LUCIEN BUONAPARTE’S COLLECTION, ETC.
| The Champion.] | [January 22, 1815. |
We have been able to obtain access to the almost inaccessible collection of the Prince of Canino. The liberality with which the collections of foreign princes are thrown open to strangers and the public is often boasted of; but this liberality, we suppose, ceases when the same collections are exposed in this country for sale. The pictures of Lucien Buonaparte, which are valued at £40,000, are kept in most ‘vile durance’; and even the ticket of admission, which we presented to a person who seems placed at the door to keep persons out, and not to let them in, was inspected and objected to with the same scrupulous jealousy as if it had been a bank-note presented in payment of the purchase-money of the collection. A cursory glance round the room was sufficient to explain the source of so much mystery and caution. The pictures are in general mere trash. Nor is the general dearth of attraction relieved by even a few examples of first-rate excellence. The only exception to these remarks which struck us was an exquisite female head by Leonardo da Vinci. It is one of the finest specimens we have seen of that great master, both for expression, drawing, the spirit and delicacy of the execution, and the preservation of the tone of colouring. There is in Leonardo’s female heads a grace and charm of expression, which is peculiar to himself—a character of natural sweetness and playful tenderness, mixed up with the pride of conscious intellect, and with the graceful reserve of personal dignity. He blends purity with voluptuousness; and the expression of his women is equally characteristic of ‘the mistress or the saint!’ His pictures are always worked up to the utmost height of the idea he had conceived, with an elaborate felicity. No painter made more a religion of his art! His fault is, that his style of execution is too mathematical; that is, his pencil does not follow the graceful variety of nature, but substitutes certain refined gradations both of form and colour, producing equal changes in equal distances, with a mechanical uniformity. Leonardo was a man of profound learning as well as genius; and perhaps transferred too much of the formality of science to his favourite art. In making this objection, we have had in our eye two of the most celebrated pictures, the Jocunda in the Louvre, and the St. John in the possession of Mr. Hope. The picture in the present collection has more flexibility and variety; as well as greater heightening of colour; and perhaps the latter effect may be the cause of the former. It is not impossible that a certain degree of monotony may have been sometimes produced by the rubbing off of the higher tints and finishing touches of the pencil, so as to leave little more of the picture than the general ground-work.
To return to the collection before us. The only remaining pictures which can excite any interest are, some curious specimens of the early masters, Ghirlandaio, Bellino, and others;—some small sketches of Titian; a finely coloured Holy Family by the same master; a portrait by Sebastian del Piombo; a sketch of Diana and Acteon, by A. Caracci; a landscape by Ruysdael; and a transfiguration, said to be by Vasari. Besides these, there is a Frenchified Salvator Rosa, coloured pink and blue, a copy of Domenichino’s head of St. Jerome, one or two pretended Claudes, and some amatory pictures of the modern French school. To these shall we add the picture of Lucien Buonaparte himself? Nothing certainly can go beyond it in its way. It is the very priggism of portrait-painting.
We have already said something of the French style of portraits, and we shall here add a few remarks in explanation, though we are aware that any hints of a want of refinement will be thrown away on a nation so entirely spirituel as the French, and we are also afraid that some of our own artists may take credit to themselves for as many excellences, as we may charge their neighbours with defects.
The French systematically paint all objects as they would paint still life; and hence they in general never paint any thing but still life. It is not possible to paint that which has life and motion by the same mechanical process by which that which has neither life nor motion may be represented. Thus it is not possible to imitate the human countenance, which is moveable and animated, as you would imitate a piece of drapery, or a chair, or a table, in which the physical appearance is every thing, and that appearance always remains the same. The industry of the eye and hand will go a great way in giving the effect of a number of parts of any external object, arranged in the same order; but to give truth of effect to that which is always varying, and always expressive of more than strikes the senses, imagination and feeling are absolutely required. Whenever there is life and motion, life and motion become the principal things; and any attempt to give these, without a distinct operation or feeling of the mind as to what constitutes their essence, by a mere attention to the physical form, or particular details, must necessarily destroy all appearance both of one and the other. To instance in expression only. This can only be given by being felt. Take for instance the outline of part of a face, and let it be so placed as to form part of the outline of a rock, or any other inanimate object. A copy of this, done with tolerable care, will seem to be the same thing: but let it be known that this is really a part of a human countenance, and then it will probably be found to be quite different from the difference of expression. We distinguish all objects more or less by habitual knowledge; and this knowledge is always acute in proportion to the interest excited, that is, to the intensity of the feeling or passion which is combined with the immediate impression on the senses. Expression is therefore only caught by sympathy; and it has been received as a maxim, that no painter can succeed in giving an expression which is totally foreign to his own character. There are some painters who cannot paint a wise man, and others who cannot paint a fool: some who cannot give strength, and others softness to their works. It is the want of character, of flexibility, and transient expression, which is the great defect of French portraits. Without the indications of the mind breathed into the countenance and moulding the features, the whole must appear stiff, hard, mean, unconnected, and lifeless—like the mask of a face, not like the face itself—forced, affected, and unnatural. Another consequence of this mode of copying the letter and leaving out the spirit of all objects, is that the face in general looks the least finished part of the picture, for while the other parts remain the same, this necessarily varies, and the only way to make up for the want of literal exactness, must be by seizing the force and animation of the expression. A head that does not look like life, cannot look like any thing else.—The portrait of Lucien Buonaparte is a striking confirmation of these remarks. We do not know how to describe it otherwise than by saying that it looks as if the artist had first modelled the face in wax, oiled it over, painted the lips purple, stuck on a pair of artificial eyebrows, and inserted a pair of dark blue glass eyes, and then set to work to copy every part of this perverse misrepresentation, with tedious and disgusting accuracy. In a portrait of the author of Charlemagne, one has a right to expect some refinement of intellect and feeling, if not the marks of elevated genius. No such thing. The picture has just the appearance of a spruce holiday mechanic, with all the hardness, littleness, and vulgarity of expression which is to be found in nature, where the countenance has not been expanded by thought and sentiment, and in art, where this expression has been entirely overlooked. The French artists themselves, both men and women, seem to be aware of the dilemma to which they are reduced, and prefer copying from plaster casts, or lay figures, to painting from the life; which baffles the mechanical minuteness and ‘laborious foolery’ of their style of art. They set about painting a face as they would about engraving a picture. This cannot possibly answer. From the general idea of the liveliness and volatility of the French character one would be apt to suppose, that instead of the method here described, their artists would have adopted the happier mode proposed by Pope in describing his characters of women:
‘Come, then, the colours and the ground prepare,
Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air,
Chuse a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it
Catch, ere the change, the Cynthia of a minute!’
But the days of Watteau are over, and the plodding gravity of the Dutch has succeeded to the natural levity of French art. It is no wonder: for both proceed from a want of real concentration and force of intellect.[[23]]
There is another picture in this collection which we would recommend to the attention of all whom it may concern, as a most instructive lesson of the vanity of human pretensions, and the capriciousness of national taste. It is the historical picture of the return of Marcus Sextus, by Guerin, one of the most admired painters of the modern French school. This picture combines all the vices of that school in their most confirmed and aggravated state, and yet it drew, at the time when it was first exhibited in Paris, crowds of admirers, whose raptures were excited exactly in proportion as it flattered their habitual prejudices, and outraged every principle of common sense. It consists of three figures, that of the husband standing in front of the bed, the wife who lies dead upon it being behind him, and the daughter kneeling at his feet. Now all these figures seem as if they had been cut out of pasteboard, smeared over with putty to represent the shadows, and then stuck flat against the canvass to make a picture. This is not truth, nor invention, nor art, nor nature: but it is the French style of painting. Their pictures are sections of statues, or architectural elevations of the human figure. They have the effect neither of painting nor sculpture; for painting has colour, and the appearance of substance, sculpture has real substance without colour; but these have neither colour, substance, nor the appearance of it, but consist of mere lines. Whatever they may do, we cannot think this the highest style of history: because proceeding on arithmetical principles only, it wants two out of three of the physical requisites of the art of painting. The picture of Guerin is painted in strong contrast of light and shade, and ought to have proportionable prominence and relief. But from the habit of attending only to lines and detached parts, that is, of never combining the lesser masses into larger ones, or of contemplating the general appearance of nature, the whole effect is frittered away, and neither the prominent parts stand out, nor do the receding ones fall back. The same flat, imbecile, and dingy effect is produced, as by smearing white streaks upon a black ground, without knowledge or design, or reference to any actual object in nature. The drawing in this picture is equally characteristic of the general French style, and equally repulsive. It is not easy to explain the elaborate absurdity of the process: but it is in reality this. The painter has taken the figure of an antique statue for the figure of his hero. But finding that the position would not answer his purpose; he therefore gets a lay-figure made from a cast of this statue, and distorting it into the attitude he wants, places it against some object which props it up, with the two feet stretched out before it, as if it could neither move nor stand; and this the artist calls painting history, and copying the ancients. This is what no other nation dare attempt. The expression which is given to these mockeries of art and nature, is of a piece with the rest. It is either copied tamely, servilely, and without effect, from the model before them, or if any thing is added to it, all grace and feeling is instantly lost in the extravagance of grimace and affectation. The ambition of these refiners on nature is like that of Pygmalion to give life and animation to a stone, but no miracle has yet come to their assistance.[[24]] The French are incapable of painting true history, for they are a people essentially without imagination, and without a knowledge of the passions that belong to it. All that is powerful in them, is immediate sensation—the rest is either levity, or formality, or distortion. Take the picture of the deluge by Girodet. In this, a daughter is represented clinging to her mother by the hair of her head, the mother is clinging to the husband, he is at the same time supporting his father with his other arm, and is enabled to support the whole of this exquisite family groupe by taking hold of the branch of a tree which has just broken off by the weight. This effort of imagination almost equals the exploit of the clown in the pantomime, who contrives to balance a dozen men on one another’s shoulders. If Poussin or Raphael had been fortunate enough to study in the central schools of Paris, what a difference would this new principle of grouping have introduced into their pictures of the Deluge and the Incendio del Borgo.
Before we quit this subject of French art, we would notice that there are two pictures of the Emperor Napoleon to be seen at present, one in Leicester-fields, which is very bad, and another in the Adelphi, by Lefebre, which is tolerably good. The last is one of the best French portraits we have ever seen. The effect however is only good, very near, and is best when each part is seen through a magnifying glass. There is considerable character, firmness of drawing, and prominence in the features. Still it does not convey an adequate idea of the man. It is heavy, perplexed, and sullen, without sufficient fierceness or energy, and indeed without either the high or the bad qualities of the original. It has, notwithstanding, the appearance of being what is understood by a faithful likeness, and only wants that full developement of the workings of the mind, which every portrait ought to have, and which, in a portrait like the present, would be invaluable.