UN DES PEINTRES PEU CONNUS DE L’ÉCOLE FLAMANDE DE TRANSITION. Jean Gossart de Maubeuge, sa vie et son œuvre, d’après les dernières recherches et des documents inédits. Par Maurice Gossart. 147 pp., 2 engravings, and 12 phototypes. Lille, 1903.
Being at Veere some years ago, and finding that I had a few hours at my disposal before the members of the gild of St. Thomas and St. Luke could arrive, I bethought me of the local archives, which I fancied would probably contain documents throwing light on the history and works of Gossart. I found the archives in confusion, and was not so fortunate as to discover anything. I had hoped on taking up the present volume to find that the author had been more fortunate, but, alas, it contains no mention of these archives, which probably still await the visit of someone with leisure and patience to devote to their examination. It is a pity that M. Gossart has not been able to undertake this; still we must be thankful for what he has done. Any attempt to clear up the history of an artist of note, especially of one to whom many works are attributed, is deserving of praise and encouragement. The settling of the date of Gossart’s visit to Italy with Philip of Burgundy and of his death are two important additions to our knowledge. ¶ John Gossart, son of Simon, a bookbinder, was born at Maubeuge about 1472. It is not known when or to whom he was apprenticed, or where he worked prior to 1503, in which year he was admitted as free master into the gild of St. Luke at Antwerp. In 1508 he went to Rome with his patron, Philip of Burgundy, admiral of Flanders, who was sent by the Archduchess Margaret on an embassy to Pope Julius II. Starting from Mechlin on October 26, 1508, they visited Verona and Florence on their way to the Eternal City, where, after the return of Philip, Gossart remained copying antique works of art for him until July 1509, when he set out for the Netherlands, arriving at Middleburg in November. ¶ He remained in the service of Philip until the death of that prince in 1524, and then entered that of Adolphus of Burgundy, marquis of Veere, with whom he remained until his death in 1533. So far good, and had the author stopped here we should have had no fault to find with him, but he has endeavoured to draw up a list of Gossart’s paintings, a task for which he is evidently little fitted. Not only has he omitted several important works, such as the early picture in the Prado gallery, but he has included others which bear no resemblance to those painted by Gossart, or which never pretended to be other than copies, being honestly signed by the copyist ‘Malbodius inventor’; he has enumerated pictures as being now in private collections which were dispersed more than fifty years ago, and has described the same picture twice over (pp. 66 and 68) under different titles, having apparently copied out or translated any notices he has come across, and this with very little care, as his pages not only swarm with errors of spelling but also of fact, such as the monstrous absurdity that Gossart (p. 63) painted the portrait of ‘Van den Rust, Carmélite, qui recueillit Memlinc à la bataille de Nancy.’
W. H. J. W.
OLD ENGLISH MASTERS Engraved by Timothy Cole. Macmillan.
This hook contains some of Mr. Timothy Cole’s most accomplished work. The preface certainly does not exaggerate his merits when it says that no other engraver of the day could transpose into the medium of wood engraving so much of the spirit and even of the actual quality of the original pictures. Whether, as is also claimed, his engravings are of more value as records and reminiscences of the paintings than good photogravures we doubt. For any purposes of study photographic processes with all their drawbacks are essential. But there is much to be said for interpretative engraving when it reaches so high a point of excellence as Mr. Cole’s. For when we look at a photograph or a photogravure, however good, we enjoy, not the thing before our eyes, but the vision of the original, which, even if we have never seen it, we imaginatively construct. Our enjoyment is at one remove from our actual sensations, but when we look at one of Mr. Cole’s finer pieces we get an immediate pleasure from the discriminating and appreciative tact of the translator, from the rare mastery of a difficult medium which he shows, and this pleasure is superadded to a very vivid sense of the beauty of the original. Moreover, in certain instances, his power of suggesting luminous and transparent depth of colour or of hinting at subtle gradations of tone goes almost beyond the reach of photographic reproduction. It is not a little surprising that in a medium so precise as wood engraving Mr. Cole’s most distinctive excellence lies not in his rendering of design of definite form so much as in his power of giving atmospheric suffusion and infinitely subtle gradations of tone and of suggesting colour. There are, indeed, not a few cases where the form is too much lost, where the searched-out design of the original disappears in a vague penumbra; many cases, too, where the contour is unduly wavering and shapeless: on the other hand, where the chiaroscuro is most subtle, where the gradations would seem to defy any analysis into lines and dots, Mr. Cole surpasses himself. The face of Gainsborough’s Mrs. Graham is quite marvellous in this respect, while for atmospheric quality it would be impossible to surpass the Wilsons. With Reynolds he is less successful. Romney’s Parson’s Daughter is another excellent engraving; and here again it is the evasive liquid brush stroke which he understands so perfectly. Raeburn’s Lord Newton, in which similar qualities predominate, is again admirably rendered. We doubt whether this method of reproducing works of art will be continued in the future, nor do we particularly desire it. The finest qualities of wood engraving as an independent art are really contradictory to such methods as are necessary for the faithful transcription of oil painting, but the American school of wood engraving will nevertheless be remembered for the perfect attainment of its best aims in Mr. Cole’s work.
R. E. F.