The only Collection of Pictures at Oxford is that at the Radcliffe Library; bequeathed by Sir William Guise. It is so far appropriate that it is dingy, solemn, old; and we would gladly leave it to its repose; but where criticism comes, affection ‘clappeth his wings, and straightway he is gone.’ Most of the pictures are either copies, or spoiled, or never were good for any thing. There is, however, a Music Piece by Titian, which bears the stamp of his hand, and is ‘majestic, though in ruins.’ It represents three young ladies practising at a harpsichord, with their music-master looking on. One of the girls is tall, with prominent features seen in profile, but exquisitely fair, and with a grave expression; the other is a lively, good-humoured girl, in a front view; and the third leans forward from behind, looking down with a demure, reserved, sentimental cast of countenance, but very pretty, and much like an English face. The teacher has a manly, intelligent countenance, with a certain blended air of courtesy and authority. It is a fascinating picture, to our thinking; and has that marked characteristic look, belonging to each individual and to the subject, which is always to be found in Titian’s groups. We also noticed a dingy, melancholy-looking Head over the window of the farthest room, said to be a Portrait of Vandyke, with something striking in the tone and expression; and a small Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, attributed to Giuseppe Ribera, which has considerable merit. The amateur will here find continual copies (of an indifferent class) of many of his old favourite pictures of the Italian school, Titian, Domenichino, Correggio, and others. But the most valuable part of the Collection consists of four undoubted Heads cut out of one of the Cartoons, which was destroyed by fire about a hundred years ago: they are here preserved in their pristine integrity. They shew us what the Cartoons were. They have all the spirit and freedom of Raphael’s hand, but without any of the blotches and smearing of those at Hampton Court; with which the damp of outhouses and the dews of heaven have evidently had nearly as much to do as the painter. Two are Heads of men, and two of women; one of the last, Rachel weeping for her Children, and another still finer (both are profiles) in which all the force and boldness of masculine understanding is combined with feminine softness of expression. The large, ox-like eye, a ‘lucid mirror,’ with the eye-lids drooping, and the long eye-lashes distinctly marked, the straight scrutinizing nose, the full, but closed lips, the matronly chin and high forehead, altogether convey a character of matured thought and expansive feeling, such as is seldom to be met with. Rachel weeping for her Children has a sterner and more painful, but a very powerful expression. It is heroic, rather than pathetic. The Heads of the men are spirited and forcible, but they are distinguished chiefly by the firmness of the outline, and the sharpness and mastery of the execution.
Blenheim is a morning’s walk from Oxford, and is not an unworthy appendage to it—
‘And fast by hanging in a golden chain
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon!’
Blenheim is not inferior in waving woods and sloping lawns and smooth waters to Pembroke’s princely domain, or to the grounds of any other park we know of. The building itself is Gothic, capricious, and not imposing—a conglomeration of pigeon-houses—
‘In form resembling a goose pie.’
But as a receptacle for works of art, (with the exception of Cleveland House,) it is unrivalled in this country. There is not a bad picture in it: the interest is sustained by rich and noble performances from first to last. It abounds in Rubens’ works. The old Duchess of Marlborough was fond of the historical pieces of this great painter; she had, during her husband’s wars and negociations in Flanders, a fine opportunity of culling them, ‘as one picks pears, saying, this I like, that I like still better:’ and from the selection she has made, it appears as if she understood the master’s genius well. She has chosen those of his works which were most mellow, and at the same time gorgeous in colouring, most luxuriant in composition, most unctuous in expression. Rubens was the only artist that could have embodied some of our countryman Spenser’s splendid and voluptuous allegories. If a painter among ourselves were to attempt a Spenser Gallery, (perhaps the finest subject for the pencil in the world after Heathen mythology and Scripture History,) he ought to go and study the principles of his design at Blenheim!—The Silenus and the Rape of Proserpine contain more of the Bacchanalian and lawless spirit of ancient fable than perhaps any two pictures extant. We shall not dispute that Nicolas Poussin could probably give more of the abstract, metaphysical character of his traditional personages, or that Titian could set them off better, so as to ‘leave stings’ in the eye of the spectator, by a prodigious gusto of colouring, as in his Bacchus and Ariadne: but neither of them gave the same undulating outline, the same humid, pulpy tone to the flesh, the same graceful involution to the grouping and the forms, the same animal spirits, the same breathing motion. Let any one look at the figure of the Silenus in the first-mentioned of these compositions, its unwieldy size, its reeling, drunken attitude, its capacity for revelling in gross, sensual enjoyment, and contrast it with the figure of the nymph, so light, so wanton, so fair, that her clear crystal skin and laughing grace spread a ruddy glow, and account for the giddy tumult all around her; and say if any thing finer in this kind was ever executed or imagined. In that sort of licentious fancy, in which a certain grossness of expression bordered on caricature, and where grotesque or enticing form was to be combined with free and rapid movements, or different tones and colours were to be flung over the picture as in sport or in a dance, no one ever surpassed the Flemish painter; and some of the greatest triumphs of his pencil are to be found in the Blenheim Gallery. There are several others of his best pictures on sacred subjects, such as the Flight into Egypt, and the illustration of the text, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’ The head and figure and deportment of the Christ, in this last admirable production, are nobly characteristic (beyond what the painter usually accomplished in this department)—the face of a woman holding a young child, pale, pensive, with scarce any shadow, and the head of the child itself (looking as vacant and satisfied as if the nipple had just dropped from its mouth) are actually alive. Those who can look at this picture with indifference, or without astonishment at the truth of nature, and the felicity of execution, may rest assured that they know as little of Rubens as of the Art itself. Vandyke, the scholar and rival of Rubens, holds the next place in this Collection. There is here, as in so many other places, a picture of the famous Lord Strafford, with his Secretary—both speaking heads, and with the characters finely diversified. We were struck also by the delightful family picture of the Duchess of Buckingham and her Children, but not so much (we confess it) as we expected from our recollection of this picture a few years ago. It had less the effect of a perfect mirror of fashion in ‘the olden time,’ than we fancied to ourselves—the little girl had less exquisite primness and studied gentility, the little boy had not the same chubby, good-humoured look, and the colours in his cheek had faded—nor had the mother the same graceful, matron-like air. Is it we or the picture that has changed? In general our expectations tally pretty well with our after-observations, but there was a falling-off in the present instance. There is a fine whole-length of a lady of quality of that day (we think Lady Cleveland); but the master-piece of Vandyke’s pencil here is his Charles I. on Horseback. It is the famous cream or fawn-coloured horse, which, of all the creatures that ever were painted, is surely one of the most beautiful.
‘Sure never were seen