picture of which he was very fond, “Carthage,” was the occasion of an amusing anecdote. “Chantry,” he said to his friend the sculptor, “I want you to promise that when I am dead you will see me rolled in that canvas when I’m buried.”
“All right,” said Chantry, “I’ll do it, but I’ll promise to have you taken up and unrolled, also.”
A remarkable incident of generosity is told of Turner. In 1826 he hung two exquisite pictures in the Academy. One, “Cologne,” having a most beautiful, golden effect. This was hung between two portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence. The golden colouring of Turner’s picture entirely destroyed the effect of the Lawrence pictures, and without a word, Turner washed his lovely picture over with lampblack. This gave the Lawrence, pictures their full colour value. A friend who had been enthusiastic about the “Cologne” was provoked with Turner. “What in the world did you do that for?” he demanded. “Well, poor Lawrence was so unhappy. It will all wash off after the exhibition.” Turner had his reward in cash, for the picture sold for 2,000 guineas.
Above all things Turner hated engravings, or any process that cheapened art, and one day he stated this to his friend Lawrence. “I don’t choose to be a basket engraver,” he declared.
“What do you mean by that,” Sir Thomas inquired.
“Why when I got off the coach t’ other day at Hastings, a woman came up with a basket of your ‘Mrs. Peel,’ and offered to sell me one for a sixpence.”
Turner dearly loved his friends, and the story of Chantry’s death, illustrates it. He was in his room when the sculptor breathed his last, and just as he died, the artist turned to another friend, George Jones, and with tears streaming down his face, wrung Jones’s hand and rushed from the room, unable to speak.
Again, when William Frederick Wells, another friend, died, Turner rushed to the house of Clara Wells, his daughter, and cried: “Oh Clara, Clara! these are iron tears. I have lost the best friend I ever had in my life.”
In his old age Turner suddenly disappeared from all his haunts, and his friends could not find him. They were much troubled, but one day his old housekeeper found a note in a pocket of an old coat, which made her think he had gone to Chelsea. She looked there for him, and found him very ill, in a little cottage on the Thames River. Everybody about called him Admiral Booth, believing him to be a retired admiral. He had felt his death near and had tried to meet it quite alone. He died the very day after his friends found him, as he was being wheeled by them to the window to look out upon the river for the last time. He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral between Sir Joshua Reynolds and James Barry. He left his drawings and pictures to a “Turner Gallery,” and $100,000 to the Royal Academy, to be used for a medal to be struck every two years for the best exhibitor. The rest of his fortune went to care for “poor and decayed male artists born in England and of English parents only.” This was to be known as Turner’s Gift, and that is why he had saved money all his life.
A few more of the numberless stories of his generosity should be told. A picture had been sent to the Academy by a painter named Bird It was very fine, and Turner was full of its praise, but when they came to hang it no place could be found.
“It can’t be hung,” the others of the committee said.
“It must be hung,” returned Turner, but nothing could be done about it, for there was absolutely no place. Then Turner went aside with the picture and sat studying it a long time. Finally he got up, took down a picture of his own and hung Bird’s in its place. “There!” he said. “It is hung!”
Again, an old drawing-master died and Turner who had known the family for a long time, was aware that they were destitute, so he gave the widow a good sum of money with which to bury her husband and to meet general expenses. After some time she came to him with the money; but Turner put his hands in his pockets. “No,” he said; “keep it. Use it to send the children to school and to church.”
On one occasion when he had irritably sent a beggar from his house, he ran out and called her back, thrusting a 5 note into her hand before letting her go.
There was a man who in Turner’s youth, while the little fellow was making pictures in the cheerless barber shop bought all of these drawings he could find. He often raised the price and in every way tried to help Turner. In after years that old patron went bankrupt. Turner heard that his steward had been instructed to cut down some fine old trees on this man’s estate, and sell them. Turner, without letting himself be known in the matter, at once stopped the cutting and put into his old patron’s hands about 20,000. The rescued man, afterward, through the same channels that he had received the money, paid it all back. Years passed, and the son of that same man got into the same difficulties, and again, without being known in the matter, Turner restored his fortune. That son, in his turn, honestly paid back the full amount. This was the miser who saved all his money–to do good deeds to his friends. Ruskin wrote that in all his life he had never heard from Turner one unkind or blameful word for others.
PLATE–THE FIGHTING TMRAIRE
This was the picture which Turner loved best of all, the one he would never sell; but at his death ho gave it to the English nation.
“Many years before he painted it, he had gone down to Portsmouth one day to see Nelson’s fleet come in after the glorious victory of Trafalgar. The _Tmraire_ was pointed out to him–a battle ship that had very proudly borne the English flag, for during the battle it had run in between two French frigates and captured them both.
“And now between thirty and forty years later, he lingered one afternoon on the banks of the Thames. As he looked over the water he saw the grand old hulk being towed down the river by a noisy little tug to be broken up at Deptford. ‘There’s a fine subject!’ he exclaimed as he looked at the heroic ship that had known many glorious years; and in his thought he compared it to ‘a battle-scarred warrior borne to the grave.’
“Then he painted the picture. The glow of the setting sun irradiates the scene and bids farewell to the old ship. Twilight is coming on, and the new moon has just risen in its pearly light. It is a pathetic picture,” and well illustrates how truly a “master of sunsets and waves” the artist was.
Among his other paintings are several of Venice; “The Slave Ship” and many other sea pieces.
XL
SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK
_Flemish School_
1599-1641
_Pupil of Rubens_
Anthony Van Dyke’s father was neither a gentleman nor an ill-born person. He was “betwixt-and-between,” being a silk merchant, who met so many fine folk that he seemed to be “fine folk” himself; and by the time Anthony had grown up, he actually believed himself to be one of them. If manners stand for fineness Sir Anthony must have been superfine, because he was almost overburdened with “manners.”
He became a wonderful, be-laced, perfumed, shiny gentleman who never stooped to paint anything less than royalty and its associates, nor in anything less than velvets and laces. Like Rembrandt and Gainsborough, he set a fashion–or rather the style in which he painted came to be known after his name. We are all familiar with the kind of ornamentation on clothes called Van Dyck–pointed lace, or trimmings–and pointed beards.
As a very young lad he was almost too dainty to be liked by healthy boys; and the worst of it was he did not care whether healthy, robust chaps liked him or not; certainly he did not care for them. He liked to sit in his father’s shop and be smiled upon by the great ladies who came to buy, and in turn to smile shyly at them; this tendency became stronger as he grew to be a man.
Anthony’s mother made the most exquisite embroideries, and this may mean that some part of his art was inherited. She handled lovely colours, and tried to fashion beautiful flower shapes for customers. She was a fragile, tender sort of woman, while the father was doubtless a dapper, over-nice little fellow.
Anthony was born in Antwerp, and the facts concerning his education, as in the case of most artists, are lost to our knowledge. He probably had a little of some sort outside of painting, but it certainly was not enough to hurt him, nor to make a fine healthy man of him. He was very beautiful, in a lady-like, faint-coloured way, not in the least resembling the handsome, gorgeous, elegant, robust Rubens, a true cavalier, of a dashing sort.
He was apprenticed to a painter when he was ten years old, and later on became the pupil of Rubens. He painted a whole series of Apostles’ heads, about which a lawsuit took place. The papers relating to this were found about twenty years ago, though the lawsuit occurred as far back as 1615. Several of the Apostles’ heads that brought about the suit are to-day to be seen in the gallery at Dresden.
Everything in those days–especially in Germany and Holland–was represented by a “guild.” In reading about the Mastersingers of Nuremberg we are told that on the day when the trial of singers was to take place, dozens of “guilds” assembled in the meadow–guilds of bakers, of shoemakers–of which Hans Sachs was the head–guilds of goldsmiths, etc. Van Dyck was a member of the painters’ guild when he was no more than nineteen. His work at that time showed so much strength that there is a picture of his, an old gentleman and lady, in the Dresden gallery, which for a long time was supposed to have been painted by his master, Rubens.
An intimate friend of Van Dyck, Kenelm Digby, says that Van Dyck’s first relations with Rubens came about by Van Dyck being employed to make engravings for the reproduction of Rubens’s great works. After that he studied painting with him.
One of his friends of that time wrote that at twenty Van Dyck was nearly as great as Rubens, though this is hardly substantiated by the verdict of time, and that being a man with very rich family connections, he could hardly be expected to leave home. On every hand we have signs of the artist’s affected feeling about himself and other people.
However, an annual pension from the King of England seems to have made travelling possible to this fine gentleman of lace ruffles, pale face, and lady-like ways.
There is an entry about him on the royal account book of “Special service … performed for His Majesty.” Also “Antonio Van Dyck, gent., _His Majesty’s servant_, is allowed to travaile 8 months, he havinge obtayneid his Majesty’s leave in that behalf, as was signified to the E. of Arundel.” Certainly by that time Van Dyck had become a truly great portrait painter; not the greatest, because every picture showed the same characteristics in its subject–elegance, fine clothes, languid manners, without force of great truth or any excellent moral quality to distinguish one from another. Nevertheless, the kind of painting that he did, he did better than anyone else had ever done, or probably ever will do.
While in England he painted all the royalties and many aristocrats, and wherever he went he was always painting pictures of himself.
He travelled about a good deal, always painting people of the same class–kings and queens and fine folk, and painting them pretty nearly all alike.
When he went to Italy he was everywhere received as a great painter, but while artists agreed that his work was excellent he was not much liked by them, and many tales are told about that journey which are interesting, if not entirely true. Van Dyck was the sort of man about whom tales would be made up. One, however, sounds true. It is said that he fell in love–which of course he was always doing–with a beautiful country girl, and that for love of her he painted an altar piece into which he put himself, seated on the great gray horse which Rubens had given him. That picture is in St. Martin’s Church at Saventhem, near Brussels, but although one is inclined to believe this story because it was quite the sort of thing which might be expected of Van Dyck, even this is not true, because the painting was done long after the artist had made his Italian journey, and it was commissioned by a gentleman living at Saventhem, whose daughter Van Dyck undoubtedly liked pretty well; but he made the picture for money, not for love.
While he was in Italy he lived with a cardinal, and painted languid pictures of sacred subjects, which were far from being his best work. The best that he did was in portraiture. Distinguished though he was, he did not have a very good time in Italy, because he would not join the artists who worked there, nor associate with them in the least, and naturally this made him disliked.
We see a good many portraits painted by Van Dyck, of persons mounted upon or standing beside the gray horse, and these were painted about the time of that Italian journey. He used the Rubens horse in many paintings.
Of all the people with whom he painted, he most valued the knowledge he got from a blind woman painter of Sicily, called Sofonisba Anguisciola, and he often said that he had learned more from a blind woman than from all the open-eyed men he ever knew. This woman artist was over ninety years old at the time he learned from her.
While he was in Italy the plague broke out, and Van Dyck fled for his life, leaving an unfinished picture behind him, one ordered by the English king, the subject being Rinaldo and Armida, which had gained for the artist his knighthood pension.
It is said that during his first year in England he painted the king and queen twelve times. He had an extraordinary record for industry, and painted very quickly, as he had need to do, because it took a great deal of money to buy the sort of things Van Dyck liked–fine laces and velvets, perfumes and satins. His plan was to sketch his subject first on gray paper with black and white chalk, and after that he gave the sketch to an assistant who increased it to the size he wished to paint. The next step was to set his painter to work upon the clothing of his figures. This was painted in roughly, together with background and any architectural effect Van Dyck wanted. After this the artist himself sat down and in three or four sittings, of not more than an hour each, he was able to finish a picture worth to-day thousands of dollars.
He painted hands specially well, and kept certain models for them alone.
Van Dyck had eleven brothers and sisters, whom he always kept in mind. Some of his sisters had become nuns while some of his brothers were priests, and Van Dyck’s influence got a monkish brother called to the Dutch court to act as chaplain to the queen.
By this time every royal personage in the world, nearly, had sent for Van Dyck to paint his portrait, for he could make one look handsomer than could any other painter in existence. If the king was very ugly, Van Dyck painted such beautiful clothes upon him that nobody noticed the plainness of the features.
When Van Dyck was about thirty-six years old he married a great lady, the Lady Mary Ruthven, granddaughter of the Earl of Gowrie, but before that he had had a lady-love, Margaret Lemon, whom he painted as the Virgin and in several other pictures. When he married Lady Mary, Margaret Lemon was so furiously jealous that she tried to injure Van Dyck’s right hand so that he could paint no more.
About this time Rubens died in Flanders, leaving behind him an unfinished series of pictures which had been commissioned by the king of Spain. Van Dyck was asked to finish these, but declined until he was asked to make an independent picture, to complete the series, and this he was delighted to do. Ferdinand of Austria wrote to the king of Spain that Van Dyck had returned in great haste to London to arrange for his change of home, in order to do the work. “Possibly he may still change his mind,” he added, “for he is stark mad.” This shows how Van Dyck’s erratic ways appeared to some people.
He had a sister, Justiniana, who was also something of an artist and she married a nobleman when she was about twelve years old.
When Van Dyck died he was buried in St. Paul’s, London, and Charles I. placed an inscription on his tomb.
In the “Young People’s Story of Art,” is the following anecdote: “A visit was once paid by a courtly looking stranger passing through Haarlem, to Franz Hals, the distinguished Dutch painter.
“Hals was not at home but he was sent for to the tavern and hastily returned. The stranger told him that he had heard of his reputation–had just two hours to spare–and wished to have his portrait painted. Hals, seizing canvas and brushes fell vigorously to work; and before the given time had elapsed, he said, ‘Have the goodness to rise, sir, and examine your portrait!’ The stranger looked at it, expressed his satisfaction, and then said, ‘Painting seems such a very easy thing, suppose we change places and see what I can do!’
“Hals assented, and took his position as the sitter. The unknown began, and as Hals watched him, he saw that he wielded the brush so quickly, he must be a painter. His work, too, was rapidly finished, and as Hals looked at it he exclaimed, ‘You must be Van Dyck! No one else could paint such a portrait!’
“No two portraits could have been more unlike. The story adds that the famous Dutch and Flemish masters heartily embraced each other.”
The stories of Van Dyck’s youth are interesting, and probably true. It is said that he drew so well when he was a pupil of Rubens that the great master often allowed him to retouch his own works. Once in Rubens’s studio, some of the students got the key and went in to see what the master was doing, when he was absent. Rubens had left a painting fresh upon the easel, and in looking about them one of the boys rubbed against it. This frightened them all. What should they do? Rubens would find his picture ruined and know that they had broken in.
After consultation they decided there was no one with them who could repair the damage as well as Van Dyck, who set about it, and soon he had painted in the smudged part so perfectly that when Rubens saw it, he did not for some time know that anything had happened to his picture. Later he suspected something, and when he learned of the prank and its outcome, he was so delighted with Van Dyck’s work that he praised him instead of blaming him for it.
Van Dyck had a very precise method of working. When sitters came to him he would paint for just one hour. Then he would politely dismiss them, and his servant would wash his brushes, and clear the way for the next sitter. He dined with his sitters often that he might surprise in them the expression which he wanted to paint. Also, he had their clothing sent to his studio, that it might be exactly imitated by himself or by those assistants who painted in the foundation for his finished work.
While attached to King Charles I.’s court, Van Dyck was given a fine house at Blackfriars, on the Thames, and he had a private landing place made for boats, so that the royal family might visit him at their convenience. Charles I. used often to go to Van Dyck’s studio to escape his many troubles, and thus the artist’s home became as fashionable a gathering place, as Gainsborough’s studio was in Bath. He painted Queen Henrietta not less than twenty-five times. He often furnished concerts for his sitters, for he himself was passionately fond of music, and moreover he believed that music often brought to the faces of his sitters, an expression that he loved to paint.
He painted so many pictures of a certain kind of little dog, in the pictures of King Charles I. that ever since that breed has been known as the King Charles spaniel.
After a while Van Dyck got heavily into debt. King Charles himself was in great trouble, and he had no money with which to pay his painter’s pension. The artist had lived so extravagantly that he did not know at last which way to turn, so in desperation he thought to try alchemy and maybe to learn the secret of making gold. He wasted much time at this, as cleverer men have done, but at last he became too ill for that or for his own proper work, and badly off though Charles was himself, he offered his court physician a large sum if he could cure his court painter. But Van Dyck had enjoyed life too well, and nothing could be done for him.
He was the seventh child of his parents–which some have thought had something to do with his genius and success; he lived gaily all the years of his life, going restlessly from place to place, and having many acquaintances but probably few friends, outside of his old master, Rubens, who loved him for his genius.
PLATE–CHILDREN OF CHARLES THE FIRST
Van Dyck painted the family of the unfortunate king of England four times. There are five children in the Windsor Castle picture, and this one, which hangs in the Turin Gallery, was probably painted before the birth of the fourth child in 1636. It is celebrated for its colouring as well as for its great artistic merit. The children are surely childlike enough, despite their stately attire, and they little dream of the sad fate awaiting the whole of the Stuart family to which they belong.
Other Van Dycks are: “The Blessed Herman Joseph,” “Lords Digby and Russell,” “Lord Wharton,” “Countess Folkestone,” and “William Prince of Orange.”
XLI
VELASQUEZ (DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DE SILVA)
(Pronounced Vay-lahs’keth)
_Castilian School_
1599-1669
_Pupil of Herrera_
It is pretty difficult to find out why a man was named so-and-so in the days of the early Italian and Spanish painters. More likely than not they would be called after the master to whom they had been first apprenticed; or after their trade; after the town from which they came, and rarely because their father had had the name before them. In Velasquez’s case, he was named after his mother.
No one seemed to be certain what to call him, but he generally wrote his name “Diego de Silva Velasquez.” His father was Rodriguez de Silva, a lawyer, but in calling the boy Velasquez the family followed a universal Spanish custom of naming children after their mothers.
Little Velasquez was well taught in his childhood; he studied many languages and philosophy, for he was intended to be a lawyer or something learned, anything but a painter. The disappointment of parents in those days, when they found a child was likely to become an artist is touching.
Despite his equipment for a useful life, according to the ideas of his parents, this little chap was bound to become nothing but a maker of pictures.
Herrera was a bad-tempered master and little Velasquez could not get on with him, so after a year of harsh treatment, he went to another master, Pacheco, but by that time he had learned a secret that was to help make his work great. Herrera had taught him to use a brush with very long bristles, which had the effect of spreading the paint, making it look as if his “colours had floated upon the canvas,” in a way that was the “despair of those who came after him.”
Velasquez was born in Seville at a time when about all the art of the world was Italian or German; thus he became the creator of a new school of painting.
He stayed five years in Pacheco’s studio and pupil and master became very fond of each other. Pacheco was not a great master–not so good as Herrera–but he was easy to get on with, and knew a good deal about painting, so that as Velasquez had the genius, he was as well placed as he needed to be.
In Pacheco’s studio there was a peasant boy whose face was very mobile, showed every passing feeling; and Velasquez used to make him laugh and weep, till, surprising some good expression, he would quickly sketch him. With this excellent model, Velasquez did a surprising amount of good work.
Spain had just then conquered the far-off provinces of Mexico and Peru, and was continually receiving from its newly got lands much valuable merchandise. Rapidly growing rich, this Latin country loved art and all things beautiful, so its money was bound to be spent freely in such ways. Madrid had been made its capital, and at that time there were few fine pictures to be found there. The Moors who had conquered Spain had forbidden picture making, because it was contrary to their religion to represent the human figure, or even the figures of birds and beasts. Then the Inquisition had hindered art by its rules, one of which was that the Virgin Mary should always be painted with her feet covered; another, that all saints should be beardless. There were many more exactions.
While cathedrals were being built elsewhere, the Moors had been in control of Spanish lands, so that no cathedral had been built there, and when Velasquez came upon the scene the time of great cathedral building was past. It had ceased to be the fashion. Although there had been such painters as Beneguette, Morales, Navarrette, and Ribera, all Spanish and of considerable genius, they had been too badly handicapped to make painting a great art in Spain. When Madrid became the capital of Spain, it had no unusual buildings, unless it was an old fortress of the Moors, the Alcazar, Caesar’s house, but the nation was buying paintings from Italy, and it began to beautify Madrid, which had the advantage of the former Moorish luxury and art, very beautiful, though not pictorial.
In Madrid, then, there seemed to be great opportunity for a fine artist like Velasquez, and his master urged him to go there and try his fortune. So he set out on mule-back, attended by his slave, but unless he could get the ear of the king, it was useless for him to seek advancement in Madrid. Without the king as patron at that time, an artist could not accomplish much. After trying again and again, Velasquez had to return to his old master, without having seen the king; but after a time a picture of his was seen by Philip IV., and he was so much pleased with it that he summoned the artist. Through his minister, Olivares, he offered him $113.40 in gold (fifty ducats) to pay his return expenses. The next year he gave him $680.40 to move his family to Madrid.
At last the artist had found a place in the rich city, and he went to live at the court where the warmest friendship grew between him and the king. The latter was an author and something of a painter, so that they loved the same things. This friendship lasted all their lives, and they were together most of the time, the king always being found, in Velasquez’s studio in the palace when his duties did not call him elsewhere. During the many many years–nearly thirty-seven–that Velasquez lived with Philip IV. he employed himself in painting the scenes at court. Thus he became the pictorial historian of the Spanish capital. He was a man of good disposition, kindly and generous in conduct and in feeling, so that he was always in the midst of friends and well-wishers.
Philip IV. was indeed a noble companion, but he was not a gay one, being known as the king who never laughed–or at least whose laughter was so rare, the few times he did laugh became historic. One would expect this serious and depressing atmosphere to have had an effect upon a painter’s art; but it chanced that Rubens visited Spain, and there, Velasquez being the one famous artist, it was natural they should become interested in each other. Rubens told Velasquez of the wonders of Italian painting, till the Spaniard could think of nothing else, and finally he begged Philip to let him journey to Italy that he might see some of those wonders for himself. The request made the king unhappy at first, but at last he gave his consent and Velasquez set out for Italy. The king gave him money and letters of introduction, and he went in company with the Marquis of Spinola.
After Velasquez had stayed eighteen months in Italy, Philip began to long for his friend and sent for him to return. He came back full of the stories of brilliant Italy, and charmed the king completely.
There is as absurd a story of Velasquez’s perfection in painting as that of Raphael’s, whose portrait of the pope, left upon the terrace to dry, imposed upon passers by. It is said of Velasquez’s work that when he had painted an admiral whom the king had ordered to sea, and left it exposed in his studio, the king, entering, thought it was the admiral himself, and angrily inquired why he had not put to sea according to orders. On the face of them these stories are false, but they serve to suggest the perfection of these artists’ paintings.
Philip, being a melancholy man, had his court full of jesters, poor misshapen creatures–dwarfs and hunchbacks–who were supposed to appear “funny,” and Velasquez, as court painter, painted those whom he continually saw about him, who formed the court family. Thus we have pictures of strange groups–dwarfs, little princesses, dressed precisely as the elders were dressed, favourite dogs, and Velasquez himself at his easel.
In 1618, while still with his master, Pacheco, he had married the master’s daughter, a big, portly woman. Before he left Seville he bad two daughters.
These were all the children he had, although he painted a picture of “Velasquez’s Family” which includes a great number of people. The figures in that painting are the children of his daughter, not his own; and this may account for one biographer’s statement that the artist had “seven children.” He was devoted to and happy in his family of children and grandchildren.
He did not grow rich, but received regularly during his life in Madrid, twenty gold ducats ($45.36) a month to live upon, and besides this his medical attendance, lodging, and additional payment for every picture. The one which brought him this good fortune was an equestrian portrait of Philip; first uncovered on the steps of San Felipe. Everywhere the people were delighted with it, poets sung of it, and the king declared no other should ever paint his portrait. This picture has long since disappeared.
In 1627 Velasquez won the prize for a picture representing the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and was rewarded by “being appointed gentleman usher. To this was shortly afterward added a daily allowance of twelve reals–the same amount which was allowed to court barbers–and ninety gold ducats ($204.12) a year for dress, which was also paid to the dwarfs, buffoons, and players about the king’s person–truly a curious estimate of talent at the court of Spain.”
The record of Philip IV. with unpleasing, even degenerate characters, about him, is brightened by the thought of his loyalty to his court painter and life-long friend. When the king’s favourites fell, those who had been the friends of Velasquez, the artist loyally remained their friend in adversity as he had been while they were powerful. This constancy, even to the royal enemies, was never resented by Philip. He honoured the faithfulness of his artist, even as he himself was faithful in this friendship. Philip’s court was such that there was little to paint that was ennobling, and so Velasquez lacked the inspiration of such surroundings as the Italian painters had.
Philip IV. was hail-fellow-well-met with his stablemen, his huntsmen, his cooks, and yet he seems to have had no sense of humour, was long faced and forbidding to look at, and despite his strange habits considered himself the most mighty and haughty man in the world. He felt himself free to behave as he chose, because he was Philip of Spain; and he chose to do a great many absurd and outrageous things. In all Philip’s portraits, painted by Velasquez, he wears a stiff white linen collar of his own invention, and he was so proud of this that he celebrated it by a festival. He went in procession to church to thank God for the wonderful blessing of the _Golilla_–the name of his collar. This unsightly thing became the fashion, and all portraits of men of that time were painted with it. “In regard to the wonderful structure of Philip’s moustaches it is said, that, to preserve their form they were encased during the night in perfumed leather covers called _bigoteras_.” Such absurdities in a king, who had the responsibilities of a nation upon him, seem incredible.
Velasquez made in all three journeys to Italy, and the last one was on a mission for the king, which was much to the latter’s credit. Philip had determined to have a fine art gallery in Madrid, for Spain had by this time many pictures, but no statuary; so he commissioned his painter to buy whatever he thought well of and _could_ buy, in Italy. Hence the artist set off again with his slave–the same one with whom he had journeyed to Madrid so long before. His name was Pareja, and his master had already made an excellent artist of him.
They went to Genoa, thence to the great art-centres of Italy, were received everywhere with honour, and the artist bought wisely. Velasquez did not care for Raphael’s paintings as much as for Titian’s, and he said so to Salvator Rosa, an honoured painter in Italy.
While in Rome Velasquez painted the pope, also his own slave, Pareja.
When he returned to Spain he took with him three hundred statues, but a large number of them were nude, and the Spanish court, not over particular about most things, was very particular about naked statues, so that after Philip’s death, they nearly all disappeared. After his return, and after the queen had died and Philip had married again, Velasquez was made quartermaster-general, no easy post but not without honour, though it interfered with his picture painting a good deal. He had to look after the comfort of all the court, and to see that the apartments it occupied, at home or when it visited, were suitable.
“Even the powerful king of Spain could not make his favourite a belted knight without a commission to inquire into the purity of his lineage on both sides of the house. Fortunately, the pedigree could bear scrutiny, as for generations the family was found free from all taint of heresy, from all trace of Jewish or Moorish blood, and from contamination from trade or commerce. The difficulty connected with the fact that he was a painter was got over by his being painter to the king and by the declaration that he did not sell his pictures.”
The red Cross of Santiago conferred upon him by Philip, made Velasquez a knight and freed him also from the rulings of the Inquisition, which directed so largely what artists could and could not do. Thus it is that we come to have certain great pictures from Velasquez’s brush which could not otherwise have been painted.
This action of the king, setting free the artist, made two schools of art, of which the court painter represented one; and Murillo the other, under the command of the Church. Although not so rich perhaps as Raphael, Velasquez lived and died in plenty, while Murillo, the artist of the Church of Rome, was a poverty-stricken man.
Finally, while in the midst of honours, and fulfilling his official duty to the court of Spain, Velasquez contracted the disease which killed him. The Infanta, Maria Theresa, was to wed Louis XIV., and the ceremony was to take place on a swampy little island called the Island of Pheasants. There he went to decorate a pavilion and other places of display. He became ill with a fever and died soon after he returned to Madrid.
He made his wife, his old master Pacheco’s daughter, his executor, and was buried in the church of San Juan, in the vault of Fuensalida; but within a week his devoted wife was dead, and in eight days’ time she was buried beside him.
He left his affairs–accounts between him and the court–badly entangled, and it was many years before they were straightened out. His many deeds of kindness lived after him. He made of his slave a good artist and a devoted friend, and by his efforts the slave became a freedman. The story of his kindly help to Murillo when that exquisite painter came, unknown and friendless to Madrid, has already been told.
The Church where Velasquez was buried was destroyed by the French in 1811, and all trace of the resting place of the great Spanish artist is forever lost to us.
He is called not only “painter to the king,” but “king of painters.”
PLATE–EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT OF DON BALTHASAR CARLOS.
Philip of Spain had long prayed for a son and when at last one was granted him his pride in his young heir was unbounded. The little Don Carlos was not unworthy, for he was a cheerful, hearty boy, trained to horsemanship, from his fourth year, for his father was a noted rider and had the best instructors for his son. The prince was a brave hunter too and we are told that he shot a wild boar when he was but nine years of age. In this portrait which is in the Museo del Prado he is six years old, and it was neither the first nor the last that Velasquez made of him. It was one of the court painter’s chief duties to see that the heir to the throne was placed upon canvas at every stage of his career, and he painted him from two years of age till his lamented death at sixteen.
The young prince wears in this picture a green velvet jacket with white sleeves and his scarf is crimson embroidered with gold. The lively pony is a light chestnut and the foreshortening of its body must be noticed. The steady grave eyes of the lad are gazing far ahead as they would naturally be if he were riding rapidly, but his princely dignity is shown in his firm seat in the saddle and his manner of holding his marshal’s batn.
The great art of the painter is also shown in the way he subordinates the landscape to the figure. He will not allow even a tree to come near the young horseman, but brings his young activity into vivid contrast with the calm peacefulness of the distant view.
With the death of Don Carlos the downfall of his father’s dynasty was assured, though for a time his little sister, the Infanta Maria Theresa, was upheld as the heiress. She married Louis XIV. and had a weary time of it in France. Velasquez painted her picture too, in the grown up dress of the children of that day. It is in the Vienna Gallery. Among his best known pictures are “The Surrender of Breda,” “Alessandro del Borro,” and “Philip IV.”
XLII
PAUL VERONESE (PAOLO CAGLIARI)
(Pronounced Vay-ro-nay’zay and pah’o-lah cal-ee-ah’ree) _Venetian School_
1528-1588
_Pupil of Titian_
“One has never done well enough, when one can do better; one never knows enough when he can learn more!”
This was the motto of Paul Veronese. This artist was born in Verona–whence he took his name–and spent much of his life with the monks in the monastery of St. Sebastian.
His father was a sculptor, and taught his son. Veronese himself was a lovable fellow, had a kind feeling for all, and in return received the good will of most people. When he first went to Venice to study he took letters of introduction to the monks of St. Sebastian, and finally went to live with them, for his uncle was prior of the monastery, and it was upon its walls that he did his first work in Venice. His subject was the story of Esther, which he illustrated completely.
He became known in time as “the most magnificent of magnificent painters.” He loved the gaieties of Venice; the lords and ladies; the exquisite colouring; the feasting and laughter, and everything he painted, showed this taste. When he chose great religious subjects he dressed all his figures in elegant Venetian costumes, in the midst of elegant Venetian scenes. His Virgins, or other Biblical people, were not Jews of Palestine, but Venetians of Venice, but so beautiful were they and so inspiring, that nobody cared to criticise them on that score. He loved to paint festival scenes such as, “The Marriage at Cana,” “Banquet in Levi’s House,” or “Feast in the House of Simon.” He painted nothing as it could possibly have been, but everything as he would have liked it to be.
Into the “Wedding Feast at Cana,” where Jesus was said to have turned the water into wine, he introduced a great host of his friends, people then living. Titian is there, and several reigning kings and queens, including Francis I. of France and his bride, for whom the picture was made. This treatment of the Bible story startles the mind, but delights the eye.
It was said that his “red recurred like a joyful trumpet blast among the silver gray harmonies of his paintings.”
Muther, one who has written brilliantly about him, tells us that “Veronese seems to have come into the world to prove that the painter need have neither head nor heart, but only a hand, a brush, and a pot of paint in order to clothe all the walls of the world with oil paintings” and that “if he paints Mary, she is not the handmaid of the Lord or even the Queen of Heaven, but a woman of the world, listening with approving smile to the homage of a cavalier. In light red silk morning dress, she receives the Angel of the Annunciation and hears without surprise–for she has already heard it–what he has to say; and at the Entombment she only weeps in order to keep up appearances.”
Such criticism raises a smile, but it is quite just, and what is more, the Veronese pictures are so beautiful that one is not likely to quarrel with the painter for having more good feeling than understanding. His joyous temperament came near to doing him harm, for he was summoned before the Inquisition for the manner in which he had painted “The Last Supper.”
After the Esther pictures in St. Sebastian, the artist painted there the “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,” and there is a tradition that he did his work while hiding in the monastery because of some mischief of which he had been guilty.
At that time he was not much more than twenty-six or eight, while the great painter Tintoretto was forty-five, yet his work in St. Sebastian made him as famous as the older artist.
There is very little known of the private affairs of Veronese. He signed a contract for painting the “Marriage at Cana,” for the refectory of the monastery of St. Giorgio Maggiore, in June 1562, and that picture, stupendous as it is, was finished eighteen months later. He received $777.60 for it, as well as his living while he was at work upon it, and a tun of wine. One picture he is supposed to have left behind him at a house where he had been entertained, as an acknowledgment of the courtesy shown him.
Paul had a brother, Benedetto, ten years younger than himself, and it is said that he greatly helped Paul in his work, by designing the architectural backgrounds of his pictures. If that is so, Benedetto must have been an artist of much genius, for those backgrounds in the paintings are very fine.
Veronese married, and had two sons; the younger being named Carletto. He was also the favourite, and an excellent artist, who did some fine painting, but he died while he was still young. Gabriele the elder son, also painted, but he was mainly a man of affairs, and attended to business rather than to art.
Veronese was a loving father and brother, and beyond doubt a happy man. After his death both his sons and his brother worked upon his unfinished paintings, completing them for him. He was buried in the Church of St. Sebastian.
PLATE–THE MARRIAGE AT CANA
This painting is most characteristic of Veronese’s methods. He has no regard for the truth in presenting the picture story. At the marriage at Cana everybody must have been very simply dressed, and there could have been no beautiful architecture, such as we see in the picture. In the painting we find courtier-like men and women dressed in beautiful silks. Some of the costumes appear to be a little Russian in character, the others Venetian; and Jesus Himself wears the loose every-day robe of the pastoral people to whom he belonged. We think of luxury and rich food and a splendid house when we look at this painting, when as a matter of fact nothing of this sort could have belonged to the scene which Veronese chose to represent. Perhaps no painter was more lacking in imagination than was Veronese in painting this particular picture. He chose to place historical or legendary characters, in the midst of a scene which could not have existed co-incidently with the event.
Among his other pictures are “Europa and the Bull,” “Venice Enthroned,” and the “Presentation of the Family of Darius to Alexander.”
XLIII
LEONARDO DA VINCI
(Pronounced Lay-o-nar’do dah Veen’chee) _Florentine School_
1451-1519
_Pupil of Verrocchio_
Leonardo da Vinci was the natural son of a notary, Ser Pier, and he was born at the Castello of Vinci, near Empoli. From the very hour that he was apprenticed to his master, Verrocchio, he proved that he was the superior of his master in art. Da Vinci was one of the most remarkable men who ever lived, because he not only did an extraordinary number of things, but he did all of them well.
He was an engineer, made bridges, fortifications, and plans which to this day are brilliant achievements.
He was a sculptor, and as such did beautiful work.
He was a naturalist, and as such was of use to the world.
He was an author and left behind him books written backward, of which he said that only he who was willing to devote enough study to them to read them in that form, was able to profit by what he had written.
Finally, and most wonderfully, he was a painter.
He had absolute faith in himself. Before he constructed his bridge he said that he could build the best one in the world, and a king took him at his word and was not disappointed by the result.
He stated that he could paint the finest picture in the world–but let us read what he himself said of it, in so sure and superbly confident a way that it robbed his statement of anything like foolish vanity. Such as he could afford to speak frankly of his greatness, without appearing absurd. He wrote:
“In time of peace, I believe I can equal anyone in architecture, in constructing public and private buildings, and in conducting water from one place to another. I can execute sculpture, whether in marble, bronze, or terra cotta, and in painting I can do as much as any other man, be he who he may. Further, I could engage to execute the bronze horse in eternal memory of your father and the illustrious house of Sforza.” He was writing to Ludovico Sforza whose house then ruled at Milan. “If any of the above-mentioned things should appear to you impossible or impracticable, I am ready to make trial of them in your park, or in any other place that may please your excellency, to whom I commend myself in proud humility.”
Leonardo’s experiments with oils and the mixing of his pigments has nearly lost to us his most remarkable pictures. His first fourteen years of work as an artist were spent in Milan, where he was employed to paint by the Duke of Milan, and never again was his life so peaceful; it was ever afterward full of change. He went from Milan to Venice, to Rome, to Florence, and back to Milan where his greatest work was done.
While Leonardo was a baby he lived in the Castle of Vinci. He was beautiful as a child and very handsome as a man. When a child he wore long curls reaching below his waist. He was richly clothed, and greatly beloved. His body seemed no less wonderful than his mind. He wished to learn everything, and his memory was so wonderful that he remembered all that he undertook to learn. His muscles were so powerful that he could bend iron, and all animals seemed to love him. It is said he could tame the wildest horses. Indeed his life and accomplishments read as if he were one enchanted. One writer tells us that “he never could bear to see any creature cruelly treated, and sometimes he would buy little caged birds that he might just have the pleasure of opening the doors of their cages, and setting them at liberty.”
The story told of his first known work is that his master, being hurried in finishing a picture, permitted Leonardo to paint in an angel’s head, and that it was so much better than the rest of the picture, that Verrocchio burned his brushes and broke his palette, determined never to paint again, but probably this is a good deal of a fairy tale and one that is not needed to impress us with the artist’s greatness, since there is so much to prove it without adding fable to fact.
Leonardo was also a very far seeing inventor and most ingenious. He made mechanical toys that “worked” when they were wound up. He even devised a miniature flying machine; however, history does not tell us whether it flew or not. He thought out the uses of steam as a motive power long before Fulton’s time.
Leonardo haunted the public streets, sketchbook in hand, and when attracted by a face, would follow till he was able to transfer it to paper. Ida Prentice Whitcomb, who has compiled many anecdotes of da Vinci, says that it was also his habit to invite peasants to his house, and there amuse them with funny stories till he caught some fleeting expression of mirth which he was pleased to reproduce.
As a courtier Leonardo was elegant and full of amusing devices. He sang, accompanying himself on a silver lute, which he had had fashioned in imitation of a horse’s skull. After he attached himself to the court of the Duke of Milan, his gift of invention was constantly called into use, and one of the surprises he had in store for the Duke’s guests was a great mechanical lion, which being wound up, would walk into the presence of the court, open its mouth and disclose a bunch of flowers inside.
Leonardo worked very slowly upon his paintings, because he was never satisfied with a work, and would retouch it day after day. Then, too, he was a man of moods, like most geniuses, and could not work with regularity. The picture of the “Last Supper” was painted in Milan, by order of his patron, the Duke, and there are many picturesque stories written of its production. It was painted upon the refectory wall of a Dominican convent, the Santa Maria delle Grazie; and at first the work went off well, and the artist would remain upon his scaffolding from morning till night, absorbed in his painting. It is said that at such times he neither ate nor drank, forgetting all but his great work. He kept postponing the painting of two heads–Christ and Judas.
He had worked painstakingly and with enthusiasm till that point, but deferred what he was hardly willing to trust himself to perform. He had certain conceptions of these features which he almost feared to execute, so tremendous was his purpose. He let that part of the work go, month after month, and having already spent two years upon the picture, the monks began to urge him to a finish. He was not the man to endure much pressure, and the more they urged the more resentful he became. Finally, he began to feel a bitter dislike for the prior, the man who annoyed him most. One day, when the prior was nagging him about the picture, wanting to know why he didn’t get to work upon it again, and when would it be finished, Leonardo said suavely: “If you will sit for the head of Judas, I’ll be able to finish the picture at once.” The prior was enraged, as Leonardo meant he should be; but Leonardo is said actually to have painted him in as Judas. Afterward he painted in the face of Christ with haste and little care, simply because he despaired of ever doing the wonderful face that his art soul demanded Christ should wear.
The one bitter moment in Leonardo’s life, in all probability, was when he came in dire competition with Michael Angelo. When he removed to Florence he was required to submit sketches for the Town Hall–the Palazzo Vecchio–and Michael Angelo was his rival. The choice fell to Angelo, and after a life of supremacy Leonardo could not endure the humiliation with grace. Added to disappointment, someone declared that Leonardo’s powers were waning because he was growing old. This was more than he could bear, and he left Italy for France, where the king had invited him to come and spend the remainder of his life. Francis I. had wished to have the picture in the Milan monastery taken to France, but that was not to be done.
Doubtless the king expected Leonardo to do some equally great work after he became the nation’s guest.
Before leaving Italy, Leonardo had painted his one other “greatest” picture–“La Gioconda” (Mona Lisa)-and he took that wonderful work with him to France, where the King purchased it for $9,000, and to this day it hangs in the Louvre.
But Leonardo was to do no great work in France, for in truth he was growing old. His health had failed, and although he was still a dandy and court favourite, setting the fashion in clothing and in the cut of hair and beard, he was no longer the brilliant, active Leonardo.
Bernard Berensen, has written of him: “Painting … was to Leonardo so little of a preoccupation that we must regard it as merely a mode of expression used at moments by a man of universal genius.” By which Berensen means us to understand that Leonardo was so brilliant a student and inventor, so versatile, that art was a mere pastime. “No, let us not join in the reproaches made to Leonardo for having painted so little; because he had so much more to do than to paint, he has left all of us heirs to one or two of the supremest works of art ever created.”
Another author writes that “in Leonardo da Vinci every talent was combined in one man.”
Leonardo was the third person of the wonderful trinity of Florentine painters, Raphael and Michael Angelo being the other two.
He knew so much that he never doubted his own powers, but when he died, after three years in France, he left little behind him, and that little he had ever declared to be unfinished–the “Mona Lisa” and the “Last Supper.” He died in the Chteau de Cloux, at Amboise, and it is said that “sore wept the king when he heard that Leonardo was dead.”
In Milan, near the Cathedral, there stands a monument to his memory, and about it are placed the statues of his pupils. To this day he is wonderful among the great men of the world.
PLATE–THE LAST SUPPER
This, as we have said, is in the former convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan. It was the first painted story of this legendary event in which natural and spontaneous action on the part of all the company was presented.
To-day the picture is nearly ruined by smoke, time, and alterations in the place, for a great door lintel has been cut into the picture. Leonardo used the words of the Christ: “Verily, I say unto you that one of you shall betray me,” as the starting point for this painting. It is after the utterance of these words that we see each of the disciples questioning horrified, frightened, anxious, listening, angered–all these emotions being expressed by the face or gestures of the hands or pose of the figures. It is a most wonderful picture and it seems as if the limit of genius was to be found in it.
The company is gathered in a half-dark hall, the heads outlined against the evening light that comes through the windows at the back. We look into a room and seem to behold the greatest tragedy of legendary history: treachery and sorrow and consternation brought to Jesus of Nazareth and his comrades.
This great picture was painted in oil instead of in “distemper,” the proper kind of mixture for fresco, and therefore it was bound to be lost in the course of time. Besides, it has known more than ordinary disaster. The troops of Napoleon used this room, the convent refectory, for a stable, and that did not do the painting any good. The reason we have so complete a knowledge of it, however, is that Leonardo’s pupils made an endless number of copies of it, and thus it has found its way into thousands of homes. The following is the order in which Leonardo placed the disciples at the table: Jesus of Nazareth in the centre, Bartholomew the last on the left, after him is James, Andrew, Peter, Judas–who holds the money bag–and John. On the right, next to Jesus, comes Thomas, the doubting one; James the Greater, Philip, Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon. Jesus has just declared that one of them shall betray him, and each in his own way seems to be asking “Lord, is it I?” In the South Kensington Museum in London will be found carefully preserved a description, written out fairly in Leonardo’s own hand, to guide him in painting the Last Supper. It is most interesting and we shall quote it: “One, in the act of drinking puts down his glass and turns his head to the speaker. Another twisting his fingers together, turns to his companion, knitting his eyebrows. Another, opening his hands and turning the palm toward the spectator, shrugs his shoulders, his mouth expressing the liveliest surprise. Another whispers in the ear of a companion, who turns to listen, holding in one hand a knife, and in the other a loaf, which he has cut in two. Another, turning around with a knife in his hand, upsets a glass upon the table and looks; another gasps in amazement; another leans forward to look at the speaker, shading his eyes with his hand; another, drawing back behind the one who leans forward, looks into the space between the wall and the stooping disciple.”
Other paintings of Leonardo’s are: “Mona Lisa,” “Head of Medusa,” “Adoration of the Magi,” and the “Madonna della Caraffa.”
XLIV
JEAN ANTOINE WATTEAU
(Pronounced in French, Vaht-toh; English, Wot-toh) _French (Genre) School_
1684-1721
_Pupil of Gillot and Audran_
Watteau’s father was a tiler in a Flemish town–Valenciennes. He meant that his son should be a carpenter, but that son tramped from Valenciennes to Paris with the purpose of becoming a great painter. He did more, he became a “school” of painting, all by himself.
There is no sadder story among artists than that of this lowly born genius. He was not good to look upon, being the very opposite of all that he loved, having no grace or charm in appearance. He had a drooping mouth, red and bony hands, and a narrow chest with stooping shoulders. Because of a strange sensitiveness he lived all his life apart from those he would have been happy with, for he mistrusted his own ugliness, and thought he might be a burden to others.
Such a man has painted the gayest, gladdest, most delicate and exquisite pictures imaginable.
He entered Paris as a young man, without friends, without money or connections of any kind, and after wandering forlornly, about the great city, he found employment with a dealer who made hundreds of saints for out-of-town churches.
It is said that for this first employer Watteau made dozens and dozens of pictures of St. Nicholas; and when we think of the beautiful figures he was going to make, pictures that should delight all the world, there seems something tragic in the monotony and common-placeness of that first work he was forced by poverty to do. Certainly St. Nicholas brought one man bread and butter, even if he forgot him at Christmas time.
After that hard apprenticeship, Watteau’s condition became slightly better. He had been employed near the Pont Notre Dame, at three francs a week, but now in the studio of a scene painter, Gillot, he did work of coarse effect, very different from that exquisite school of art which he was to bring into being. After Gillot’s came the studio of Claude Audran, the conservator of the Luxembourg, and with him Watteau did decorative work. In reality he had no master, learned from nobody, grovelled in poverty, and at first, forced a living from the meanest sources. With this in mind, it remains a wonder that he should paint as no other ever could, scenes of exquisite beauty and grace; scenes of high life, courtiers and great ladies assembled in lovely landscapes, doing elegant and charming things, dressed in unrivalled gowns and costumes. Until Watteau went to the Luxembourg he had seen absolutely nothing of refined or gracious living. He had come from country scenes, and in Paris had lived among workmen and bird-fanciers, flower sellers, hucksters and the like. This is very likely the secret of his peculiar art.
Watteau would have been a wonderful artist under any circumstances, no matter what sort of pictures he had painted; but circumstances gave his imagination a turn toward the exquisite in colourand composition. Doubtless when he first looked down from the palace windows of the Luxembourg and saw gorgeous women and handsome men languishing and coquetting and revelling in a life of ease and beauty, he was transported. He must have thought himself in fairyland, and the impulse to paint, to idealise the loveliness that he saw, must have been greater in him than it would have been in one who had lived so long among such scenes that they had become familiar with them.
After Watteau there were artists who tried to do the kind of work he had done, but no one ever succeeded. Watteau clothed all his shepherdesses in fine silken gowns, with a plait in the back, falling from the shoulders, and to-day we have a fashion known as the “Watteau back”–gowns made with this shoulder-plait. He put filmy laces or softest silks upon his dairy maids, as upon his court ladies, dressing his figures exquisitely, and in the loveliest colours. He had suffered from poverty and from miserable sights, so when he came to paint pictures, he determined to reproduce only the loveliest objects.
At that time French fashions were very unusual, and it was quite the thing for ladies to hold a sort of reception while at their toilet. A description of one of these affairs was written by Madame de Grignon to her daughter: “Nothing can be more delightful than to assist at the toilet of Madame la Duchesse (de Bourgoyne), and to watch her arrange her hair. I was present the other day. She rose at half past twelve, put on her dressing gown, and set to work to eat a _mringue_. She ate the powder and greased her hair. The whole formed an excellent breakfast and charming _coiffure_.” Watteau has caught the spirit of this strange airy, artificial, incongruous existence. His ladies seem to be eating _meringues_ and powdering their hair and living on a diet of the combination. One hardly knows which is toilet and which is real life in looking at his paintings.
He quarreled with Audran at the Luxembourg, and having sold his first picture, he went back to his Valenciennes home, to see his former acquaintances, no doubt being a little vain of his performance.
After that he painted another picture which sold well enough to keep him from poverty for a time, and on his return to Paris he was warmly greeted by a celebrated and influential artist, Crozat. Watteau tried for a prize, and though his picture came second it had been seen by the Academy committee.
His greatness was acknowledged, and he was immediately admitted to the Academy and granted a pension by the crown, with which he was able to go to Italy, the Mecca of all artists the world over.
From Italy he went to London, but there the fogs and unsuitable climate made his disease much worse and he hurried back to France, where he went to live with a friend who was a picture dealer. It was then that he painted a sign for this friend, Gersaint, a sign so wonderful that it is reckoned in the history of Watteau’s paintings.
Soon he grew so sensitive over his illness, that he did not wish to remain near his dearest friends, but one of them, the Abb Haranger, insisted upon looking after his welfare, and got lodgings for him at Nogent, where he could have country air and peace.
Watteau died very soon after going to Nogent in July, 1721, and he left nine thousand livres to his parents, and his paintings to his best friends, the Abb, Gersaint, Monsieur Henin, and Monsieur Julienne. He is called the “first French painter” and so he was–though he was Flemish, by birth.
PLATE–FÅTE CHAMPÅTRE
This exquisite picture displays nearly all the characteristics of Watteau’s painting. He was said to paint with “honey and gold,” and his method was certainly remarkable. His clear, delicate colours were put upon a canvas first daubed with oil, and he never cleaned his palette. His “oil-pot was full of dust and dirt and mixed with the washings of his brush.” One would think that only the most slovenly results could come from such habits of work, but the artist made a colour which no one could copy, and that was a sort of creamy, opalescent white. This was original with Watteau, and most beautiful.
In this “Fte Champtre,” which is now in the National Gallery at Edinburgh, he paints an elegant group of ladies and gentlemen indulging in an open air dance of some sort. One couple are doing steps facing one another, to the music of a set of pipes, while the rest flirt and talk, decorously, round about. There is no boisterous rusticity here; all is dainty and refined.
The same characteristics are to be found in Watteau’s other pictures such as, “Embarkation for the Island of Cythera,” “The Judgment of Paris,” and “Gay Company in a Park.”
XLV
SIR BENJAMIN WEST
_American_
1738-1820
_Pupil of the Italian School_
The beautiful smile of his little niece helped to make this man an artist. This is the story:
Benjamin West was born down in Pennsylvania, at Westdale, a small village in the township of Springfield, of Quaker parentage. The family was poor perhaps, but in America at a time when everybody was struggling with a new civilisation it did not seem to be such binding poverty as the same condition in Europe would have been. Benjamin had a married sister whose baby he greatly loved, and he gave it devoted attention. One day while it was sleeping and the undiscovered artist was sitting beside it he saw it smile, and the beauty of the smile inspired him to keep it forever if he could. He got paper and pencil and forthwith transferred that “angel’s whisper.”
No child of to-day can imagine the difficulties a boy must have had in those days in America, to get an art education, and having learned his art, how impossible it was to live by it. Men were busy making a new country and pictures do not take part in such pioneer work; they come later. Still, there were bound to be born artistic geniuses then, just as there were men for the plough and men for politics and for war. He who happened to be the artist was the Quaker boy, West.
He took his first inspiration from the Cherokees, for it was the Indian in all the splendour of his strength and straightness that formed West’s ideal of beautiful physique.
When he first saw the Apollo Belvedere, he exclaimed: “A young Mohawk warrior!” to the disgust of every one who heard him, but he meant to compliment the noblest of forms. Europeans did not know how magnificent a figure the “young Mohawk warrior” could be; but West knew.
After his Indian impetus toward art he went to Philadelphia, and settled himself in a studio, where he painted portraits. His sitters went to him out of curiosity as much as anything else, but at last a Philadelphia gentleman, who knew what art meant, recognised Benjamin West’s talent, and made some arrangement by which the young man went to Italy.
Life began to look beautiful and promising to the Pennsylvanian. He was in Italy for three years, and in that home of art the young man who had made the smile of his sister’s sleeping baby immortal was given highest honours. He was elected a member of all the great art societies in Italy, and studied with the best artists of the time. He began to earn his living, we may be sure, and then he went to England, where, in spite of the prejudice there must have been against the colonists, he became at once a favourite of George III., a friend of Reynolds and of all the English artists of repute–unless perhaps of Gainsborough, who made friends with none.
West was appointed “historical painter” to his Majesty, George III., and he was chosen to be one of four who should draw plans for a Royal Academy. He was one of the first members of that great organisation, and when Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president, died, West became president, remaining in office for twenty-eight years.
About that time came the Peace of Amiens, and West was able to go to Paris, where he could see the greatest art treasures of Europe, which had been brought to France from every quarter as a consequence of the war. At that time, before Paris began to return these, and when she had just pillaged every great capital of Europe, artists need take but a single trip to see all the art worth seeing in the whole world.
After a long service in the Academy, West quarreled with some of the Academicians and sent in his resignation; but his fellow artists had too much sense and good feeling to accept it, and begged him to reconsider his action. He did so, and returned to his place as president. When West was sixty-five years old he made a picture, “Christ Healing the Sick,” which he meant to give to the Quakers in Philadelphia, who were trying to get funds with which to build a hospital. This picture was to be sold for the fund; but it was no sooner finished and exhibited in London before being sent to America, than it was bought for 3,000 guineas for Great Britain. West did not contribute this money to the hospital fund, but he made a replica for the Quakers, and sent that instead of the original.
West was eighty-two years old when he died and he was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral after a distinguished and honoured life. Since Europe gave him his education and also supported him most of his life, we must consider him more English than American, his birth on American soil being a mere accident.
PLATE–THE DEATH OF WOLFE
This death scene upon the Plains of Abraham, without the walls of Quebec in 1759, must not be taken as a realistic picture of an historic event. West drew upon his imagination and upon portraits of the prominent men supposed to have been grouped around the dying general, and he has produced a dramatic effect. One can imagine it is the two with fingers pointing backward who have just brought the memorable tidings, “They run! They run!”
“Who run?” asks Wolfe, for when he had fallen the issues of the fight were still undecided. “The French, sir. They give way everywhere.” “Thank God! I die in peace,” replied the English hero. At a time when the momentous results of this battle had set the whole of Great Britain afire with enthusiasm it is easy to understand the popularity of a picture such as this. It was sold in 1791 for 28, and now belongs to the Duke of Westminster. There is a replica of it in the Queen’s drawing-room at Hampton Court.
Another famous historical picture by West is “The Battle of La Hogue.”
INDEX
About, Edmund
Academia, Florence
Academy, French
Rome,
Royal, London,
Venice
“Acis and Galatea”
Adoration of the Magi
“Adoration of the Shepherds”
“After a Summer Shower”
“Afternoon”
Albert, King
“Alessandro del Borro”
Alexander VI.
Alice, Princess
Allegri, Antonio. _See_ Correggi
Allegri, Pompino
“Ambassadors, The”
“American Mustangs”
“Anatomy Lesson, The”
Andrea del Sarto
Angelo, Michael
“Angels’ Heads”
“Angelas, The”
Anguisciola, Sofonisba
Anne of Cleves
Anne of Saxony
Annunciata, cloister of the
“Annunciation, The”
“Ansidei Madonna, The”
“Antiope”
Apocalypse
Apollo Belvedere
Apostles, the Four
Apostles’ Heads
Appelles
“Archipelago”
Arena Chapel
Arrivabene Chapel
“Artist’s Two Sons, The”
“Arundel Castle and Mill”
“Assumption of the Virgin”
“At the Well”
Audran
Augusta, Princess
“Avenue, Middelharnis, Holland”
“Awakened Conscience, The”
“Bacchanal”
“Bacchus and Ariadne”
Balzac
“Banquet in Levi’s House”
“Baptism of Christ, The”
Barbizon
Barile
Barry, James
Bartoli d’Angiolini
Bartolommeo, Fra
Bassano
“Bathers”
“Battle of La Hogue”
Beaumont, Sir George
Beaux-Arts, l’Ecole des
Begarelli
Bellini, Gentile
Bellini, Giovanni
Bembo, Cardinal
Beneguette
“Bent Tree”
Bentivoglio, Cardinal
Berck, Derich
Berensen, Bernard
Bergholt, East
“Berkshire Hills”
“Bianca”
Bicknell, Maria
Bigio, Francia
Bigordi. _See_ Ghirlandajo
Bird
“Birth of the Virgin”
(Andrea del Sarto)
(Murillo)
“Birth of Venus”
Blanc, Charles
“Blessed Herman Joseph, The”
“Bligh Shore”
“Blue Boy, The”
Bcklin, Arnold
“Boat-Building”
Boleyn, Anne
Bolton, Mrs. Sarah K.
Bonheur, Marie-Rosea
Bonheur, Raymond B.
Bordeaux
Bordone. _See_ Giotto
Borghese Palace
Borgia family
Borgia, Lucretia
Botticelli
Boudin
Bouguereau, William Adolphe
“Boy at the Stile, The”
Brancacci Chapel
Brant, Isabella
Breton, Jules
Brice, J. B.
Brouwer
Browning
Brunellesco
“Brutus”
Buckingham, Duke of
Buonarroti. _See_ Angelo Michael
Burgundy, Duchess of
Burke, Edmund
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward
Burr, Margaret
Caffin
Cagliari, Benedetto
Cagliari, Carletto
Cagliari, Gabriele
Cagliari, Paolo. _See_ Veronese
Cambridge, University of
“Camels at Rest”
Campagna
Campana, Pedro
Campanile, Florence
Canova
Caprese
“Capture of Samson”
Capuchin Church
Capuchin Convent
Carlos, Don
“Carmencita”
Carmine, Church of the
“Carthage”
Castillo, Juan del
Cecelia, wife of Titian
Cellini
Centennial Exhibition
Chamberlain, Arthur
“Chant d’Amour”
Chantry, Sir Francis
“Charity”
Charles, I.
Charles V.
Charles X.
Cherokees
“Chess Players, The”
“Children of Charles I.”
“Christ Healing the Sick”
“Christ in the Temple”
“Christina of Denmark”
Church
Cibber, Theophilus
Cimabue
Claude
“Cleopatra Landing at Tarsus”
“Cock Fight”
Cogniet, Lon
Colnaghi
“Cologne”
Constable, John
Copley, John Singleton
Copper Plate Magazine
Cornelia, Rembrandt’s daughter
Cornelissen, Cornelis
“Cornfield”
“Coronation of Marie de Medicis”
“Coronation of the Virgin”
(Ghirlandajo)
(Raphael)
Corot, Jean Baptiste Camille
Correggio
Cosimo, Piero di
“Cottage, The”
“Countess Folkstone”
“Countess of Spencer”
Coventry, Countess of
“Creation of Man, The”
“Creation of the World, The”
Crozat
“Crucifixion, The”
(Raphael)
(Tintoretto)
“Dana”
Dandie Dinmont
“Daniel”
Dante
“Daphnis and Chloe”
Daubigny
“David”
“Dead Christ, The”
“Dead Mallard”
“Death of Ananias, The”
“Death of Wolfe, The”
“Dedham Mill”
“Dedham Vale”
Delaroche
“Deluge, The”
“Descent from the Cross, The”
(Campana)
(Rembrandt)
(Rubens)
De Witt
Diaz
“Dice Players, The”
Dickens, Charles
Digby, Kenelm
“Dignity and Impudence”
“Divine Comedy”
Dolce, Ludovico
Donatello
“Don Quixote”
Dor, Paul Gustave
D’Orsay
“Duchess of Devonshire and Her Daughter, The” “Duel After the Masked Ball”
Dunthorne, John
Dupr
Durand, Carolus
Drer, Albrecht
Dyce
“Ecce Homo”
“Education of Mary, The”
Edward, King
Egyptian art
Elizabeth, Cousin of the Virgin
Elizabeth, Princess
“Embarkation for the Island of Cythera” “Emperor at Solferino, The”
Engravers and engraving
“Entombment, The”
(Titian)
(Veronese)
Eos
“Equestrian Portrait of Don Balthasar Carlos” Errard, Charles
Escorial, the
Estban, Bartolom. See Murillo
Estban, Gaspar
Estban, Therese
Etchers and etching
“Europa and the Bull”
“Eve of St. Agnes, The”
Fallen, Ambrose
“Fall of Man, The”
“Fantasy of Morocco”
Fawkes, Hawksworth
“Feast in the House of Simon”
“Feast of Ahasuerus”
“Ferdinand of Austria”
Ferdinand III., Grand Duke
Ferrara, Duke of
“Fte Champtre”
“Fighting Tmraire, The”
Filipepi, Mariano
“Finding of Christ in the Temple, The” “Flamborough, Miss”
“Flatford Mill on the River Stour”
“Flora”
(Bcklin)
(Titian)
“Foal of an Ass, The”
Fondato de’ Tedeschi
Fontainebleau
“Fool, The”
“Fornarina, The”
Fortuny, Mariano
Fourment family
Fourment, Helena
“Four Saints”
Francis I.
Frari, monks of the
Frey, Agnes
“Friedland”
Gainsborough, Mary
Gainsborough, Thomas
Gallery, Berlin
Dresden
Grosvenor
Hague, The
Hermitage, The
Lichtenstein, Vienna
Louvre
Luxembourg
Madrid
Naples
National, Edinburgh
National, London
Old Pinakothek, Munich
Parma
Pitti Palace
Uffizi
Vienna
Garrick
“Gay Company in a Park”
Gelle. See Claude Lorrain
George III.
“Georgia Pines”
Gerbier
Germ, The
Grme, Jean Lon
Gersaint
Ghibertio
Ghirlandajo
“Gibeon Farm”
Gignoux, Regis
“Gillingham Mill”
Gillot
Giorgione
Giotto
“Giovanna degli Albizi”
Girten, Thomas
Gisze, Gorg
Gladstone, Mr. and Mrs.
“Gleaners, The”
“Glebe Farm”
Goethe
“Golden Calf, The”
“Golden Stairs, The”
Goldsmith, craft of the
Goldsmith, Oliver
Gonzaga, Vincenzo
“Good Samaritan, The”
Graham, Judge
Granacci
Gravelot
Grignon, Madame de
Gualfonda
“Guardian Angel, The”
Guidi, Giovanni
Guidi, Simone
Guidi. Tommaso. _See_ Masaccio
Guido
Guidobaldo of Urbino
Guilds
“Gust of Wind”
Haarlem Town Hall
“Haarlem’s Little Forest”
“Hadleigh Castle”
Hals, Franz
Hamerton
Hamilton, Duchess of
“Hampstead Heath”
Hancock, John
“Hans of Antwerp”
Haranger, Abb
“Hark!”
“Harvest Waggon, The”
Hassam, Childe
Hastings, Warren
“Haunt of the Gazelle, The”
Hayman
“Haystack in Sunshine”
“Hay Wain, The”
“Head of Christ”
“Head of Medusa”
Hearn, George A.
Henin
Henrietta, Queen
Henry III.
Henry VIII.
“Henschel”
“Hercules”
Herrera
“Highland Sheep”
“Hille Bobbe, the Witch of Haarlem” Hill, Jack
“Hireling Shepherd, The”
Hobbema, Meindert
Hogarth, William
Holbein, Ambrosius
Holbein, Hans, the Younger
Holbein, Michael
Holbein, Philip
Holbein, Sigismund
Holbein, the Elder
“Holofernes”
Holper, Barbara
“Holy Family and St. Bridget”
Holy Family in art, The
“Holy Family under a Palm Tree, The” “Holy Night, The”
“Homer St. Gaudens”
“Hon. Ann Bingham, The”
Hood, Admiral
“Horse Fair, The”
Howard, Catherine
Hudson, Thomas
Hunt, William Holman
“II Giorno”
“II Medico del Correggio”
“Immaculate Conception, The”
Indian pottery
Infanta
“Infant Jesus and St. John, The”
Inman
Inness
“Innocence”
“In Paradise”
Inquisition, Spanish
“Interior of the Mosque of Omar”
Isabella, Queen
Islay
“Isle of the Dead, The”
“Ivybridge”
Jacopo da Empoli
Jacque
“Jane Seymour”
“Jerusalem by Moonlight”
“Jesus and the Lamb”
Jesus in art
Johnson, Dr.
Jones, George
Joseph in art
“Joseph in Egypt”
“Joseph’s Dream”
“Judgment of Paris, The”
“Judith”
Julienne
Julius II.
Justiniana
Kann, Rudolf
“King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid” “King of Hearts”
“Kirmesse, The”
Knackfuss
“Knight, Death and the Devil, The”
“La Belle Jardinire”
“La Disputa”
“Lady Elcho, Mrs. Arden, Mrs. Tennant” “La Gioconda”
“Landscape with Cattle.”
Landseer, John
Landseer, Sir Edwin Henry
Landseer, Thomas
“La Primavera”
“Last Judgment, The”
(Angelo)
(Tintoretto)
(Titian)
“Last Supper, The”
(Andrea del Sarto)
(Ghirlandajo)
(Veronese)
(Leonardo da Vinci)
“Laughing Cavalier, The”
Laura
Lavinia, daughter of Titian
“Lavinia, the Artist’s Daughter”
Lawrence, Sir Thomas
“Leda”
(Correggio)
(Grome)
Lee, Jeremiah
Legion of Honour
Lemon, Margaret
Leonardo. See da Vinci
Leo X.
Lewis, J. F.
_Liber Studiorium_
“Liber Veritas”
Library, Boston Public
“Light of the World, The”
Linley, Thomas
Linley, Samuel
“Lion Disturbed at His Repast”
“Lion Enjoying His Repast”
“Lioness, The Study off a”
“Lion Hunt, A”
Lippi, Fra Filippo
“Lock on the Stour”
Lombardi
“Lords Digby and Russell”
“Lord Wharton”
Lorenzalez, Claudio
Lorrain, Claude
Lott, Willy
Louis XIV.
Louise, Princess
“Love Among the Ruins”
“Low Life and High Life”
Lowther, Sir William
Lucas van Leyden
Lucia, mother of Titian
Lucretia, wife of Andrea del Sarto
Luther, Martin
Madonna and Child
“Madonna and Child with St. Anne”
“Madonna and Child with Saints”
“Madonna del’Arpie”
“Madonna della Caraffa”
“Madonna della Casa d’Alba”
“Madonna della Sedia”
“Madonna del Granduca”
“Madonna del Pesce”
“Madonna del Sacco”
“Madonna of the Palms”
“Madonna of the Rosary.”
Madrazo
“Magdalene, The”
Manet
“Manoah’s Sacrifice”
Mantegna
Mantua, Duke of
Mantua, Duke Frederick II. of
“Man with the Hoe, The”
“Man with the Sword, The”
Margherita
Maria Theresa
“Marriage
la Mode”
“Marriage at Cana, The”
“Marriage Contract, The”
“Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne, The” “Marriage of Mary and Joseph, The”
“Marriage of St. Catherine, The”
“Marriage of Samson, The”
Martineau
“Martyrdom of St. Agnes, The”
“Martyrdom of St. Peter, The”
“Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, The”
Mary, the Virgin, in art
Masaccio (Tommasco Guidi)
Masoline
Mastersingers, Nuremberg
Maximillian, Emperor
Medici family
Medici, Giovanni di Bicci de’
Medici, Lorenzi de’
Medici, Ottaviano de’
Medici, Pietro de’
“Meeting of St. John and St. Anna at Jerusalem” Meissonier, Jean Louis Ernest
“Melancholy”
Merlini, Girolama
“Meyer Madonna, The”
Michallon
“Midsummer Noon”
Millais
Millet, Jean Franois
Millet, Mre
“Mill Stream”
“Miracle of St. Mark, The”
Missions, Spanish
Missirini
“Mr. Marquand”
“Mr. Penrose”
“Mrs. Meyer and Children”
“Mrs. Peel”
Mohawk
Mona Lisa
Monet, Claude
“Money Changers, The”
“Moonlight at Salerno”
Morales
“Moreau and His Staff before Hohenlinden” More, Sir Thomas
“Morning Prayer, The”
“Moses”
“Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law” Mudge, Dr.
Murat
Murillo (Bartolom Estban)
Murillo, Do¤a Anna
Museum of Art, Basel
Berlin
Court, Vienna
Madrid
Metropolitan, New York
Prado
Rijks, Amsterdam
South Kensington
Muther
“Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, The”
“Naiads at Play”
Napoleon
“Nativity, The”
(Botticelli)
(Drer)
Navarrette
“Nieces of Sir Horace Walpole”
“Night Watch, The”
“Noli me Tangere”
Norham Castle
Nuremberg
“Nurse and the Child, The”
“‘Oh, Pearl’ Quoth I”
“Old Bachelor, The”
“Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner, The” Olivares
Pacheco
“Pallas”
“Pan and Psyche”
Pantheon
Pareja
“Parish Clerk, The”
‘Past and Present”
Passignano
“Pathless Water, The”
Paul III.
“Paysage”
Pazzi family
“Penzance”
Percy, Bishop
Perez family
Perez, Maria
Perugino
Philip II.
Philip III.
Philip IV.
Picot
“Pilate Washing His Hands”
Pinas
Pirkneimer
Pissaro
“Ploughing”
Pope, Alexander