In speaking of these great artists, the greatest masters of painting that the world has seen, I do not propose to do more than make a rough comparison of their main qualities, with the idea of indicating the points of agreement and of difference between them. It seems almost an impertinence to speak at all of men who are above discussion or praise, whose names alone suggest the finest painting, and each of whom in his own way has reached the limits of achievement. One might discuss all the problems of painting by reference only to what each has done. I am not qualified to do this, but can only give my own, perhaps superficial, impressions of their work.
It seems to me that the differences which divide Italian painting into schools are of much less account than are the great qualities these schools had in common—a noble simplicity of form, broad lighting, and rich, full colouring. Indeed, to my mind there are only two schools of Italian painting—Michelangelo is the one, and the rest of the Italian painters all come together in the other. The great ceiling of the Sistine Chapel stands apart from, and beyond, all other work; but of all the other Italians, Titian most fully represents the finest painting. By his great genius he brought together the theories of his predecessors, and carried on their practice to a degree of completeness which cannot be surpassed. Velasquez said, “It is Titian who bears the banner”; whether in subject pictures or portraits, his work is perfect in all the qualities of painting, and it may almost be said that he has done with colour all that can be done.
He is the meeting-point of the old and the new. His work combines minuteness and freedom. His early training must have given him the power he possessed of treating detail with the most dainty fineness, yet keeping it always in its place, never letting it appear laboured or obtrusive. There is a “Madonna” of his in the Vienna Gallery—an early work—that has the clearness and simplicity of the Primitives, with a greater fulness. It is carried to the finest point of realisation, with seemingly the greatest ease. It is one of the most beautiful things in the Gallery.
Titian chose, as a rule, a simple mode of lighting—a warm daylight, or evening light, upon his figures; not concentrating the interest on one main point of his picture by suppression of minor things, but controlling it from one end to the other, and including everything in his attention. His effect was produced by devices of composition which he invented, or developed, from his own observation of nature. I have already indicated how, by relieving figures in light by figures and objects in shade, or by uniting figures and groups by shadows—on the ground, on or from trees and buildings—he constructed his pictures, using these momentary effects of contrast which we may notice for ourselves in nature. These devices, besides enabling him to make his picture by placing his principal objects in prominence, give us the sense of living and moving nature; of man not merely posed against a background of landscape or building, but in the scene, and part of its setting, so that one influence is felt throughout. And in this use of landscape, as well as in his treatment of landscape as a mood of nature, and not a transcript of nature, Titian was the first and one of the greatest of landscape painters.
His method was usually to keep the principal parts of his picture warm and light, and this warmth was enhanced by the blue of the sky, which he frequently used in his background; and the colours of his principal figures were made to tell out strongly, as well as separated from the background, by masses or spaces of shadow in the middle distance; as we see in the picture of the “Entombment” in the Louvre. We may notice, too, in this picture how the central light is packed round with various colours—rich reds and dark greens—in the dresses of the supporting figures.
When we endeavour, in cold blood, as it were, to gauge the actual colour of his work by comparing it with white, its richness and depth are amazing. It seems, indeed, to go beyond the power of the palette as we know it, but, of course, it cannot be so; and it is recorded that Titian used few and very simple colours to produce his fine harmonies. I doubt if his work owes much to the mellowing of age. It must always have been fine and rich, and I think, as I have said, that the Italian painters were led in the direction of warm and glowing colour through feeling strongly the beauty of blue; for, as we know, it is only by keeping the whole tone of a picture warm that the beauty of blue can be expressed. How this richness was produced, this depth without darkness, has been again and again discussed. It is called the “Venetian secret,” and certainly no other painting is so full of colour; and is considered—I think rightly—to have been produced by first painting a solid monochrome in tempera, on which the picture was finished, in its colours, in oil. But we need not trouble much about the method, for whatever it was, great knowledge, and that only, was the secret of Titian, as of all the other masters. This is brought home to us when we see a number of fine pictures of different schools hanging side by side, as in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, where there are on the same wall, works by painters as different in their methods as Rembrandt and Giorgione, Da Vinci and Velasquez, Raphael and Holbein, all agreeing together like good brothers. Their methods are as various as may be, but great knowledge was the basis of them all.
When in presence of one of Titian’s pictures we are conscious of their being true to a noble vision of nature,—i.e. that particular elements have been chosen and put before us,—and we feel, although we are not always conscious of it, except by comparison with other men’s work, a sentiment, which by means of colour alone he has conveyed to us. I think the sentiment of his pictures is communicated but little by form or expression, and almost entirely by the emotional power of their colour. His figures have the natural grace and gravity of their race, with an air of nobility, and, as Reynolds says, of senatorial dignity, of his own; but to me they seem to go through their actions as in a formal pageant, without interest, with something even of an air of indifference. There is in them nothing of the familiar, passionate human interest—of insight, almost, one feels, into the very souls of his subjects, that we find in Rembrandt; which moves us so deeply, and makes us—at anyrate, I find it so—to hold Rembrandt nearer to our hearts than any other artist. Titian’s power is in the beauty of his colour, and this is the special power of the painter. By his command of colour he imposes his mood upon us without our knowledge, making us look at nature through his eyes.
Titian was greatest as a portrait painter, as Reynolds has said. In arrangement, and in painting, and in character also, although he does not give so searching a reading as Rembrandt, they are as fine as can be. We have none in our National Gallery, but there is a very fine portrait in the Louvre, the “Man with the Glove.” This work is beautifully drawn and modelled, the head very simply and broadly, so that everything seems left out, but everything essential is there. The head is not forced out into the highest light, as is the usual practice now, but is kept lower in tone than the linen, which is the brightest light, and each colour tells in its natural degree. I should imagine that his painting-room was not lighted in our ordinary way, from the north, but probably from the south, with a veiled light, and that he painted or studied sometimes out of doors; for the lighting of his pictures could, I think, only have been arrived at by studying in sunlight, or perhaps by artificial light. His portraits seem to me to have very much the effect, both in colour and modelling, of people as seen by the light of a candle, where the light is reflected from the bright colours only, and is absorbed by the dark ones.
The influence of Titian can be traced in the work of all succeeding painters. Both Velasquez and Rembrandt owe something to him; Velasquez more than Rembrandt, as he was better acquainted with his work. But the influence of Titian, of Rubens, and of Tintoret on Velasquez only supplemented, and did not lead him away from, his own frank and straightforward view of nature.
We know, now that we have his whole life’s work before us, that Velasquez had the surest eye and the truest hand of any artist who has ever lived, or at least that he was the equal in this respect of any other artist; but if we look at his early work in the National Gallery, we find that it is not “clever” in any sense. It is most uncompromising, somewhat heavy-handed, one may almost say common, in its execution; suggesting not brilliant ability, but clear insight and determination. We may notice in this picture—the small still-life group with figures, called “Christ in the House of Martha”—how everything is set down relentlessly and thoroughly; and in another early work, the “Dead Warrior,” we see the same thing—everything is painted deliberately and apparently without alterations. It is only those who try to paint who know how much knowledge, how much determination, this implies.
But so much is said of the freedom of Velasquez’s painting, and so often is his name used to justify careless and sloppy work, that one may be allowed to draw attention again to the old truth—that this freedom was only gained at the price of labour, greater than most of his worshippers seem willing or able to undertake; and that the charm of his painting is that, with all its freedom, it is so careful and so beautifully drawn. He having, by great labour, learnt what to do, practice gave him a ready means to his end. It is surely, then, a mistaken idea for an artist to think that he can begin in Velasquez’s later manner, where he left off. If he will follow this great master, let him begin as the master began, and tramp the whole road.
The work of Velasquez seems to reveal the temperament of a dispassionate observer, with an eye so keen and so thoroughly trained that nothing escapes him; but he does not show us his own feeling towards his sitter. In other painters’ work, we get at least some hint of the artist’s feeling towards the persons he brings before us, but we do not get this in Velasquez. He is a perfect mirror. His attitude is that of one apart, or aloof, from his fellows, understanding, but without appearing to show sympathy or enthusiasm. These feelings seem to be reserved for the painting itself, though in some of his pictures, such as the “Surrender of Breda,” where, I fancy, the Italian influence can be seen, and in some of his dwarfs, there is, I think,—I have not seen the pictures themselves, and only know them from photographs and copies,—a little nearer approach to his persons, a little less detachment than usual.
In examining his work we can follow with delight the interest he must have felt in recording the things before him, and yet the final impression remains that the picture was not painted for the sake of fine painting, and that his manner was but his ready way of expressing his subject. When we look at that fine portrait of the Admiral in the National Gallery, we think only of the man who stands before us, as he stood before the painter; and it is only when we come near and realise the extreme simplicity of the means by which the illusion of his presence is produced that we are amazed at the painter’s skill. These odd, apparently unrelated, touches of colour, which we see at close quarters, explain themselves and take their place when the picture is seen at its proper distance. The fine portrait of Pope Innocent X. in Rome impresses in the same way.
The later work of Velasquez is the finest of all. One cannot imagine direct painting finer than the head of Philip IV. in the National Gallery, and it has every appearance of being done with ease and certainty. There is no display, no trace of effort, no “execution.” And in what must be his finest work, “Las Meniñas,” of which I have only seen a study, a problem of the utmost complexity in gradation is solved with apparently the greatest ease. The arrangement is so easy and natural that one does not realise its consummate art. How beautifully the figures are proportioned to the room, and how finely the large dark empty space above contrasts with the light and sparkle of the figures! His paint charms by its clear silvery colour and by what looks like unconscious certainty in his handling, and this must have come to him naturally, unsought. But the great interest of his work lies in the fact that it is so “modern,” that he paints things as we see them; and this has been well pointed out by the late R. A. M. Stevenson in his excellent appreciation of Velasquez, which I should advise you to read.
Rembrandt in some of his works, as in the “Syndics,” at Amsterdam, is as fine and rich in colour as Titian; but in the range and variety of his lighting, and in the interest he shows in life and character, he goes beyond either Titian or Velasquez. Every portrait, every picture indeed that he painted, seems to have been undertaken as a problem of lighting, as well as of character; but there is nearly always, I think, some reflection of himself in his portraits, and if detachment is the ideal, he was inferior to Titian or Velasquez in this respect. But he was greater, perhaps, than any other painter in human feeling and sympathy, in dramatic sense and invention; and his imagination seems inexhaustible.
His qualities, however, do not strike us at once. If we come from looking at Titian, or any of the fine Italians, to Rembrandt, our first impression is of plebeian coarseness, of uncouthness, and even of vulgarity, and all these qualities are there. But if we can put aside our prejudices, and try to understand his meaning, we find, after a time—it takes a little time—that beauty may wear the most unlikely dress. We discover beauties of design, of delicate drawing, and of sentiment, and a depth and intensity of feeling so convincing, that the ugliness of his types becomes of small account. Compare, for example, Rembrandt’s etching of the “Descent from the Cross,” either the large or the small plate (the small one is the better, for probably the design only of the large plate is Rembrandt’s) with the “Entombment” by Titian. The tragic side of the scene is finely given by Rembrandt, and Titian’s picture is formal in comparison with it, although this is one of his most expressive works.
Rembrandt’s eye seems to have been always attracted to the point of light, or the source of light, when the actual colours of objects were rather suggested than seen, or if the light shone on objects it was always focussed on the principal parts by shadows; and we find his work characterised by the most searching study of shadows and their infinite gradations, as well as of the diffusion of light. This study of light and shade in his pictures is so thorough as to seem an end and object in itself, but it was only with him the means of expressing or enhancing his idea. The idea and its presentation are inseparable, and his pictures seem to be imagined rather than constructed. He seems to take a suggestion from some very ordinary scene, and to carry it on in his mind and make it significant; as in the “Adoration of the Shepherds” in the National Gallery, the light and shade motive of which was probably inspired by something he happened to see in a stable.
This is, to my mind, one of his most beautiful works. If we look at it long enough to get beyond the paint, we find ourselves in the stable, taking part in the scene, with the shepherds; we seem even to know them well. The lighting, expression, gesture, and sentiment in this work are all natural and true; and the picture in the Wallace Collection, the “Unmerciful Servant,” with the figures starting out of the deep background, is also an instance of his lighting, or conceiving a picture so as—unconsciously, it seems—to emphasise the dramatic element in the story.
There is something greater and deeper in this than the mere artifice of lighting. The “Supper at Emmaus,” and the “Good Samaritan,” both in the Louvre, are instances of this marvellous power of conceiving his subject which can be seen in all his works, even in the slightest sketch.
Two drawings are reproduced here from the British Museum Collection. These drawings of his, made on the impulse of the moment, with expression as the one aim, show the richness of his imagination and his mastery more clearly than do his paintings, where other aims and problems enter, and sometimes confuse or obscure the thought. They are most wonderful in directness and expressiveness; in a happy instinctive rightness of arrangement, which seems inevitable. Every essential thing is given with the slightest of means—with the greatest economy of line; yet they are not slight sketches, but full and complete expressions.
We should study his drawings and the magnificent series of his etchings, as well as his paintings, for not only do we see in these the great range of his invention and expression, but his fine draughtsmanship. It is, too, in his drawings, but most of all in his etchings, that we see Rembrandt’s greatness in landscape. As an etcher, he is beyond question the greatest master, and the completeness and delicacy of his plates has never been surpassed. His etchings alone number about three hundred, and there are about four hundred and fifty of his paintings, and some hundreds of drawings, so that his life must have been one of unflagging industry, of constant progress towards perfection; everything that he touched is fine in some way. And if we think of this enormous number of works from his hand, and their great perfection; and realise how readily his work must have been done, and how few mistakes were made, we can understand what is meant by mastery.
Our knowledge of art is wider than that of our predecessors. Not that we have greater abilities, but we have greater opportunities of judging and making comparisons between schools. And time has helped us in coming to some conclusion on the vital question: On what does the reputation of an artist rest? His work should express some kind of beauty; it should be true to some aspect of nature; but, above all, it seems to me that an artist should be true to himself. In the work of all great artists we feel that we make the acquaintance of a person, and share a personal view—as in Titian, the interest is in the rich and beautiful aspect of nature; in Velasquez, in an absolute truth of presentation, with no preference; while Rembrandt saw with the eye of a poet, looking for the soul of things through their outward appearances.
Rembrandt in his later years, when he was producing his finest work, was, as we know, poor, and in such obscurity that his death was unnoticed by his contemporaries; and Michel, in his interesting book on Rembrandt, enforces this by quoting Gerard de Lairesse, who wrote of Rembrandt some thirty years after his death, that “in his efforts to attain mellow colour he merely achieved the effect of rottenness. The vulgar and prosaic aspects of a subject were the only ones he was capable of noting, and his colours lie like liquid mud on the canvas,” etc. He goes on to say that in early life he was much attracted by Rembrandt’s manner, and thought of following it, but better counsels prevailed! Gerard was an artist of some standing, and a follower of the Classic tradition, as the Dutchmen understood it; but the world has very willingly let his work die, while Rembrandt has come to his own.
The history of art shows that an artist’s work lives by its own vitality rather than by following blindly a tradition, however noble. And the innovator is usually, in his lifetime, decried; it must be so. But sometimes it is recognised afterwards that the innovator was the loyal follower of good tradition, and that his opponents merely imagined they were. The work of the great minds, the great masters, remains unapproachable, and is, if possible, more highly esteemed now than ever; but where are the Caracci, Carlo, Maratta, Pompeo Battoni, and the rest who were so highly esteemed in their day? They are—perhaps a little undeservedly—forgotten, for they were able painters; but their glory is absorbed again into that of their masters. For, as Jean François Millet said: “Decadence set in when people began to believe that art was the supreme end; when such and such an artist was taken as model and aim, without remembering that he had his eyes fixed on infinity.”