LANDSCAPE. GENRE (the finest in the world) are to be found at Hampton Court. In the Van Dyck Room at Windsor may be studied the excellencies of another school, the Flemish. In the National Gallery we have the "Giulia Gonzaga" (24), "Pope Julius II." (27), the "Portrait of Van der Gheest" (52), "The Jew Merchant" (51), "Lord Heathfield” (111), and John Philip Kemble" (142); all fine examples of characteristic portrait-painting in different schools of art.* IV.-LANDSCAPE was first introduced merely as an accessory or background,† and the earliest painter who made it a separate department of art, and excelled in it, was Titian. Many of the great historical painters of the second period painted landscape admirably-for instance, Annibal Carracci, Domenichino, Rubens, and Nicolò Poussin. It was not, however, till some years later that we find distinguished landscape-painters by profession practising exclusively this branch of art. Claude Lorraine and Gaspar Poussin in Italy, and Cuyp and Hobbima in the Low Countries, are the most eminent names that can be cited. Landscapes may be ideal compositions or literal transcripts from nature; they may be historically grand and poetical, as in Claude and Poussin; or wildly picturesque, as in Salvator Rosa and Rubens; or purely idyllic and pastoral, as in Cuyp, Berghem, &c. (see p. 25). In our National Gallery may be found examples of all the above-named painters, except Hobbima and Berghem, who will not, I hope, be long an exception. V. All painting which is not history, portrait, or landscape, comes under the comprehensive designation of Genre Painting. For this word genre no equivalent offers itself in * But as yet not one from the Titian school: might not one or two be spared from Hampton Court as examples, at least for a time? It is said by Filippo Lippi, about 1425. I do not remember ever to have seen a landscape by Guido; and but one by Guercino, which is n the possession of Miss Rogers. English, nor, strange to say, in German; so that both STILL-LIFE. VI. The imitation of flowers, animals, objects of na- FLOWERS. tural history, and inanimate objects (technically called still-life), forms perhaps another separate branch of art, which was successfully cultivated in the seventeenth century. Rubens, and his friend Franz Snyders, excelled in painting animals; the Boar's Head by the latter (Hampton Court, 381) is a fine example of style in this department. Hampton Court Gallery is rich in fine specimens of some of the best flower-painters,-Father Seghers, Maria van Osterwyck, Baptiste; and of the most celebrated painters of stilllife, Kalf, De Heem, Roestraten, Labradore. Huysum there are some beautiful examples at Dulwich. Of Van VII.-The five classes of painting are then :-1. History; 2. Portrait; 3. Landscape; 4. Genre, or Familiar Life; 5. Natural History and Still-life; but to whatever class a picture may properly belong, it must, as a picture, possess certain component parts or qualities, which may be divided into spiritual and material: or, as one should say, if it did not sound at once too pedantic and too familiar, into the morale and the physique of painting. The spiritual part of art I conceive as not to be acquired by study, but depending on the innate power or It comgenius in the artist, improved by cultivation. prises, Invention. Character. VIII. INVENTION; which, in painting, does not mean the invention of the subject, but the manner in which a given subject is conceived and represented. The painters most remarkable for richness and fertility of invention are Raphael, Albert Durer, Rubens, and Rembrandt. But a painter may also invent his subject; and if in this he display originality, fancy, feeling, and a moral aim, he becomes, in a double sense, a creative poet. Hogarth is an instance. IX. Next to invention I will place that subtle quality emanating from the soul, and, like a soul, pervading the whole representation-call it character, sentiment, feeling; for no one word seems to render that of which we perceive at once the presence or the absence, though it escape definition. For not only will it be sublime, grand, graceful, pathetic, or tender, in accordance with the subject represented, but it will be essentially modified by the temperament of him who represents it. Where it is, it atones for many deficiencies; where it is not, no merits supply its place. As exemplifying the existence of this breathing, vital soul of art with the want of that technical skill to which we are now accustomed, we may look to the early artists of the Italian school. The paintings of Giotto, executed about 1300, in the church at Assisi; those of Andrea Orcagna in the Campo Santo at Pisa, and a variety of works scattered through the ancient ecclesiastical edifices at Sienna, Orvieto, Padua, might be cited as examples, but are too far off to be available as references; and engravings, even the best, fail to transmit that spiritual and evanescent charm which is the great, and often the only, merit of these works. There is a fragment of a fresco painting by Giotto, now in the collection of Mr. Rogers, representing two heads of apostles, in which the profound truth of sentiment and devout feeling would illustrate what is meant: but the nearest instance to which I can refer the reader, as generally accessible, is the "Crowning of the Virgin," by Fra Giovanni Angelico, now in the Louvre. Perhaps before this sheet is printed I may be able to refer to the divine Francia as an example of this "beauty of holiness," in combination, however, with greater mastery over the technicalities of art than we find in earlier painters. Those who threw most mind into their works were of course those who had most mind-Raphael for instance: but the spirit thus infused was not always pure in quality even when it was great in degree; and the various schools of painting are not so much distinguished from each other by the tangible characteristics of style, design, colour, &c., as by the mental and moral impress on the works which proceeded from them. Compare, for instance, the prevailing sentiment of the early Bolognese school of Francia and his compeers to that of the later Bolognese school of the Carracci and their followers: the latter must be pronounced vulgar in comparison; the word is strong, but no other would express the comparative difference between the pure intense feeling, the simplicity, the solemnity of the first, and the mannered elegance and grandeur of the last. Ludovico had indeed glimpses of that "better part;" and the accomplished Agostino and the gifted Annibal had a thousand merits; but, compared with the heavenly aspi * I hope to have another opportunity of observing upon the pictorial treatment of sacred subjects; and at present will only call the reader's attention to one remark-that, when the blessed Virgin is represented as crowned by the Father and the Son, it is in her emblematical character as the pictorial type of the Christian religion, or visible Church. That the early painters should select the figure of her who was the most pure and exalted amongst women to represent typically that blessing which she was the means of introducing into the world, cannot be matter of wonder. These representations are typical merely, and must be so considered. [anner. rations of their predecessors, all here was "of the earth, earthy." X.-Manner, as applied to painting, comes under the moral part of art, inasmuch as it depends on individuality, and expresses the style of workmanship of a particular painter, as distinguished from that of every other, and peculiar to himself. The greater the painter, the more distinct and characteristic is the manner of workmanship. A painter had sometimes three or four different manners. The man ner of Raphael before and after he visited Florence; the manner of Titian before and after his friendship with "that notorious ribald of Arezzo," Aretino; the manner of Van Dyck when in Italy and when in England; the manner of Parmigiano before and after he took to alchymy, are distinctly different, and may be referred to mental influences. When manner of execution is stamped by originality, and is the manifestation of the individual mind, it is a great interest and charm. When it is carried further, or imitated from another, it becomes a trick of hand or a sort of affectation: it is then not manner, but mannerism. Thus, the manner of Correggio became in Parmigiano mannerism. Guido is another instance, where we find him taking up the strong, ferocious style of Caravaggio (in him so characteristic), and afterwards assuming one diametrically opposite, in which delicacy verges on insipidity. Guercino was a mannerist; not so Rembrandt. I am not sure that critics will go with me in considering manner, even in this sense, as part of the morale of painting; but I think, if I understand myself, that I am right. It is the more necessary to distinguish between manner and mannerism, because Sir Joshua Reynolds uses the word manner sometimes in a good and sometimes in a bad sense. |