Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845

by Various

The very first sentence of this passage is of very undefined sense; we can guess at what is meant by the sneer upon the "vaunted Italian schools." There are not only immense gaps, but great gulfs, over which there is no legitimate passage. If these schools have "done so much honour to the art of painting," as M. de Burtin asserts that they have, it has rather been in their perpetuating it as a practical art, than by adding to its dignity or importance. If, however, it be allowable to separate Rubens from the Flemish school, we may with still greater propriety set apart by himself that extraordinary man Rembrandt, who, if any, had some insight of the sentiment of colour.

Very little compliment is paid to the French school by De Burtin. He considers that it has no characteristic but that of the imitation of all schools. It should be observed in justice to more modern French painters, that this was written in 1808. The very opposite opinions of M. Levesque against, and Lairesse in favour of Simon Vouet, the founder of the school, are quoted. The opinions of neither will weigh much with modern critics, even though it were certain that those ascribed to Lairesse were his. Neither Claude nor Nicolas Poussin are allowed to belong to the French school. We presume De Burtin had but little taste for landscape, for he does not mention, we believe, in this whole work, Gaspar Poussin—nor does he dwell much upon Claude. It is extraordinary that in mentioning the one, he should take no notice of his great contemporary.

And here we may observe, that writers on art have ever been neglectful in the extreme with regard to this part of art—we should add, this delightful part, and so capable of sentiment. They take a vast jump from the high Italian Historic (of Figures) to the low Flemish and Dutch, not even in those latter schools discriminating the better portion of the landscape from the lower.

There is wanting a new classification, one not so much of schools, nor of styles per se, as of subjects—in which the School of Landscape would require an ample treatment. It is a school which, by the neglect of critics, has been allowed to descend to its lowest depth; yet is it one which is daily becoming more the public taste—a taste, nevertheless, which has as yet given to it but little of its former elevation, which it had entirely lost before it reached us through the deterioration of the Dutch and Flemish schools.

The German school, the first in antiquity, was extinguished with its masters. It was founded by Albert Durer, whose genius was acknowledged and admired by Raffaelle himself. The modern German school was not in existence at the date of this publication in 1808.

An entire chapter is given upon "the causes of the characteristics which distinguish the different schools from each other." There is, however, nothing new said upon this subject. Undoubtedly there is much truth in the following passage: "So much did the liberty which the Dutch had just recovered from the Spaniards, by unheard-of efforts, become fatal among them to the same class of art, the foundations of which they sapped by their resolution to banish their priests, and to substitute a religion that suffers neither pictures nor statues of saints in their churches. From that time all the views of their painters were necessarily turned to the other classes of art, more susceptible of a small form, and therefore more suitable to the private houses of the Dutch, which, though neat and commodious, are not sufficiently large for pictures of great size." If the dignity of art is to be recovered, it will be by national galleries, and we might yet perhaps hope, by re-opening our churches for the admission of scriptural pictures.

The chapter upon the division of pictures into classes, is by no means satisfactory. It is admitted by the translator to be incomplete. At its conclusion is a quotation from Pliny, which, as it is intended to justify De Burtin's taste for the low Flemish and Dutch schools, does not indicate a very high taste in either Pliny or himself. Pliny says of Pyreicus, that "few artists deserve to be preferred to him. That he painted, in small, barbers' and shoemakers' stalls, asses, bears, and such things." He further adds, that his works obtained larger prices than other artists of nobler subjects obtained, and that he was not degraded by choosing such low subjects. We beg pardon of Pliny, but we would not give three farthings for his pictorial judgment. Indeed, had not Lucian given us some most vivid descriptions of some of the ancient pictures, we should have had no very high opinion of them. For the well-known anecdotes speak only in favour of mechanical excellence. Our author, in his chapter on the art of describing pictures, might have taken Lucian for his model with great propriety. There is in this chapter on division into classes, much nonsense about beauty, Ideal and Physical. De Burtin thinks we have not any instinctive feeling for physical beauty as of moral beauty; that a fixed proportion of parts neither in men nor animals, any more than in architecture, is the foundation of beauty—which is perfectly ridiculous, and not worth an argument. Ideal beauty he here treats with great contempt, and points out two truths on this matter demonstrated by comparative anatomy; "the one of which is, that the beauty of the antique heads depends chiefly on the facial line in them, making an angle of 100 degrees with the horizontal line; the other is, that it is certain that such a head is never found in nature."

In the tenth chapter he treats of "the causes of the superiority of the pictures of the 16th and 17th centuries over those of the past century." He looks upon Rome and the Antique as the chief cause, and that artists go there before they have established principles of art. It is not, he asserts, in difference of colours; for "Giorgione and Titian neither made this themselves, nor brought them from afar, but bought then uniformly in the shops at Venice." He appears to entertain no suspicion of loss or deterioration of vehicle; on the contrary, thinks some artists have been very successful in copies, here rather contradicting his former remarks upon the difference between old copies and new; but, above all, he attributes this décadence of art to the neglect of colour. That, however, is evidently only one part of the art. We are almost induced to smile either at his flattery or his simplicity in naming certain exceptions of modern times, whose names will be little known to, and those known not much in the admiration of, the English collector, "all of whom have carried their art to a very high degree of perfection." In his chapter on the "different manners of the masters," it is observable how little he has to say of the Italian schools; almost all the subsequent remarks in the volume are confined to the Flemish and Dutch. He greatly praises Dietrici for his manner, which to us is not pleasing, and which we should term an imitating flippancy. He tells an anecdote of Titian, which, if it rest upon any good authority, tends to prove that Titian's medium must have been one which admitted the mixture of water with oil. Of Titian he says, that at the end of his life "he used to daub his best works anew with red paint, because he thought the colour too feeble. But happily his pupils had the address to prevent the fatal effects of his foolishness, by making up his colours with water only, or with an oil that was not of a drying nature." With colours ground, Titian could not have mixed his pencil in oil alone and unmixed—and he would himself have immediately discovered the cheat, for it would have dried as distemper dead, and crumbled away under his hand. He might have so painted, if oil and water had been combined, and the vehicle rendered saponaceous, which it probably was. Many artists have been led, he observes, to change the manner from good to bad. We have a remarkable instance in our Gainsborough, whose latter scratchy, slovenly manner is most displeasing; nor had he at any time an imagination to justify it, or rather to qualify it by the power of his compositions.

It is strange that he attributes slovenliness of manner to Rembrandt, "from Avarice." Documents have recently been produced showing that Rembrandt's goods were seized for payment of no very large debt. But is not M. de Burtin altogether mistaken in this manner of Rembrandt? Any of his pictures that show this slovenliness, are, we should suspect, in those parts merely sketched in—a method agreeable to his practice, which was to work upon and upon, glazing, and heaping colour—a method which required, in the first instance, a loose and undefined sketchy manner. Some few years ago there was a picture by him exhibited at the Institution, Pall-Mall—dead game, wonderfully painted, and evidently unfinished; a boy in the background was, as we might term it, daubed in in a very slovenly manner, and with a greenish colour, evidently for the sake of that colour as an underground. Under the head "Historical" in this chapter, it is strange to find but seven names, Rubens, Vandyke, Rembrandt, Lairesse, Poelemburg, Albert Durer, and Hans Holbein. Even with some of these names it is too much honour to place Lairesse and Poelemburg.

In reference to the lower classes of subjects, we think justice is hardly done to Jan Steen, of whom, considering him even as a colourist, more should have been said, than that he "is distinguished by the drollery of his subjects, and by the most true and ingeniously simple expression of the feelings of common life." All this might be said of many others; the characteristic of Jan Steen is still wanting. So we think as to Philip Wouverman; no notice is taken of his too great softness, the evident fault of his manner. Nor are we satisfied with the description of Backhuysen. It should have been noticed in what he is distinguished from Vandervelde. His defect in composition is so striking, as frequently to show a want of perspective in design, and often he has no principal object in his picture. His vessels are either too large or too small for the scene; and his execution was likewise too softened. He winds up this part of the subject with a quotation from Diderot, that "he cannot be manner'd, either in design or colouring, who imitates nature scrupulously, and that mannerism comes of the master of the academy, of the school, and of the Antique," which we very much doubt, for the mannerism is often in the mind, the peculiar, the autographic character of the painter, which he stamps even upon nature. Were a Wynantz, and a Claude or Poussin, put down before the same scene, how different would be their pictures, how different the vision in the eye of the three! A Claude would see the distances, a Gaspar Poussin the middle distances and flowing lines, and Wynantz the docks and thistles. The chapter "on the signatures of the Masters," will be found useful to collectors. He says that where there is a false signature it is removed by spirits of wine, and that is the proof that it is false. He does not draw the inference, that as spirits of wine destroy the one vehicle and not the other, the old and original, they must differ.