第25章 ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING:(8)
O matutini rores auraeque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish.You can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious airs ("the breath of Nature blowing free," as the corn-law man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapors are rising up from the blue lowlands.You can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words.As with regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit.Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion.You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own.Icannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study.Portraits, on the contrary, and large pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods.
Fancy living in a room with David's sans-culotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face!
There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness and gayety it is.What a delightful affectation about yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades! What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out their toes, with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches!
Yonder, in the midst of a golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little round Cupids, bubbling up in clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air.There is, to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication.Thus, were we inclined to pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,--calm, fresh, delicate, yet full of flavor,--should be likened to a bottle of Chateau Margaux.And what is the Poussin before spoken of but Romanee Gelee?--heavy, sluggish,--the luscious odor almost sickens you; a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if you had been drinking hot blood.
An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off this mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often indulged in such tremendous drink.I think in my heart I am fonder of pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates.Confess how many times you have read Beranger, and how many Milton? If you go to the "Star and Garter,"don't you grow sick of that vast, luscious landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to this subject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them.Milton they never grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with exquisite Titania.Let us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity.I have never heard that we were great geniuses.
Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses of the sublime are but rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and to the donkeys;and if it nothing profit us aerias tentasse domos along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.
I have now only to mention the charming "Cruche Cassee" of Greuze, which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the color (a thought too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate.There are three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and color; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me.A very fine picture by Bon Bollongue, "Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child," deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigor and richness of color.
You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of Leopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better color, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects.
Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures is worth examining and admiring; they are full of "unction" and pious mystical grace.
"Saint Scholastica" is divine; and the "Taking down from the Cross"as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be.There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at once).I hate those simpering Madonnas.I declare that the "Jardiniere" is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her.I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a bad picture,--a bad composition, badly drawn, badly colored, in a bad imitation of Titian,--a piece of vile affectation.I say, that when Raphael painted this picture two years before his death, the spirit of painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; ITWAS TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!
There,--the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is no time to speak of Lesueur's "Crucifixion," which is odiously colored, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy.
But such things are most difficult to translate into words;--one lays down the pen, and thinks and thinks.The figures appear, and take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colors are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint.With which, for the present, adieu.
Your faithfulM.A.T.
To Mr.ROBERT MACGILP,NEWMAN STREET, LONDON.