A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools

2627. EVENING ON THE LAKE

Corot (French: 1796-1875). See 2135.

Formerly in the collection of Lord Leighton. That Corot liked the effect of trees stretching out a graceful arm across the water may be seen by comparing this picture with No. 2625.

2628. NOON

2629. A FLOOD

Corot (French: 1796-1875). See 2135.

2630. COWS STANDING IN A MARSH

Corot (French: 1796-1875). See 2135.

How simple are the ingredients out of which Corot makes a picture! A marsh, two cows with a herdsman, and four willows; but all are suffused in a beautiful haze, and wrought into an exquisite harmony of tone and colour. Like all Corot's pictures, this should be seen from some little distance; the more it is observed, the more will its charm be felt.

2631. THE FISHERMAN'S HUT

Corot (French: 1796-1875). See 2135.

An exquisite harmony in tender green and pink.

2632. THE STORM

2633. COMMON WITH STORMY SUNSET

Diaz (French: 1809-1876). See 2058.

2634. RIVER SCENE

Jules Dupré (French: 1812-1889).

Dupré, the last of the romantic school of French landscape, the friend and the survivor by many years of Millet and Rousseau, was born at Nantes. He began by painting on china, in the studio at Sèvres of his uncle, Arsène Gillet, to whom also Diaz was at one time apprenticed. At the age of 22 he was already exhibiting at the Salon; and unlike other members of the group, he was well treated by the artistic powers of the day. During a visit to England he became acquainted with Constable. He lived at Isle-Adam near Paris.

2635. SUNSET AT AUVERGNE

Théodore Rousseau (French: 1812-1867). See 2439.

2636. THE WHISPER

Jean François Millet (French: 1814-1875).

Millet, the peasant painter of France, occupies an important place in the history of modern art. He heard, as he said, le cri de la terre; and it is this to which he gave expression in painting. Gambetta well described the characteristics of Millet and his great contemporary. Rousseau (see 2439) "revealed the forest; Millet was the painter of the seasons, the fields, and the peasants." Rousseau and others of the school were painters of the country, of work-a-day nature; Millet painted the country-labourers. He did not idealise them, but he showed, with deep poetry, the dignity of their labour. This is the spirit of the great pictures – "The Sower," "The Gleaners," "The Angelus," by which through engravings and other reproductions he is most widely known. The depth of impression which those works are found to make was the result of intense feeling and infinite pains on the part of the artist. "The Angelus" hung on the point of finish for many months. "I mean," he said, "I mean the bells to be heard sounding, and only natural truth of expression can produce the effect." When a visitor wanted to buy "The Sheepfold," Millet would not let it go. "It is not complete," he said; "you cannot hear the dog bark in there yet." The life and character of Millet were in accord with his work. He was born of peasant ancestry, and the boy grew up, as Mr. Henley says, "in an environment of toil, sincerity, and devoutness. He was fostered upon the Bible and the great book of nature." "Wake up, my little François," was his grandmother's morning salutation, "the birds have long been singing the glory of God." He learned Latin from the parish priest, and he soon became a student of Virgil. He followed his father out into the fields, and thenceforward, as became the eldest boy in a large family, worked hard at grafting and ploughing, sowing and reaping, scything and sheaving and planting, and all the many duties of husbandmen. The life he painted was the life he knew and had led. The spirit in which he painted it was that of his own reverent, and somewhat melancholy, temperament. In 1849 he moved from Paris to Barbizon, on the borders of the Forest of Fontainebleau, which henceforward was his home. "If you could but see," he wrote, "how beautiful the forest is! It is so calm, with such a terrible grandeur, that I feel myself really afraid in it." "The most joyful thing I know," he wrote in a letter of 1851, "is the peace, the silence that one enjoys in the woods or in the tilled lands. One sees a poor, heavily laden creature with a bundle of faggots advancing from a narrow path in the fields. The manner in which this figure comes suddenly before one is a momentary reminder of the fundamental condition of human life and toil. On the tilled land around, one watches figures hoeing and digging. One sees how this or that one rises and wipes away the sweat with the back of his hand. 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.' Is that merry, enlivening work, as some people would like to persuade us? And yet it is here that I find the true humanity, the great poetry."

Like most innovators, Millet had to create the taste by which he was to be admired; and, though the tale of his struggles and poverty is sometimes exaggerated, he had many discouragements and times of difficulty. He was neither "classical" nor "romantic," and both of those schools of art looked askance at him. He was born at Gruchy, near Cherbourg; and till the age of 18 lived the life of a peasant. As there were then other sons to help on the farm, his father, who had long noticed the lad's artistic talent, took him to Cherbourg, where he received some instruction under Mouchel and Langlois successively, and where the Town Council gave him assistance in pursuing his studies. The death of his father recalled him for a while to the farm; but in 1837, at the age of 23, he went to Paris and entered the studio of Delaroche (see 1909). His studio-nickname was "The Man of the Woods." He tried to sell works in his own style, but found no market for them, and had to take instead to painting pastorals, etc., in the manner of Boucher and Watteau. He married in 1841; his wife died in 1844, and in 1845 he married again. For a time, he attained a certain vogue as a painter of the nude, and a classical picture of [OE]dipus in the Salon of 1847 attracted some attention. In 1849, as already said, he settled at Barbizon, and it is from 1850 onwards that his great works date. They did not sell, or they commanded very small prices. One was bought by his devoted friend, Rousseau; for "The Angelus" he received £100. Within 20 years of his death, it fetched £22,120 at public auction. But the reputation of Millet grew gradually in his lifetime, and in 1868 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He is buried beside Rousseau at Chailly, near Barbizon.

This little "pastoral," in which a girl reclines on a rock, while a naked child whispers in her ear, belongs to the painter's earlier period.

2669. ST. CLEMENT AND DONOR

Le Mâitre de Jean Perréal (French: 15th century).

Attributed to the master of Jean Perréal (called Jean de Paris, who lived about 1463-1529); painter to Louis XII.

St. Clement, in cope and mitre (as Bishop of Rome), rests his right hand on the shoulder of the Donor; and in his left hand carries an anchor (the emblem referring to the legend of the Saint having been cast into the sea bound to an anchor). Londoners are familiar with the emblem, as it surmounts the steeple of St. Clement Danes in the Strand.

2670. LADY HOLDING A ROSARY

Unknown (Flemish: 16th century).

2671. A PIETÀ

Francia (Bolognese: 1450-1517). See 179.

2672. A VENETIAN GENTLEMAN

Alvise Vivarini (Venetian: painted 1461-1503). See 1872.

This striking and powerful portrait is signed by the artist on the parapet. It was formerly in the Bonomi-Cereda Collection at Milan (see Berenson's Lorenzo Lotto, p. 107).

2673. NARCISSUS

Beltraffio (Lombard: 1467-1516). See 728.

This pretty little picture was shown at the Old Masters' Exhibition of 1870, where Ruskin noted it as an example of the phase in Italian art in which "pictorial perfectness and deliciousness" were sought before everything else (Works, xix. 444-5). "The same model reappears in the profile portrait of a youth (also in the character of Narcissus) in the Uffizi Gallery; again in a profile of San Sebastian in the Frizzoni Collection at Bergamo; and again in a profile drawing in the Louvre" (No. 47a at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1898).

2709. MOTHER AND CHILD

2710. THE DRAWBRIDGE

Jacob Maris (Dutch: 1837-1899).

Two small pictures by one of the principal masters of the modern Dutch School. Jacob Maris was born at The Hague. He studied in Paris under Hebert, and exhibited at the Salon from 1862 to 1872, when he returned to The Hague. His figure-studies show, says R. A. M. S., "a perception of the rich but quiet tissue of colour which wraps all Nature if you look at it broadly enough." In landscape he and his brother Matthew are the chief of modern Dutch painters.

2711. WATERING HORSES

Anton Mauve (Dutch: 1838-1888).

Mauve, one of the favourite landscape-painters of the modern Dutch School, was born at Zaandam, the son of a Baptist minister. He studied art at Amsterdam; his pensive and peaceful landscapes, often combined with horses and other animals, rapidly became popular. "His colour," wrote W. E. Henley, "is quite his own. To a right sense of nature and a mastery of certain atmospheric effects, he unites a genuine strain of poetry. His treatment of animals is at once judicious and affectionate. He is careful to render them in relation to their aerial surroundings; but he has recognised that they too are creatures of character and sentiment, and he loves to paint them in their relations to each other and to man. The sentiment is never forced, the characterisation is never strained, the drama is never exorbitant; the proportions in which they are introduced are so nicely adjusted that the pictorial, the purely artistic qualities of the work are undiminished" (Edinburgh Exhibition Catalogue, 1886).

This picture is a good example of the luminous skies in which Mauve excelled. The sky shines, it has been said, even on a dull day (see an appreciation of Mauve by Frank Rutter in the Studio, vol. 42).

2712. THE INTERIOR OF HAARLEM CHURCH

Johannes Bosboom (Dutch: 1817-1891).

A characteristic piece by a painter of architecture who "rendered very delicately the play of sunbeams in the interior of picturesque churches, and warm effects of light in large halls and dusky corners" (Muther).

2713. THE PHILOSOPHER

Joseph Israels (Dutch: 1824-1911).

Joseph Israels, the head of the modern Dutch School and a painter of world-wide reputation, has been called "The Dutch Millet," and "a modern Rembrandt"; and the phrases serve to indicate his characteristics, and his place in the development of modern art. He essayed to do what Rembrandt had done triumphantly two centuries before: to paint "not accidents, but life itself." He made in Dutch art the same departure that Millet made in French: he turned from conventional themes and motives to the life around him. Like Millet, Israels made a false start in art. He went to Paris in 1845, entered the École des Beaux-Arts, showing "Achilles and Patroclus" as his probationary drawing, and on his return to Amsterdam in 1848 began to paint, as Delaroche had taught him, "historical" scenes, Calabrian brigands, and other subjects in "the grand style." His health broke down, and he was ordered change of scene. At Zandvoort, a small fishing village near Haarlem, he found his Barbizon. "He lodged with a ship's carpenter, took part in all the usages of his house-mates, and began to perceive amid these new surroundings that the events of the present are capable of being painted, that the sorrows of the poor are as deep as the tragical fate of ancient heroes, that everyday life is as poetic as any historical subject, and that nothing suggests richer moods of feeling than the interior of a fishing-hut, bathed in tender light and harmonious in colour. This residence of several months in a distant little village led him to discover his calling, and determined his future career" (Muther). He was a devoted Jew, with a deep interest in the life and character of those of his race who abound in Holland. Among them, and among the Dutch toilers of the sea, he found his vocation, in painting the tragedy, the pathos, or the simple domestic joys of humble working folk. He did this with a technical mastery and with rare insight. His power of pathetic expression is remarkable; and over his work a spirit of soft tenderness is suffused. Many, perhaps most, of his pictures are sombre, but he had an eye for youth and hope, as well as age and sorrow, and few artists have painted children with so much sympathy. His method is broad and simple; his pictures having unity of effect, and telling their own story with great directness.

Joseph Israels was born at Gröningen, in the north of Holland, and for a time was occupied in his father's business as a money-changer, but he was encouraged to draw. In 1844 he went to Amsterdam, and entered the studio of Jan Kruseman. Then, as already related, came his student-years in Paris, and his false start as an historical painter. In 1855 he was represented at the Paris Exhibition by an historical picture of the Prince of Orange. In 1857 he showed at the Salon "Children by the Sea" and "Evening on the Beach." This change of subject marks the true start in an artistic career which was continuously successful, and which was prolonged into extreme old age. In 1862 his picture of "The Shipwrecked Mariner" (see below, 2732) created a sensation at the International Exhibition in London. In 1863 he married and settled down in a house midway between The Hague and Scheveningen, facing the canal. "Here the boats with their loads of herrings pass slowly along, so that the painter has only to look out of the front windows of his house in order to see the very men and women, the boats and towing-ropes, that figure in his canvases. His work is done in a studio in his garden; here he has a glass house, in which he paints his open-air figures, and has likewise fitted up a corner of an old Dutch cottage, so that open-air scenes and interiors may be as lifelike as it is possible for an artist to render them. As you enter this studio, you perceive a little old gentleman at work, dressed in a brown velvet coat. His hair is silvery white, and his somewhat pale face is lit up with the kindliest of smiles. He speaks five or six languages in the pleasantest voice imaginable, and English is one of them."

Personally, Israels was one of the most breezy of men, full of life and vigour, genial and accessible: "as fresh in mind as a youngster in his teens, as versatile as he is amiable, able and always ready to talk on every conceivable subject of interest, ever contributing some caustic and pointed comment, yet never assuming the dictatorial and self-opinionated manner which genius often considers itself privileged to adopt. His modesty, his unfailing amiability to all, young and old, distinguished and insignificant, have served to endear Joseph Israels to all who come in contact with him. He does not care to talk much about his own achievements, but he is less reticent about those of his son Isaac, who, he declares, is a greater artist than himself." These personalia are quoted from notices which appeared in connection with the artist's 75th birthday (in the Daily News and in Israel). He had still twelve years of life; and "his was the rare satisfaction of the man who, beginning in advance of his time, creates his own public, and sees it growing stronger, larger, and more devoted as he passes from youth to middle life and thence to extreme old age. He was not consciously the founder of a school, but he had many close followers, and the modern Dutch painters, who are now so fashionable, owe their fundamental ideas to him" (Times, Aug. 15, 1911).

There are passages in Browning's Grammarian's Funeral which will suggest themselves to many readers as they study this picture of an old student writing by the light of a single candle. The picture may be compared with an earlier Dutch one of a like subject – "The Philosopher," by Bega (1481).

2714. GRANDFATHER'S BIRTHDAY

Isabey (French: 1804-1886).

Eugène Gabriel Isabey (by whom there are several pictures in the Wallace Collection) was born in Paris, the son of the celebrated miniature-painter, Jean-Baptiste Isabey. He first appeared as a genre painter; and "amid the group of Classicists of his time, he had (says Dr. Muther) the effect of a beautiful patch of colour." He afterwards took to sea painting, having in 1830 accompanied the French expedition to Algiers as marine draughtsman.

A characteristic example of the elegant facility with which the painter rendered scenes involving gay attire.

2715. FISH MARKET, DIEPPE

Isabey (French: 1804-1886).

2723, 2724. LANDSCAPES

Ascribed to G. Poussin (French: 1613-1675). See 31.

These landscapes, only recently included in the official numbering of the collection, were presented by Mr. P. Pusey in 1849.

2725. CHRIST BLESSING

Benedetto Diana (Venetian: died 1525).

"If Benedetto be the painter of the fine picture of 'Christ at Emmaus,' in the church of St. Salvatore, Venice, still attributed in the guidebooks to Giovanni Bellini, he must have been an artist of no ordinary merit, and one who gradually, from an unpromising commencement of his artistic career, attained a high place among the followers of the master. A half-length figure, larger than life, of the Saviour in the act of blessing, signed with the painter's name, in private possession at Venice, although in a very damaged condition, has a grand and impressive character not unworthy of Bellini, to whom, as to other Venetian masters of note, many works by Diana in sundry collections are ascribed. He was employed with the two Bellini and Alvise Vivarini in decorating the hall of the Ducal Palace" (Layard's ed. of Kugler, 1887, p. 333).

2727. LE PONT DE LA TOURNELLE, PARIS

Stanislas Lapine (French: 1836-1892).

Born at Caen; studied under Corot; exhibited at the Salon from 1859.

The Church of Notre Dame in the middle distance.

2731. LANDSCAPE

W. Buitenweg (Dutch: 1590-1630).

William Buitenweg, or Buytewech, best known for his landscape drawings, was born at Rotterdam; married at Haarlem in 1613, and in 1625 returned to Rotterdam.

2732. THE SHIPWRECKED MARINER

Joseph Israels (Dutch: 1824-1911). See 2713.

This celebrated picture – one by which the master often said he would like to be judged – created a great sensation at the International Exhibition of 1862. It was, said one critic, the most moving picture in the exhibition; before it, said another, crowds daily linger. The storm has passed, the waves have subsided, the greyish-black thunderclouds have vanished, and greenish, pallid sky smiles upon the earth once more. But upon the waves a shattered boat still rocks, and men and women and children have come down to see what victim may have been cast up by the tide – "For men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbour bar be moaning." Two fishermen reverently bear home the body of their dead comrade. His disconsolate wife and two awestruck children walk in front, and his old mother beside him. A man with a boat-hook, a woman pointing to the wreck on the reef, and others follow the procession, in the rear of which is the pathetic figure of a dog.

2757. TARTARUS: A SATIRICAL DESIGN

James Callot (French: 1593-1635).

"A curious and fantastic composition (in Indian ink), by a celebrated engraver and draughtsman, in which it would seem that the artist intended to satirise the ecclesiastic factions rife in France during the minority of Louis XIII. Under the vault of a huge cave, round the upper part of which evil spirits and harpies are sporting, several figures are grouped. In the centre of the foreground two Jesuits are derided by demons. On the right, Cerberus, chained to a rock, guards the entrance to Hell, while an armed warrior (Louis XIII.) stands near with his back to the spectator. On the left is Death, surrounded by his victims and the Vices. In the middle distance Charon is crossing the Styx with his boat full of passengers, whom a crowd on the shore vainly endeavour to join. Beyond are represented the tortures of the condemned, among whom Ixion, Tityus, the Danaides, and other mythological personages are conspicuous. The armorial bearings introduced on the lower edge of the drawing are supposed to be those of M. de Boyer of Baudot, who is said to have suggested the design" (Director's Report, 1884). The artist's independence of character is recorded in a familiar anecdote. He was witness to the siege and capitulation of his native town, Nancy, in 1633, and the French king called on him to engrave a plate commemorative of the occurrence. When he declined, some of the courtiers are said to have remarked to the artist that there were means to make him comply. He replied that he would sooner cut off his right hand than employ it in such a work; a speech which, being reported to the king, led him to say that the Dukes of Lorraine were fortunate in the possession of such subjects.

2758. A SQUALL FROM THE WEST

Louis Eugène Boudin (French: 1825-1898). See 2078.

2759. STORMY LANDSCAPE

George Michel (French: 1763-1843). See 2258.

2764. A FAMILY GROUP

Ascribed to Jan Vermeer (Dutch: 1632-1675).

This picture once formed part of No. 1699; the right arm of the seated child and the tablecloth here are continued there.

2767. THE SEA

Gustave Courbet (French: 1819-1877).

Courbet is famous in the history of modern French painting as the first of the "realists"; he is the Caravaggio of France, full of force and vigour, but often somewhat coarse and brutal. His landscapes and seapieces will probably be esteemed more highly by posterity than his realistic works. He was, says Dr. Muther, "the first French painter of sea-pieces, who had a feeling for the sombre majesty of the sea. His very quietude is expressive of majesty; his peace is imposing, his smile grave; and his caress is not without a menace." Courbet was a revolutionary in politics, as in art. In September 1870 he was appointed Director of the Fine Arts by the Provisional Government, and he afterwards joined the Commune. He was instrumental in saving many works of art, but he ordered the destruction of the Column in the Place Vendôme. For this he was brought before a court-martial and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. Afterwards, in a civil action, he was cast in heavy damages; his furniture and pictures were sold; and he retired to Switzerland. He died at La Tour, Vevay, a ruined man.

2790. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

Mabuse (Flemish: about 1470-1541). See 656.

This famous picture was acquired for the National Gallery from Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle, in 1911, for £42,776.261 The picture was painted in about the year 1500 for the Abbey of Grammont in East Flanders. In 1600 it was bought for 2000 florins by the Archduke Albert to decorate the high altar of the Court Chapel in Brussels. A story which is recorded of it in those days is a tribute to its bright attractiveness. During Lent it used to be concealed by the hanging in front of it of a picture of the Crucifixion as less likely to interfere with the penitential thoughts proper to the season. In the 18th century the picture passed into the collection of Prince Charles of Lorraine, Governor-General of the Netherlands, and thence into that of the fifth Earl of Carlisle. For more than a century it remained at Castle Howard, and many connoisseurs who saw it there wrote of it as one of the chief art-treasures of Great Britain. "I do not think," wrote W. Bürger (Thoré), "that there is anywhere else a picture by Mabuse so brilliant, so well preserved, so capital as the Adoration of the Kings, belonging to the Earl of Carlisle." "For variety of character, glow of colour, and finished execution, quite unsurpassed," said Mrs. Jameson of it.