Page:The Norwich School of Painting (1905).djvu/20

10 between the old style and the new):—“Sir George placed a small landscape by Gaspar Poussin on his easel by the side of one he was himself painting, and observed, “Now, if I can match these tints, I am sure to be right” ‘But, suppose, Sir George,’ replied Constable, ‘Gaspar could rise from his grave, do you think he would know his own picture in its present state? Or, if he did, should we not find it difficult to persuade him that somebody had not smeared tar or cart-grease over its surface, and then wiped it imperfectly off?’”

On another occasion, Sir George recommended the colour of the varnish of an old Cremona violin for the prevailing tone of a landscape. Constable replied by taking the old fiddle and laying it on the green lawn before the house.

No doubt the continual study of brown Old Masters, mellowed by time and “comforted” (to use a restorers word) by many glazings of Dutch pink, had induced in him, as in most of the Italian-travelled artists, a positive abhorrence of that “salad” freshness of English meadows and groves which is their peculiar charm. Beaumont was a stickler for the “conventionalities” of the Academy, according to which in every landscape there should be a first, second, and a third light, besides at least one brown tree. To his query, “Do you find it very difficult to determine where to place your brown tree?” Constable replied, “Not in the least, for I never put such a thing into a picture.”

Such was the contrast between the bathos of the Old School and the fresh awakening of the new. As the result of endless copying, the glorious art of Claude, of Poussin, and of Wilson, had been succeeded by brown monotonies of the studio. Second-hand art, dull, lifeless, uninteresting. Canvases were never taken into the open air, and the water-colour sketches from which they were painted were only Indian ink drawings lightly washed over with local colours.

It must not be supposed that the New School leapt into the void suddenly. It had been prepared for by the scattering of Dutch pictures—particularly the sale of the Orleans collection in 1792, in this country. These becoming the fashion, a Soho watchmaker, travelling in Holland to dispose of his English watches, taking a fancy to panels by Cuyp, which he saw used as wall decorations in the wainscoting of the houses, bartered away his watches for them. Bringing these to London he found the transaction so remunerative that he devoted himself to the business of collecting Cuyp’s. Thus, England became the resting-place of the works of that grand master, who had painted so entirely from nature and so little in the studio, that at his death—in comparative poverty—not a single sketch or study was found in his house. These Dutch pictures had set the tide flowing against the dark school of Italy, and in favour of the daylight of the North. Instead of the Caracci, the Poussins, and Salvator Rosa, Van de Velde, Ruysdael, Hobbeina, and Cuyp, attracted those who must copy. But after all, this was little more than the transfer of allegiance from one set of alien masters to another, and a step in advance of some degree only because the latter were landscapists of our own latitude.