Art Principles with Special Reference to Painting. Ernest Govett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ natural views with special reference to figure designs. Some of them, particularly the leaders of the Venetian School, occasionally painted pictures in which landscape appears to play an important part, but in these cases the landscape is really subsidiary, though essential to the design; and the works cannot be compared in any way with those of Claude and others who often added figures to their landscapes in order to comply with the wishes of their patrons. The fifteenth century Flemish artists also dealt with landscape purely as background, and so with Martin Schongauer, Dürer, and other early German painters. But all the great painters down to the decline of the Renaissance, closely studied landscape, as is evidenced by the numerous sketches still existing, and the finished pictures remaining clearly indicate that by the middle of the sixteenth century artists had little or nothing to learn in landscape art, save the management of complex aerial perspective.

      Since landscape painting was introduced as a separate art towards the end of the sixteenth century, it has only commanded general attention when the higher art of the painter has appeared to decline. In Flanders the spurt in landscape due to Paul Bril was terminated with the last of the Breughels by the overpowering splendour of Rubens in historical work, and the attempts of even Rubens himself to create a greater interest in landscape signally failed. There were some good landscape painters in Holland during the flourishing period of the Dutch school, but it was only when Rembrandt, Dow, Terburg, and the rest of the bright constellation of figure painters had passed their zenith, or were resting in quiet graves, that landscape painting became in any way general. Then it was that Hobbema, Jacob Ruysdael, and their numerous followers, with coast painters like Van der Cappelle, and sea painters as William van de Velde, turned out the many fine works which are now so highly prized.

      The Italians of the seventeenth century were too close to Raphael, and Michelangelo, and Titian, to permit of a landscape being generally received as a great work of art, but there appeared at this time in Rome numerous foreigners from France, and Flanders, and Holland, who were devoted to landscape, and amongst them the greatest genius known in the art—Claude Lorraine. He was the first to put the sun in the sky on canvas for the purpose of pure landscape; the first to master thoroughly the intricate difficulties of aerial perspective; the first to adorn the earth with fairy castles and dreamy visions of nature, such as we might suppose to have been common in the days of the Golden Age, ere yet men fought for power, or toiled from morn to eve for daily bread. With his magic wand he skimmed the cream of natural beauty and spread it over the Roman Campagna, transforming this historic ground into a region of palaces, terraces, cascades, and glorious foliage. At the same time Nicholas Poussin was also using the Campagna for the landscape settings of his classical compositions—such perfect settings that it is impossible to imagine the figures separated from their surroundings. These two artists with their disciples, and many Flemish and Dutch painters headed by Berghem and the two Boths, formed a landscape colony of considerable importance, but no Italian landscape school was founded from it. In the next century there was little pure landscape in Italy. Some fine works of topographical, and a few of general interest were produced by Canaletto and his followers, and a kind of landscape school was maintained in Venice for half a century or more, but elsewhere in Italy the cultivation of landscape was spasmodic and feeble.

      In England and France, landscape as a separate art has only made considerable headway quite recently, though there have been local schools, as the Norwich and Barbizon, which followed particular methods in design. Meanwhile England produced some isolated giants in landscape, as Wilson, Gainsborough, Turner, and Constable, Turner standing out as the greatest painter of strong sun effects on record. It will be seen that until the last generation or so, in no country has landscape been admitted to high rank as a separate art, universal opinion very properly recognizing that the highest beauty in the handiwork of man is to be found in the representation of the human figure. Profound efforts of the imagination are not required in landscape, for it consists of a particular arrangement of inanimate signs which have no direct influence upon the mind, and cannot appeal to the higher faculties. There is no scope therein for lofty conceptions, and consequently the sensorial beauty exhibited must be very high to have more than a quickly passing effect upon the observer. This high beauty is most difficult to obtain, and can only be reached by those who have a supreme knowledge of the technique of their art; who have made a long and close study of natural signs and effects; and who are possessed of uncommon patience and industry. We need not be surprised that scarcely one out of every hundred landscape painters executes a work which lasts a generation, and not one out of a thousand secures a permanent place on the roll of art. The man who does not give his life from his youth up, to his work, concentrating his whole energy upon it, to the exclusion of everything else, will paint only inferior landscapes. The four greatest landscape painters known to us are Claude and Turner in distance work, and Hobbema and Jacob Ruysdael in near-ground. Claude was labouring for twenty-five years before he succeeded in accomplishing a single example of those lovely fairy abodes so forcibly described by Goethe as "absolute truth without a sign of reality." Turner took more than twenty years to master the secrets of Claude; Jacob Ruysdael spent a quarter of a century in working out to perfection the representation of flowing water, and Hobbema passed through more than half of his long life before arriving at his superlative scheme of increasing his available distance by throwing in a powerful sunlight from the back of his trees. And a long list of landscape painters of lesser lustre might be given, who went through from fifteen to thirty years of painstaking labour before executing a single first-class picture.

      Great landscapes of the pure variety are of two kinds, and two kinds only. The highest are those where an illusion of opening distance or other movement is provided, and the second class are where natural scenes of common experience, under common conditions of atmosphere, are faithfully reproduced. The lighter landscapes representing phases, as the sketches of the Barbizon school,18 with the moonlight scenes, and the thousand and one sentimental colour harmonies unconcerned with human motives, which are turned out with such painful regularity every month, serve their purpose as wall decorations of the moment, but then die and fade from memory like so many of the unfortunate artists who drag their weary way to the grave in the vain struggle for fame by means of them.

      No landscape of the phase class can be anything more than a simple harmony of tone and design, more ephemeral than the natural phase itself. The quiet harmony is restful for the fatigued eye, and every eye is fatigued every day; and because the eye feels relieved in glancing at the picture, the conclusion arises to the unthinking that it must be a great work of art. Glowing eulogies were pronounced upon Whistler's Nocturne, in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, when it was first placed there, but is there anything less like a work of beauty than the dark meaningless patch as it is now seen? And the same thing has happened with a thousand other landscapes of the kind—first presented to the tired eyes of business and professional men, and then placed in collections to be surrounded by permanently beautiful works. All these phase pictures must quickly lose their beauty in accordance with natural laws which cannot be varied. Let it not be supposed that the writer means to suggest that these simple works should not be executed. They are surely better than no decoration at all in the many homes for which really fine pictures are unavailable, but it is entirely wrong to endeavour to pervert the public judgment by putting them forward as works of high art.

      And what of the struggling artists? Look around in every city and see the numbers of bright young men and women wearing away the bloom of their youth in vain endeavours to climb the heights of art by the easy track of glowing colours! It is the call of Fame they think, that leads them along, for they know not the voice of the siren, and see not the gaping precipice which is to shatter their dreams. There is but one sure path to the top of the mountain, but it is drab-coloured, and many are the slippery crags. Few of the strongest spirits can climb it, but all may try, and at least they may direct their minds upwards, and keep ever in front of them a vision of the great idealists wandering over the summit through the eternal glow of the fires they lit ere death consecrated their glory.

      FOOTNOTES:

[a] See Chap. III.

СКАЧАТЬ