excellent painters of genre are Terborch, Metsu and Brouwer, | van Eyck downwards, distinguish themselves by their minute the two first painters of the life of the upper classes, the last of rendering of details, in which they were followed later on by peasant existence in some of its mos. unlovely aspects. The Dürer, who was fond of landscape, and by Altdorfer. Of pictures of Brouwer are among the most instructive documents Dürer indeed it has been said that some of his landscape sketches of modern painting. They are all small pictures and nearly in water-colour are the first examples in which a natural scene all exhibit nothing but two or three toors drinking, fighting, is painted for its own sake alone. Some of the northern artists or otherwise characteristically employed, but the artist's feeling of the "Italianizing school of the 16th century, such as for colour and tone, and above all his inimitable touch, has | Patinir, whom Dürer, about 1520, calls "Joachim the good raised each to the rank of a masterpiece. He is best represented landscape painter," Paul Bril later in the century, and Adam in the Munich Pinacotek, from which has been selected fig. 30, Elsheimer, who worked at Rome about 1600, with several of Plate IX. Hardly less admirable are Teniers in Flanders, De their contemporaries, must not be omitted in any sketch of Hooch, Ver Meer of Delft, Jan Steen, A. van Ostade, in Holland, the history of the art. South of the Alps, the late Italian while in more modern times Hogarth, Chardin, Sir David Wilkie, Salvator Rosa treats the wilder aspects of nature with seme Meissonier, and a host of others carry the tradition of the work imaginative power, and his work, as well as the scenery of his down to our own day (see Table VIII.). Greuze may have the native land, had an influence in the rapid development of landdoubtful honour of having invented the sentimental figure- scape art in the 17th century, which was in part worked out piece from ordinary life that delights the non-artistic spectator in the peninsula. What is known as classical landscape in our modern exhibitions. was perfected in the 17th century, and its most notable masters were the Lorrainer Claude Gelée and the French Poussin and Dughet, while the Italianizing Dutch painters Both and Berchem modify the style in accordance with the greater naturalism of The landscapes of Claude are characteristic productions of the 17th century, because they convey as their primary impression that of space and atmosphere. The compositions, in which a few motives such as rounded masses of foliage are constantly repeated, are conventional; and there is little effort after naturalism or variety in detail; but the pictures are full of art, and reproduce in telling fashion some of the larger and grander aspects of the material creation. There are generally figures in the foreground, and these are often taken from classical fables or from scripture, but instead of the landscape, as in older Italian art, being a background to the figures, these last come in merely to enliven and give interest to the scenery. The style, in spite of a certain conventionality which offends some modern writers on art, has lived on, and was represented in our own country by Richard Wilson, the contemporary of Reynolds; and in some of his work, notably in the Liber Studiorum, by Turner. Even Corot, though so individual a painter, owes something to the tradition of classical landscape. §25. Landscape and Marine Painting. This is one of the most important and interesting of the forms of painting that belong especially to modern times. It is true that there is sufficient landscape in ancient art to furnish matter for a sub-their countrymen. stantial book (Woermann, Die Landschaft in der Kunst der alten Völker, Munich, 1876), and the extant remains of Pompeian and Roman wall-painting contain a very fair proportion of works that may be brought under this heading. By far the most important examples are the half-dozen or so of pictures forming a series of illustrations of the Odyssey, that were found on the Esquiline at Rome in 1848, and are now in the Vatican library. As we shall see it to be the case with the landscapes of the late medieval period, these have all figure subjects on the nearer planes to which the landscape proper forms a background, but the latter is far more important than the figures. In some of these Odyssey landscapes there is a feeling after space and atmospheric effect, and in a few cases an almost modern treatment of light and shade, which give the works a prominent place among ancient productions which seem to prefigure the later developments of the art. In the rendering of landscape detail, especially in the matter of trees, nothing in antique art equals the pictures of a garden painted on the four walls of a room in the villa of Livia at Prima Porta near Rome. They are reproduced in Antike Denkmäler (Berlin, 1887, &c.). These may be the actual work of a painter of the Augustan age named Ludius or Studius, who is praised by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 116) for having introduced a style of wall decoration in which "villas, harbours, landscape, gardens, sacred groves, woods, hills, fish-ponds, straits, streams and shores, any scene in short that took his fancy were depicted in lively and facile fashion. Pompeian wall paintings exhibit many pieces of the kind, and we find the same style illustrated in the low reliefs in modelled stucco, of which the specimens found near the Villa Farnesina, and now in the Terme Muscum at Rome, are the best known. In medieval painting landscape was practically reduced to a few typical objects, buildings, rocks, trees, clouds, &c., which stood for natural scenery. Occasionally however in the MSS. these objects are grouped in pictorial fashion, as in a Byzantine Psalter of the 10th century in the National Library at Paris. The beginning of the 15th century may be reckoned as the time when the modern development of landscape art had its origin, and Masaccio here, as in other walks of painting, takes the lead. Throughout the century the landscape background, always in strict subordination to the figure interest, is a common feature of Flemish and Italian pictures, but, in the latter especially, the forms of natural objects are very conventional, and the impression produced on the city-loving Tuscan or Paduan of the time by mountain scenery is shown by the fact that rocks are commonly shown not only as perpendicular but overhanging. Titian is the first painter who, as mountain-bred, depicts the soaring peaks with real knowledge and affection (see the distance in fig. 22, Plate VII.), and the Venetians are the first to paint landscape with some breadth and sense of spaciousness, while, as we have seen, the Flemings, from Hubert The prevailing tendency of modern landscape art, especially in more recent times, has been in the direction of naturalism. Here the masters of the Dutch school have produced the canonical works that exercise a perennial influence, and they were preceded by certain northern masters such as the elder Breughel, whose "Autumn" at Vienna has true poetry; Savary, Roghman, and Hercules Seghers. Several of the Dutch masters, even before the time of Rembrandt, excelled in the truthful rendering of the scenes and objects of their own simple but eminently paintable country; but it was Rembrandt, with his pupil de Koningk and his rival in this department Jacob Ruysdael, who were the first to show how a perfectly natural and unconventional rendering of a stretch of country under a broad expanse of sky might be raised by poetry and ideal feeling to the rank of one of the world's masterpieces of painting. Great as was Rembrandt in what Bode has called "the landscape of feeling," the "Haarlem from the Dunes of Ruysdael (fig. 31, Plate IX.) with some others of this artist's acknowledged successes, surpass even his achievement. Nearer our own time Constable caught the spirit of the best Dutch landscapists, and in robust naturalism, controlled by art and elevated to the ideal region by greatness of spirit, he became a worthy successor of the masters just named, while on the other side he furnished inspiration to the French painters of the so-called Barbizon school, and through them to many of the present-day painters in Holland and in Scotland. To fix the place of J. M. W. Turner in landscape art is not easy, for the range of his powers was so vast that he covered the whole field of nature and united in his own person the classical and naturalistic schools. The special merits of each of these phases of the art are united in this artist's "Crossing the Brook in the National Gallery, that is probably the most perfect landscape in the world (fig. 32, Plate IX.). In a good | the airy filaments, that is the despair of the most accomplished deal of Turner's later work there was a certain theatrical strain, modern executant and at times even a garishness in colour, while his intense idealism led him to strive after effects beyond the reach of human art. We may however put out of view everything in Turner's œuvre to which reasonable exception may on these grounds be taken, and there will still remain a body of work which for extent, variety, truth and artistic taste is like the British fleet among the navies of the world. But animals have been treated more nobly than when shown in Flemish agitation or in Dutch phlegmatic calm. Leonardo da Vinci was specially famed for his horses, which he may have treated with something of the majesty of Pheidias. Durer has a magnificent horse in the "Knight and Death," but this is studied from the Colleoni monument Nearer our own time the painter of Napoleonic France, Géricault, gave a fine reading of the equine nature. Rembrandt's drawings of lions are notable features in his work, and in our own day in France and England the lion and other great beasts have been treated with true imaginative power. Among Turner's chief titles to honour is the fact that he portrayed the sea in all its moods with a knowledge and sympathy that give him a place alone among painters of marine. Marine painting began among the Greeks, who were fond of the sea, and the "Odyssey" and other classical landscapes are stronger on this side than the landscapes of the Tuscans or Umbrians, who cared as little for the ocean as for the mountains. The Venetians did less for the sea in their paintings than might have been expected, and in northern art not much was accomplished till the latter part of the 16th century, when the long line of the marine painters of Holland is opened by Hendrick Cornelius Vroom, who found a worthy theme for his art in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Simon de Vlieger of Rotterdam, who was born about the beginning of the 17th century, was the master of W Vandevelde the younger (1633-1707), who has never been equalled for his truthful representation of calm seas and shipping. He painted innumerable pictures of the sea-fights of the time between the English and the Dutch, those representing the victories of the Dutch being in Holland, while at Hampton Court the English are triumphant. There are exquisite artistic qualities in the painting of Vande- | Rembrandt, may have all the essential qualities of the highest velde, who is reckoned the canonical master in this branch of art; but the few sea-pieces by Ruysdael, especially the "Dykes" | of the Louvre, and the "Stormy Sea" at Berlin, exhibit the element under far more imaginative aspects. Besides Turner there are many British artists of modern days who have won fame in this branch of art that is naturally attractive to islanders. § 26. Animal Painting. In all early schools of representative art from the time of the cave-dwellers downwards, the artist has done better with animals than with the human figure, and there is no epoch of the art at which the portrayal of animals has not flourished. (On Egyptian and Assyrian animals see 7.) In Greece the representations of animals on coins are so varied and so excellent that we may be sure that the praise given to the pictures of the same creatures by contemporary artists is not overdrawn. In northern art animals have always played an important part, and the motives of medieval decoration are largely drawn from this source, while beast symbolism brings them into vogue in connexion with religious themes. In Italian and early Flemish and German art animals are as a rule only accessories, though some artists in all these schools take special delight in them; and when, early in the 17th century, they begin to take the chief place, the motive is often found in Paradise, where Adam and Eve lord it over the animal creation. If De Vlieger and Ruysdael are the first to show the sea in agitation, Rubens may have the same credit for revealing the passion and power of the animal nature in the violent actions of the combat or the chase. In this his contemporary Frans Snyders (1579-1657), and after Snyders Jan Fyt, specialized, and the first named is generally placed at the head of animal painters proper. In Holland, in the 17th century, the animal nature presented itself under the more contemplative aspect of the ruminants in the lush water-meadows. True to their principle of doing everything they attempt in the best possible way, the Dutch paint horses (Cuyp, Wouwerman) and cattle (Cuyp, Adrian Vandevelde, Paul Potter) with canonical perfection, while Hondekoeter delineates live cocks and hens, and Weenix dead hares and moor-fowl, in a way that makes us feel that the last word on such themes has been spoken. There is a large white turkey by Hondekoeter in which the truth of mass and of texture in the full soft plumage is combined with a delicacy in the detail of § 27 Still-Life Painting-Like portraiture and landscape, the painting of objects on near planes, or as it is called still-life painting, is gradually differentiated from the figure-piece which was supreme in the early, and has been the staple product in all, the schools. Just as is the case with the other subsidiary branches of painting, it appears, though only as a by-product, in the history of ancient classical painting, passes practically out of existence in medieval times, begins to come to a knowledge of itself in the 15th and 16th centuries, and attains canonicity in the Dutch school of the first half of the 17th century. Stilllife may be called the characteristic form of painting of the modern world, because the intrinsic worth of the objects represented is a matter of complete indifference when compared with their artistic treatment in tone, colour and texture. By virtue of this treatment it has been noted (§§ 19, 20) that a study of a group of ordinary objects, when seen and depicted by a manifestations of the art. There is no finer Rembrandt for pictorial quality than the picture in the Louvre representing the carcase of a flayed ox in a flesher's booth. As illustrating the principle of modern painting this form of the graphic art has a value and importance which in itself it could hardly claim. It is needless to repeat in this connexion what has been said on modern painting in general, and it will suffice here to indicate briefly the history of this particular phase of the art. The way was prepared for it as has been noticed by the minute and forcible rendering of accessory objects in the figurepieces and portraits of the early Flemish masters, of Dürer, and above all of Holbein. The painting of flower and fruit pieces without figure interest by Jan Breughel the younger, who was born in 1601, represents a stage onward, and contemporary with him were several other Dutch and Flemish specialists in this department, among whom Jan David de Heem, born 1603, and the rather older Willem Klaasz Heda may be mentioned. Their subjects sometimes took the form of a luncheon table with vessels, plate, fruit and other eatables; at other times of groups of costly vessels of gold, silver and glass, or of articles used in art or science, such as musical instruments and the like; and it is especially to be noted that the handling stops always short of any illusive reproduction of the actual textures of the objects, while at the same time the differing surfaces of stuffs and metal and glass, of smooth-rinded apples and gnarled lemons, are all most justly rendered. In some of these pieces we realize the beauty of what Sir Charles Eastlake has called the "combination of solidity of execution with vivacity and grace of handling, the elasticity of surface which depends on the due balance of sharpness and softness, the vigorous touch and the delicate marking-all subservient to the truth of modelling." In this form of painting the French 18th-century artist Chardin, whose impasto was fuller, whose colouring more juicy than those of the Dutch, has achieved imperishable fame (see fig. 33, Plate X.), and the modern French, who understand better than others the technical business of painting, have carried on the fine tradition which has culminated in the work of Vollon. The Germans have also painted still-life to good result, but the comparative weakness in technique of British painters has kept them in this department rather in the background. PART II., §28.-SCHOOLS OF PAINTING [In the following Tables are included the main facts in the history of Painting since about A.D. 1000, with the artists of the first, second and third rank in their schools and periods. The relative importance of the artists is shown by the size of the capitals in which their names are printed. Facts and names of minor importance have in the interest of clearness been excluded. The names are given as commonly used, and where they differ from the headings of the separate biographical articles identification can be made by the Index. Words indicating localities are in italics.] Dates. 1000 to 1200 1150 to 300 C. 1350 I. MEDIEVAL PAINTING & ITS OFFSHOOTS NORTH OF THE ALPS. Romanesque Wall and Panel Painting, Reichenau, Brauweiler, Brunswick, Hildesheim, Soest, &c. THE GOTHIC MOVEMENT IN CENTRAL FRANCE FROM 1150. GOTHIC INFLUENCE ON NORTHERN PAINTING. Wall and Panel Paintings at Ramersdorf, Cologne, Westminster, &c. THE EARLIEST NORTHERN SCHOOLS. 1150 to 1300 1400 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN, 1399-1464 (in Italy, MASACCIO, 1402–1429. DIERICK BOUTS (Haarlem), 1400(?)-1475. (Perhaps author of the PETRUS CRISTUS, C. 1410-1472. HUGO VAN DER GOES, C. 1435-1482. GERARD DAVID (Oudewater), c. 1450-1523. LUCAS VAN LEYDEN JAN SCHOREEL, 1495-1562 MARTEN VAN HEEMSKERK For the Dutch School of 1500 RAPHAEL, d. 1520. Landscape The High Renaissance. QUINTIN MATSYS (Antwerp), c. 1466-1530. MABUSE (JAN GOSSART), C. 1472-C.1533. ANTONIO MORO, c. 1512-c. 1575. } and Genre. Figures Portraits. PAUL BRIL, 1554-1626. Landscape. Italianisers. 1200 1250 II. THE PROTO-RENAISSANCE AND THE REVIVAL OF ART IN ITALY. CONDITION OF THE ART OF PAINTING IN ITALY BEFORE THE REVIVAL. Wall Paintings of poor style, with hard black outlines, devoid of any feeling for beauty or truth to nature. Panel Paintings, chiefly in the form of Enthroned Madonnas of Byzantine type, heavy but dignified;and painted Crucifixes, repulsive in aspect, with exaggeration of physical suffering, black outlines, green shadows, hatched lights. [Best Italian Sculpture, eg. by Antellami at Parma, c. 1200, greatly inferior to contemporary work in France.] REVIVAL FIRST SEEN IN SCULPTURE. NICCOLA PISANO inspired by the Proto-Renaissance of Southern Italy; his pulpit at Pisa, 1260. At ROME, PIETRO CAVALLINI "Last Judgment" at S. Cecilia, Rome, c. 1293; at SIENA, DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA, c. 1255-c. 1315, 1200 1250 Dates 1300 III. GOTHIC INFLUENCE ON THE ITALIAN REVIVAL. [Gothic Naturalism, Expressiveness, and Feeling in the Sculpture of Giovanni Pisano and Andrea Pisano.] FLORENCE. GIOTTO, 1267-1337, great in composition and in natural and dramatic treatment of sacred themes. Painting carried on on traditional lines by the Giottesques to the TADDEO GADDI, STEPANO, MASO DI BANCO, BERNARDO DADDI, SIENA. SIMONE MARTINI, c. 1283-1344, exhibits the pensive sweetness that marks Sienese school preserves throughout its tender and devout feeling, LIPPO MEMMI, BARTOLO DI FREDI, ANDREA VANNI. THE LORENZETTI, d. c. 1348. Painters of dramatic power. CONTEMPORARY PAINTING IN OTHER PARTS OF ITALY. Revival hardly begins in XIVth century. Best work done by ALLEGRETTO DI NUZIO of Fabriano and ALTICUIERO of Verona. Dates. 1300 1400 IV. ITALIAN SCHOOLS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE RENAISSANCE. 400 1350 School Kembrandt. GERARD DOU, JAN VICTOR, GERBRANDT VAN DEN EECKHOUT, CAREL FABRITIUS, AART DE GELDER, FERD. BOL, GOVERT FLINCK,) (Poetic.) NICOLAS MAAS, Italianize after Landscape. 1650. (Early landscapists, born before 1600.) (Cattle and Landscape.) A. CUYP; A. VAN DE VELDE; PAUL POTTER. (Marine painters.) SIMON DE VLIEGER; W. VAN DE VELDE; L. BACKHUYSEN. (Architecture.) JAN VAN DER HEYDEN. JAN BOTH NICOLAES BERCHEM K. DU JARDIN (Painters of the Decline) VAN MIERIS, C. NETSCHER, ADRIAN VAN DER WERFF. Dates. 1600 1600 1700 RIBERA. 1600 Age of VELAZQUEZ, 1599-1000. 1617, MURILLO, 1682. 1700 GERMANY. CHODOWIECKI, 1726-1801 1779 1784, CORNELIUS, 1867. 1789, OVERBECK, 1869. 1305, KAULBACH, 1874. RETHEL, 1816-1859Romanticists BÖCKLIN. 1723, REYNOLDS, GAINSBOROUGH, 1727 ROMNEY, RAEBURN. 1785, WILKIE, 1841. Norwich School. 1714, WILSON, 1782. 1684, WATTEAU, 1721. PATER FRAGONARD. CHARDIN, 1788 Modern Dutch, MARIS, &c.; Glasgow School. AMERICA. cists Impressionists. WHISTLER. 1900 |