A Text-Book of the History of Painting Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 55.--CARAVAGGIO. THE CARD PLAYERS. DRESDEN.]

NINETEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING IN ITALY: There is little in the art of Italy during the present century that shows a positive national spirit. It has been leaning on the rest of Europe for many years, and the best that the living painters show is largely an echo of Dusseldorf, Munich, or Paris. The revived cla.s.sicism of David in France affected nineteenth-century painting in Italy somewhat. Then it was swayed by Cornelius and Overbeck from Germany. Morelli (1826-[2]) shows this latter influence, though one of the most important of the living men.[3] In the 1860's Mariano Fortuny, a Spaniard at Rome, led the younger element in the glittering and the sparkling, and this style mingled with much that is more strikingly Parisian than Italian, may be found in the works of painters like Michetti, De Nittis (1846-1884), Favretto, t.i.to, Nono, Simonetti, and others.

[Footnote 2: Died, 1901.]

[Footnote 3: See _Scribner's Magazine_, Neapolitan Art, Dec., 1890, Feb., 1891.]

Of recent days the impressionistic view of light and color has had its influence; but the Italian work at its best is below that of France.

Segantini[4] was one of the most promising of the younger men in subjects that have an archaic air about them. Boldini, though Italian born and originally following Fortuny's example, is really more Parisian than anything else. He is an artist of much power and technical strength in _genre_ subjects and portraits. The newer men are Fragiocomo, Fattori, Mancini, Marchetti.

[Footnote 4: Died, 1899.]

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS: MANNERISTS--Agnolo Bronzino, Christ in Limbo and many portraits in Uffizi and Nat. Gal. Lon.; Vasari, many pictures in galleries at Arezzo, Bologna, Berlin, Munich, Louvre, Madrid; Salviati, Charity Christ Uffizi, Patience Pitti, St. Thomas Louvre, Love and Psyche Berlin; Federigo Zucchero, Duomo Florence, Ducal Palace Venice, Allegories Uffizi, Calumny Hampton Court; Baroccio, Pardon of St. Francis Urbino, Annunciation Loreto, several pictures in Uffizi, Nat. Gal. Lon., Louvre, Dresden Gal.

ECLECTICS--Ludovico Caracci, Cathedral frescos Bologna, thirteen pictures Bologna Gal.; Agostino Caracci, frescos (with Annibale) Farnese Pal. Rome, altar-pieces Bologna Gal.; Annibale Carracci, frescos (with Agostino) Farnese Pal. Rome, other pictures Bologna Gal., Uffizi, Naples Mus., Dresden, Berlin, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Domenichino, St.

Jerome Vatican, S. Pietro in Vincoli, Diana Borghese, Bologna, Pitti, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Guido Reni, frescos Aurora Rospigliosi Pal. Rome, many pictures Bologna, Borghese Gal., Pitti, Uffizi, Brera, Naples, Louvre, and other galleries of Europe; Albani, Guercino, Sa.s.soferrato, and Carlo Dolci, works in almost every European gallery, especially Bologna; Cristofano Allori, Judith Pitti, also pictures in Uffizi; Berrettini and Maratta, many examples in Italian galleries, also Louvre.

NATURALISTS--Caravaggio, Entombment Vatican, many other works in Pitti, Uffizi, Naples, Louvre, Dresden, St.

Petersburg; Giordano, Judgment of Paris Berlin, many pictures in Dresden and Italian galleries; Salvator Rosa, best marine in Pitti, other works Uffizi, Brera, Naples, Madrid galleries and Colonna, Corsini, Doria, Chigi Palaces Rome.

LATE VENETIANS--Palma il Giovine, Ducal Palace Venice, Ca.s.sel, Dresden, Munich, Madrid, Naples, Vienna galleries; Padovanino, Marriage in Cana Kneeling Angel and other works Venice Acad., Carmina Venice, also galleries of Louvre, Uffizi, Borghese, Dresden, London; Tiepolo, large fresco Villa Pisani Stra, Palazzo l.a.b.i.a Scuola Carmina, Venice, Villa Valmarana, and at Wurtzburg, easel pictures Venice Acad., Louvre, Berlin, Madrid; Ca.n.a.letto and Guardi, many pictures in European galleries.

MODERN ITALIANS[5]--Morelli, Madonna Royal chap.

Castiglione, a.s.sumption Royal chap. Naples; Michetti, The Vow Nat. Gal. Rome; De Nittis, Place du Carrousel Luxembourg Paris; Boldini, Gossips Met. Mus. New York.

[Footnote 5: Only works in public places are given. Those in private hands change too often for record here. For detailed list of works see Champlin and Perkins, _Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings._]

CHAPTER XII.

FRENCH PAINTING.

SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Amorini, _Vita del celebre pittore Francesco Primaticcio_; Berger, _Histoire de l'ecole Francaise de Peinture au XVII^{me} Siecle_; Bland, _Les Peintres des fetes galantes, Watteau, Boucher, et al._; Curmer, _L'OEuvre de Jean Fouquet_; Delaborde, _etudes sur les Beaux Arts en France et en Italie_; Didot, _etudes sur Jean Cousin_; Dimier, _French Painting in XVI Century_; Dumont, _Antoine Watteau_; Dussieux, _Nouvelles Recherches sur la Vie de E. Lesueur_; Genevay, _Le Style Louis XIV., Charles Le Brun_; Goncourt, _L'Art du XVIII^{me} Siecle_; Guibel, _eloge de Nicolas Poussin_; Guiffrey, _La Famille de Jean Cousin_; Laborde, _La Renaissance des Arts a la Cour de France_; Lagrange, _J. Vernet et la Peinture au XVIII^{me} Siecle_; Lecoy de la Marche, _Le Roi Rene_; Mantz, _Francois Boucher_; Michiels, _etudes sur l'Art Flamand dans l'est et le midi de la France_; Muntz, _La Renaissance en Italie et en France_; Pal.u.s.tre, _La Renaissance en France_; Pattison, _Renaissance of Art in France_; Pattison, _Claude Lorrain_; Poillon, _Nicolas Poussin_; Stranahan, _History of French Painting_.

EARLY FRENCH ART: Painting in France did not, as in Italy, spring directly from Christianity, though it dealt with the religious subject. From the beginning a decorative motive--the strong feature of French art--appears as the chief motive of painting. This showed itself largely in church ornament, garments, tapestries, miniatures, and illuminations. Mural paintings were produced during the fifth century, probably in imitation of Italian or Roman example. Under Charlemagne, in the eighth century, Byzantine influences were at work.

In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries much stained-gla.s.s work appeared, and also many missal paintings and furniture decorations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 56.--POUSSIN. ET IN ARCADIA EGO. LOUVRE.]

In the fifteenth century Rene of Anjou (1408-1480), king and painter, gave an impetus to art which he perhaps originally received from Italy. His work showed some Italian influence mingled with a great deal of Flemish precision, and corresponded for France to the early Renaissance work of Italy, though by no means so advanced.

Contemporary with Rene was Jean Fouquet (1415?-1480?) an illuminator and portrait-painter, one of the earliest in French history. He was an artist of some original characteristics and produced an art detailed and exact in its realism. Jean Pereal (?-1528?) and Jean Bourdichon (1457?-1521?) with Fouquet's pupils and sons, formed a school at Tours which afterward came to show some Italian influence. The native workmen at Paris--they sprang up from illuminators to painters in all probability--showed more of the Flemish influence. Neither of the schools of the fifteenth century reflected much life or thought, but what there was of it was native to the soil, though their methods were influenced from without.

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING: During this century Francis I., at Fontainebleau, seems to have encouraged two schools of painting, one the native French and the other an imported Italian, which afterward took to itself the name of the "School of Fontainebleau." Of the native artists the Clouets were the most conspicuous. They were of Flemish origin, and followed Flemish methods both in technic and mediums. There were four of them, of whom Jean (1485?-1541?) and Francois (1500?-1572?) were the most noteworthy. They painted many portraits, and Francois' work, bearing some resemblance to that of Holbein, it has been doubtfully said that he was a pupil of that painter. All of their work was remarkable for detail and closely followed facts.

The Italian importation came about largely through the travels of Francis I. in Italy. He invited to Fontainebleau Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Il Rosso, Primaticcio, and Niccol dell' Abbate.

These painters rather superseded and greatly influenced the French painters. The result was an Italianized school of French art which ruled in France for many years. Primaticcio was probably the greatest of the influencers, remaining as he did for thirty years in France.

The native painters, Jean Cousin (1500?-1589) and Toussaint du Breuil (1561-1602) followed his style, and in the next century the painters were even more servile imitators of Italy--imitating not the best models either, but the Mannerists, the Eclectics, and the Roman painters of the Decadence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 57.--CLAUDE LORRAIN. FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. DRESDEN.]

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING: This was a century of great development and production in France, the time of the founding of the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and the formation of many picture collections. In the first part of the century the Flemish and native tendencies existed, but they were overawed, outnumbered by the Italian. Not even Rubens's painting for Marie de' Medici, in the palace of the Luxembourg, could stem the tide of Italy. The French painters flocked to Rome to study the art of their great predecessors and were led astray by the flashy elegance of the late Italians. Among the earliest of this century was Freminet (1567-1619). He was first taught by his father and Jean Cousin, but afterward spent fifteen years in Italy studying Parmigianino and Michael Angelo. His work had something of the Mannerist style about it and was overwrought and exaggerated. In shadows he seemed to have borrowed from Caravaggio.

Vouet (1590-1649) was a student in Italy of Veronese's painting and afterward of Guido Reni and Caravaggio. He was a mediocre artist, but had a great vogue in France and left many celebrated pupils.

By all odds the best painter of this time was Nicolas Poussin (1593-1665). He lived almost all of his life in Italy, and might be put down as an Italian of the Decadence. He was well versed in cla.s.sical archaeology, and had much of the cla.s.sic taste and feeling prevalent at that time in the Roman school of Giulio Romano. His work showed great intelligence and had an elevated grandiloquent style about it that was impressive. It reflected nothing French, and had little more root in present human sympathy than any of the other painting of the time, but it was better done. The drawing was correct if severe, the composition agreeable if formal, the coloring variegated if violent. Many of his pictures have now changed for the worse in coloring owing to the dissipation of surface pigments. He was the founder of the cla.s.sic and academic in French art, and in influence was the most important man of the century. He was especially strong in the heroic landscape, and in this branch helped form the style of his brother-in-law, Gaspard (Dughet) Poussin (1613-1675).

The landscape painter of the period, however, was Claude Lorrain (1600-1682). He differed from Poussin in making his pictures depend more strictly upon landscape than upon figures. With both painters, the trees, mountains, valleys, buildings, figures, were of the grand cla.s.sic variety. Hills and plains, sylvan groves, flowing streams, peopled harbors, Ionic and Corinthian temples, Roman aqueducts, mythological groups, were the materials used, and the object of their use was to show the ideal dwelling-place of man--the former Garden of the G.o.ds. Panoramic and slightly theatrical at times, Claude's work was not without its poetic side, shrewd knowledge, and skilful execution. He was a leader in landscape, the man who first painted real golden sunlight and shed its light upon earth. There is a soft summer's-day drowsiness, a golden haze of atmosphere, a feeling of composure and restfulness about his pictures that are attractive. Like Poussin he depended much upon long sweeping lines in composition, and upon effects of linear perspective.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 58--WATTEAU. GILLES. LOUVRE.]

COURT PAINTING: When Louis XIV. came to the throne painting took on a decided character, but it was hardly national or race character. The popular idea, if the people had an idea, did not obtain. There was no motive springing from the French except an inclination to follow Italy; and in Italy all the great art-motives were dead. In method the French painters followed the late Italians, and imitated an imitation; in matter they bowed to the dictates of the court and reflected the king's mock-heroic spirit. Echoing the fas.h.i.+on of the day, painting became pompous, theatrical, grandiloquent--a ma.s.s of vapid vanity utterly lacking in sincerity and truth. Lebrun (1619-1690), painter in ordinary to the king, directed substantially all the painting of the reign. He aimed at pleasing royalty with flattering allusions to Caesarism and extravagant personifications of the king as a cla.s.sic conqueror. His art had neither truth, nor genius, nor great skill, and so sought to startle by subject or size.

Enormous canvases of Alexander's triumphs, in allusion to those of the great Louis, were turned out to order, and Versailles to this day is tapestried with battle-pieces in which Louis is always victor.

Considering the amount of work done, Lebrun showed great fecundity and industry, but none of it has much more than a mechanical ingenuity about it. It was rather original in composition, but poor in drawing, lighting, and coloring; and its example upon the painters of the time was pernicious.

His contemporary, Le Sueur (1616-1655), was a more sympathetic and sincere painter, if not a much better technician. Both were pupils of Vouet, but Le Sueur's art was religious in subject, while Lebrun's was military and monarchical. Le Sueur had a feeling for his theme, but was a weak painter, inclined to the sentimental, thin in coloring, and not at all certain in his drawing. French allusions to him as "the French Raphael" show more national complacency than correctness.

Sebastian Bourdon (1616-1671) was another painter of history, but a little out of the Lebrun circle. He was not, however, free from the influence of Italy, where he spent three years studying color more than drawing. This shows in his works, most of which are lacking in form.

Contemporary with these men was a group of portrait-painters who gained celebrity perhaps as much by their subjects as by their own powers. They were facile flatterers given over to the pomps of the reign and mirroring all its absurdities of fas.h.i.+on. Their work has a graceful, smooth appearance, and, for its time, it was undoubtedly excellent portraiture. Even to this day it has qualities of drawing and coloring to commend it, and at times one meets with exceptionally good work. The leaders among these portrait-painters were Philip de Champaigne (1602-1674), the best of his time; Pierre Mignard (1610?-1695), a pupil of Vouet, who studied in Rome and afterward returned to France to become the successful rival of Lebrun; Largilliere (1656-1746) and Rigaud (1659-1743).

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING: The painting of Louis XIV.'s time was continued into the eighteenth century for some fifteen years or more with little change. With the advent of Louis XV. art took upon itself another character, and one that reflected perfectly the moral, social, and political France of the eighteenth century. The first Louis clamored for glory, the second Louis revelled in gayety, frivolity, and sensuality. This was the difference between both monarchs and both arts. The gay and the coquettish in painting had already been introduced by the Regent, himself a dilettante in art, and when Louis XV. came to the throne it pa.s.sed from the gay to the insipid, the flippant, even the erotic. Shepherds and shepherdesses dressed in court silks and satins with cottony sheep beside them posed in stage-set Arcadias, pretty G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses reclined indolently upon gossamer clouds, and court gallants lounged under artificial trees by artificial ponds making love to pretty soubrettes from the theatre.

Yet, in spite of the lack of moral and intellectual elevation, in spite of frivolity and make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by Louis XIV. It was more spontaneous, more original, more French. The influence of Italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror French life. It was largely court life, lively, vivacious, licentious, but in that very respect characteristic of the time. Moreover, there was another quality about it that showed French taste at its best--the decorative quality. It can hardly be supposed that the fairy creations of the age were intended to represent actual nature. They were designed to ornament hall and boudoir, and in pure decorative delicacy of design, lightness of touch, color charm, they have never been excelled. The serious spirit was lacking, but the gayety of line and color was well given.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 59.--BOUCHER. PASTORAL. LOUVRE.]

Watteau (1684-1721) was the one chiefly responsible for the coquette and soubrette of French art, and Watteau was, practically speaking, the first French painter. His subjects were trifling bits of fas.h.i.+onable love-making, scenes from the opera, fetes, b.a.l.l.s, and the like. All his characters played at life in parks and groves that never grew, and most of his color was beautifully unreal; but for all that the work was original, decorative, and charming. Moreover, Watteau was a brushman, and introduced not only a new spirit and new subject into art, but a new method. The epic treatment of the Italians was laid aside in favor of a genre treatment, and instead of line and flat surface Watteau introduced color and cleverly laid pigment. He was a brilliant painter; not a great man in thought or imagination, but one of fancy, delicacy, and skill. Unfortunately he set a bad example by his gay subjects, and those who came after him carried his gayety and lightness of spirit into exaggeration. Watteau's best pupils were Lancret (1690-1743) and Pater (1695-1736), who painted in his style with fair results.

After these men came Van Loo (1705-1765) and Boucher (1703-1770), who turned Watteau's charming fetes, showing the costumes and manners of the Regency, into flippant extravagance. Not only was the moral tone and intellectual stamina of their art far below that of Watteau, but their workmans.h.i.+p grew defective. Both men possessed a remarkable facility of the hand and a keen decorative color-sense; but after a time both became stereotyped and mannered. Drawing and modelling were neglected, light was wholly conventional, and landscape turned into a piece of embroidered background with a Dresden china-tapestry effect about it. As decoration the general effect was often excellent, as a serious expression of life it was very weak, as an intellectual or moral force it was worse than worthless. Fragonard (1732-1806) followed in a similar style, but was a more knowing man, clever in color, and a much freer and better brushman.

A few painters in the time of Louis XV. remained apparently unaffected by the court influence, and stand in conspicuous isolation.

Claude Joseph Vernet (1712-1789) was a landscape and marine painter of some repute in his time. He had a sense of the pictorial, but not a remarkable sense of the truthful in nature. Chardin (1699-1779) and Greuze (1725-1805), clung to portrayals of humble life and sought to popularize the _genre_ subject. Chardin was not appreciated by the ma.s.ses. His frank realism, his absolute sincerity of purpose, his play of light and its effect upon color, and his charming handling of textures were comparatively unnoticed. Yet as a colorist he may be ranked second to none in French art, and in freshness of handling his work is a model for present-day painters. Diderot early recognized Chardin's excellence, and many artists since his day have admired his pictures; but he is not now a well-known or popular painter. The populace fancies Greuze and his sentimental heads of young girls. They have a prettiness about them that is attractive, but as art they lack in force, and in workmans.h.i.+p they are too smooth, finical, and thin in handling.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS: All of these French painters are best represented in the collections of the Louvre. Some of the other galleries, like the Dresden, Berlin, and National at London, have examples of their work; but the masterpieces are with the French people in the Louvre and in the other munic.i.p.al galleries of France.

CHAPTER XIII.

FRENCH PAINTING.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Stranahan, _et al._; also Balliere, _Henri Regnault_; Blanc, _Les Artistes de mon Temps_; Blanc, _Histoire des Peintres francais au XIX^{me} Siecle_; Blanc, _Ingres et son OEuvre_; Bigot, _Peintres francais contemporains_; Breton, _La Vie d'un Artiste_ (_English Translation_); Brownell, _French Art_; Burty, _Maitres et Pet.i.t-Maitres_; Chesneau, _Peinture francaise au XIX^{me} Siecle_; Clement, _etudes sur les Beaux Arts en France_; Clement, _Prudhon_; Delaborde, _OEuvre de Paul Delaroche_; Delecluze, _Jacques Louis David, son ecole, et son Temps_; Duret, _Les Peintres francais en 1867_; Gautier, _L'Art Moderne_; Gautier, _Romanticisme_; Gonse, _Eugene Fromentin_; Hamerton, _Contemporary French Painting_; Hamerton, _Painting in France after the Decline of Cla.s.sicism_; Henley, _Memorial Catalogue of French and Dutch Loan Collection_ (1886); Henriet, _Charles Daubigny et son OEuvre_; Lenormant, _Les Artistes Contemporains_; Lenormant, _Ary Scheffer_; Merson, _Ingres, sa Vie et son OEuvre_; Moreau, _Decamps et son OEuvre_; Planche, _etudes sur l'ecole francaise_; Robaut et Chesneau, _L' OEuvre complet d'Eugene Delacroix_; Sensier, _Theodore Rousseau_; Sensier, _Life and Works of J. F. Millet_; Silvestre, _Histoire des Artistes vivants et etrangers_; Strahan, _Modern French Art_; Th.o.r.e, _L'Art Contemporain_; Theuriet, _Jules Bastien-Lepage_; Van d.y.k.e, _Modern French Masters_.