The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book. William Makepeace Thackeray
salubrious airs (‘the breath of Nature blowing free,’ as the Corn-law man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapours are rising up from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein, lies the vast privilege of the landscape painter: he does not address you with one fixed particular subject of expression, but with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large pieces of figures have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David’s sansculotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face!
There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness and gaiety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades! What splendid dandies are those, ever smirking, turning out their toes, with broad blue ribands to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches! Yonder, in the midst of a golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little Cupids, bubbling up in clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air. There is, to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined to pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude—calm, fresh, delicate, yet full of flavour—should be likened to a bottle of Chateau Margaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but Romanée Gelée?—heavy, sluggish—the luscious odour almost sickens you; a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if you had been drinking hot blood.
An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off this mortal stage, in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates. Confess how many times you have read Béranger, and how many Milton? If you go to the Star and Garter, don’t you grow sick of that vast luscious landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to this subject—say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton they never grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with exquisite Titania. Let us thank Heaven, my dear sir, for according to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I have never heard that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses of the sublime are but rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and to the donkeys; and if it nothing profit us, aërias tentâsse domos along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.
I have now only to mention the charming ‘Cruche Cassée’ of Greuze, which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the colour (a thought too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and colour; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very fine picture by Bon Bollongue, ‘Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child,’ deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigour and richness of colour. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the French school has produced—as deep as Poussin, of a better colour, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects.
Every one of Lesueur’s church-pictures are worth examining and admiring; they are full of ‘unction’ and pious mystical grace. ‘Saint Scholastica’ is divine; and the ‘Taking down from the Cross’ as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say Raphael at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare that the ‘Jardinière’ is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the ‘Saint Elizabeth’ is a bad picture—a bad composition, badly drawn, badly coloured, in a bad imitation of Titian—a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when Raphael painted this picture, two years before his death, the spirit of painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; it was time that he should die!!
There—the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is no time to speak of Lesueur’s ‘Crucifixion,’ which is odiously coloured, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most difficult to translate into words;—one lays down the pen, and thinks and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colours are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which, for the present, adieu.—Your faithful
M. A. T.
To Mr. Robert MacGilp, Newman Street, London.
THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN
SIMON GAMBOUGE was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and, as all the world knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody came to sit to him.
As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better himself by taking a wife—a plan which a number of other wise men adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a butcher’s daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to quit the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa—such was the fair creature’s name—‘was as lovely a bit of mutton,’ her father said, ‘as ever a man would wish to stick a knife into.’ She had sat to the painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge’s pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless other characters: Portrait of a Lady—Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph—Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude—Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the offspring of their affections.
The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be more lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little household; bakers’ bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father, unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and swore that his daughter, and the dauber her husband, should have no more of his wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and crying over their little infant, vowed to Heaven that they would do without: but in the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon pawned his best coat.
When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a kind of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they, in the course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan, his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a washhand basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and arm-chairs. Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had found a second father in her uncle—a base pun, which showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no longer the tender simple Griskinissa of other days.
I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking: she swallowed the warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole evening with the crimson plush breeches.