THE PICTURES AT WINDSOR CASTLE
The palaces of Windsor and Hampton-court contain pictures worthy of the feelings we attach to the names of those places. The first boasts a number of individual pictures of great excellence and interest, and the last the Cartoons.
Windsor Castle is remarkable in many respects. Its tall, grey, square towers, seated on a striking eminence, overlook for many miles the subjacent country, and, eyed in the distance, lead the mind of the solitary traveller to romantic musing; or, approached nearer, give the heart a quicker and stronger pulsation. Windsor, besides its picturesque, commanding situation, and its being the only palace in the kingdom fit for the receptacle of ‘a line of kings,’ is the scene of many classical associations. Who can pass through Datchet, and the neighbouring greensward paths, and not think of Falstaff, of Ann Page, and the oak of Herne the hunter? Or if he does not, still he is affected by them as if he did. The tall slim deer glance startled by, in some neglected track of memory, and fairies trip it in the unconscious haunts of the imagination! Pope’s lines on Windsor Forest also suggest themselves to the mind in the same way, and make the air about it delicate. Gray has consecrated the same spot by his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College; and the finest passage in Burke’s writings is his comparison of the British Monarchy to ‘the proud Keep of Windsor.’ The walls and massy towers of Windsor Castle are indeed built of solid stone, weather-beaten, time-proof; but the image answering to them in the mind’s eye is woven of pure thought and the airy films of the imagination—Arachne’s web not finer!
The rooms are chill and comfortless at this time of the year,[[7]] and gilded ceilings look down on smoky fire-places. The view from the windows, too, which is so rich and glowing in the summer-time, is desolate and deformed with the rains overflowing the marshy grounds. As to physical comfort, one seems to have no more of it in these tapestried halls and on marble floors, than the poor bird driven before the pelting storm, or the ploughboy seeking shelter from the drizzling sky, in his sheep-skin jacket and clouted shoes, beneath the dripping, leafless spray. The palace does not (more than the hovel) always defend us against the winter’s cold. The apartments are also filled with too many rubbishly pictures of kings and queens—there are too many of Verrio’s paintings, and a whole roomful of West’s; but there are ten or twenty pictures which the eye, having once seen, never loses sight of, and that make Windsor one of the retreats and treasuries of art in this country. These, however, are chiefly pictures which have a personal and individual interest attached to them, as we have already hinted: there are very few historical compositions of any value, and the subjects of the others are so desultory that the young person who shows them, and goes through the names of the painters and portraits very correctly, said she very nearly went out of her mind in the three weeks she was ‘studying her part.’ It is a matter of nomenclature: we hope we shall make as few blunders in our report as she did.
In the first room the stranger is shown into, there are two large landscapes by Zuccarelli. They are clever, well-painted pictures; but they are worth nothing. The fault of this artist is, that there is nothing absolutely good or bad in his pictures. They are mere handicraft. The whole is done with a certain mechanical ease and indifference; but it is evident no part of the picture gave him any pleasure, and it is impossible it should give the spectator any. His only ambition was to execute his task so as to save his credit; and your first impulse is, to turn away from the picture, and save your time.
In the next room, there are four Vandykes—two of them excellent. One is the Duchess of Richmond, a whole-length, in a white satin drapery, with a pet lamb. The expression of her face is a little sullen and capricious. The other, the Countess of Carlisle, has a shrewd, clever, sensible countenance; and, in a certain archness of look, and the contour of the lower part of the face, resembles the late Mrs. Jordan.—Between these two portraits is a copy after Rembrandt, by Gainsborough, a fine sombre, mellow head, with the hat flapped over the face.
Among the most delightful and interesting of the pictures in this Collection, is the portrait by Vandyke, of Lady Venetia Digby. It is an allegorical composition: but what truth, what purity, what delicacy in the execution! You are introduced into the presence of a beautiful woman of quality of a former age, and it would be next to impossible to perform an unbecoming action with that portrait hanging in the room. It has an air of nobility about it, a spirit of humanity within it. There is a dove-like innocence and softness about the eyes; in the clear, delicate complexion, health and sorrow contend for the mastery; the mouth is sweetness itself, the nose highly intelligent, and the forehead is one of ‘clear-spirited thought.’ But misfortune has touched all this grace and beauty, and left its canker there. This is shown no less by the air that pervades it, than by the accompanying emblems. The children in particular are exquisitely painted, and have an evident reference to those we lately noticed in the Four Ages, by Titian. This portrait, both from the style and subject, reminds one forcibly of Mrs. Hutchinson’s admirable Memoirs of her own Life. Both are equally history, and the history of the female heart (depicted, in the one case, by the pencil, in the other, by the pen) in the finest age of female accomplishment and pious devotion. Look at this portrait, breathing the beauty of virtue, and compare it with the ‘Beauties’ of Charles II.’s court, by Lely. They look just like what they were—a set of kept-mistresses, painted, tawdry, showing off their theatrical or meretricious airs and graces, without one trace of real elegance or refinement, or one spark of sentiment to touch the heart. Lady Grammont is the handsomest of them; and, though the most voluptuous in her attire and attitude, the most decent. The Duchess of Portsmouth, in her helmet and plumes, looks quite like a heroine of romance or modern Amazon; but for an air of easy assurance, inviting admiration, and alarmed at nothing but being thought coy, commend us to my lady——above, in the sky-blue drapery, thrown carelessly across her shoulders! As paintings, these celebrated portraits cannot rank very high. They have an affected ease, but a real hardness of manner and execution; and they have that contortion of attitude and setness of features which we afterwards find carried to so disgusting and insipid an excess in Kneller’s portraits. Sir Peter Lely was, however, a better painter than Sir Godfrey Kneller—that is the highest praise that can be accorded to him. He had more spirit, more originality, and was the livelier coxcomb of the two! Both these painters possessed considerable mechanical dexterity, but it is not of a refined kind. Neither of them could be ranked among great painters, yet they were thought by their contemporaries and themselves superior to every one. At the distance of a hundred years we see the thing plainly enough.
In the same room with the portrait of Lady Digby, there is one of Killigrew and Carew, by the same masterly hand. There is spirit and character in the profile of Carew, while the head of Killigrew is surprising from its composure and sedateness of aspect. He was one of the grave wits of the day, who made nonsense a profound study, and turned trifles into philosophy, and philosophy into a jest. The pale, sallow complexion of this head is throughout in wonderful keeping. The beard and face seem nearly of the same colour. We often see this clear uniform colour of the skin in Titian’s portraits. But then the dark eyes, beard, and eye-brows, give relief and distinctness. The fair hair and complexions, that Vandyke usually painted, with the almost total absence of shade from his pictures, made the task more difficult; and, indeed, the prominence and effect he produces in this respect, without any of the usual means, are almost miraculous.
There are several of his portraits, equestrian and others, of Charles I. in this Collection, some of them good, none of them first-rate. Those of Henrietta (his Queen) are always delightful. The painter has made her the most lady-like of Queens, and of women.
The family picture of the Children of Charles I. is certainly admirably painted and managed. The large mastiff-dog is inimitably fine and true to nature, and seems as if he was made to be pulled about by a parcel of royal infants from generation to generation. In general, it may be objected to Vandyke’s dressed children, that they look like little old men and women. His grown-up people had too much stiffness and formality; and the same thing must quite overlay the playfulness of infancy. Yet what a difference between these young princes of the House of Stuart, and two of the princes of the reigning family with their mother, by Ramsay, which are evident likenesses to this hour!
We have lost our reckoning as to the order of the pictures and rooms in which they are placed, and must proceed promiscuously through the remainder of our Catalogue.
One of the most noted pictures at Windsor is that of the Misers, by Quintin Matsys. Its name is greater than its merits, like many other pictures which have a lucky or intelligible subject, boldly executed. The conception is good, the colouring bad; the drawing firm, and the expression coarse and obvious. We are sorry to speak at all disparagingly of Quintin Matsys; for the story goes that he was originally bred a blacksmith, and turned painter to gain his master’s daughter, who would give her hand to no one but on that condition. Happy he who thus gained the object of his love, though posterity may differ about his merits as an artist! Yet it is certain, that any romantic incident of this kind, connected with a well-known work, inclines us to regard it with a favourable instead of a critical eye, by enhancing our pleasure in it; as the eccentric character, the wild subjects, and the sounding name of Salvator Rosa have tended to lift him into the highest rank of fame among painters.
In the same room with the Misers, by the Blacksmith of Antwerp, is a very different picture by Titian, consisting of two figures also, viz. Himself and a Venetian Senator. It is one of the finest specimens of this master. His own portrait is not much: it has spirit, but is hard, with somewhat of a vulgar, knowing look. But the head of the Senator is as fine as anything that ever proceeded from the hand of man. The expression is a lambent flame, a soul of fire dimmed, not quenched by age. The flesh is flesh. If Rubens’s pencil fed upon roses, Titian’s was carnivorous. The tone is betwixt a gold and silver hue. The texture and pencilling are marrowy. The dress is a rich crimson, which seems to have been growing deeper ever since it was painted. It is a front view. As far as attitude or action is concerned, it is mere still-life; but the look is of that kind that goes through you at a single glance. Let any one look well at this portrait, and if he then sees nothing in it, or in the portraits of this painter in general, let him give up virtù and criticism in despair.
This room is rich in valuable gems, which might serve as a test of a real taste for the art, depending for their value on intrinsic qualities, and not on imposing subjects, or mechanical arrangement or quantity. As where ‘the still, small voice of reason’ is wanting, we judge of actions by noisy success and popularity; so where there is no true moral sense in art, nothing goes down but pomp, and bustle, and pretension. The eye of taste looks to see if a work has nature’s finest image and superscription upon it, and for no other title and passport to fame. There is a Young Man’s Head, (we believe in one corner of this room) by Holbein, in which we can read high and heroic thoughts and resolutions, better than in any Continence of Scipio we ever saw, or than in all the Battles of Alexander thrown into a lump. There is a Portrait of Erasmus, by the same, and in the same or an adjoining room, in which we see into the mind of a scholar and of an amiable man, as through a window. There is a Head by Parmegiano, lofty, triumphant, showing the spirit of another age and clime—one by Raphael, studious and self-involved—another, said to be by Leonardo da Vinci (but more like Holbein) grown crabbed with age and thought—and a girl reading, by Correggio, intent on her subject, and not forgetting herself. These are the materials of history; and if it is not made of them, it is a nickname or a mockery. All that does not lay open the fine net-work of the heart and brain of man, that does not make us see deeper into the soul, is but the apparatus and machinery of history-painting, and no more to it than the frame is to the picture.
We noticed a little Mater Dolorosa in one of the rooms, by Carlo Dolci, which is a pale, pleasing, expressive head. There are two large figures of his, a Magdalen and another, which are in the very falsest style of colouring and expression; and Youth and Age, by Denner, which are in as perfectly bad a taste and style of execution as anything we ever saw of this artist, who was an adept in that way.
We are afraid we have forgotten one or two meritorious pictures which we meant to notice. There is one we just recollect, a Portrait of a Youth in black, by Parmegiano. It is in a singular style, but very bold, expressive, and natural. There is (in the same apartment of the palace) a fine picture of the Battle of Norlingen, by Rubens. The size and spirit of the horses in the fore-ground, and the obvious animation of the riders, are finely contrasted with the airy perspective and mechanical grouping of the armies at a distance; and so as to prevent that confusion and want of positive relief, which usually pervade Battle-pieces. In the same room (opposite) is Kneller’s Chinese converted to Christianity—a portrait of which he was justly proud. It is a fine oil-picture, clear, tawny, without trick or affectation, and full of character. One of Kneller’s fine ladies or gentlemen, with their wigs and toupées, would have been mortally offended to have been so painted. The Chinese retains the same oily sly look, after his conversion as before, and seems just as incapable of a change of religion as a piece of terra cotta. On each side of this performance are two Guidos, the Perseus and Andromeda, and Venus attired by the Graces. We give the preference to the former. The Andromeda is a fine, noble figure, in a striking and even daring position, with an impassioned and highly-wrought expression of features; and the whole scene is in harmony with the subject. The Venus attired by the Graces (though full of beauties, particularly the colouring of the flesh in the frail Goddess) is formal and disjointed in the composition; and some of the actions are void of grace and even of decorum. We allude particularly to the Maid-in-waiting, who is combing her hair, and to the one tying on her sandals, with her arm crossing Venus’s leg at right angles. The Cupid in the window is as light and wanton as a butterfly flying out of it. He may be said to flutter and hover in his own delights. There are two capital engravings of these pictures by Strange.