PICTURES AT OXFORD AND BLENHEIM
Rome has been called the ‘Sacred City:’—might not our Oxford be called so too? There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope: it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it waves its mighty shadow over the imagination: it stands in lowly sublimity, on the ‘hill of ages;’ and points with prophetic fingers to the sky: it greets the eager gaze from afar, ‘with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,’ that shine with an internal light as with the lustre of setting suns; and a dream and a glory hover round its head, as the spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual shapes, are seen retreating or advancing to the eye of memory: its streets are paved with the names of learning that can never wear out: its green quadrangles breathe the silence of thought, conscious of the weight of yearnings innumerable after the past, of loftiest aspirations for the future: Isis babbles of the Muse, its waters are from the springs of Helicon, its Christ-Church meadows, classic, Elysian fields!—We could pass our lives in Oxford without having or wanting any other idea—that of the place is enough. We imbibe the air of thought; we stand in the presence of learning. We are admitted into the Temple of Fame, we feel that we are in the sanctuary, on holy ground, and ‘hold high converse with the mighty dead.’ The enlightened and the ignorant are on a level, if they have but faith in the tutelary genius of the place. We may be wise by proxy, and studious by prescription. Time has taken upon himself the labour of thinking; and accumulated libraries leave us leisure to be dull. There is no occasion to examine the buildings, the churches, the colleges, by the rules of architecture, to reckon up the streets, to compare it with Cambridge (Cambridge lies out of the way, on one side of the world)—but woe to him who does not feel in passing through Oxford that he is in ‘no mean city,’ that he is surrounded with the monuments and lordly mansions of the mind of man, outvying in pomp and splendour the courts and palaces of princes, rising like an exhalation in the night of ignorance, and triumphing over barbaric foes, saying, ‘All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall bow to me!’—as the shrine where successive ages came to pay their pious vows, and slake the sacred thirst of knowledge, where youthful hopes (an endless flight) soared to truth and good, and where the retired and lonely student brooded over the historic or over fancy’s page, imposing high tasks for himself, framing high destinies for the race of man—the lamp, the mine, the well-head from whence the spark of learning was kindled, its stream flowed, its treasures were spread out through the remotest corners of the land and to distant nations. Let him then who is fond of indulging in a dream-like existence go to Oxford and stay there; let him study this magnificent spectacle, the same under all aspects, with its mental twilight tempering the glare of noon, or mellowing the silver moonlight; let him wander in her sylvan suburbs, or linger in her cloistered halls; but let him not catch the din of scholars or teachers, or dine or sup with them, or speak a word to any of the privileged inhabitants; for if he does, the spell will be broken, the poetry and the religion gone, and the palace of enchantment will melt from his embrace into thin air!
The only Collection of Pictures at Oxford is that at the Radcliffe Library; bequeathed by Sir William Guise. It is so far appropriate that it is dingy, solemn, old; and we would gladly leave it to its repose; but where criticism comes, affection ‘clappeth his wings, and straightway he is gone.’ Most of the pictures are either copies, or spoiled, or never were good for any thing. There is, however, a Music Piece by Titian, which bears the stamp of his hand, and is ‘majestic, though in ruins.’ It represents three young ladies practising at a harpsichord, with their music-master looking on. One of the girls is tall, with prominent features seen in profile, but exquisitely fair, and with a grave expression; the other is a lively, good-humoured girl, in a front view; and the third leans forward from behind, looking down with a demure, reserved, sentimental cast of countenance, but very pretty, and much like an English face. The teacher has a manly, intelligent countenance, with a certain blended air of courtesy and authority. It is a fascinating picture, to our thinking; and has that marked characteristic look, belonging to each individual and to the subject, which is always to be found in Titian’s groups. We also noticed a dingy, melancholy-looking Head over the window of the farthest room, said to be a Portrait of Vandyke, with something striking in the tone and expression; and a small Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, attributed to Giuseppe Ribera, which has considerable merit. The amateur will here find continual copies (of an indifferent class) of many of his old favourite pictures of the Italian school, Titian, Domenichino, Correggio, and others. But the most valuable part of the Collection consists of four undoubted Heads cut out of one of the Cartoons, which was destroyed by fire about a hundred years ago: they are here preserved in their pristine integrity. They shew us what the Cartoons were. They have all the spirit and freedom of Raphael’s hand, but without any of the blotches and smearing of those at Hampton Court; with which the damp of outhouses and the dews of heaven have evidently had nearly as much to do as the painter. Two are Heads of men, and two of women; one of the last, Rachel weeping for her Children, and another still finer (both are profiles) in which all the force and boldness of masculine understanding is combined with feminine softness of expression. The large, ox-like eye, a ‘lucid mirror,’ with the eye-lids drooping, and the long eye-lashes distinctly marked, the straight scrutinizing nose, the full, but closed lips, the matronly chin and high forehead, altogether convey a character of matured thought and expansive feeling, such as is seldom to be met with. Rachel weeping for her Children has a sterner and more painful, but a very powerful expression. It is heroic, rather than pathetic. The Heads of the men are spirited and forcible, but they are distinguished chiefly by the firmness of the outline, and the sharpness and mastery of the execution.
Blenheim is a morning’s walk from Oxford, and is not an unworthy appendage to it—
‘And fast by hanging in a golden chain
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon!’
Blenheim is not inferior in waving woods and sloping lawns and smooth waters to Pembroke’s princely domain, or to the grounds of any other park we know of. The building itself is Gothic, capricious, and not imposing—a conglomeration of pigeon-houses—
‘In form resembling a goose pie.’
But as a receptacle for works of art, (with the exception of Cleveland House,) it is unrivalled in this country. There is not a bad picture in it: the interest is sustained by rich and noble performances from first to last. It abounds in Rubens’ works. The old Duchess of Marlborough was fond of the historical pieces of this great painter; she had, during her husband’s wars and negociations in Flanders, a fine opportunity of culling them, ‘as one picks pears, saying, this I like, that I like still better:’ and from the selection she has made, it appears as if she understood the master’s genius well. She has chosen those of his works which were most mellow, and at the same time gorgeous in colouring, most luxuriant in composition, most unctuous in expression. Rubens was the only artist that could have embodied some of our countryman Spenser’s splendid and voluptuous allegories. If a painter among ourselves were to attempt a Spenser Gallery, (perhaps the finest subject for the pencil in the world after Heathen mythology and Scripture History,) he ought to go and study the principles of his design at Blenheim!—The Silenus and the Rape of Proserpine contain more of the Bacchanalian and lawless spirit of ancient fable than perhaps any two pictures extant. We shall not dispute that Nicolas Poussin could probably give more of the abstract, metaphysical character of his traditional personages, or that Titian could set them off better, so as to ‘leave stings’ in the eye of the spectator, by a prodigious gusto of colouring, as in his Bacchus and Ariadne: but neither of them gave the same undulating outline, the same humid, pulpy tone to the flesh, the same graceful involution to the grouping and the forms, the same animal spirits, the same breathing motion. Let any one look at the figure of the Silenus in the first-mentioned of these compositions, its unwieldy size, its reeling, drunken attitude, its capacity for revelling in gross, sensual enjoyment, and contrast it with the figure of the nymph, so light, so wanton, so fair, that her clear crystal skin and laughing grace spread a ruddy glow, and account for the giddy tumult all around her; and say if any thing finer in this kind was ever executed or imagined. In that sort of licentious fancy, in which a certain grossness of expression bordered on caricature, and where grotesque or enticing form was to be combined with free and rapid movements, or different tones and colours were to be flung over the picture as in sport or in a dance, no one ever surpassed the Flemish painter; and some of the greatest triumphs of his pencil are to be found in the Blenheim Gallery. There are several others of his best pictures on sacred subjects, such as the Flight into Egypt, and the illustration of the text, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’ The head and figure and deportment of the Christ, in this last admirable production, are nobly characteristic (beyond what the painter usually accomplished in this department)—the face of a woman holding a young child, pale, pensive, with scarce any shadow, and the head of the child itself (looking as vacant and satisfied as if the nipple had just dropped from its mouth) are actually alive. Those who can look at this picture with indifference, or without astonishment at the truth of nature, and the felicity of execution, may rest assured that they know as little of Rubens as of the Art itself. Vandyke, the scholar and rival of Rubens, holds the next place in this Collection. There is here, as in so many other places, a picture of the famous Lord Strafford, with his Secretary—both speaking heads, and with the characters finely diversified. We were struck also by the delightful family picture of the Duchess of Buckingham and her Children, but not so much (we confess it) as we expected from our recollection of this picture a few years ago. It had less the effect of a perfect mirror of fashion in ‘the olden time,’ than we fancied to ourselves—the little girl had less exquisite primness and studied gentility, the little boy had not the same chubby, good-humoured look, and the colours in his cheek had faded—nor had the mother the same graceful, matron-like air. Is it we or the picture that has changed? In general our expectations tally pretty well with our after-observations, but there was a falling-off in the present instance. There is a fine whole-length of a lady of quality of that day (we think Lady Cleveland); but the master-piece of Vandyke’s pencil here is his Charles I. on Horseback. It is the famous cream or fawn-coloured horse, which, of all the creatures that ever were painted, is surely one of the most beautiful.
‘Sure never were seen
Two such beautiful ponies;
All others are brutes,
But these macaronies.’
Its steps are delicate, as if it moved to some soft measure or courtly strain, or disdained the very ground it trod upon; its form all lightness and elegance: the expression quick and fiery; the colour inimitable; the texture of the skin sensitive and tremblingly alive all over, as if it would shrink from the smallest touch. The portrait of Charles is not equal; but there is a landscape-background, which in breezy freshness seems almost to rival the airy spirit and delicacy of the noble animal. There are also one or two fine Rembrandts (particularly a Jacob and Esau)—an early Raphael, the Adoration of some saint, hard and stiff, but carefully designed; and a fine, sensible, graceful head of the Fornarina, of which we have a common and well-executed engraving.
‘But did you see the Titian room?’—Yes, we did, and a glorious treat it was; nor do we know why it should not be shewn to every one. There is nothing alarming but the title of the subjects—The Loves of the Gods—just as was the case with Mr. T. Moore’s Loves of the Angels—but oh! how differently treated! What a gusto in the first, compared with the insipidity of the last! What streaks of living blood-colour, so unlike gauze spangles or pink silk-stockings! What union, what symmetry of form, instead of sprawling, flimsy descriptions—what an expression of amorous enjoyment about the mouth, the eyes, and even to the finger-ends, instead of cold conceits, and moonlight similes! This is en passant; so to our task.—It is said these pictures were discovered in an old lumber-room by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who set a high value on them, and that they are undoubtedly by Titian, having been originally sent over as a present by the King of Sardinia (for whose ancestor they were painted) to the first Duke of Marlborough. We should (without, however, pretending to set up an opinion) incline, from the internal evidence, to think them from the pencil of the great Venetian, but for two circumstances: the first is the texture of the skin; and secondly, they do not compose well as pictures. They have no back-ground to set them off, but a most ridiculous trellis-work, representing nothing, hung round them; and the flesh looks monotonous and hard, like the rind of fruit. On the other hand, this last objection seems to be answered satisfactorily enough, and without impugning the skill of the artist; for the pictures are actually painted on skins of leather. In all other respects, they might assuredly be by Titian, and we know of no other painter who was capable of achieving their various excellences. The drawing of the female figures is correct and elegant in a high degree, and might be supposed to be borrowed from classic sculpture, but that it is more soft, more feminine, more lovely. The colouring, with the exception already stated, is true, spirited, golden, harmonious. The grouping and attitudes are heroic, the expression in some of the faces divine. We do not mean, of course, that it possesses the elevation or purity that Raphael or Correggio could give, but it is warmer, more thrilling and ecstatic. There is the glow and ripeness of a more genial clime, the purple light of love, crimsoned blushes, looks bathed in rapture, kisses with immortal sweetness in their taste—Nay, then, let the reader go and see the pictures, and no longer lay the blame of this extravagance on us. We may at any rate repeat the subjects. They are eight in number. 1. Mars and Venus. The Venus is well worthy to be called the Queen of Love, for shape, for air, for every thing. Her redoubted lover is a middle-aged, ill-looking gentleman, clad in a buff-jerkin, and somewhat of a formalist in his approaches and mode of address; but there is a Cupid playing on the floor, who might well turn the world upside down. 2. Cupid and Psyche. The Cupid is perhaps rather a gawky, awkward stripling, with eager, open-mouthed wonder: but did ever creature of mortal mould see any thing comparable to the back and limbs of the Psyche, or conceive or read any thing equal to it, but that unique description in the Troilus and Cressida of Chaucer? 3. Apollo and Daphne. Not equal to the rest. 4. Hercules and Dejanira. The female figure in this picture is full of grace and animation, and the arms that are twined round the great son of Jove are elastic as a bended bow. 5. Vulcan and Ceres. 6. Pluto and Proserpine. 7. Jupiter and Io. Very fine. And finest of all, and last, Neptune and Amphitrite. In this last work it seems ‘as if increase of appetite did grow with what it fed on.’ What a face is that of Amphitrite for beauty and for sweetness of expression! One thing is remarkable in these groups (with the exception of two) which is that the lovers are all of them old men; but then they retain their beards (according to the custom of the good old times!) and this makes not only a picturesque contrast, but gives a beautiful softness and youthful delicacy to the female faces opposed to them. Upon the whole, this series of historic compositions well deserves the attention of the artist and the connoisseur, and perhaps some light might be thrown upon the subject of their authenticity by turning over some old portfolios. We have heard a hint thrown out that the designs are of a date prior to Titian. But ‘we are ignorance itself in this!’