Israels.
Coming down to our own times, the elder Israels stands out as a giant, a distinguished master. We have only been able to see a few of his pictures, but those show us the master. Hopeful, indeed, is the art of Holland and Belgium with such men as Artz, Mauve,[[8]] Maas M. Maris, Mesdag, Boosboom, and others. The reader will often have opportunities of seeing works by these men at the French Gallery, the Hanover Gallery, and Goupil’s, and he should take every opportunity of studying their works most carefully.
[8]. Now dead.
France.
And now, lastly, we come to France—France where art has in modern times reached its highest level. France has in modern times always been the leader of civilization in Europe, and even now she is in the van of modern progress, our intellectual mother. We may have a finer literature to show, in Germany science may be more profound, but in all that is greater than literature or science, that is in solving the problem of being and throwing off the yoke of religious and political despotism, France has become the leader. Practical, energetic, and thrifty, the French with all their faults, still remain in many ways the first nation of the world. France and the French have more of the Ancient Greek’s esprit than any other nation has or ever has had. In all the humanizing influences that distinguish brute man from civilized man, the French are to the fore, but in histrionic, glyptic and pictorial art, she is unapproachable, and still reigns Queen of the Arts, in these branches.
Poussin and Le Brun.
Passing over Nicolas Poussin, Le Brun and other lesser names, whose works are not those of masters, |Claude Lorraine.| we arrive at Claude Lorraine, who may claim to have an inkling of the truth and whose work shows a distinct advance on Poussin, but who after all is no master because not loyal to nature, and therefore his already doubtful reputation will go on diminishing. |Watteau.| The first name that really stands forth as great in French art is that of Watteau. Watteau, however, cannot be ranked among the Immortals, for though his technique was marvellous, and his power of drawing unsurpassed, he like all his contemporaries, artists and otherwise, neglected nature, living as they did in the artificial times of Louis XIV. There is a picture in the National Gallery which well explains what we mean. Then name after name is handed down to us, but in vain do we look for a master among them. |Boucher and Greuze.| Boucher and Greuze still have admirers, but they are not great painters, because they did not study nature or at least did not succeed in painting her, as it is very easy to see from their works. |Delacroix.| Delacroix strove to rise from the artificial influence of the time, but he was not strong enough to become a master. |Ingres.| It was reserved for Ingres to make a real advance. He, though imbued to some extent with the old spirit of classicism, was a deep lover of nature, and the story of the struggle for the mastery between those two opposing tendencies is the story of his art and life. Though he rises above all previous painters of his country, he cannot be ranked with the masters. With Ary Scheffer there was a retrogression which in its turn was counteracted by Delaroche. |Delaroche.| It was Delaroche who afterwards said an artist would one day have to use photography. Still, in vain do we look for a genius, and until Constable’s pictures exhibited in 1824 in Paris, aroused the French as to the real aims of art, no really great master appears. But when practical France saw, she immediately took up naturalism. |Descamps.| Then we have first Descamps[Descamps], who took up the newly revived ideas, but failed, and Rousseau made the real departure—the poetry and mystery of nature roused in him an ardent sympathy, and all honour to him for struggling on at Barbizon, in the face of the neglect and contumacy of the Salon.|Rousseau.| But Rousseau, hero though he was, never rose to be a mighty painter, and his works fall far behind those of the best painters of to-day, but as a pioneer his name will always be remembered, and though he failed, he at least took Nature as his watchword. |Corot.| After Rousseau came Corot, a master good for all time. His early works show signs of the classical spirit, from which he had not yet shaken himself free, thus we sometimes see in his early works, peasants strangely habited and reminding one of the seventeenth century or ancient Greece, which is of course ridiculous; but his later work is true and great. Full of breadth and feeling for the subtleties and poetry of nature, he has never been surpassed. Examples of his work in England can sometimes be seen in the French Gallery, the Hanover Gallery and at Goupil’s, but it must be remembered that great as Corot is, there is much of his work that is bad. |Daubigny.| Another great painter is Daubigny, a contemporary of Corot’s, and though not such a subtle observer as Corot, still he is a painter whose work has had great influence and will live though it has been surpassed by younger men. |Troyon.| Troyon was another who like Corot loved and studied and painted from nature, but he lacked the insight into nature that Corot had, and his work is not as true as that of his contemporary.
Millet.