A Child's Guide to Pictures

by Charles H. Caffin

I have already told you how Velasquez in Spain and the Dutch artists devoted themselves to the study of the persons and things actually present to their eyes. They were realists or naturalists. Holland had cut herself off from Flanders and the splendid vice-regal Court of Brussels, and her own noblemen were busy fighting for their country’s freedom. So there was no demand for her artists to paint handsome decorations. She had also cut herself off from the Roman Catholic religion; and in the churches of the Reformed Faith there was no demand for great religious pictures. These two motives were lacking; but she had another one—a very strong one—the love of country and the pride of the people in themselves. It was strong enough to produce a great school of painters of little pictures, distinguished for their great truth to nature.

Among these Dutch artists, however, was at least one who was not only a realist but an idealist. This was Rembrandt. It is of his idealism that I will speak here; and, to illustrate it, will tell you of a small religious picture in the Louvre: The Visit to Emmaus. You remember that Christ in the evening of the day of his Resurrection came upon two of his disciples and joined them in their walk to the village of Emmaus. Not recognising him, they talked of what had happened. It was not until the little party had reached the inn, and the Saviour raised his hands in blessing the food, that their eyes were opened and they knew him. It is this moment that Rembrandt represented.

When you see this picture you will find no grandeur in it such as the Italian pictures have. The figures are those of poor ordinary men. Rembrandt, being also a realist, drew them from the real types of poor Jews in the Ghetto, or Jew-quarter of Amsterdam. There is nothing of imposing dignity even in the Saviour’s form and face. Whatever may be the idealism in the picture, it does not depend on form. Its motive is different from that of the Italians. Its motive is light. From Christ’s figure spreads a light. Is not one of his titles—The Light of the World? And the light, flowing from this humble figure, illumines the faces of his humble companions and, passing up to the vaulted ceiling, sheds through the gloom a mystery of tremulous glow. The picture like the subject it celebrates, is a miracle—a miracle of light.

Do you see how this was an expression of idealism? Rembrandt in studying the world around him had discovered, like other artists of his time, the beauty of light. Light by degrees represented to him the highest element of beauty in the visible world. While the great Italians had found the ideal or highest conception of abstract beauty in form, Rembrandt found it in light. Therefore, when he painted this picture and wished to show that these figures, though humble looking, were not ordinary men, and that the event was no ordinary meeting at a village inn, he proceeded to idealise the scene according to his own conception of ideal beauty. He introduced into it the beauty and mystery of light.

Please note that word mystery. A mystery is what passes beyond our knowledge and understanding, something that cannot be grasped by our mind and intelligence. Thus we speak of the mystery of life: scientists have discovered how the various forms of life have been developed on the earth, but the origin of life is still a mystery to them. Even when they have traced life back to the smallest conceivable beginning, they are as far off from knowing what started that smallest beginning into life. But because they do not know, do they say “Oh, what we do not know is not worth the knowing”? No indeed! they realise, that hidden in the mystery is a truth, even more wonderful than what they know.

Or again, some beautiful summer night by the sea-shore you are looking out over the water. The moon is low and her rays make a pathway of light. You gaze along it and at first the waves are clearly visible, heaving in the light; further off, the movement of the waves disappears; only a luminous glow remains, growing fainter and fainter, till far away it melts into that thin line where sky and water meet—the horizon. Do you know that horizon really means boundary, the limit of our sight, the point beyond which our eye has no power to see? But is there nothing beyond? If we took ship and sailed beyond that pathway of light, should we ever reach the horizon? We should only sail on to find the horizon continually beyond our reach.

Or we turn our gaze from the water to the sky. Above us, further than eye can travel, it extends. It is studded with innumerable stars. We may know the names of some of them, and have learned about their movements and their distance from the earth; but what do we know, what does any one, even the wisest and most learned, know of them, compared with our ignorance of them? It will be well for us, as we gaze into the mystery of the heavens, to be thinking less of the little knowledge that we have than of the miracle, the wonder, of what transcends man’s understanding; of the vast, impenetrable mystery that surrounds our lives. To do so will fill us with, what we call, a spiritual joy; a joy, that is to say, which goes beyond knowledge, and affects that higher capacity of feeling that, not knowing what it is, we call spirit. This highest feeling, that we call spiritual, has always in it some element of mystery. The truth of this was curiously expressed by a little girl of my acquaintance, who was very fond of having her mother read poetry to her. I asked her if she understood a certain poem. “Of course not,” was her quick reply, “what fun would there be in poetry if you could understand it?”

Well, I have spoken at length of Rembrandt, because his way of idealising a scene through the beauty and mystery of light, has become the way of modern artists. But it was not until nearly two hundred years after his death that the world came round to this way. In the mean time Rembrandt and the other Dutch painters of his Century, like Velasquez, had been forgotten. The painters were busy trying to keep alive the other notion of idealism, the Italian one, based on form. Indeed, it was not until naturalism again became popular, that idealism by means of light was renewed.

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I have already told you of the revival of naturalism at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century; how the English landscape painter, Constable, was followed by the French landscapists of the Barbizon-Fontainebleau group. You remember that their point of view was nature as it is visible to the eye, but their motive was also to express the feelings of love with which it inspired themselves.