C URRENT LITERATURE.
ART BOOKS.
Lives of Brunelleschi, Giotto, Mantegna, Rembrandt, Gerard Dou, and Wilkie have been added to Messrs. Bell and Sons' " Great Masters" series (5s. each). Mr. Leader Scott has made a decidedly interesting study of Brunelleschi. He tells the story of the architect's struggle to convince the " masters " of the possi- bility of building a cupola 200 ft. in diameter without centering or supports. This had never been attempted before, but the genius of Brunelleschi saw that it was possible. The dome was the master's greatest piece of construction, but it was the crown and finish to the work of earlier artists, and so it is not here that we look for the individual style of the architect. Rather we see it in the Pazzi Chapel at Santa Croce and the Church of Santo Spirito. Here it is that we recognise a master who did not hope to produce harmony out of a conglomeration of details heaped upon a clever plan. Brunelleschi had by nature the gift that cannot be 'acquired,— proportion. It matters not how simple the lines or how sparing the ornament of his buildings, he was always sure of a sense of absolute harmony.—It was with pleasure that we read the following words in the preface to Mr. F. M. Perkins's Giotto:—" To those few, however, who look for something more than a mere literary pleasure in the study of an artist's life and work, I can but hope that this little book may prove of some slight use." It is because the author is really interested in Giotto's painting, and not merely in stories about it, that this book is valuable. Mr. Perkins treats Giotto as the liberator of art. Before his time Byzantine conven- tion held painting in bonds, and it is difficult to realise how great was the work of the master who emancipated art and laid down the lines on which it was to travel for two hundred years.— Those who wish for something shorter than the huge volume of Kristeller will find plenty of information and not too many theories in Miss Maud Cruttwell's Mantegna. This painter is one of those masters whose outlook on the world is intensely individual and peculiar ; so much so, that we desire some technical consideration of his attitude towards problems of form, colour, and composition. The account of the art of Mantegna is yet to be written.— Mr. Malcolm Bell's Life of Rembrandt is, he tells us, no more than a compressed form of the excellent larger volume by him noticed in these columns not long ago. We cannot refrain from quoting a passage from Evelyn given by Mr. Bell. Alluding to the picture fairs at Rotterdam, the diarist says :—" The reason of this store of pictures and their cheapness proceeds from their want of land to employ their stock, so that it is an ordinary thing to find a common farmer lay out two or three thousand pounds in this commodity. Their houses are full of them." Could anything be more delightfully British? Some reason had to be found for people spending money on art, and so it is supposed that it must be because the more satisfying expenditure on the multiplication of cows and pigs was impossible on account of the smallness• of the country.—Gerard Dou is, for the first time, according to the preface of Dr. Martin's book, the subject of a mono- graph in English. The present volume is a translation by Mrs. Bell from the Dutch author's work, which has been compressed. The, most interesting part of the book before us is that which treats of the general condition of art and artists in Holland during the seventeenth century. Then great numbers of painters were at work, and almost every one seems to have bought and sold pictures. But apart from this mercantile aspect, the love for pictures must have been great and very widely diffused. Gerard Dou seems to have enjoyed success throughout his life, and never to have fallen on evil days like his master, Rembrandt. This may be accounted for by the fact that the nature and art of the pupil were absolutely prosaic, and had no touch of that mystical poetry which made the master one of the greatest of artists, and cut him off from the sympathy of commonplace men. Gerard Dou painted few portraits, but these were excellent. Generally he *devoted himself to the fabrication of the picturesque composed from a miscellaneous rubbish of onions, carrots, cabbages, pewter-pots, bird-cages, dead fowls, wheelbarrows, and other things. These he painted with enormous patience, and they have dominated picture-making ever since. The painter's figures have a great deal of character, but there is a stolid and posed realism about his work which ever prevents it from attaining the beauty and charm of such painters as Hooch and Ver Meer. The book does not read like a translation, and Dr. Martin has revised the spelling of the Dutch names, so that we may feel on sure ground among these orthographical quagmires.
Wilkie was pre-eminently the painter of mild anecdotes and domestic dramas. He is indeed the father of the oleographic supplements in Christmas numbers. Also he might be called the progenitor of the country grocer's almanac, that large coloured sheet with the domestic incident which is given away with a pound of tea. Lord Ronald Gower, the writer of the present memoir, has given us a sympathetic study of the artist. From it we realise Wilkie as a delightful personality, and a man of high character and good sense. If we cannot help feeling that this painter's art never got beyond a rather uninspired realism, we must admit that of its kind it was exceedingly well done. In his early works Wilkie showed himself a true painter, but at the end of his life he was overcome by an infatuation for bitumen. This fatal medium of treacly fascination he daubed over his painting in the hope of arriving at the " tone " of Titian and Velasquez. Instead, ruin resulted, leaving the pictures with a surface like hardbake. That Wilkie should have thought it possible to produce the desired effects by such means shows a curious and complete mis- understanding of the great masters.
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