It is very refreshing to me to emerge from a gallery containing pictures of this class, and to enter one devoted to pictures of the Dutch school. I feel as if I had reached terra firma after floundering about in a quagmire. We never find a want of intelligent and careful drawing in the hands and dresses of portraits by Rembrandt, Van der Heist, Franz Hals, Terburg, and all the other masters of the school.
It may be objected that I am deprecating a fault which no longer exists, that my expressions of antipathy to a slovenly treatment of the accessory parts of a picture are out of date, and that the commonplace, simpering full-lengths of fifty years ago, with their impossible shoulders and badly-drawn hands, are no longer seen in an Academy exhibition. I am quite willing to grant this, but it does not follow that because this pseudo-Lawrence sort of work is no longer seen on the walls of the Academy, that therefore it is defunct.
There is a large and ever-increasing class of young artists who are treading in the footsteps of the old masters, who grudge no time and spare no pains in the study of their hands, costumes, and every thing which will give finish and completeness to their work; but, on the other hand, there are still many who, to save themselves trouble, and perhaps misled by the present extraordinary popularity of Gainsborough, are satisfied with the most careless and weak treatment of all accessories in their pictures.
That these pictures are not often seen on the Academy walls is due to the rejecting power of the Council, and not to the non-existence of their authors.
Having thus, I trust, given you to understand that by the word “finish” I mean something quite different from mere smoothness or polish, I will now give you a few hints as to how the work of finishing a picture is to be accomplished.
It was the habit of Horace Vernet to make a very rough pen-and-ink sketch for his elaborate battle-pieces. He would then, without further preamble, have his models, and paint direct from them on to the blank canvas, finishing every thing as he went on.
When the whole canvas was covered, the picture was finished.
I remember, on one occasion, he painted a most gorgeous Arab saddle, holsters, stirrups, and all, and several weeks afterward painted the horse which bore it.
Cocked-hats, kepis, etc., he would knock off by the dozen, and then, when he could get his trooper models, he would paint the wearers. He was always, in the matter of finish, putting the cart before the horse. I don’t think that he did this intentionally, but he was of an impatient nature, and could not bear to sit idle, waiting for his sitters.
He was not a great colorist, like his contemporary Delacroix, nor a great draughtsman, like Flandrin, but his pictures have a manly, business-like look about them, and a homogeneous quality which is perfectly marvellous, considering the heterodox way in which they were put together.