Painting. It is convenient to divide this slight sketch of the history of painting into two sections, the first dealing with the technical, and the second with the intellectual, history of the art.
(1) The Technical History of Painting.—The importance of technical conditions in the fine arts is due to their influence upon the action of the mind. For example, fresco-painting, if genuine, requires both speed and decision, oil-painting permits deliberation and correction almost without limit. Water-colour occupies, as to hurry, a position between the two. A technical facility allures the mind in certain directions, a technical difficulty impedes it, and a technical impossibility, like an insurmountable obstacle, diverts its energy into another channel. Each art has its own educational influence on the artist who practises it. Albert Dürer was an engraver with the burin, and he carried the strictness and precision of the burin into his painting; Rembrandt was an etcher, and he painted with an etcher's freedom; Turner was a water-colour painter, and his practice in oil bears evidence of his other skill. Fresco was painted either from drawings or from pure imagination. The deliberation possible in oil has led to painting from the life, with its consequences of increased reality, better knowledge, and more perfect truth. The improvement in water-colour has done for landscape what oil has done for the figure. As water-colour dries quickly it is convenient for sketching from nature, so that modern landscape-painters have been induced to study more in colour than their predecessors, a practice which has brought about a revolution in landscape-painting by taking it from the studio and the gallery into the open air.
The extreme importance of technical conditions may be made still clearer by a reference to the sister arts. With the burin in his hand, the most impetuous of men must be disciplined by the instrument itself till he becomes cautious, careful, and methodical. A sculptor may love marble, but he does not sketch or invent in it; he sketches in wax or clay. Bronze can be cast into the most picturesque forms, but the granite of Egypt imposed a severe simplicity.
Painting was not, in its origin, an independent art. It was employed in subservience to sculpture, to architecture, and to primitive engraving quite unconnected with printing. Rude idols were coloured in imitation of life, or rude outlines incised in stone or wood were filled up with spaces of colour sharply separated and clearly distinguished. The outlines might also be themselves painted and then filled up with colour. Painting was separated from sculpture and engraving long before it was separated from hard and definite linear drawing. The connection of painting with the hard line is always evidence of a primitive condition of the art, either simple-minded as in early work, or affected in modern work as an archaic fancy, or continued for decorative reasons.
The earliest painting known to us is that of the ancient Egyptians, a kind of distemper or water-colour with dissolved gum. They had a sufficiently well-supplied palette. White, a light yellow, a duller yellow, light red, dark red, light blue, green, brown, and black appear to have constituted their list. As for the chemical nature of these pigments, pure chalk supplied a white; the Egyptians were acquainted with a vegetable yellow; they were familiar with the ochres; cinnabar was to be had in Ethiopia; their blue was powdered blue glass, itself stained with copper, and when mixed with yellow it supplied a green. Black was easily obtained from animal charcoal and other materials. It is a misunderstanding of Egyptian art to criticise it as a representation of nature; that was rendered impossible by ignorance of perspective and other technical deficiencies. It was intended to be at the same time a record and a decoration, and it effectually answered both purposes. It is much too primitive to be artistic in the modern sense, and in fact the Egyptian painters were not artists but workmen subjected to authoritative direction and to an excessive division of labour. Their drawing was manually skilful, but limited by want of knowledge; their colouring was simply decorative.
The remains of Assyrian painting are much less abundant than those of Egyptian, though it appears from the evidence of travellers that the Assyrians must have painted extensively upon internal walls covered with plaster, and also upon tiles built together so as to make more or less extensive compositions. The little that we know of Assyrian and Babylonian painting leads to the conclusion that it was technically not more advanced than that of Egypt, and resembled it in being a record and a decoration rather than an imitation of nature. Outlines were still strongly marked and adhered to, and spaces were coloured flatly, almost as we colour them in heraldic painting. The painting of those early times is, in principle, much the same as that now employed upon playing-cards.
The supreme position of Greece in the art of sculpture has strongly predisposed many critics in favour of her painters, and it has long been believed that if we could see their works we should admire them as we now admire Greek statues of the age of Pericles. There are, however, very good reasons for believing that Greek pictures, even by the most famous men, would appear to us still primitive from the pictorial point of view, though it is certain that the drawing of the figures would be elegant and observant. We have no evidence whatever in the classical paintings which have come down to us that the ancients ever mastered the craft of painting in the modern sense—i.e. as an art which interprets truths of effect and which studies not only the forms but the appearances of nature. The great Greek painters must have been fine linear draughtsmen, and they would colour their drawings carefully; but all Greek art that is known to us has a clear and positive quality incompatible with the richness, the mystery, and the subtle visual truth of painting in its most advanced stages. With regard to the colouring of the Greeks, Sir Joshua Reynolds praised them for having used only four colours, and said that four are sufficient to make every combination required. Sir Joshua probably was thinking of flesh-colour only, which has since been painted by Etty with very few colours. Maclise said of Etty that 'with three colours and white—anything approaching to a yellow, a red, and a blue—he could produce a sweetly-coloured picture.' The Greeks in like manner might colour 'sweetly' with few pigments, but it is not possible to imitate the full colouring of the natural world without a complete palette. Apelles himself could not paint a primrose with yellow ochre, nor a geranium with red ochre, nor is there any means of mixing black and white so as to imitate the azure of a southern sky. It is therefore of the greatest interest to ascertain whether the Greeks had a complete palette or not. Here the difficulty is to know at what date each pigment came into use. The vague expression generally employed is that certain colours were 'known to the ancients.' Of yellows Pliny says that Polygnotus and Micon used yellow ochre only. Vermilion is said to have been 'first prepared by Kallias the Athenian five hundred years before the Christian era,' and minium (red lead) was first used by Nicias, a painter of Athens in the time of Alexander. It is highly probable that the Greeks would be acquainted with Egyptian colours, and the Egyptians knew the madder-root. The Tyrian purple and Egyptian blue were too famous for the Greeks to remain ignorant of them. Yellow and red orpiment were also known to the ancient world. Blue-black made from burnt wine lees was used by Polygnotus and Micon, and ivory black is said to have been employed by Apelles. As for vehicles, there is a well-known passage in Pliny which Sir Joshua Reynolds interpreted as a description of glazing, that is, repainting with transparent colours; but it seems more probable that such accounts as have come down to us mean really no more than varnishing. The use of the word 'atamentum' by Pliny seems to imply that the varnish darkened the picture, which it would do if it were not colourless. It is generally believed now that the works of the Greek painters were executed in distemper and varnished afterwards, except their encaustic pictures, tediously executed with melted colours. Distemper or tempera (the Italian word for the same thing) is a kind of painting in which opaque colours, ground in water, are mixed with any kind of thin glue or white or yolk of egg with vinegar. We believe that the Greeks possessed oils and varnishes, but there is no evidence that they ever practised what we call oil-painting. However, a tempera picture protected by a coat of oil-varnish is distinguishable from an oil-painting only by experts. As to their palette, the probability is that the extremely restricted list of pigments which has been attributed to them was a matter of choice rather than of necessity for con- ventionally under-coloured work, or they may have begun their paintings with very few colours, as Titian did afterwards, and finished them with a fuller palette.
For a study of Roman painting our materials are much more abundant. We have no important works by famous artists, but there is an ample supply of such ordinary painting as was applied to the decoration of houses and tombs; and from this we may infer at least the technical condition of higher art. The variety of pigments was evidently sufficient to give a full scale of colouring by mixture or superposition, and, as oils and varnishes were known, it might have been possible for oil-painting to arise under the Cæsars. Everything was ready for it as everything was ready for printing, yet the final step was not taken. The art of tempera or size-painting remained technically much what it had been before, except that there may have been greater freedom in execution and in choice of subject. Classical taste in painting continued with a tradition of old methods for a considerable time after the introduction of Christianity, and even when the nude figure was no longer a subject of study tempera-painting was still practised, though more stiffly than in classic times. The distance from the painters of Pompeii to mediæval work is marked by more than a technical decline.
In reading histories of painting we may be on our guard against the careless and inaccurate employment of the word 'fresco.' It really means painting on fresh plaster—i.e. on plaster that is still wet; but the word is inaccurately used for paintings on dry plaster also. The practice of painting on walls covered with plaster is as old as ancient Assyria, and it has been believed that the ancient Greeks understood true fresco, principally on the strength of an expression of Plutarch, eph' hugreois zôgraphein, 'to paint on a wet ground.' Vitruvius, too, speaks of a wet ground, and, although he does not directly say that it was painted upon when wet, he says that, so prepared, it was fit for pictures, and that colours on it are permanent. This permanence of the colours is the characteristic of true fresco. Unfortunately, Plutarch compares painting on the wet with encaustic as evanescence to permanence.
Whatever may be the real antiquity of true fresco, it is certainly a much older process than oil-painting. It was understood and practised in Italy in the middle ages, when mural painting in churches was already in great request. The process is as follows: On the second coat of ordinary mortar is spread a coat of fine old lime mixed with well-sifted river sand. In a few hours (say from three to six, according to temperature) this begins to dry, and the work of painting must be completed before the drying begins, consequently a small surface of plaster is laid at a time. All honest and conscientious fresco-painters, such as Antonio Veneziano, resisted the temptation to retouch on the dry plaster; but the careless or the incompetent could not resist, though such retouching is simply cheating, as it is really not in fresco, and not permanent.
The technical process of fresco was well understood in Italy whilst art itself was still in a primitive condition. Cimabue, Taddeo Gaddi, and Giotto, with many less known men, painted in fresco as well as in tempera, so that all the technical part of the craft was a matter of ancient tradition when Raphael and Michael Angelo took it up on their own account, and brought to it far greater powers of mind. To appreciate the progress made before these great men it is necessary only to refer to the stiff and mindless Byzantine art from which that of Cimabue was already a partial emancipation.
After the invention of oil-painting the inconveniences of fresco were more strongly felt, and many artists turned away from it to the new process. True fresco cannot be retouched; it has to be painted darker than the artist's intention, as it lightens in drying, and it must be painted from sketches or cartoons. On the other hand, it is luminous and has no gloss, and so is suitable for mural decoration. Raphael seems to have liked fresco and oil equally well. Michael Angelo greatly preferred fresco, as better suited to his powers. Leonardo da Vinci painted his great mural work, 'The Last Supper,' in oil, though fresco must have naturally suggested itself.
Many modern attempts to revive fresco have been made in Europe. They have rarely been successful, and have especially failed in the Houses of Parliament, where many works have decayed prematurely. Modern failures have led to the adoption of a process on dry plaster, fixed afterwards with water-glass in spray, as in Maclise's large works in the Royal Gallery; but this is not absolutely durable. The best substitute for true fresco appears to be Mr Gambier Parry's 'spirit fresco,' employed by Sir Frederick Leighton for his large compositions at South Kensington. These are painted with a spirit medium on dry mortar. In France a substitute for fresco has been found in painting on canvas with a dead surface, the canvas being afterwards fastened to the wall with white lead. True fresco may now be considered almost a dead art.
The next step of importance in the history of art is the discovery, or earliest known practice, of what we call 'oil-painting,' which includes the use of varnishes during the progress of the work. This has been generally assigned to John Van Eyck, who was born about 1390; but it is now believed that his elder brother Hubert may have an equal if not a better claim. Both certainly worked in the new method, and John continued it after his brother's death. Since then the practice of oil-painting and of varnish-painting has been carried without interruption down to our own time, and, though it has undergone much technical development, it remains essentially distinguished from tempera by the mixture of oil or varnish with the colours themselves and by the consequences in execution to which this mixture has led. The brothers Van Eyck themselves were far from anticipating the future freedom and power of oil-painting. Their work was beautifully executed in a smooth and simple way, and, with the exception of small cracks, it has lasted wonderfully; but their careful rendering of detail belongs to the infancy of art. An Italian student of painting, Antonello da Messina, stayed in Flanders for some time and worked under John Van Eyck. He afterwards returned to Italy by way of Venice, and from him the knowledge of the new method spread to Florence, and thence to the other cities of Italy. The date of Antonello's death, which occurred in Venice, is not precisely known, but appears to have been in the last years of the 15th century.
It may be convenient to remember that the year 1500 saw the practice of oil-painting firmly established in the north and south of Europe. It did not immediately win the absolute pre-eminence that it has subsequently attained. Michael Angelo expressed a contempt for it which was probably due to the fact that its full powers were not yet developed by his neighbours. The fame of Raphael as an artist is due to other qualities than the technical merit of his oil-painting, which remained comparatively primitive. The earliest practice of oil-painting was dependent upon the luminous quality of the ground showing through the colours; and, although the early oil-painters manifested a workman-like skill in dealing with their materials, they displayed no power of handling. The manual precision of Albert Dürer has never been surpassed, yet his work as a painter is primitive. Roman painters of the time of Michael Angelo might use oil as a convenience, but they could have expressed themselves as completely in fresco or tempera. When we come to the Venetian school the case is very different. There was a harmony between the technical methods of oil and the genius of the Venetians which led to the highest technical excellence. Van Eyck and his followers, both in Flanders and Italy, painted upon a transparent monochrome. Titian used a substantial dead-colouring in which he could make whatever alterations he chose, and afterwards worked upon that by successive glazings till he obtained the utmost richness of quality. The notion that Titian had some secret that died with him may be dismissed as purely fanciful. His method of painting is well known, and his superiority to his imitators may be accounted for by his natural genius and by favourable circumstances. His master, Bellini, drew carefully and coloured well, but his work is still primitive, because it is still coloured drawing. In Titian's painting the different kinds of technical knowledge are so completely fused together that he is not the draughtsman who colours, but the painter. The same is true of Giorgione, almost equally gifted, but less favoured than Titian in the circumstances of his life.
Rubens was a great master of the technique of painting in another way. He painted much in transparent or semi-transparent colours over a first painting in transparent brown monochrome; but, instead of leaving the lights thin that the white ground might show through as in the practice of the early Flemish painters, Rubens loaded his lights with thick opaque colour. His way of painting was technically very systematic, which permitted an extreme rapidity. There is evidence that he followed the early practice of mixing varnish with his colours, at least when transparent and for linear sketching with the brush. The technical execution of Velasquez is a model of excellence in the use of both transparent and opaque colours and in variety of handling. It is not so methodical as that of Rubens, being always subordinated to the artistic intention of the painter.
The most perfect works on a small scale have hitherto been those of the Dutch painters, Teniers, Terburg, Metsu (or Metz), Maas, Peter de Hooch, and many others of the same school. Their method of painting was almost universally to begin with a transparent brown monochrome on which they painted the shadows thinly, giving more substance and opacity to the lights. Being limited in their aims, and painting chiefly what they could see around them and study at their own convenience, they attained a high degree of technical excellence. Their drawing is almost invariably careful and true, and their colouring harmonious, whilst the quality of their textures is often inimitable.
The practice of modern artists is always founded upon that of one or other of the masters we have mentioned. There are not very many ways of painting, or if they seem to be many they are reducible to a few very simple principles. The early method of giving luminous quality to the lights by letting the white ground show through them is seldom followed in these days, but it has been resorted to occasionally. The practice of Rubens, by which the shadows are painted thinly and the lights more thickly, is much commoner in the modern schools. Reynolds, who painted first a strong dead-colour with few colours and glazed upon it afterwards, worked on the principle of Titian. Landseer's practice was essentially that of the Flemish school, and Meissonier's (in his best works) that of the Dutch. Turner approached much more nearly to the Venetian practice than to that of Rubens, as he dead-coloured broadly and afterwards painted in detail on the dead-colour, using glazes and scumbles (opaque colour used thinly); but Turner's practice was complex, as he often had recourse to water-colour in his oil-pictures, and finally loaded his lights. Ingres, the leader of the classical French school, was a close follower of Raphael. It is difficult to point to any real technical originality in modern art, unless it be the use of thick pigments in the French school (called in French, pleine pâte) introduced by Decamps, and often exaggerated by his imitators. The novelty here was, however, rather in the brush-work than in the use of thick pigments themselves. Many French artists have also blurred their outlines in revolt against the clear definition of the classical school, but the originality was rather in the manner of doing it than in the mere softening of the outlines, as Titian, Correggio, Reynolds, and others had already carefully avoided the early hardness of definition.
Although the technical methods of oil-painting are few and have now been known for centuries, the varieties of quality which result from individual genius are almost as numerous as artists themselves. They cannot be explained without examples; but it may be said generally that, as different violinists elicit different qualities of tone from the same instrument, so the idiosyncrasy of painters produces new results with old colours and old processes. It is in this way, and not by the invention of novel methods, that the art continually renovates itself.
Oil-painting now holds the first place on account of its convenience, as it permits of infinite deliberation and alteration, and also on account of its great power and truth in imitating the textures and tones of nature. But the true successor of fresco in modern times is water-colour. It resembles fresco very closely by its rapidity and by the absence of gloss, though it cannot replace fresco in mural decoration. Water-colour, as a process, is much more ancient than oil, having been extensively employed in various ways during ancient and mediæval times; but the method of using it that gives the process its present intellectual value is essentially modern and English, dating from the early years of the 19th century. The practice of the 18th century led up to it by the use of broad washes in sepia or in neutral tint, afterwards more or less coloured, an adaptation of the Dutch and Flemish practice in oil-painting, except that the finished result stopped very far short of full colour. The water-colour of the present day has discarded the monochrome wash, beginning with pale washes in colour, and working from light to dark. In its perfection modern water-colour is distinguished by extreme freshness and brilliancy. It is important not only as an independent art, but by its great influence on modern oil-painting. The majority of oil-painters have themselves employed water-colour as an auxiliary for studies, especially in landscape, and much of the light and air in modern oil-painting may be attributed to its influence. Water-colour, in our own century, has proved a compensation for our failure in the attempted revival of fresco. Though apparently of inferior importance, because practised on a small scale, it has taught what fresco taught and more, as it has educated us in landscape. Improvements in the materials of water-colour have led some of its practitioners to attempt rivalry with the force of oil, which is unnecessary, as oil must ever remain the more powerful medium of the two, and water-colour has its own superiorities in freshness and delicacy. There does not seem to be any probability that either of the two arts will ever be replaced by a new discovery as tempera was superseded by oil, nor is it likely that the technical methods will be improved. There is room for improvement in a stricter abstinence from the use of evanescent or destructive colours; but unfortunately very few artists trouble themselves to secure the permanence of their works.
Water-colour was despised in France until the fall of the second empire; but the example of English artists has led the French to the study of it, and now many of them pursue it with success. Their methods of work are usually very simple and direct, and their influence is almost exclusively in favour of freshness and decision.
(2) The Intellectual History of Painting.—Under the Egyptian dynasties painters were recorders of events and decorators; in Assyria they illuminated a sort of pictorial history of royal deeds. In both these cases there could be very little room for the exercise of individual intellect in the artist, who was seldom more than a manual workman, laying on colour according to methods prescribed for him by authority. Even in Greece we have evidence that the manual skill of artists was despised as handicraft by the class of gentlemen and scholars; however, Greek painters of eminence attained individual distinction, and such a complete degree of personal emancipation that they were free to exercise whatever intellectual power they possessed. There is not much expression in Greek sculpture, but there is some, and what there is proves quite sufficiently that the subtle and acute intellect of Greece could express itself in art as effectually as in literature. What remains to us of Greek and Roman caricature is good evidence of faculties that might have exercised themselves, by an alliance with a higher form of art, in what we now call genre-painting. Still, we have no direct proof that the fine arts in Greece ever really were intellectually so great as her poetry, her philosophy, and her drama. In the decline of classical art we find little more than the current production of an inferior class of men for the adornment of habitations or tombs. The beginnings of Christian art, stiff in design and laboriously ornamental, give hardly any evidence of intellect; the artists who produced that art were in a condition of mental servitude, like that of the men who now manufacture holy icons in Russia, and who are the direct descendants of the early Byzantine school. As the fine arts became gradually emancipated from the thralldom of sacerdotal authority intellectual power began to show itself, and, at length, when the human mind was stimulated in so many directions by the great outburst of the Renaissance, the art of painting had its full share in the general activity, and assumed a place by the side of literature which it has ever since maintained. Nevertheless, the necessity for high manual accomplishment and technical mastery must always, in painting, give an advantage to the workman over the thinker; and so we find, as in many Dutch pictures, that clever representations of the most commonplace subjects preserve their value though almost destitute of mind. There can be no more striking contrast than that between a Dutchman toiling for six weeks on the representation of a besom and Michael Angelo painting a prophet in half a day; yet the Dutchman is immortal too. The intellectual progress of art has been marked by the extension of its sympathies. Under Christianity the art of painting began again from the beginning, without either technical or intellectual preparation. Its first awakening of sympathy is with the human side of Christianity, the love of mother and child, the sufferings of the crucified Christ, the sorrow and bereavement of the disciples. As religious art advances, its mental progress is shown by the increasing importance given to the human side of its subjects and the diminution of ornament in dress, till at length the dresses become simple draperies, almost without jewels or embroidery, and the charm of the work lies in the beauty or nobility of the faces and the dignity of the attitudes. With the Italian Renaissance the art of painting made a great intellectual advance by its sympathy with what was then the new activity of scholarship. Raphael was, if not himself a scholar, the intimate friend of scholars, working constantly under their influence; besides which he was an architect and an archaeologist. The selection of 'The School of Athens' as the subject of one of the most important mural pictures in the Vatican is most significant. In Leonardo da Vinci the artistic is united to the scientific intellect; in Rubens it is united to the broadest culture of the scholar and the man of the world. Rembrandt may not have been a learned man, but few authors or artists have shown more sympathy with different classes, or have discerned so well the dignity that may belong to the learned or the unlearned, to the rich or the poor. The pictures and etchings of biblical subjects by Rembrandt bring them nearer to us by their homely truth than the ideal conceptions of Raphael. Surely we cannot refuse the title 'intellectual' to an art which contains a philosophy at once so comprehensive and so ripe. The faculties of Teniers and Ostade are narrower and lower, yet even in their works there is a sympathy with the humbler classes which has lasted down to the art of our own day, which was lively in the art of Wilkie, and is graver and more profound in the work of Israels.
All portrait-painting of any importance has endeavoured not only to copy the features, but to express as much as possible of the mind; and the knowledge we derive from historians and biographers is felt to be incomplete until we have referred to the canvases of some observant contemporary artist, some Holbein, Van Dyck, Velasquez, Reynolds, or Raeburn. Even in these days of photographic invention the portrait-painter keeps his place, great portraits are painted still, and future students of history will not be satisfied with the photograph alone, but will go for the intellectual element to the canvases of a Millais or a Bonnat. Closely connected with portraiture is the art which observes and records the passing phases of social life, an art which reached perfection in the 18th century in the strongly characterised and too truthful pictures of Hogarth. The representation of contemporary life, in drawing-rooms and elsewhere, has been actively pursued down to our own day in all the leading schools of Europe, and is now practised more than ever, especially in France, where the artists are tempted by the elegance of modern interiors and the grace of feminine costumes.
In the 19th century there has also been much retrospective painting, particularly of the 18th century, and this has led to a very close and minute study of that century by Leslie in England, Meissonier and Gérôme in France, and many other artists of ability. The retrospective tendency of our own time has been strongly manifested in other ways. The modern interest in the past has been shown by much 'historical' painting on insufficient data representing personages whose portraits we do not possess, in buildings that have left no trace, and engaged in actions known to us only by the meagre narrative of some chronicler. Art of this kind possesses no real historical interest, though it may display considerable artistic ability. Of late years it has been in a great measure superseded by archaeological painting, skilfully practised by Mr Alma Tadema and his followers, whose object is to revive the past for us in its details as it really was by representing everyday life without much pretence to the portraiture of individuals or the recording of particular events. This kind of painting has brought the art nearer than ever to the spirit of scholarship. No doubt the special interest of it is outside of artistic interest, but there is no reason why archaeological pictures should not be as beautifully drawn, as well composed, and as richly coloured as any others.
A sketch of the history of painting would not be complete without some notice of the way in which landscape became a speciality. Rude and childish landscape backgrounds are found even in Assyrian art, they are not uncommon in Greek and Roman antiquity, and they attained a considerable degree of freedom and observation in the backgrounds of the paintings at Pompeii. After the death of classic art, painting began again from its first rudiments in the ornamental art of the middle ages, and the study of landscape soon revived in the backgrounds of religious pictures. Mediæval landscape lasted down to Raphael, who was himself essentially a mediæval landscape-painter, especially in his early works. The general characteristics of that kind of landscape are clear atmosphere, pure skies, either cloudless or with a few white clouds, pale blue distances with hills, green foregrounds, and almost invariably one or more well-kept buildings. Trees in the foreground are usually slender, with thin twigs and few leaves visible almost separately against the sky; in the distance they may be more massive. Water is usually calm in ponds or winding rivers, or serene in distant sea. Rocks occur in mediæval landscape, but are seldom accurately represented, the mediæval ignorance of rocks having even persisted in Leonardo da Vinci notwithstanding his scientific genius. In the backgrounds of Albert Dürer all kinds of objects are observed and set down as in a catalogue; he perceived the grandeur of mountains, the abundance of forest trees, the picturesque beauty of mediæval towns, and he took an interest in all the details of the foreground; but he never fused his details into one connected whole; he never saw nature with the eye of a landscape-painter; he had no sense of atmosphere or effect. The beginning of the modern landscape spirit is to be sought for in Venice. Titian made many studies of landscape, and, although in his pen-drawings there is no recognition of local colour and very little effect, there is a remarkable sense of grandeur and a fine grasp of noble scenery, not in detail merely, but as a whole. In his painted landscape backgrounds Titian goes still further and attempts transient effects, showing himself a true precursor of the modern landscape-painters. Tintoretto occasionally exercised his magnificent powers in the same direction. The most influential of professed landscape-painters was Claude. He had not the power of the Venetians, but he had a tenderness and charm, and a sense of grace and beauty, that won the hearts of contemporaries and have since maintained the celebrity of his name, though it is easy for criticism to point out deficiencies of knowledge. Unlike Dürer, Claude saw nature, not in details, but synthetically in complete pictures full of atmosphere and light. Salvador Rosa and Gaspard Dughet (or Poussin) maintained a grandeur of conception and style in landscape which, in spite of a certain remoteness from pure nature, tell effectually in picture-galleries even at the present day.
The same may be said of Gainsborough, whilst Wilson perpetuated in England a feeling for landscape akin to the amenity of Claude. Cozens and Girtin had the old breadth and serenity of conception, with a more modern view of nature, and
Turner did not manifest much personal independence until he had first studied and imitated the old masters, particularly Clande. Indeed, he is much more closely connected with the past than with the future of landscape-painting. He had the deepest respect for the older masters, whom he both studied and imitated, yet he founded no school and has had little influence on the art of England and none on that of continental Europe. Constable, on the other hand, who during his lifetime was a less celebrated artist, has had a very far-reaching influence. The freshness and originality of his view of nature, less poetical and imaginative than Turner's, but nearer to rustic reality, determined the future direction of that French rustic school which in its turn has influenced all the schools of Europe. Whilst England has had her poet landscape-painter in Turner, France has had hers in Corot, a painter of at least equal celebrity, though of much narrower range. Like Turner, Corot founded his art on the study of Claude, but won public favour late in life by a delicacy of sentiment which was his own. His subjects were simple and his effects chosen so as to avoid strong colouring, but he composed beautifully and was a master of quiet grays, pale yellows, and browns.
Since the middle of the 19th century landscape-painting, both in oil and water-colour, has been actively pursued all over Europe. Every class of scenery has found its interpreters. Scotland has been painted effectively by Horatio MacCulloch, Sam Bough, Mr Peter Graham, Mr Colin Hunter, and many others. A severely accurate and scientific spirit was imported into English landscape by Mr Cooke and Mr Brett. The French landscape of the present day is usually marked by simplicity of subject, breadth of treatment, and truth of tone, without much accuracy of detail. Marine painters in all countries appear to concentrate their attention more than their predecessors upon the sea itself, and both English, French, and American artists have produced remarkable studies of waves.
A sketch of the history of painting seems to require a brief outline of the sects which have divided artists. The chief of these have been the Classics, the Romantics, the Realists, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Impressionists. The classical aim was the pursuit of the ideal, which was believed to be one and to have been attained by Raphael; this school was represented by the French painter Ingres. The Romantics desired freedom from the classical restraint, and liberty to illustrate all literature and all history that interested them in their own way; their great man was Eugène Delacroix. The doctrine of the Realists is the right to represent persons and things as they are without beautifying them by idealisation. This doctrine was at one time represented by the French painter Courbet; but, in fact, there was a great deal of downright realism long before his time, as we find it in Velasquez, Rembrandt, Teniers, Ostade, Hogarth, and many others, who have redeemed the ugliness of a subject by the intelligence of their treatment and the force of their execution. Even in the case of Courbet himself we now easily see that, although he affected to take nature exactly as it is, he displayed the wilfulness and the style of an artist. English Pre-Raphaelitism was not alone in its return to the painstaking imitation of detail which marked the practice of Raphael's predecessors. Like the continental movements in the same direction, it was a return to patient analysis, and had a disciplinary value; but the accumulation of artistic experience was too much for it. After Titian, Velasquez, and Reynolds, it is not possible to bind down the art of painting permanently to the minute practice of the early masters. Intellectually the movement was of more importance, as it favoured the choice of noble subjects. Impressionism asserts the importance of visual truth as opposed to mere truth of fact, and affirms that painting ought not to represent what is, but what appears. Impressionism is also opposed to the abstract rendering of this or that quality; it requires a synthesis of all visible qualities as they strike the eye together. The Impressionists claim several great artists, especially Turner and Constable, as their predecessors. They are equally opposed to the detail of the minute painters and to the hard, clear, linear definition of the classical schools. There can be no doubt that theoretically they have right on their side, but in practice their art is often unsatisfactory, as it requires the happiest and most rapid sketching to be successful, with great certainty in selection and perfect truth of tone.
The present state of the art of painting is one of complete freedom from all the former restraints of religious or classical authority. The fine arts are as free as the sciences, and, although less exclusively devoted than men of science to the pursuit of natural truth, contemporary painters at least refer to nature for everything. The consequence is a pervading freshness in the modern schools, and it is also certain that manual skill has never been so general as it is now. On the other hand, the intensity of the commercial struggle amongst the great multitude of artists is certainly not favourable either to learning or to refinement, and it is doubtful whether painting makes any advance in taste and culture corresponding to the increase of its productiveness or the extension of its fields of study.
Chronology.—The extent of the subject renders laconic treatment necessary. Archaic Greek drawing, marked by want of proportion, especially in thickness of limbs, lasts in vase-painting throughout the 6th century B.C. and later. In 5th century better drawing on many vases; in 4th century it is often learned and beautiful, as on Camirus vase (British Museum), contemporary with Protogenes. Attitudes then easy and graceful, faces shown in all positions; 5th and 4th centuries B.C. golden age of antique painting, including Apollodorus, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Apelles, Polygnotus, and Micon. Romans imported Greek pictures and took up painting by imitation. Roman painter Ludius (Augustan age) anticipated Claude in choice of subjects. Paintings preserved at Herculanum and Pompeii, and in baths of Titus, belong nearly to Christian era, some earlier, others a few years later. Pompeian painting shows interest in ordinary life and in landscape. Classical art is, in feeling and principle, prolonged for six centuries in the service of Christianity.
The middle ages are divided by Woltmann into (1) Early, from 700 to 950 A.D.; (2) Romanesque, from 950 to 1250 A.D.; (3) Gothic, from 1250 to 1400 A.D. Thus the three periods are 250, 300, and 150 years. Throughout these ages, speaking generally, the human motive of art is religious, and its artistic motive is ornament. In the middle ages figure design began again from a barbarous infancy, it being necessary for the representation of religious personages. From 8th to 13th century childish drawing and gaudy colouring prevailed throughout Europe. In 13th some partial improvement takes place, and in 14th the advance is remarkable when Claes Sluter carved his life-like statues. Brothers Van Eyck (q.v.) born in this century.
The 15th century is the time of transition from the art of the middle ages to an improved craft of drawing and painting preparatory to the Renaissance. Improvement simultaneous in Flanders and Italy. Van Eyck's work known in southern Europe, his influence only technical, and soon died out in Flanders itself. Roger van der Weyden (died 1464) worked differently, having stayed in Italy and exercised much influence in Flanders and Germany. His pupil, Hans Memling, died 1495.
The 16th century is remarkable for its extension of the subject-matter of painting. Before 1500 the art is chiefly confined to religious subjects and portraits, afterwards it includes more of what we now call genre—a change associated with the name of Quentin Massys (1466-1530). The nude introduced into Flemish art from Italy by Jan Gossart (died 1532). After this date Flemish painters went much to Italy, which produced a hybrid school called the 'Italianised Flemings'—e.g. Michael Coxis (1499-1592), spent many years in Italy. The first Flemish school, now at an end, was influential in Germany; Roger van der Weyden had German pupils. Cologne and Nuremberg were active centres. Martin Schongauer lived in Rhineland in the 15th century. Hans Holbein the elder, of Augsburg, lived in 15th and 16th centuries. His famous son, Hans (1498-1543), represents the perfection of German realism in portrait. Albert Dürer (1471-1528) stands for Germany, coming out of, but not yet delivered from, the middle ages. His contemporary, Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), was like Dürer, laborious and productive. Dürer visited Venice 1506, and was admired for his skill (particularly by Giovanni Bellini), but had little influence. German hardness and minuteness of finish culminated in the comparatively mindless art of Denner (1685-1747).
Italian painting is minutely divided into local schools, and these again chronologically into three or four stages of development. Masters of 14th century divided into Tuscan, Sieneese, Bolognese, Paduan, and Neapolitan; those of the 15th into Tuscan, Umbrian, Paduan, Veronese, Milanese, Venetian; those of the 16th are headed by the well-known great individualities. The schools affect each other—e.g. it is difficult to disengage Roman and Florentine art, whilst the Umbrian school gave strength to Rome. The following list gives the most famous names. 14th Century—Tuscans.—Giotto (1276-1336), Taddeo Gaddi (1300-66), Orcagna (died before 1376). Sicnese.—Duccio (still living in 1339), Angelico (1387-1455). 15th Century—Tuscans.—Paolo Uccello (c. 1400-79), Masaccio (1402-28), Filippo Lippi (1412-69), Ghirlandaio (1449-98). Umbrians.—Pietro della Francesca (living 1494), Giovanni Santi (died 1594), Pietro Perugino (1446-1524). Bolognese.—Francis (1450-1517). Paduans.—Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506). Venetians.—Antonello da Messina (1414-93), Gentile Bellini (1421-1507), Giovanni Bellini (1426-1516). 16th Century—The Great Masters.—Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michael Angelo (1475-1563), Raphael (1483-1520), Correggio (1494-1534), Giorgione (1478-1511), Titian (1477-1576), Tintoret (1512-94), Paul Veronese (1530-88). Other Italians of eminent, but not of supreme, rank in the 16th century are Luini (living 1500-30), Volterra (1509-66), Andrea del Sarto (1488-1530), Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1485-1547), Palma Vecchio (c. 1480-1528), Moroni (c. 1525-78).
In the north of Europe there was a new development occupying the 17th century. In the year 1600 Rubens was an accomplished artist (died 1640). Snyders (1579-1637) his most powerful contemporary, and Van Dyck (1599-1641) his most eminent scholar. David Teniers, the father (1582-1649), was eclipsed by David Teniers, the son (1610-94); the latter gave genre-painting a firm position. Gonzales Coques (1614-84) was a portrait-painter. Passing to Holland we find Frans Hals, a contemporary of the elder Teniers (1584-1666), and a painter of remarkable certainty and spirit. The greatest of the Dutchmen, Rem- brandt, belonged entirely to the 17th century (1607-69). The fame of Rembrandt has greatly increased during the 19th century, and so has that of Frans Hals. Rembrandt had distinguished pupils, like Dow and Flink, and he influenced many artists. Terburg, genre-painter, was Rembrandt's contemporary (1608-81), also Metsu (1615-58). These carried genre-painting to perfection. Landscape also prospered in Rembrandt's time, chief representatives being Ruisdael (c. 1628-82) and Hobbema.
In Spain a primitive school was founded as early as 1450. In the 16th century local schools developed themselves. Eminent foreign artists visited Spain and worked there, as in England. Of the Spaniards themselves, few have become celebrated out of their own country. Ford's list includes only thirty-seven names; the National Gallery only seven, and of these one was a Greek. Only five Spanish artists are represented in the Louvre. The fame of the school is due almost entirely to Velasquez (1599-1660) and Murillo (1616-82). Next to these come Zurbaran (1598-1662) and Ribera (1588-1656); Morales (c. 1509-86) is also known. Goya (1746-1828) is the only great Spanish artist between the old masters and our contemporaries.
The French school before developing a character decidedly of its own was subject to foreign, chiefly Italian influences, especially after the Renaissance. François Clouet (c. 1500-72), one of the earliest French masters, was naturalised, and probably of Flemish origin, like his accurate method of work; Jean Cousin (1500-89) worked under Italian influence; Vouet (1590-1649) studied, lived, and married in Italy; the great Poussin (1594-1665) lived nearly forty years in Rome, and died there; Claude le Lorrain (1600-82) lived fifty-five years in Rome, where he, too, died; Lesueur (1617-55) refused to go to Rome, but was influenced by Raphael; Le Brun (1619-90) studied four years in Rome, like other eminent Frenchmen since his time. The following artists are essentially French: Rigaud (1659-1743), Watteau (1684-1721), Lancret (1690-1743), Chardin (1699-1779), Boucher (1704-70), Greuze (1725-1805), Fragonard (1732-1806), Prud'hon (1758-1823).
In the British school the seven names which follow are at the same time distinctly national, and generally recognised by continental criticism. They occupy in this respect a position similar to that of the few Spanish masters who are generally known: Hogarth (1697-1764), Reynolds (1723-92), Gainsborough (1727-88), Turner (1775-1851), Constable (1776-1837), Wilkie (1785-1841), Landseer (1802-73).
The peculiarity of the present situation is that all schools have turned away from their national ancestry. The modern Italians go straight to nature, and paint it as if they had no art behind them. The modern Dutch have no connection with the great Dutchmen of the 17th century. Spaniards of the school of Fortuny are as remote as Americans from Velasquez. French landscape has nothing to do with Claude. Leighton is not a descendant of Reynolds. We find everywhere that the national artistic ancestry counts for little or nothing. The localisation of styles has to be done anew by criticism for the close of the 19th century, and it is complicated by the free choice everywhere made amongst past examples. Ribot is nearer to Ribera than to any Frenchman. Paris has become the capital of the art of painting. The clever and promising American school is as yet an offshoot from the French; and the northern European nations send their art-students to Paris as once they went to Rome. Schools are no longer national, the art has become cosmopolitan to a degree impossible for literature.
Technical Chronology.—400 B.C., white-lead of this date has been found at Athens; 1398 A.D., Indian ink prepared in China as now; 1350-1400, true fresco used in Italy; 1500, oil-painting generally adopted; 1710, Prussian blue discovered by Diesbach of Berlin; 1787, zinc white suggested by Courtois of Dijon; 1802, Thénard discovers cobalt blue; 1814, discovery of emerald green; 1814, first discovery of existence of artificial ultramarine, and prize offered for its manufacture soon afterwards won by Guimet of Lyons; 1814, cappagh brown found on Lord Audley's estate; 1817, cadmium discovered by Stromeyer; 1834, zinc white prepared by Winsor and Newton as Chinese white; 1838, discovery of chromium green by Pannetier and Binet; 1850, water-glass painting introduced. Of the ten colours chosen for permanence in Professor Church's restricted palette six have been discovered during the 19th century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Vasari, Lives of the Painters (1850); Lanzi, History of Painting (1847); Blanc, Histoire des Peintres (n.d.); Kugler, Handbook, Italian Schools, with Eastlake's additions (1874), and Handbook, German, Flemish, and Dutch Schools, remodelled by Waagen, rewritten by Crowe (1874); Carel van Mander, The Book of Painters; Woltmann and Woermann, History of Painting, edited by S. Colvin (1880); Cunningham, British Painters, edited by Mrs Heaton (1879); Müntz, Les Précurseurs de la Renaissance (1882), Raphael et son Temps (1886), and Histoire de l'Art pendant la Renaissance (5 vols. 1889 et seq.); Passavant, Rafael von Urbino (1839-58); Mrs Heaton, Albrecht Dürer (1870) and Lionardo da Vinci (1874); Scott, Life of Dürer (1869); Gilbert, Landscape in Art before Claude and Salvador (1885); Ford, Handbook for Spain (1869); Clément, Michel Ange, Léonard de Vinci, Raphael (1867); Mantz, Holbein (1879) and Boucher (1880); Fromentin, Les Maîtres d'Autrefois (1876); Ruskin, Modern Painters (1843-60); Wedmore, The Masters of Genre-painting (1880) and Studies in English Art (1876); Poynter, Lectures on Art (1879); Atkinson, Modern Schools of Art in Germany (1880); Collier, A Manual of Oil-painting (1886) and A Primer of Art (1882); Church, The Chemistry of Paints and Painting (1890); Morelli, Italian Painters (applying new methods for solving problems as to the authenticity of 'old masters'; trans. 1892); H. Quilter, Preferences (1892); G. Moore, Modern Painting (1893); W. C. Brownell, French Art (1894); R. Muther, History of Modern Painting (3 vols.; trans. 1894-96). See further the articles in this work on the greater painters—DÜRER, LEONARDO DA VINCI, MICHELANGELO, RAPHAEL, TITIAN, TURNER, and the rest; that on RUSKIN; also those on ART, FRESCO, IMPRESSIONISM, PIGMENTS, PRE-RAPHAELITISM, RENAISSANCE, ROMANTICISM, WATER-COLOURS, &c.