DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31830#0045
shavings of the joiner’s shed, or straw from the harvest-threshing
floors. ” In such fragments we see into Calvert’s brooding mind,
with its rare insight into the continuity of life, its subtle appre-
ciation of the latencies in objects and their relationship to one
another. Sights of rustic life, the reapers and the cider-press,
stored from boyish memories at Appledore; the woods above the
waters at Fowey; golden days in the Mediterranean, and intimacy
with ships in their own element; all were cherished as parts of
a single unity in this mind, so impressionable and receptive, yet
so secure in its power to reject distraction, disturbance,
disillusion.
In 1844 Calvert journeyed to the Greece of his dreams; he
wandered through Arcadia to Helieon and Parnassus. To some
the reality might have been disenchanting; but not to him. The
chief fruit of that journey was the picture which is the completest
expression of his aims in painting, called by him A Migration of
Nomads, but since known as Arcadian Shepherds moving their
Flocks at Dawn (Plate 71). John Giles commissioned the picture
after seeing the preparatory sketch. It was suggested by an
actual experience; but the actual is not allowed to dominate;
rather it moves us like a vision, in which the shapes we see move
as to a music in the mind. Round this lovelj^ picture we may
group those smaller paintings, never carried beyond a certain
stage of completion, lest their suggestive power should be
impaired, of which a number of examples are here reproduced in
colour or in monochrome. To picture “ a few moments of the
Golden A_ge” was Calvert’s chosen aspiration : and these small
panels, with the rare beauty of their temperate colour, achieve
their aim. He had travelled far from Blake in the methods of his
art : but, with all their difference, these works of Calvert’s later
time are in their inspiration Songs of Innocence. In the
Arcadian Shepherds moving so serenely out of sight along the
uplands in the dewv dawn, the art of the pastoral has been re-
created; it has found expression, nowhere else more spontaneous
and felicitous in painting, for a dreamed-of harmony between man
and nature in “ the morning of the worldM
29
floors. ” In such fragments we see into Calvert’s brooding mind,
with its rare insight into the continuity of life, its subtle appre-
ciation of the latencies in objects and their relationship to one
another. Sights of rustic life, the reapers and the cider-press,
stored from boyish memories at Appledore; the woods above the
waters at Fowey; golden days in the Mediterranean, and intimacy
with ships in their own element; all were cherished as parts of
a single unity in this mind, so impressionable and receptive, yet
so secure in its power to reject distraction, disturbance,
disillusion.
In 1844 Calvert journeyed to the Greece of his dreams; he
wandered through Arcadia to Helieon and Parnassus. To some
the reality might have been disenchanting; but not to him. The
chief fruit of that journey was the picture which is the completest
expression of his aims in painting, called by him A Migration of
Nomads, but since known as Arcadian Shepherds moving their
Flocks at Dawn (Plate 71). John Giles commissioned the picture
after seeing the preparatory sketch. It was suggested by an
actual experience; but the actual is not allowed to dominate;
rather it moves us like a vision, in which the shapes we see move
as to a music in the mind. Round this lovelj^ picture we may
group those smaller paintings, never carried beyond a certain
stage of completion, lest their suggestive power should be
impaired, of which a number of examples are here reproduced in
colour or in monochrome. To picture “ a few moments of the
Golden A_ge” was Calvert’s chosen aspiration : and these small
panels, with the rare beauty of their temperate colour, achieve
their aim. He had travelled far from Blake in the methods of his
art : but, with all their difference, these works of Calvert’s later
time are in their inspiration Songs of Innocence. In the
Arcadian Shepherds moving so serenely out of sight along the
uplands in the dewv dawn, the art of the pastoral has been re-
created; it has found expression, nowhere else more spontaneous
and felicitous in painting, for a dreamed-of harmony between man
and nature in “ the morning of the worldM
29