Travelling Sketches

THE ART TOURIST

The class of art tourists is very numerous, and of all tourists the art tourist is, I think, the most indefatigable. He excels the tourist in search of knowledge both in length of hours and in assiduity while he is at his work. The art tourist now described is not the man or woman who goes abroad to learn to paint, or to buy pictures and gems, or to make curious art investigations. Such travellers are necessarily few in number, and set about their work as do other people of business. They are not tourists at all in the now accepted meaning of the word. Our art tourist is he, – or quite as often she, – who flies from gallery to gallery, spending hours and often days in each, with a strong determination to get up conscientiously the subject of pictures. Sculpture and architecture come also within the scope of the labours of the art tourist, but not to such an extent as to influence them materially. Pictures are the ever present subject of the English art tourist's thoughts, and to them and their authors he devotes himself throughout his holiday with that laborious perseverance which distinguishes the true Briton as much in his amusement as in his work. He is studying painters rather than pictures, – certainly not pictures alone as things pleasing in themselves. A picture, of which the painter is avowedly unknown, is to such a one a thing of almost no interest whatever, – unless in the more advanced period of his study he should venture to attempt to read the riddle and should take upon himself to name the unknown. And this work of the art tourist, though it may lead to a true love of pictures, does in no wise arise from any such feeling. And, indeed, it is quite compatible with an entire absence of any such predilection. Men become learned in pictures without caring in the least for their beauty or their ugliness, just as other men become learned in the laws, without any strong feeling either as to their justice or injustice. The lawyer looks probably for a return for his labours in a comfortable income, and the art tourist looks for his return in that sort of reputation which is now attached to the knowledge of the history of painting.

The first great object of the art tourist is to be able to say, without reference to any card, guide-book, or affixed name, and with some approach to correctness, who painted the picture then before him; and his next great object is to be able to declare the date of that painter's working, the country in which he lived, the master who taught him, the school which he founded, the name of his mistress or wife, the manner of his death, and the galleries in which his chief works are now to be found.

As regards the first object, – that of knowing the painter from his work, – the art tourist soon obtains many very useful guides to his memory. Indeed, it is on guides to his memory that he depends altogether. When he has progressed so far that he can depend on his judgment instead of his memory, he has ceased to be an art tourist, and has become a connoisseur. The first guide to memory is the locality of the picture. He knows that Raphaels are rife at Florence, Titians at Venice, Vandykes at Genoa, Guidos at Bologna, Van Eykes and Memlings in Flanders, and Rembrandts and Paul Potters in Holland. Pictures have been too much scattered about to make this knowledge alone good for much; but joined to other similar aids, it is a powerful assistance, and prevents mistakes which in an old art tourist would be disgraceful. Next to this, probably, he acquires a certain, though not very accurate idea of dates, which supplies him with information from the method and manner of the picture. If he is placed before a work of some early Tuscan painter, – Orcagna, or the like, – he will know that it is not the work of some comparatively modern painter of the same country, – such as Andrea del Sarto; – and so he progresses. Then the old masters themselves were very liberal in the aids which they gave to memory by repeating their own work, – as, indeed, are some of their modern followers, who love to produce the same faces year after year upon their canvas, – I will not say usque ad nauseam, for how can we look on a pretty face too often? The old masters delighted to paint their own wives or their own mistresses, – the women, in short, whom they loved best and were most within their reach, guided perhaps by some idea of economy in saving the cost of a model; and this peculiarity on their part is a great assistance to art tourists. He or she must be a very young art tourist who does not know the Murillo face, or the two Rubens faces, or the special Raphael face, or the Leonardo da Vinci face, or the Titian head and neck, or the Parmigianino bunch of hair, or the Correggio forehead and fingers. All this is a great assistance, and gives hope to an art tourist in a field of inquiry so wide that there could hardly be any hope without such aid. And then these good-natured artists had peculiar tricks with them, which give further most valuable help to the art tourist in his work. Jacobo Bassano paints people ever cringing towards the ground, and consequently a Jacobo Bassano can be read by a young art tourist in an instant. Claude Lorraine delighted to insert a man carrying a box. That vilest of painters, Guercino, rejoices in turbans. Schalken painted even scenes by candle-light, so that he was called Della Notte. Jan Steen usually greets us with a portrait of himself in a state of drunkenness. Adrian van Ostade seldom omits a conical-shaped hat, or Teniers a red cap and a peculiar figure, for which the art tourist always looks immediately when he thinks of discovering this artist. All these little tricks of the artist, and many more of the same kind, the art tourist soon learns, much to his own comfort.

And then he progresses to a kind of knowledge which comes somewhat nearer to art criticism, but which does not yet amount to the exercise of any judgment on his own part. He learns to perceive the peculiar manner of certain artists who painted peculiarly; and though by the knowledge he so attains he may be led into error, – as when he takes a Lancret for a Watteau, – still the error is never disgracefully erroneous. He knows at once the girl by Greuze, with her naked shoulder and her head on one side; he knows at once the old woman by Denner, the little wrinkles on whose face, as he looks at them through his magnifying glass, seem to be so very soft. The unnatural sunshine of Claude he knows, and the natural sunshine of Cuyp. The blotches of Rembrandt and the smoothness of Carlo Dolci are to him as A, B, C. The romantic rocks and trees of Salvator Rosa do not certainly represent nature, – to which they bear no resemblance, – but to him they represent Salvator Rosa very adequately. The pietistic purity of Fra Angelico strikes him forcibly, and the stiff grace of Perugino; though, when he advances as far as this, he is somewhat prone to make mistakes. And he learns to note the strong rough work of the brush of Paul Veronese, and the beautiful blue hills of Titian's backgrounds. He distinguishes between the graceful dignity of a Venetian nobleman and the manly bearing of a Florentine citizen; and he recognizes the spears of Paolo Uccello, who painted battles; and the beards of Taddeo Gaddi, who painted saints; and the long-visaged virgins with fair hair, by Sandro Botticelli. And he will gradually come to perceive how those long-visaged, fair-haired virgins grew out of the first attempts at female dignity by Cimabue, and how they progressed into the unnatural grace of Raphael, and then descended into the meretricious inanities of which Raphael's power and Raphael's falseness were the forerunners.

And so the art tourist goes on till he really knows something about painting, – even whether he have a taste or no, – and becomes proud of himself and his subject. That second object of which I have spoken, and which has reference to the life of the painter, he of course acquires from books. And it may be remarked that the popularity of this kind of knowledge has become so strong that much of the information is given in the ordinary guide-books. We do not much care to know who taught Christopher Wren to be an architect, or whence Mozart learned the art of music, or even how Canova became a sculptor. But it is essential to the art tourist, to the youngest tyro in art touring, that he should know that Titian was the scholar of Bellini, and Raphael of Perugino, and Vandyke of Rubens. The little intricacies of the schooling, – how this man migrated from one school to another, and how the great pernicious schools of art at last formed themselves, destroying individual energy, – these come afterwards. But to the diligent art tourist they do come. And it is delightful to hear the contests on the subject of art tourists who have formed themselves, one on Kugler and another on Waagen; who have read the old work of Vasari, or have filled themselves with a widely-extended mass of art information from the late excellent book by Mr. Wornum.

The upshot of all this has been the creation of a distinct and new subject of investigation and study. Men and women get up painting as other men and women get up botany, or entomology, or conchology, and a very good subject painting is for the purpose. It is innocent, pretty, and cheap; – for I take the fact of the tour to be given as a matter of course. It leads its pursuers to nothing disagreeable, and is as open to women as to men. And it leads to very little boring of other people who are not tourists, which, perhaps, is its greatest advantage; for though the art tourist will sometimes talk to you of pictures, what is that to the persecution which you are called on to endure in inspecting cupboards full of pickled snakes or legions of drawers full of empty egg-shells? The work of an art tourist must at least be more attractive than the unalluring task of collecting postage-stamps and monograms. And, above all, let it be remembered that if it so chance that the art tourist have an eye in his head, he may at last become a lover of art.

The work of the art tourist begins about the middle of September, is carried on hotly for that and the next three months, and then completes its season at Rome in Easter. It flourishes, however, only in autumn, as the normal art tourist is one who is either away from his business for his holiday, or whose period of travelling is dependent on some such person. The work is begun at the Louvre, for the disciple in this school of learning will never condescend to use our own National Gallery, though for the purposes of such learning our own is perhaps the best gallery in the world. He begins in the Louvre; and, indeed, in the tribune of that gallery, under the influence of the great picture by Paul Veronese, which is probably the most marvellous piece of painting in the world, the resolution to get up painting is often taken by the young scholar. Then the galleries of Italy are seen – Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and perhaps Naples; Antwerp and Bruges probably come next; and then Dresden, Munich, and Vienna. By this time the art tourist is no longer a tyro, but, stored with much knowledge, burns for the acquisition of more. He pines after Madrid and Seville, and steals a day or two from some year's holiday for Amsterdam and the Hague. He works hard and conscientiously at his galleries, as though he could turn aside in idleness from no wall, on which pictures are hung, without dishonesty.

And then how the subject swells before him when he takes to fresco-painting, and begins to despise easel pictures! He penetrates to Assisi, and declares the Campo Santo at Pisa to be the centre of the world of Art! He expatiates to you with vigour on the chapel in the Carmine, and turns from you in disgust when he finds that you don't know what that chapel is, or where that chapel may be.

There is an old saying, which the world still holds to be very true, but which is, nevertheless, I think, very false: "Whatever you do, do well." Now there are many things which are worth doing which cannot be done well without the devotion of a lifetime, and which certainly are not worth such devotion as that. Billiards is a pretty game, but to play billiards well is a dangerous thing. And chess is a beautiful game; but they who play chess really well can rarely do much else. Art tourists are in this danger, that it is quite possible they may teach themselves to think that they should do their art touring so well as to make that the one pleasurable pursuit of their lives. After all, it is but a collecting of dead leaves, unless the real aptitude and taste be there.

THE TOURIST IN SEARCH OF KNOWLEDGE

I think that we all know the tourist in search of knowledge, the tourist who goes abroad determined not to waste a day, who is resolved to bring back with him when he returns from his travels information that shall be at any rate an equivalent to him for the money and time expended. This tourist in search of knowledge no doubt commands our respect in a certain degree. He is a sedulous man, probably exempt from any strong evil proclivities, anxious to do the best he can with his life, imbued with a respectable ambition, and animated by that desire to be better than those around him which generally saves a man from being below the average if it does not suffice to do more for him than that. But, having said so much in praise of tourists of this class, I do not know that there is much more to be said in their favour. Such men are usually bores as regards their effect upon others; and, as regards themselves, they seem in too many cases to have but little capacity for following up the special career which they have proposed to themselves. They are diligent in their inquiries, but have laid down for themselves no course of study. They wish to learn everything, but have too great a faith for learning everything easily. They have seldom realized to themselves how hard is the task of mastering information, and think that in going far afield from their own homes they have found, or are like to find, a royal road to knowledge. And then they have a worse fault than this incorrectness of idea which I have imputed to them. They are apt to forestall the merits which they should in truth never claim till the knowledge has been won, and as seekers for wisdom, assume the graces which others should give them when such acquired wisdom has become the manifest result of their labours.

There are female tourists in search of knowledge as well as male; but a woman has so much more tact than a man, that she is usually able to hide that which is objectionable in her mode of action. Perhaps the middle-aged single lady, or the lady who is not yet middle-aged but fears that she may soon become so, is more prone to belong to this class of travellers than any species of man; but she keeps her investigations somewhat in the background, goes through her heavy reading out of sight, and asks her most pressing questions sotto voce, when she and her hoped-for informant are beyond the hearing of the multitude. The male investigator of Continental facts has no such reticence. He demands the price of wheat with bold voice before a crowd of fellow-travellers; he asks his question as to the population of the country, and then answers it himself with a tone of conscious superiority, and he suggests his doubts as to the political action of the people around him with an air of omniscience that is intended to astonish all that stand within hearing of him.

What a glorious thing is knowledge, and how terrible to us are those lapses of opportunity with which the consciences of most of us are burdened in this respect! And to us who are ignorant, whose lapses in that respect have been too long to have been numerous, how great the man looms who has really used his intellect, and exercised his brain, and stirred his mind! But as he looms large, so does the ignorant man who affects acquirements and prides himself on knowledge which can hardly even be called superficial – as, spread it as thin as he may, he cannot make it cover a surface – appear infinitesimally mean and small! The getter-up of quotations from books which he has never read, – how vile he is to all of us! The man who allows it to be assumed that he can understand a subject or a language till he breaks down, caught in the fact, despised, but pitied through the extent of his misery, – how poor a creature he is in his wretchedness! The tourist in search of knowledge may of course be a man infinitely too strong to fall into any of these pitfalls. He may be modest-minded though ambitious, silent in his search, conscious of his ignorance where he is ignorant, and doubtful of his learning where he is learned. No doubt there are such English tourists, – many of them probably passing from city to city year after year, – with eyes and ears more readily open than their mouths; but not such a one is the tourist of whom we are here speaking. Travellers such as they become liable to no remark, and escape the notice of all observers. But the normal traveller in search of knowledge, with whom all of us who are habitual tourists are well acquainted, is altogether of a different nature. He is the Pharisee among students. He is always thanking God that he is not as those idlers who pass from country to country learning nothing of the institutions of the people among whom they travel, – not as that poor Publican, that lonely traveller, who, standing apart, hardly daring to open his mouth, asks some humble question which shows thoroughly and at once the extent of his ignorance.

Our tourist in search of knowledge, – the tourist who is searching for that which he thinks he has got, but which he never will find, – is seldom a very young man. Nor is he often a man stricken in years. The man over fifty who makes inquiries with eager pretension but with no fixed aptitudes in that direction, after the price of flour and the fluctuations of the population, must be a fool indeed. The tourist now in question will usually be progressing from thirty to forty. He is a severe man in his mien, given to frowning at all puerilities, and especially hostile to his young countrymen who travel for fun, in denouncing whose sins he is prone to put forward his best eloquence. Nor is he much more gracious to young ladies who travel with their mammas, and who sometimes show a tendency to cultivate the acquaintance of those scandalous young British rioters. To the unprotected female tourist he will sometimes unbend, and will find in her a flattering listener, and one who is able to understand and appreciate the depth and breadth of his acquirements. He generally starts from home alone, but will occasionally be found joined for a time to a brother traveller, induced to adopt such company by sympathy in tastes and motives of economy. But sympathy in tastes will not carry the two far together, as, little as may be their capacity for fathoming depths, each will be able to fathom the depth of the other. The tourist in search of knowledge will generally be found dressed in gaiters, in a decorous suit of brown garments, and accompanied by a great coat, rug, and umbrella, carefully packed together with a strap. Now, in these latter days, he has relinquished his chimney-pot, and covered himself with a dark soft felt hat, which must add greatly to his comfort. Indeed, his appearance would be much in his favour, as opposed in its decency to the violent indecency of some of our British tourists, were it not for a certain priggishness of apparel which tells a tale against him and acts terribly to his disfavour. It must, however, be acknowledged of the tourist in search of knowledge that he never misbehaves himself. He is not often to be seen in the churches during the hours of public worship, – for what is there for an inquiring tourist to learn in such places at such times? – but when chance does so place him he disturbs no one, and entails upon the big Swiss, or verger with the cocked hat, no necessity to keep an eye upon him. He is no great frequenter of galleries, preferring the useful to the ornamental in his inquiries; but he makes his little tour of inspection to any art collections that are of especial note, so that he may be able to satisfy himself and his admirers that he has seen everything. Occasionally he will venture on a morsel of art criticism, and then the profundity of his ignorance is delightful to those who feel that, as a tourist in search of knowledge, he is turning up his nose at them. He will generally admire a "Carlo Dolci," and will have some word to say in favour of Salvator Rosa. But he will be found much more frequently in libraries and museums. These will be his hunting-grounds, though it will be out of the power of the ordinary tourist to ascertain what he does there. He is, however, an enduring, conscientious man, and can pass along from shelf to shelf and from one glass-covered repository to another, hardly missing a stuffed bird or an Indian arrow-head. And he will listen with wondrous patience to the details of guides, jotting down figures in a little book, and asking wonder-working questions which no guide can answer. And he looks into municipal matters wherever he goes, learning all details as to mayors, aldermen, and councillors, as to custom duties on provisions, as to import duties on manufactures, as to schools, convents, and gaols, to scholars, mendicants, and criminals. He does not often care much for scenery, but he will be careful to inquire how many passengers the steamboats carry on the lakes, and what average of souls is boarded and lodged at each large hotel that he passes. He would like to know how many eggs are consumed annually, and probably does ask some question as to the amount of soap used in the laundries.

To the romance and transcendental ebullitions of enthusiastic admirers of nature he is altogether hostile, and dislikes especially all quotations from poetry. "Cui bono?" is his motto. To whom will any of these things do any good? Has Dante fed any hungry mouths, or has Shakspeare put clothes on the backs of any but a poor company of players? He will tell you that Byron wasted a fortune, and that Shelley wasted himself. The jingle of rhymes is an injury to him, as is also the scraping of a fiddle. To get up either poetry or music would be out of his line, and he recognizes no utility that does not show itself by figures. So he goes on from town to town, passing quickly through the mountains and by the lakes, and conscientiously performs the task which he had laid out for himself before he started. When he returns home he has never been enticed to the right or to the left. He has spent exactly the number of francs which he had allowed himself. He had ordered breakfast to be ready for him in his home on a certain morning by eight o'clock, and exactly at that hour he appears and is ready for his meal. He has kept his journal every day; and, over and beyond his journal, he has filled a pocket-book so full of figures that even his methodical mind can hardly disentangle them from the crowded pages. He has an idea of publishing an article on the consumption of rye-flour in Pomerania, and is a happy man until he finds that the effort is beyond his power.

But he has had no holiday, and it may be doubted whether such a man wants any holiday; whether the capability of enjoying holiday-time has been vouchsafed to him. To sit on a mountain-side and breathe sweeter air than that which his daily work affords him gives him no delight. Neither the rivers nor the clouds nor the green valleys have been dear to him. But he has worked conscientiously in his vocation, and in the result of that work will be his reward. If his memory serves him, or even if it does not, he will be able to repeat among friends and foes an amount of facts which will show that he has not been a tourist in search of knowledge for nothing.

That such a man has made a mistake in his ideas as to knowledge and in his mode of seeking it may be our opinion and that of some others, and yet may be a very false opinion. And we may certainly confess that any true searching after knowledge must be beneficial, even though the method of the search may to our eyes and in our estimation be ungainly and inefficacious. It is not against the search that protest is here made. It is against the pretence of the man that our battle is waged, against the broad phylacteries worn so openly on the foreheads of utilitarian tourists that our little shafts are pointed. Let the tourist in search of knowledge work hard and despise all holiday-making, and sacrifice himself to statistics, if he have strength and will to do so; but in doing so, let him cease to thank God that he is not as other men are.