Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art.

by P. H. Emerson

In the sixteenth century Quinten Massys was the greatest and most naturalistic painter. He was said to be the “originator of a peculiar class of genre pictures, being in fact life-like studies from the citizen life of Antwerp.” Here was an honourable departure from conventionality. His followers, however, having no mind to see how he was so great, were led away from the study of nature, and where are they now? Their names we all know, but who cares to see their works? Massys, the greatest painter of this period in the Netherlands, was content to take his subjects from the life of his own times, as all great men have been, from the Egyptians downwards.

Germany.

Turning now to Germany, we shall see what the best men there thought of naturalism. The movement towards the study of nature seems to have begun in the methods of engraving as practised by the goldsmiths, who were trained artists. The earliest plates we find are of subjects illustrating the life of the times, a hopeful augury for Germany, which was fulfilled by the work of the master, Albert Durer. |Albert Durer.| We are told he had “unlimited reverence for nature, which made him one of the most realistic painters that have ever existed.” What strikes us most after an examination of his plates at the British Museum, is the wonderful strength and direction with which the man tells his tale. His engravings are, of course, without tone, and when he does natural landscapes, as was often the case, this lack of tone is a serious fault; but for draughtsmanship he is marvellous, and it is with joy we learn that such a master said, “Art is hidden in nature, those who care have only to tear it forth.” Every one interested in art, and who is not already well acquainted with Durer’s work, should make a point of going to the Print Room in the British Museum, and studying carefully all examples of his work. They will, perhaps, at the same time, notice what struck us, namely, that one of the best draughtsmen on Punch’s staff has evidently been a great admirer of Durer.

Woltmann and Woermann, speaking of Durer’s landscapes illustrative of his travels south of the Alps, say that “he reveals himself as one of the founders of the modern school of landscape painting.”

His “Mill” is remarkable. His etchings are mostly of familiar subjects of every-day life. The great danger of a man like Durer is the bad effect of his influence in later times, for inferior men imitate his faults and not his merit, as is always the case with imitators, and they forget that though Durer was a genius, yet did he live today he would probably work very differently and interpret different subjects. An artist’s time and environment must always be reckoned with.

Evolution in art.

There are so many people who cannot understand the principle of development in art, and cannot distinguish, and appreciate, and value artists according to their periods, and as steps in development, but are now-a-days led by them, holding them up as models for modern painters, whereas they are but the undeveloped efforts of earlier times. There are numbers of young men who paint better than Durer ever did, but who lack Durer’s genius; just as an undergraduate may know more science than Galileo, or more mathematics than Newton, but yet be incomparably less great than either Galileo or Newton. A work of art, however, is only valuable for its intrinsic merits, and much as we feel the value of Durer, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and others in their own time, for many of their works as works of art, quâ art, we care but little now, but as historical documents they are priceless.

It may be asked how Durer, the Van Eycks, and others can be called “naturalists,” when they painted so many religious pictures. Of course the one explanation of this is that they painted conscientiously from living models and natural landscapes, and not from what is called their “imagination.” The influence of the times on these painters could not but be tremendous, but if a man must perforce paint an “imaginative” picture, its artistic value must always be in proportion to the truth of the picture; and, therefore, what is good in the picture is the naturalism of it. All the rest seems to our mind—for how could Durer or any one else paint the Virgin Mary?—uninteresting. For Durer and the men of his day there was, of course, every excuse, but to-day there is none; and if painters will persist in painting—from their imagination—woolly landscapes, peopled by impossible men, women, and animals, they will pay the penalty of such vivid imagination—by quick and well-merited consignment to oblivion. The public call such men learned. Learned, forsooth! when Lemprière or the poets have supplied the idea. “There is something great behind a picture,” is another favourite expression; well, so there is behind many an impostor’s work, but that greatness belongs to another man.

An artist looks at the art of the picture, a sentimentalist at the subject alone; to him a badly-painted subject may bring tears to the eyes, to an artist the same subject will probably bring a laugh. What is the sense of copying our predecessors? And even as copyists, these painters of “imaginative” works fall immeasurably below their models. Botticelli towers yet like a giant over Blake and Rossetti, yet we know he was very far from perfect.

Hans Holbein.