A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools. National Gallery (Great Britain)

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39

"When they went to nature, which I believe to have been a very much rarer practice with them than their biographers would have us suppose, they copied her like children, drawing what they knew to be there, but not what they saw there" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. iii. § 7).

40

The "Claude Lorraine glass" – a convex dark, or coloured hand-mirror used to concentrate the features of a landscape in a subdued tone – "gives the objects of nature," says an old writer, "a soft mellow tinge like the colouring of that master."

41

But Ruskin does not quite keep his promise. "If Claude had been a great man he would not have been so steadfastly set on painting effects of sun; he would have looked at all nature, and at all art, and would have painted sun effects somewhat worse, and nature universally much better" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 23).

42

The passages quoted from Sir F. Burton are to be found in his edition of the Official Catalogue (unabridged) of the Foreign Schools. That work, which occupied the late Director's leisure for many years, is a worthy monument of his wide learning and fastidious taste. A large-paper edition was issued by the Stationery Office in 1892.

43

See, however, the sunset picture of his predecessor, Bellini (726). Connoisseurs should note that this picture is referred to by Richter as bearing on the vexed question of Palma Vecchio's relation with Titian, and showing that the latter imitated the former rather than vice versâ (Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 85. See also Morelli's German Galleries, p. 25).

44

Called also "Sinon before Priam" (Æneid, ii. 79).

45

The two pictures were bought by the nation in 1834 for £11,550. The sum was then thought a very large one, and the trustees fortified themselves with the opinion of experts. Amongst these Sir David Wilkie, R.A., wrote, "It is certainly a large sum for two pictures; but giving this difficulty its due weight, I would decidedly concur in giving this sum rather than let them go out of the country, considering the rarity of such specimens even in foreign countries, and their excellence as examples of the high school to which they belong, to which it must be the aim of every other school to approach."

46

The picture is inscribed "Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebecca," but it is a repetition with some variations in detail of the Claude known as Il Molino (The Mill) in the Doria palace at Rome. Ruskin characterises this version of the subject as a "villainous and unpalliated copy." "There is not," he adds, "one touch or line of even decent painting in the whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a Claude, as it has been put in our Gallery for a Claude, and as people admire it every day for a Claude, I may at least presume it has those qualities of Claude in it which are wont to excite the public admiration, though it possesses none of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and I have so reasoned, and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with respect to facts of form, which cannot have been much altered by the copyist" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. i. § 9, sec. iv. ch. ii. § 8).

47

The following is the text of this portion of Turner's will: "I give and bequeath unto the Trustees and Directors for the time being of a certain Society or Institution, called the 'National Gallery' or Society, the following pictures or paintings by myself, namely Dido Building Carthage, and the picture formerly in the De Tabley collection. To hold the said pictures or paintings unto the said Trustees and Directors of this said Society for the time being, in trust for the said Institution or Society for ever, subject, nevertheless, to, for, and upon the following reservations and restrictions only; that is to say, I direct that the said pictures or paintings shall be hung, kept, and placed, that is to say, always between the two pictures painted by Claude, The Seaport and Mill." The "picture formerly in the De Tabley collection" is the "Sun rising in a Mist," 479. Turner bought it back at Lord de Tabley's sale at Christie's in 1827 for £514: 10s., and ever afterwards refused to part with it. The other picture, the Carthage (498), was returned unsold from the Academy, and Turner always kept it in his gallery. His friend Chantrey used to make him offers for it, but each time its price rose higher. "Why, what in the world, Turner, are you going to do with the picture?" he asked. "Be buried in it," Turner replied – a remark he often made to other friends.

48

"So in N. Poussin's 'Phocion' (40) the shadow of the stick on the stone in the right-hand corner, is shaded off and lost, while you see the stick plainly all the way. In nature's sunlight it would have been the direct reverse: you would have seen the shadow black and sharp all the way down; but you would have had to look for the stick, which in all probability would in several places have been confused with the stone behind it" (ibid.).

49

Compare on this point G. Poussin's "Abraham and Isaac" (31).

50

One may compare with Ruskin's description the similar one by Tennyson of a distant view of Monte Rosa —

The Daisy.

51

"In some of the convents (in Mexico) there still exist, buried alive like the inmates, various fine old paintings … brought there by the monks" (Dublin National Gallery Catalogue). The Spanish influence gave birth, moreover, to a native Mexican School of painting, said to be of considerable merit.

52

"Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, feeblest, and most superficial, for those reasons the most popular" (Two Paths, § 57 n.) – "The delight of vulgar painters (as Murillo) in coarse and slurred painting merely for the sake of its coarseness, opposed to the divine finish which the greatest and mightiest of men disdained not" (Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. x. § 3).

53

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