Modern Painters Volume III Part 25

It is an ultimate condition of the Florentine conventional landscape, more or less softened by reference to nature. Fig. 8., from No. 145. of the Liber Veritatis, is sufficiently characteristic of Claude's rock-drawing; and compared with Fig. 5. (p. 314), will show exactly the kind of modification he made on old and received types. We shall see other instances of it hereafter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 8.]

Imagine this kind of reproduction of whatever other people had done worst, and this kind of misunderstanding of all that he saw himself in nature, carried out in Claude's trees, rocks, s.h.i.+ps--in everything that he touched,--and then consider what kind of school this work was for a young and reverent disciple. As I said, Turner never recovered the effects of it; his compositions were always mannered, lifeless, and even foolish; and he only did n.o.ble things when the immediate presence of nature had overpowered the reminiscences of his master.

-- 28. Of the influence of Gaspar and Nicolo Poussin on Turner, there is hardly anything to be said, nor much respecting that which they had on landscape generally. Nicolo Poussin had n.o.ble powers of design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he been trained in Venice; but his Roman education kept him tame; his trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies of the age, and had few imitators compared to the das.h.i.+ng of Salvator, and the mist of Claude. Those few imitators adopted his manner without possessing either his science or invention; and the Italian school of landscape soon expired. Reminiscences of him occur sometimes in Turner's compositions of sculptured stones for foreground; and the beautiful Triumph of Flora, in the Louvre, probably first showed Turner the use of definite flower, or blossom-painting, in landscape. I doubt if he took anything from Gaspar; whatever he might have learned from him respecting ma.s.ses of foliage and golden distances, could have been learned better, and, I believe, _was_ learned, from t.i.tian.

-- 29. Meantime, a lower, but more living school had developed itself in the north; Cuyp had painted suns.h.i.+ne as truly as Claude, gilding with it a more homely, but far more honestly conceived landscape; and the effects of light of De Hooghe and Rembrandt presented examples of treatment to which southern art could show no parallel. Turner evidently studied these with the greatest care, and with great benefit in every way; especially this, that they neutralized the idealisms of Claude, and showed the young painter what power might be in plain truth, even of the most familiar kind. He painted several pictures in imitation of these masters; and those in which he tried to rival Cuyp are healthy and n.o.ble works, being, in fact, just what most of Cuyp's own pictures are--faithful studies of Dutch boats in calm weather, on smooth water. De Hooghe was too precise, and Rembrandt too dark, to be successfully or affectionately followed by him; but he evidently learned much from both.

-- 30. Finally, he painted many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde (who was the accepted authority of his time in sea painting), and received much injury from him. To the close of his life, Turner always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of his early study of Vandevelde. He never seemed to perceive color so truly in the sea as he saw it elsewhere. But he soon discovered the poorness of Vandevelde's forms of waves, and raised their meanly divided surfaces into ma.s.sive surge, effecting rapidly other changes, of which more in another place.

Such was the art to which Turner, in early years, devoted his most earnest thoughts. More or less respectful contemplation of Reynolds, Loutherbourg, Wilson, Gainsborough, Morland, and Wilkie, was incidentally mingled with his graver study; and he maintained a questioning watchfulness of even the smallest successes of his brother artists of the modern landscape school. It remains for us only to note the position of that living school when Turner, helped or misled, as the case may be, by the study of the older artists, began to consider what remained for him to do, or design.

-- 31. The dead schools of landscape, composed of the works we have just been examining, were broadly divisible into northern and southern: the Dutch schools, more or less natural, but vulgar; the Italian, more or less elevated, but absurd. There was a certain foolish elegance in Claude, and a dull dignity in Gaspar; but then their work resembled nothing that ever existed in the world. On the contrary, a ca.n.a.l or cattle piece of Cuyp's had many veracities about it; but they were, at best, truths of the ditch and dairy. The grace of nature, or her gloom, her tender and sacred seclusions, or her reach of power and wrath, had never been painted; nor had _anything_ been painted yet in true _love_ of it; for both Dutch and Italians agreed in this, that they always painted for the _picture's_ sake, to show how well they could imitate suns.h.i.+ne, arrange ma.s.ses, or articulate straws,--never because they loved the scene, or wanted to carry away some memory of it.

And thus, all that landscape of the old masters is to be considered merely as a struggle of expiring skill to discover some new direction in which to display itself. There was no love of nature in the age; only a desire for something new. Therefore those schools expired at last, leaving the chasm of nearly utter emptiness between them and the true moderns, out of which chasm the new school rises, not engrafted on that old one, but, from the very base of all things, beginning with mere washes of Indian ink, touched upon with yellow and brown; and gradually feeling its way to color.

But this infant school differed inherently from that ancienter one, in that its motive was love. However feeble its efforts might be, they were _for the sake of the nature_, not of the picture, and therefore, having this germ of true life, it grew and throve. Robson did not paint purple hills because he wanted to show how he could lay on purple; but because he truly loved their dark peaks. Fielding did not paint downs to show how dexterously he could sponge out mists; but because he loved downs.

This modern school, therefore, became the only true school of landscape which had yet existed; the artificial Claude and Gaspar work may be cast aside out of our way,--as I have said in my Edinburgh lectures, under the general t.i.tle of "pastoralism,"--and from the last landscape of Tintoret, if we look for _life_, we must pa.s.s at once to the first of Turner.

-- 32. What help Turner received from this or that companion of his youth is of no importance to any one now. Of course every great man is always being helped by everybody,[103] for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons; and also there were two men a.s.sociated with him in early study, who showed high promise in the same field, Cousen and Girtin (especially the former), and there is no saying what these men might have done had they lived; there might, perhaps, have been a struggle between one or other of them and Turner, as between Giorgione and t.i.tian. But they lived not; and Turner is the only great man whom the school has yet produced,--quite great enough, as we shall see, for all that needed to be done. To him, therefore, we now finally turn, as the sole object of our inquiry. I shall first reinforce, with such additions as they need, those statements of his general principles which I made in the first volume, but could not then demonstrate fully, for want of time to prepare pictorial ill.u.s.tration; and then proceed to examine, piece by piece, his representations of the facts of nature, comparing them, as it may seem expedient, with what had been accomplished by others.

I cannot close this volume without alluding briefly to a subject of different interest from any that have occupied us in its pages. For it may, perhaps, seem to a general reader heartless and vain to enter zealously into questions about our arts and pleasures in a time of so great public anxiety as this.

But he will find, if he looks back to the sixth paragraph of the opening chapter of the last volume, some statement of feelings, which, as they made me despondent in a time of apparent national prosperity, now cheer me in one which, though of stern trial, I will not be so much a coward as to call one of adversity. And I derive this encouragement first from the belief that the War itself, with all its bitterness, is, in the present state of the European nations, productive of more good than evil; and, secondly, because I have more confidence than others generally entertain, in the justice of its cause.

I say, first, because I believe the war is at present productive of good more than of evil. I will not argue this hardly and coldly, as I might, by tracing in past history some of the abundant evidence that nations have always reached their highest virtue, and wrought their most accomplished works, in times of straitening and battle; as, on the other hand, no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and triumphant peace without receiving in its own bosom ineradicable seeds of future decline. I will not so argue this matter; but I will appeal at once to the testimony of those whom the war has cost the dearest. I know what would be told me, by those who have suffered nothing; whose domestic happiness has been unbroken; whose daily comfort undisturbed; whose experience of calamity consists, at its utmost, in the incert.i.tude of a speculation, the dearness of a luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune which they could meet fourfold without inconvenience. From these, I can well believe, be they prudent economists, or careless pleasure-seekers, the cry for peace will rise alike vociferously, whether in street or senate. But I ask _their_ witness, to whom the war has changed the aspect of the earth, and imagery of heaven, whose hopes it has cut off like a spider's web, whose treasure it has placed, in a moment, under the seals of clay. Those who can never more see sunrise, nor watch the climbing light gild the Eastern clouds, without thinking what graves it has gilded, first, far down behind the dark earth-line,--who never more shall see the crocus bloom in spring, without thinking what dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of Balaclava. Ask _their_ witness, and see if they will not reply that it is well with them, and with theirs; that they would have it no otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of love and life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of the cross on the breastplate of England. Ask them: and though they should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon their lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry--"Set on."

And this not for pride--not because the names of their lost ones will be recorded to all time, as of those who held the breach and kept the gate of Europe against the North, as the Spartans did against the East; and lay down in the place they had to guard, with the like home message, "Oh, stranger, go and tell the English that we are lying here, having obeyed their words;"--not for this, but because, also, they have felt that the spirit which has discerned them for eminence in sorrow--the helmed and sworded skeleton that rakes with its white fingers the sands of the Black Sea beach into grave-heap after grave-heap, washed by everlasting surf of tears--has been to them an angel of other things than agony; that they have learned, with those hollow, undeceivable eyes of his, to see all the earth by the sunlight of deathbeds;--no inch-high stage for foolish griefs and feigned pleasures; no dream, neither, as its dull moralists told them;--_Any_thing but that: a place of true, marvellous, inextricable sorrow and power; a question-chamber of trial by rack and fire, irrevocable decision recording continually; and no sleep, nor folding of hands, among the demon-questioners; none among the angel-watchers, none among the men who stand or fall beside those hosts of G.o.d. They know now the strength of sacrifice, and that its flames can illumine as well as consume; they are bound by new fidelities to all that they have saved,--by new love to all for whom they have suffered; every affection which seemed to sink with those dim life-stains into the dust, has been delegated, by those who need it no more, to the cause for which they have expired; and every mouldering arm, which will never more embrace the beloved ones, has bequeathed to them its strength and its faithfulness.

For the cause of this quarrel is no dim, half-avoidable involution of mean interests and errors, as some would have us believe. There never was a great war caused by such things. There never can be. The historian may trace it, with ingenious trifling, to a courtier's jest or a woman's glance; but he does not ask--(and it is the sum of questions)--how the warring nations had come to found their destinies on the course of the sneer, or the smile. If they have so based them, it is time for them to learn, through suffering, how to build on other foundations--for great, acc.u.mulated, and most righteous cause, their foot slides in due time; and against the torpor, or the turpitude, of their myriads, there is loosed the haste of the devouring sword and the thirsty arrow. But if they have set their fortunes on other than such ground, then the war must be owing to some deep conviction or pa.s.sion in their own hearts,--a conviction which, in resistless flow, or reckless ebb, or consistent stay, is the ultimate arbiter of battle, disgrace, or conquest.

Wherever there is war, there _must_ be injustice on one side or the other, or on both. There have been wars which were little more than trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which the injustice was not to each other, but to the G.o.d who gave them life.

But in a malignant war of these present ages there is injustice of ign.o.bler kind, at once to G.o.d and man, which _must_ be stemmed for both their sakes. It may, indeed, be so involved with national prejudices, or ignorances, that neither of the contending nations can conceive it as attaching to their cause; nay, the const.i.tution of their governments, and the clumsy crookedness of their political dealings with each other, may be such as to prevent either of them from knowing the actual cause for which they have gone to war.

a.s.suredly this is, in a great degree, the state of things with _us_; for I noticed that there never came news by telegraph of the explosion of a powder-barrel, or of the loss of thirty men by a sortie, but the Parliament lost confidence immediately in the justice of the war; reopened the question whether we ever should have engaged in it, and remained in a doubtful and repentant state of mind until one of the enemy's powder-barrels blew up also; upon which they were immediately satisfied again that the war was a wise and necessary one. How far, therefore, the calamity may have been brought upon us by men whose political principles shoot annually like the leaves, and change color at every autumn frost:--how loudly the blood that has been poured out round the walls of that city, up to the horse-bridles, may now be crying from the ground against men who did not know, when they first bade shed it, exactly what war was, or what blood was, or what life was, or truth, or what anything else was upon the earth; and whose tone of opinions touching the destinies of mankind depended entirely upon whether they were sitting on the right or left side of the House of Commons;--this, I repeat, I know not, nor (in all solemnity I say it) do I care to know. For if it be so, and the English nation could at the present period of its history be betrayed into a war such as this by the slipping of a wrong word into a protocol, or bewitched into unexpected battle under the budding hallucinations of its sapling senators, truly it is time for us to bear the penalty of our baseness, and learn, as the sleepless steel glares close upon us, how to choose our governors more wisely, and our ways more warily.

For that which brings swift punishment in war, must have brought slow ruin in peace; and those who have now laid down their lives for England, have doubly saved her; they have humbled at once her enemies and herself; and have done less for her, in the conquest they achieve, than in the sorrow that they claim.

But it is not altogether thus: we have not been cast into this war by mere political misapprehensions, or popular ignorances. It is quite possible that neither we nor our rulers may clearly understand the nature of the conflict; and that we may be dealing blows in the dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly awakened from slumber by an unknown adversary. But I believe the struggle was inevitable, and that the sooner it came, the more easily it was to be met, and the more n.o.bly concluded. France and England are both of them, from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, in a state of intense progression, change, and experimental life. They are each of them beginning to examine, more distinctly than ever nations did yet in the history of the world, the dangerous question respecting the rights of governed, and the responsibilities of governing, bodies; not, as heretofore; foaming over them in red frenzy, with intervals of fetter and straw crown, but in health, quietness, and daylight, with the help of a good Queen and a great Emperor; and to determine them in a way which, by just so much as it is more effective and rational, is likely to produce more permanent results than ever before on the policy of neighboring States, and to force, gradually, the discussion of similar questions into their places of silence. To force it,--for true liberty, like true religion, is always aggressive or persecuted; but the attack is _generally_ made upon it by the nation which is to be crushed,--by Persian on Athenian, Tuscan on Roman, Austrian on Swiss; or, as now, by Russia upon us and our allies: her attack appointed, it seems to me, for confirmation of all our greatness, trial of our strength, purging and punishment of our futilities, and establishment for ever, in our hands, of the leaders.h.i.+p in the political progress of the world.

Whether this its providential purpose be accomplished, must depend on its enabling France and England to love one another, and teaching these, the two n.o.blest foes that ever stood breast to breast among the nations, first to decipher the law of international charities; first to discern that races, like individuals, can only reach their true strength, dignity, or joy, in seeking each the welfare, and exulting each in the glory, of the other. It is strange how far we still seem from fully perceiving this. We know that two men, cast on a desert island, could not thrive in dispeace; we can understand that four, or twelve, might still find their account in unity; but that a mult.i.tude should thrive otherwise than by the contentions of its cla.s.ses, or _two_ mult.i.tudes hold themselves in anywise bound by brotherly law to serve, support, rebuke, rejoice in one another, this seems still as far beyond our conception, as the clearest of commandments, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth," is beyond our habitual practice. Yet, if once we comprehend that precept in its breadth, and feel that what we now call jealousy for our country's honor, is, so far as it tends to other countries'

_dis_honor, merely one of the worst, because most complacent and self-gratulatory, forms of irreligion,--a newly breathed strength will, with the newly interpreted patriotism, animate and sanctify the efforts of men. Learning, unchecked by envy, will be accepted more frankly, throned more firmly, guided more swiftly; charity, unchilled by fear, will dispose the laws of each State without reluctance to advantage its neighbor by justice to itself; and admiration, unwarped by prejudice, possess itself continually of new treasure in the arts and the thoughts of the stranger.

If France and England fail of this, if again petty jealousies or selfish interests prevail to unknit their hands from the armored grasp, then, indeed, their faithful children will have fallen in vain; there will be a sound as of renewed lamentation along those Euxine waves, and a shaking among the bones that bleach by the mounds of Sebastopol. But if they fail not of this,--if we, in our love of our queens and kings, remember how France gave to the cause of early civilization, first the greatest, then the holiest, of monarchs;[104] and France, in her love of liberty, remembers how _we_ first raised the standard of Commonwealth, trusted to the grasp of one good and strong hand, witnessed for by victory; and so join in perpetual compact of our different strengths, to contend for justice, mercy, and truth throughout the world,--who dares say that one soldier has died in vain? The scarlet of the blood that has sealed this covenant will be poured along the clouds of a new aurora, glorious in that Eastern heaven; for every sob of wreck-fed breaker round those Pontic precipices, the floods shall clap their hands between the guarded mounts of the Prince-Angel; and the spirits of those lost mult.i.tudes, crowned with the olive and rose among the laurel, shall haunt, satisfied, the willowy brooks and peaceful vales of England, and glide, triumphant, by the poplar groves and sunned coteaux of Seine.

[97] The education here spoken of is, of course, that bearing on the main work of life. In other respects, Turner's education was more neglected than Scott's, and that not beneficently.

See the close of the third of my Edinburgh Lectures.

[98] The picture is in the Uffizii of Florence.

[99] This etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the next volume; it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in the water, than I should have made it, if intended to be complete as it is.

[100] Compare Vol. I. Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. I repeat here some things that were then said; but it is necessary now to review them in connection with Turner's education, as well as for the sake of enforcing them by ill.u.s.tration.

[101] Now in the old library of Venice.

[102] My old friend Blackwood complains bitterly, in his last number, of my having given this ill.u.s.tration at one of my late lectures, saying, that I "have a disagreeable knack of finding out the joints in my opponent's armor," and that "I never fight for love." I never do. I fight for truth, earnestly, and in no wise for jest; and against all lies, earnestly, and in no wise for love. They complain that "a n.o.ble adversary is not in Mr. Ruskin's way." No; a n.o.ble adversary never was, never will be. With all that is n.o.ble I have been, and shall be, in perpetual peace, with all that is ign.o.ble and false everlastingly at war. And as for these Scotch _bourgeois gentilshommes_ with their "Tu n'as pas la patience que je pare," let them look to their fence. But truly, if they will tell me where Claude's strong points are, I will strike there, and be thankful.

[103] His first drawing master was, I believe, that Mr. Lowe, whose daughters, now aged and poor, have, it seems to me, some claim on public regard, being connected distantly with the memory of Johnson, and closely with that of Turner.

[104] Charlemagne and St. Louis.

APPENDIX.

I. CLAUDE'S TREE-DRAWING.

The reader may not improbably hear it said, by persons who are incapable of maintaining an honest argument, and therefore incapable of understanding or believing the honesty of an adversary, that I have caricatured, or unfairly chosen, the examples I give of the masters I depreciate. It is evident, in the first place, that I could not, if I were even cunningly disposed, adopt a worse policy than in so doing; for the discovery of caricature or falsity in my representations, would not only invalidate the immediate statement, but the whole book; and invalidate it in the most fatal way, by showing that all I had ever said about "truth" was hypocrisy, and that in my own affairs I expected to prevail by help of lies.

Nevertheless it necessarily happens, that in endeavors to facsimile any work whatsoever, bad or good, some changes are induced from the exact aspect of the original. These changes are, of course, sometimes harmful, sometimes advantageous; the bad thing generally gains; the good thing _always_ loses: so that I am continually tormented by finding, in my plates of contrasts, the virtue and vice I exactly wanted to talk about, eliminated from _both_ examples. In some cases, however, the bad thing will lose also, and then I must either cancel the plate, or increase the cost of the work by preparing another (at a similar risk), or run the chance of incurring the charge of dishonest representation. I desire, therefore, very earnestly, and once for all, to have it understood that whatever I say in the text, bearing on questions of comparison, refers _always_ to the _original_ works; and that, if the reader has it in his power, I would far rather he should look at those works than at my plates of them; I only give the plates for his immediate help and convenience: and I mention this, with respect to my plate of Claude's ramification, because, if I have such a thing as a prejudice at all, (and, although I do not myself think I have, people certainly say so,) it is against Claude; and I might, therefore, be sooner suspected of some malice in this plate than in others. But I simply gave the original engravings from the Liber Veritatis to Mr. Le Keux, earnestly requesting that the portions selected might be faithfully copied; and I think he is much to be thanked for so carefully and successfully accomplis.h.i.+ng the task.

The figures are from the following plates:--

No. 1. Part of the central tree in No. 134. of the Liber Veritatis.

2. From the largest tree " 158.

3. Bushes at root of tree " 134.

4. Tree on the left " 183.

5. Tree on the left " 95.

6. Tree on the left " 72.

7. Princ.i.p.al tree " 92.

8. Tree on the right " 32.

If, in fact, any change be effected in the examples in this plate, it is for the better; for, thus detached, they all look like small boughs, in which the faults are of little consequence; in the original works they are seen to be intended for large trunks of trees, and the errors are therefore p.r.o.nounced on a much larger scale.

The plate of mediaeval rocks (10.) has been executed with much less attention in transcript, because the points there to be ill.u.s.trated were quite indisputable, and the instances were needed merely to show the _kind_ of _thing_ spoken of, not the skill of particular masters.

The example from Leonardo was, however, somewhat carefully treated.

Mr. Cuff copied it accurately from the only engraving of the picture which I believe exists, and with which, therefore, I suppose the world is generally content. That engraving, however, in no respect seems to me to give the look of the light behind Leonardo's rocks; so I afterwards darkened the rocks, and put some light into the sky and lily; and the effect is certainly more like that of the picture than it is in the same portion of the old engraving.

Of the other masters represented in the plates of this volume, the n.o.blest, Tintoret, has a.s.suredly suffered the most (Plate 17.); first, in my too hasty drawing from the original, picture; and, secondly, through some accidental errors of outline which occurred in the reduction to the size of the page; lastly, and chiefly, in the withdrawal of the heads of the four figures underneath, in the shadow, on which the composition entirely depends. This last evil is unavoidable. It is quite impossible to make _extracts_ from the great masters without partly spoiling every separated feature; the very essence of a n.o.ble composition being, that none should bear separation from the rest.

The plate from Raphael (11) is, I think, on the whole, satisfactory.

It cost me much pains, as I had to facsimile the irregular form of every leaf; each being, in the original picture, executed with a somewhat wayward pencil-stroke of vivid brown on the clear sky.

Of the other plates it would be tedious to speak in detail.

Generally, it will be found that I have taken most pains to do justice to the masters of whom I have to speak depreciatingly; and that, if there be calumny at all, it is always of Turner, rather than of Claude.