DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22421#0406
342
NATIONAL GALLERY.
Letter X.
the figures. On canvas, 3 ft. 4 in. high, 4 ft. 5 in. wide. (Anger-
stein.)
Gaspar Poussin.—This collection affords also honourable evi-
dence of the predilection of the English for Claude's great con-
temporary, whose conception of nature is of a perfectly opposite
character. If, in the finest pictures by Claude, nature appears in
such bright cheerfulness and clearness as to put us in mind of the
passage of Homer where he says of the Islands of the Blessed,—
" Joys, ever young, unmix'd with, pain or fear,
Fill the wide circle of the eternal year ;
Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime,
The fields are florid with unfading prime ;
From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow,
Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow ;
But, from the breezy deep, the blest inhale
The fragrant murmurs of the western gale"—
Odyssey, Book iv.
Poussin, on the other hand, appears to greatest advantage when
he shows the elements in the most violent convulsion—when the
tempest sweeps over the land—when the lightnings flash through the
dark clouds—and when man and beast anxiously seek refuge from
the storm. In such pictures he produces with his southern scenes
the same feeling in the spectator which Goethe so powerfully
describes for the northern :—
" When in the wood the howling tempest brawls,
The giant pine beneath its fury falls ;
O'erthrows the neighbouring stems, that sink around,
While with the crash the echoing hills resound."
Even when Poussin represents nature in a state of repose, yet
the clouded sky, with its detached lights and the dark masses of
forest, excites a feeling of melancholy, which, however, is always
pleasing and soothing, and frequently, from the grandeur of the
outlines, of the sublimest kind. For no master, like Poussin, ever
rendered the middle ground so important, or understood to unite it
so picturesquely with the lines of his distance : in the choice of his
figures, too, he is always happy—in execution spirited and correct.
There are masterpieces of both kinds in this Gallery.
1. The celebrated Land-storm, from the Lansdowne collection
(No. 36), well known by the engraving by Vivares. Here the
bright light of the horizon only makes us more clearly perceive the
NATIONAL GALLERY.
Letter X.
the figures. On canvas, 3 ft. 4 in. high, 4 ft. 5 in. wide. (Anger-
stein.)
Gaspar Poussin.—This collection affords also honourable evi-
dence of the predilection of the English for Claude's great con-
temporary, whose conception of nature is of a perfectly opposite
character. If, in the finest pictures by Claude, nature appears in
such bright cheerfulness and clearness as to put us in mind of the
passage of Homer where he says of the Islands of the Blessed,—
" Joys, ever young, unmix'd with, pain or fear,
Fill the wide circle of the eternal year ;
Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime,
The fields are florid with unfading prime ;
From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow,
Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow ;
But, from the breezy deep, the blest inhale
The fragrant murmurs of the western gale"—
Odyssey, Book iv.
Poussin, on the other hand, appears to greatest advantage when
he shows the elements in the most violent convulsion—when the
tempest sweeps over the land—when the lightnings flash through the
dark clouds—and when man and beast anxiously seek refuge from
the storm. In such pictures he produces with his southern scenes
the same feeling in the spectator which Goethe so powerfully
describes for the northern :—
" When in the wood the howling tempest brawls,
The giant pine beneath its fury falls ;
O'erthrows the neighbouring stems, that sink around,
While with the crash the echoing hills resound."
Even when Poussin represents nature in a state of repose, yet
the clouded sky, with its detached lights and the dark masses of
forest, excites a feeling of melancholy, which, however, is always
pleasing and soothing, and frequently, from the grandeur of the
outlines, of the sublimest kind. For no master, like Poussin, ever
rendered the middle ground so important, or understood to unite it
so picturesquely with the lines of his distance : in the choice of his
figures, too, he is always happy—in execution spirited and correct.
There are masterpieces of both kinds in this Gallery.
1. The celebrated Land-storm, from the Lansdowne collection
(No. 36), well known by the engraving by Vivares. Here the
bright light of the horizon only makes us more clearly perceive the