A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools

The one gleam of light breaking through the clouds falls on the watch tower of a castle, perched on a rock – "a stately image of stability," where all things else are bent beneath the power of the storm. The spirit of the picture is, however, better than its execution. Take, for instance, the clouds. They are mere "massive concretions of ink and indigo, wrung and twisted very hard, apparently in a vain effort to get some moisture out of them" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. iv. § 6). In the tree forms, again, Ruskin sees a concentration of errors. "Gaspard Poussin, by his bad drawing, does not make his stem strong, but his tree weak; he does not make his gust violent, but his boughs of Indian-rubber" (for details of this criticism see ibid., vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 12, 13).

37. See under 7

38. THE ABDUCTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN

    Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640).

Peter Paul Rubens, born on the festival of Saints Peter and Paul (hence his Christian name), is the chief glory of the Flemish School, and one of the great masters of the world. It is impossible to walk round any gallery where there are good specimens of his work and not to be impressed at once with his power. Here, one feels, is a strong man, who knew what he wanted to paint, and was able to paint it. Whatever moral or poetical feelings he had or had not, he was at any rate master of the painter's language,[68 - Ruskin's analysis of Rubens's technical method, which is here omitted as foreign to the scope of this handbook, will be found in his review of Eastlake's History of Oil Painting, now reprinted in On the Old Road, i. §§ 98-136.] and this language is itself "so difficult and so vast, that the mere possession of it argues the man is great, and that his works are worth reading." "I have never spoken," says Ruskin elsewhere, "and I never will speak of Rubens but with the most reverential feeling; and whatever imperfections in his art may have resulted from his unfortunate want of seriousness and incapability of true passion, his calibre of mind was originally such that I believe the world may see another Titian and another Raphael, before it sees another Rubens." Rubens affords, in fact, "the Northern parallel to the power of the Venetians." Like the Venetians, too, he is a great colourist. The pictures by the later Northern painters which here hang around his are dark and gloomy; his are all bright and golden. He is like Paul Veronese, too, in his "gay grasp of the outside aspects of the world."[69 - "The conditions of art in Flanders – wealthy, bourgeois, proud, free, – were not dissimilar to those of art in Venice. The misty flats of Belgium have some of the atmospheric qualities of Venice. As Van Eyck is to the Vivarini, so is Rubens to Paolo Veronese. This expresses the amount of likeness and difference" (Symonds: Renaissance, iii. 265 n).] His pictures in this Gallery embrace a wide range of subjects – some peaceful, others tumultuous – some religious, others profane, but over them all is the same gay glamour, "Alike, to Rubens, came subjects of tumult or tranquillity, of gaiety or terror; the nether, earthly, and upper world were to him animated with the same feeling, lighted by the same sun; he dyed in the same lake of fire the warp of the wedding-garment or of the winding-sheet; swept into the same delirium the recklessness of the sensualist and rapture of the anchorite; saw in tears only their glittering, and in torture only its flush." A fourth characteristic, which also cannot fail to be perceived in a general survey of Rubens's pictures in the Gallery, remains to be noticed. In all his exuberant joyousness is a strain of coarseness, "a want of feeling for grace and mystery." "There is an absence everywhere of refinement and delicacy, a preference everywhere for abundant and excessive types." He would have agreed, one may think, with the saying of Blake (in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell), "exuberance is beauty," – Madonnas, goddesses, Roman matrons, have all alike a touch of grossness. Rubens, says Fromentin, "is very earthy, more earthy than any among the masters whose equal he is, but the painter comes to the aid of the draughtsman and the thinker, and sets them free." To like effect Heine speaks of "the colossal good humour of that Netherlands Titan, the wings of whose spirit were so strong that they bore him up to the sun, in spite of the hundredweights of Dutch cheese hanging to his legs."

It is instructive to notice how the art of Rubens was characteristic of the circumstances of his life and time. In the first place, though he travelled in many lands, Rubens remained to the end a Fleming, every inch of him.[70 - See, for a further instance of this, what is said of Rubens's landscapes below, under 66.] "A man long trained to love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico, turns in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of Rubens which he encounters on his return across the Alps. But is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten that while Angelico prayed and wept in his olive shade, there was different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders; – wild seas to be banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick walls against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands and gross stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes and Christmas feasts which were to be the reward of it; rough affections, and sluggish imaginations; fleshy, substantial, iron-shod humanities, but humanities still; humanities which God had his eye upon, and which won, perhaps, here and there, as much favour in his sight as the wasted aspects of the whispering monks of Florence. (Heaven forbid it should not be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and reapers still.) And are we to suppose there is no nobility in Rubens's masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by birth, and feeling, and education, and place; and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? He had his faults, perhaps great and lamentable faults, though more those of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister breeding nor boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court, knight's camp, or peasant's cottage." It is thus that Rubens was a child of Flanders. But he was also a child of the intellectual time in which he lived. He was born at a time, says Ruskin, when the Reformation had been arrested – his father, curiously enough, had fled from Antwerp as a Reformer, but afterwards returned to Catholicism. "The Evangelicals despised the arts, while the Roman Catholics were effete or insincere, and could not retain influence over men of strong reasoning power. The painters could only associate frankly with men of the world, and themselves became men of the world. Men, I mean, having no belief in spiritual existences, no interests or affections beyond the grave. Not but that they still painted Scriptural subjects. Altarpieces were wanted occasionally, and pious patrons sometimes commissioned a cabinet Madonna. But there is just this difference between men of this modern period and the Florentines or Venetians – that, whereas the latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject, the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane." Rubens was thus a man of the world. When a boy he was for some time page in the family of a countess at Brussels. But his bent towards art was too strong to be gainsaid. When only twenty-two he was already a master-painter in the Antwerp Guild. Two years later he went to Italy, and for eight years he was in the service of the Duke of Mantua. An excellent Latin scholar, he was also proficient in French, Italian, English, German, and Dutch. These gifts procured him diplomatic employment. In 1603 "the Fleming," as they called him, was sent on a mission to Spain. In 1608 news of his mother's illness reached him, and he hastened home, when he was appointed court-painter to the Archduke Albert, then Governor of the Netherlands. In 1620 he visited Paris, at the invitation of Mary de' Medici (a sister of the Duchess of Mantua), and received the commission for the celebrated series of pictures now in the Louvre, commemorating the marriage of that princess with Henry IV. of France. In 1628 Rubens was sent on a mission to Philip IV. of Spain, and made the acquaintance of Velazquez. The great decorative master and the great realist (his junior by twenty-two years) painted together, travelled together, and talked together for eight or nine months. Rubens, we are told, was never so well pleased as when he was in the company of Velazquez, and Velazquez showed no resentment at the commissions given by the court to the foreign painter. In 1629 Rubens was sent to Charles I. of England (see under 46), by whom, in the following year, he was knighted. He was also given an honorary degree by the University of Cambridge. On this occasion, Rubens was commissioned to paint the pictures which adorn the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall (now the United Service Institution). Wherever he went Rubens continued to paint, and his diplomacy he considered as mere recreation. "The painter Rubens," he is reported to have said of himself, "amuses himself with being ambassador." "So said one with whom, but for his own words, we might have thought that effort had been absorbed in power, and the labour of his art in its felicity." How hard he laboured is known by the enormous number of his works which still survive, by the large fortune he amassed, and by the great request in which his talents were held. "Whatever work of his I may require," wrote a celebrated Antwerp printer, "I have to ask him six months before, so as that he may think of it at leisure, and do the work on Sundays or holidays; no week-days of his could I pretend to get under 100 florins." But of the several thousands of works ascribed to the master, many were painted from his sketches by pupils and assistants. "To put it plainly, Rubens established a picture factory at Antwerp. He was thus enabled to paint portraits, landscapes, hunting scenes, and pictures of genre, as well as to undertake several series of gigantic decorations as important as those of Raphael or Michael Angelo. The master made small, lively sketches of the work to be done, the pupils laid them in, each doing what suited his talent, while Rubens reserved to himself the duty of bringing the picture together; in some cases by using the work beneath as a ground for almost complete repainting, in most cases by mainly correcting here and there, or enhancing the effect with a few brilliant and dexterous touches" (R. A. M. Stevenson's "Portfolio monograph" on Rubens). Brueghel, Snyders, Teniers, and Van Dyck were among his assistants. Some of Rubens's letters contain curious information on his methods. Thus he offers to Sir Dudley Carleton certain pictures in exchange for a collection of antique marbles. Among them was to be "'A Last Judgment,' begun by one of my pupils after an original which I made of much larger size for the Prince of Neubourg, who paid me for it 3500 florins in ready money. As the present piece is not quite finished, I will retouch it altogether by myself, so that it can pass for an original: 1200 florins."

Rubens was unspoilt by success. Like many other great artists, he is conspicuous for "a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy… His letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. He was an honourable and entirely well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, simple and temperate in habits of life, highbred, learned, and discreet. His affection for his mother was great, his generosity to contemporary artists unfailing." He was twice married. In 1626 his first wife, Isabella Brant, died. Four years later he married Helena Fourment, a beautiful girl of sixteen, the living incarnation of his feminine type. "At the time of his second marriage Rubens was fifty-three years of age. He led a serious, happy, retired life. His leisure time he devoted to his family, to a few friends, to his correspondence, his collections, and his rides." "In the morning," we read, "he rose very early, and while he painted someone read aloud Livy, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil or other poets. Then he would stroll in his gallery to stimulate his taste by the sight of the works of art he had brought from Italy. On other occasions he would study science, in which he always retained an active interest. Although he lived splendidly, he ate and drank moderately, and the gout from which he suffered in later life was certainly undeserved. He painted in the afternoon till towards evening, when he mounted a horse and rode out of the town." His house at Antwerp still stands; as also does his country-house, near Mechlin, of which there is a view in our Gallery (No. 66) (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15, sec. ii. ch. ii. § 12; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. i. § 2; vol. iv. pt. v. ch. i. § 17; vol. v. pt. viii. ch. iv. § 21, pt. ix. ch. vi. §§ 1-9; On the Old Road, i. 185, 186; Stones of Venice, vol. i. App. 15; Wauters, The Flemish School, p. 214).

"A miracle of agitation. A flush tide of the richest colour, which positively seems to boil up in swirling eddies of harmonious form. Its whole surface is swept by lines which rush each other on like the rapid successive entrances of an excited stretto, till the violent movement seems to undulate the entire pattern of the picture" (R. A. M. Stevenson: Velazquez, 1899, p. 51). As for the subject, see for the story of the Sabine women under 644. But the subject in this case does not greatly matter. "Rubens in one of his most marvellous pictures, the Rape of the Sabines, which hangs in the National Gallery, did not even take the trouble to dress his Sabines in the costumes of their day. Without any more ado he dressed them in the style of the seventeenth century. One might rather think it a kidnapping of beautiful Antwerp women on a Flemish fair-day. But what difference does it make? He has made white shoulders that shine, sumptuous stuffs, warriors with glittering arms – all which is instinct with life, and blazes with the deepest colouring of the greatest of Flemish masters. The colourists have never considered the subject otherwise than as a means of representing life under such and such actions, or such and such aspects, joyful or sad, or simply plastic" (Benjamin Constant in North American Review, Nov. 1900).

39. THE NURSING OF BACCHUS

    Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593[71 - Dr. Elisabeth Denio, in her monograph on Poussin (1899), adduces good reason for altering the commonly accepted date 1594 to 1593.]-1665).

The life of Nicolas Poussin may be summed up in the cry of Æneas, Italiam petimus– we make for Italy. He was born in Normandy, of a noble family, and first learnt painting under Quintin Varin at Les Andelys. When eighteen he went to Paris and became acquainted with Courtois, the mathematician, whose collection of Italian prints fired him with a desire to go to Rome. This devotion to Rome became from that day the leading point alike in his life and in his art. Among the artist friends of his wandering years was Philippe de Champaigne (see under 798). After several unsuccessful efforts to get to Rome, Poussin made the acquaintance at Lyons of the Italian poet Marino, who invited him to Rome (1624), and introduced him to Cardinal Barberini. The Cardinal, however, was called away, and for a time Poussin's life in Rome was one of severe struggle. He also fell ill, and was nursed by a compatriot, Dughet, whose daughter he afterwards married. The wife brought her husband a comfortable dowry, with which a house was bought, and the painter, now released from the pinch of poverty, was able to give free play to his talents. In 1640 he returned to Paris, where he was introduced by Richelieu (for whom amongst other pictures he painted No. 62 in this Gallery) to Louis XIII. The king appointed him his painter-in-ordinary, with a salary of £120 and rooms in the Tuileries, but two years later, disgusted with the intrigues and jealousies of Paris, and being anxious to rejoin his wife, he returned to Rome, where he remained – full of work – for the rest of his life. His house on the Pincian, adjoining the church of the Trinita, may still be seen, and he is buried in the church of St. Lorenzo. Poussin, says his biographer, Bellori, led a regular life, rising early and taking a walk for one or two hours, sometimes in the city, but more often on Monte Pincio, not far from his house. From these lovely gardens he could enjoy the view of Rome on its hills; there he met his friends and discoursed on curious and learned topics. "In the evening he went out again and walked on the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the hill, in the midst of the strangers who congregate there. He always had friends with him, and often they made a kind of retinue. He spoke often of art, and so clearly, that artists and all cultivated men of talent came to hear his beautiful and profound thoughts about painting." "During my sojourn in Rome," says a traveller of that period, "I often saw Poussin. I admired the extreme love this excellent painter had for perfection in his art. I met him among the ruins of Rome, in the Campagna, and on the banks of the Tiber, and I saw him carry home stones, moss, flowers, and other things, in order to paint them from nature. One day I asked him how he had attained such an elevation among the greatest artists of Italy. He answered modestly, 'I have neglected nothing.'"

It is Rome which gives the leading idea also to Poussin's art. He has been called the "Raphael of France"; and certain it is that at a time when the local art of France was purely decorative in character, he returned, and strenuously adhered, to classical traditions. Already at Paris he had studied casts and prints after Raphael; and when he first went to Rome he lived with Du Quesnoy ("Il Fiammingo"), under whom he learnt the art of modelling bassi-relievi. He also studied anatomy, and attended the academy of Domenichino, whom he considered the first master in Rome. His profound classical learning has caused him to be called "the learned Poussin." "He studied the beautiful," says his biographer, "in the Greek statues of the Vatican." "He studied the ancients so much," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way, and seemed to know perfectly the actions and gestures they would use on every occasion." His learning went, however, farther than this in its influence on his art. His ideal, says Lanzi, was that of "philosophy in painting"; and in one of his letters Poussin illustrates the idea from the Greek theory of "modes" in music. If a subject were serious, it should be painted in the Doric mode; if vehement, in the Phrygian; if plaintive, in the Lydian; if joyous, in the Ionic.[72 - See Lanzi, i. 477, and a paper by Mr. R. Heath in the Magazine of Art for September 1877, where Poussin's theory is illustrated from his pictures in the Louvre. English readers may be reminded that Poussin is particularly well represented in the Dulwich Gallery.] This classical learning of Poussin was the source at once of his strength and of his weakness as an artist. On the one hand, it often made his work wonderfully harmonious and impressive. Thus in the Ionic mode, his Bacchanalian pictures in this Gallery and elsewhere are nearly the best representations in art of the Epicurean ideal of life, of a world in which enjoyment is the end of existence. "His best works," says Ruskin, "are his Bacchanalian revels, always brightly wanton, full of frisk and fire; but they are coarser than Titian's[73 - Elsewhere Ruskin says of Poussin, "Whatever he has done has been done better by Titian." Also, "the landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows much power, and is usually composed and elaborated on right principles, but I am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found in other masters in higher degrees. In finish it is inferior to Leonardo's, in invention to Giorgione's, in truth to Titian's, in grace to Raphael's" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 14).] and infinitely less beautiful. In all minglings of the human and brutal character he leans on the bestial, yet with a sternly Greek severity of treatment." Again, in more serious Doric mode, he is "the great master of the elevated ideal of landscape." He does not "put much power into his landscape when it becomes principal; the best pieces of it occur in fragments behind his figures. Beautiful vegetation, more or less ornamental in character, occurs in nearly all his mythological subjects, but his pure landscape is notable only for its dignified reserve; the great squareness and horizontality of its masses, with lowness of tone, giving it a deeply meditative character: " see especially 40. On the other hand, he had the defects of his training. It made him too restrained and too cold. "His peculiarities are, without exception, weaknesses, induced in a highly intellectual and inventive mind by being fed on medals, books, and bassi-relievi instead of nature, and by the want of any deep sensibility." Thus he "had noble powers of design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he been trained in Venice;[74 - "He feared the fascinations of colour, and once wrote from Venice that he must flee from a place where they lured him too much. He did not know how needless was the alarm" (Sir F. Burton).] but his Roman education kept him tame; his trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies of his age, and had few imitators, compared to the dashing of Salvator and the mist of Claude. These few imitators adopted his manner without possessing either his science or invention; and the Italian School of landscape soon expired… This restraint, peculiarly classical, is much too manifest in him; for, owing to his habit of never letting himself be free, he does nothing as well as it ought to be done, rarely even as well as he can himself do it; and his best beauty is poor, incomplete and characterless, though refined." Finally, his "want of sensibility permits him to paint frightful subjects without feeling any true horror; his pictures of the plague are thus ghastly in incident, sometimes disgusting, but never impressive: " see 165 (collected from Modern Painters, vol. i. preface, p. xxv., pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 14; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 19; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 28; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. v. § 17).

The wine-god is represented in infancy, nursed by the nymphs and fauns of Eubœa, and fed not on milk but on the juice of the grape. "The picture makes one thirsty to look at it – the colouring even is dry and adust. The figure of the infant Bacchus seems as if he would drink up a vintage – he drinks with his mouth, his hands, his belly, and his whole body. Gargantua was nothing to him" (Hazlitt: Criticisms on Art, p. 33).

40. LANDSCAPE: PHOCION

    Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593-1665). See 39.

"The work of a really great and intellectual mind, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced"[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 Life of Constable, p. 90).] (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 8), – its excellence consisting in the perfect harmony of the landscape with the subject represented, and thus marking the painter's sense of the dependence of landscape for its greatest impressiveness on human interest. In the foreground to the left is Phocion "the good" – the incorruptible Athenian general and statesman, contemporary with Philip and Alexander the Great, of whom it is recorded that he was "never elated in prosperity nor dejected in adversity," and "never betrayed pusillanimity by a tear nor joy by a smile." He wears an undyed robe, and is washing his feet at a public fountain, the dress and action being thus alike emblematic of the purity and simplicity of his life. In entire keeping with this figure of noble simplicity is the feeling of the landscape in which "all the air a solemn stillness holds." In detail, however, Ruskin finds the picture deficient in truth – false, indeed, both in tone and colour (see ibid., vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 5).

41. THE DEATH OF PETER MARTYR

    Ascribed to Cariani. See under 1203.

For the legend, see under 812 – a more pleasing version of the same subject. The man was afterwards regarded as a martyr and canonised; and here, too, notice that he is made to see the angels as he dies.

42. A BACCHANALIAN FESTIVAL

    Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593-1665). See 39.

A realisation of the classic legends of mirth and jollity, precisely in the spirit of Keats's ode On a Grecian Urn—

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

"This masterpiece, conceived in the manner of Titian and imbued with the spirit of the antique, full of life, and incomparable for its qualities of drawing and painting, is perhaps the most beautiful work which Nicolas Poussin ever painted, and, with the 'Bacchanalian Dance' (No. 62), is among the most valued possessions of the National Gallery" (Poynter: The National Gallery, ii. 104).

43. CHRIST TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS

    Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.

A sketch for a composition which Rembrandt etched and also drew. The drawing is in the British Museum. This sketch was formerly in the possession of Sir Joshua Reynolds, at whose sale it was bought by Sir George Beaumont.

44. A BLEACHING GROUND

    J. van Ruysdael (Dutch: 1628-1682). See 627.

This little picture, which dates from the earliest days of the National Gallery, was for many years obscured with dirt and not exhibited to the public. It has recently been cleaned, and shows one of the painter's favourite subjects – the bleaching grounds in the neighbourhood of Haarlem. Before the discovery of chemical means of bleaching linen, these were a great source of income to the town. Linen was brought here from all parts of the continent to be bleached, and then went back as Dutch linen or Holland.

45. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY

    Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669).

Rembrandt Harmensz – called also Van Rhyn, "of the Rhine," from having been born on the banks of that river – has a place apart by himself in the history of painting. He is the greatest genius of the Dutch School, and one of the six supreme masters of the world. He is also one of the most distinctive and individual of them all. In what, let us ask, do the genius and the individuality of Rembrandt consist? In the first place, his mastery of the resources of painting, within the sphere and for the ideals he chose for himself, is surpassed by no other artist. "It will be remembered," said Millais, "that Rembrandt in his first period was very careful and minute in detail, and there is evidence of stippling in his flesh-painting; but when he grew older, and in the fulness of his power, all appearance of such manipulation and minuteness vanished in the breadth and facility of his brush, though the advantage of his early manner remained. The latter manner is, of course, much the finer and really the more finished of the two.[76 - "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.] I have closely examined his pictures at the National Gallery, and have actually seen, beneath that grand veil of breadth, the early work that his art conceals from untrained eyes – the whole science of painting. And herein lies his superiority to Velazquez, who, with all his mighty power and magnificent execution, never rose to the perfection which, above all with painters, consists in ars celare artem" (Magazine of Art, 1888, p. 291). "Rembrandt," says Sir Frederic Burton, "would have been unparalleled had he treated nothing but frivolous subjects"; but, in the second place, "the artist was a poet and a seer." He was a seer in his penetration into the mind of man; a poet in his perception of a special kind of beauty. His portraits have "an inward life that belongs to no others in a like degree." It is as a painter of character that he shows himself supreme, bringing out the personality of his sitters in their gestures and attitudes, and in the peculiarity of bearing and expression stamped upon them by temperament and habits. From his dramatic action and mastery of expression, Rembrandt has been called "the Shakespeare of Holland." In his religious subjects, the originality of his mind and power of his imagination are also conspicuous. "He gives," says Ruskin, "pathetic or powerful fancies, founded on real Scripture reading, and on his interest in the picturesque character of the Jew." In all subjects alike, "he moves us by his profound sympathy with his kind, by his tragic power, by his deep pathos, by his humour, which is thoroughly human and seldom cynical." What he held up to nature – and herein is Rembrandt's individuality most marked – was the dark mirror. "He was," says Leighton, "the supreme painter who revealed to the world the poetry of twilight and all the magic mystery of gloom." "He was in the mystery," says Burton, "that underlies the surface of things." "He accosts with his dark lantern," says Fromentin, "the world of the marvellous, of conscience, and the ideal; he has no master in the art of painting, because he has no equal in the power of showing the invisible." "It was his function," says another critic, "to introduce mystery as an element of effect in the imitative arts." "As by a stroke of enchantment Rembrandt brought down a cloud over the face of nature, and beneath it, half-revealed, half-hidden, her shapes met the eye in aspects full of new suggestion."[77 - Baldwin Brown's The Fine Arts, p. 298, where Mr. Whistler's beautiful description of a "nocturne" on the Thames is cited as being in direct artistic descent from Rembrandt. "To Rembrandt," said the late Mr. Wornum (Epochs of Painting, 1864, p. 421), "belongs the glory of having first embodied in art and perpetuated [such] rare and beautiful effects of nature" as are referred to above. Ruskin took up the sentence, and replied with characteristic emphasis: "Such effects are indeed rare in nature; but they are not rare, absolutely. The sky, with the sun in it, does not usually give the impression of being dimly lighted through a circular hole; but you may observe a very similar effect any day in your coal-cellar. The light is not Rembrandtesque on the current, or banks, of a river; but it is on those of a drain. Colour is not Rembrandtesque, usually, in a clean house; but is presently obtainable of that quality in a dirty one. And without denying the pleasantness of the mode of progression, which Mr. Hazlitt, perhaps too enthusiastically, describes (in a criticism upon the present picture) as obtainable in a background of Rembrandt's, 'you stagger from one abyss of obscurity to another,' I cannot feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness, and the dulness of his light. Glorious or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. It is the aim of the best painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. It was the aim of Rembrandt to paint the foulest things he could see – by rushlight," – a statement from which, of course, deduction must be made, in forming a general idea of Ruskin's estimate, for his appreciation of Rembrandt's portraits. See, e. g. under 51.] In the technical method by which Rembrandt worked out his ideal he is the great master of the school of chiaroscuro – of those, that is, who strive at representing not so much the colours of objects, as the contrasts of light and shade upon them. "If it were possible for art to give all the truths of nature it ought to do it. But this is not possible. Choice must always be made of some facts which can be represented from among others which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some respects, misrepresented… Rembrandt always chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. In order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the light and colour of five-sixths of his picture; and the expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of shape or tint. But he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety."[78 - To further understand Rembrandt's principle of choice, contrast that of Veronese. See the passage quoted under No. 26.] Rembrandt "sacrifices the light and colour of five-sixths of his picture." This is inevitable. For both the light and the darkness of nature are inimitable by art. "The whole question, therefore, is simply whether you will be false at one end of the scale or at the other – that is, whether you will lose yourself in light or in darkness… What Veronese does is to make his colours true to nature as far as he can. What Rembrandt does is to make his contrasts true, never minding his colours – with the result that in most cases not one colour is absolutely true."[79 - 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 Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 16; vol. iv. pt. v. ch. ii. §§ 11-19; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 10; On the Old Road, i. 498-505.] An exception, however, must be made. For he often "chose subjects in which the real colours were very nearly imitable, – as single heads with dark backgrounds, in which nature's highest light was little above his own." He was particularly fond also of dark scenes lighted only by some small spot of light; as, for instance, in this picture and in No. 47.

The technical skill and sense of power which distinguish Rembrandt's work are reflected in his life – a life of hard labour, sinking towards its close into deep gloom, and a life at all times of a certain aloofness and of restricted vision. He was born at Leyden, being the fifth child of a miller, and from a very early age set himself to etch and sketch the common things about the mill. "His father's mill was, doubtless, Rembrandt's school; the strong and solitary light, with its impenetrable obscurity around, the characteristic feature of many of Rembrandt's best works, is just such an effect as would be produced by the one ray admitted into the lofty chamber of a mill from the small window, its ventilator" (Wornum). He never went to Italy or cultivated the grand style. He studied the life and manner of his own time and people. His models were not conspicuous for elegance; beauty of form was not within the compass of his art. He was indefatigable in making studies both of himself and of his mother. Among the things he studied were, it must be admitted, the lowest functions of humanity and often obscenities of a rollicking kind; coarseness of manner and conversation was common at that time. Rembrandt studied for a short period under a well-known painter, Pieter Lastman, at Amsterdam, where he had for a fellow-pupil a fellow-townsman, Jan Lievens (see 1095), but returned to Leyden in 1624, determined "to study and practise in his own fashion." He soon acquired a considerable reputation; a Dutch poet, in a book published in 1630, refers to him as an instance of precocity, and in disproof of the doctrine of heredity. Rembrandt, "beardless, yet already famous," was the son of a miller, "made of other flour than his father's." As most of his sitters lived in Amsterdam, then a great centre of wealth and learning, Rembrandt moved to that city in 1631. The famous "Anatomy Lesson," now in the Museum at the Hague, was produced in the following year. "He lived very simply," we are told, "and when at work contented himself with a herring or a piece of cheese and bread; his only extravagance was a passion for collecting." In 1634 he married Saskia Uilenburg, a lady of a good Frisian family, and possessed of some fortune. Her features may be recognised in a large number of the painter's pictures; in none more attractively rendered than in the famous picture of the Dresden Gallery, in which she is sitting on her husband's knee. During this period of Rembrandt's life all went well with him. Commissions poured in; his studio was crowded with scholars, and his etchings spread his fame far beyond his native land. He lived for his art and his home, mixing little in society. "When I want to give my wits a rest," he said, "I do not look for honour, but for liberty." "When he was painting," said one of his biographers, "he would not have given audience to the greatest monarch on earth, but would have compelled even such an one to wait or to come again when he was more at leisure." He never travelled, even in Holland, and he dwelt apart. He had few books, but his taste in art was catholic. To his passion for collecting we have already referred. His house, which still stands in the Breedstraat, was a museum of curiosities, containing costly materials, stuffed animals, richly ornamented weapons, casts, engravings, and pictures (including works by Palma Vecchio and Giorgione). The pearls, precious stones, rich necklaces, clasps and bracelets of every kind that Saskia wears in her portraits were not gems of the painter's imagination, but actual objects from the jewel-cases which he filled for his wife. "When Rembrandt was present at a sale," says Baldinucci, "it was his habit, especially when pictures drawn by great masters were put up, to make an enormous advance on the first bid, which generally silenced all competition. To those who expressed their surprise at such a proceeding, he replied that by this means he hoped to raise the status of his profession." This lordly buying was the undoing of Rembrandt's worldly fortunes. In 1642 Saskia died, and his financial embarrassments, which had already begun, went from worse to worse. In 1656 he was declared bankrupt; his house and collections were sold, and at the age of fifty-one he found himself homeless and penniless. He was stripped, we read, even of his household linen, though of this, to be sure, he seems to have had but a meagre store. In his life, as in his art, there were heavy shadows; but the light shines out in his undaunted perseverance. He had lived for some years with his servant, Hendrickje Stoffels, an uneducated peasant, who served him as a model, and whose homely features appear in many of the pictures of his middle period (see e.g. No. 54). In 1654 Rembrandt had been summoned before the elders of the Church on account of the irregularity of their relationship. But Hendrickje was a good mother to Rembrandt's legitimate children as well as to her own, and in 1660 she and the painter's son, Titus, entered into partnership as art dealers, and supported Rembrandt by the sale of his etchings. His vogue as a painter had by this time been eclipsed by the popularity of painters of less sombre genius. Fallen from his rich estate and frowned upon by the Church, the master found himself in the last period of his life deserted and unhonoured. Yet to this period belong many of his noblest works. "He had never cared," says M. Michel, "for the suffrages of the crowd. He set his face more steadily than ever towards the goal he had marked out for himself. Within the walls of his makeshift studios, seeking solace in work and meditation, he lived for his art more absolutely than before; and some of his creations of this period have a poetry and a depth of expression such as he had never hitherto achieved." But fresh sorrows descended upon the master as the end drew near. Hendrickje died about 1664, and this blow was followed in 1668 by the death of Titus. Crushed in spirit and broken by poverty, the old painter did not long survive his son. He died in 1669 – unknown, unrecorded, and dishonoured. Gerard de Lairesse, then at the height of his reputation, said of him only that he was a master "who merely achieved an effect of rottenness," and was "capable of nothing but vulgar and prosaic subjects." Now, two centuries and a quarter after his death, Rembrandt's fame stands higher than even in the heyday of his success. His work as a painter is represented in the National Gallery by several masterpieces. Of his drawings and etchings the British Museum possesses a splendid collection; an exhibition of these (illustrated by an admirable Catalogue) was arranged in 1899.

A tour de force in the artist's speciality of contrasts of light and shade. Notice how a succession of these contrasts gradually renders the subject intelligible. "The eye falls at once upon the woman, who is dressed in white, passes then to the figure of Christ, which next to her is the most strongly lighted – and so on to Peter, to the Pharisees, to the soldiers, till at length it perceives in the mysterious gloom of the Temple the High Altar, with the worshippers on the steps" (Waagen: Treasures of Art in Great Britain, i. 353). "Beyond the ordinary claims of art, this picture commands our attention from the grand conception of the painter, who here, as in other pictures and etchings, has invested Christ with a majestic dignity which recalls Leonardo and no other" (J. F. White).

This picture, which was painted in 1644 for Jan Six, the well-known patron of Rembrandt, passed eventually into the possession of Mr. Angerstein. The poet Wordsworth, describing a visit he paid to the Angerstein collection, wrote to Sir George Beaumont in 1808: "Coleridge and I availed ourselves of your letters to Lawrence, and saw Mr. Angerstein's pictures. The day was very unfavourable, not a gleam of sun, and the clouds were quite in disgrace. The great picture of Michael Angelo and Sebastian (No. 1) pleased me more than ever. The new Rembrandt has, I think, much, very much, in it to admire, but still more to wonder at rather than admire. I have seen many pictures of Rembrandt which I should prefer to it. The light in the depth of the temple is far the finest part of it: indeed, it is the only part of the picture which gives me very high pleasure; but that does highly please me" (Memorials of Coleorton, ii. 49).

46. THE BLESSINGS OF PEACE

    Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

This picture was presented in 1630 to King Charles I. by Rubens, when he came to England as accredited ambassador for the purpose of negotiating a peace with Spain. After the death of Charles, the Parliament sold the picture for £100. It passed into the possession of the Doria family at Genoa, where it was known as "The Family of Rubens." It was afterwards bought by the Marquis of Stafford for £3000, and by him presented to the National Gallery.[80 - Ruskin, writing to the Times in 1847, said of the then condition of the picture: "I have no hesitation in asserting that for the present it is utterly, and for ever partially, destroyed. I am not disposed lightly to impugn the judgment of Mr. Eastlake (that is, the then Keeper and subsequent Director, the late Sir C. L. Eastlake), but this was indisputably of all the pictures in the Gallery that which least required, and least could endure, the process of cleaning. It was in the most advantageous condition under which a work of Rubens can be seen; mellowed by time into more perfect harmony than when it left the easel, enriched and warmed, without losing any of its freshness or energy. The execution of the master is always so bold and frank as to be completely, perhaps even most agreeably, seen under circumstances of obscurity, which would be injurious to pictures of greater refinement; and though this was, indeed, one of his most highly-finished and careful works (to my mind, before it suffered this recent injury, far superior to everything at Antwerp, Malines, or Cologne), this was a more weighty reason for caution than for interference. Some portions of colour have been exhibited which were formerly untraceable; but even these have lost in power what they have gained in definitiveness, – the majesty and preciousness of all the tones are departed, the balance of distances lost. Time may, perhaps, restore something of the glow, but never the subordination; and the more delicate portions of flesh tint, especially the back of the female figure on the left, and of the boy in the centre, are destroyed for ever" (Arrows of the Chace, i, 56, 57).]

The circumstances under which the picture was painted gave the clue to its meaning. Rubens came to urge Charles to conclude peace, and here on canvas he sets forth its blessings. In the centre of the picture is the Goddess of Wisdom, with Minerva's helmet on her head, her right hand resting on her spear, now to be used no more. Before her flies War, reluctantly, as if he dared not resist Wisdom, yet employing his shield, in order still to shelter Discord, with her torch now extinguished. Last of all in the hateful train is Malice, whose very breath is fire, and who "endeth foul in many a snaky fold" – in the serpent's folds, which ever attend the hostilities of nations. Beneath Minerva's protection sits Peace enthroned, and gives the milk of human kindness for babes to suck. From above, Zephyrus, the soft warm wind, descends with the olive wreath – the emblem in all ages of public peace, whilst at her side stands the "all-bounteous Pan," with Amalthea's storied Horn of Plenty. A band of happy children, led by Love (whose torch, now that Discord's is gone out, burns aloft), approach to taste the sweets of Peace, and to minister to abundance. In the train of Plenty comes Opulence, bringing goblets, wreaths of pearl, and other treasures; whilst behind is Music, playing on her tambourine to celebrate the arts of peace. Last of all in the foreground is a leopard, not hurting or destroying any more, but playful as a lamb —

All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail;
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale;
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,
And white-rob'd Innocence from heaven descend…
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes…
The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,
And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead.

    Pope: Messiah.

47. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS

    Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.