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

1850. A SCENE ON THE ICE

Andries Vermeulen (Dutch: 1763-1814). See 1447.

1851. THE INTERIOR OF A STABLE

Dutch School (17th century).

1860. PORTRAIT OF A LADY

Ascribed to Sir Antonio More (Flemish: 1572-1578).

1872. VIRGIN AND CHILD

Alvise Vivarini (Venetian, painted 1461-1503).

All visitors to Venice are familiar with a picture, in the church of the Redentore, of the Madonna and Sleeping Child, with two playing angels; there is a bird on the curtain above, and some fruit on the parapet below. It is one of the most charming little pictures in Venice, and is usually shown as a work of Giovanni Bellini. Modern criticism assigns it, however, to Alvise Vivarini, to whom an important place in the history of Venetian painting is now accorded as an artist developing on lines independent of the Bellinis, and as the Master of Lorenzo Lotto.254 That he was largely employed in the Ducal Palace we know from Vasari, who describes his works there, commending more particularly their fine perspective and "portraits from the life so well depicted as to prove that this master copied nature very faithfully." These works, begun in 1489 and stopped by the artist's death in 1503, were destroyed in the fire of 1577. Of his extant works, the earliest one, which is dated (1475), is at Montefiorentino. The altar-piece in the Venice Academy is dated 1480, and that in the Berlin Gallery is probably of the same period. To a later date are assigned the Madonnas of the Redentore and S. Giovanni in Bragora at Venice, and the present picture. His latest work, finished after his death by Marco Basaiti, is the large altar-piece of St. Ambrose in the Frari.

This picture (which is signed on a cartellino on the parapet) is, says Mr. Berenson, "delightful as a composition. The Madonna is seen down to the waist, holding the Child on a parapet, while behind her, to the left, a window opens out on a charming landscape. The Madonna's face has a tinge of almost Botticellian melancholy, as in Lotto's Recanati altarpiece. The Child is almost the putto on the right in the Redentore picture, but somewhat more bony. The draperies already have the freedom of Alvise's latest works." The picture, formerly in the Manfrini Gallery, was presented by Mr. Charles Loeser in 1898.

1895. BARON WAHA DE LINTER OF NAMUR

Jacob Jordaens (Flemish: 1593-1678).

Jordaens, who stands next to Rubens and Van Dyck among the great Flemish painters, was a fellow-pupil with the former under Adam Van Noort, whose daughter he married in 1616. In the same year he became a member of the Painter's Guild of St. Luke, being described as a "water-colourist"; his first works were in fact paintings in distemper and cartoons for the tapestry workers. By 1620 his fame as a painter of pictures was established. His works, which are very numerous, are of all kinds of subjects, but he is little represented in British Galleries. Examples may be seen, however, in the Wallace Collection and the Dulwich Gallery.

The name of the sitter is on the frame; his coat of arms and crest, with the inscription "Aetatis suae 63, 1626," are on the upper corner of the picture. It is a fine portrait, characteristic of the exuberance and vigour which mark the work of Jordaens.

1896. INTERIOR OF A CHURCH

Pieter Saenredam (Dutch: 1597-1665).

Saenredam, who lived at Haarlem, is one of the leading Dutch painters of architecture. His interiors in particular are remarkable for their luminous effect. Another example of them may be seen at Dulwich.

The church is the Domkerk at Utrecht. Notice the boy making a caricature on the wall; underneath this is the artist's signature.

1897. THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN

Lorenzo Monaco (Florentine: 1370-1425).

Don Lorenzo was born at Siena, but became a Camaldose monk of the Convent of the Angeli at Florence, his early practice being that of a miniaturist. In the principal of his known works – an altar-piece of 1413 now in the Uffizi at Florence, Mr. Roger Fry bids us note the cunning with which the painter "weaves together his flowing curves," the "rare charm in his ætherial, unstructural draperies," and "a kind of visible music" in his design (Monthly Review, June 1901).

Something of these qualities may be seen in the long and slender figures of our picture. The decorativeness of its patterns, and the architectural details, should also be noticed. The picture, formerly in a church at Certaldo, is in its original Gothic frame. Crowe and Cavalcaselle (vol. i. p. 554) suppose the picture to have formed part of a larger altar-piece of which the two wings are in our gallery, ascribed to the school of Taddeo Gaddi (Nos. 215, 216). But the different scale of the figures in them negatives this supposition.

1903. LANDSCAPE, WITH DOGS AND GAME

Jan Fyt (Dutch: 1609-1661). See 1003. See also (p. xxi)

1909. THE EXECUTION OF LADY JANE GREY

Paul Delaroche (French: 1797-1856).

Hippolyte, or (as he called himself) Paul, Delaroche, was the popular French painter of his time, and this is one of his best known pictures. He turned to historical illustration as affording scope for an art which should reconcile the "classical" with the "romantic." He was the embodiment in the art of painting, as someone has put it, of Louis Philippe's maxim of the juste-milieu. To the same class with the present picture belong his "Death of Queen Elizabeth" (Louvre), "The Princes in the Tower" (familiar from engravings), and several works in the Wallace Collection. Ruskin, while not enamoured of his pictures (see Fors Clavigera, Letter 35), allows that his "honest effort to grasp the reality of conceived scenes" compares favourably with "the deathful formalism and fallacy of what was once called 'Historical Art,'" and that his kindly-meant talent has "contributed greatly to the instruction of innumerable households" (Works, vol. xix. pp. 50, 205). Théophile Gautier, more contemptuously, described Delaroche's art as that of "historical illustration for the family use of the bourgeoisie," and the vogue which it enjoyed all over Europe set the fashion for what became a prevailing style of "stage-dramatic representation" in painting. In 1833 (the date on our picture) Delaroche was appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, and from 1837-1841 he was engaged upon the principal work of his life, the decoration of the amphitheatre of that school – the idea of his design being an assemblage of the chiefs of the arts in past ages to witness the triumphs of the labourers in his own age. He was assisted in this colossal work by many pupils; among them was Edward Armitage, R. A. (see vol. ii. No. 759), who has given an interesting account of the manner of their co-operation (see Report of the Commissioners on the Royal Academy, 1863, p. 64). The "Hemicycle" was much damaged by fire in 1853, and was restored after the death of Delaroche by Robert Henry.

The scene is in the Tower, February 12, 1554. Lady Jane Grey, condemned for treason, has been blindfolded, and is being led to the block by the Lieutenant of the Tower.

1914. A ROYAL CHÂTEAU IN HOLLAND

1915. A DUTCH CHURCH AND MARKET PLACE

Jan van der Heyden (Dutch: 1637-1712). See 866.

The château in the former picture is "The House in the Wood" (Huis ten Bosch), built in 1647, in which the first Peace Conference was held at The Hague.

1917. AN ITALIAN LANDSCAPE

Jan Both (Dutch: 1610-1662). See 71.

A fine example of the "soft golden tones" noted in our account of Both as characteristic of his best works.

1918. MARKET PLACE AT THE HAGUE

Paul Constantin La Fargue (Dutch: died 1782).

The work of an artist (best known by his drawings and etchings) who painted many small pictures of his native city, The Hague.

A scene in the Groén Market; the tower of the Groote Kerk in the background.

1925. PORTRAIT OF A MAN

Lucas Cranach (German: 1472-1553). See 291.

Upon the shield to the left is the painter's crest, as in No. 291; with the date 1524. The head is fine and full of character; the hands are less successful.

1930. PORTRAIT OF A LADY AS ST. MARGARET

Francisco Zurbaran (Spanish: 1598-1662). See 230.

Zurbaran, it has been said, was "a great though not a professed, portrait painter." The lady is St. Margaret only in virtue of the dragon, the emblem of the saint; otherwise this is a portrait of a young lady in a fanciful country costume.

1937. PORTRAIT OF A LADY

Bartholomeus van der Helst (Dutch: 1611-1670). See 140.

This picture, said to be a portrait of a lady of the house of Braganza, was formerly in the collection of Mr. Beckford at Fonthill. It is signed, and dated 1645. The "careful finish," which Sir Joshua Reynolds commended in the work of Van der Helst, may be well studied here in the rich and beautiful costume and jewellery.

1938. PORTRAIT OF HIS FATHER

Albrecht Dürer (German: 1471-1528).

The acquisition of this picture adds to the Gallery a fine example of the great artist, who in all the characteristics of his art is the central representative of the German spirit, – "its combination of the wild and rugged with the homely and the tender, its meditative depth, its enigmatic gloom, its sincerity and energy, its iron diligence and discipline." The range of his powers is shown not only in his works that survive, but in the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries. When he went to Venice they "praised his beautiful colouring," Bellini honoured him with his friendship, "and he was everywhere treated," so he wrote, "as a gentleman." Raphael sent him some drawings, on one of which this note in Dürer's handwriting may still be seen: "Raphael of Urbino, who has been so highly esteemed by the Pope, drew these naked figures, and sent them to Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg to show him his hand." He was a writer as well as an artist. "Painting," said Melanchthon, "was the least of his accomplishments"; whilst of his personal qualities Luther bore testimony when he wrote: "As for Dürer, assuredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the best of men… May he rest in peace with his fathers: Amen!"

He was born at Nuremberg – the son of a goldsmith and the third of eighteen children – and Albert of Nuremberg he remained to the end – the painter of a city distinguished for its "self-restrained, contented, quaint domesticity." His first training was from his father in the goldsmith's trade; next, when fifteen, he was apprenticed for three and a half years to Wohlgemuth, the chief painter of the town; and lastly came his Wanderjahre, a long course of travel and study in foreign lands. In 1494 he settled down at Nuremberg, and there, with the exception of a visit to Venice in 1505-1506 (see p. 190 n.), and to the Netherlands in 1520-1521, he passed the remainder of his life in the busy and honoured exercise of the various branches of his art. He had married, at the age of twenty-three, a well-to-do merchant's daughter. The stories which have long passed current with regard to her being imperious, avaricious, and fretful, have been entirely discredited on closer knowledge of the facts. The marriage was childless, but husband and wife lived throughout on terms both of affection and companionship. As for examples of Dürer's work, the widely-spread prints of the "Knight and Death" and the "Melancholia" give the best idea of his powers of imagination; while in actual specimens of his handiwork in drawing, the British Museum is the second richest collection in the world.

The best commentary on this picture is the description of his father which Dürer wrote in a history of his family: —

"My dear father became a goldsmith, a pure and skilful man. He passed his life in great toil and stern, hard labour, having nothing for his support save what he earned with his hand for himself, his wife, and his children; so that he had little enough. He underwent, moreover, manifold afflictions, trials, and adversities. But he won just praise from all who knew him, for he lived an honourable, Christian life; was a man patient of spirit, mild and peaceable to all, and very thankful towards God. For himself he had little need of company and worldly pleasures: he was also of few words, and was a God-fearing man. This my dear father was very careful with his children to bring them up in the fear of God; for it was his highest wish to train them well that they might be pleasing in the sight both of God and man. Wherefore his daily speech to us was that we should love God and deal truly with our neighbours."

It is just such a man that the painter here sets before us. "The face is pathetic with the deep furrows ploughed in by seventy years of labour and sorrow. Yet as he stands there, so quietly, for his son to paint him, there is just a trace of pleasure and pride lurking in the kind old face" (Conway's Literary Remains of Dürer, p. 35). An inscription on the top of the panel records that it was painted in 1497, when the father was seventy and the son twenty-six. There are three other versions of the picture – at Munich, Frankfort, and Syon House respectively, and the question which is the original has been much disputed. The present picture (exhibited at the Old Masters, 1903) was bought, with No. 1937, for £10,000 from the Marquis of Northampton.

1939. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS

French School (15th century).

A little picture almost as delicately wrought as an illuminated page in a missal. The donor is kneeling in the door of the Gothic chapel. The Virgin and Child are in "a garden enclosed," where columbines spring up at her feet; at the top of the picture are two small figures of St Michael driving out Satan.

1944. "PORTRAIT OF ARIOSTO."

Titian (Venetian: 1477-1576). See 4.

This superb portrait, though traditionally called "Ariosto," bears no resemblance to the poet. It is the picture of an Italian aristocrat of the Renaissance that the painter sets before us; of a man refined and luxurious, unimpassioned, and somewhat cynical. Immortalised by art, he looks out upon us with a somewhat scornful glance; the handsome head is one of those thoroughly individualised representations which, once studied, fix themselves indelibly in the memory. Sober and yet sumptuous in colour, the picture is enveloped in a luminous haze; and the costume, with the quilted sleeve of steely grey, is a masterpiece of technique.

The picture, which is signed on the parapet Titianus V. (with another V. at the further end of the parapet), belongs to Titian's earlier period, when he was under the influence of Giorgione, to which master indeed it is sometimes attributed.255 There are several versions of the picture, including one in Lord Rosebery's collection at Mentmore.256 The present picture (Old Masters, 1895) was bought by Sir George Donaldson from Cobham Hall (Lord Darnley) for £30,000, and sold by him for the same price to the nation; a portion of the sum (£9000) being contributed by Mr. W. W. Astor, Mr. Alfred Beit, Lord Burton, Lord Iveagh, Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and Lady Wantage.

1951. PORTRAIT OF DR. PERAL

Francisco Goya (Spanish: 1746-1828). See 1471.

"Perhaps as good an example as could be found of the brilliancy and execution and vivid portrayal of character which characterise this artist at his best" (Official Catalogue).

1952. MR. AND MRS. EDWIN EDWARDS

Henri Fantin-Latour (French: 1836-1904). See 1686.

A fine example of this artist's portraiture, representing old friends of the French painter, with whom he stayed when in this country. Mr. Edwards, landscape painter in water-colours and etcher (1823-1879), is examining a print with an expert's eye. His wife, perhaps less happily posed (because seemingly disconnected with the other figure), looks out at the spectator with her arms folded. Mrs. Edwards who presented this picture to the nation in 1904 died in 1907. "Nearly every one of Fantin-Latour's pictures in this country passed through her hands, and have her private marks, by which she was able to identify them after a lapse of many years."

1953. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD

Lazzaro Bastiani (Venetian: about 1425-1512). See 750.

In the background is the festoon of fruit, familiar to us in Crivelli's pictures.

1969. A GREEK CAPTIVE

Henriette Browne (French: 1829-1901).

2057. VENUS WITH THE MIRROR

Velazquez (Spanish: 1599-1660). See 197.

This celebrated picture – commonly called "Venus and Cupid," but known in Spain as the "Venus del Espejo" – is one of the master's rare studies of the nude, and it is characteristic of his genius. The subject is professedly mythological, but Velazquez seeks no adventitious interest from legendary association or idealistic grace. Here, as everywhere, his standpoint is frankly realistic, whilst the work is saved from commonness by purity of colour and sincerity of artistic purpose. It has been truly said that the flesh-painting here makes many another picture in the Gallery look lifeless and unreal. The face of "Venus" in the mirror – with broad features enframed in plainly dressed hair – does not realise the promise of the pretty outline of the head with the brown hair tied in a knot; and it has been suggested (by Dr. Justi) that "perhaps the damsel did not wish to be recognised." However this may be, the very plainness of the face emphasises the artist's intention. The picturesqueness of the outline and modulations of the back in a youthful female figure was the artistic effect which he set himself to render.

The history of the picture is well authenticated.257 It was painted about 1650, and passed into the possession of the Duke of Alba on his marriage in 1688 with Doña Catalina de Haro of Guzmom, Condessa-Duquesa de Olivares, the picture forming part of her dowry. It is mentioned in an inventory of the paintings belonging to her family as "a Venus of life size reclining nude with a child who holds up for her a mirror into which she gazes. This picture is an original work by Don Diego Velazquez." In an account of the Duke of Alba's palace in 1776 it is described as "the very celebrated Venus depicted from the back, in the reclining posture, with her face reflected in a mirror towards which she directs her gaze." Subsequently the picture became the property of the Spanish statesmen, Godoy. In 1808 it was sold and brought to this country; and purchased through Mr. Buchanan for the sum of £500, by Mr. Morritt, the friend of Sir Walter Scott. It became an heirloom in Mr. Morritt's family at Rokeby Hall, Teesdale. "Twice," says Dr. Justi in his life of Velazquez, "in 1879 and 1885 I had the privilege of seeing it there and convincing myself of its faultless preservation and the original brilliancy and freshness of its colour." It was exhibited in 1857 among the "Art Treasures" at Manchester and in 1890 at the "Old Masters." It was ultimately sold under an order of the Court of Chancery, the price obtained being £30,500. It passed into the hands of Messrs. Agnew, and its sale out of this country was believed to be imminent when the National Art Collections Fund came to the rescue and raised by subscription the amount now necessary for its purchase.

The sum paid was £45,000,258 and the picture was presented by the Fund to the nation.

2058. SUNNY DAYS IN THE FOREST

Diaz (French: 1809-1876).

Narciso Virgilio Diaz de la Peña, one of the members of "the Barbizon School" (see p. 698), was born, of Spanish extraction, at Bordeaux. Left an orphan at the age of ten, he was adopted by a Protestant clergyman, living at Bellevue, near Sèvres. He was of a truant disposition, and sleeping once upon the grass in the woods he was bitten by a viper; the accident cost him his left leg, and he had to go through life with a wooden one, which he called his pilon. In after years, when his pictures were rejected at the Salon, he would make a hole in the canvas with his wooden leg, saying with a laugh "what's the use of being rich? I can't have my pilon set in diamonds." His early years were of uncertain fortune, spent in earning a precarious living, sometimes as a painter on china at Sèvres, sometimes as an errand-boy in the streets. But he had confidence in his talent, and gradually found a market for his pictures. These were at first of figures, flowers, or other genre. A meeting in 1830 with Théodore Rousseau sent him to Fontainebleau and nature. For Rousseau, he entertained the most profound admiration, the story of "the toast of Diaz," is well known. Diaz had been preferred to Rousseau in admission to the Legion of Honour. In attending a dinner given in 1851 to the new officiers, Diaz rose and invited the company to drink "À Rousseau, notre maître oublié!" Of his figure-subjects, one of the best "La Fée aux Perles" is in the Louvre, but it is on his landscapes that his fame chiefly rests. "Go into the forest," it has been said, "lose yourself among its trees, and you can only say 'À Diaz'." To him, however, the forest was not, as to some others of the school, or as to Ruysdael, sombre or serious. It was a keyboard on which to play colour-fantasies. "You paint stinging-nettles," he said to Millet, "I prefer roses." "Pearls," said Théophile Gautier of his pictures, "brilliant as precious stones, prismatic gems and rainbow jewels." His pictures have been called not so much landscapes, as "tree-scapes." "Have you seen my last stem?" he used to say himself to his visitors. But it was the play of sunlight on the stems that he chiefly loved. Diaz is the colourist of the Barbizon School.

The acquisition of this sparkling little picture of a glade in the forest of Fontainebleau, lit by the afternoon sun, marked somewhat of an era in the history of the National Gallery. It was the first illustration on its walls of the modern French school of landscape.

2062. CHRIST TEACHING FROM ST. PETER'S SHIP

Herman Saftleven (Dutch: 1609-1685).

This painter, whose landscapes were praised by connoisseurs of the time as "distinguished by great care and accuracy," was born at Rotterdam, was a pupil of Jan van Goyen, and worked chiefly at Rotterdam and Utrecht. He painted many views on the Rhine and Maas; and one of the former, in the Dulwich Gallery, dated 1656, is among his best works.

The scene is the Lake of Gennesaret; the people are assembled on the shore to hear the words of Christ who is seated in St. Peter's ship (Luke v. 1-3).

2069. THE "MADONNA OF THE TOWER."

Raphael (Urbino: 1483-1520). See 1171.

This picture is attributed to the earlier portion of Raphael's "Roman period" (see p. 569); to about the same time, that is, as that of the "Garvagh Madonna" (No. 744). It takes its commonly accepted name from the small tower which may be seen in the distance of the landscape background; it is sometimes referred to as "The Madonna with the Standing Child," or "The Virgin with the Downcast Eyes," or "The Rogers Madonna." It is painted on canvas, and has suffered much from accident and repainting; but the feeling of the picture is thoroughly Raphaelesque in purity of colour and charm of expression. The mother's face is full of affection, sweet and yet serious; while the Child looks out of the canvas, "as if unconscious of all but the joy of the moment."