DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0089
4 MODERN PAINTERS’—FIFTH VOLUME. 77
theology into a row of bishops’ backs at the Louvre.
And for dogs, Velasquez has made some of them nearly
as grand as his surly Kings.”
It is in the same chapter that Ruskin speaks of the
trivial sentiment and caricature of Landseer, who “ gave
up the true nature of the animal ” for the sake of
a jest. And by this mature judgment the reader should
correct a passage of praise in an earlier volume.
In the chapter that contrasts Wouvermans and
Angelico, Ruskin tells us how he finds it impossible
to “lay hold of the temper” of some of the Dutch
painters, workmanlike though they are. Wouvermans
and Berghem are amongst the masters of the “hybrid
landscape,” intended to combine the attractions of the
other schools, but they have a ££ clay-cold, ice-cold in-
capacity of understanding what pleasure meant.” Music,
dancing, hunting, boating, fishing, bathing, and child-
play are sprinkled in a picture of Wouvermans, but
the fishing and bathing go on close together; no one
turns to look at the hunting; hart and hind gallop
across the middle of the river touching bottom, but
a man dives at the edge where it is deep; the dancing
has no spring; the buildings are part ruin, part villa.
Ruskin holds this paralysis of dramatic invention to
be the consequence of the desire to please sensual
patrons by offering them “ inventoried articles of
pleasure.” “ Unredeemed carnal appetite ” seems to
the reader a somewhat violent sentence for this cold
incontinence of incident, this trifling of convention,
theology into a row of bishops’ backs at the Louvre.
And for dogs, Velasquez has made some of them nearly
as grand as his surly Kings.”
It is in the same chapter that Ruskin speaks of the
trivial sentiment and caricature of Landseer, who “ gave
up the true nature of the animal ” for the sake of
a jest. And by this mature judgment the reader should
correct a passage of praise in an earlier volume.
In the chapter that contrasts Wouvermans and
Angelico, Ruskin tells us how he finds it impossible
to “lay hold of the temper” of some of the Dutch
painters, workmanlike though they are. Wouvermans
and Berghem are amongst the masters of the “hybrid
landscape,” intended to combine the attractions of the
other schools, but they have a ££ clay-cold, ice-cold in-
capacity of understanding what pleasure meant.” Music,
dancing, hunting, boating, fishing, bathing, and child-
play are sprinkled in a picture of Wouvermans, but
the fishing and bathing go on close together; no one
turns to look at the hunting; hart and hind gallop
across the middle of the river touching bottom, but
a man dives at the edge where it is deep; the dancing
has no spring; the buildings are part ruin, part villa.
Ruskin holds this paralysis of dramatic invention to
be the consequence of the desire to please sensual
patrons by offering them “ inventoried articles of
pleasure.” “ Unredeemed carnal appetite ” seems to
the reader a somewhat violent sentence for this cold
incontinence of incident, this trifling of convention,