22 JANUARY 1983, Page 25

Arts

Murillo: resurfacing

John McEwen

Royal Opera House Retrospective, 1732-1982 (Royal Academy till 6 February)

In Spain a bad painting is still called a J. `pintura de feria' and a good one a `Murillo', and yet this is the first time that the art of Murillo himself has been accord- ed a full-scale exhibition. Part of the reason for this apparent oversight lies in the secular fact that today art takes precedence over religion, and the Roman Catholic Church no longer minds the temporary desecration of its holy places in the cause of general education. A narrower and more pertinent reason is that Murillo's artistic reputation outside Spain has, over the last hundred years or so, taken the most unprecedented dive.

This is well illustrated by the 'recent' history of perhaps his most famous picture, (No. 75 at the RA) the 'Immaculate Con- ception of Los Venerables'. In 1813 this Picture represented the supreme prize of Marshall Soult's loot from the Peninsular Wars and from then on it was flaunted in Paris as the most important in the world, a supposition made financial fact when in 1852 it also became the most expensive the Louvre buying it at public auction for 615,300 gold francs. But by 1941 the Louvre was happy to swap this, once, most prized item of its collection for a Spanish Velasquez, so the 'Venerables' re- turned to Spain, where it now hangs in the Prado.

This choice of a Velasquez is significant, because, art-critically, Velasquez has risen at the expense of Murillo more than anyone. Out of him came Manet, and out of Manet came Impressionism, which marked the obliteration of modelling and the outlawing of story-telling. Velasquez, because of the animated style which at close quarters endows the surfaces of his pain- tings with an abstract and even self- expressionistic life of their own, was en- shrined, on the basis of this and various other self-aware and self-critical counts, as one of the great precursors of Modernism — that strangely undefinable but much used word suggesting that the true nature of modern inquiry is one of secularity and doubt. Murillo's weight of devotional Christian paintings, 'the gentleness and human tolerance' (as Sir Hugh Casson ac- curately extols it in the catalogue foreword) of his optimistic view, his baroque un- concern for surface effect or the 'picture plane', all counted heavily against him with

modernists. He began to be seen as a bore and a reactionary, the weakest and most vapid of the famous Spanish painters, and the sentimental source of all that 20th- century intellectuals came most to despise in 19th-century art. If there was one painter the student should not been seen admiring it was Murillo; but now it would seem the progressive beliefs of Modernism are under attack. Emotion, at least in the visual arts, seems to be the 'in' virtue, the appreciation of narrative and sentiment, at least in past art, is once more acceptable, it is no longer fashionable in smart circles to deride family life, thanks to Ferdinand Mount, and, thanks to the Pope, even to be Roman Catholic is quite trendy.

Nevertheless it was a bold stroke of Pro- fessor Andrade, then Director of the Prado, and Norman Rosenthal, Exhibitions Secretary to the Royal Academy, when they proposed this exhibition in 1978, and no less bold of BAT Industries to provide the London sponsorship. Murillo, art- historically, is still a very hot potato; but the evidence here will surely put an end to that. It may not re-install him above Velas- quez in the relevant order of merit, or even above his other 16th-century Spanish peers, but for most doubters it will surely prove his right to a place in the pantheon.

The exhibition reveals that several of his finest paintings come from English collec- tions — 'The Healing of the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethseda' and the 'Laughing Boy' (National Gallery); the 'Invitation to the Game of Pelota' and 'The Flower Girl' (Dulwich Picture Gallery) to name four but even familiarity with the variety of these works will not prepare untravelled visitors for the scope of his achievement. There are masterpieces on every scale, from the grand and religious to the domestic and secular. There is considerable evolution of manner — especially in his religious work — from precision and darkness to softness and light. And, throughout, his extraordinary level of engagement never flags.

This engagement, which marks him above all as a naturalist, is perhaps his most obvious quality as a painter. He is often ac- cused of being mawkish, but his interpreta- tion of emotion, his subtleties of perception make a nonsense of the accusation. His in- fant Jesus looks but, in the way of babies, does not focus. His cherubs — conjured (for anyone who doubts his painterly in- terest) in his last paintings with a minimalism worthy of Monet at his best are individuals, usually derived from one or two models, individually deployed. Even his sheep have personalities. For him naturalism invariably takes the form of a pre-photographic pleasure in freezing movement — and he sets himself some hard tasks, none harder than boys in the act of chewing or, in the superb 'Dream of the Patrician', the difference between the stillness of life and the stillness of death. Are there three more convincing sleepers in all of art than the patrician, his wife and their dog? The painting is beautifully framed, as are so many in the exhibition.

Murillo's devotional pictures seldom fail to convey this sense of sincerity, but it is his pictures of boys that most act as a live-wire between his sensibility and ours — and also, it could be said, that give the freshest ex- perience of his painting, many of the hues in the more colourful religious pictures suf- fering from varnish and the passage of time. Predominantly brown and tonally low-key, his pictures of Seville's street Arabs are less affected by such change. The `Invitation to the Game of Pelota' was Hazlitt's favourite picture in the whole of the Dulwich Collection, and it is worth recalling his words: 'In the imitation of common life, nothing ever went beyond it, or as far as we can judge, came up to it. A Dutch picture is mechanical, and mere "still-life" to it. But this is life itself. The boy at play on the ground is miraculous. It is done with a few dragging strokes of the pencil, and with a little tinge of colour; but the mouth, the nose, the eyes, the chin, are as brimful as they can hold of expression, of arch roguery, of animal spirits, of vigorous, elastic health .... Compared with these imitations of nature, as faultless as they are spirited, Murillo's Virgins and Angels however good in themselves, look vapid, and even regular.'

Subject-matter is always the public's priority, and perhaps more of these secular paintings, particularly from the earlier period, could have been included, though it is a small complaint. Otherwise it must be said that the addition orwall-texts explain- ing the subject-matter of the religious pain- tings — a precaution taken following com- plaints at the. lack of them in the recent Neapolitan exhibition — will surely im- prove their chances of appreciation. As for the catalogue (f6.50), it is more than ade- quate. Seventeenth-century Spain witnessed inflation and post-imperial decline.

Without crossing any 'es, John H. Elliott seems to suggest that in Mrs Thatcher we have the reincarnation of the Count-Duke of Olivares. This too adds contemporary spice to what, for a few, may seem a dull subject.

The Royal Opera House Retrospective is a smaller, even more crowded (a proper complaint of the Murillo is that the hanging is overcrowded), affair in what used to be some of the RA's private rooms. Three towering `Lawrences' of Kemble dominate in size, but it is Zoffany and, to a lesser extent, Francis Hayman who most revive the eye. It is an exhibition for various kinds of buffs, but not principally art ones. There is a catalogue choc-a-bloc with facts for O.