§ 31. Expression of the effects of age on architec ture by S. Prout. the grace of nature as from her faintness and transparency: and for his truth of colour, let the single fact of his having omitted all record whatsoever of the frescoes whose wrecks are still to be found at least on one half of the unrestored palaces, and, with still less excusableness, all record of the magnificent coloured marbles of many whose greens and purples are still undimmed upon the Casa Dario, Casa Trevisan, and multitudes besides, speak for him in this respect. Let it be observed that I find no fault with Canaletto for his want of poetry, of feeling, of artistical thoughtfulness in treatment, or of the various other virtues which he does not so much as profess. He professes nothing but coloured daguerreotypeism. Let us have it; most precious and to be revered it would be: let us have fresco where fresco was, and that copied faithfully; let us have carving where carving is, and that architecturally true. I have seen daguerreotypes in which every figure and rosette, and crack and stain, and fissure is given on a scale of an inch to Canaletto's three feet. What excuse is there to be offered for his omitting, on that scale, as I shall hereafter show, all statement of such ornament whatever? Among the Flemish schools, exquisite imitations of architecture are found constantly, and that not with Canaletto's vulgar black exaggeration of shadow, but in the most pure and silvery and luminous greys. I have little pleasure in such pictures; but I blame not those who have more; they are what they profess to be, and they are wonderful and instructive, and often graceful, and even affecting but Canaletto possesses no virtue except that of dexterous imitation of commonplace light and shade; and perhaps, with the exception of Salvator, no artist has ever fettered his unfortunate admirers more securely from all healthy or vigorous perception of truth, or been of more general detriment to all subsequent schools. Neither, however, by the Flemings nor by any other of the elder schools, was the effect of age or of human life upon architecture ever adequately expressed. What ruins they drew looked as if broken down on purpose; what weeds they put on seemed put on for ornament. Their domestic buildings had never any domesticity; the people looked out of their windows evidently to be drawn, or came into the street only to stand there for ever. A peculiar studiousness infected all accident; bricks fell out methodically, windows opened and shut by rule; stones were chipped at regular intervals; everything that happened seemed to have been expected before; and above all, the street had been washed and the houses dusted expressly to be painted in their best. We owe to Prout, I believe, the first perception, and certainly the only existing expression, of precisely the characters which were wanting to old art; of that feeling which results from the influence, among the noble lines of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and the weed, and from the writing upon the pages of ancient walls of the confused hieroglyphics of human history. I suppose, from the deserved popularity of the artist, that the strange pleasure which I find myself in the deciphering of these is common to many. The feeling has been rashly and thoughtlessly contemned as mere love of the picturesque; there is, as I have above shown, a deeper moral in it, and we owe much, I am not prepared to say how much, to the artist by whom pre-eminently it has been excited: for, numerous as have been his imitators, extended as his influence, and simple as his means and manner, there has yet appeared nothing at all to equal him; there is no stone drawing, no vitality of architecture like Prout's. I say not this rashly; I remember Mackenzie, and Haghe, and many other capital imitators; and I have carefully reviewed the architectural work of the Academicians, often most accurate and elaborate. I repeat there is nothing but the work of Prout, which is true, living, or right, in its general impression, and nothing, therefore, so inexhaustibly agreeable. Faults he has manifold, easily detected, and much declaimed against by second-rate artists; but his excellence no one has ever approached, and his lithographic work (Sketchés in Flanders and Germany), which was, I believe, the first of the kind, still remains the most valuable of all, numerous and elaborate as its various successors have been. The second series (in Italy and Switzerland) was of less value; the drawings seemed more laborious, and had less of the life of the original sketches, being also for the most part of subjects less adapted for the developement of the artist's peculiar powers: but both are fine; and the Brussels, Louvain, Cologne, and Nuremberg subjects of the one, § 32. His excellent com position and colour. together with the Tours, Amboise, Geneva, and Sion of the other, exhibit substantial qualities of stone and wood drawing, together with an ideal appreciation of the present active and vital being of the cities, such as nothing else has ever approached. Their value is much increased by the circumstance of their being drawn by the artist's own hand upon the stone, and by the consequent manly recklessness of subordinate parts (in works of this kind, be it remembered, much is subordinate), which is of all characters of execution the most refreshing. Note the scrawled middle tint of the wall behind the Gothic well at Ratisbonne, and compare this manly piece of work with the wretched smoothness of recent lithography. Let it not be thought that there is any inconsistency between what I say here and what I have said respecting finish. This piece of dead wall is as much finished in relation to its function, as the masonries of Ghirlandajo or Leonardo in relation to theirs; and the refreshing quality is the same in both, and manifest in all great masters, without exception,-that of the utter regardlessness of the means so that their end be reached. The same kind of scrawling occurs often in the shade of Raffaelle. It is not, however, only by his peculiar stone touch, nor by his perception of human character, that he is distinguished. He is the most dexterous of all our artists in a certain kind of composition. No one can place figures as he can, except Turner. It is one thing to know where a piece of blue or white is wanted, and another to make the wearer of the blue apron or white cap come there, and not look as if it were against her will. Prout's streets are the only streets that are accidentally crowded; his markets the only markets where one feels inclined to get out of the way. With others we feel the figures so right where they are, that we have no expectation of their going anywhere else; and approve of the position of the man with the wheelbarrow, without the slightest fear of his running it against our legs. One other merit he has, far less generally acknowledged than it should be; he is among our most sunny and substantial colourists. Much conventional colour occurs in his inferior pictures (for he is very unequal), and some in all; but portions are always of quality so luminous and pure, that I have found these works the only ones capable of bearing juxtaposition with Turner and Hunt, who invariably destroy everything else that comes within range of them. His most beautiful tones occur in those drawings in which there is prevalent and powerful warm grey; his most failing ones in those of sandy red. On his deficiencies I shall not insist, because I am not prepared to say how far it is possible for him to avoid them. We have never seen the reconciliation of the peculiar characters he has obtained, with the accurate following out of architectural detail. With his present modes of execution, farther fidelity is impossible, nor has any other mode of execution, yet obtained the same results; and though much is unaccomplished by him in certain subjects, and something of over-mannerism may be traced in his treatment of others, as especially in his mode of expressing the decorative parts of Greek or Roman architecture, yet in his own peculiar Gothic territory, where the spirit of the subject itself is somewhat rude and grotesque, his abstract of decoration has more of the spirit of the reality, than far more laborious imitation. The spirit of the Flemish Hôtel de Ville and decorated street architecture has never been, even in the slightest degree, felt or conveyed except by him, and by him, to my mind, faultlessly and absolutely; and though his interpretation of architecture that contains more refined art in its details is far less satisfactory, still it is impossible, while walking on his favourite angle of the Piazza at Venice, either to think of any other artist than Prout or not to think of him. architectural painting G. Cattermole. Many other dexterous and agreeable architectural artists we § 33. Modern have, of various degrees of merit, but of all of whom, it may be generally said, that they draw hats, faces, cloaks and caps much generally. better than Prout, but figures not so well: that they draw walls and windows, but not cities; mouldings and buttresses, but not cathedrals. Joseph Nash's work on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, is, however, valuable, and I suppose that Haghe's works may be depended on for fidelity. But it appears very strange that a workman capable of producing the clever drawings he has, from time to time, sent to the New Society of Painters in Water Colours, should publish lithographs so conventional, forced, and lifeless. VOL. I. 1 Compare Stones of Venice, vol. i. chap. xxiii. § 5. I It is not without hesitation, that I mention a name respecting which the reader may already have been surprised at my silence, that of G. Cattermole. There are signs in his works of very peculiar gifts, and perhaps also of powerful genius; their deficiencies I should willingly attribute to the advice of ill-judging friends, and to the applause of a public satisfied with shallow efforts, if brilliant ; yet I cannot but think it one necessary characteristic of all true genius to be misled by no such false fires. The antiquarian feeling of Cattermole is pure, earnest, and natural; and I think his imagination originally vigorous, certainly his fancy; his grasp of momentary passion considerable, his sense of action in the human body vivid and ready. But no original talent, however brilliant, can sustain its energy when the demands upon it are constant, and all legitimate support and food withdrawn. I do not recollect in any, even of the most important of Cattermole's works, so much as a fold of drapery studied out from nature. Violent conventionalism of light and shade, sketchy forms continually less and less developed, the walls and the faces drawn with the same stucco colour, alike opaque, and all the shades on flesh, dress, or stone, laid in with the same arbitrary brown, for ever tell the same tale of a mind wasting its strength and substance in the production of emptiness, and seeking, by more and more blindly hazarded handling, to conceal the weakness which the attempt at finish would betray. This tendency has of late been painfully visible in his architecture. Some drawings made several years ago for an Annual, illustrative of Scott's works, were, for the most part, pure and finely felt, though irrelevant to our present subject, a fall of the Clyde should be noticed, admirable for breadth and grace of foliage, and for the bold sweeping of the water; and another subject of which I regret that I can only judge by the engraving, Glendearg at twilight (the monk Eustace chased by Christie of the Clint hill), which I think must have been one of the sweetest pieces of simple Border hill feeling ever painted ;-and about that time, his architecture, though always conventionally brown in the shadows, was generally well drawn, and always powerfully conceived. Since then, he has been tending gradually through exaggeration to caricature, and vainly endeavouring to attain, by inordinate bulk |