"William, Earl of Craven," "Thomas, Lord of Arundel, "Charles I.," "The Family of Charles I.," "Charles II.," "James II. and the period which intervened between Anto- | the face, showed intuitions which pertain to nio More in the reign of Mary, and the sensitive and highly-wrought organizations; arrival of Vandyke in the time of Charles Rubens, on the other hand, was qualified I., was rather badly off for portrait paint- by a magnificent physique to make the aniers. The age indeed seems to have in- mal strength of man triumphant; while clined to miniatures rather than to life-size Rembrandt, belonging to yet a different oils; Hilliard and his pupil, Isaac Oliver, order of mortals, saw in face and figure worked much and well in the reigns of susprise of light, mystery of shadow, and Elizabeth and James. But whatever might rugged picturesque outline. Now when we be petite, small, and delicate in the minia- look at the portraits of Vandyke, of which tures of the sixteenth or seventeenth cen- no less than seventy have been seen at turies found reaction with a vengeance in Kensington, we are ready, "all things conthe large, gawky, and ungainly figures of sidered," as Reynolds would say, to allow Mark Garrard, Cornelius Jansen, Van So- that, in their specific style, they are unsurmer, and Gerard Honthorst. A man who passed. The head which in the National in those days found himself swelling into Gallery bears the name of "Gervartius," historic celebrity might scarcely know how is justly held second to none in the whole decently to transmit his face to posterity. world, and certainly at Kensington, scarcely The niches of history were now decorated inferior, were such portraits as — with barbers' blocks; figures, wooden, stolid, yet stalwart, stand out from blackened canvases in solemn state. There may be nothing to violate decorun, and equally nothing which can emulate life or speech. Still it cannot be denied that the painters just enumerated are in their best works worthy of the fame usually accorded them. For example, by Mark Garrard, " "The Countess of Bedford and Child," is more than respectable; "William Cavendish," by Jansen, has force of features and beauty of lace collar; "James I." and Queen Anne of Denmark" have merit not far short of the works of Lawrence; lastly, by Honthorst, were portraits of the King and Queen of Bohemia, rarely surpassed for splendour, power, and finish. Notwithstanding, however, such brilliant exceptions, this period, as a whole, was poor in portraiture. We borrowed artists from the Continent, as we had been accustomed to import our kings, and a portrait painter was deemed as useful an appendage to a court as a dwarf, a jester, or an undertaker. Such was the condition of foreign art when imported; as for the native commodity, it still remained in the sixteenth century on a level with the product of the stone-mason and of the village carpenter. Princess Mary," severally belonging to her Majesty; "Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I.," "Sir Kenelm Digby and Family," "Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke,' "James Stanley, Earl of Derby," "William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle," Algernon, Earl of Northumberland, Countess and Child," George Digby, Earl of Bedford," and "Thomas Carew and Sir William Killigrew." 66 Vandyke certainly did well for his royal patron; the portraits he painted of Charles I. are the most favourable frontispieces that could be put to an infirm character; they serve as apologies for weakness, as encomiums on virtue: moreover drooping lines, nerveless hands, and shadowed cast of melancholy prognosticate pending doom. Never was a portrait painter better fitted to his master: even between the face of the artist and of his royal sitter is consanguinity; Vandyke was accustomed to throw the type of his own features into his portraits generally; and the mannerism he contracted of moody melancholy, sickly sentiment, and affected grace even to the tips of tapering and pendant fingers, became elevated into a beau ideal in the portraits of Charles. Portrait-painting was in England once more raised to the dignity of an art by Some of the portraits above enumerated Vandyke, whom Reynolds deemed "all belong to the time when Vandyke, to things considered, the first of portrait paint- borrow an expression of Reynolds, supers. Yet this judgment we cannot but posed the sun to be shining inside his stuthink a little too favourable. Titian is dio, so golden and glowing are they: others usually held chief of the profession. Rey-show a later manner, when the artist painted nolds himself pronounced the great Vene- by the light of common day, or threw over tian unapproachable for a certain senato- his sitters the pale cast of thought, the rial dignity. Velasquez too was second to none in broad, strong, trenchant delineation of character; Raphael also, by subtle supersensuous readings of the mind through pallid shadow of care. That Vandyke's studio had never been in a garret, that his genius was not starved, or on a mere pittance of bread and salt sustained, may be well understood by the bearing of high versed. The men whose faces now tell birth, the air of luxury and ease which he from the canvas with unwonted force, have throws around his figures. It is a signifi- evidently little or nothing in common with cant fact that the greatest portrait painters the ancient families of long descent who have lived like princes, and that thus they have lined the walls of picture corridors for have met their sitters on equal terms. centuries. The Commonwealth brought Titian, Velasquez, Rubens, showed them- into portraiture" nature's aristocracy," selves magnificent fellows, accustomed to men self-made by merit, stout of sinew to live sumptuously. And to this rule Van- wield the sword, strong of will to govern dyke was no exception. He had a country- an empire; but it was not illustrious in art house in Kent: he lived in great state when as in arms. Yet this interregnum interin town; and we are told that he always vening between two Stuart kings seems to went magnificently dressed, had a numer- have had the honour of restoring banished ous, gallant equipage, and kept so good a conscience to portrait galleries! Some of table in his apartment, that few princes the men of these times might, in fact, have were more visited or better served." Yet deemed themselves too good to hold comhis portraits are not betrayed into unseemly munion with an art which had been servant pomp or swagger; there is nothing loud or to Satan. These saints of the earth, whose pretentious in the tone and bearing of his heritage was sure in the kingdom of heaven, figures; his sitters comport themselves condemned all that appealed to sense, and quietly, and have the unconscious ways of to them was not given the insight of those well-bred gentlefolk. That Vandyke could saints of old who saw in art the symbol of pass beyond the superficial grace and the spiritual beauty. Nonconformist portraits, outward decorum of the drawing-room, and as a matter of fact, whatever be the cause, enter on the prerogatives of noble humanity are, with few exceptions, the very worst that beneath his draperies is to be found which find an entrance into picture gallea heart, and within bag-wigs an intellect, ries. Of Milton and Cromwell, however, many of his portraits prove; few painters exist inimitable miniatures. Cooper inhave managed to indicate with greater deli- deed, as an artist, might have been excacy the clear obscure" of a calm and pressly created for the Commonwealth, liquid eye, to catch the fugitive rose as it even as courtly Vandyke seems to have faded on the cheek, to arrest the curve and been ordained to dance attendance as a the ripple of a passing smile across the carpet-knight in the palace of a Stuart. features, to detain an evanescent thought Robert Walker, too, known as "Cromere it fled, to seize action in its motion, at- well's painter," who possessed himself a titude in its grace and point, the whole man grand, manly head, quite in keeping with as he lived and had his being. The touch the large brains of the Commonwealth, had of the painter was firm yet free, the colour a style simple, truthful, and vigorous. warm yet toned down by tender grey; the Thus, after all, the interregnum, which, as whole handling had a breadth suggestive of we have seen, was an interlude in art, did detail, a sweep which could give in sum- manage to produce some few respectable mary the entirety of the subject, however portraits. large. While looking at these matchless products, it is impossible to agree with those who would assign to portraiture a subordinate position. These figures are, in fact, something more than portraits, they are perfect in point of art. The lines are studiously balanced, the spaces nicely apportioned, the whole work in composition, drawing, light, shade, and colour, is wrought to the pitch of a fancy picture. Vandyke, in short, adorned whatever he touched, and, like Reynolds, brought to portraiture a manner learnt in a higher sphere. Sir Peter Lely has been within the last three years seen in Kensington by seventyfour pictures. These naturally include the chief men and women of the times. We will enumerate some of the portraits which, in point of art, best deserve remembrance: 66 Henrietta," called "La Belle Henriette," youngest daughter of Charles I., seated in a landscape as Minerva: "Drs. Dolben, Allesby, and Fell, a very exceptional picture for Lely; dark, severe, without colour or ostentation, these The Commonwealth brings into portrait Carteret,' heads are quiet, learned, pious: "Sir George a magnificent picture for style, galleries a wholly different order of heads. The great rebellion was not only a sub-James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews," a management, colour, and power of effect: version of the established mode of government, but seemed, as it were, to work a change in the pre-established form and order of nature! The type of head is re good portrait proving that Lely, when he chose, could be grey and quiet: also "George Saville, Marquis of Halifax;" "Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of London ;" and "Sir William Tem the ple." "Algernon Sidney" is inferior; in art | have," said the king, "promised Pepys my this portrait ranks as a second-rate Vandyke ; picture, and I will finish my sitting; the hands and the figure are little else than a parody on that master. portrait was completed, and the dynasty "Such are thy pictures, Kneller, such thy skill, Lely's female portraits are in strange and painful contrast with the best of the above pictures, wherein the artist put forth his power. Lely, to judge from his works, was a complete lady's man, at least in the lower sense of the phrase. His portraits pander to fashion, they are perfect as triumphs of the milliner's art, showy, meretricious, flaunting; his women wear even, when decently dressed, a doubtful reputation Nell Guynne, the Fornarina of South Kensington galleries, serves as the type of the tribe. Yet, that the artist had within him appreciation of a pure and noble nature may be judged by a commendable portrait of good Mrs. Claypole, the favourite daughter of Cromwell. But Lely's genius finds more consonant theme in heads such as those of "Eleanor, Lady Byron," and Charles II." The former, if meretricious, is magnificent; strong in drawing, Kneller certainly may be deemed fortunate rich in colour. In the portrait of Charles, in his sitters; what was most paintable in the drapery assumes truly imperial propor- the talent of the time presented itself betions, and the general display, if inclining to fustian, is not wholly contemptible. The manner which found favour in these profligate times may be judged by two large compositions, ostentatious rather than in good taste, seen not long since in the Royal Academy, the one the "Ante-chamber of Charles II.," by E. M. Ward, R. A.; the other, the "Last Sunday of Charles II.," by W. P. Frith, R. A. But in order that no doubt might remain as to the quality and motive of Lely's art, the painter kindly left to posterity a portrait of himself a fat, jolly fellow, more than a match for Peter Paul Rubens in wrestling or fencing. The face at once supplies any needed comment on the painter's pictures. Indeed an artist's face usually tells what he will paint; his own type and expression are generally transfused over the features of his sitters. Faces generally have been made for and by the times, and the leading painters of an epoch are for the most part in mind and person representative men. Lely, and his portraits of the reign of Charles II., are thus indicative and suggestive. Sir Godfrey Kneller ranks well as a physical force painter; he was powerful as he was prolific; his pictures at Kensington numbered ninety-one; and he actually lived and worked through six reigns, and painted the persons of at least four sovereigns. James II. was sitting to Kneller when news came of the landing of William. "I fore his easel. Thus deficiency in art finds canvas 66 66 pencil was accustomed at a single stroke to | as with quip and quirk, still he stuck to the create a feature; one morning's work al- maxim that" comedy should in painting, as most sufficed to turn out the whole man, in writing, be allotted the first place." In life-size, and at all points complete. Knel- Leeds may be seen, indeed, Hogarth's own ler, like Lely, has helped us to interpret portrait taken by himself, in the very act of his style through his portrait. The head is Painting the Comic Muse; so true is it, showy, and bears up with swagger, yet has we repeat, that a man's face, whether comic the features of nobility, especially the or tragic, serves as a key to his style. Honose that infallible index of character:- garth professed to tread in a path half-way while looking at this head we cannot but between the sublime and the grotesque; feel that Kneller was destined for a higher he was the Hudibras of the painter's art. art than he ever reached. "His line," says Walpole, lay between the Italians, whom we may consider as epic poets or tragedians, and the Flemish painters, who are as writers of farce and editors of burlesque nature." For technical qualities and soundness of material, Hogarth's portraits are superior to the works by which they were preceded and followed. While the pictures of Lely, Kneller, and Reynolds fade, blacken, and become discoloured, the portraits of Hogarth remain comparatively intact in manipulation, in fact, they have merits found in no other artist. Left often in the rough, they always bear traits of genius, native and untaught. A change for the better now came upon the fortunes of our English school. With Lely and Kneller happily departed a race of foreigners who had long maintained monopoly in the land. William Hogarth was born, and brought us back to nature. During the present and past year this truly English artist has been seen at Kensington by thirty-nine portraits, of which the best worth remembering are "George Hooper, Bishop of Bath and Wells," a masterly work: "Lavinia Fenton, Duchess of Bolton," more than commonly brilliant, transparent in flesh painting, and refined: "Lord Lovat," deservedly celebrated; character here seized by a broad caricaturist ; execution sketchy, hasty, almost slovenly: "Miss Rich," supremely artistic; touch firm, fluent, playful; colour exquisite for purity, transparency, harmony; this, in express art-quality, is the master's choicest product: "Thomas Western, of Rivenhall, and Family;" here the painter passes from individual portraits to concerted compositions, and accordingly finds opportunity for animated action and the play of inimitable humour: "William Hogarth," by himself; this, the famous picture in the National Gallery, is further known through the parody used as the frontispiece to Punch: "Sarah Malcolm," sketchy, and, consequently, transparent in colour: " Captain Coram," from the Foundling Hospital, taken for all in all, the best portrait Hogarth ever painted; here every touch, each line and detail has a portraiture in it, all is true to the very life: "David Garrick, as Richard III.," can be accounted little better than a parody, vulgar and repulsive, mere stage rant; the execution of this picture is as coarse as its conception. 66 Hogarth, it must be confessed, let down his sitters, took from them dignity, and made them play the part of comedians on the world's stage. Comedy," says Hogarth, “should in painting as in writing, be allotted the first place." Accordingly, the artist was ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of a joke, - he walked through life to gain occasion for laughter, even his portraits, pointed as with a censor's and a satirist's pen, provoke a smile, and when he dashed off his own strange features, twisted The second and third Exhibitions at Kenof a vital native school. The reign of sington were refreshing in the pledge given George III. is eminently a portrait-painting era. More portraits were then produced than in any prior period. Moreover, seldom in the history of our country have been crowded into half a century so many men, who, by service to the commonwealth, won the right of passing from the seclusion of private mansions into the honoured notoriety of public picture galleries. When a statesman acquires historic position, even his features are taken possession of as national property. It had been the privilege of a Leo to be painted by Raphael, of Vittoria Colonna to be drawn by Michael Angelo, of Charles V. to be invested in the colours of Titian, and now it became scarcely less noteworthy in the chronicles of art, that graceless George III. and good Queen Charlotte had the fortune to sit at the easel of Reynolds. Into the solemn assize just held of the illustrious dead, Reynolds entered with 187 works, some whereof Titian would have greeted with enthusiasm. Take, for instance, the two large pictures, each containing seven members of the Dilettanti Society - works which, for harmony of colour, for depth in the half tones, for subdued shadowed lustre, and even for technical handling, might have proceeded from the studio of Giorgione, Palma, Bonifazio, or even of Titian himself. It becomes, indeed, evident at a glance that these rare works must have been painted | fashionable portrait painter and a successin direct emulation of lustrous Venetian ful physician alike depend on manners. masters. Sir William Hamilton and Sir Reynolds received six sitters a day; he Joseph Banks here take, it will be ob- valued his time at five guineas the hour; served, their seats at the table. The he made £6,000 a year; painted, during painter, in fact, was put upon his mettle. his life, considerably above two thousand Hence Sir Joshua called to his aid the pictures; and left behind him a goodly forresources gathered in his Italian tours. tune of £80,000. As for his art, he had at Look at the transparent shadows, the command as many styles as sitters might be loaded lights; pigments in the places in waiting. His several manners admit of where strength and brilliance were needed, ready analysis. The first broad division is laid on in bodily relief, and then glazed between male portraits on one hand, and over and painted into till the whole mass female portraits on the other; at Kensingmelted into colour-liquid, translucent, ton we marked something like a dozen of and impalpable as light itself. Thus, after each not less than superlative in art-quality. the manner of Venetians, are cool and Other distinctive differences in style are warm tones contrasted yet reduced to con- obvious. Thus, we have seen that for the cord, opaque and transparent pigments Dilettanti Society Reynolds deemed the brought together as body and spirit, to manner of the Italian Cinque-cento or make of man one substance and mind. Renaissance most appropriate. Another These pictures, marvels in their way, seem marked class, represented by Mansfield, to reconcile contradictions; they are at Thurlow, Lifford, Lord Chancellor of Ireonce dodgy and downright, tricky yet land, and Sir John Cust, Speaker of the guileless, sketchy and suggestive, yet com- House of Commons, is studiously stately plete. Probably English portraiture never and senatorial, gravely judicial, as if went further; yet we are bound to confess the weight of law and the ponderous volthat the result falls somewhat short of ume of constitutional history lay heavily the standard of the old masters. Titian on learned brows. It is impossible for would have preserved the likeness, and yet any one to be so wise as Thurlow looks." have given greater elevation. Vandyke The portrait of this renowned Chancellor would have infused into the treatment has power and command, manliness and more of "style." Raphael would have individuality; the trappings of office are gained more direct in-look and out-look made subservient to pictorial purposes. of soul. Rubens, of course, would have triumphed in redundant form and colour; while Velasquez would have weighted each man as a war-horse; would have reconciled repose with motion; would have brought upon canvas, not a semblance of life, but nature herself. In other words, Reynolds never painted a portrait quite equal to "La Bella" of Titian, the socalled "Gevartius" of Vandyke, the "Leo X." of Raphael, "Las Meninas," and other works by Velasquez, or certain portraits by Rubens in the galleries of Florence, &c. Yet, on the other hand, was our English Titian saved from the extremes into which his rivals fell. For balance, moderation, propriety, for a certain eclectic compilation of excellencies found scattered among many masters, the portraits of Reynolds are unapproached. Reynolds was made by nature a courtier, which all fashionable portrait painters should be. He approached his sitters in the mental attitude of adulation; he was all things to all men; he could share in the foibles of ladies, treat tenderly their frailties, and even make their weaknesses appear as pretty graces upon canvas. A 66 Draperies with Reynolds were never merely decorative - they assumed a meaning; they were made to fall into place; they assert no more than their due. An artist less studious of relative keeping in a composition might, in a portrait such as that of Lifford, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, have lost himself in costume; Reynolds, on the contrary, used robes but as seemly foils to humanity. A management no less consummate is seen in that magnificent portrait of Mansfield, seated in scarlet and ermine robes. Reynolds was not to be frightened by reds; when, as here, he had to encounter hot colour, he sought not the balance of negatives or neutrals, but absolutely outbid what was bright by tones still brighter. Look how fearlessly does the painter lay on his pigments! as if he thought thereby to add opulence to his work. His hand played and toyed with his subject; his pencil was swift in its sweep, yet his clenching touch could be direct and keen as a sabre thrust. The artist, too, had a happy knack of knowing just where to leave off, what to keep slight, sketchy, and suggestive; thus spirit in execution and transparency of colour are seldom lost in over-elaboration. |