Some French critic compared Austrian art to a noisy brass band, and the comparison is not inapt. No doubt the band is a very good one; the trumpets are loud, the trombones sonorous, and the big drum unexceptionable. Still it is not the kind of harmony which would please a musician. Austrian and Hungarian art, though apparently fascinating to the multitude, is too rich and cloying for a more fastidious taste. If you can fancy a mixture of plum-pudding and lobster-sauce, you will form a good idea of the most celebrated Austrian pictures. As the French school has a weakness for the horrible, and the English for the homely, so the Austrian delights in the showy. Pageants, royal receptions, and ceremonies of mediæval times are the subjects which the leading Austrian artists revel in; subjects in which there is not much story to tell, no human emotions to portray, nothing but silks, velvets, armor, and trappings to paint. All these accessories are marvellously well executed, a great deal too well indeed for the heads and the flesh; but it is this overpowering execution, united with a pseudo-Venetian coloring, which captivates the French bourgeois, just as it would captivate the London cockney.
I wish to observe that I am speaking of the large Austrian and Hungarian pictures which attracted so much attention at the Paris exhibition. Amongst the portraits and the smaller pictures there were some which would have done credit to any school. Vigorous in drawing and execution, full of character, and harmonious though rather dark in color, they appeared to me far superior to the kindred pictures from North Germany. I should have formed a very high estimate of the Austrian school if two or three of the principle pictures had been absent.
It may be asked why, if these large pictures were so offensively meretricious, the jury awarded them medals of honor?
I should be very sorry to have to defend all the decisions of the international jury, but in the present case I think I may say with truth that it was not admiration for this kind of art which dictated the award.
Before leaving the Austrian and Hungarian galleries, I would observe, that whatever may be thought of the pretentious richness of these large pictures, there exists at any rate an Austrian school, and that this school seems full of power and vitality. Austrians, do not, as a rule, paint their pictures in Paris or Rome. Others may, like myself, deplore the overpowering gorgeousness of a good deal of their work, but amongst the canvasses of more modest proportion there was abundant evidence of sound training and original invention.
Dutch art is very national; that is, the subjects are national. Muddy seas, flat meadows with groups of cattle, canal and street scenes—in short, the same kind of subjects which were formerly painted by Teniers, Vandevelde, De Hoogh, and Paul Potter, are still the favorites with the Dutch artists.
In the Dutch school, as seen at the Great Exhibition, there was a laudable absence of priggishness or sensationalism, but the pictures appeared to me to lack the neat precision of touch and the delicacy of color which distinguished the old Dutchmen.
Pathos will cover a multitude of sins, and in some of the best modern Dutch work this quality is not wanting; but in subjects which do not admit of pathos, such as the old familiar scenes of Teniers and Ostade, something more is wanted than indifferent execution and dull, inoffensive color. I am inclined to think that Dutch art was not only fairly, but even favorably represented at the Paris Exhibition, for in several recent visits to Holland I was always struck by the want of development of modern art. There are no great mural painters as in Belgium; the Church, being Protestant, does nothing for art. The rich Dutch citizens and merchants are equally unsympathetic; in short, there is no demand for a high class of art, so there is no supply.
I never heard of a Dutch collector who patronized modern painters. His rooms are always filled with Ostades, Wouvermans, Vanderveldes, etc., or more frequently with wretched copies of these masters; but in these private collections, which are scattered all over Holland, one never meets with a good picture by a modern artist. Under these circumstances I think it very creditable to Dutch artists that painting should not have declined more than it has in Holland.
Swiss art can only be regarded as provincial French. It is, however (like the Dutch), very national in its subjects. Glaciers, snow mountains, pine forests, and châlets were the usual subjects in the Swiss section. Even the figure-subjects were redolent of Switzerland—peasants, guides, hunters, and tourists were the principal dramatis personæ. If a fault is to be found with these innocent works of art, it is that they look as if they were meant for the tourist or the Alpine Club market. A traveller who is detained by rain for a week at Interlacken would be just the man to purchase a good view of the Jungfrau, or perhaps he might be tempted by a group of Bernese Oberlanders at home. The native Swiss pictures are too much like their wood carvings, not works of good art but pleasant souvenirs.