DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0280
236 THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
the eye. His pictures are the perfection of the graphic,
but not of the suggestive in art.”*
If we now turn to the works of Rubens in this gallery,
we shall find all these characteristics exemplified in a
greater or less degree; not that the illustration is here
complete, nor that eleven pictures, however various in
style, could exhibit the cycle of his powers: no single
gallery, except that of Munich, would do him justice ; not
even the Louvre, or Blenheim. How in his hands History
became gorgeous, dramatic, decorative, we may here see in
the four great pictures brought from Spain, representing,
allegorically, the Glory of the Church. Full of faults they
are, which have been most severely, and not too severely,
denounced by a judicious critic: but let us see how a poetical
critic treats the same faults. Hazlitt is about as bad a
guide in a picture gallery as it is possible to have, but he
is a delightful companion; and when he discourses of
Rubens or of Titian, it is as one intoxicated with colour,
drunk with beauty. He says,
“ The four large pictures of ecclesiastical subjects 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 colour-
ing are so too. He seems to have painted with a huge,
sweeping, gigantic pencil, and with broad masses of un-
alloyed colour. The spectator is (as it were) thrown back
by the pictures, and surveys them, as if placed at a stu-
pendous height, as well as distance from him. This, indeed,
is their history; they were painted to be placed in some
j esuit’s church abroad, f 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
* See the Preface to Waagen’s “ Essay on the Life and Genius of Rubens.”
t They were painted for the church of the Carmelite convent at Loeches,
founded by the Duke d’Olivarez, the famous minister of Philip IV. of Spain.
the eye. His pictures are the perfection of the graphic,
but not of the suggestive in art.”*
If we now turn to the works of Rubens in this gallery,
we shall find all these characteristics exemplified in a
greater or less degree; not that the illustration is here
complete, nor that eleven pictures, however various in
style, could exhibit the cycle of his powers: no single
gallery, except that of Munich, would do him justice ; not
even the Louvre, or Blenheim. How in his hands History
became gorgeous, dramatic, decorative, we may here see in
the four great pictures brought from Spain, representing,
allegorically, the Glory of the Church. Full of faults they
are, which have been most severely, and not too severely,
denounced by a judicious critic: but let us see how a poetical
critic treats the same faults. Hazlitt is about as bad a
guide in a picture gallery as it is possible to have, but he
is a delightful companion; and when he discourses of
Rubens or of Titian, it is as one intoxicated with colour,
drunk with beauty. He says,
“ The four large pictures of ecclesiastical subjects 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 colour-
ing are so too. He seems to have painted with a huge,
sweeping, gigantic pencil, and with broad masses of un-
alloyed colour. The spectator is (as it were) thrown back
by the pictures, and surveys them, as if placed at a stu-
pendous height, as well as distance from him. This, indeed,
is their history; they were painted to be placed in some
j esuit’s church abroad, f 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
* See the Preface to Waagen’s “ Essay on the Life and Genius of Rubens.”
t They were painted for the church of the Carmelite convent at Loeches,
founded by the Duke d’Olivarez, the famous minister of Philip IV. of Spain.