Illustrated Catalogue of the Willitts J. Hole Art Collection: Old Masters Collected by the Late Willitts J. Hole and Given to the University of California, Los Angeles, by Samuel K. and Agnes Hole Rindge [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520346598

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The Willitts J. Hole Art Collection

Illustrated Catalogue of the

WILLITTS J. HOLE

ART COLLECTION Old Masters Collected by the Late Willitts J. Hole and Given to the University of California, Los Angeles, by SAMUEL K. AND AGNES HOLE R I N D G E Twenty-two of Which Are Pictured, with Notes on the Artists by M A R G A R E T LAMAR S T E A R N S

U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A PRESS B E R K E L E Y A N D LOS A N G E L E S

1942

UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

BERKELEY,

PRESS

CALIFORNIA

o

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY

PRESS

LONDON,ENGLAND

COPYRIGHT, 1942,

BY

T H E R E G E N T S OF T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF

CALIFORNIA

P R I N T E D IN T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S O F A M E R I C A BY T H E U N I V E R S I T Y

OF CALIFORNIA

PRESS

From the Address by Robert Gordon Sproul, President of the University, at the Public Ceremony of Acceptance at the University of California, Los Angeles January 1, 1940

O

||F T H A T T R A D I T I O N A L trilogy of values-truth, goodness, and beauty—so often mentioned by the philosophers, truth and goodness have always had the formal respect, at

least, of the dominant members of society. N o t so with beauty. In certain places and periods the fine arts have been

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highly regarded, as in the Florence of the Medici; but not,

for example, in the America of the nineteenth century. T h e genius of our people has seemed to be so completely absorbed in the economic and social struggles of pioneering in a new and undeveloped country that we have had little inclination to spare time or energy in taking thought of subtler values, or of pursuing interests that did not press directly and insistently upon our daily lives. There is a growing mass of evidence that this period in American life is ending; that we are approaching maturity as a people, and that from now on art may come to be as important with us as it has been in many civilizations of the past—as important as it should be in any civilization worthy of the name. Today, most of us live incomplete lives. W e are specialists, more or less, who do a few things over and over again, not for a day or a season or a year, but for a lifetime. Something in us is too often overexpressed, and much more within us is underexpressed. This is as true of the professional man and the industrial leader as of the wage worker. W h a t close concentration or intense specialization do at the one social extreme, machine tending and minute mechanical repetition do at the other. Democracy, too, lays a special burden upon those who must participate in it, as all must if it is to succeed. T h e impulses of individualism and the attitudes of cooperation cannot be harmoniously interwoven save by severe self-discipline.The essential elements of self-discipline—self-restraint, mutual

tolerance, sensitiveness to others, and the will to act—are emotionally wearing. The democratic order, with its constant shifting as men exercise their liberty to move up or down, can never be particularly calm or peaceful. Each succeeding day sees that order's component parts forced nearer and nearer to the limits of emotional depletion. M e n begin to lose the drive that it takes to get hard civic duties done, and tend to become indifferent and complacent. That men be kept emotionally refreshed is an urgent need of our kind of social and governmental organization. W h e n the day's work has sent us home torn apart, art has power to put us together again, to make us forget ourselves—the most restful experience man can know. To awaken men and women to the aesthetic fulfillment of life is as much the obligation of the University as to give them the tools of knowledge and instruct them in their use. To be educated is to know with accuracy the sciences and philosophy, to feel with enduring moral values, and to express both knowledge and feeling with aesthetic force and charm. Few people possess an inherent, spontaneous appreciation of the aesthetic. To most of us, the emotional pleasure, the intellectual satisfaction, and the spiritual inspiration of fine works of art are too often denied. The decision of Agnes Hole Rindge and Samuel K. Rindge to present the Willitts }. Hole Collection of Art to the University of California is therefore of major significance. They have established here a memorial to one who bore witness to his sensitivity to beauty by gathering one of the finest private collections of great works of art. But they have done infinitely more: they have made available to thousands of young men and women who seek here an education, and to other thousands of people who look upon the University as a cultural center, a rare opportunity and the instrumentality through which to claim it.

THE WILLITTS I. HOLE COLLECTION OF ART NUMBER

I . Poussin, Nicolas

The Sacrifice of Venus

2. Rubens, Peter Paul

The Duchess of Mantua

3. Italian School

Christ the Savior

4. Murillo, Bartolome Esteban

Landscape with Biblical

Motif

5. Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti). . A Venetian Senator of the Capello

Family

6. El Greco (Domenico Theotokopuli)

The

7. Ribera, Jusepe

The Good Samaritan

8. Velasquez, Diego

Old Woman and Boy

9. Rubens, Peter Paul 1 o. Parmigiano (Francesco Maria Mazzuoli)

Three Angel

Heads

Madonna and

Child

1 1. Reynolds, Sir Joshua

Two

1 2 . Salaino, Andrea (School of Da Vinci) 1 3 . Murillo, Bartolome Esteban 1 4 . Beechey, William

Astronomers

Angels

St. Anne and St. Mary The Virgin of Mount

Carmel

Portrait of Thomas Masterman

Hardy

1 5. Raeburn, Sir Henry

Portrait of Duncan

Robertson

1 6. Teniers, David

The Prodigal Son

1 7 . Bellini, Giovanni

Portrait of a Boy

1 8 . Constable, John 19. Stuart, Gilbert

Portrait of a Woman with a Hat Portrait Sketch of George

20. Van Dyck, Sir Anthony 2 1. Gainsborough, Thomas

Portrait of President Roos Portrait of Mrs. Travers

2 2 . El Greco (Domenico Theotokopuli)

St. Francis

2 3-Hobbema, Meyndert 24. Reynolds, Sir Joshua 2 5 . Lawrence, Sir Thomas

Washington

Landscape Portrait of Mister Portrait of an English

Payler

Nobleman

THE WILLITTS J. HOLE COLLECTION OF ART NUMBER

CContinued^l

26. Hoppner, John

The Earl of Essex

27. Hoppner, John

The Countess of Essex

28. Gainsborough, Thomas 25. Lawrence, Sir Thomas 30. Lei y, Sir Peter 3 1. Reni, Guido

The Cottage Portrait of the Countess

Children Hardwicke

Portrait of a Lady Tobias, an Angel

32. Ruysdael, Jakob

Landscape with Waterfall

3 3 . Constable, John

Landscape Near

Arundel

34. Gainsborough, Thomas

The Watering Place

35. Raphael, School of

Portrait of Raphael

36. Jordaens, Jakob 37. Titian, School of 38. Rembrandt van Rijn 39. Rubens, Peter Paul

Portrait of a Man Portrait

ofLavinia

Portrait of a Woman The Duke of Mantua

40. Claude Lorrain (Claude Gelée)

Classical Ruins

4 1 . Holbein, Hans, the Younger

Saint Sebastian

42. Romney, George 43. Hals, Frans 44. Wildens, Jan 45. Wouwermans, Pieter 46. Turner, J. M . W 47. Brueghel, Pieter, the Elder 48. Cuyp, Aelbert 49. Ter Borch, Gerard

Lady

Hamilton

Portrait of a Cavalier Landscape with Trees The Hay Wagon Landscape with a Rainbow Dance of St. Aiagdalene The Ferry The Fair Visitor

Twenty-two Paintingsfrom the

WILLITTS T. HOLE COLLECTION OF ART With Notes on the Artists by

MARGARET LAMAR STEARNS

Twenty-two Paintingsfrom the

WILLITTS T. HOLE COLLECTION OF ART With Notes on the Artists by

MARGARET LAMAR STEARNS

THE SACRIFICE OF V E N U S (No. i) B y NICOLAS

POUSSIN

(1594-1665) Canvas, 5 7 b y 88 inches

was born at Les Andelys, France, almost under the shadow of Richard the Lion-Hearted's famous "Saucy Castle!' H e was the descendant of an aristocratic family and received a thorough classical education. His bent toward painting manifested itself while he was still in his teens and he began his art studies in Paris, where he may have seen Rubens working on the grandiose series of paintings for the Luxembourg Palace, or at least have seen and studied them. But it is an interesting proof of his innate independence that he was not influenced in the least by the style of that great master, who was swaying so many young painters. A t the age of nineteen we find him turning his back on Paris and setting out for Rome—the treasure house of the classical tradition. There his study of antique sculpture and of Latin poetry combined to turn him even more firmly toward allegorical tableaux and scenes from the Bible as subjects for his own career as a painter. He lived at first in the house of a famous Roman poet, who influenced his taste still further by reading to him daily from his own works and those of antique poets. Poussin's illustrations of classic scenes and paintings of Roman ruins soon enchanted the Italians who bought his paintings, and found, as is so often the case, that the foreigner understood their landscape and their tradition better than did some of their own painters. Except for a brief visit to France in an official position, which he quickly resigned because of his disgust with the intrigues and politics of court life, he spent the rest of his life in Italy. ^tet, while remaining completely aloof from French influences of his time, he nevertheless may be said to have laid the foundations for a truly French school of painting, and those characteristics of formal design, discipline, and balance which are inherently French qualities were outstanding in his work. W i t h his younger contemporary, the almost illiterate Claude Lorrain, Poussin shares the distinction of occupying the most important place in French painting until the birth of Watteau, almost one hundred years later. It is for his grand sense of landscape and the powerful intellectual approach to his art that Poussin is admired by those moderns who find his coloring perfunctory and his figures more like bas-relief than painting. After his brief return to his native land his coloring became warmer, and T H E SACRIFICE OF V E N U S belongs to this epoch—the mid-seventeenth century—for it shows the mellowing influence of the softly beautiful French countryside upon his austere palette. NICOLAS POUSSIN

[2] T H E S A C R I F I C E OF V E N U S ( N O . I ) » » )

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THE DUCHESS OF M A N T U A (No. 2) By

PETER PAUL

RUBENS

(1577-1640) Canvas, 2 7 ^ by 21

inches

THIS PORTRAIT is closely related to the one of the D u k e of Mantua ( N o . 39 of the collection) and is of his wife, who was an older sister of Marie de Medicis, Queen of France. T h e portrait was painted in 1605 when the Duchess was thirty-five years old and shows her to have been young-looking, even handsome, if a trifle severe in expression. T h e details of the lace collar and the embroidery design of her dress as well as her pearls are painted with the truly Flemish love of beautiful texture, and a minute attention to detail which the young painter was soon to drop in favor of the freer brushwork that was to make him famous. (See biographical note on Rubens, N o . 39.) Seventeen years later, Marie de Medicis was to give Rubens one of his greatest commissions. She called him to Paris to decorate the Luxembourg Palace with that stupendous series of paintings which records the great events of her marriage with Henri Quatre and which now hangs in the Louvre. B y this time, however, Rubens had won so great renown and was so much in demand that he persuaded the Queen to let him execute most of the work in Antwerp, where he had established a sort of "picture factory" a corps of assistants doing most of the work.The original designs and the finishing touches were always his own, but the details of draperies, landscapes, buildings, fruits, flowers, would each be by the hand of some young artist who specialized in that one particular. A m o n g the most famous of these assistants were Jordaens and Van Dyck, both of whom are represented in this collection (Nos. 36 and 2 0 ) . T h e study entitled THREE ANGEL HEADS ( N o . 9 ) is attributed to Rubens b y W . R.

Valentiner in his catalogue of Rubens paintings written for the 1936 Loan Exhibit of Old Masters at the Detroit Institute of Arts. These three heads occur again and again in Rubens' larger canvases, and Edouard Vermoecken, of the Royal M u s e u m of Fine Arts at Antwerp, tells us that this canvas was found over the door of Rubens' study a few years ago when the house was being remodeled. According to an inscription on the back, these may be the original studies from which Rubens and his assistants copied the group. Valentiner concurs with Vermoecken in this opinion.

T H E D U C H E S S OF M A N T U A ( N O . 2 ) ) »

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L E O N O K A HE M E D I O M \ N T \ A . I T M O N T I S f i H RAH

!\

PORTRAIT OF A W O M A N WITH A HAT (No.

18)

By J O H N C O N S T A B L E (1776-1837) Panel, 30 by 25 inches

IN THE YEAR that brought forth the Declaration of Independence there was born an English painter whose work was to effect a profound revolution in the art of landscape painting. T h i s man was John Constable, just a year younger than J. M . W . Turner, whose more spectacular methods and erratic temperament brought him to swift public notice. T h e quiet, sincere Constable had to wait until his forty-eighth year before receiving acclaim, and then it came from France rather than from his own country, which chose to ignore him until long after his death. H e was the son of a miller and, for a while, worked at that trade himself, his artistic evolution being a long, slow growth during which, step b y step, he explored a new trail for himself as well as for others. H i s personal life, too, taught him patience, for he had to wait m a n y years before being allowed to marry the girl he loved, her father seeing little likelihood of Constable's ever being able to support her. T h e y were married w h e n he was forty, and w h e n success finally came to him at the Paris Salon of 1824, he no longer needed it, financially at least, for b y that time his wife had inherited a little money of her own and they were independent. Constable had at first tried to make a living as a portrait painter in London, with but indifferent success, the sham and pretense of fashionable circles being most repugnant to his unaffected, studious personality. H i s real interest being in the field of landscape painting, he soon returned to Suffolk where he could pursue his studies of the problems of natural color that so engrossed him. U p to then it had been a rooted tradition to paint grass and sky and trees in a brownish tone that was very far from w h a t the eye actually saw w h e n looking at a scene out-of-doors—a tradition handed down from the D u t c h , w h o had painted their exterior scenes inside their studios—and at first his English contemporaries were so startled by Constable's realistic greens and yellows that they dubbed his landscapes "eggs and spinach!' It was the French painter, Delacroix, w h o first became excited over Constable's achievement in setting down nature's colors as he really saw them, and w h o hailed him as the "father of modern landscape'.' Constable is k n o w n almost exclusively as a landscape painter, w h i c h gives unusual interest to this rare PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN WITH A HAT. H i s theories of painting and the effect they had upon the artists w h o came after him are gone into at greater length in N o . 33, LANDSCAPE N E A R ARUNDEL.

[14] P O R T R A I T OF A W O M A N W I T H A H A T ( N O . L8) »)»

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PORTRAIT SKETCH OF GEORGE WASHINGTON (No. By

i9)

GILBERT

STUART

(1755-1828) Canvas, 27 by 2 3 ^ inches

THE NAME of Gilbert Stuart is familiar to every American schoolchild, and immediately brings to mind that of the "Father of His Country!' T h e painter of so many American patriots was actually a Tory, however, and had left his native country in 1775 for London, where he worked under Benjamin West. There he achieved success after impecunious beginnings, for a time earning his bread as a church organist, but his spendthrift ways kept him in debt and it was with the plan of earning enough money to clear up all those debts that he returned to America in 1793. His uncanny talent for catching facial expressions made him a favorite with the statesmen and generals of the young republic as well as with their wives and daughters, and he spent the rest of his life in the United States, dying in Boston at the age of seventy-three. N o t only were his talents such as to command the respect of posterity; he was advantaged by having as his sitters many of the greatest men of his time on both sides of the ocean: Reynolds, West, Copley, all sat to him, as did almost all the American notables of his time, but of course it is through his many portraits of George Washington that he is chiefly known today. These have occasioned much controversy, for it is known that, although Washington actually sat for him only three times, Stuart made about one hundred copies of these original portraits, all of which are now spoken of as belonging to the "Vaughan type" or the "Athenaeum type" according as the pose shows Washington's head from the right side (Vaughan type) or from the left as in the famous portrait which belongs to the Boston museum (Athenaeum type). T h e portrait sketch shown here is of unusual interest for several reasons. In the first place, it does not conform to either of the types described above, for while it shows the right side of the face it also resembles in general composition the Athenaeum portrait. T h e face shows most careful study and analysis, but the jabot and the hands are less meticulously done, suggesting that this may be a study from life preparatory to the painting of one of the larger portraits. T h e second item of historical interest is that this portrait was once in the possession of Robert E. Lee, having been painted originally at the order of Lee's father, "Lighthorse Harry" of the Revolution. From the Lee family it passed into the hands of a picture restorer in lieu of payment for work he had done in restoring thirty family portraits for the Lees, and from the restorer it went to a Dr. C r u m of Baltimore in payment for professional services! These facts are vouched for by Charles Henry Hart, who verified them by personal letters from Lee's daughter. This portrait is listed in the book on Gilbert Stuart by Lawrence Park (1926) and also in Mantle Fielding's Gilbert Stuart Portraits of George

Washington.

[16] P O R T R A I T S K E T C H OF G E O R G E W A S H I N G T O N ( N O . 1 9 ) » )

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PORTRAIT OF PRESIDENT ROOS (No. 20) By

SIR ANTHONY V A N

DYCK

(1599-1641) Canvas, 26 b y 22 inches W E HAVE noted elsewhere (No. 2) the names of two famous artists who began their careers as assistants to Rubens—Jakob Jordaens and Anton Van Dyck. The first was to remain always very strongly influenced by his master, but Van Dyck was to break away and develop a style of his own—one as elegant, spiritual, and refined as that of Rubens was lusty and robust. Van Dyck entered the studio of Rubens at the age of nineteen and so great was his talent that almost immediately he was painting pictures that could hardly be told from those by Rubens himself. This might have been most detrimental to the free play of the young artist's own talent, but, fortunately, within two years he left Rubens' workshop for a short visit to England at the invitation of James the First. Soon after this, at Rubens' own suggestion, Van Dyck took a leave of absence and departed for Italy, there to study the works of the great Italian painters, to whom he was temperamentally more akin than to the more earthy northerners. He returned to Antwerp for a short while, until 1631, when he once more sailed for England, this time at the suggestion of Charles the First, who knighted him and appointed him court painter. In England he quickly won renown as the painter who could most perfectly express the ideal concept of royalty, for his portraits of the royal family and of the English aristocracy reflect to a great degree his own temperament—charming, exquisite, elegant, pleasure-loving. In fact, so great was his love of the luxurious side of life that the Italian people have already nicknamed him "II pittore cavaliere" The purity of his drawing and the faultless brilliance of his coloring seemed indeed to express all that was highbred and noble, and his style was copied by almost all his English successors. In his paintings of children he is perhaps at his best, and his many portraits of the children of Charles the First are scattered throughout the art galleries of Europe. While his intelligence was of too high an order to be harmed by flattery and success, his physical strength was not equal to the strenuosity upon which the robust Rubens could thrive, and at forty-two, worn out with hard work and unrestrained living, he died, having barely survived his illustrious master by one year. According to W. R. Valentiner, this PORTRAIT OF PRESIDENT ROOS was painted about 1630, that is, within the time of his second Antwerp residence, before his final return to England. It was formerly in the collection of Rodman Wanamaker in Philadelphia.

[18] P O R T R A I T OF P R E S I D E N T ROOS ( N O . 2 0 ) »»)

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ST. FRANCIS (No. 2 2) By

EL

GRECO

(Ca. 1542-1614) Canvas, 27 b y 22 inches

IT IS HIGHLY interesting that the first artist to develop a definitely Spanish style of painting should be a man who was not a Spaniard at all. For though he succeeded in interpreting the mystical religious fervor of the Spanish Counterreformation with terrible and at times even brutal grandeur, El Greco was actually a native of Crete who came to Toledo from Venice, where he had worked under Titian and probably under Tintoretto. Beyond this, nothing is known of his early life or of his forebears or what drew him to the gray, granite city of Toledo. Once there, however, he quickly shed all Italian influence and developed a style all his own—melancholy, mystic, and frankly extravagant. His figures seem like veritable specters of the Inquisition, with elongated limbs and emaciated faces of livid pallor. There seems to be a hint of the Byzantine in these strange faces with melancholy eyes, and some critics have suggested that El Greco may have begun his career as an apprentice in an ikon workshop before arriving in Italy. Certainly any canvas by him is quickly recognized at a distance even by the layman because of these distorted figures and cold tonalities. A s a painter of religious subjects he was well suited to the taste of the times, and he rose quickly to prominence, being given many commissions to execute for the church authorities. With the court, however, he had no success, and the king, after having entrusted him with one commission, was so bitterly disappointed over the result that, though he paid the artist for it, he refused to hang the picture. While fashionable painters in Spain were merely following the path laid out for them by the great Italian and Flemish painters, El Greco was actually painting Spain—her landscape, her people, her fanatical religious exaltation—ever seeking for beauty through truth. His success endured throughout his lifetime, but almost immediately after his death his works were buried in oblivion, not to be disinterred until three hundred years later, when a Europe plunged into war was to find his violent and exciting canvases once more to its taste. M a n y modernists consider him to have been the true precursor of modern painting. Examples of his work are to be seen in the Metropolitan Museum, and perhaps his greatest landscape masterpiece, the "View of Toledo" belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago. The ST. FRANCIS which hangs in this collection is one of the most typical of EL Greco's religious portraits. It is described in books on EL Greco by such critics as Manuel Cossio, Paul Lafond, and August Mayer, who vouches for its genuineness and draws our attention to the painter's signature, which can be seen on the piece of paper, or parchment, at the lower right of the canvas.

[20] ST. F R A N C I S ( N O . 2 2 ) ) »

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LANDSCAPE (No. 23) By

MEYNDERT

HOBBEMA

(1638-1709) Panel, 23^/g by 28^ inches painters who followed Rembrandt are classed as "The Little Dutchmen" not only because they were of an artistic stature less great than that of their illustrious predecessor, but also because they depicted smaller objects, smaller aspects of nature, and painted them upon smaller canvases. The quietly beautiful pictures of Dutch interiors, the various scenes from everyday living, called "genre paintings" and the landscapes from that long succession of Dutchmen that ends with Ruysdael and Hobbema, comprise this school of "Little Dutchmen!' After Hobbema there were no more outstanding Dutch painters until well into the nineteenth century. While the Dutch burghers were very much interested in art as a matter of speculation, buying up the works of certain painters and trading and promoting sales, their taste was not of the best and they had little sympathy for the needs of the artist, and no understanding of them. In fact, they held them in such low esteem that men such as Vermeer and Ruysdael were driven to bankruptcy, like the one, or died in the poorhouse, like the other. Meyndert Hobbema was a pupil of Ruysdael, and perhaps because he saw the neglect and stark tragedy that surrounded the older man he wisely gave up trying to make a living through painting and did it as a hobby, earning his daily bread by means of an obscure post as wine-customs collector. This permitted him to paint with perfect sincerity, uninfluenced by the tastes of the times or the caprices of a possible buyer. One of his most beautiful landscapes, "The Avenue" which hangs in the National Gallery, influenced the entire school of British landscape painting that came a hundred years later. John Constable, ever quick to acknowledge the inspiration he derived from his great predecessors, said with his dying breath: "Oh! Hobbema, my dear Hobbema, how I have loved you!" Thus, after years of neglect, Hobbema's paintings became famous and were eagerly bought up by British, French, and American collectors, so that today there are very few Hobbemas left in Holland. The LANDSCAPE shown in this collection was formerly at The Hague and was probably painted around 1658, according to W. R. Valentiner, who authenticates this painting and adds that "the strong contrasts of light and shadow and the brown tone of the trees are characteristic for this period of the artist!' Cornelis Hofstede de Groot adds his certification, as does Wilhelm Bode, who mentions particularly its "energetic technique, luminosity of color, and warm tonality!' T H E DUTCH

[22] L A N D S C A P E ( N O . 2 3 ) »)»

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PORTRAIT OF MISTER PAYLER (No. 24) By

SIR JOSHUA

REYNOLDS

(1723-1792) Canvas, 3 0 b y 25 inches

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, England's greatest exponent of portraiture, was born near Plymouth, the son of a clergyman. A t the age of seventeen, when pressed by his father to choose a vocation, he replied that "he would rather be an apothecary than a mediocre painter, but that if he could be apprenticed to an eminent master he would choose the latter!' The eminent master was found in the person of Thomas Hudson, and thus young Reynolds began his study of painting. Eight years later, through the friendship of Commodore Keppel, whose ship by lucky accident put into Plymouth for repairs, Reynolds was offered free passage to Italy and so was enabled to study the works of his great idol, Michelangelo. If he never reached the heights of the great Renaissance master he so revered, he nevertheless attained and held a very high position of his own, remaining the acknowledged master of British painting for over twenty-five years. Through his exquisite portraits of women and children we find corroboration of the testimony of his contemporaries to the rare gentleness and goodness of his character, for besides being a fine painter he was a cultivated gentleman, a leader in the intellectual and fashionable life of London at that epoch. He was the first president of the newly formed Royal Academy and was one of the founders of London's literary club of which David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, and Boswell were also members. Raeburn, Hoppner, and Lawrence were all befriended by him. His feud with Gainsborough should not be taken too seriously, as it was more or less artificially engendered by the foolish claims of rival factions, each claiming superiority for its favorite. Among his best-known paintings are the " A g e of Innocence" for which his little grandniece posed, and the "Portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse'.' The PORTRAIT OF M I S T E R P A Y L E R s h o w n in this c o l l e c t i o n is l i s t e d in t h e h i s t o r y of R e y n o l d s '

work by Algernon Graves and W. V Cronin and was formerly in the Henry Hammond Collection at St. Albans. These authors tell us that "Mister and Mistress Payler sat for their portraits in June 1771, the charge being 35 guineas each!' The portraits remained in the possession of the family and were not even exhibited until 1931-

[24] P O R T R A I T OF M I S T E R P A Y L E R ( N O . 2 4 ) )»»

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THE EARL A N D COUNTESS OF ESSEX (Nos. 26 and 27) ZtyJoHN

HOPPNER

(1758—1810) Canvases, each 93 b y 5 7 inches

IN THE CHRONOLOGY of England's eighteenth-century painters, John Hoppner comes after Gainsborough and Reynolds (he admired Reynolds to the point of deliberately imitating that artist's style) and just before Lawrence, who was his junior by eleven years. The circumstances of his birth are somewhat obscure, but it is known that his mother, who was German, was employed at court in some capacity and that his father was, supposedly, a German physician. A t any rate it is clear that he had from early life the benevolent protection of King George III, who had him placed in the St. Paul Choristers, bestowing upon him a small pension, and when his talent for painting began to show itself it was again through the patronage of the King that he was enabled to enter the Academy schools. By the time of Hoppner's arrival upon the scene, England's style of portrait painting had declined. Enamoured of softness and grace, the artists of the time made no pretense of expressing character in a face, and were content to endow their sitters' features with a specious glamour. A pupil of Hoppner's wrote: "Hoppner frequently remarked that in painting ladies' portraits he used to make as beautiful a face as he could, then give it a likeness to his sitter, working down from this beautiful ideal until a bystander should cry out: 'Oh! I see a likeness coming! Whereupon he always stopped and would never venture to try and make it more like!' In view of this anecdote, it is perhaps not surprising that Hoppner's method has seemed to give better results in his portraits of women and children, although his portrait of Pitt is a notable exception and perhaps the best thing he has done. We have noted elsewhere (No. 29) that early in his career Hoppner alienated fashionable support by his affiliation with the wrong political party and his contributions to a prominent W h i g periodical of the time, so that his young rival, Lawrence, skimmed off the cream of social patronage. I n c o n n e c t i o n w i t h t h e s e p o r t r a i t s , T H E E A R L OF ESSEX a n d T H E COUNTESS OF

ESSEX, it may be of interest to note this is the same Earl of Essex who about thirty years later, when in his eighties, was to take as his second wife the beautiful singer, Kitty Stephen, the vivacious "Polly" of "The Beggar's Opera" and heroine of several of Dr. Arne's works, and that the Earl was to leave her widowed just one year after this May-and-December romance.

[26] T H E E A R L AND C O U N T E S S OF E S S E X ( N O S . 2 6 AND 2 7 ) )»» NO.

27

ON

PAGE

29

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T H E C O U N T E S S OF E S S E X

(NO. 2 7 )

»)

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PORTRAIT OF THE COUNTESS H A R D W I C K E (No. By

29)

SIR THOMAS

LAWRENCE

(1769—1830) Canvas, 50 by 40 inches

THE STORY of Sir Thomas Lawrence's life begins with the romantic career of a child prodigy, for so precocious was he that at the age of ten he was selling crayon likenesses to the guests of his father's inn at Bristol. W h e n he was eighteen his father, seeing that money could be made by the boy's talents, removed to London, where young Lawrence, through the kindness of Reynolds, studied at the Academy schools. His rise to success was swift, helped along, as he was, by his exceptional social charm and good looks. H e was admitted to the Academy as an "associate" at the age of twenty-two— three years before the regular minimum—at the special request of K i n g George III, and he had the honor of being commissioned to paint the Queen's portrait before he was twenty-one. H e had already gained a reputation as a Don Juan, however, and before he was allowed to start upon this commission he had to sign an affidavit vouching for the perfect propriety of his conduct toward his royal sitter! H e never married, though for a time he was engaged to the daughter of Sarah Siddons. T h e fact that his two contemporaries, Hoppner and Opie, had lost all fashionable support both by reason of their political beliefs and their personal characteristics, left the field open to Lawrence, who became the protege of the Tory party. H e received stupendous prices for that time, was knighted in 1815, and upon the death of Benjamin West, five years later, succeeded him in the presidency of the Royal Academy. His portraits reflect the grace and charm of his own temperament and have an artificial elegance and brilliant superficiality that emphasize what is lovely in his sitters and conveniently suppress the unbeautiful elements, so that his paintings are often weak in character and lacking in vitality. Sheldon Cheney in his World

History

of Art speaks of the "fastidious fragility and consummate fluency" of Lawrence's work, calling it "superficial painting at its very best!' Lawrence's death closed an epoch that had seen British portraiture brought to its highest point and one that contained the names of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Raeburn, Hoppner, and Romney, in addition to his own. T h e Hon. Susan \orke, later the Countess Hardwicke, whose likeness by Lawrence is exhibited in the Willitts J. Hole Collection, was one of the famous belles of the Regency, and W. Roberts suggests that the flowing robes she wears in the portrait, which are unusual with Lawrence, probably depict her in fancy dress for a ball. Certainly they add immensely to the beauty and grace of the picture. Both Roberts and Algernon Graves, who adds his authentication to that of Roberts, suggest that this portrait was probably contemporary with the artist's "Countess of Wilton'.'

[30] P O R T R A I T OF T H E C O U N T E S S H A R D W I C K E ( N O . 2 9 )

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LANDSCAPE NEAR ARUNDEL (No. By

JOHN

33)

CONSTABLE

(1776-1837) Canvas, 44 b y 55J/2 inches JOHN CONSTABLE'S c o n t r i b u t i o n to t h e P a r i s S a l o n of 1 8 2 4 w a s his n o w w o r l d - f a m o u s

"Hay Wain" which had been exhibited in England three years before without exciting any particular enthusiasm. This time, however, the French painter, Eugene Delacroix, happened to see it and was so electrified by the brilliancy of the Englishman's color that he begged permission of the authorities to take down his own canvas on which he had worked two years, and, furiously employing Constable's method, he repainted the entire background of his picture in Constable's luminous, natural tones in only three days! For this, Delacroix was all but ostracized by the older French critics, who christened his reworked canvas "The Massacre of Painting" and protested that Constable's idea of painting nature as one really saw it to be the ruin of "all beauty, style, or tradition!' Constable, who once said, "There is nothing in Nature, either beautiful or ugly, but light and shade make it so!' was really the forerunner of the naturalistic, realistic, and impressionistic schools that were to follow. Until then, it had been assumed that the colors of nature must be toned down, "disciplined" to an orderly grayish brown key, so that Constable's riot of clean air, sparkling light, water, and clouds must have been like a blinding release into the sunlight after years in a dim studio. To achieve this effect of reality, he used the plan later followed by the Impressionists, that of "divided tones" or little dabs, strokes, or dots of various colors, laid on side by side, which the eye of the beholder assembles into the desired "impression!' The view shown here is of the Brighton Road and the Castle of Arundel, with the valley of the Arun, in early autumn. It was exhibited in London at the N e w Gallery in 1897, when it was owned by James Orrock, and at that time was described and reproduced in Byron Webber's James Orrock, R. I. There is no record that any view of Arundel had been exhibited by Constable either at the Royal Academy or at the British Institution, but it is known that in 1834 he was visiting a friend at Arundel and working on the painting of "Arundel Mill and Castle" which is now privately owned in the United States. The painting in this collection, which at one time was owned by Lord Leverhulme, dates therefore from about the time of the other painting and, in the opinion of W. Roberts of London, who vouches for the foregoing historical details, ranks as one of his masterpieces.

[32] LANDSCAPE NEAR A R U N D E L (NO. 3 3 )

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THE WATERING PLAGE (NO.34)

By T H O M A S G A I N S B O R O U G H (1727—1788)

Canvas, 38 by

inches

T H E CAREER of T h o m a s Gainsborough affords a most interesting study in contrasts when compared with that of his great rival, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Whereas Reynolds worked upon a basis of conscious planning and analysis, Gainsborough achieved his effects through what Ruskin calls his "swift expressional power," relying on spontaneous touch rather than careful toil. Secondly, we know that Reynolds loved the world of thought and intellectual activity, while Gainsborough, a true bohemian, loved nature and music above all else. A comparison between the portraits each artist painted of the great actress, Sarah Siddons, further illustrates this difference of outlook, for Reynolds chose to paint her as " T h e Tragic M u s e " whereas Gainsborough saw her as a lovely and charming woman. Reynolds remained single; Gainsborough married young and romantically. Finally, these divergences of temperament are evidenced by the long personal feud which existed between them and which was not ended until, on his deathbed, Gainsborough begged Reynolds to come to him. In one thing he concurred with Reynolds, however, and that was in the conviction that his real talent lay not in the field of portraiture but in the enraptured study of nature, for he used to say that he "painted portraits for money, but landscapes for love!' T h i s love, and also his talent for painting, he inherited from his mother, who was herself a painter of flowers. H e began his art studies at the age of fifteen under the tutelage of the French engraver, Gravelot, and continued under the portrait painter, H a y m a n , in London. H e then returned to his native Sudbury, later removing to Bath, where he first began to attract fashionable attention, and finally moved to London, where he spent the rest of his life, his faculty of making all his sitters look elegant and distinguished bringing him a large following. His landscapes are imbued with the charm of his romantic approach to nature and his loving familiarity with every detail of the countryside he was painting. W h i l e he did not entirely abandon the premeditated, "arranged" type of landscape painting, and while his coloring stayed in the muted gray and brown of tradition, Gainsborough, nevertheless, is thought by some critics to have been the forerunner of those painters who were to give us an expression of beauty through the effects of light and shade acting upon the scene painted. Strangely enough, Gainsborough's earlier landscapes are conceded to be superior to his later ones both in construction and color, showing, perhaps, how far fashionable portrait painting had diverted him from his true bent. W . Roberts and James Greig of London have both certified this painting, which was formerly in the John Glen Collection in London.

[34] T H E WATERING P L A C E (NO. 3 4 )

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PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN (No. By

38)

R E M B R A N D T VAN R I J N (1606—1665) O a k panel, 26 b y 2 0 ^ inches

REMBRANDT is almost universally conceded to be the greatest of all the Dutch masters, though there is a wide divergence in opinion when it comes to defining or analyzing this supremacy in the field of art, since his nature was one of contrasting elements as fascinating and challenging to the psychologist as were the problems of chiaroscuro to the painter. He was both a dreamer and a realist; a marvelous technician and yet, occasionally, an almost slovenly workman; a mystic and again a cruelly clear-eyed, unflattering portrait painter. Born in the little university town of Leyden, center of Dutch philosophy and learning, he early imbibed the philosopher's truth-seeking attitude toward life and art. He never underwent the period of Italian travel and study that then seemed almost indispensable to a painter, because he shared the attitude of many artists of today that an artist must remain within the focus of his own national culture or he will face the danger of being merely an imitator of what has already been done. That he did not underestimate the inspiration of great predecessors we know, however, from the fact that he spent money freely on the purchase of great works of art of every kind as well as on beautiful jewels and apparel to adorn the beauty of his young wife Saskia. This period of his life was the happiest he was to know, and the portraits he did of himself and of Saskia are tributes to this joyous interlude. With the death of Saskia came a bitter turn in his fortunes, for it is at this time that he lost the favor of clients and critics by allowing his growing absorption in certain problems of painting to cause him to neglect the human vanity of his sitters. T h e unveiling of his masterpiece, "The Night Watch"—depicting the officers of the civic militia—roused a storm of censure, for, pursuing his interest in the effects of light and shade, he had placed half his personages in darkness, where they were unrecognizable! Complete artistic and social ostracism followed this event and the sole comforts to the spiritual isolation of his last years were the loyal devotion of Hendrickje Stoffels, his housekeeper, whom he later married, and an ever-increasing absorption in his work. He left behind him works enough to have occupied several lifetimes. The PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN belongs to Rembrandt's first Amsterdam period, when he was mingling with the most scholarly circles of that city and when he enjoyed painting women in symbolic or allegorical dress. It has been suggested that this may be a portrait of Anna Maria von Schiirman, a distinguished poet, linguist, and Orientalist. T h e painting is discussed both by Hofstede de Groot in his book on Dutch painters and by W. R. Valentiner in his two books, Rembrandt Paintings in America and Rembrandt's Re-discovered Paintings.

[36] P O R T R A I T OF A W O M A N ( N O . 3 8 ) )»»

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T H E D U K E OF M A N T U A (No. By

39)

PETER PAUL

RUBENS

(1577-1640) Canvas,

by 21^4 inches

LIKE Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens belongs to that small group of great artists w h o were more than painters, for he was a scholar, a linguist, and a successful diplomatist in the cause of European peace. H e was born in Westphalia, in a Europe seething w i t h war and destruction, and though he played his part in bringing about the peace of 1 6 3 0 , before his death he was to see Europe caught up once more in the swirl of war. O n e of his last great paintings was entitled " T h e Furies of W a r Unloosed!' A s a y o u t h he was a page to the C o u n t de Ligne, and acquired that knowledge of court etiquette and the easy manners that enabled him to move gracefully through all the courts of Europe. But, his love of painting u r g i n g him on, he began to study with the best masters of A n t w e r p , and at the age of twenty-three he w e n t to Italy. H i s beautiful copies of the works of T i t i a n and Tintoretto q u i c k l y w o n h i m the favor of V i n c e n z o Gonzaga, fourth D u k e of M a n t u a , who, taking him under his protection, appointed h i m court painter and, later, secret emissary to Spain. It was right after his return f r o m that first visit to Spain and shortly before leaving M a n t u a for A n t w e r p that this portrait and its companion piece ( N o . 2) were painted. W e hardly need the date—1605—to realize that these portraits are his early work, done w i t h the restraint and sobriety of a y o u n g artist w h o has not yet entirely found himself and w h o still retains the painstaking attention to details of costume and ornaments so typical of his countrymen. N o t e that the duke is wearing the decoration and red ribbon of the Order of the Golden Fleece. T h e first mention of these portraits occurs in an inventory of paintings at the A l c a z a r of M a d r i d , made in 1635, where they are minutely described. T h e date of these portraits helps to decide the date of the well-known large painting of the D u k e and Duchess and four other personages now h a n g i n g in the A c a d e m y at M a n t u a and which must have been done at about the same period. Rubens m a y be said to have combined powerful intellect with a stupendous imagination reaching far beyond the limits of Flemish tradition, yet remained entirely Flemish in his work. H i s f a m e spread throughout the world, influencing the taste of the times and the development of almost all contemporary painters.

[38] THE DUKE OF MANTUA (NO. 3 9 ) » ) >•

CLASSICAL RUINS (No. 40) By

CLAUDE

LORRAIN

(1600—1682) Canvas, 61 by 81 inches CLAUDE GELÉE, surnamed Lorrain on account of his birth in a little village of Lorraine, was of most humble origin and was early apprenticed to a pastry cook because he seemed so stupid that book learning of any kind would be hopelessly beyond him. Tradition tells us that it was his talent for cake decoration which led his master to send him to Rome with a group of pastry-cook apprentices in order to learn the art of sugar icing. There, coming into contact with the great art works of the Renaissance and the antique sculptures of Greece, the young man found his true vocation to be that of landscape painting. H e lived to attain great success, to become the favorite of three Popes, and to go down in history as one of the founders of a national school of French painting. His paintings of the Italian countryside, dotted with classical ruins or conventionally arranged figures, were formal and artificially contrived, but he made nevertheless a great contribution to art by his intense realization of the possibilities of light and atmosphere—a poetic sense of space and light which saved his canvases from dullness and made his lifework a sort of bridge from classicism to the school of "open air" realism that was to come almost two centuries later. Like Nicolas Poussin he was a Frenchman who, although remaining out of France throughout his adult life, still showed more definitely French attitudes of thought in his work than did most of the painters of the time actually working at the French court. Lorrain's influence was felt and admitted by many later painters, from the elegant Watteau to the Barbizon painters and the Impressionists. T h e English landscape painter, John Constable, speaking of Lorrain, said, " H o w paramount is Claude!" J. M . W . Turner admired him so boundlessly and strove so endlessly to surpass him that when he bequeathed two of his paintings to the National Gallery he stipulated that they must hang between two of Claude's most famous canvases. T h e CLASSICAL RUINS shown here comes from the W i n t e r Palace of the late Czar of Russia, where it used to hang over the grand stairway. In its subject matter, arrangement, and color it is a good example of the painter's style. T h e careful composition, the contrast between the classic ruins and the small peasant figures, even the plan of lighting and color, are according to a formula-like scheme ever recurring in Claude's landscapes. In spite of formula, however, the pictures are endowed with charm and interest by the magic of the painter's art, which knew how to blend nature and art, the past and the present, in a luminous veil of poesy.

[40] CLASSICAL RUINS (NO. 4 0 ) •>» >

LANDSCAPE WITH A RAINBOW (No. 46) By

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM

TURNER

(1775-1851)

Canvas, 1 9 ^ by 35 inches LESS THAN a single decade saw the birth of three of England's greatest landscapists: John Crome, John Constable, and J. M . W . Turner, whose worship of the beauties of light and air was so feverish and so intense as to verge sometimes on the theatrical. In fact, there is reason to believe that Turner was more than a little mad, like so many men of genius. Like a figure from a mystery novel, he led a "double life" for years: the one as a retired seaman, living in respectable lodgings in Cheyne Walk; the other as the well-known if rather disliked, erratic, talented painter. T h i s deception was not discovered until he suddenly died while in the role of the seaman, in his quiet lodging house, and one of the reasons advanced for his long assumption of that role was his great passion for the sea plus an innate theatricalism. In his youth he had sailed into many a port, as his beautiful marine landscapes attest. H e started life as a topographer and in that capacity learned the art of coloring lithographs, thereby deriving a technical mastery of this difficult medium which was to make it possible for him to achieve such unparalleled results in his water-color paintings. Indeed, it is by these that we can best judge his work, for like m a n y other painters he insisted upon various experiments in the mixing of his oil colors, with the result that he commonly used pigments which finally destroyed each other. His palette, at first cool and restrained, developed in tone after visits to Switzerland and Italy and his study of Claude Lorrain's luminous color. Turner declared that Claude was his most potent inspiration. His frenzied worship of Lorrain's work was only equaled b y the critic Ruskin's unbounded admiration for Turner himself, and the critic stoutly championed the artist at a time when the extremely individual qualities of his paintings caused him to be misunderstood or passed indifferently by. Ruskin compared him to Giotto in his use of "opalescent, warm color!' It is possible that the very extravagance of Ruskin's claims for his idol have delayed a just estimate of Turner's proper worth in the history of painting. Turner's work ranged from the merely pretty and prosaic through the wildly romantic and melodramatic, finally reaching the very heights of the ethereal and poetic; but behind this final impressionistic vagueness there was a long stored-up and unique knowledge of nature that gives substance and foundation to his most shadowy visions.

[42] L A N D S C A P E W I T H A RAINBOW (NO. 4 6 ) » )

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THE DANCE OF ST. MAGDALENE (NO.47)

By

PIETER BRUEGHEL, THE

ELDER

(1525-1569) Canvas, 28 b y 83 inches

BOEREN, or Peasant, Brueghel (so called to distinguish him from his less talented sons and grandson, who were painters, too), came o£ a family of farmers and cowherds. H e studied painting under Jerome Cock and Pieter Koeck (whose daughter he later married), but neither of these artists influenced him as much as that odd genius, Jerome Bosch, though he saw much more truthfully, if less wildly imaginatively, than did Bosch. A t the age of eighteen he made a visit to France and Italy, filling his sketchbooks with landscapes which served him as studies for backgrounds in subsequent years. N o painter ever portrayed what he saw more meticulously. H e stored up in his mind all that he observed, and later drew at will upon this storehouse with astounding truth and vitality. Brueghel was a quiet man, taking in so much that he had little time to give out; but, full of humor and pranks, he used to love to disguise himself and mingle with the peasants in their jollifications. W i t h a vigorous and original mind, and an imagination which kindled to the nature which he loved, he was so independent that although he was able to learn from others he remained almost uninfluenced by them. W h i l e most other Flemish painters seem to be either leading up to Rubens, or merely to be a later echo of Brueghel's genius, Brueghel managed to stand out to posterity as a complete, independent realization of himself and his century, and he remained almost completely free from southern (Italian) influences. H e may be said to have prepared the path for Rubens, just as Bellini had marked the way for Titian and Giorgione. T o carry this comparison further, it might be said that as Bellini was the father of portraiture, so was Brueghel the father of genre painting. T h i s curiously titled picture, DANCE OF ST. MAGDALENE, is evidently an allegory depicting the allurements of the primose path, along which M a r y of Magdala is being led by the cloven-footed creature who is beckoning her on to the day of reckoning. In contrast to the exuberant gaiety of Brueghel's scenes of peasant roystering, we sense here the consciousness of guilt thrown over fleshly appetites by the medieval church; but Brueghel's healthy interest in humanity breaks out here and there, as in the absorbed attitudes of the two musicians under the tree in the foreground. T h i s Brueghel is unusual, being painted on canvas, but its authenticity is attested by several experts, among whom are W i l h e l m Bode and M a x J. Friedländer, director of the State Picture Gallery, Berlin.

[44] T H E D A N C E OF ST. M A G D A L E N E ( N O . 4 7 ) » )

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