A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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680. THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES.

Van Dyck (Flemish: 1599-1641). See 49.

Painted by Van Dyck from the large picture by Rubens at Mechlin, for an engraver to work from. "One of the too numerous brown sketches in the manner of the Flemish School, which seem to me rather done for the sake of wiping the brush clean than of painting anything. There is no colour in it, and no light and shade;—but a certain quantity of bitumen is rubbed about so as to slip more or less greasily into the shape of figures; and one of St. John's (or St. James's) legs is suddenly terminated by a wriggle of white across it, to signify that he is standing in the sea" (Art of England, p. 44). Ruskin notices the picture as an example of the art which was assailed by the Pre-Raphaelites. A word-picture of the same scene in the Pre-Raphaelite manner, with its literal and close realisation, will be found in Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iv. § 16.