Travels in France during the years 1814-15. Patrick Fraser Tytler
general character, which the splendour of colouring is so apt to destroy. It is a feeling similar to that which Lord Byron has so finely described, as arising from the beauty of moonlight scenery:—
———"Mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies."
The Dutch and Flemish school, to which you next advance, possesses merit, and is distinguished by a character of a very different description. It was the well-known object of this school, to present an exact and faithful imitation of nature; to exaggerate none of its faults, and enhance none of its excellencies, but exhibit it as it really appears to the eye of an ordinary spectator. Its artists selected, in general, some scene of humour or amusement, in the discovery of which, the most ignorant spectators might discover other sources of pleasure than those which the merit of the art itself afforded. They did not pretend, in general, to aim at the exhibition of passion or powerful emotion: their paintings, therefore, are free from that painful display of theatrical effect, which characterises the French school; their object was not to represent those deep scenes of sorrow or suffering, which accord with the profound feelings which it was the object of the Italian school to awaken; they want, therefore, the dignity and grandeur which the works of the greater Italian painters possess: their merit consists in the faithful delineation of those ordinary scenes and common occurrences, which are familiar to the eye of the most careless observer. The power of the painter, therefore, could be displayed only in the minuteness of the finishing, or the brilliancy of the effect; and he endeavoured, by the powerful contrast of light and shade, to give an higher character to his works, than the nature of their subject could otherwise admit.
The pictures of Teniers, Ostade, and Gerard Dow, possess these merits, and are distinguished by this character in the highest degree; but their qualities are so well known in this country, as to render any observation on them superfluous. There is a very great collection here preserved of the works of Rembrandt, and their design and effect bear, in general, a higher character than belongs to most of the works of this celebrated master.
In one respect, the collection in the Louvre is altogether unrivalled—in the number and beauty of the Wouvermans which are there to be met with; nor is it possible, without having seen it, to appreciate, with any degree of justice, the variety of design, the accuracy of drawing, or delicacy of finishing, which distinguish his works from those of any other painter of a similar description. There are 38 of his pieces there assembled, all in the finest state of preservation, and all displaying the same unrivalled beauty of colouring and execution. In their design, however, they widely differ; and they exhibit, in the most striking manner, the real object to which painting should be applied, and the causes of the errors in which its composition has been involved. His works, for the most part, are crowded with figures; his subjects are in general battle-pieces, or spectacles of military pomp, or the animated scenes which the chace presents; and he seems to have exhausted all the efforts of his genius, in the variety of incident and richness of execution, which these subjects are fitted to afford. From the confused and indeterminate expression, however, which the multitude of their objects exhibit, we turn with delight to those simpler scenes in which his mind seems to have reposed, after the fatigues which it had undergone: to the representation of a single incident, or the delineation of a certain occurrence—to the rest of the traveller after the fatigues of the day—to the repose of the horse in the intermission of labour—to the return of the soldier after the dangers of the campaign;—scenes, in which every thing combines for the uniform character, and where the genius of the artist has been able to give to the rudest occupations of men, and even to the objects of animal life, the expression of general poetical feeling.
The pictures of Vandyke and Rubens belong to a much higher school than that which rose out of the wealth and the limited taste of the Dutch people. There are 60 pieces of the latter of these masters in the Louvre, and, combined with the celebrated Gallery in the Luxembourg Palace, they form the finest assemblage of them which is to be met with in the world. The character of his works differs essentially from that both of the French and the Dutch schools; he was employed, not in painting cabinet pictures for wealthy merchants, but in designing great altar pieces for splendid churches, or commemorating the glory of sovereigns in imperial galleries. The greatness of his genius rendered him fit to attempt the representation of the most complicated and difficult objects; but in the confidence of this genius, he seems to have lost sight of the genuine object of composition in his art. He attempts what it is impossible for painting to accomplish—he aims at telling a whole story by the expression of a single picture; and seems to pour forth the profusion of his fancy, by crowding his canvas with a multiplicity of figures, which serve no other purpose than that of shewing the endless power of creation which the author possessed. In each figure there is great vigour of conception, and admirable power of execution; but the whole possesses no general character, and produces no permanent emotion. There is a mixture of allegory and truth in many of his greatest works, which is always painful; a grossness in his conception of the female form, which destroys the symmetry of female beauty; and a wildness of imagination in his general design, which violates the feelings of ordinary taste. You survey his pictures with astonishment—at the power of thought and brilliancy of colouring which they display; but they produce no lasting impression on the mind; they have struck no chord of feeling or emotion, and you leave them with no other feeling, than that of regret, that the confusion of objects destroys the effect which each in itself might be fitted to produce. And if one has made a deeper impression; if you dwell on it with that delight which it should ever be the object of painting to produce, you find that your pleasure proceeds from a single figure, or the expression of a detached part of the picture; and that, in the contemplation of it, you have, without being conscious of it, detached your mind from the observation of all that might interfere with its characteristic expression, and thus preserved that unity of emotion which is essential to the existence of the emotion of taste, but which the confusion of incident is so apt to destroy.
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