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

2607. A MAN WITH A MEDALLION

Unknown (Flemish: 15-16th Century).

2608. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ANGELS

Robert Campin (Early Flemish: died 1444).

Campin, a native of Hainault, settled at Tournai in about the year 1406, and quickly made a reputation, becoming painter-in-ordinary to the town. Between 1423 and 1428 there are records showing that he filled several offices in the Painters' Guild and amassed a considerable fortune. He had several apprentices; among them, Roger Van der Weyden (see 711), who was with him from 1426 to 1432. He made many designs for tapestry and seems to have been charged with the designing of all municipal art work in whatever kind (W. H. Weale, in the Burlington Magazine, vol. xi.).

2609. VIRGIN AND CHILD IN AN APARTMENT

Campin (Early Flemish: died 1444).

The Virgin is of the same unlovely type as in the picture ascribed to Bouts, No. 2595. Behind her head is a screen of plaited straw.

2610. ANTOINE DE BOURBON

Corneille de Lyons (French: 16th Century).

Two painters are catalogued under this name, father and son, who are sometimes distinguished as "Corneille le Grand" and "Corneille le Petit." The elder was a Flemish painter, who became naturalised in France in 1547. In 1540 he was appointed Painter to the Dauphin; in 1551, Painter to the King. He is mentioned in a poem of 1544, and in a deed of 1564. Several portraits in the Museum of Versailles and at Chantilly are ascribed to him. (See Henri Bouchot's Les Clouet et Corneille de Lyon.)

2611. A MAN IN BLACK

Corneille de Lyons (French: 16th Century).

2612. LOUIS XI., KING OF FRANCE, 1423-1483

2613. PHILIP AND MARGARET OF BURGUNDY

Unknown (French: 15th Century).

These pictures are of the early Burgundian School.

2614. A LADY AS MARY MAGDALEN

Unknown (French School: 15th Century).

Notice the pearl embroidery.

2615. MARY, QUEEN OF FRANCE

Unknown (French School: 15th Century).

Formerly supposed to represent Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., born in 1498.

2616. PORTRAIT OF A LADY

2617. THE DUCHESS D'ANGOULÊME

Unknown (French School: 15th Century).

2618. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ANGELS

Unknown (French School: 15th Century).

Possibly by an artist of the Catalonian school.

2619. LANDSCAPE

Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593-1665). See 39.

2620. THE HAPPY MOTHER

Jean Honoré Fragonard (French: 1732-1806).

The only poets who seized the spirit of the France of the eighteenth century were, said the brothers Goncourt, two painters: Watteau and Fragonard. It was Fragonard, says Sir Claude Phillips, "whose frank passion, whose irresistible élan lighted up the decline of the century much as the imaginativeness of Watteau, his reticence and wistful charm even in the midst of voluptuousness, lighted up its first years. He is the Ovid of French painting." He was born at Grasse near Cannes; and the pupil, in Paris, first of Chardin and then of Boucher (see 1258, 1090). Having won the Prix de Rome in 1752, he travelled in Italy, drawing all the sights and monuments, and studying the old masters. The works of Tiepolo (see 1192) especially attracted him, and something of their brilliant, flashing bravura was to be characteristic of Fragonard himself. Soon after his return to Paris, a picture of "Coresus and Callirhoë" made a sensation in the Salon, and inspired what Lord Morley calls "an elaborate but not very felicitous criticism" by Diderot. Fragonard did not return, however, to compositions in the classical style; he found his métier, and a highly lucrative practice, in pictures of sentimental genre, audaciously amorous in subject, and of masterly grace and lightness in execution. Some of his most famous works in this sort are to be seen in the Wallace Collection. The beautifully decorative canvases, the "Roman d'Amour de la Jeunesse," which were exhibited in London in 1898 and are now in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection, were a commission from Madame du Barry, who, however, for reasons which have not been clearly explained, declined them. From Mademoiselle Guimard, the dancer, and queen of the monde galant, Fragonard had received a like commission; and the story is well known of the revenge taken by the painter when he threw up the task, and transformed his portrait of the lady as Terpsichore into Tisiphone. In 1794 Fragonard retired for security from the Terror to Grasse, and on his return to Paris he found his vogue gone. The Revolution had killed the taste for his amorous trifles. The reign of the Classical School of David had begun; and Fragonard died in comparative oblivion and poverty.

In 1769 Fragonard had married Marie Anne Gérard, the miniature painter; and to the succeeding years belong, says his biographer (the Baron de Portalis), many pictures of which the theme is the cradle. Our picture is of that kind.

2621. WILLOWS

Charles François Daubigny (French: 1817-1878).

Daubigny was the youngest member of the "Barbizon" group; and, though he has artistic affinity with them, and regarded Corot as his master, he painted not in their chosen district, but on the banks of the Oise. His landscapes have not the poetry of Corot's, nor the force of Rousseau's; but they are more comfortable, as it were, and human. Corot's world might be inhabited by dryads; in Rousseau's landscapes man is subordinate or overpowered; Daubigny paints nature as the pleasant abode of human beings fond of the country – commons not too remote from a garden wall, the banks of pleasant streams where men may boat or fish. The country with him is full of fresh air. "There is a story told of a poor young man, afflicted with consumption, who coming suddenly before a work of Daubigny, exclaimed, 'Ah, I can breathe better now'" (Thomson's Barbizon School, p. 283).

Daubigny's life is in accord with what have been suggested above as characteristic notes of his art. He had no privations, storms, or struggles. He was born at Paris, in an artistic family; and as a youth assisted his father in painting boxes, clock-cases and the like. He was a delicate child, and had lived much with his nurse Bazot at Valmondois on the Oise, where too he afterwards spent many holidays and where in later years he made his home. At the age of 18 he went to Italy, where the pictures of Claude especially attracted him. On his return he was engaged for a time as a picture-restorer. He studied with Paul Delaroche, but struck out a line for himself in landscape pictures and etchings, and his works gradually found favour. He had a boat made for voyaging on the Oise and Seine, and this served as a floating studio. He built himself a house at Auvers on the Oise, which was decorated with paintings by Corot and other artist-friends. In 1866 he was invited by Leighton and others to visit England, and he exhibited at the Academy. In 1859 he had been made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and in 1874 he was promoted to the grade of Officer. On his death-bed he said to those about him "Adieu; I am going to see above if friend Corot has found me any motifs for landscapes."

Sunset effect on a lake; with brilliant colours piercing through the trees to the water. Signed, and dated 1874.

2622. THE BANKS OF A RIVER

Daubigny (French: 1817-1878). See 2621.

An earlier picture (signed, and dated 1859). The small house-boat or barge in the foreground may be the painter's floating studio, mentioned above.

2623. ALDERS

2624. THE GARDEN WALL

Daubigny (French: 1817-1878). See 2621.

2625. THE BENT TREE

J. B. C. Corot (French: 1796-1875). See 2135.

This beautiful picture was formerly in the collection of the late Mr. Alexander Young, one of the earliest purchasers of Corots in England, and was generally considered the gem of his collection of works by that master. The writer of an account of the Young Collection calls attention, in describing this picture, to "the wonderful gradation of tones in the trees and foreground, the subtle beauty of the distant view, the massing and treatment of the trees against the luminous sky, the dignified restraint of the colour scheme" (Studio, vol. 39).

2626. THE WOOD GATHERER

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

Also from the Young Collection.

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."