We are, however, now in a position to hear the witnesses speak for themselves. Such a mass of contradictions it will be difficult to find elsewhere among professors of any other art or science. In the multitude of counsellors there may be wisdom, but it is not the less hard to extract it; and certainly one part of the wisdom is sometimes to conceal it.
As “glazing” has been shown to be a fertile source of discrepancies of opinion, and the whole question of the cleaning process so much depends upon its existence or non-existence in certain works, and upon its peculiar liability to injury, it may not be unimportant to examine the testimonies concerning it.
What is the definition of glazing? Sir Charles Eastlake makes it to be, “The passing a dark transparent colour over a lighter colour.” He also draws a distinction between the Italian and Flemish glazing. “The Italian practice is glazing over a solid, light preparation; the Flemish is passing transparent colours over a light ground.” Mr Charteris doubts the propriety of the definition; Sir Charles explains, “I would say that, if a dark transparent colour be passed too thickly, even over a white ground, so as to exclude the light entirely, it becomes opaque; on the other hand, if an opaque colour be passed so thinly over a light ground as to show the light through, it partakes of the nature of glazing. There are pictures by Rubens, in which some of the tints are produced in that way, with opaque colour in a diaphanous state. I was about to state, when you called my attention to the meaning you attach to glazing, that the system of passing a thin opaque colour over its ground is called, in English technical phraseology, ‘scumbling;’ and the passing a strictly transparent colour over its ground is called ‘glazing.’” It may appear very bold in us to question this definition of the President of the Academy; yet we are inclined to do so, because we think our artists have not agreed to adopt it, and because it leaves a common mode of painting without any technical term; but if scumbling may be allowed to express the thin, yet somewhat dry, rubbing in of opaque colour, we may well leave glazing to the conception of it adopted by the Italians, which strikes Sir Charles Eastlake as remarkable. “Now, it is remarkable that the Italians have but one word for both operations—the term velare (to veil) comprehends both glazing and scumbling.” Nor do we see any sufficient reason for confining glazing to dark over light. We cannot but think it was the practice of the Italian schools, at least some of them, to paint glazingly light over dark. Did not Correggio, especially in his backgrounds, paint out the light, the white ground—if he used always light grounds—with deep greys, not of a uniform tone, and afterwards go over them, sometimes with dark transparent colour, and sometimes semi-transparent, and so on lighter? The practice of Rembrandt seems to want technical terms, if Sir Charles’s definition is to be an authority. That eminent painter of mysterious effect, of “palpable obscure,” certainly often painted glazingly semi-opaque lighter over dark, as well as dark over light. It may be a question of practical art, if it be not as desirable that dark under-painting should come out, or slightly appear through a lighter, as that light should come up through the dark. We never can be brought to believe that a white ground, showing through dark glazings, will imitate all the depths of nature. It was perhaps too much the practice of the Flemish schools, but they were not schools from which we should learn the power of sentiment in colouring. It was an expeditious practice, but it led to a conventional colouring, sacrificing the truth of shadows, with the object (if attained) of setting off, and giving body to the lights. We the rather dwell upon this, because we believe that the Flemish system, and particularly that of Rubens, has had an injurious influence upon modern art. Rubens was a painter of great power, and dared an extravagance of conventionality, which, in weaker hands, becomes a conspicuous fault. Hence a thin, flashy, and flimsy style of painting, unnatural, because unsubstantial;—we say unsubstantial; for, however illuminated, or covered with transparency of light or of shadow, nature is ever substantial. The Italian practice is, therefore, greatly to be preferred.
It is well known that our Gainsborough said, that with black or blue, and asphaltum, he would make a pit as deep as the Inferno; but it was a mistake: with such dark transparency, especially over a light ground, he would make no pit at all, but a hole scarcely the depth of his mall-stick; his arm could reach to the end of it, as against a wall. In the greatest depths of nature, there is a depth of dark below, not of light, over which there is atmosphere. It is this depth that should come up, not light. We are not unaware that any semi-opaque glazing over a darker colour has a tendency to coldness, but it may not be the worse on that account, as the painter has the choice of making his under-darks as warm as he pleases, and his semi-opaque glazing warm too. This, cool, in its various degrees over warm, was the method adopted by both the Poussins: they painted on red ground, and that generally not light, but of deep tone; as it was also pretty much the case with the Bolognese school. Gaspar Poussin, by this method, gave great effect to his cool greens in masses of wood, the red ground imperceptibly giving an under warmth, the general masses being laid in with a body of colour, but semi-transparent, as if chalk, or some transparent body, had been embodied with the colour. In his pictures, cool greys, more or less mixed with ochres, tell with great truth over the red ground. We hope the condemnation passed by the President of the Academy upon this method may not be quite merited. Indeed, the beauty of most of that great, we should say greatest, of landscape-painter’s works, which are yet uninjured by the cleaner, would contradict so strong an assertion, as that they are sure to perish from the cause ascribed; for, as they have survived at least two hundred years, Gaspar Poussin having been born in 1600, (and, it may be worth observing, Claude in the same year), we may fairly presume that the work of time on white lead has already done its worst; and we would almost doubt the effect ascribed to time, when we look at the perfect pictures of the master, which appear as if fresh from the easel, and certainly the white not too transparent. Sir Charles is explaining why he objected to the cleaning certain pictures. “The general reason I have given; but if you were to ask me about those pictures, I should say of the two, Canaletti and the Poussin, that it is extremely injudicious to clean pictures of that kind, because time, even without any assistance from picture-cleaners, is sure to destroy such pictures in the end; they are painted on a dark ground, and every painter knows, that when white lead is thinly spread over a dark colour, it becomes more or less transparent in time: white lead has a tendency to grow transparent. If you were to paint a chess-board with a thin coat of white lead, so as effectually to conceal the black squares, and not suffer it to be touched, in a certain time, longer or shorter, according to the thinness of the paint, the black squares would again become apparent. The white lead has a tendency to grow transparent, and the consequence is, that, when a picture is painted on a dark ground, time does it harm rather than good.” We would, with some hesitation—for we pay great deference to the opinions of Sir C. Eastlake—suggest another cause for this appearance of the chess-board—the tendency of oil to become a varnish, and therefore itself more transparent; and we are inclined to think that, had the experiment been tried with any other colour, ochres, or Naples yellow, the effect would have been the same. Nay, what would be a still better test—had the whole board been covered with black, the white squares, we believe, though concealed for a time, would have appeared through. We also hope and trust that this effect of time on the oil is on the whole rather beneficial than otherwise, and that it is not continuous beyond a certain point. It is almost incredible that either the oil or the white lead, laid on canvass two or three hundred years ago, is now, at the present, and will be in future, to a day of destruction, changing their properties. Then, with regard to Gaspar Poussin, if such were really the case, the lights would be the first to disappear; but, on the contrary, Mr Brown, who cleaned the Dido and Æneas about thirty years ago, a very dark picture, gives another kind of evidence. Q. 1128.—“Did you observe in that picture that a very considerable part of the discolouring and blackness arose from internal causes, from an internal alteration in the colours?”—“In some instances; but the general effect of the picture was very much lowered by the heterogeneous mass of oil that was upon it, and the very dark parts did not, of course, come out, as you would imagine they would, from the removal of that: the lighter parts were very brilliant, indeed, but it was always a dark picture.” Q. 1130.—“Is there not something peculiar in the ground on which Gaspar and Nicholas Poussin painted their pictures, which rendered them liable to decomposition and discolourment?”—“I think not so much the ground, as the colour which they would put upon the ground, because the ground that you see in those masters, where they have used it to assist them in painting the picture, is an universal colour: in some parts of the picture, the ground is more or less painted on, but all the light parts of Gaspar Poussin’s pictures are very tender.” The differences of opinion with respect to glazing are chiefly among the artists. Picture-cleaners and picture-dealers are in better agreement. Even the artists who differ, perhaps differ more on account of the definition not being very clear, and established in the artists’ vocabulary, than as to the fact. But the evidence of the present keeper, Mr Uwins, is certainly very extraordinary on this, as on every point upon which his examination entered. We showed, in our last paper, how he was present and absent at the cleanings at the same times; how he gave evidence as to the methods adopted by the cleaners in his presence, which the cleaners themselves very flatly contradicted; how he astonished Lord Monteagle by assertions which his lordship denied; how he protested he did not advise, yet did advise; and now we find, with regard to this question of glazing, having contradicted nearly every one else, he turns round, for lack of others, to contradict himself. His first answers about glazing were most plain and unhesitating. Being asked if the Venetian painters did not use glazing, and that, in consequence, their pictures are liable to injury in cleaning, he says, “That is a question that can never be settled, because nobody can prove that they did use glazings.” Q. 116.—“Is it your opinion that they did, or that they did not?”—“I believe that the best painters of every school used very little, indeed, if any at all, of what is called glazing. I think it quite a modern quackery, that has nothing to do with the noble works of remote ages in art.” Q. 117.—“You consider the theory, as to the Venetian painters having used very delicate glazings in finishing off their pictures, is fallacious?”—“I do not admit those glazings, as they are called; I believe that they sought for freshness and pureness of colour, and depended on their knowledge of colour for the harmony of their picture, and not on putting on what the Romans call ‘la velatura Inglese;’ they wished to obtain the vigour and freshness of nature, or their pictures would not have lasted as they have.” Q. 118.—“Will you explain to the Committee why the Romans (I presume you mean the Romans of the present day) call that particular process by the name of ‘la velatura Inglese?’”—“Because the English painters only adopt it.” Q. 119.—“The English painters of the modern school?”—“It is only those who adopt it; that is why it is especially called ‘la velatura Inglese.’” This is very childish, to attempt to disprove the practice of the old Roman, or other masters, by the supposed—for it is only supposed—or assumed criticism of modern Romans, who can be no authority upon the practice of modern art in this country. Having found, however, that “velare” and “velatura” are old, not new terms of art, in another examination Mr Uwins comes to his explanation, which is as extraordinary as his first assertion. He contradicts himself, by admitting, that all good painters did use glazings, and even asserts that he never denied it, only in a particular sense. It is in vain that the Committee tell him, they asked not the question in any particular sense; he slips out of the hands of the examiner with wonderful lubricity. It is the hardest thing to bring his comprehension to any sense whatever of the questions put to him; and as to the unfortunate “velatura,” he has examined the dictionary of the Academy of Bologna, and, although he has admitted its meaning by the thing, as in practice they all glazed, yet, not to be vanquished, even by his extracts from his dictionary, he pertinaciously says, “I believe that both these extracts relate to the preparation of the canvass.”
We fear the reader may be weary of this discussion on glazing, but we must beg him to go a little further with us on the subject; it is important, for if there were no glazings, both during the process and final, no damage may have been done, in respect to them, for there could be none to remove—a state of the case which some would fain establish, if possible. The Committee take a great deal of trouble to get the clearest evidence upon the point. We perfectly agree with Mr Morris Moore in his evidence in this matter, and utterly repudiate the idea that the mellow, warm, lucid tones of the old masters have been in any degree given by time. He very appositely quotes the sensible Hogarth, “Time cannot give a picture more union and harmony than has been in the power of a skilful master, with all his rules of art, to do.” Mr Morris Moore denies it, with the examples of Claude and Titian, and quotes amply old authorities. We have immediately referred to Leonardo da Vinci’s treatise on painting in general, a very puzzling book; but we find a passage which shows that not only tone might be given by glazing, but colours changed by it—that is, one colour over another, making a third. He says, “A transparent colour being laid on another colour of a different kind forms a third, partaking of each of the two simples that compose it.” Mr Dyce, R.A., comes to the rescue of the Paul Veronese, one of the recently cleaned pictures, showing from the authority of Boschini, a satirical writer on art, of the seventeenth century, that Paul Veronese did not glaze his draperies. The conclusion would of course be, that in that respect the picture could not have been injured, or that it is not the work of Paul Veronese. But surely the passage from Boschini proves too much; for it asserts with regard to drapery an impossibility, or at best a very unlikely thing, unless glazing be taken into the account. For though Boschini is made to say, that Paul Veronese never glazed his drapery, he is made also to say that “he was accustomed to paint the shadows of drapery with lake, not only of red draperies, but also of yellow, green, and even blue, thus producing an indescribably harmonious effect.” But he had also said, that the painter “put in the local tints of draperies first, painting the blue draperies for the most part in water-colour.” It is, in the first place, most unlikely that he left these draperies in water-colour only; it is more probable that this first painting was entirely gone over, or his lake in shadows would hardly have suited all the colours. We happen to have in our possession a Venetian picture, which shows this Venetian practice of lake, under blue drapery. It is a Palma; the subject, The Dead Christ, The Virgin Mother, Mary Magdalene, and other figures. The foot of Mary the Mother rests on a stone, on which is written Jacobus Palma. He was the pupil of Titian, and is said to have finished a picture left unfinished by Titian. The lake is very visible under the blue, which was evidently put over it; and being rubbed off here and there, the red is very conspicuous. We mention this, merely to show that so far Boschini was right, and that the practice was not confined to Paul Veronese. And is there not presumption in any one, whether painter or not—and Boschini was no painter, or a poor one—to assert positively, that a master who lived a generation before him did not use this or that process of painting, having a choice of all, and skill to use them. Boschini’s aversion was the abuse of varnishes; and it is curious that, among the condemned recipes is the olio d’abezzo, for which there are other authorities besides Armenini, and it is mentioned in the Marciana Manuscript, supposed to have been the varnish of Correggio. Boschini is speaking of foreigners, “forestiere,” not Venetians:—
“O de che strazze se fa cavedal
D’ogio d’avezzo, mastice e sandraca,
E trementina (per no dir triaca)
Robe che illusterave ogni stival.”
—Marco Boschini, Vinisto Quinto.