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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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grounds. As to physical comfort, one seems to have no more of it in
these tapestried halls and on marble floors, than the poor bird driven
before the pelting storm, or the ploughboy seeking shelter from the
drizzling sky, in his sheep-skin jacket and clouted shoes, beneath the
dripping, leafless spray. The palace does not (more than the hovel)
always defend us against the winter’s cold. The apartments are also
filled with too many rubbishly pictures of kings and queens—there
are too many of Verrio’s paintings, and a whole roomful of West’s;
but there are ten or twenty pictures which the eye, having once seen,
never loses sight of, and that make Windsor one of the retreats and
treasuries of art in this country. These, however, are chiefly pictures
which have a personal and individual interest attached to them, as
we have already hinted: there are very few historical compositions of
any value, and the subjects of the others are so desultory that the
young person who shows them, and goes through the names of the
painters and portraits very correctly, said she very nearly went out of
her mind in the three weeks she was ‘studying her part.’ It is a matter
of nomenclature: we hope we shall make as few blunders in our
report as she did.
In the first room the stranger is shown into, there are two large
landscapes by Zuccarelli. They are clever, well-painted pictures; but
they are worth nothing. The fault of this artist is, that there is
nothing absolutely good or bad in his pictures. They are mere
handicraft. The whole is done with a certain mechanical ease and
indifference; but it is evident no part of the picture gave him any
pleasure, and it is impossible it should give the spectator any. His
only ambition was to execute his task so as to save his credit; and
your first impulse is, to turn away from the picture, and save your
time.
In the next room, there are four Vandykes—two of them excellent.
One is the Duchess of Richmond, a whole-length, in a white satin
drapery, with a pet lamb. The expression of her face is a little sullen
and capricious. The other, the Countess of Carlisle, has a shrewd,
clever, sensible countenance; and, in a certain archness of look, and
the contour of the lower part of the face, resembles the late Mrs.
Jordan.—Between these two portraits is a copy after Rembrandt, by
Gainsborough, a fine sombre, mellow head, with the hat flapped over
the face.
Among the most delightful and interesting of the pictures in this
Collection, is the portrait by Vandyke, of Lady Venetia Digby. It is an
allegorical composition: but what truth, what purity, what delicacy in
the execution! You are introduced into the presence of a beautiful
woman of quality of a former age, and it would be next to impossible
to perform an unbecoming action with that portrait hanging in the
room. It has an air of nobility about it, a spirit of humanity within it.
There is a dove-like innocence and softness about the eyes; in the
clear, delicate complexion, health and sorrow contend for the
mastery; the mouth is sweetness itself, the nose highly intelligent,
and the forehead is one of ‘clear-spirited thought.’ But misfortune
has touched all this grace and beauty, and left its canker there. This
is shown no less by the air that pervades it, than by the
accompanying emblems. The children in particular are exquisitely
painted, and have an evident reference to those we lately noticed in
the Four Ages, by Titian. This portrait, both from the style and
subject, reminds one forcibly of Mrs. Hutchinson’s admirable
Memoirs of her own Life. Both are equally history, and the history of
the female heart (depicted, in the one case, by the pencil, in the
other, by the pen) in the finest age of female accomplishment and
pious devotion. Look at this portrait, breathing the beauty of virtue,
and compare it with the ‘Beauties’ of Charles II.’s court, by Lely. They
look just like what they were—a set of kept-mistresses, painted,
tawdry, showing off their theatrical or meretricious airs and graces,
without one trace of real elegance or refinement, or one spark of
sentiment to touch the heart. Lady Grammont is the handsomest of
them; and, though the most voluptuous in her attire and attitude, the
most decent. The Duchess of Portsmouth, in her helmet and plumes,
looks quite like a heroine of romance or modern Amazon; but for an
air of easy assurance, inviting admiration, and alarmed at nothing
but being thought coy, commend us to my lady——above, in the sky-
blue drapery, thrown carelessly across her shoulders! As paintings,
these celebrated portraits cannot rank very high. They have an
affected ease, but a real hardness of manner and execution; and they
have that contortion of attitude and setness of features which we
afterwards find carried to so disgusting and insipid an excess in
Kneller’s portraits. Sir Peter Lely was, however, a better painter than
Sir Godfrey Kneller—that is the highest praise that can be accorded
to him. He had more spirit, more originality, and was the livelier
coxcomb of the two! Both these painters possessed considerable
mechanical dexterity, but it is not of a refined kind. Neither of them
could be ranked among great painters, yet they were thought by their
contemporaries and themselves superior to every one. At the
distance of a hundred years we see the thing plainly enough.
In the same room with the portrait of Lady Digby, there is one of
Killigrew and Carew, by the same masterly hand. There is spirit and
character in the profile of Carew, while the head of Killigrew is
surprising from its composure and sedateness of aspect. He was one
of the grave wits of the day, who made nonsense a profound study,
and turned trifles into philosophy, and philosophy into a jest. The
pale, sallow complexion of this head is throughout in wonderful
keeping. The beard and face seem nearly of the same colour. We
often see this clear uniform colour of the skin in Titian’s portraits.
But then the dark eyes, beard, and eye-brows, give relief and
distinctness. The fair hair and complexions, that Vandyke usually
painted, with the almost total absence of shade from his pictures,
made the task more difficult; and, indeed, the prominence and effect
he produces in this respect, without any of the usual means, are
almost miraculous.
There are several of his portraits, equestrian and others, of Charles I.
in this Collection, some of them good, none of them first-rate. Those
of Henrietta (his Queen) are always delightful. The painter has made
her the most lady-like of Queens, and of women.
The family picture of the Children of Charles I. is certainly admirably
painted and managed. The large mastiff-dog is inimitably fine and
true to nature, and seems as if he was made to be pulled about by a
parcel of royal infants from generation to generation. In general, it
may be objected to Vandyke’s dressed children, that they look like
little old men and women. His grown-up people had too much
stiffness and formality; and the same thing must quite overlay the
playfulness of infancy. Yet what a difference between these young
princes of the House of Stuart, and two of the princes of the reigning
family with their mother, by Ramsay, which are evident likenesses to
this hour!
We have lost our reckoning as to the order of the pictures and rooms
in which they are placed, and must proceed promiscuously through
the remainder of our Catalogue.
One of the most noted pictures at Windsor is that of the Misers, by
Quintin Matsys. Its name is greater than its merits, like many other
pictures which have a lucky or intelligible subject, boldly executed.
The conception is good, the colouring bad; the drawing firm, and the
expression coarse and obvious. We are sorry to speak at all
disparagingly of Quintin Matsys; for the story goes that he was
originally bred a blacksmith, and turned painter to gain his master’s
daughter, who would give her hand to no one but on that condition.
Happy he who thus gained the object of his love, though posterity
may differ about his merits as an artist! Yet it is certain, that any
romantic incident of this kind, connected with a well-known work,
inclines us to regard it with a favourable instead of a critical eye, by
enhancing our pleasure in it; as the eccentric character, the wild
subjects, and the sounding name of Salvator Rosa have tended to lift
him into the highest rank of fame among painters.
In the same room with the Misers, by the Blacksmith of Antwerp, is a
very different picture by Titian, consisting of two figures also, viz.
Himself and a Venetian Senator. It is one of the finest specimens of
this master. His own portrait is not much: it has spirit, but is hard,
with somewhat of a vulgar, knowing look. But the head of the
Senator is as fine as anything that ever proceeded from the hand of
man. The expression is a lambent flame, a soul of fire dimmed, not
quenched by age. The flesh is flesh. If Rubens’s pencil fed upon
roses, Titian’s was carnivorous. The tone is betwixt a gold and silver
hue. The texture and pencilling are marrowy. The dress is a rich
crimson, which seems to have been growing deeper ever since it was
painted. It is a front view. As far as attitude or action is concerned, it
is mere still-life; but the look is of that kind that goes through you at
a single glance. Let any one look well at this portrait, and if he then
sees nothing in it, or in the portraits of this painter in general, let
him give up virtù and criticism in despair.
This room is rich in valuable gems, which might serve as a test of a
real taste for the art, depending for their value on intrinsic qualities,
and not on imposing subjects, or mechanical arrangement or
quantity. As where ‘the still, small voice of reason’ is wanting, we
judge of actions by noisy success and popularity; so where there is no
true moral sense in art, nothing goes down but pomp, and bustle,
and pretension. The eye of taste looks to see if a work has nature’s
finest image and superscription upon it, and for no other title and
passport to fame. There is a Young Man’s Head, (we believe in one
corner of this room) by Holbein, in which we can read high and
heroic thoughts and resolutions, better than in any Continence of
Scipio we ever saw, or than in all the Battles of Alexander thrown
into a lump. There is a Portrait of Erasmus, by the same, and in the
same or an adjoining room, in which we see into the mind of a
scholar and of an amiable man, as through a window. There is a
Head by Parmegiano, lofty, triumphant, showing the spirit of
another age and clime—one by Raphael, studious and self-involved—
another, said to be by Leonardo da Vinci (but more like Holbein)
grown crabbed with age and thought—and a girl reading, by
Correggio, intent on her subject, and not forgetting herself. These are
the materials of history; and if it is not made of them, it is a
nickname or a mockery. All that does not lay open the fine net-work
of the heart and brain of man, that does not make us see deeper into
the soul, is but the apparatus and machinery of history-painting, and
no more to it than the frame is to the picture.
We noticed a little Mater Dolorosa in one of the rooms, by Carlo
Dolci, which is a pale, pleasing, expressive head. There are two large
figures of his, a Magdalen and another, which are in the very falsest
style of colouring and expression; and Youth and Age, by Denner,
which are in as perfectly bad a taste and style of execution as
anything we ever saw of this artist, who was an adept in that way.
We are afraid we have forgotten one or two meritorious pictures
which we meant to notice. There is one we just recollect, a Portrait of
a Youth in black, by Parmegiano. It is in a singular style, but very
bold, expressive, and natural. There is (in the same apartment of the
palace) a fine picture of the Battle of Norlingen, by Rubens. The size
and spirit of the horses in the fore-ground, and the obvious
animation of the riders, are finely contrasted with the airy
perspective and mechanical grouping of the armies at a distance; and
so as to prevent that confusion and want of positive relief, which
usually pervade Battle-pieces. In the same room (opposite) is
Kneller’s Chinese converted to Christianity—a portrait of which he
was justly proud. It is a fine oil-picture, clear, tawny, without trick or
affectation, and full of character. One of Kneller’s fine ladies or
gentlemen, with their wigs and toupées, would have been mortally
offended to have been so painted. The Chinese retains the same oily
sly look, after his conversion as before, and seems just as incapable
of a change of religion as a piece of terra cotta. On each side of this
performance are two Guidos, the Perseus and Andromeda, and
Venus attired by the Graces. We give the preference to the former.
The Andromeda is a fine, noble figure, in a striking and even daring
position, with an impassioned and highly-wrought expression of
features; and the whole scene is in harmony with the subject. The
Venus attired by the Graces (though full of beauties, particularly the
colouring of the flesh in the frail Goddess) is formal and disjointed in
the composition; and some of the actions are void of grace and even
of decorum. We allude particularly to the Maid-in-waiting, who is
combing her hair, and to the one tying on her sandals, with her arm
crossing Venus’s leg at right angles. The Cupid in the window is as
light and wanton as a butterfly flying out of it. He may be said to
flutter and hover in his own delights. There are two capital
engravings of these pictures by Strange.
 THE PICTURES AT HAMPTON COURT

This palace is a very magnificent one, and we think, has been

undeservedly neglected. It is Dutch-built, of handsome red brick, and
belongs to a class of houses, the taste for which appears to have been
naturalised in this country along with the happy introduction of the
Houses of Orange and Hanover. The approach to it through Bushy-
Park is delightful, inspiriting at this time of year; and the gardens
about it, with their close-clipped holly hedges and arbours of
evergreen, look an artificial summer all the year round. The statues
that are interspersed do not freeze in winter, and are cool and
classical in the warmer seasons. The Toy-Inn stands opportunely at
the entrance, to invite the feet of those who are tired of a straggling
walk from Brentford or Kew, or oppressed with thought and wonder
after seeing the Cartoons.
Besides these last, however, there are several fine pictures here. We
shall pass over the Knellers, the Verrios, and the different portraits of
the Royal Family, and come at once to the Nine Muses, by Tintoret.
Or rather, his Nine Muses are summed up in one, the back-figure in
the right-hand corner as you look at the picture, which is all
grandeur, elegance, and grace.—We should think that in the gusto of
form and a noble freedom of outline, Michael Angelo could hardly
have surpassed this figure. The face too, which is half turned round,
is charmingly handsome. The back, the shoulders, the legs, are the
perfection of bold delicacy, expanded into full-blown luxuriance, and
then retiring as it were from their own proud beauty and conscious
charms into soft and airy loveliness—
‘Fine by degrees, and beautifully less.’

Is it a Muse? Or is it not a figure formed for action more than

contemplation? Perhaps this hypercritical objection may be true; and
it might without any change of character or impropriety be supposed,
from its buoyancy, its ease, and sinewy elasticity, to represent the
quivered Goddess shaping her bow for the chase. But, at any rate, it
is the figure of a Goddess, or of a woman in shape equal to a
Goddess. The colour is nearly gone, so that it has almost the tone of a
black and white chalk-drawing; and the effect of form remains pure
and unrivalled. There are several other very pleasing and ably-drawn
figures in the group, but they are eclipsed in the superior splendour
of this one. So far the composition is faulty, for its balance is
destroyed; and there are certain critics who could probably maintain
that the picture would be better, if this capital excellence in it had
been deliberately left out: the picture would, indeed, have been more
according to rule, and to the taste of those who judge, feel, and see by
rule only! Among the portraits which are curious, is one of Baccio
Bandinelli, with his emblems and implements of sculpture about
him, said to be by Correggio. We cannot pretend to give an opinion
on this point; but it is a studious, powerful, and elaborately painted
head. We find the name of Titian attached to two or three portraits in
the Collection. There is one very fine one of a young man in black,
with a black head of hair, the face seen in a three-quarter view, and
the dark piercing eye, full of subtle meaning, looking round at you;
which is probably by Titian, but certainly not (as it is pretended) of
himself. It has not the aquiline cast of features by which his own
portraits are obviously distinguished. We have seen a print of this
picture, in which it is said to be done for Ignatius Loyola. The
portrait of a lady with green and white purfled sleeves (like the leaves
and flower of the water-lily, and as clear!) is admirable. It was in the
Pall-Mall exhibition of the Old Masters a short time ago; and is by
Sebastian del Piombo.—The care of the painting, the natural ease of
the attitude, and the steady, sensible, conversable look of the
countenance, place this in a class of pictures, which one feels a wish
to have always by one’s side, whenever there is a want of thought, or
a flaw in the temper, that requires filling up or setting to rights by
some agreeable and at the same time not over-exciting object. There
are several soi-disant Parmegianos; one or two good Bassans; a
Battle-Piece set down to Julio Romano; a coloured drawing (in one
corner of a room) of a Nymph and Satyr is very fine; and some of
Polemberg’s little disagreeable pictures of the same subject, in which
the Satyrs look like paltry bits of painted wood, and the Nymphs like
glazed China-ware. We have a prejudice against Polemberg, which is
a rare thing with us!
The Cartoons occupy a room by themselves—there are not many
such rooms in the world. All other pictures look like oil and varnish
to these—we are stopped and attracted by the colouring, the
pencilling, the finishing, or the want of it, that is, by the
instrumentalities of the art—but here the painter seems to have flung
his mind upon the canvas; his thoughts, his great ideas alone prevail;
there is nothing between us and the subject; we look through a
frame, and see scripture-histories, and are made actual spectators of
miraculous events. Not to speak it profanely, they are a sort of
revelation of the subjects, of which they treat; there is an ease and
freedom of manner about them, which brings preternatural
characters and situations home to us, with the familiarity of common
every-day occurrences; and while the figures fill, raise, and satisfy
the mind, they seem to have cost the painter nothing. The Cartoons
are unique productions in the art. They are mere intellectual, or
rather visible abstractions of truth and nature. Every where else we
see the means; here we arrive at the end apparently without any
means. There is a Spirit at work in the divine creation before us. We
are unconscious of any details, of any steps taken, of any progress
made; we are aware only of comprehensive results, of whole masses
and figures. The sense of power supersedes the appearance of effort.
It is like a waking dream, vivid, but undistinguishable in member,
joint, or limb; or it is as if we had ourselves seen the persons and
things at some former period of our being, and that the drawing
certain dotted lines upon coarse paper, by some unknown spell,
brought back the entire and living images, and made them pass
before us, palpable to thought, to feeling, and to sight. Perhaps not
all is owing to genius: something of this effect may be ascribed to the
simplicity of the vehicle employed in embodying the story, and
something to the decayed and dilapidated state of the pictures
themselves. They are the more majestic for being in ruin: we are
struck chiefly with the truth of proportion, and the range of
conception: all the petty, meretricious part of the art is dead in them;
the carnal is made spiritual, the corruptible has put on incorruption,
and, amidst the wreck of colour, and the mouldering of material
beauty, nothing is left but a universe of thought, or the broad,
imminent shadows of ‘calm contemplation and majestic pains!’
The first in order is the Death of Ananias; and it is one of the noblest
of these noble designs. The effect is striking; and the contrast
between the steadfast, commanding attitude of the Apostles, and the
convulsed and prostrate figure of Ananias on the floor, is finely
imagined. It is much as if a group of persons on shore stood to
witness the wreck of life and hope on the rocks and quicksands
beneath them. The abruptness and severity of the transition are,
however, broken and relieved by the other human interests in the
picture. The Ananias is a masterly, a stupendous figure. The attitude,
the drawing, the expression, the ease, the force, are alike wonderful.
He falls so naturally, that it seems as if a person could fall in no other
way; and yet of all the ways in which a human figure could fall, it is
probably the most expressive of a person overwhelmed by and in the
grasp of Divine vengeance. This is in some measure, we apprehend,
the secret of Raphael’s success. Most painters, in studying an
attitude, puzzle themselves to find out what will be picturesque, and
what will be fine, and never discover it: Raphael only thought how a
person would stand or fall naturally in such or such circumstances,
and the picturesque and the fine followed as matters of course.
Hence the unaffected force and dignity of his style, which are only
another name for truth and nature under impressive and
momentous circumstances. The distraction of the face, the
inclination of the head on one side, are as fine as possible, and the
agony is just verging to that point, in which it is relieved by death.
The expression of ghastly wonder in the features of the man on the
floor next him is also remarkable; and the mingled beauty, grief, and
horror in the female head behind can never be enough admired or
extolled. The pain, the sudden and violent contraction of the
muscles, is as intense as if a sharp instrument had been driven into
the forehead, and yet the same sweetness triumphs there as ever, the
most perfect self-command and dignity of demeanour. We could
hazard a conjecture that this is what forms the great distinction
between the natural style of Raphael and the natural style of
Hogarth. Both are equally intense; but the one is intense littleness,
meanness, vulgarity; the other is intense grandeur, refinement, and
sublimity. In the one we see common, or sometimes uncommon and
painful, circumstances acting with all their force on narrow minds
and deformed bodies, and bringing out distorted and violent efforts
at expression; in the other we see noble forms and lofty characters
contending with adverse, or co-operating with powerful impressions
from without, and imparting their own unaltered grace, and habitual
composure to them. In Hogarth, generally, the face is excited and
torn in pieces by some paltry interest of its own; in Raphael, on the
contrary, it is expanded and ennobled by the contemplation of some
event or object highly interesting in itself: that is to say, the passion
in the one is intellectual and abstracted; the passion in the other is
petty, selfish, and confined. We have not thought it beneath the
dignity of the subject to make this comparison between two of the
most extraordinary and highly gifted persons that the world ever
saw. If Raphael had seen Hogarth’s pictures, he would not have
despised them. Those only can do it (and they are welcome!) who,
wanting all that he had, can do nothing that he could not, or that
they themselves pretend to accomplish by affectation and bombast.
Elymas the Sorcerer stands next in order, and is equal in merit.
There is a Roman sternness and severity in the general look of the
scene. The figure of the Apostle, who is inflicting the punishment of
blindness on the impostor, is grand, commanding, full of ease and
dignity: and the figure of Elymas is blind all over, and is muffled up
in its clothes from head to foot. A story is told of Mr. Garrick’s
objecting to the natural effect of the action, in the hearing of the late
Mr. West, who, in vindication of the painter, requested the
celebrated comedian to close his eyes and walk across the room,
when he instantly stretched out his hands, and began to grope his
way with the exact attitude and expression of this noble study. It may
be worth remarking here, that this great painter and fine observer of
human nature has represented the magician with a hard iron visage,
and strong uncouth figure, made up of bones and muscles, as one not
troubled with weak nerves, nor to be diverted from his purpose by
idle scruples, as one who repelled all sympathy with others, who was
not to be moved a jot by their censures or prejudices against him,
and who could break with ease through the cobweb snares which he
laid for the credulity of mankind, without being once entangled in his
own delusions. His outward form betrays the hard, unimaginative,
self-willed understanding of the Sorcerer.—There is a head (a profile)
coming in on one side of the picture, which we would point out to our
readers as one of the most finely relieved, and best preserved, in this
series. The face of Elymas, and some others in the picture, have been
a good deal hurt by time and ill-treatment. There is a snuffy look
under the nose, as if the water colour had been washed away in some
damp lumber-room, or unsheltered out-house. The Cartoons have
felt ‘the seasons’ difference,’ being exposed to wind and rain, tossed
about from place to place, and cut down by profane hands to fit them
to one of their abodes; so that it is altogether wonderful, that
‘through their looped and tattered wretchedness,’ any traces are seen
of their original splendour and beauty. That they are greatly changed
from what they were even a hundred years ago, is evident from the
heads in the Radcliffe library at Oxford, which were cut out from one
of them that was nearly destroyed by some accident, and from the
large French engravings of single heads, done about the same time,
which are as finished and correct as possible. Even Sir James
Thornhill’s copies bear testimony to the same effect. Though without
the spirit of the originals, they have fewer blots and blotches in them,
from having been better taken care of. A skeleton is barely left of the
Cartoons: but their mighty relics, like the bones of the Mammoth, tell
us what the entire and living fabric must have been!
In the Gate Beautiful there is a profusion of what is fine, and of
imposing contrasts. The twisted pillars have been found fault with;
but there they stand, and will for ever stand to answer all cavillers
with their wreathed beauty. The St. John in this Cartoon is an
instance of what we have above hinted as to the ravages of time on
these pictures. In the old French engraving (half the size of life) the
features are exceedingly well marked and beautiful, whereas they are
here in a great measure defaced; and the hair, which is at present a
mere clotted mass, is woven into graceful and waving curls,
‘Like to those hanging locks
Of young Apollo.’

Great inroads have been made on the delicate outline of the other
parts, and the surface has been generally injured. The Beggars are as
fine as ever: they do not lose by the squalid condition of their garb or
features, but remain patriarchs of poverty, and mighty in disease and
infirmity, as if they crawled and grovelled on the pavement of
Heaven. They are lifted above this world! The child carrying the
doves at his back is an exquisite example of grace, and innocence,
and buoyant motion; and the face and figure of the young woman
seen directly over him give a glad welcome to the eye in their fresh,
unalloyed, and radiant sweetness and joy. This head seems to have
been spared from the unhallowed touch of injury, like a little isle or
circlet of beauty. It was guarded, we may suppose, by its own
heavenly, feminine look of smiling loveliness. There is another very
fine female head on the opposite side of the picture, of a graver cast,
looking down, and nearly in profile. The only part of this Cartoon
that we object to, or should be for turning out, is the lubberly naked
figure of a boy close to one of the pillars, who seems to have no sort
of business there, and is an obvious eye-sore.
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes is admirable for the clearness and
prominence of the figures, for the vigorous marking of the muscles,
for the fine expression of devout emotion in the St. Peter, and for the
calm dignity in the attitude, and divine benignity in the countenance
of the Christ. Perhaps this head expresses, more than any other that
ever was attempted, the blended meekness, benevolence, and
sublimity in the character of our Saviour. The whole figure is so still,
so easy, it almost floats in air, and seems to sustain the boat by the
secret sense of power. We shall not attempt to make a formal reply to
the old objection to the diminutive size of the boat, but we confess it
appears to us to enhance the value of the miracle. Its load swells
proportionably in comparison, and the waves conspire to bear it up.
The Storks on the shore are not the least animated or elevated part of
the picture; they exult in the display of divine power, and share in the
prodigality of the occasion.
The Sacrifice at Lystra has the marks of Raphael’s hand on every
part of it. You see and almost hear what is passing. What a pleasing
relief to the confused, busy scene, are the two children piping at the
altar! How finely, how unexpectedly, but naturally, that innocent
rustic head of a girl comes in over the grave countenances and
weighty, thoughtful heads of the group of attendant priests! The
animals brought to be sacrificed are equally fine in the expression of
terror, and the action of resistance to the rude force by which they
are dragged along.
A great deal has been said and written on the St. Paul preaching at
Athens. The features of excellence in this composition are indeed so
bold and striking as hardly to be mistaken. The abrupt figure of St.
Paul, his hands raised in that fervent appeal to Him who ‘dwelleth
not in temples made with hands,’ such as are seen in gorgeous
splendour all around, the circle of his auditors, the noble and pointed
diversity of heads, the one wrapped in thought and in its cowl,
another resting on a crutch and earnestly scanning the face of the
Apostle rather than his doctrine, the careless attention of the
Epicurean philosopher, the fine young heads of the disciples of the
Porch or the Academy, the clenched fist and eager curiosity of the
man in front as if he was drinking sounds, give this picture a
superiority over all the others for popular and intelligible effect. We
do not think that it is therefore the best; but it is the easiest to
describe and to remember.
The Giving of the Keys is the last of them: it is at present at
Somerset-House. There is no set purpose here, no studied contrast: it
is an aggregation of grandeur and high feeling. The disciples gather
round Christ, like a flock of sheep listening to some divine shepherd.
The figure of their master is sublime: his countenance and attitude
‘in act to speak.’ The landscape is also extremely fine and of a
soothing character.—Every thing falls into its place in these pictures.
The figures seem to stop just where their business and feelings bring
them: not a fold in the draperies can be disposed of for the better or
otherwise than it is.
It would be in vain to enumerate the particular figures, or to explain
the story of works so well known: what we have aimed at has been to
shew the spirit that breathes through them, and we shall count
ourselves fortunate, if we have not sullied them with our praise. We
do not care about some works: but these were sacred to our
imaginations, and we should be sorry indeed to have profaned them
by description or criticism. We have hurried through our
unavoidable task with fear, and look back to it with doubt.
 LORD GROSVENOR’S COLLECTION OF
PICTURES

We seldom quit a mansion like that of which we have here to give

some account, and return homewards, but we think of Warton’s
Sonnet, written after seeing Wilton-house.
‘From Pembroke’s princely dome, where mimic art
Decks with a magic hand the dazzling bowers,
Its living hues where the warm pencil pours,
And breathing forms from the rude marble start,
How to life’s humbler scenes can I depart?
My breast all glowing from those gorgeous tow’rs,
In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours?
Vain the complaint! For Fancy can impart
(To Fate superior, and to Fortune’s doom)
Whate’er adorns the stately-storied hall:
She, mid the dungeon’s solitary gloom,
Can dress the Graces in their Attic pall:
Bid the green landscape’s vernal beauty bloom;
And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall.’

Having repeated these lines to ourselves, we sit quietly down in our

chairs to con over our task, abstract the idea of exclusive property,
and think only of those images of beauty and of grandeur, which we
can carry away with us in our minds, and have every where before us.
Let us take some of these, and describe them how we can.
There is one—we see it now—the Man with a Hawk, by Rembrandt.
‘In our mind’s eye, Horatio!’ What is the difference between this idea
which we have brought away with us, and the picture on the wall?
Has it lost any of its tone, its ease, its depth? The head turns round in
the same graceful moving attitude, the eye carelessly meets ours, the
tufted beard grows to the chin, the hawk flutters and balances
himself on his favourite perch, his master’s hand; and a shadow
seems passing over the picture, just leaving a light in one corner of it
behind, to give a livelier effect to the whole. There is no mark of the
pencil, no jagged points or solid masses; it is all air, and twilight
might be supposed to have drawn his veil across it. It is as much an
idea on the canvas, as it is in the mind. There are no means
employed, as far as you can discover—you see nothing but a simple,
grand, and natural effect. It is impalpable as a thought, intangible as
a sound—nay, the shadows have a breathing harmony, and fling
round an undulating echo of themselves,
‘At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiles!’

In the opposite corner of the room is a Portrait of a Female (by the

same), in which every thing is as clear, and pointed, and brought out
into the open day, as in the former it is withdrawn from close and
minute inspection. The face glitters with smiles as the ear-rings
sparkle with light. The whole is stiff, starched, and formal, has a
pearly or metallic look, and you throughout mark the most elaborate
and careful finishing. The two pictures make an antithesis, where
they are placed; but this was not probably at all intended: it proceeds
simply from the difference in the nature of the subject, and the truth
and appropriate power of the treatment of it.—In the middle between
these two pictures is a small history, by Rembrandt, of the Salutation
of Elizabeth, in which the figures come out straggling, disjointed,
quaint, ugly as in a dream, but partake of the mysterious significance
of preternatural communication, and are seen through the visible
gloom, or through the dimmer night of antiquity. Light and shade,
not form or feeling, were the elements of which Rembrandt
composed the finest poetry, and his imagination brooded only over
the medium through which we discern objects, leaving the objects
themselves uninspired, unhallowed, and untouched!
We must go through our account of these pictures as they start up in
our memory, not according to the order of their arrangement, for
want of a proper set of memorandums. Our friend, Mr. Gummow, of
Cleveland-house, had a nice little neatly-bound duodecimo
Catalogue, of great use as a Vade Mecum to occasional visitants or
absent critics—but here we have no such advantage; and to take
notes before company is a thing that we abhor. It has a look of
pilfering something from the pictures. While we merely enjoy the
sight of the objects of art before us, or sympathise with the approving
gaze of the greater beauty around us, it is well; there is a feeling of
luxury and refinement in the employment; but take out a pocket-
book, and begin to scribble notes in it, the date of the picture, the
name, the room, some paltry defect, some pitiful discovery (not
worth remembering), the non-essentials, the mechanic common-
places of the art, and the sentiment is gone—you shew that you have
a further object in view, a job to execute, a feeling foreign to the
place, and different from every one else—you become a butt and a
mark for ridicule to the rest of the company—and you retire with
your pockets full of wisdom from a saloon of art, with as little right as
you have to carry off the dessert, (or what you have not been able to
consume,) from an inn, or a banquet. Such, at least, is our feeling;
and we had rather make a mistake now and then, as to a numero, or
the name of a room in which a picture is placed, than spoil our whole
pleasure in looking at a fine Collection, and consequently the
pleasure of the reader in learning what we thought of it.
Among the pictures that haunt our eye in this way is the Adoration of
the Angels, by N. Poussin. It is one of his finest works—elegant,
graceful, full of feeling, happy, enlivening. It is treated rather as a
classical than as a sacred subject. The Angels are more like Cupids
than Angels. They are, however, beautifully grouped, with various
and expressive attitudes, and remind one, by their half antic, half
serious homage, of the line—
‘Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.’

They are laden with baskets of flowers—the tone of the picture is

rosy, florid; it seems to have been painted at
‘The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,’

and the angels over-head sport and gambol in the air with butterfly-
wings, like butterflies. It is one of those rare productions that satisfy
the mind, and from which we turn away, not from weariness, but
from a fulness of delight.—The Israelites returning Thanks in the
Wilderness is a fine picture, but inferior to this. Near it is a group of
Angels, said to be by Correggio. The expressions are grotesque and
fine, but the colouring does not seem to us to be his. The texture of
the flesh, as well as the hue, too much resembles the skin of ripe
fruit. We meet with several fine landscapes of the two Poussins,
(particularly one of a rocky eminence by Gaspar,) in the room before
you come to the Rembrandts, in which the mixture of grey rock and
green trees and shrubs is beautifully managed, with striking truth
and clearness.
Among detached and smaller pictures, we would wish to point out to
the attention of our readers, an exquisite head of a Child, by Andrea
del Sarto, and a fine Salvator in the inner room of all: in the room
leading to it, a pleasing, glassy Cuyp, an airy, earthy-looking Teniers,
and a Mother and a Sleeping Child, by Guido: in the Saloon, a St.
Catherine, one of Parmegiano’s most graceful pictures; a St. Agnes,
by Domenichino, full of sweetness, thought, and feeling; and two
pictures by Raphael, that have a look as if painted on paper: a Repose
in Egypt, and St. Luke painting the Virgin, both admirable for
drawing and expression, and a rich, purple, crayon tone of colouring.
Wherever Raphael is, there is grace and dignity, and an informing
soul. In the last-mentioned room, near the entrance, is also a
Conversion of Saint Paul, by Rubens, of infinite spirit, brilliancy, and
delicacy of execution.
But it is in the large room to the right, that the splendour and power
of Rubens reign triumphant and unrivalled, and yet he has here to
contend with highest works and names. The four large pictures of
ecclesiastical subjects, the Meeting of Abram and Melchisedec, the
Gathering of Manna, the Evangelists, and the Fathers of the
Church, have no match in this country for scenic pomp, and dazzling
airy effect. The figures are colossal; and it might be said, without
much extravagance, that the drawing and colouring are so too.[8] He
seems to have painted with a huge sweeping gigantic pencil, and with
broad masses of unalloyed colour. The spectator is (as it were)
thrown back by the pictures, and surveys them, as if placed at a
stupendous height, as well as distance from him. This, indeed, is
their history: they were painted to be placed in some Jesuit’s church
abroad, at an elevation of forty or fifty feet, and Rubens would have
started to see them in a drawing-room or on the ground. Had he
foreseen such a result, he would perhaps have added something to
the correctness of the features, and taken something from the
gorgeous crudeness of the colour. But there is grandeur of
composition, involution of form, motion, character in its vast, rude
outline, the imposing contrast of sky and flesh, fine grotesque heads
of old age, florid youth, and fawn-like beauty! You see nothing but
patriarchs, primeval men and women, walking among temples, or
treading the sky—or the earth, with an ‘air and gesture proudly
eminent,’ as if they trod the sky—when man first rose from nothing
to his native sublimity. We cannot describe these pictures in their
details; they are one staggering blow after another of the mighty
hand that traced them. All is cast in the same mould, all is filled with
the same spirit, all is clad in the same gaudy robe of light. Rubens
was at home here; his forte was the processional, the showy, and the
imposing; he grew almost drunk and wanton with the sense of his
power over such subjects; and he, in fact, left these pictures
unfinished in some particulars, that, for the place and object for
which they were intended, they might be perfect. They were done (it
is said) for tapestries from small designs, and carried nearly to their
present state of finishing by his scholars. There is a smaller picture in
the same room, Ixion embracing the false Juno, which points out
and defines their style of art and adaptation for remote effect. There
is a delicacy in this last picture (which is, however of the size of life)
that makes it look like a miniature in comparison. The flesh of the
women is like lilies, or like milk strewed upon ivory. It is soft and
pearly; but, in the larger pictures, it is heightened beyond nature, the
veil of air between the spectator and the figures, when placed in the
proper position, being supposed to give the last finishing. Near the
Ixion is an historical female figure, by Guido, which will not bear any
comparison for transparency and delicacy of tint with the two Junos.
—Rubens was undoubtedly the greatest scene-painter in the world, if
we except Paul Veronese, and the Fleming was to him flat and
insipid. ‘It is place which lessens and sets off.’ We once saw two
pictures of Rubens’ hung by the side of the Marriage of Cana in the
Louvre; and they looked nothing. The Paul Veronese nearly occupied
the side of a large room (the modern French exhibition-room) and it
was like looking through the side of a wall, or at a splendid banquet
and gallery, full of people, and full of interest. The texture of the two
Rubenses was woolly, or flowery, or satiny: it was all alike; but in the
Venetian’s great work the pillars were of stone, the floor was marble,
the tables were wood, the dresses were various stuffs, the sky was air,
the flesh was flesh; the groups were living men and women. Turks,
emperours, ladies, painters, musicians—all was real, dazzling,
profuse, astonishing. It seemed as if the very dogs under the table
might get up and bark, or that at the sound of a trumpet the whole
assembly might rise and disperse in different directions, in an
instant. This picture, however, was considered as the triumph of Paul
Veronese, and the two by the Flemish artist that hung beside it were
very inferior to some of his, and assuredly to those now exhibited in
the Gallery at Lord Grosvenor’s. Neither do we wish by this allusion
to disparage Rubens; for we think him on the whole a greater genius,
and a greater painter, than the rival we have here opposed to him, as
we may attempt to shew when we come to speak of the Collection at
Blenheim.
There are some divine Claudes in the same room; and they too are
like looking through a window at a select and conscious landscape.
There are five or six, all capital for the composition, and highly
preserved. There is a strange and somewhat anomalous one of Christ
in the Mount, as if the artist had tried to contradict himself, and yet it
is Claude all over. Nobody but he could paint one single atom of it.
The Mount is stuck up in the very centre of the picture, against all
rule, like a huge dirt-pye: but then what an air breathes round it,
what a sea encircles it, what verdure clothes it, what flocks and herds
feed round it, immortal and unchanged! Close by it is the Arch of
Constantine; but this is to us a bitter disappointment. A print of it
hung in a little room in the country, where we used to contemplate it
by the hour together, and day after day, and ‘sigh our souls’ into the
picture. It was the most graceful, the most perfect of all Claude’s
compositions. The Temple seemed to come forward into the middle
of the picture, as in a dance, to show its unrivalled beauty, the Vashti
of the scene! Young trees bent their branches over it with playful
tenderness; and, on the opposite side of a stream, at which cattle
stooped to drink, there grew a stately grove, erect, with answering
looks of beauty: the distance between retired into air and gleaming
shores. Never was there scene so fair, ‘so absolute, that in itself
summ’d all delight.’ How did we wish to compare it with the picture!
The trees, we thought, must be of vernal green—the sky recalled the
mild dawn, or softened evening. No, the branches of the trees are
red, the sky burned up, the whole hard and uncomfortable. This is
not the picture, the print of which we used to gaze at enamoured—
there is another somewhere that we still shall see! There are finer
specimens of the Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire, at
Lord Radnor’s, in Wiltshire. Those here have a more polished,
cleaned look, but we cannot prefer them on that account. In one
corner of the room is a St. Bruno, by Andrea Sacchi—a fine study,
with pale face and garments, a saint dying (as it should seem)—but
as he dies, conscious of an undying spirit. The old Catholic painters
put the soul of religion into their pictures—for they felt it within
themselves.
There are two Titians—the Woman taken in Adultery, and a large
mountainous landscape with the story of Jupiter and Antiope. The
last is rich and striking, but not equal to his best; and the former, we
think, one of his most exceptionable pictures, both in character, and
(we add) colouring. In the last particular, it is tricky, and discovers,
instead of concealing its art. The flesh is not transparent, but a
transparency! Let us not forget a fine Synders, a Boar-hunt, which is
highly spirited and natural, as far as the animals are concerned; but
is patchy, and wants the tone and general effect that Rubens would
have thrown over it. In the middle of the right-hand side of the room,
is the Meeting of Jacob and Laban, by Murillo. It is a lively, out-of-
door scene, full of bustle and expression; but it rather brings us to
the tents and faces of two bands of gypsies meeting on a common
heath, than carries us back to the remote times, places, and events,
treated of. Murillo was the painter of nature, not of the imagination.
There is a Sleeping Child by him, over the door of the saloon (an
admirable cabinet-picture), and another of a boy, a little spirited
rustic, brown, glowing, ‘of the earth, earthy,’ the flesh thoroughly
baked, as if he had come out of an oven; and who regards you with a
look as if he was afraid you might bind him apprentice to some trade
or handicraft, or send him to a Sunday-school; and so put an end to
his short, happy, careless life—to his lessons from that great teacher,
the Sun—to his physic, the air—to his bed, the earth—and to the soul
of his very being, Liberty!
The first room you enter is filled with some very good and some very
bad English pictures. There is Hogarth’s Distressed Poet—the Death
of Wolfe, by West, which is not so good as the print would lead us to
expect—an excellent whole-length portrait of a youth, by
Gainsborough—A Man with a Hawk, by Northcote, and Mrs.
Siddons as the Tragic Muse, by Sir Joshua. This portrait Lord
Grosvenor bought the other day for £1760. It has risen in price every
time it has been sold. Sir Joshua sold it for two or three hundred
pounds to a Mr. Calonne. It was then purchased by Mr. Desenfans
who parted with it to Mr. William Smith for a larger sum (we believe
£500); and at the sale of that gentleman’s pictures, it was bought by
Mr. Watson Taylor, the last proprietor, for a thousand guineas.
While it was in the possession of Mr. Desenfans, a copy of it was
taken by a pupil of Sir Joshua’s, of the name of Score, which is now
in the Dulwich Gallery, and which we always took for an original. The
size of the original is larger than the copy. There was a dead child
painted at the bottom of it, which Sir Joshua Reynolds afterwards
disliked, and he had the canvas doubled upon the frame to hide it. It
has been let out again, but we did not observe whether the child was
there. We think it had better not be seen.
We do not wish to draw invidious comparisons; yet we may say, in
reference to the pictures in Lord Grosvenor’s Collection, and those at
Cleveland-house, that the former are distinguished most by elegance,
brilliancy, and high preservation; while those belonging to the
Marquis of Stafford look more like old pictures, and have a
corresponding tone of richness and magnificence. We have
endeavoured to do justice to both, but we confess we have fallen very
short even of our own hopes and expectations.
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