Landscapes. Émile Michel

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Each of his pictures, interesting as it was in itself, had its own special meaning in a series which included all the most characteristic aspects of the landscape. These pictures were varied by the points of view, the differences in the sky, the hour of day, and by the succession of work which the change of season demanded.

      Above everything, Rubens loved to paint the summer, with its fertility and magnificence. He has given us a large number of landscapes, the subjects being taken from the country around Steen. These pictures, therefore, must date from towards the end of his career.

      The Return from the Fields is very interesting. Under a sky tinged by the gleams of the setting sun, the vast Flemish plain, with its woods and meadows, its villages half hidden by greenery, stretches out to the bluish horizon. In the distance is the town of Malines, dominated by the Saint-Rombaut steeple. The sun, which is just disappearing, lights up the whole country with its last rays. In the midst of the increased activity which, at this moment, seems to animate the scene, the peace of approaching night is suggested, and one feels that in the cool air the vague fragrance of the freshly-cut hay fills the atmosphere. Very different, but perhaps still more natural, is the impression of that Landscape with a Rainbow. Here, too, summer, with all its splendour of colouring, is depicted. The ripe, golden corn presents a strong contrast to the green of the meadows, whose brilliancy is more vivid after the rain, while the treetops, lit up by the sun, stand out against the sombre clouds on which is seen the huge curve of the rainbow.

      The importance which Rubens gives to the changing aspects of the sky is quite an innovation. No other artist had thought of representing the great combats of the clouds and their perpetual transformations. It was not only the falling of the snow or the appearance of the rainbow after the storm that he painted. All the various phenomena of light and all the atmospheric disturbances attracted his attention and tempted his brush. In his picture of the Cart Stuck in the Mire, also referred to as The Storm, we see the owners of the cart endeavouring to extricate it from the furrows in which it is wedged. They are evidently in a hurry, as night is approaching and the road is rough. The mysterious twilight, so dear to contemporary landscapists, had never inspired artists before Rubens, and he expresses its poetical vagueness with exquisite charm. His predecessors had rarely been tempted to portray the solemn calm of the starry night.

      In each of these landscapes, the figures or animals, in lifelike attitudes, always seem to be in just the right place. They characterise the picture or relieve its tone by an effective touch, such as the white of a horse, or the bright blue or red of a skirt. In one picture two men are sawing a tree, a fowler has spread his nets, and two ladies and a horseman half hidden in the shrubs are waiting to see the birds captured.

      Peter Paul Rubens, Return of the Peasants from the Fields, 1635.

      Oil on wood, 121 × 194 cm.

      Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

      Profitable though absolute freedom and mental repose would have been to Rubens during the last years of his life, he was not able to spend as much time in his home at Steen as he would have liked. Certain unavoidable obligations compelled him to return to Antwerp. He had more orders than he could execute from Philip IV, and died in the midst of completing them. At the end of the summer of 1639 he left Steen, where he had been to recuperate, and this was the last he saw of his home, for on the 30th of May, 1640, he died after great suffering. The very name of Rubens suffices, in our days, to express the loss to art occasioned by his death.

      Even if with Rubens, the star of the Flemish school, disappeared, David Teniers was greatly influenced by him. He, too, but with less breadth of treatment, attempted, various styles. Without idealising his subject or drawing much on his imagination, he simply painted what he saw. He frequently treats the unimportant sides of great subjects, but his intelligence interests us with the humblest themes. His lively and amusing composition is somewhat summary perhaps, and his thin and extremely transparent colour sometimes lacks strength. On a thinly-painted surface he gives the illusion of careful finish by a few vigorous accents in the shadows, and highlights put in with marvellous skill. But his delicacy and firmness of touch are unique.

      These qualities, which are more evident in his interiors, are also to be found in his landscapes. Sparingly coloured, with their animated skies and fluttering leaves, they are the outcome of the artist’s true sense of nature, and they give evidence of his keen observation. The facility with which he worked seems incredible. With the proceeds of his pictures he bought the picturesque Chateau of Dry Toren, and, when making little excursions in the neighbourhood with his guests, he would note the various effects that appealed to him, and, as soon as he returned to his studio, would paint pictures quickly from these sketches.

      After these artists of the great epoch, who were brought up in the school of nature, the decline of the Flemish school was soon evident. This was not for lack of talent; it was simply that art was no longer the result of a direct study of nature with many of these Italianised painters, some of whom had never even seen Italy. Others were clever executants who, merely through continually copying each other, soon lost the sense of reality, and substituted for it school methods and conventional formulas.

      In spite of the incontestable qualities of these artists, this school seems gradually to have lost life. It was not until after a long interval that Flemish artists, won over by the simpler and more passionate method of modern landscapists, returned once more to the study of nature, in search of the instruction that she alone can give.

      David Teniers the Younger, Peasants Merrymaking, c.1650.

      Oil on copper, 69 × 86 cm.

      Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

      German Landscape

      It was near the banks of the Rhine that the first manifestation of Christian art in Germany appeared. The river, by facilitating interaction between Cologne and the South of Europe and Flanders, procured prosperity and culture for this city and for the surrounding country at an earlier date than the rest of Germany. Torn by violent strife, it was not until much later that the other parts of Germany attained the same degree of cultural development. The poetry of the Minnesang certainly abounded in picturesque features; the mystery of the great forests, the return of spring flowers, and the songs of constantly singing birds; and yet, all these poetical details, inspired by a love of nature, did not appeal to German painters. In the pictures of the early Rhenish School, for instance, a few flowers and plants, presented in a very summary fashion, were timidly depicted under the feet of the saints, or were to be seen against the gold used for a background to these figures.

      Stefan Lochner’s work is more impressive and individualistic. Lochner went to live in Cologne around 1440, and died there on December 24th, 1451. He was the painter of the admirable triptych of the Adoration of the Magi, the altarpiece of Cologne Cathedral. We have in his work that charm of purity, softness, and delicacy which is to be found in the pictures of Fra Angelico and Memling, who had preceded him. Like them, he delighted in painting the Virgin, and with the sweet, candid type of woman he depicts, he associates the softest harmonies and the most delicate perfumes of nature as being worthy of her. Birds are singing among the rosebushes in the background, and ripe strawberries and spring violets are to be seen in the grass at her feet.

      A СКАЧАТЬ