Mr Dyce is unfortunate upon one occasion in rejecting the evidence of Armenini, “because he describes the practice of another school,” “his own school, the school of Ferrara.” Upon this Mr Morris Moore is somewhat sharp upon him, and quotes Armenini himself, to show that he does not confine himself to any school, but speaks from the “practice and example of the most excellent artists that have existed,” and that he was of Faenza, not Ferrara.
Mrs Merrifield, in her valuable work on the ancient practice of painting, the result of a Government Commission, expresses great confidence in the information she received from a learned and skilful Milanese painter and cleaner, Signor A. He had particularly studied the works of Titian, and describes his practice. If his account be correct, Titian certainly glazed over his lights as well as darks; and, like Paul Veronese, by the account of Boschini, he painted the shadows of blue drapery with lake. “He (Titian) then painted the lights with flesh-colour, and laid by the picture to dry. After five or six months he glazed the flesh with terra rossa, and let it dry. He then painted in the shades transparently (that is without any white in the shadows), using a great deal of asphaltum[[5]] with them.” “He also said, that in a blue drapery he painted the shades with lake, and then laid on the lights (with white); that these colours were laid on with great body, and, when dry, he took a large brush and spread the biadetto over the whole.” This biadetto was used by Paul Veronese; we suppose it was a blue from copper, and, owing to its liability to turn green, used without oil. Now, if such was the practice of Titian, it was most likely in some degree the practice also of Paul Veronese, who, though younger, was contemporary with Titian. We somewhat enlarge upon this question here, because, by the evidence given, doubts were thrown upon the originality of the “Consecration of St Nicolas,” or to prove that no glazings had been removed.
We shall not pursue this subject further, concluding that, whatever practice is in use now by various artists was known by the ancient masters, and some things more, which are either lost or uncertainly recovered. No one has paid greater attention to this subject, or applied to it more research and discrimination, than Sir Charles Eastlake. We still look for more valuable and decisive information from him, especially with respect to the Italian schools.
We are certainly surprised at the opinions given by artists of eminence as to the condition of the Claude, “The Queen of Sheba;” that Mr Stansfield should confirm his opinion of its being uninjured “from the extremities of the trees next the sky, and the foliage generally,” because those very parts have appeared to our eyes so feeble, so washy, as if at some time or other painted on by another hand than Claude’s: we say the same also, somewhat fearlessly, of the edges of the trees in the small upright Claude. The outlining, too, of the cloud in the Queen of Sheba is of the same feeble handling; and the upper and lower tones of the sky are quite out of agreement. Mr Stansfield and others think time will restore the lost tone and harmony: we cannot comprehend this judgment. If time can give that peculiar warm glow of Claude, we should see that time had done this kind or unkind office on the works of other painters, as cold as that picture is now. There were many who avoided this glow, as unsuited to their subjects; we do not see that time has in this respect converted any of them into Claudes. There is Claude’s imitator, Swannevelt, without the glow; but take Ruysdael, who painted upon an opposite principle—we never see that glow thrown over his pictures. His fresh blue and white skies are still free from that yellow toning of time’s fingers. It comes to this—either Claude painted his peculiar glow, or time did for him. If Time did it for him, Time must have been constrained by his office and nature to do the same thing for others. He did not do so for others, or Claude’s would not be a glow peculiar to him—ergo, Claude did the work, and not time. But time is also supposed to do this ameliorating work very speedily. Mr Stansfield thinks “we all must allow that the Cuyp has recovered its tone.” Will it be allowed? There is, and was after the cleaning of that picture in 1844, a pink colouring in the sky, which put the whole picture out of harmony, which, if painted by Cuyp, to be like his other works, could only have been an under-tone, and by him gone over with another, which must have been at some time or other removed.
How could so skilful a marine painter as Mr Stansfield look accurately at the water from the foreground to the distance in the Claude and think it uninjured? The very forms of the waves, in the second and third distances, are interrupted and faint. An argument has been brought, that, if the sky had been injured, the ropes would have suffered. Besides that it is merely assumed that they have not suffered, that argument is fallacious. We have the authority of a very experienced picture-cleaner, and one well acquainted with pictures and all processes, which tends to a contrary proof. De Burtin, in his treatise on picture-cleaning, says: “A point of the utmost importance, and which never must be lost sight of, is this, that among the glazings there will be found some which, although very transparent and delicate, it is nevertheless very difficult to injure, because they have been laid on the colour when fresh, and have become thoroughly incorporated and united therewith; and, on the contrary, there will be found others, and sometimes not so transparent and delicate, but which will yet be injured very readily, because they stand separate from, and do not adhere to the colour beneath them, that having been almost dry ere they were put on.” Now, supposing that Claude’s glow were—we say not that it was—an after-glaze, the ropes may have been put in on the wet sky. Does any one think that Claude’s skies were painted at one painting, or even two?
Mr Stansfield had used the words “raw and disagreeable;” but being asked if he thought that picture raw and disagreeable when it left Claude’s easel? replies, No. We must in justice say, that he somewhat modifies the expression. “Perhaps I have used a wrong term in saying ‘raw’ and ‘disagreeable,’ for we all paint for time to have some effect upon our pictures.” Notwithstanding Mr Stansfield’s great experience, we more than doubt this fallacy as to time. We know it to be, and to have been, a favourite maxim of many painters of the English school, that time will remedy rawness, and make their works in mellowness what those of the ancient masters were. We utterly disbelieve it, and for the following reasons: It is out of character with the mind of genius purposely to leave a work incomplete. The idea of perfection being in the mind, the hand cannot resist the operation. Then, has time had that effect upon more modern works? We appeal for evidence to the Vernon Gallery. Are the pictures there better than when they were fresh from the easel? Not one, we verily believe, and know some to be much worse. This was a notion of Constable’s and his followers, and it has infected the minds of too many. He painted as if he would frost his pictures with white—has time finished them to his conceived perfection? Those who trust to time must, we fear, also trust to the picture-cleaner and picture-toner, against whom there is, rather inconsistently, a considerable outcry. This is a point not requiring a test of long ages. Mr Stansfield himself thinks “The Queen of Sheba” will recover its tone in six months, and that from 1846 to the present time the satisfactory change has taken place in the pictures cleaned.
With regard to Claude’s general yellow tone, there remains yet a question to be asked—Did he take it from nature, or did he add it with a view of improving nature? Quite aware that the question will shock the Naturalists, we still venture it. In the first place, be it observed—and we have noticed it elsewhere in the pages of this Magazine—nature will bear great liberties with regard to colour, without losing her characteristics. Colour may be said, in this sense, to be the poetical language of nature. It is astonishing that any can doubt whether or not this view of nature was taken by the Ancient Masters. It is unfashionable now. To apply this to Claude: In Sir David Brewster’s evidence, we find mention made of “Claude glasses,” some of which he produced. He considered that, looking through these, the tone would be much restored to the eye. “I conceive,” he says, “this (the yellow tone) is proved by the glasses, which I have produced, having got the name of Claude Lorraine glasses from their giving that general tone to nature that characterises all his pictures.” This leads to a slight discussion on the subject of the glasses. Mr B. Wall asks Sir David, “Are you not aware that, about forty-five years ago, those Claude Lorraine glasses were introduced and sold, three, or four, or five together, and they were very much used by tourists who used to see the English Lakes?—were they not of different colours—blue, pink, green, and almost every shade?” “No such name was given to such glasses as you refer to in your question.” Mr B. Wall: “I venture to differ from your high authority, and to think that the glass which you call a Claude Lorraine glass is not the only glass that went by that name; and therefore that the inference which you have drawn, that the yellow one was the proper one to use when you looked at Claude’s pictures, was not correct.” Mr Stirling asks if there is not another thing called a Claude Lorraine glass, “a piece of coloured glass which is used to reduce the landscape, and reflect it like the surface of a mirror?” Sir David says, he never saw it done with coloured glass. The difference between the glass spoken of by Sir David, and that by Mr B. Wall, does not seem very important,—it being that one admits other colours more freely than the other. Mr Wall is not, however, quite correct in limiting the invention to forty-five years ago. We have one in our possession which we know to have been in existence very near a century, and it has always been called a Claude glass. I believe it has been in use, as was the black glass, in the days of the Old Masters. The effect on the natural landscape is curious, and worth recording. The yellow glass is very extraordinary: it wondrously heightens the lights, so that a sky, for instance, in which scarcely an illuminated cloud is seen, looked at through this glass, exhibits great variety of parts. Shadows are deepened, and light strengthened; real colours not lost, but as it were covered with a glaze. We have always been of opinion that Rembrandt used it, his pictures are so like nature seen through that medium. It mostly reduces the blue, making it greenish. There was a little picture of Rembrandt exhibited some years ago at the Institution in Pall-Mall, which presented exactly the effect we speak of. It was a most simple subject—a hilly ground, on the undulating summit of which, on one side, was a village church among trees, on the other a few scattered houses, all dark, against the sky; from the division of the hill, a road very indistinct came down to the foreground, which, to the right, melted off into a dark brook, going into deep shade, where it was lost. The sky was exceedingly luminous—a cloud rising over the village, such as would “drop fatness,” and the whole tone of that greenish-grey, with rich-toned illuminations, which the Claude glass constantly presents to the eye. In a paper of this Magazine of 1847, in which we had occasion to speak of colour, and the habit of the Old Masters in deviating from the common, obvious colouring of nature, we alluded to this Claude Lorraine glass. “This may be exemplified by a dark mirror—and, better still, by a Claude glass, as it is called, by which we look at nature through coloured glasses. We do not the less recognise nature—nay, it is impossible not to be charmed with the difference, and yet not for a moment question the truth. We are not here discussing the propriety of using such glasses—it may be right, or it may be wrong, according to the purpose the painter may have. We only mean to assert, that nature will bear the changes and not offend any sense. The absolute naturalness, then, of the colours of nature, in its strictest and most limited sense, local and aërial, is not so necessary as that the eye cannot be gratified without it. And it follows, that agreeability of colour does not depend upon this strict naturalness.”
We learn from Mrs Merrifield, that Signor A. showed her a black mirror, which had belonged to Bamboccio (Peter Van Laer). “This mirror was bequeathed by Bamboccio to Gaspar Poussin; by the latter to some other painter, until it ultimately came into the hands of Signor A.” It is admitted by Mr Seguier himself, as by other witnesses, that Claude painted thinly, semi-opaque over dark, but this is called “scumbling.” It is, however, in fact, if done with a free hot dry brush, a glaze, and he may have thus toned his pictures. That tone once removed, as in the case of the Sheba, we believe irrecoverable but by such a master-hand as put it on, and possessed of the same pure medium. We fancy we discover in the working that a great deal of the detail of his pictures was painted in this method. To expect that time only will restore that fine glow is worthy the philosopher of Laputa, and his resolution to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. Poor Claude! Professors of the art of painting are far worse off than professors of literature, whose tormentors are but the printer’s devil and the compositor. The poor painter has an endless generation of tormentors. The “Quidlibet audendi” is not his motto; his genius will never be half so daring as the hands of his scrubbers. Let him sit at his easel, and, in his enthusiasm, throw sunshine from his brush, and dream fondly that it will be eternal; a host of cleaners are looking over his shoulder, or lurking in secret, to catch the treasure, and smudge his dream and his work out for ever. And when they have visibly, too visibly, done their worst, old Time, that used to be represented as the “Edax rerum,” the general destroyer, is introduced as a newly-dubbed professor of the art of cleaning and restoring by dirt.
We do not, however, wish to speak disrespectfully of picture-cleaners, or picture-varnishers, or picture-dealers. There are many very skilful and very useful, and, of dealers, honourable and liberal. Nor do we say this without knowledge; yet habit creates boldness, and removes caution. Like the medical profession, cleanership, it is to be feared, must kill before it has learned to cure. But the professors sometimes forget the wholesome rule, “Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.” Even the wise Sir David Brewster confesses to having dabbled in destruction. There is not a man of note in it but must have killed his man; and few are so happy as the wonderful Mr Lance, to make a new one so well that none can tell the difference. Indeed, Mr Lance’s magic brush did a great deal more. A cleaner had wiped out of existence whole members—man and horse; sometimes had left half a horse, and scarcely half a man, and sometimes had ironed them all out together. Mr Lance brought all to life again, without having ever seen one of them; and all so like, that their most familiar acquaintances had never missed them, nor known they had ever been defunct. Yet was his modesty equal to his skill. He never boasted of his performance. Man and horse were revivified, and remounted, and caracoled with the utmost grace and precision before himself and the public, with unbounded applause; and the wonderful restorer was contented to sit quietly in a corner, as if unconscious of his own creations, and deaf to the loudest blast of Fame’s trumpet. If we have wearied our readers with too long discussions upon technicalities, we can now make amends by retiring behind the scenes, first introducing Mr Lance himself, who will be as amusing to others as he has been to us. But there is a prologue to every play; we would not usher in so celebrated a performer without one.
Every one acquainted with the National Gallery knows the Velasquez “Boar-hunt.” It was always a celebrated picture, and henceforth will be more celebrated than ever. In the very Index of the Report it occupies more than a whole page. The famous Erymanthian boar never gave half the sport, though it required a Hercules to kill him. But there is a difference: he was killed, and frightened people after he was dead; this boar was killed, and brought to life again, and pleased every one ever after. It had been hunted in many countries, and would have been hunted in many more, had it not received its Apotheosis from the hand of Sir Robert Peel, and found a place in the galaxy of the National Gallery.