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Book of Art for Young People, The

<h3>CHAPTER XV</h3> <h4>THE NINETEENTH CENTURY</h4> Since we began our voyagings together among the visionary worlds of the great painters, five hundred and thirty years ago, at the accession of King Richard II., we have journeyed far and wide, trudging from the rock where Cimabue found the boy Giotto drawing his sheep's likeness. The battleship of Turner has now brought us to the mid-nineteenth century, a time within the memories of living men, and still our journey is not ended. Hitherto we have been guided in our general preference for certain artists and certain pictures by the concurring opinion of the best judges of many successive generations. But while we are looking at modern paintings, we cannot say, as some one did, that in our opinion, 'which is the correct one,' such and such a picture is worthy to rank with Titian. The taste of one age is not the taste of another. Who can surely pronounce the consensus of opinion to-day? Who can guess if it will concur with that of future decades—of future centuries? We can but hope that learning to see and enjoy the recognized masterpieces of the past will teach us what to like best among the masterpieces of the present. A great love of the Old Masters inspired the work of a group of young artists, who, about the year 1850, banded themselves together into a society which they called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The title indicates their aim, which was to draw the inspiration of their art from the fifteenth-century painters of Italy. The sweetness of feeling in a picture such as Botticelli's 'Nativity,' the delicacy of workmanship and beautiful painting of detail in Antonello's 'St. Jerome' and other pictures of that date, had an irresistible fascination for them. They fancied and felt that these artists had attained to the highest of which art was capable, so that the best could only again be produced by a faithful study of their methods. The aims of the Brotherhood were not imitation of the artists but of the methods of the past. They held that every painted object, and every painted figure should be as true as it could be made to the object as it actually existed, rather than to the effect produced upon the eye, seeing it in conjunction with other objects. These men heralded a widespread medieval revival, but all the study in the world could not make them paint like born artists of the fifteenth century. Yet there are those who think that much of the spirit of beauty, which had dwelt in the soul of Botticelli and his contemporaries, was born again in Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Their feeling for beauty of form and purity of colour, and their aloofness from the modern world, impart to their work an atmosphere that may remind us of the fifteenth century, though the fifteenth century could never have produced it. Rossetti and Burne-Jones, indeed, never formally joined the Brotherhood, though they were influenced by its ideals and pursued the same strict fidelity to nature in all the accessories of a picture. Millais and Holman Hunt, original members of the Brotherhood, painted men and women of the mid-Victorian epoch with every detail of their peaked bonnets and plaid shawls, and were comparatively indifferent to beauty of form and face. But Rossetti and Burne-Jones created a type of ideal beauty which they employed on their canvases with persistent repetition. Burne-Jones founded his type upon the angels of Botticelli, and his drapery is like that of the ring of dancers in the sky in our picture of the 'Nativity.' You are probably familiar with some of his pictures and perhaps have felt the spell of his pure gem-like colouring and pale, haunting faces. It was the people of their minds' eye who sat beside their easels. Rossetti lived and worked in the romantic mood of a Giorgione, but instead of expressing the atmosphere of his fairy city of Venice, he created one as far as possible removed from his own mid-Victorian surroundings. His imaginary world was peopled by women with pale faces and luxuriant auburn hair, pondering upon the mysteries of the universe. Like Rossetti's 'Blessed Damozel,' they look out from the gold bar of heaven with eyes from which the wonder is not yet gone. One of the best Pre-Raphaelite landscapes is the 'Strayed Sheep' of Holman Hunt. The sheep are wandering over a grass hillside of the vividest green, shot with spring flowers, and every sheep is painted with the detail of the central sheep in Hubert van Eyck's 'Adoration of the Lamb.' The colouring is almost as bright and jewel-like as that of the fifteenth-century painters, for one of the theories of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was that grass should be painted as green as the single blade—not the colour of the whole field seen immersed in light and atmosphere, which can make green grass seem gray or even blue. In Brett's 'Val d'Aosta,' another Pre-Raphaelite landscape, we look from a hill upon a great expanse of valley with mountains rising behind. Every field of corn and every grassy meadow is outlined as clearly as it would be upon a map. Every stick can be counted in the fences between the fields and every tree in the hedge-rows. When we look at the picture we involuntarily wander over the face of the country. There is no taking in the view at a glance; we must walk through every field and along every path. After seeing these Pre-Raphaelite landscapes, let us imagine ourselves straightway turning to one of the numerous scenes by Whistler of the Thames at twilight, with its glimmering lights and ghostly shapes of bridges and hulks of steamers. Nothing is outlined, nothing is clearly defined, but the mystery of London's river is caught and pictured for ever. Let us look, too, at his 'Valparaiso,' bathed in a brilliant South American sunshine, where all is pearly and radiant with southern light. Even here the impression is not given by the power of the sun revealing every detail. There are few touches, but like Velasquez, he has made every touch tell. As the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood kindled their inspiration by the vision of the fifteenth-century painters of Italy, so Whistler and many other modern artists have turned to Velasquez for guidance. Till the last half of the last century his name had been almost forgotten outside Spain. Now, among the modern 'impressionists' so-called, he is perhaps more studied than any other painter. When we were looking at the pictures of this great man, we saw how he and Rembrandt were among the earliest to learn the value of subordinating detail in the parts to the better general effect of the whole, so as to present no more than the eye could grasp in a comprehensive glance. Every tree and stick in Brett's 'Val d'Aosta' is truthfully painted, but the picture as a whole does not give the spectator the impression of truth, for the simple reason that the eye can never see at once what Brett has tried to make it see. All the wonderfully veracious detail in the work of the Pre-Raphaelite does not give the impression of life. Men like Holman Hunt, on the one hand, and on the other hand Whistler, living and working at the same time, exhibiting their works in the same galleries, differ even more in their ideals than Velasquez differed from the fifteenth-century painters of Italy. Facts such as these make the study of modern art difficult. Before the nineteenth century, pictures of the same date in the same country were painted in approximately the same style. But during the last fifty years many styles have reigned together. At one and the same time painters have been inspired by the Greek and Roman sculptors, by Botticelli, Mantegna, Titian, Tintoret, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Reynolds, and Turner, and the work of each is, notwithstanding, unmistakably nineteenth century, and could never have been produced at any other date. Every artist finds a problem of his own to solve, and attacks it in his own way. When Whistler painted a portrait he endeavoured to express character in the general aspect of the figure, rather than in the face. The picture of his mother is a wonderful expression of the sweetness and peace of old age, given by the severe lines of her black dress and the simplicity and nobility of her pose. The great painter Watts, who by the face chiefly sought to express the man, never painted a full-length figure portrait. His long life, covering nearly the whole of the century, enabled him to portray many of the foremost men of the age—statesmen, poets, musicians, and men of letters. In his portrait gallery their fine spirits still meet one another face to face. But his portraits, in and through likenesses of the men, are made to express the essence of that particular art of which the man was a spokesman. In his portrait of Tennyson, the bard with his laurel wreath is less Tennyson the man, if one may say so, than Tennyson the poet. The picture might be called 'poetry,' as that of Joachim could be called 'music,' for the violinist with his dreamy beautiful face, playing his heart out, looks the soul of music's self. Watts was never a Pre-Raphaelite, clothing anew his dreams of medieval beauty; nor a seeker after the glories of Greece and Rome, like Leighton and Alma Tadema; nor a student of the instant's impression, like Whistler. To penetrate beneath the seen to the unseen was the aim of his art. He wrestled to express thoughts in paint that seem inexpressible. When we go to the Tate Gallery in London, to the room filled with most precious works of Watts, we feel almost overawed by the loftiness of his ideas, though they may seem to strain the last resources of the painter's art. One of them is a picture of 'Chaos' before the creation of the world. Half-formed men and women struggle from the earth to force themselves into life, as the half-wrought statues of Michelangelo from the marble that confines them. Near by is a picture of the 'All-pervading,' the spirit of good that penetrates the world, symbolized as a woman gazing long into a globe held upon her knee. Opposite is the 'Dweller in the Innermost,' with deep, unsearchable eyes. These are pictures that constrain thought rather than charm the eye. When the thought is less obscure, it is better suited to pictorial utterance, and Watts sometimes painted pictures as simple as these are difficult. There is nothing obscure in our frontispiece picture of 'Red Ridinghood.' It sets before us a child's version and vision of a child's fable that is imperishable, and as such makes an immediate appeal to the eye. She is not acting a part or posing as a princess, but is simply a cowering little girl, frightened at the wolf and eager to protect her basket. In her freshness and simplicity, a cottage maiden with anxious blue eyes, most innocent and childish of children, she need not shun proximity to Richard II., Edward VI., William of Orange, Don Balthazar Carlos, and the Duke of Gloucester. And thus we conclude our procession of royal children with a child of the people. Beginning with Richard II., a portrait of a king rather than a child, we end with a picture in which childhood merely, without the gift of distinction or the glamour of royalty, suffices to charm a great painter's eye and inspire his thought. With the sweetness and grace of modern childhood filling our eyes, may we not well close this children's book? <h4>THE END</h4> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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