VAN DYCK'S POSITION IN ART
During the past twenty years the public has become so educated in matters artistic that it wishes at once to definitely assign a certain position to an artist with whose works it is familiar. We live in an age of comparison, and as opportunities for its exercise, owing to the cheapening of travel, are so manifestly improved of recent years, a more just estimation exists in the mind of the public regarding an artist's worth than formerly. Van Dyck, as I said at the beginning of the opening chapter, has never fallen from the high position he occupied in his own day. He has always appealed to the student and the artist of every nationality, and if we survey portrait painting since his day, we shall see that he has exercised more influence than any other artist who has ever lived. It may be said that Titian, for a couple of centuries after his death, was the idol almost exclusively worshipped, and that during the last fifty years Velazquez and Rembrandt have been the ideals painters have dangled before the public and themselves. But both of these mighty masters have had their ups and downs. The genius of Rembrandt was certainly not appreciated until the end of the eighteenth century, and even then his stupendous powers were not recognised as they have been in our own day.
The worship of Velazquez is quite a modern institution, and it is not at all unlikely, in the opinion of well-informed critics, that if his influence, which has now reached a decadent stage, is not curtailed it will create as much havoc amongst modern portrait painters as the example of Constable has had upon certain phases of landscape painting.
It can never be laid to the charge of Van Dyck that any period of his art has exercised a permanently baneful influence. True, immediately after the Restoration, a school arose, headed by Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller, who claimed to have followed the traditions of Van Dyck. It requires, however, but little comparison between even his later and slighter works and those of Lely, who was incomparably the greatest of the portrait painters working in England in the interval between Van Dyck and Hogarth, to see how far below Van Dyck's standard portrait painting had fallen, and how little of his method there was left in it.
Van Dyck has exercised more influence in England than abroad. Many of our greatest eighteenth-century portrait painters have largely formed themselves upon his example. Gainsborough was the most conspicuous instance of this. From his earliest days he worshipped the great Fleming, and that the spell never left him may be gauged from his dying words: "We are all going to Heaven, and Van Dyck is of the company." Even prior to his departure for Bath, his portraits possessed many of the qualities of Van Dyck, but after arriving in the western city, then the centre of a rich and fashionable world, he had manifold opportunities of studying his favourite master. His brushwork became at once more refined, his colouring more transparent, and his method in every way more facile. Before leaving Bath he had produced portraits which are worthy to be placed alongside those of Van Dyck, and after a few years' residence in London had created those marvels of the brush which contend for supremacy with the finest works of the Fleming. For example, what portrait of the latter master could be cited to surpass the portrait of Mrs. Graham in the Gallery at Edinburgh, the superb group at Dulwich, or the "Blue Boy," in the possession of the Duke of Westminster?
Reynolds appears to have worked more in emulation of Titian than Van Dyck. He painted in a solider and apparently slower manner, and if the slickness—if I may be allowed an Americanism—of the Flemish master appealed to him, it yet had no visible effect upon his own technique.
The minor masters of our school demonstrate materially how much they owed to Van Dyck. Allan Ramsay and Cotes bear adequate witness of this.
Full justice, however, has not been done to the good wrought for English art by his immediate followers and pupils. It is only of late years that the portraits of old Stone are beginning to be sorted out from those of the later period of Van Dyck. Stone was occupied in copying or making replicas of the portraits of Van Dyck, and so well did he succeed in his task that, even to this day, numerous works by him are to be found in the country houses of England passing under the name of the great master.
PLATE VIII.—THE MARCHESE CATTANEO
(In the National Gallery)
In spite of its somewhat bad condition this portrait is an excellent specimen of Van Dyck's Genoese period. It was achieved about the same time as the two magnificent pictures in the Scottish National Gallery, the Lomellini family and the portrait of an unknown Italian nobleman. Its recent entry into the National Gallery filled a gap in our representation of the great Fleming.
Then we have William Dobson, whose works are worthy of yet more study than has hitherto been accorded them. He did not long survive Van Dyck, dying in 1646 at the early age of thirty-six. He was probably the most gifted of all his pupils, and had he lived at any other period would probably have been held in great estimation. There is an excellent example of his brush in the National Gallery, the portrait of Endymion Porter, groom of the bedchamber of Charles I. In many of the other examples strewn about the country he shows yet a greater approach to Van Dyck. Still, the Trafalgar Square picture is a worthy example of his powers at his best. His masculine handling and sense of colour place him, from a purely artistic point of view, far above such men as Lely and Kneller, who followed him.
Another painter who wrought excellent work under the Commonwealth was Robert Walker. He was much patronised by Oliver Cromwell and his party. He appears to have been one of the few portrait painters who flourished at this time. He acquired in a remarkable manner the liquid and transparent style affected by Van Dyck during his last years in England, and coupling with this remarkable powers of fidelity, his portraits possess great attractions for the artist as well as the student of history.
As I have already said, the influence of Van Dyck upon the painters who flourished throughout the three succeeding reigns was a decadent one. Sir Peter Lely, who came to England, at the age of twenty-three, with the Prince of Orange, the son-in-law of Charles I., was the best of all these men. He was born in Westphalia, of Dutch parentage, and was educated in the school of Pieter Fransz de Grebber at Haarlem. But his entire method was built upon Van Dyck. He seems not to have had a bad time under the Commonwealth, for he was employed to paint Cromwell's portrait. It is said that he had instructions upon this occasion to paint him, "warts, pimples, and all." It was not, however, till Charles II. had ascended the throne that he reached the zenith of his fame. Then came the long series of ladies of the Court with which we are so familiar. They are all set in the same artificial setting, a landscape half conventional, half natural in feeling, a languid and somewhat haughty air about the heads, together with draperies destined to accentuate the artificial appearance of the whole portrait. One can see at a glance that it was from Van Dyck he had learned the placing and handling of the heads, hands, and backgrounds, but what a monotonous procession it is. In order to appreciate the superficialities of Lely a number of his portraits must be seen together. We then see how monotonous he was, how few of those qualities he possessed which go to make up a great artist. That he had a considerable amount of technique at his command can be seen in such portraits as the "Duchess of Cleveland" in the National Portrait Gallery, but in others again he fell so far below this level of excellence, that one is sometimes tempted to reject many perfectly glorious pictures as not being from his hand.
The art of Lely had attained great popularity amongst the aristocracy whose lives called into being the decadent art of this period. All who sought the public favour tried to catch his manner, and hence arose quite a number of imitators. Occasionally Lely was surpassed by some of his scholars. For example, John Greenhill absorbed more of the real qualities of Van Dyck than his master. The remarkable portrait in the Gallery of Dulwich College shows unmistakable signs of genius of a high order, and had he not fallen into irregular habits and died at the age of thirty-two he might have achieved great things.
Sir Godfrey Kneller, who followed Lely, was infinitely inferior to him as an artist. He claimed, too, to continue the Van Dyck tradition, but by this time the art of portrait painting had sunk into such a deplorable condition, owing to the depravity of public taste and to the slavish imitation of the brilliant Fleming, that there are few of his pictures that appeal in the least to the artistic sense. It was not until the great period of English painting, beginning with Hogarth, of which I have already spoken, that the downward career of painting in this country was finally checked.
So far our attention has been devoted to discovering the visible effect of Van Dyck's art upon his contemporaries and followers. The fact that on the whole his influence was decadent in this direction must not allow us to detract from his own qualities. We must rather search for the reasons which caused his art to retain such a hold upon generations of English painters. It must not be forgotten that Van Dyck's profession in England was essentially that of a portrait painter, and he was employed by the aristocracy exclusively. He, indeed, may be called the aristocratic painter par excellence, and in this respect does not yield to either Titian or Velazquez. It was, however, when he strayed from his normal course that he revealed his deficiencies; the few extant portraits of the lower classes demonstrate amply how unsuited he was to portraying any below the upper ranks of life. To every plebeian sitter he imparted an air of gentility and distinction quite out of keeping. Until the advent of Wilson and Gainsborough, portraiture was the sole art, at any rate, as far as painting is concerned, that flourished in England. Its patrons were all of the upper classes, and the Van Dyck manner, which by this time had become a tradition, was recognised by both artists and sitters as the best suited to their purpose. It was only in the eighteenth century that the general financial and educational uplifting of the middle classes called into being that naturalist school which finally drove all others from the field.
It is probable, however, that the painters who worked so slavishly in Van Dyck's English manner had never become acquainted with his finest achievements in portraiture. With few exceptions these were executed before he settled permanently in England.
It is practically certain that Gainsborough, for example, had never seen such portraits as the Philippe le Roy and his wife, now among the greatest treasures of Hertford House, which date from the years between 1628-32. It was then that Van Dyck had reached his maximum development, and it is by the portraits he made in the ten years round about this date that he will probably be judged by posterity. The facile ease and silvery liquidity of his latter manner may have an irresistible charm for those who have not studied the master very deeply, but for the artist and the student the works he had achieved, before success had crowned his efforts in the same measure that it did shortly after his arrival here, will ever remain the standard by which to judge him.
At this time he displayed great assiduity to learn anything he could either from his predecessors or from his contemporaries. In this connection it may not be out of place to relate a story, the truth of which has frequently been challenged.
Having come across some portraits by Franz Hals, and being very anxious to see the master at work, he made a journey to Haarlem. Upon inquiring at the Dutchman's studio, he found that Hals was at his usual tavern. He accordingly sent word to him that a stranger was waiting to have his portrait painted, and that he had but two hours to give him before leaving the town. Hals arrived immediately, and, in view of the shortness of time at his disposal, set to work with a will. Van Dyck, who, needless to say, had not been recognised, remarked, as Hals was putting on the finishing touches, that painting seemed a very easy process, and asked to be allowed to try his hand. Accordingly they changed places, and Hals soon perceived that the stranger was no novice in the handling of the brush. As the work proceeded his curiosity became more and more whetted, and finally, unable to restrain his curiosity any longer, he went over to see how the work was progressing. One can imagine his surprise when he saw a masterly portrait in process of completion, and, recognising the handling, immediately cried out: "Why, you are none other than Van Dyck, for he alone could have achieved what you have done."
As an historical painter he takes a very high rank amongst seventeenth-century masters; he was far ahead in vigour of treatment and in strength of brushwork of any of his contemporaries in Italy. The school of Bologna, whilst possessing a refinement he never attained, is effeminate in comparison with him. Their very eclecticism prevented them giving free rein to their fancy, and consequently the great majority of their works possess a restraint of feeling, coupled with a perfection of execution, which neither Rubens nor Van Dyck surpassed.
Van Dyck certainly stands out as the greatest scholar of Rubens in every way. His fellow-pupils whom he left behind in Flanders could not compare with him. The works of the cleverest of them, Caspar de Grayer, appear formal, indeed, when compared with any of the stupendous religious compositions still preserved in the great churches of his native country. Their chief merit is, as I have before said, in the exceedingly human presentment of the subject. The sense of physical pain and of human brutality has never been better treated, and, if at times he carries this quality to a painful degree, no charge could be levelled against him on the score of feebleness or of lack of thoroughness in making his meaning quite clear.
As compared with similar works by Rubens they possess an interest for us which the latter cannot always command, by reason of their being conceived and finished by the master himself, whereas those of Rubens, more often than not, were only worked upon by the master after pupils had carried out the greater part of the work.
Van Dyck's religious and historical pictures belong to the period of his career when his execution was at its zenith, and consequently they possess an extraordinary degree of interest to the artist.
It is, however, to his early years that one must turn to form a just estimation of his abilities, and in his finest works he takes his place beside Titian and Velazquez, Rembrandt and Holbein, amongst the greatest masters of portrait painting who have ever lived.
The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., London & Derby
The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
IN THE SAME SERIES
ARTIST. AUTHOR.
VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN.
REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN.
TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND.
ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND.
GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS.
ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO.
BELLINI. GEORGE HAY.
FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON.
REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS.
LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY.
RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY.
HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE.
TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN.
MILLAIS. A. LYS BALDRY.
CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY.
GAINSBOROUGH. MAX ROTHSCHILD.
TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN.
LUINI. JAMES MASON.
FRANZ HALS. EDGCUMBE STALEY.
VAN DYCK. PERCY M. TURNER.
In Preparation
WHISTLER. T. MARTIN WOOD.
LEONARDO DA VINCI. M. W. BROCKWELL.
RUBENS. S. L. BENSUSAN.
BURNE-JONES. A. LYS BALDRY.
J. F. MILLET. PERCY M. TURNER.
CHARDIN. PAUL G. KONODY.
FRAGONARD. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
HOLBEIN. S. L. BENSUSAN.
BOUCHER. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
VIGÉE LE BRUN. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
WATTEAU. C. LEWIS HIND.
MURILLO. S. L. BENSUSAN.
AND OTHERS.