that he is finical; and Poussin’s figures might be said by a satirist to be antique puppets. To proceed to our task.—
The first picture that struck us on entering the Marquis of Stafford’s Gallery (a little bewildered as we were with old recollections, and present objects) was the Meeting of Christ and St. John, one of Raphael’s master-pieces. The eager ‘child-worship’ of the young St. John, the modest retirement and dignified sweetness of the Christ, and the graceful, matron-like air of the Virgin bending over them, full and noble, yet feminine and elegant, cannot be surpassed. No words can describe them to those who have not seen the picture:—the attempt is still vainer to those who have. There is, however, a very fine engraving of this picture, which may be had for a trifling sum.—No glory is around the head of the Mother, nor is it needed: but the soul of the painter sheds its influence over it like a dove, and the spirit of love, sanctity, beauty, breathes from the divine group. There are four Raphaels (Holy Families) in this collection, two others by the side of this in his early more precise and affected manner, somewhat faded, and a small one of the Virgin, Sleeping Jesus, and St. John, in his finest manner. There is, or there was, a duplicate of this picture (of which the engraving is also common) in the Louvre, which was certainly superior to the one at the Marquis of Stafford’s. The colouring of the drapery in that too was cold, and the face of the Virgin thin and poor; but never was infancy laid asleep more calmly, more sweetly, more soundly, than in the figure of Our Saviour—the little pouting mouth seemed to drink balmy, innocent sleep—and the rude expression of wonder and delight in the more robust, sun-burnt, fur-clad figure of St. John was as spirited in itself as it was striking, when contrasted with the meeker beauties of the figure opposed to it.—From these we turn to the Four Ages, by Titian, or Giorgione, as some say. Strange that there should have lived two men in the same age, on the same spot of earth, with respect to whom it should bear a question—which of them painted such a picture! Barry, we remember, and Collins, the miniature-painter, thought it a Giorgione, and they were considered two of the best judges going, at the time this picture was exhibited, among others, in the Orleans Gallery. We cannot pretend to decide on such nice matters ex cathedra; but no painter need be ashamed to own it. The gradations of human life are marked with characteristic felicity, and the landscape, which is thrown in, adds a pastoral charm and naïveté to the whole. To live or to die in such a chosen, still retreat must be happy!—Certainly, this composition suggests a beautiful moral lesson; and as to the painting of the group of children in the corner, we suppose, for careless freedom of pencil, and a certain milky softness of the flesh, it can scarcely be paralleled. Over the three Raphaels is a Danae, by Annibal Caracci, which we used to adore where it was hung on high in the Orleans Gallery. The face is fine, upturned, expectant; and the figure no less fine, desirable, ample, worthy of a God.—The golden shower is just seen descending; the landscape at a distance has (so fancy might interpret) a cold, shuddering aspect. There is another very fine picture of the same hand close by, St. Gregory with Angels. It is difficult to know which to admire most, the resigned and yet earnest expression of the Saint, or the elegant forms, the graceful attitudes, and bland, cordial, benignant faces of the attendant angels. The artist in these last has evidently had an eye to Correggio, both in the waving outline, and in the charm of the expression; and he has succeeded admirably, but not entirely. Something of the extreme unction of Correggio is wanting. The drawing of Annibal’s Angels is, perhaps, too firm, too sinewy, too masculine. In Correggio, the Angel’s spirit seemed to be united to a human body, to imbue, mould, penetrate every part with its sweetness and softness: in Caracci, you would say that a heavenly spirit inhabited, looked out of, moved a goodly human frame,
The composition of this picture is rather forced (it was one of those made to order for the monks) and the colour is somewhat metallic; but it has, notwithstanding, on the whole, a striking and tolerably harmonious effect.—There is still another picture by Caracci (also an old favourite with us, for it was in the Orleans set) Diana and Nymphs bathing, with the story of Calisto. It is one of his very best, with something of the drawing of the antique, and the landscape-colouring of Titian. The figures are all heroic, handsome, such as might belong to huntresses, or Goddesses: and the coolness and seclusion of the scene, under grey over-hanging cliffs, and brown overshadowing trees, with all the richness and truth of nature, have the effect of an enchanting reality.—The story and figures are more classical and better managed than those of the Diana and Calisto by Titian; but there is a charm in that picture and the fellow to it, the Diana and Actæon, (there is no other fellow to it in the world!) which no words can convey. It is the charm thrown over each by the greatest genius for colouring that the world ever saw. It is difficult, nay, impossible to say which is the finest in this respect: but either one or the other (whichever we turn to, and we can never be satisfied with looking at either—so rich a scene do they unfold, so serene a harmony do they infuse into the soul) is like a divine piece of music, or rises ‘like an exhalation of rich distilled perfumes.’ In the figures, in the landscape, in the water, in the sky, there are tones, colours, scattered with a profuse and unerring hand, gorgeous, but most true, dazzling with their force, but blended, softened, woven together into a woof like that of Iris—tints of flesh colour, as if you saw the blood circling beneath the pearly skin; clouds empurpled with setting suns; hills steeped in azure skies; trees turning to a mellow brown; the cold grey rocks, and the water so translucent, that you see the shadows and the snowy feet of the naked nymphs in it. With all this prodigality of genius, there is the greatest severity and discipline of art. The figures seem grouped for the effect of colour—the most striking contrasts are struck out, and then a third object, a piece of drapery, an uplifted arm, a bow and arrows, a straggling weed, is introduced to make an intermediate tint, or carry on the harmony. Every colour is melted, impasted into every other, with fine keeping and bold diversity. Look at that indignant, queen-like figure of Diana (more perhaps like an offended mortal princess, than an immortal Goddess, though the immortals could frown and give themselves strange airs), and see the snowy, ermine-like skin; the pale clear shadows of the delicately formed back; then the brown colour of the slender trees behind to set off the shaded flesh; and last, the dark figure of the Ethiopian girl behind, completing the gradation. Then the bright scarf suspended in the air connects itself with the glowing clouds, and deepens the solemn azure of the sky: Actæon’s bow and arrows fallen on the ground are also red; and there is a little flower on the brink of the Bath which catches and pleases the eye, saturated with this colour. The yellowish grey of the earth purifies the low tone of the figures where they are in half-shadow; and this again is enlivened by the leaden-coloured fountain of the Bath, which is set off (or kept down in its proper place) by the blue vestments strown near it. The figure of Actæon is spirited and natural; it is that of a bold rough hunter in the early ages, struck with surprise, abashed with beauty. The forms of some of the female figures are elegant enough, particularly that of Diana in the story of Calisto; and there is a very pretty-faced girl mischievously dragging the culprit forward; but it is the texture of the flesh that is throughout delicious, unrivalled, surpassingly fair. The landscape canopies the living scene with a sort of proud, disdainful consciousness. The trees nod to it, and the hills roll at a distance in a sea of colour. Every where tone, not form, predominates—there is not a distinct line in the picture—but a gusto, a rich taste of colour is left upon the eye as if it were the palate, and the diapason of picturesque harmony is full to overflowing. ‘Oh Titian and Nature! which of you copied the other?’
We are ashamed of this description, now that we have made it, and heartily wish somebody would make a better. There is another Titian here (which was also in the Orleans Gallery),[3] Venus rising from the sea. The figure and face are gracefully designed and sweetly expressed:—whether it is the picture of the Goddess of Love, may admit of a question; that it is the picture of a lovely woman in a lovely attitude, admits of none. The half-shadow in which most of it is painted, is a kind of veil through which the delicate skin shows more transparent and aerial. There is nothing in the picture but this single exquisitely turned figure, and if it were continued downward to a whole-length, it would seem like a copy of a statue of the Goddess carved in ivory or marble; but being only a half-length, it has not this effect at all, but looks like an enchanting study, or a part of a larger composition, selected a l’envie. The hair, and the arm holding it up, are nearly the same as in the well-known picture of Titian’s Mistress, and as delicious. The back-ground is beautifully painted. We said before, that there was no object in the picture detached from the principal figure. Nay, there is the sea, and a sea-shell, but these might be given in sculpture.—Under the Venus, is a portrait by Vandyke, of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, a most gentleman-like performance, mild, clear, intelligent, unassuming; and on the right of the spectator, a Madonna, by Guido, with the icy glow of sanctity upon it; and to the left, the Fable of Salmacis, by Albano (saving the ambiguity of the subject), exquisitely painted. Four finer specimens of the art can scarcely be found again in so small a compass. There is in another room a portrait, said to be by Moroni, and called Titian’s School-master, from a vague tradition, that he was in the habit of frequently visiting, in order to study and learn from it. If so, he must have profited by his assiduity; for it looks as if he had painted it. Not knowing any thing of Moroni, if we had been asked who had done it, we should have replied, ‘Either Titian or the Devil.’[4] It is considerably more laboured and minute than Titian; but the only objection at all staggering is, that it has less fiery animation than is ordinarily to be found in his pictures. Look at the portrait above it, for instance—Clement VII. by the great Venetian; and you find the eye looking at you again, as if it had been observing you all the time: but the eye in Titian’s School-master is an eye to look at, not to look with,[5] or if it looks at you, it does not look through you, which may be almost made a test of Titian’s heads. There is not the spirit, the intelligence within, moulding the expression, and giving it intensity of purpose and decision of character. In every other respect but this (and perhaps a certain want of breadth) it is as good as Titian. There is (we understand) a half-length of Clement VII. by Julio Romano, in the Papal Palace at Rome, in which he is represented as seated above the spectator, with the head elevated and the eye looking down like a camel’s, with an amazing dignity of aspect. The picture (Mr. Northcote says) is hard and ill-coloured, but, in strength of character and conception, superior to the Titian at the Marquis of Stafford’s. Titian, undoubtedly, put a good deal of his own character into his portraits. He was not himself filled with the ‘milk of human kindness.’ He got his brother, who promised to rival him in his own art, and of whom he was jealous, sent on a foreign embassy; and he so frightened Pordenone while he was painting an altar-piece for a church, that he worked with his palette and brushes in his hand, and a sword by his side.
We meet with one or two admirable portraits, particularly No. 112, by Tintoretto, which is of a fine fleshy tone, and A Doge of Venice, by Palma Vecchio, stamped with an expressive look of official and assumed dignity. There is a Bassan, No. 95, The Circumcision, the colours of which are somewhat dingy with age, and sunk into the canvas; but as the sun shone upon it while we were looking at it, it glittered all green and gold. Bassan’s execution is as fine as possible, and his colouring has a most striking harmonious effect.—We must not forget the Muleteers, supposed to be by Correggio, in which the figure of the Mule seems actually passing across the picture (you hear his bells); nor the little copy of his Marriage of St. Catherine, by L. Caracci, which is all over grace, delicacy, and sweetness. Any one may judge of his progress in a taste for the refinements of art, by his liking for this picture. Indeed, Correggio is the very essence of refinement. Among other pictures in the Italian division of the gallery, we would point out the Claudes (particularly Nos. 43 and 50,) which, though inferior to Mr. Angerstein’s as compositions, preserve more of the delicacy of execution, (or what Barry used to call ‘the fine oleaginous touches of Claude‘)—two small Gaspar Poussins, in which the landscape seems to have been just washed by a shower, and the storm blown over—the Death of Adonis, by Luca Cambiasi, an Orleans picture, lovely in sorrow, and in speechless agony, and faded like the life that is just expiring in it—a Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, by Alessandro Veronese, a very clever, and sensible, but rigidly painted picture[6]—an Albert Durer, the Death of the Virgin—a Female head, by Leonardo da Vinci—and the Woman taken in Adultery, by Pordenone, which last the reader may admire or not, as he pleases. We cannot close this list without referring to the Christ bearing his cross, by Domenichino, a picture full of interest and skill; and the little touching allegory of the Infant Christ sleeping on a cross, by Guido.
The Dutch School contains a number of excellent specimens of the best masters. There are two Tenierses, a Fair, and Boors merry-making, unrivalled for a look of the open air, for lively awkward gesture, and variety and grotesqueness of grouping and rustic character. There is a little picture, by Le Nain, called the Village Minstrel, with a set of youthful auditors, the most incorrigible little mischievous urchins we ever saw, but with admirable execution and expression. The Metzus are curious and fine—the Ostades admirable. Gerard Douw’s own portrait is certainly a gem. We noticed a Ruysdael in one corner of the room (No. 221), a dark, flat, wooded country, but delectable in tone and pencilling. Vandevelde’s Sea-pieces are capital—the water is smooth as glass, and the boats and vessels have the buoyancy of butterflies on it. The Seaport, by A. Cuyp, is miraculous for truth, brilliancy, and clearness, almost beyond actual water. These cannot be passed over; but there is a little picture which we beg to commend to the gentle reader, the Vangoyen, at the end of the room, No. 156, which has that yellow-tawny colour in the meads, and that grey chill look in the old convent, that give one the precise feeling of a mild day towards the end of winter, in a humid, marshy country. We many years ago copied a Vangoyen, a view of a Canal ‘with yellow tufted banks and gliding sail,’ modestly pencilled, truly felt—and have had an affection for him ever since. There is a small inner room with some most respectable modern pictures. Wilkie’s Breakfast-table is among them.
The Sacraments, by N. Poussin, occupy a separate room by themselves, and have a grand and solemn effect; but we could hardly see them where they are; and in general, we prefer his treatment of light and classical subjects to those of sacred history. He wanted weight for the last; or, if that word is objected to, we will change it, and say force.
On the whole, the Stafford Gallery is probably the most magnificent Collection this country can boast. The specimens of the different schools are as numerous as they are select; and they are equally calculated to delight the student by the degree, or to inform the uninitiated by the variety of excellence. Yet even this Collection is not complete. It is deficient in Rembrandts, Vandykes, and Rubenses; except one splendid allegory and fruit-piece by the last.
The palaces of Windsor and Hampton-court contain pictures worthy of the feelings we attach to the names of those places. The first boasts a number of individual pictures of great excellence and interest, and the last the Cartoons.
Windsor Castle is remarkable in many respects. Its tall, grey, square towers, seated on a striking eminence, overlook for many miles the subjacent country, and, eyed in the distance, lead the mind of the solitary traveller to romantic musing; or, approached nearer, give the heart a quicker and stronger pulsation. Windsor, besides its picturesque, commanding situation, and its being the only palace in the kingdom fit for the receptacle of ‘a line of kings,’ is the scene of many classical associations. Who can pass through Datchet, and the neighbouring greensward paths, and not think of Falstaff, of Ann Page, and the oak of Herne the hunter? Or if he does not, still he is affected by them as if he did. The tall slim deer glance startled by, in some neglected track of memory, and fairies trip it in the unconscious haunts of the imagination! Pope’s lines on Windsor Forest also suggest themselves to the mind in the same way, and make the air about it delicate. Gray has consecrated the same spot by his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College; and the finest passage in Burke’s writings is his comparison of the British Monarchy to ‘the proud Keep of Windsor.’ The walls and massy towers of Windsor Castle are indeed built of solid stone, weather-beaten, time-proof; but the image answering to them in the mind’s eye is woven of pure thought and the airy films of the imagination—Arachne’s web not finer!
The rooms are chill and comfortless at this time of the year,[7] and gilded ceilings look down on smoky fire-places. The view from the windows, too, which is so rich and glowing in the summer-time, is desolate and deformed with the rains overflowing the marshy grounds. As to physical comfort, one seems to have no more of it in these tapestried halls and on marble floors, than the poor bird driven before the pelting storm, or the ploughboy seeking shelter from the drizzling sky, in his sheep-skin jacket and clouted shoes, beneath the dripping, leafless spray. The palace does not (more than the hovel) always defend us against the winter’s cold. The apartments are also filled with too many rubbishly pictures of kings and queens—there are too many of Verrio’s paintings, and a whole roomful of West’s; but there are ten or twenty pictures which the eye, having once seen, never loses sight of, and that make Windsor one of the retreats and treasuries of art in this country. These, however, are chiefly pictures which have a personal and individual interest attached to them, as we have already hinted: there are very few historical compositions of any value, and the subjects of the others are so desultory that the young person who shows them, and goes through the names of the painters and portraits very correctly, said she very nearly went out of her mind in the three weeks she was ‘studying her part.’ It is a matter of nomenclature: we hope we shall make as few blunders in our report as she did.
In the first room the stranger is shown into, there are two large landscapes by Zuccarelli. They are clever, well-painted pictures; but they are worth nothing. The fault of this artist is, that there is nothing absolutely good or bad in his pictures. They are mere handicraft. The whole is done with a certain mechanical ease and indifference; but it is evident no part of the picture gave him any pleasure, and it is impossible it should give the spectator any. His only ambition was to execute his task so as to save his credit; and your first impulse is, to turn away from the picture, and save your time.
In the next room, there are four Vandykes—two of them excellent. One is the Duchess of Richmond, a whole-length, in a white satin drapery, with a pet lamb. The expression of her face is a little sullen and capricious. The other, the Countess of Carlisle, has a shrewd, clever, sensible countenance; and, in a certain archness of look, and the contour of the lower part of the face, resembles the late Mrs. Jordan.—Between these two portraits is a copy after Rembrandt, by Gainsborough, a fine sombre, mellow head, with the hat flapped over the face.
Among the most delightful and interesting of the pictures in this Collection, is the portrait by Vandyke, of Lady Venetia Digby. It is an allegorical composition: but what truth, what purity, what delicacy in the execution! You are introduced into the presence of a beautiful woman of quality of a former age, and it would be next to impossible to perform an unbecoming action with that portrait hanging in the room. It has an air of nobility about it, a spirit of humanity within it. There is a dove-like innocence and softness about the eyes; in the clear, delicate complexion, health and sorrow contend for the mastery; the mouth is sweetness itself, the nose highly intelligent, and the forehead is one of ‘clear-spirited thought.’ But misfortune has touched all this grace and beauty, and left its canker there. This is shown no less by the air that pervades it, than by the accompanying emblems. The children in particular are exquisitely painted, and have an evident reference to those we lately noticed in the Four Ages, by Titian. This portrait, both from the style and subject, reminds one forcibly of Mrs. Hutchinson’s admirable Memoirs of her own Life. Both are equally history, and the history of the female heart (depicted, in the one case, by the pencil, in the other, by the pen) in the finest age of female accomplishment and pious devotion. Look at this portrait, breathing the beauty of virtue, and compare it with the ‘Beauties’ of Charles II.’s court, by Lely. They look just like what they were—a set of kept-mistresses, painted, tawdry, showing off their theatrical or meretricious airs and graces, without one trace of real elegance or refinement, or one spark of sentiment to touch the heart. Lady Grammont is the handsomest of them; and, though the most voluptuous in her attire and attitude, the most decent. The Duchess of Portsmouth, in her helmet and plumes, looks quite like a heroine of romance or modern Amazon; but for an air of easy assurance, inviting admiration, and alarmed at nothing but being thought coy, commend us to my lady——above, in the sky-blue drapery, thrown carelessly across her shoulders! As paintings, these celebrated portraits cannot rank very high. They have an affected ease, but a real hardness of manner and execution; and they have that contortion of attitude and setness of features which we afterwards find carried to so disgusting and insipid an excess in Kneller’s portraits. Sir Peter Lely was, however, a better painter than Sir Godfrey Kneller—that is the highest praise that can be accorded to him. He had more spirit, more originality, and was the livelier coxcomb of the two! Both these painters possessed considerable mechanical dexterity, but it is not of a refined kind. Neither of them could be ranked among great painters, yet they were thought by their contemporaries and themselves superior to every one. At the distance of a hundred years we see the thing plainly enough.
In the same room with the portrait of Lady Digby, there is one of Killigrew and Carew, by the same masterly hand. There is spirit and character in the profile of Carew, while the head of Killigrew is surprising from its composure and sedateness of aspect. He was one of the grave wits of the day, who made nonsense a profound study, and turned trifles into philosophy, and philosophy into a jest. The pale, sallow complexion of this head is throughout in wonderful keeping. The beard and face seem nearly of the same colour. We often see this clear uniform colour of the skin in Titian’s portraits. But then the dark eyes, beard, and eye-brows, give relief and distinctness. The fair hair and complexions, that Vandyke usually painted, with the almost total absence of shade from his pictures, made the task more difficult; and, indeed, the prominence and effect he produces in this respect, without any of the usual means, are almost miraculous.
There are several of his portraits, equestrian and others, of Charles I. in this Collection, some of them good, none of them first-rate. Those of Henrietta (his Queen) are always delightful. The painter has made her the most lady-like of Queens, and of women.
The family picture of the Children of Charles I. is certainly admirably painted and managed. The large mastiff-dog is inimitably fine and true to nature, and seems as if he was made to be pulled about by a parcel of royal infants from generation to generation. In general, it may be objected to Vandyke’s dressed children, that they look like little old men and women. His grown-up people had too much stiffness and formality; and the same thing must quite overlay the playfulness of infancy. Yet what a difference between these young princes of the House of Stuart, and two of the princes of the reigning family with their mother, by Ramsay, which are evident likenesses to this hour!
We have lost our reckoning as to the order of the pictures and rooms in which they are placed, and must proceed promiscuously through the remainder of our Catalogue.
One of the most noted pictures at Windsor is that of the Misers, by Quintin Matsys. Its name is greater than its merits, like many other pictures which have a lucky or intelligible subject, boldly executed. The conception is good, the colouring bad; the drawing firm, and the expression coarse and obvious. We are sorry to speak at all disparagingly of Quintin Matsys; for the story goes that he was originally bred a blacksmith, and turned painter to gain his master’s daughter, who would give her hand to no one but on that condition. Happy he who thus gained the object of his love, though posterity may differ about his merits as an artist! Yet it is certain, that any romantic incident of this kind, connected with a well-known work, inclines us to regard it with a favourable instead of a critical eye, by enhancing our pleasure in it; as the eccentric character, the wild subjects, and the sounding name of Salvator Rosa have tended to lift him into the highest rank of fame among painters.
In the same room with the Misers, by the Blacksmith of Antwerp, is a very different picture by Titian, consisting of two figures also, viz. Himself and a Venetian Senator. It is one of the finest specimens of this master. His own portrait is not much: it has spirit, but is hard, with somewhat of a vulgar, knowing look. But the head of the Senator is as fine as anything that ever proceeded from the hand of man. The expression is a lambent flame, a soul of fire dimmed, not quenched by age. The flesh is flesh. If Rubens’s pencil fed upon roses, Titian’s was carnivorous. The tone is betwixt a gold and silver hue. The texture and pencilling are marrowy. The dress is a rich crimson, which seems to have been growing deeper ever since it was painted. It is a front view. As far as attitude or action is concerned, it is mere still-life; but the look is of that kind that goes through you at a single glance. Let any one look well at this portrait, and if he then sees nothing in it, or in the portraits of this painter in general, let him give up virtù and criticism in despair.
This room is rich in valuable gems, which might serve as a test of a real taste for the art, depending for their value on intrinsic qualities, and not on imposing subjects, or mechanical arrangement or quantity. As where ‘the still, small voice of reason’ is wanting, we judge of actions by noisy success and popularity; so where there is no true moral sense in art, nothing goes down but pomp, and bustle, and pretension. The eye of taste looks to see if a work has nature’s finest image and superscription upon it, and for no other title and passport to fame. There is a Young Man’s Head, (we believe in one corner of this room) by Holbein, in which we can read high and heroic thoughts and resolutions, better than in any Continence of Scipio we ever saw, or than in all the Battles of Alexander thrown into a lump. There is a Portrait of Erasmus, by the same, and in the same or an adjoining room, in which we see into the mind of a scholar and of an amiable man, as through a window. There is a Head by Parmegiano, lofty, triumphant, showing the spirit of another age and clime—one by Raphael, studious and self-involved—another, said to be by Leonardo da Vinci (but more like Holbein) grown crabbed with age and thought—and a girl reading, by Correggio, intent on her subject, and not forgetting herself. These are the materials of history; and if it is not made of them, it is a nickname or a mockery. All that does not lay open the fine net-work of the heart and brain of man, that does not make us see deeper into the soul, is but the apparatus and machinery of history-painting, and no more to it than the frame is to the picture.
We noticed a little Mater Dolorosa in one of the rooms, by Carlo Dolci, which is a pale, pleasing, expressive head. There are two large figures of his, a Magdalen and another, which are in the very falsest style of colouring and expression; and Youth and Age, by Denner, which are in as perfectly bad a taste and style of execution as anything we ever saw of this artist, who was an adept in that way.
We are afraid we have forgotten one or two meritorious pictures which we meant to notice. There is one we just recollect, a Portrait of a Youth in black, by Parmegiano. It is in a singular style, but very bold, expressive, and natural. There is (in the same apartment of the palace) a fine picture of the Battle of Norlingen, by Rubens. The size and spirit of the horses in the fore-ground, and the obvious animation of the riders, are finely contrasted with the airy perspective and mechanical grouping of the armies at a distance; and so as to prevent that confusion and want of positive relief, which usually pervade Battle-pieces. In the same room (opposite) is Kneller’s Chinese converted to Christianity—a portrait of which he was justly proud. It is a fine oil-picture, clear, tawny, without trick or affectation, and full of character. One of Kneller’s fine ladies or gentlemen, with their wigs and toupées, would have been mortally offended to have been so painted. The Chinese retains the same oily sly look, after his conversion as before, and seems just as incapable of a change of religion as a piece of terra cotta. On each side of this performance are two Guidos, the Perseus and Andromeda, and Venus attired by the Graces. We give the preference to the former. The Andromeda is a fine, noble figure, in a striking and even daring position, with an impassioned and highly-wrought expression of features; and the whole scene is in harmony with the subject. The Venus attired by the Graces (though full of beauties, particularly the colouring of the flesh in the frail Goddess) is formal and disjointed in the composition; and some of the actions are void of grace and even of decorum. We allude particularly to the Maid-in-waiting, who is combing her hair, and to the one tying on her sandals, with her arm crossing Venus’s leg at right angles. The Cupid in the window is as light and wanton as a butterfly flying out of it. He may be said to flutter and hover in his own delights. There are two capital engravings of these pictures by Strange.
This palace is a very magnificent one, and we think, has been undeservedly neglected. It is Dutch-built, of handsome red brick, and belongs to a class of houses, the taste for which appears to have been naturalised in this country along with the happy introduction of the Houses of Orange and Hanover. The approach to it through Bushy-Park is delightful, inspiriting at this time of year; and the gardens about it, with their close-clipped holly hedges and arbours of evergreen, look an artificial summer all the year round. The statues that are interspersed do not freeze in winter, and are cool and classical in the warmer seasons. The Toy-Inn stands opportunely at the entrance, to invite the feet of those who are tired of a straggling walk from Brentford or Kew, or oppressed with thought and wonder after seeing the Cartoons.
Besides these last, however, there are several fine pictures here. We shall pass over the Knellers, the Verrios, and the different portraits of the Royal Family, and come at once to the Nine Muses, by Tintoret. Or rather, his Nine Muses are summed up in one, the back-figure in the right-hand corner as you look at the picture, which is all grandeur, elegance, and grace.—We should think that in the gusto of form and a noble freedom of outline, Michael Angelo could hardly have surpassed this figure. The face too, which is half turned round, is charmingly handsome. The back, the shoulders, the legs, are the perfection of bold delicacy, expanded into full-blown luxuriance, and then retiring as it were from their own proud beauty and conscious charms into soft and airy loveliness—