FRENCH SCHOOL

“Art is the child of Nature; yes. Her darling child in whom we trace The features of the mother’s face, Her aspect and her attitude. All her majestic loveliness Chastened and softened and subdued Into a more attractive grace, And with a human sense imbued.”

We now come to the French school. Art is so woven into French life, and it is so much part of the spirit of the nation that we cannot conceive of France without art. In the days of Charlemagne architecture already flourished, and in painting, modern art was born with the Clouets.

François Clouet (1510–1572) was the son, the grandson, the nephew of painters. He had a native skill and delicacy of handling that came to him by the grace of inheritance, and that gave him a singular mastery of detail. It was in portraits that the Clouets excelled; and the two portraits in our Gallery (660 and 1190), one a man’s portrait and the other, a boy’s, are very good examples of François Clouet’s art. They are masterpieces of observation and style. They might pass for the works of some Flemish painter. The painstaking accuracy of their detail, the illusive quality of their expression are peculiarly Northern, and we must always remember that the Clouets were of Flemish descent. The heads are detached against a sea-green background, a tint much affected by the whole Clouet school.

Then let us pass to Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), who has been called “the painter of intellect.” His culture lifted him high above the ordinary intellectual level of the public. Born in Normandy of a noble family, he went to Paris when he was a lad of eighteen. A friend showed him a collection of prints from Italy, and from that moment his soul was fired with the longing to go to Rome. He steeped himself in the classics. “He understood the ancients so well,” says Sir Joshua Reynolds, “that he acquired the habit of thinking their way.” At last he set forth and he reached Lyons, where the poet Marino employed him and finally took him to Rome. Nicolas Poussin continued to live there till his death, with the exception of a few years; these he spent in Paris in the service of Louis XIII. The King appointed him his “Painter in Ordinary.” After three years, disgusted with the intrigues and jealousies of the gay capital, he rejoined his wife, returning to the city of his dreams. There he continued to reside for the rest of his life. He died in 1665.

Nicolas Poussin adored books; he loved to look at sculpture. His knowledge and his feeling for Greek mythology surpassed those of every other painter. In his landscapes there is a dignified reserve; indeed reserve in landscape painting is too much the note of his art. In “Cephalus and Aurora” (65) the Greek mythology inspires every incident of the picture. A little Cupid is holding up before Cephalus the portrait of his wife Procris, and the hunter is trying to disengage himself from the embrace of Aurora. Behind is the white-winged Pegasus, beside him a river god sleeps, Apollo’s horses melt into the shapes of the clouds. This love of classic learning is at once the strength and the weakness of Nicolas Poussin’s art. In his two Bacchanalian Dances (42 and 62), accounted among the best things he ever did, all the ancient comedy is revived. The pictures are full of riotous frolic, full of varied incident, and they reveal the ideal of the Greek philosopher, Epicurus, that pleasure is the aim of life.

Nicolas Poussin adopted his wife’s brother, Gaspard Dughet (1613–1675), who took the name of Poussin and became his pupil. There is a sense of infinity in Gaspard Poussin’s pictures. In “The Sacrifice of Isaac” (31) we feel the solemnity of the scene. The father is trudging up the hill bearing a lighted torch, the son is carrying the wood for the sacrifice, all nature is sombre; it seems to understand and to watch the tragedy of the deed about to be enacted. In “The Calling of Abraham” (1159) we have a magnificent study of sky, and it is Gaspard Poussin’s skies that I want you to note. They give distinction to his pictures, they suggest the Infinite. I think in all the pictures by him in the National Gallery you will find that the skies are the keynote to the nobility of his conception.

Very different from the learned Nicolas Poussin was Claude Gelée, known as Claude Lorraine (1600–1682). He was very ignorant; he scarcely knew how to read or how to sign his name, and yet what poems of light are his pictures! The son of poor parents, he was born at Champagne, in the department of the Vosges, in the year 1600. His parents apprenticed him to a pastry cook, and the pastry cooks of Lorraine were very famous in those days. When he had learned his trade he went to seek employment at Rome, and there became the servant of a landscape painter. He was his factotum, prepared his meals, ground his colours, and got from him his first instruction in art. Before long he found himself his assistant, for his master had been commissioned to adorn the palace of the popes. We can imagine how the little pastry cook was happy at his work. Then he returned to Nancy in Lorraine and apprenticed himself to a decorative painter of some celebrity in order to learn figure painting.

Before two years were over Claude was back again in Italy, the land of light, the country of enchantment, that had laid its spell upon him. Sandrart, a German painter, tells us many details concerning him—how Claude would be out in the open air before daybreak, stay there till nightfall, learning to depict “with a scrupulous adherence to nature’s model the changing faces of dawn, the rising and setting sun, as well as the hours of twilight.” He spent many years in this mode of study; sometimes, Sandrart says, he met him at Tivoli painting the well-known waterfalls. His landscapes are of a golden world under a golden sky. It is not for us to enter into controversy with Mr. Ruskin, who places Turner so far above the Frenchman; but is there not place for both these supreme painters in the world of art? Claude was a dreamer. His calm skies glow with a glory seldom seen on sea or land; his great palaces form the entrance of visionary seaports filled with visionary ships; his waves, illumined by the fire of the sky, lead us away in imagination to a fairy world. He has painted landscapes lit by the noon-day sun and by the pearly light of morning, and all he paints declares the beauty of light. His aerial perspective, which is perhaps his greatest charm, lends a vast horizon to the scenes.

If Claude was not always true to actual nature, he was always true to dream-nature. He is a great composer of landscape; his ideal pictures may not be representations of what is, but of what might be; they are the outcome of his memory and of his broodings. Goethe has said that “Claude used his knowledge of the material world to express the world in his own soul.” We have many pictures by him in the National Gallery. There are the two pictures, “The Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca” (12) and the “Queen of Sheba” (14). These are hung between two Turners, the “Sun Rising in a Mist” (479) and “Dido Building Carthage” (498). It was the express wish of the English painter that these pictures should be hung together, to form his appeal beyond the tomb, challenging the world to choose between the truth as he saw it and as Claude depicted it. Claude’s two pictures have been greatly injured by restoration; still I think that they are noble pictures, true to classical tradition.

Let us look at “A Seaport at Sunset” (5). It is a fine and characteristic work with its Italian architecture, its ships lying at anchor, and, in the middle distance, the declining sun nearly level with the horizon. “Landscape with Figures” (19), representing the story of Narcissus and Echo, is full of charm. It is radiant with pearly light, and its foreground is occupied by a transparent, shadowy pool in which Narcissus is admiring his own image. Mr. Ruskin finds great fault with the drawing of the trees. “Seaport: the Embarkation of St. Ursula” (30) is a picture full of delightful freshness. It is the early hour of the day when Ursula, a Sicilian princess, is starting with her maidens on a journey to the shrines of the saints before her marriage to a prince of Britain. We think as we look at it of Claude’s early rambles, when he studied nature at all hours of the day. I cannot speak to you more of this great artist. He died in Rome in 1682, and he was buried at La Trinita dei Monti. He was much appreciated a few generations ago. His serenity, his wide distances, all imbued with the charm of light, exercised a witchery over tired spirits.