International studio (31.1907)

Book Reviews

racy, his use of perspective, his primitive summary
of landscape, his effects in paint of colour and of
texture.
Piero della Francesca is credited with making
“ the beginning for the substitution of really painted
portraits in place of painted medals.” Piero’s
faces, however, retained in the rigid profile a con-
strained style at odds with the treatment of his land-
scape backgrounds. In this detail the Umbrian
introduced a new study of spaciousness and light,
anticipated some of the devices of Claude Lorraine
and proposed the modern problem of realism in
regard to colour in atmosphere. In the seventeenth
century Salvator Rosa led in the awakening that
overtook landscape work. He is instanced as a
solitary romanticist. The scholarly Carraci made
concessions to the landscape tendencies of the day.
Albano is characterised as a Rococo master gone
astray into the Baroque period. Bril’s gay land-
scape frescoes and Poussin’s solemn repose in a
convulsed epoch, represent different response to the
same opportunity from the Netherlands and France.
In Elsheimer, “the first great Stimmungsmaler of
the seventeenth century,” the author notes an oppo-
sition of the power of colour tone to clear elasticity
of form. To Rubens, who inclined so little to re-
straint in treatment, are assigned two characteristic
choices in landscape theme, the opulent comfort of
nature and moments of upheaval. Contrasting
with the storms and floods at Windsor, Vienna,
Florence, a landscape with a rainbow is cited in
which “the trees rejoice like fat children who have
just had their breakfast.” The corpulently vigor-
ous period in Flanders is explained in the light of a
reaction from an age of oppressive cerebral erotics.
Frans Hals, Dr. Muther calls the founder of im-
pressionism. Depicting with the directness of an
instantaneous photograph, he created a technique
in which every line is pulsating life. “He wields
the brush as if it were a sabre.” Rembrandt is the
first artist who in the modern sense did not execute
commissions, but expressed his thoughts. Watteau,
the foreigner, found the sights of the gracious
French world fresh to his eye. His work, far from
frivolous, expresses the longing of a sick man for joy
and a lonely man for love.
The two volumes tempt to quotation because the
style is, for a book of the kind, unexpectedly spon-
taneous and free from the pedantic touch. Merely
as a piece of reading they could hardly fail to be
interesting. As a study they are most suggestive in
the evolutionary aspect in which the author sees his
subject. The passing of the early Christian re-
straints and the appearance of a Franciscan, and

later an epicurean joy in life; the religious reaction
which found a mouthpiece in Savonarola and the
gentler spirit of the counter-reformation later; such
transmutations as the habits of life and thought
went through in the Netherlands, from the days
when the Dutch sturdily endured and withstood all
manner of conquest to the time when they delighted
to ape le roi soleil; or, in France itself, from the well-
conducted pomposity of this period, through the
reaction to the gracious and pleasing in the Rococo
and again to the reflection of antiquity after the
Revolution—all these various national states of
mind are most cleverly appealed to for an explana-
tion of the momentary character of painting.
Studies in Pictures. An Introduction to the
Famous Galleries. By John C. Van Dyke,
Author of “Art for Art’s Sake,” “The Meaning
of Pictures,” “A History of Painting,” “Old
English Masters,” etc. nmo. Illustrated. $1.25
net. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Pp.
xiv, 136.
John C. Van Dyke, professor of art at Rutgers
College, has compacted much useful information
and suggestive thought into an informal little vol-
ume which will no doubt make its appearance in
the Atlantic steamer chair this summer. The pas-
senger who expects to take a look at the famous
galleries will take a far more sensible, comprehend-
ing look if he has scanned these brief,chatty pages;
the passenger who, picking up a friend’s copy, had
planned to waste no time poking about under Euro-
pean skylights, will probably conceive some curi-
osity for the art treasures abroad. For Professor
Van Dyke has been engaged for years in interesting
people in painting, and he knows how to go about it.
The book carries forty illustrations, showing exam-
ples from Titian to Winslow Homer, and in make-up
is of a size and weight that will permit its passing
beyond the library table with ease.
Several false popular impressions are corrected in
these studies. The reader is reminded in the first
place that a gallery and all that it stands for in
regard to conditions of exhibition is a recent develop-
ment and was not dreamt of in the philosophy of the
old masters. Their work was painted for a differ-
ent purpose. The express purpose is an element to
remember in appreciating a masterpiece in its pres-
ent altered situation. The ravages, necessary and
unnecessary, worked by restoration, the deteriora-
tion due to badly chosen pigment, the bleaching of
tone, the spreading of bitumen, are described. In
a warning against false attributions, the author cites
the thirteen Raphaels of the Louvre, of which five

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