Название: A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools
Автор: National Gallery (Great Britain)
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная прикладная и научно-популярная литература
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75
Constable, who made some studies from this picture, was of the same opinion. In a letter to Fisher he describes it as "a noble Poussin: a solemn, deep, still summer's noon, with large umbrageous trees, and a man washing his feet at a fountain near them. Through the breaks in the trees are mountains, and the clouds collecting about them with the most enchanting effects possible. It cannot be too much to say that this landscape is full of religious and moral feeling" (Leslie's
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"Hang these pictures in a very strong light," said Rembrandt of his early work. "The smell of paint is not good for the health," he said many years afterwards, when a visitor came close up to one of his later pictures.
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Baldwin Brown's
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To further understand Rembrandt's principle of choice, contrast that of Veronese. See the passage quoted under No. 26.
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Yet Rembrandt's pictures are often more deceptive – look more like reality – than others which are really more true. Why? It is because "people are so much more easily and instinctively impressed by force of light than truth of colour… Give them the true contrast of light, and they will not observe the false local colour." The references to Ruskin are
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Ruskin, writing to the
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The magnificent portrait No. 52 is by some critics ascribed to Rubens. Van Dyck hardly ever signed his pictures.
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Not all artists have learnt from this great work gladly. It was exhibited at the first exhibition of "Old Masters" at the British Institution in 1815, and B. R. Haydon tells the following story: "Lawrence was looking at the Gevartius when I was there, and as he turned round, to my wonder, his face was boiling with rage as he grated out between his teeth, 'I suppose they think we want teaching!'" (
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Such is the tradition. By many modern critics the picture is, on internal evidence, taken away from Van Dyck and given to Rubens. Mr. Watts in the article cited above says: "Attributed to Van Dyck, but hardly, I think, suggesting his work, though it would be difficult to attribute it to any other painter, unless, perhaps, on some occasion Rubens might have been inspired with so fervent a love for art that he forgot his satisfaction in scattering his over-ripe dexterity."
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The statement found in many biographies of the painter that he was a brewer is a mistake. It arose from the fact that his daughter married a brewer, and that the painter himself was buried from his son-in-law's brewery.
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See
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Ruskin (
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This figure is specially good. It was to rival this great landscape that James Ward (see 688), as he avows in his autobiography, painted his "Fighting Bulls," now in the South Kensington Museum. "How full of lithe natural movement," says Mr. J. T. Nettleship, "is the man in the foreground, in heavy boots and feathered hat, stooping and creeping towards the covey of partridges under cover of bramble and bush, compared with the clumsy anatomical bulls in Ward's picture" (
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Ruskin is here speaking of the somewhat similar "St. George" picture in the Church of St. James at Antwerp.
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See also No. 98, in which the tree is said by Ruskin to be "a mere jest" compared to this.
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No. 78 was formerly Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Holy Family," on which notes will be found in Volume II. of this Handbook. The picture has now been withdrawn from exhibition and little remains of it, for owing to the excessive use of asphaltum the pigments have disappeared.
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"Garofano" is the Italian for "gillyflower" (or clove-pink), and Tisio sometimes painted this flower as his sign-manual (like Mr. Whistler's butterfly).
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Authorities differ between this title and "Pan teaching Apollo to play on the pipes." Certainly there is the "Pan's pipe," but then if it is Pan he ought to have goat's legs and horns. The fact that the picture is a companion to "Silenus gathering Grapes" makes also in favour of the description given in the text above.
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See also Ruskin's remarks on the companion storm piece, No. 36.
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It should be noted that this, as well as very many other pictures, has of late years been cleaned. Thus 98 and 68 (in 1880), 36 and 40 (in 1868), have been "cleaned and varnished." СКАЧАТЬ