Is it a Muse? Or is it not a figure formed for action more than contemplation? Perhaps this hypercritical objection may be true; and it might without any change of character or impropriety be supposed, from its buoyancy, its ease, and sinewy elasticity, to represent the quivered Goddess shaping her bow for the chase. But, at any rate, it is the figure of a Goddess, or of a woman in shape equal to a Goddess. The colour is nearly gone, so that it has almost the tone of a black and white chalk-drawing; and the effect of form remains pure and unrivalled. There are several other very pleasing and ably-drawn figures in the group, but they are eclipsed in the superior splendour of this one. So far the composition is faulty, for its balance is destroyed; and there are certain critics who could probably maintain that the picture would be better, if this capital excellence in it had been deliberately left out: the picture would, indeed, have been more according to rule, and to the taste of those who judge, feel, and see by rule only! Among the portraits which are curious, is one of Baccio Bandinelli, with his emblems and implements of sculpture about him, said to be by Correggio. We cannot pretend to give an opinion on this point; but it is a studious, powerful, and elaborately painted head. We find the name of Titian attached to two or three portraits in the Collection. There is one very fine one of a young man in black, with a black head of hair, the face seen in a three-quarter view, and the dark piercing eye, full of subtle meaning, looking round at you; which is probably by Titian, but certainly not (as it is pretended) of himself. It has not the aquiline cast of features by which his own portraits are obviously distinguished. We have seen a print of this picture, in which it is said to be done for Ignatius Loyola. The portrait of a lady with green and white purfled sleeves (like the leaves and flower of the water-lily, and as clear!) is admirable. It was in the Pall-Mall exhibition of the Old Masters a short time ago; and is by Sebastian del Piombo.—The care of the painting, the natural ease of the attitude, and the steady, sensible, conversable look of the countenance, place this in a class of pictures, which one feels a wish to have always by one’s side, whenever there is a want of thought, or a flaw in the temper, that requires filling up or setting to rights by some agreeable and at the same time not over-exciting object. There are several soi-disant Parmegianos; one or two good Bassans; a Battle-Piece set down to Julio Romano; a coloured drawing (in one corner of a room) of a Nymph and Satyr is very fine; and some of Polemberg’s little disagreeable pictures of the same subject, in which the Satyrs look like paltry bits of painted wood, and the Nymphs like glazed China-ware. We have a prejudice against Polemberg, which is a rare thing with us!
The Cartoons occupy a room by themselves—there are not many such rooms in the world. All other pictures look like oil and varnish to these—we are stopped and attracted by the colouring, the pencilling, the finishing, or the want of it, that is, by the instrumentalities of the art—but here the painter seems to have flung his mind upon the canvas; his thoughts, his great ideas alone prevail; there is nothing between us and the subject; we look through a frame, and see scripture-histories, and are made actual spectators of miraculous events. Not to speak it profanely, they are a sort of revelation of the subjects, of which they treat; there is an ease and freedom of manner about them, which brings preternatural characters and situations home to us, with the familiarity of common every-day occurrences; and while the figures fill, raise, and satisfy the mind, they seem to have cost the painter nothing. The Cartoons are unique productions in the art. They are mere intellectual, or rather visible abstractions of truth and nature. Every where else we see the means; here we arrive at the end apparently without any means. There is a Spirit at work in the divine creation before us. We are unconscious of any details, of any steps taken, of any progress made; we are aware only of comprehensive results, of whole masses and figures. The sense of power supersedes the appearance of effort. It is like a waking dream, vivid, but undistinguishable in member, joint, or limb; or it is as if we had ourselves seen the persons and things at some former period of our being, and that the drawing certain dotted lines upon coarse paper, by some unknown spell, brought back the entire and living images, and made them pass before us, palpable to thought, to feeling, and to sight. Perhaps not all is owing to genius: something of this effect may be ascribed to the simplicity of the vehicle employed in embodying the story, and something to the decayed and dilapidated state of the pictures themselves. They are the more majestic for being in ruin: we are struck chiefly with the truth of proportion, and the range of conception: all the petty, meretricious part of the art is dead in them; the carnal is made spiritual, the corruptible has put on incorruption, and, amidst the wreck of colour, and the mouldering of material beauty, nothing is left but a universe of thought, or the broad, imminent shadows of ‘calm contemplation and majestic pains!’
The first in order is the Death of Ananias; and it is one of the noblest of these noble designs. The effect is striking; and the contrast between the steadfast, commanding attitude of the Apostles, and the convulsed and prostrate figure of Ananias on the floor, is finely imagined. It is much as if a group of persons on shore stood to witness the wreck of life and hope on the rocks and quicksands beneath them. The abruptness and severity of the transition are, however, broken and relieved by the other human interests in the picture. The Ananias is a masterly, a stupendous figure. The attitude, the drawing, the expression, the ease, the force, are alike wonderful. He falls so naturally, that it seems as if a person could fall in no other way; and yet of all the ways in which a human figure could fall, it is probably the most expressive of a person overwhelmed by and in the grasp of Divine vengeance. This is in some measure, we apprehend, the secret of Raphael’s success. Most painters, in studying an attitude, puzzle themselves to find out what will be picturesque, and what will be fine, and never discover it: Raphael only thought how a person would stand or fall naturally in such or such circumstances, and the picturesque and the fine followed as matters of course. Hence the unaffected force and dignity of his style, which are only another name for truth and nature under impressive and momentous circumstances. The distraction of the face, the inclination of the head on one side, are as fine as possible, and the agony is just verging to that point, in which it is relieved by death. The expression of ghastly wonder in the features of the man on the floor next him is also remarkable; and the mingled beauty, grief, and horror in the female head behind can never be enough admired or extolled. The pain, the sudden and violent contraction of the muscles, is as intense as if a sharp instrument had been driven into the forehead, and yet the same sweetness triumphs there as ever, the most perfect self-command and dignity of demeanour. We could hazard a conjecture that this is what forms the great distinction between the natural style of Raphael and the natural style of Hogarth. Both are equally intense; but the one is intense littleness, meanness, vulgarity; the other is intense grandeur, refinement, and sublimity. In the one we see common, or sometimes uncommon and painful, circumstances acting with all their force on narrow minds and deformed bodies, and bringing out distorted and violent efforts at expression; in the other we see noble forms and lofty characters contending with adverse, or co-operating with powerful impressions from without, and imparting their own unaltered grace, and habitual composure to them. In Hogarth, generally, the face is excited and torn in pieces by some paltry interest of its own; in Raphael, on the contrary, it is expanded and ennobled by the contemplation of some event or object highly interesting in itself: that is to say, the passion in the one is intellectual and abstracted; the passion in the other is petty, selfish, and confined. We have not thought it beneath the dignity of the subject to make this comparison between two of the most extraordinary and highly gifted persons that the world ever saw. If Raphael had seen Hogarth’s pictures, he would not have despised them. Those only can do it (and they are welcome!) who, wanting all that he had, can do nothing that he could not, or that they themselves pretend to accomplish by affectation and bombast.
Elymas the Sorcerer stands next in order, and is equal in merit. There is a Roman sternness and severity in the general look of the scene. The figure of the Apostle, who is inflicting the punishment of blindness on the impostor, is grand, commanding, full of ease and dignity: and the figure of Elymas is blind all over, and is muffled up in its clothes from head to foot. A story is told of Mr. Garrick’s objecting to the natural effect of the action, in the hearing of the late Mr. West, who, in vindication of the painter, requested the celebrated comedian to close his eyes and walk across the room, when he instantly stretched out his hands, and began to grope his way with the exact attitude and expression of this noble study. It may be worth remarking here, that this great painter and fine observer of human nature has represented the magician with a hard iron visage, and strong uncouth figure, made up of bones and muscles, as one not troubled with weak nerves, nor to be diverted from his purpose by idle scruples, as one who repelled all sympathy with others, who was not to be moved a jot by their censures or prejudices against him, and who could break with ease through the cobweb snares which he laid for the credulity of mankind, without being once entangled in his own delusions. His outward form betrays the hard, unimaginative, self-willed understanding of the Sorcerer.—There is a head (a profile) coming in on one side of the picture, which we would point out to our readers as one of the most finely relieved, and best preserved, in this series. The face of Elymas, and some others in the picture, have been a good deal hurt by time and ill-treatment. There is a snuffy look under the nose, as if the water colour had been washed away in some damp lumber-room, or unsheltered out-house. The Cartoons have felt ‘the seasons’ difference,’ being exposed to wind and rain, tossed about from place to place, and cut down by profane hands to fit them to one of their abodes; so that it is altogether wonderful, that ‘through their looped and tattered wretchedness,’ any traces are seen of their original splendour and beauty. That they are greatly changed from what they were even a hundred years ago, is evident from the heads in the Radcliffe library at Oxford, which were cut out from one of them that was nearly destroyed by some accident, and from the large French engravings of single heads, done about the same time, which are as finished and correct as possible. Even Sir James Thornhill’s copies bear testimony to the same effect. Though without the spirit of the originals, they have fewer blots and blotches in them, from having been better taken care of. A skeleton is barely left of the Cartoons: but their mighty relics, like the bones of the Mammoth, tell us what the entire and living fabric must have been!
In the Gate Beautiful there is a profusion of what is fine, and of imposing contrasts. The twisted pillars have been found fault with; but there they stand, and will for ever stand to answer all cavillers with their wreathed beauty. The St. John in this Cartoon is an instance of what we have above hinted as to the ravages of time on these pictures. In the old French engraving (half the size of life) the features are exceedingly well marked and beautiful, whereas they are here in a great measure defaced; and the hair, which is at present a mere clotted mass, is woven into graceful and waving curls,
Great inroads have been made on the delicate outline of the other parts, and the surface has been generally injured. The Beggars are as fine as ever: they do not lose by the squalid condition of their garb or features, but remain patriarchs of poverty, and mighty in disease and infirmity, as if they crawled and grovelled on the pavement of Heaven. They are lifted above this world! The child carrying the doves at his back is an exquisite example of grace, and innocence, and buoyant motion; and the face and figure of the young woman seen directly over him give a glad welcome to the eye in their fresh, unalloyed, and radiant sweetness and joy. This head seems to have been spared from the unhallowed touch of injury, like a little isle or circlet of beauty. It was guarded, we may suppose, by its own heavenly, feminine look of smiling loveliness. There is another very fine female head on the opposite side of the picture, of a graver cast, looking down, and nearly in profile. The only part of this Cartoon that we object to, or should be for turning out, is the lubberly naked figure of a boy close to one of the pillars, who seems to have no sort of business there, and is an obvious eye-sore.
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes is admirable for the clearness and prominence of the figures, for the vigorous marking of the muscles, for the fine expression of devout emotion in the St. Peter, and for the calm dignity in the attitude, and divine benignity in the countenance of the Christ. Perhaps this head expresses, more than any other that ever was attempted, the blended meekness, benevolence, and sublimity in the character of our Saviour. The whole figure is so still, so easy, it almost floats in air, and seems to sustain the boat by the secret sense of power. We shall not attempt to make a formal reply to the old objection to the diminutive size of the boat, but we confess it appears to us to enhance the value of the miracle. Its load swells proportionably in comparison, and the waves conspire to bear it up. The Storks on the shore are not the least animated or elevated part of the picture; they exult in the display of divine power, and share in the prodigality of the occasion.
The Sacrifice at Lystra has the marks of Raphael’s hand on every part of it. You see and almost hear what is passing. What a pleasing relief to the confused, busy scene, are the two children piping at the altar! How finely, how unexpectedly, but naturally, that innocent rustic head of a girl comes in over the grave countenances and weighty, thoughtful heads of the group of attendant priests! The animals brought to be sacrificed are equally fine in the expression of terror, and the action of resistance to the rude force by which they are dragged along.
A great deal has been said and written on the St. Paul preaching at Athens. The features of excellence in this composition are indeed so bold and striking as hardly to be mistaken. The abrupt figure of St. Paul, his hands raised in that fervent appeal to Him who ‘dwelleth not in temples made with hands,’ such as are seen in gorgeous splendour all around, the circle of his auditors, the noble and pointed diversity of heads, the one wrapped in thought and in its cowl, another resting on a crutch and earnestly scanning the face of the Apostle rather than his doctrine, the careless attention of the Epicurean philosopher, the fine young heads of the disciples of the Porch or the Academy, the clenched fist and eager curiosity of the man in front as if he was drinking sounds, give this picture a superiority over all the others for popular and intelligible effect. We do not think that it is therefore the best; but it is the easiest to describe and to remember.
The Giving of the Keys is the last of them: it is at present at Somerset-House. There is no set purpose here, no studied contrast: it is an aggregation of grandeur and high feeling. The disciples gather round Christ, like a flock of sheep listening to some divine shepherd. The figure of their master is sublime: his countenance and attitude ‘in act to speak.’ The landscape is also extremely fine and of a soothing character.—Every thing falls into its place in these pictures. The figures seem to stop just where their business and feelings bring them: not a fold in the draperies can be disposed of for the better or otherwise than it is.
It would be in vain to enumerate the particular figures, or to explain the story of works so well known: what we have aimed at has been to shew the spirit that breathes through them, and we shall count ourselves fortunate, if we have not sullied them with our praise. We do not care about some works: but these were sacred to our imaginations, and we should be sorry indeed to have profaned them by description or criticism. We have hurried through our unavoidable task with fear, and look back to it with doubt.
We seldom quit a mansion like that of which we have here to give some account, and return homewards, but we think of Warton’s Sonnet, written after seeing Wilton-house.
Having repeated these lines to ourselves, we sit quietly down in our chairs to con over our task, abstract the idea of exclusive property, and think only of those images of beauty and of grandeur, which we can carry away with us in our minds, and have every where before us. Let us take some of these, and describe them how we can.
There is one—we see it now—the Man with a Hawk, by Rembrandt. ‘In our mind’s eye, Horatio!’ What is the difference between this idea which we have brought away with us, and the picture on the wall? Has it lost any of its tone, its ease, its depth? The head turns round in the same graceful moving attitude, the eye carelessly meets ours, the tufted beard grows to the chin, the hawk flutters and balances himself on his favourite perch, his master’s hand; and a shadow seems passing over the picture, just leaving a light in one corner of it behind, to give a livelier effect to the whole. There is no mark of the pencil, no jagged points or solid masses; it is all air, and twilight might be supposed to have drawn his veil across it. It is as much an idea on the canvas, as it is in the mind. There are no means employed, as far as you can discover—you see nothing but a simple, grand, and natural effect. It is impalpable as a thought, intangible as a sound—nay, the shadows have a breathing harmony, and fling round an undulating echo of themselves,
In the opposite corner of the room is a Portrait of a Female (by the same), in which every thing is as clear, and pointed, and brought out into the open day, as in the former it is withdrawn from close and minute inspection. The face glitters with smiles as the ear-rings sparkle with light. The whole is stiff, starched, and formal, has a pearly or metallic look, and you throughout mark the most elaborate and careful finishing. The two pictures make an antithesis, where they are placed; but this was not probably at all intended: it proceeds simply from the difference in the nature of the subject, and the truth and appropriate power of the treatment of it.—In the middle between these two pictures is a small history, by Rembrandt, of the Salutation of Elizabeth, in which the figures come out straggling, disjointed, quaint, ugly as in a dream, but partake of the mysterious significance of preternatural communication, and are seen through the visible gloom, or through the dimmer night of antiquity. Light and shade, not form or feeling, were the elements of which Rembrandt composed the finest poetry, and his imagination brooded only over the medium through which we discern objects, leaving the objects themselves uninspired, unhallowed, and untouched!
We must go through our account of these pictures as they start up in our memory, not according to the order of their arrangement, for want of a proper set of memorandums. Our friend, Mr. Gummow, of Cleveland-house, had a nice little neatly-bound duodecimo Catalogue, of great use as a Vade Mecum to occasional visitants or absent critics—but here we have no such advantage; and to take notes before company is a thing that we abhor. It has a look of pilfering something from the pictures. While we merely enjoy the sight of the objects of art before us, or sympathise with the approving gaze of the greater beauty around us, it is well; there is a feeling of luxury and refinement in the employment; but take out a pocket-book, and begin to scribble notes in it, the date of the picture, the name, the room, some paltry defect, some pitiful discovery (not worth remembering), the non-essentials, the mechanic common-places of the art, and the sentiment is gone—you shew that you have a further object in view, a job to execute, a feeling foreign to the place, and different from every one else—you become a butt and a mark for ridicule to the rest of the company—and you retire with your pockets full of wisdom from a saloon of art, with as little right as you have to carry off the dessert, (or what you have not been able to consume,) from an inn, or a banquet. Such, at least, is our feeling; and we had rather make a mistake now and then, as to a numero, or the name of a room in which a picture is placed, than spoil our whole pleasure in looking at a fine Collection, and consequently the pleasure of the reader in learning what we thought of it.
Among the pictures that haunt our eye in this way is the Adoration of the Angels, by N. Poussin. It is one of his finest works—elegant, graceful, full of feeling, happy, enlivening. It is treated rather as a classical than as a sacred subject. The Angels are more like Cupids than Angels. They are, however, beautifully grouped, with various and expressive attitudes, and remind one, by their half antic, half serious homage, of the line—
They are laden with baskets of flowers—the tone of the picture is rosy, florid; it seems to have been painted at
and the angels over-head sport and gambol in the air with butterfly-wings, like butterflies. It is one of those rare productions that satisfy the mind, and from which we turn away, not from weariness, but from a fulness of delight.—The Israelites returning Thanks in the Wilderness is a fine picture, but inferior to this. Near it is a group of Angels, said to be by Correggio. The expressions are grotesque and fine, but the colouring does not seem to us to be his. The texture of the flesh, as well as the hue, too much resembles the skin of ripe fruit. We meet with several fine landscapes of the two Poussins, (particularly one of a rocky eminence by Gaspar,) in the room before you come to the Rembrandts, in which the mixture of grey rock and green trees and shrubs is beautifully managed, with striking truth and clearness.
Among detached and smaller pictures, we would wish to point out to the attention of our readers, an exquisite head of a Child, by Andrea del Sarto, and a fine Salvator in the inner room of all: in the room leading to it, a pleasing, glassy Cuyp, an airy, earthy-looking Teniers, and a Mother and a Sleeping Child, by Guido: in the Saloon, a St. Catherine, one of Parmegiano’s most graceful pictures; a St. Agnes, by Domenichino, full of sweetness, thought, and feeling; and two pictures by Raphael, that have a look as if painted on paper: a Repose in Egypt, and St. Luke painting the Virgin, both admirable for drawing and expression, and a rich, purple, crayon tone of colouring. Wherever Raphael is, there is grace and dignity, and an informing soul. In the last-mentioned room, near the entrance, is also a Conversion of Saint Paul, by Rubens, of infinite spirit, brilliancy, and delicacy of execution.
But it is in the large room to the right, that the splendour and power of Rubens reign triumphant and unrivalled, and yet he has here to contend with highest works and names. The four large pictures of ecclesiastical subjects, the Meeting of Abram and Melchisedec, the Gathering of Manna, the Evangelists, and the Fathers of the Church, have no match in this country for scenic pomp, and dazzling airy effect. The figures are colossal; and it might be said, without much extravagance, that the drawing and colouring are so too.[8] He seems to have painted with a huge sweeping gigantic pencil, and with broad masses of unalloyed colour. The spectator is (as it were) thrown back by the pictures, and surveys them, as if placed at a stupendous height, as well as distance from him. This, indeed, is their history: they were painted to be placed in some Jesuit’s church abroad, at an elevation of forty or fifty feet, and Rubens would have started to see them in a drawing-room or on the ground. Had he foreseen such a result, he would perhaps have added something to the correctness of the features, and taken something from the gorgeous crudeness of the colour. But there is grandeur of composition, involution of form, motion, character in its vast, rude outline, the imposing contrast of sky and flesh, fine grotesque heads of old age, florid youth, and fawn-like beauty! You see nothing but patriarchs, primeval men and women, walking among temples, or treading the sky—or the earth, with an ‘air and gesture proudly eminent,’ as if they trod the sky—when man first rose from nothing to his native sublimity. We cannot describe these pictures in their details; they are one staggering blow after another of the mighty hand that traced them. All is cast in the same mould, all is filled with the same spirit, all is clad in the same gaudy robe of light. Rubens was at home here; his forte was the processional, the showy, and the imposing; he grew almost drunk and wanton with the sense of his power over such subjects; and he, in fact, left these pictures unfinished in some particulars, that, for the place and object for which they were intended, they might be perfect. They were done (it is said) for tapestries from small designs, and carried nearly to their present state of finishing by his scholars. There is a smaller picture in the same room, Ixion embracing the false Juno, which points out and defines their style of art and adaptation for remote effect. There is a delicacy in this last picture (which is, however of the size of life) that makes it look like a miniature in comparison. The flesh of the women is like lilies, or like milk strewed upon ivory. It is soft and pearly; but, in the larger pictures, it is heightened beyond nature, the veil of air between the spectator and the figures, when placed in the proper position, being supposed to give the last finishing. Near the Ixion is an historical female figure, by Guido, which will not bear any comparison for transparency and delicacy of tint with the two Junos.—Rubens was undoubtedly the greatest scene-painter in the world, if we except Paul Veronese, and the Fleming was to him flat and insipid. ‘It is place which lessens and sets off.’ We once saw two pictures of Rubens’ hung by the side of the Marriage of Cana in the Louvre; and they looked nothing. The Paul Veronese nearly occupied the side of a large room (the modern French exhibition-room) and it was like looking through the side of a wall, or at a splendid banquet and gallery, full of people, and full of interest. The texture of the two Rubenses was woolly, or flowery, or satiny: it was all alike; but in the Venetian’s great work the pillars were of stone, the floor was marble, the tables were wood, the dresses were various stuffs, the sky was air, the flesh was flesh; the groups were living men and women. Turks, emperours, ladies, painters, musicians—all was real, dazzling, profuse, astonishing. It seemed as if the very dogs under the table might get up and bark, or that at the sound of a trumpet the whole assembly might rise and disperse in different directions, in an instant. This picture, however, was considered as the triumph of Paul Veronese, and the two by the Flemish artist that hung beside it were very inferior to some of his, and assuredly to those now exhibited in the Gallery at Lord Grosvenor’s. Neither do we wish by this allusion to disparage Rubens; for we think him on the whole a greater genius, and a greater painter, than the rival we have here opposed to him, as we may attempt to shew when we come to speak of the Collection at Blenheim.
There are some divine Claudes in the same room; and they too are like looking through a window at a select and conscious landscape. There are five or six, all capital for the composition, and highly preserved. There is a strange and somewhat anomalous one of Christ in the Mount, as if the artist had tried to contradict himself, and yet it is Claude all over. Nobody but he could paint one single atom of it. The Mount is stuck up in the very centre of the picture, against all rule, like a huge dirt-pye: but then what an air breathes round it, what a sea encircles it, what verdure clothes it, what flocks and herds feed round it, immortal and unchanged! Close by it is the Arch of Constantine; but this is to us a bitter disappointment. A print of it hung in a little room in the country, where we used to contemplate it by the hour together, and day after day, and ‘sigh our souls’ into the picture. It was the most graceful, the most perfect of all Claude’s compositions. The Temple seemed to come forward into the middle of the picture, as in a dance, to show its unrivalled beauty, the Vashti of the scene! Young trees bent their branches over it with playful tenderness; and, on the opposite side of a stream, at which cattle stooped to drink, there grew a stately grove, erect, with answering looks of beauty: the distance between retired into air and gleaming shores. Never was there scene so fair, ‘so absolute, that in itself summ’d all delight.’ How did we wish to compare it with the picture! The trees, we thought, must be of vernal green—the sky recalled the mild dawn, or softened evening. No, the branches of the trees are red, the sky burned up, the whole hard and uncomfortable. This is not the picture, the print of which we used to gaze at enamoured—there is another somewhere that we still shall see! There are finer specimens of the Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire, at Lord Radnor’s, in Wiltshire. Those here have a more polished, cleaned look, but we cannot prefer them on that account. In one corner of the room is a St. Bruno, by Andrea Sacchi—a fine study, with pale face and garments, a saint dying (as it should seem)—but as he dies, conscious of an undying spirit. The old Catholic painters put the soul of religion into their pictures—for they felt it within themselves.
There are two Titians—the Woman taken in Adultery, and a large mountainous landscape with the story of Jupiter and Antiope. The last is rich and striking, but not equal to his best; and the former, we think, one of his most exceptionable pictures, both in character, and (we add) colouring. In the last particular, it is tricky, and discovers, instead of concealing its art. The flesh is not transparent, but a transparency! Let us not forget a fine Synders, a Boar-hunt, which is highly spirited and natural, as far as the animals are concerned; but is patchy, and wants the tone and general effect that Rubens would have thrown over it. In the middle of the right-hand side of the room, is the Meeting of Jacob and Laban, by Murillo. It is a lively, out-of-door scene, full of bustle and expression; but it rather brings us to the tents and faces of two bands of gypsies meeting on a common heath, than carries us back to the remote times, places, and events, treated of. Murillo was the painter of nature, not of the imagination. There is a Sleeping Child by him, over the door of the saloon (an admirable cabinet-picture), and another of a boy, a little spirited rustic, brown, glowing, ‘of the earth, earthy,’ the flesh thoroughly baked, as if he had come out of an oven; and who regards you with a look as if he was afraid you might bind him apprentice to some trade or handicraft, or send him to a Sunday-school; and so put an end to his short, happy, careless life—to his lessons from that great teacher, the Sun—to his physic, the air—to his bed, the earth—and to the soul of his very being, Liberty!
The first room you enter is filled with some very good and some very bad English pictures. There is Hogarth’s Distressed Poet—the Death of Wolfe, by West, which is not so good as the print would lead us to expect—an excellent whole-length portrait of a youth, by Gainsborough—A Man with a Hawk, by Northcote, and Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, by Sir Joshua. This portrait Lord Grosvenor bought the other day for £1760. It has risen in price every time it has been sold. Sir Joshua sold it for two or three hundred pounds to a Mr. Calonne. It was then purchased by Mr. Desenfans who parted with it to Mr. William Smith for a larger sum (we believe £500); and at the sale of that gentleman’s pictures, it was bought by Mr. Watson Taylor, the last proprietor, for a thousand guineas. While it was in the possession of Mr. Desenfans, a copy of it was taken by a pupil of Sir Joshua’s, of the name of Score, which is now in the Dulwich Gallery, and which we always took for an original. The size of the original is larger than the copy. There was a dead child painted at the bottom of it, which Sir Joshua Reynolds afterwards disliked, and he had the canvas doubled upon the frame to hide it. It has been let out again, but we did not observe whether the child was there. We think it had better not be seen.
We do not wish to draw invidious comparisons; yet we may say, in reference to the pictures in Lord Grosvenor’s Collection, and those at Cleveland-house, that the former are distinguished most by elegance, brilliancy, and high preservation; while those belonging to the Marquis of Stafford look more like old pictures, and have a corresponding tone of richness and magnificence. We have endeavoured to do justice to both, but we confess we have fallen very short even of our own hopes and expectations.
Salisbury Plain, barren as it is, is rich in collections and monuments of art. There are, within the distance of a few miles, Wilton, Longford-Castle, Fonthill-Abbey, Stourhead, and last though not least worthy to be mentioned, Stonehenge, that ‘huge, dumb heap,’ that stands on the blasted heath, and looks like a group of giants, bewildered, not knowing what to do, encumbering the earth, and turned to stone, while in the act of warring on Heaven. An attempt has lately been made to give to it an antediluvian origin. Its mystic round is in all probability fated to remain inscrutable, a mighty maze without a plan: but still the imagination, when once curiosity and wonder have taken possession of it, heaves with its restless load, launches conjecture farther and farther back beyond the landmarks of time, and strives to bear down all impediments in its course, as the ocean strives to overleap some vast promontory!
Fonthill-Abbey, which was formerly hermetically sealed against all intrusion,[9] is at present open to the whole world; and Wilton-House, and Longford-Castle, which were formerly open to every one, are at present shut, except to petitioners, and a favoured few. Why is this greater degree of strictness in the latter instances resorted to? In proportion as the taste for works of art becomes more general, do these Noble Persons wish to set bounds to and disappoint public curiosity? Do they think that the admiration bestowed on fine pictures or rare sculpture lessens their value, or divides the property, as well as the pleasure with the possessor? Or do they think that setting aside the formality of these new regulations, three persons in the course of a whole year would intrude out of an impertinent curiosity to see their houses and furniture, without having a just value for them as objects of art? Or is the expence of keeping servants to shew the apartments made the plea of this churlish, narrow system? The public are ready enough to pay servants for their attendance, and those persons are quite as forward to do this who make a pilgrimage to such places on foot as those who approach them in a post-chaise or on horseback with a livery servant, which, it seems, is the prescribed and fashionable etiquette! Whatever is the cause, we are sorry for it; more particularly as it compels us to speak of these two admired Collections from memory only. It is several years since we saw them; but there are some impressions of this sort that are proof against time.
Lord Radnor has the two famous Claudes, the Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire. Though as landscapes they are neither so brilliant, nor finished, nor varied, as some of this Artist’s, there is a weight and concentration of historic feeling about them which many of his allegorical productions want. In the first, half-finished buildings and massy columns rise amidst the dawning effulgence that is streaked with rims of inextinguishable light; and a noble tree in the foreground, ample, luxuriant, hangs and broods over the growing design. There is a dim mistiness spread over the scene, as in the beginning of things. The Evening, the companion to it, is even finer. It has all the gorgeous pomp that attends the meeting of Night and Day, and a flood of glory still prevails over the coming shadows. In the cool of the evening, some cattle are feeding on the brink of a glassy stream, that reflects a mouldering ruin on one side of the picture; and so precise is the touch, so true, so firm is the pencilling, so classical the outline, that they give one the idea of sculptured cattle, biting the short, green turf, and seem an enchanted herd! They appear stamped on the canvas to remain there for ever, or as if nothing could root them from the spot. Truth with beauty suggests the feeling of immortality. No Dutch picture ever suggested this feeling. The objects are real, it is true; but not being beautiful or impressive, the mind feels no wish to mould them into a permanent reality, to bind them fondly on the heart, or lock them in the imagination as in a sacred recess, safe from the envious canker of time. No one ever felt a longing, a sickness of the heart, to see a Dutch landscape twice; but those of Claude, after an absence of years, have this effect, and produce a kind of calenture. The reason of the difference is, that in mere literal copies from nature, where the objects are not interesting in themselves, the only attraction is to see the felicity of the execution; and having once witnessed this, we are satisfied. But there is nothing to stir the fancy, to keep alive the yearnings of passion. We remember one other picture (and but one) in Lord Radnor’s Collection, that was of this ideal character. It was a Magdalen by Guido, with streaming hair, and streaming eyes looking upwards-full of sentiment and beauty.
There is but one fine picture at Wilton-house, the Family Vandyke; with a noble Gallery of antique marbles, which we may pronounce to be invaluable to the lover of art or to the student of history or human nature. Roman Emperors or Proconsuls, the poets, orators, and almost all the great men of antiquity, are here ‘ranged in a row,’ and palpably embodied either in genuine or traditional busts. Some of these indicate an almost preternatural capacity and inspired awfulness of look, particularly some of the earlier sages and fabulists of Greece, which we apprehend to be ideal representations; while other more modern and better authenticated ones of celebrated Romans are distinguished by the strength and simplicity of common English heads of the best class.—The large picture of the Pembroke Family, by Vandyke, is unrivalled in its kind. It is a history of the time. It throws us nearly two centuries back to men and manners that no longer exist. The members of a Noble House (‘tis a hundred and sixty years since) are brought together in propriâ persona, and appear in all the varieties of age, character, and costume. There are the old Lord and Lady Pembroke, who ‘keep their state’ raised somewhat above the other groups;—the one a lively old gentleman, who seems as if he could once have whispered a flattering tale in a fair lady’s ear; his help-mate looking a little fat and sulky by his side, probably calculating the expence of the picture, and not well understanding the event of it—there are the daughters, pretty, well-dressed, elegant girls, but somewhat insipid, sentimental, and vacant—then there are the two eldest sons, that might be said to have walked out of Mr. Burke’s description of the age of chivalry; the one a perfect courtier, a carpet-knight, smooth-faced, handsome, almost effeminate, that seems to have moved all his life to ‘the mood of lutes and soft recorders,’ decked in silks and embroidery like the tender flower issuing from its glossy folds; the other the gallant soldier, shrewd, bold, hardy, with spurred heel and tawny buskins, ready to ‘mount on barbed steeds, and witch the world with noble horsemanship’—down to the untutored, carroty-headed boy, the Goose-Gibbie of the piece, who appears to have been just dragged from the farm-yard to sit for his picture, and stares about him in as great a heat and fright as if he had dropped from the clouds:—all in this admirable, living composition is in its place, in keeping, and bears the stamp of the age and of the master’s hand. Even the oak-pannels have an elaborate, antiquated look, and the furniture has an aspect of cumbrous, conscious dignity. It should not be omitted that it was here (in the house or the adjoining magnificent grounds) that Sir Philip Sidney wrote his Arcadia; and the story of Musidorus and Philoclea, of Mopsa and Dorcas, is quaintly traced on oval pannels in the principal drawing-room.
It is on this account that we are compelled to find fault with the Collection at Fonthill Abbey, because it exhibits no picture of remarkable eminence that can be ranked as an heir-loom of the imagination—which cannot be spoken of but our thoughts take wing and stretch themselves towards it—the very name of which is music to the instructed ear. We would not give a rush to see any Collection that does not contain some single picture at least, that haunts us with an uneasy sense of joy for twenty miles of road, that may cheer us at intervals for twenty years of life to come. Without some such thoughts as these riveted in the brain, the lover and disciple of art would truly be ‘of all men the most miserable:’ but with them hovering round him, and ever and anon shining with their glad lustre into his sleepless soul, he has nothing to fear from fate, or fortune. We look, and lo! here is one at our side, facing us, though far-distant. It is the Young Man’s Head, in the Louvre, by Titian, that is not unlike Jeronymo della Porretta in Sir Charles Grandison. What a look is there of calm, unalterable self-possession—
that draws the evil out of human life, that while we look at it transfers the same sentiment to our own breasts, and makes us feel as if nothing mean or little could ever disturb us again! This is high art; the rest is mechanical. But there is nothing like this at Fonthill (oh! no), but every thing which is the very reverse. As this, however, is an extreme opinion of ours, and may be a prejudice, we shall endeavour to support it by facts. There is not then a single Titian in all this boasted and expensive Collection—there is not a Raphael—there is not a Rubens (except one small sketch)—there is not a Guido, nor a Vandyke—there is not a Rembrandt, there is not a Nicolo Poussin, nor a fine Claude. The two Altieri Claudes, which might have redeemed Fonthill, Mr. Beckford sold. What shall we say to a Collection, which uniformly and deliberately rejects every great work, and every great name in art, to make room for idle rarities and curiosities of mechanical skill? It was hardly necessary to build a cathedral to set up a toy-shop! Who would paint a miniature-picture to hang it at the top of the Monument? This huge pile (capable of better things) is cut up into a parcel of little rooms, and those little rooms are stuck full of little pictures, and bijouterie. Mr. Beckford may talk of his Diamond Berchem, and so on: this is but the language of a petit-maitre in art; but the author of Vathek (with his leave) is not a petit-maitre. His genius, as a writer, ‘hath a devil:’ his taste in pictures is the quintessence and rectified spirit of still-life. He seems not to be susceptible of the poetry of painting, or else to set his face against it. It is obviously a first principle with him to exclude whatever has feeling or imagination—to polish the surface, and suppress the soul of art—to proscribe, by a sweeping clause or at one fell swoop, every thing approaching to grace, or beauty, or grandeur—to crush the sense of pleasure or of power in embryo—and to reduce all nature and art, as far as possible, to the texture and level of a China dish—smooth, glittering, cold, and unfeeling! We do not object so much to the predilection for Teniers, Wouvermans, or Ostade—we like to see natural objects naturally painted—but we unequivocally hate the affectedly mean, the elaborately little, the ostentatiously perverse and distorted, Polemberg’s walls of amber, Mieris’s groups of steel, Vanderwerf’s ivory flesh;—yet these are the chief delights of the late proprietor of Fonthill-abbey! Is it that his mind is ‘a volcano burnt out,’ and that he likes his senses to repose and be gratified with Persian carpets and enamelled pictures? Or are there not traces of the same infirmity of feeling even in the high-souled Vathek, who compliments the complexion of the two pages of Fakreddin as being equal to ‘the porcelain of Franguestan?’ Alas! Who would have thought that the Caliph Vathek would have dwindled down into an Emperor of China and King of Japan? But so it is.—
Stourhead, the seat of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, did not answer our expectations. But Stourton, the village where it stands, made up for our disappointment. After passing the park-gate, which is a beautiful and venerable relic, you descend into Stourton by a sharp-winding declivity, almost like going underground, between high hedges of laurel trees, and with an expanse of woods and water spread beneath. It is a sort of rural Herculaneum, a subterranean retreat. The inn is like a modernized guard-house; the village-church stands on a lawn without any inclosure; a row of cottages facing it, with their white-washed walls and flaunting honey-suckles, are neatness itself. Every thing has an air of elegance, and yet tells a tale of other times. It is a place that might be held sacred to stillness and solitary musing!—The adjoining mansion of Stourhead commands an extensive view of Salisbury Plain, whose undulating swells shew the earth in its primeval simplicity, bare, with naked breasts, and varied in its appearance only by the shadows of the clouds that pass across it. The view without is pleasing and singular: there is little within-doors to beguile attention. There is one master-piece of colouring by Paul Veronese, a naked child with a dog. The tone of the flesh is perfection itself. On praising this picture (which we always do when we like a thing) we were told it had been criticized by a great judge, Mr. Beckford of Fonthill, who had found fault with the execution as too coarse and muscular. We do not wonder—it is not like his own turnery-ware! We should also mention an exquisite Holbein, the Head of a Child, and a very pleasing little landscape by Wilson. Besides these, there are some capital pen-and-ink drawings (views in Venice), by Canaletti, and three large copies after Guido of the Venus attired by the Graces, the Andromeda, and Herodias’s Daughter. They breathe the soul of softness and grace, and remind one of those fair, sylph-like forms that sometimes descend upon the earth with fatal, fascinating looks, and that ‘tempt but to betray.’ After the cabinet-pictures at Fonthill, even a good copy of a Guido is a luxury and a relief to the mind: it is something to inhale the divine airs that play around his figures, and we are satisfied if we can but ‘trace his footsteps, and his skirts far-off behold.’ The rest of this Collection is, for the most part, trash: either Italian pictures painted in the beginning of the last century, or English ones in the beginning of this. It gave us pain to see some of the latter; and we willingly draw a veil over the humiliation of the art, in the age and country that we live in. We ought, however, to mention a portrait of a youth (the present proprietor of Stourhead) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which is elegant, brilliant, ‘though in ruins;’ and a spirited portrait by Northcote, of a lady talking on her fingers, may, perhaps, challenge an exception for itself to the above general censure.
We wish our readers to go to Petworth, the seat of Lord Egremont, where they will find the coolest grottos and the finest Vandykes in the world. There are eight or ten of the latter that are not to be surpassed by the art of man, and that we have no power either to admire or praise as they deserve. For simplicity, for richness, for truth of nature, for airiness of execution, nothing ever was or can be finer. We will only mention those of the Earl and Countess of Northumberland, Lord Newport, and Lord Goring, Lord Strafford, and Lady Carr, and the Duchess of Devonshire. He who possesses these portraits is rich indeed, if he has an eye to see, and a heart to feel them. The one of Lord Northumberland in the Tower is not so good, though it is thought better by the multitude. That is, there is a subject—something to talk about; but in fact, the expression is not that of grief, or thought, or of dignified resignation, but of a man in ill health. Vandyke was a mere portrait-painter, but he was a perfect one. His forte was not the romantic or pathetic; he was ‘of the court, courtly.’ He had a patent from the hand of nature to paint lords and ladies in prosperity and quite at their ease. There are some portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds in this Collection; and there are people who persist in naming him and Vandyke in the same day. The rest of the Collection consists (for the most part) of staircase and family pictures. But there are some admirable statues to be seen here, that it would ask a morning’s leisure to study properly.