Landscapes. Émile Michel

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      Preface

      Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Magpie on the Gallows (Peasants “dancing under the gallows”) (detail), 1568.

      Oil on panel, 45.6 × 50.8 cm.

      Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany.

      This book does not claim to be a complete history of landscape painting. The length of such a history would considerably exceed the proportions of this volume, but I have nevertheless endeavoured to give some idea of the order in which the different masters appeared, and of the relative importance of each. Having only to speak here of those who excelled, I have tried to show, in some sort of sequence, whence these artists came, the special merit of each, and his influence on the development of art.

      This chronological order was imposed by the subject itself. It is also helpful for the explanation of certain facts. The development of landscape painting did not take place simultaneously, but by turns in the various schools according to the preoccupations of the various regions, and the genius of the great artists distinguished as its exponents.

      Our study begins with the Renaissance. As the imitation of nature played but a minor part in antiquity, we need not look for masters in landscape painting there. In Greece, the anthropomorphism of religion prevailed in art as in literature, and among the statuary of the great epoch there is scarcely a fragment of rock or a tree trunk with ivy or vine leaves clinging to it to be found. Although landscape painting occupies a fairly important place in the villas of Rome and the Campagna, it always remains purely decorative, and the pictorial elements to be found in it seem to be merely accidental. Such work, too, was anonymous, and of a secondary order whose facile execution denoted a certain skill: but it does not compare with that close interpretation of nature in which all details are used to enhance the general effect.

      We shall not attempt to discuss, in this volume, the way in which landscape painting has been understood and practised in the Far East. In Japanese albums, particularly in those of Hokusaï, the varied subjects are rendered with a lifelike and piquant conciseness. Except for degrees of dexterity, these somewhat summary sketches, aced with a clever lightness of touch and drawn without models, are a result of very similar formulæ. Charming though they are, they lack the individual originality and that rich diversity of feeling that can be appreciated in the European masters. It is to the latter, therefore, that we shall confine our study.

      Among these we shall notice many artists who were not exclusively landscapists, and side by side with Claude, J. van Ruisdael, Constable, Corot, Rousseau, and Daubigny, several great masters, such as Van Eyck, Titian, Dürer, Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt and Velázquez, who practised all branches of art, have their place in this volume by virtue of the skill with which they interpreted nature and expressed her beauties. In order to better understand them, I have studied these artists both in their works and in the countries in which they lived, and have endeavoured to point out any special features peculiar to them and to judge the sincerity of their interpretations. It is impossible to thoroughly appreciate Claude and Poussin without having seen Italy, when, different as was their style, it becomes evident that the same scenery inspired them both. It is the same in Holland; at every step one discovers the humble subjects of which Van Goyen, J. van Ruisdael, and Van de Velde have given us such faithful and poetical representations. By living again with them in the countries where their talent was formed, I have more than once come across their favourite haunts, and even the very spot at which they halted.

      As regards modern times, it is the uniquely enviable privilege of my age to have come in contact with most of the landscapists who have been the glory of the nineteenth century school. Some of the details which I give concerning them, their careers and their ideas, I have had either from their own lips or from their friends and acquaintances. But to criticise impartially the artists of one’s own day, one must not be too near them, and it is for this reason that this volume deals only with those who are no longer with us.

      Having made frequent comparisons of very dissimilar works, I have developed the faculty of admiring the most diverse styles and of recognising talent wherever it is to be found.

      Chapter 1 The Masters of Landscape Painting in Italy

      Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), The Porta Portello, Padua (detail), c.1741–1742.

      Oil on canvas, 62 × 109 cm.

      National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

      Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo), 1503–1506.

      Oil on poplar, 77 × 53 cm.

      Musée du Louvre, Paris.

      Raphael (Raffaello Santi), La Belle Jardinière, also known as Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape, 1507–1508.

      Oil on wood, 122 × 80 cm.

      Musée du Louvre, Paris.

      Landscape painting made its appearance very late in Christian art, and for a long time it played but a minor part. It is not our intention here to treat its humble origins: a few words will suffice to show the clumsiness of its first attempts and the slowness with which it developed. In the mosaics, as in the primitive miniatures, picturesque elements borrowed from nature held a considerable place from an early date, but these purely decorative elements were reproduced in so rudimentary a fashion, that those who depicted them considered it prudent to add the names of the objects which they meant to portray.

      In the long and profound obscurity which enveloped Western Europe during the Middle Ages, the first symptoms of revival are so rare and so faint that it is difficult to distinguish them from the ruins left by vanished civilisations.

      During the sanguinary struggles that marked those centuries of cultural atrophy, it seems as though art had been on the verge of foundering completely, until beliefs more elevated and more humane finally supplanted the narrow and savage formalism that had been enforced by a myriad of despotic landlords and religious authorities.

      Nature, for a long time considered as an enemy, disclosed her beauties to the tender and ardent soul of St. Francis (1182–1226). In the depth of the solitude to which he is attracted, God speaks to him, and in the most insignificant creatures he recognises the work of the Creator, which he celebrated in impassioned accents such as Europe had not yet heard.

      As Frederic Ozanam says, the Basilica of Assisi, the venerated tomb of the saint, was destined to be the cradle of a new art. It was at Assisi that Giotto (1267–1337) opened up hitherto unexplored paths for painting. True, landscape painting plays a very secondary part in his works, and a return to the direct observation of nature is manifested more particularly by a closer study of the human figure. But his desire for truth urged him on to represent with greater exactness the various spots where he placed his compositions, to introduce into them picturesque details which his predecessors had neglected: some semblance of architecture, rocks of strange forms and colours, with shrubs or trees growing in their crevices. His perspective was childish; the proportions of objects were scarcely respected at all; the houses were too small to shelter the persons near them; the colouring was dull and monotonous, and the forms were rudimentary and simplified to excess.

      Sculptors, and particularly Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378–1455), drew largely from nature in their works, reproducing minor details with grace and exactness; whilst Giotto di Bondone’s successors for a long time copied one another. But just as the study of the forms and proportions of the human body was developed by the observance of anatomy, that of the representation of landscape gradually gained in breadth and precision from a more correct knowledge of the laws of perspective. A delicate and careful observation of the hidden beauties of nature led to its being gradually brought into