Page:Constable by C. J. Holmes.djvu/25

 obtrusion of some classical story that turns all to artifice. The criticism of the Apollo and Niobe by Reynolds proves that this was felt even in Wilson's lifetime, for Sir Joshua contrasts, just as a modern might do, the practice of introducing heroic figures into realistic landscapes, with the proper and natural use of rustic figures by Gainsborough.

Gainsborough was the first to free English landscape from the incubus of the historical tradition. Nowadays we may not find in his landscapes that "portrait-like representation of nature" which Reynolds found there, for the clouds and trees and the life of the country-side appear to us only through the veil of an exquisite artistic temperament, which passes over all that might be hard or ugly or inharmonious. In early life Gainsborough painted the oak with skill and truth, but in his mature work all except the figures and animals was generalized and idealized. The colour is so splendid, the touch so free and delicate, that the spectator cannot fail to be enchanted, though in his inmost heart he may know all the time that the deep tones of the sky, the glow and the swing of the warm foliage, are merely masterpieces of magnificent convention and like nothing that ever was upon the face of the earth.

Gainsborough and Wilson were not the only painters of the eighteenth century who helped to restore the dignity of landscape. The pioneers of water-colour drawing made no attempt to arrive at the full rendering of of the hues of nature, which was the aim of the revolution effected by Turner and Cox; yet it is wonderful how much they were able to render with their apparently scanty means. Water-colour is generally recognised as the medium by which atmospheric effects are most readily and easily suggested, and a limited scale of tone and colour only emphasizes this merit, as one sees in such drawings as those of J. R. Cozens. In spite of the poverty of his materials and an obvious lack of sound training, the vast serenity of dawn or of nightfall is expressed in his work with amazing directness and simplicity. His pale sketches are free alike from the charming unreality of Gainsborough and the sham heroics of Wilson, recalling with continuous iteration those lonely places on which one chances at twilight, where the utter silence is almost terrible. I have mentioned Cozens particularly, not only because he was the most remarkable water-colour painter working in