ART.

THE ART OF EUROPE.—III

I MUST premise that, except where otherwise stated, what I say of Italy applies equally to Spain, and vice versii ; the two countries

at present forming only one school, and that school, as far as I can judge, having its origin and guiding spirit in the genius of one man, Fortuny. I see, on taking up my catalogue, that, for some incomprehensible reason, the works of this artist are alto- gether omitted ; but there were nearly twenty examples of him in the Spanish gallery, and I will refer to them as accurately as may be, though I fear the proper names have mostly escaped me.

First, however, let me speak a little of the main points to be- noticed in this Italian-Spanish school, and the marks which dis- tinguish it from that of any other country.

And before proceeding to what the school is now, think for a- moment of what the Italian and Spanish schools were, and the traditions which they left their countrymen. Remember what the greatest English portrait painter (Sir Joshua Reynolds) said of Velasquez,—" What we are all attempting to do with great labour, Velasquez does at once,"—so expressing himself as the pupil in presence of the master. I will not go any further than that evidence ; it is sufficient to show the estimation the Spanish school was held in a hundred years since. And of the- Italian school,—well, we all know what are its traditions ; we all talk with more or less knowledge, or ignorance, of Michael Angelo, Titian, and Tintoret, generally grouping them together as a sort of distinct creation in Art, not thinking of them as individual men, but as "Old Masters," and putting them out of the ques- tion when there is any discussion upon the merits of modern art. It may, however, be new to some of my readers that Velasquez. bears a precisely similar testimony to the merits of Titian, that Reynolds afterwards bore to his merits, and on the occasion of e talk with Salvator Rosa said :—

" I saw in Venice

The true test of the good and beautiful, First in my judgment ever stands that school, And Titian first of all Italian men is."

All of which, and much more, may be read in a lecture entitled, "The Unity of Art," by John Raskin, printed in 1859, in the Two Paths. So we have this result,—the greatest English

painter extolling Velasquez, and Velasquez, in his turn, extolling Titian. Bearing this in mind, let us now see to what these two- great historico-religious schools have sunk in the present day.

And first, in choice of subject, where surely, if anywhere, the- influence of the old Art should still prevail, however greatly its- skill may have lessened and its power decayed. Well, the following names will, I think, need no description of mine, to show how utterly different is the present idea of a fit subject for a picture- to the old one. "Silence Amoureux," "Promenade Senti- mentale," "Interieur de Cuisine Venitienne," &c., the list might be continued indefinitely, but these three are close together in. the catalogue, and may be taken as typical of the other subjects. "But," I can fancy my readers saying, "all this does not prove- anything, except that the taste of the time has changed ; that whereas people a few hundred years ago liked grave or dignified, heroic or religious, subjects of contemplation, they now, in the increased hurry and rush of life, ask for something which they can comprehend without effort, and be amused by, without being affected. The painters are not to blame ; they are but swept away on the broad, irresistible current of popular feeling, snatching on- the way at any poor waifs and strays of beauty, which may chance- to drift near them. Blame them not for giving us light and frivolous subjects, so long as they are well painted and cleverly conceived. An artist is, after all, but a workman, however high his grade ; if his colour be fascinating, his drawing and his manipulationfairly good, that is all you have to ask ; it is foolish to imagine that a painter owes any duty to the public besides this, which every workman owes to those who employ him, the duty of knowing his trade."

Such, I imagine, if they spoke plainly, would be the comment of many of my readers ; at all events, such is the opinion of at least half of those amongst the public who are concerned with Art, including, I am sorry to say, no small number of the artists themselves. To which objections I should answer as- follows :—I grant you that the taste of the time has changed, that amusement has taken the place of pleasure ; that, for in- stance, ten people will go to laugh at 11.211.S. Pinafore for one who will care to see Irving's Hamlet. I grant you, too, that the artists are in no way responsible for this change of feeling (though

I believe they have had their share in producing it), and I still say they are to blame, and more to blame in Italy and Spain than in any other countries ; they have fallen from a greater height to a lower depth. The real treasures of mankind are few in number, and of one of these, artists are the guardians. Directly they cease to be leaders of popular feeling (or in certain times protestors against it), directly they do but become the mouth- piece through which the hollow public bawl, their mission is lost, their duty is neglected, and their skill is of no avail. And this is, indeed, the ease with Spain and Italy at the present day ; they have lent themselves to the degradation of Art, with so much success that they have absolutely destroyed it in its most con- genial sphere. The Italian peasant is a picture, and the Spanish sailor, brigand, bull-fighter, is an artist by nature, if only in the way he flings his nets across his shoulder, or ties a scarf round his waist ; but the art of these countries is the most intolerable mass of false colouring, affected sentiment, and de- based morality which I believe the world has ever seen, at all events, I know of no parallel to it. Having, I fear, delayed some- what too long over this preliminary question of the artists' responsibility for the style and meaning of their art, let me now -try to explain what seems to me the cause of the present state of painting in Italy and Spain, and what are the essential marks of the work now executed there. To do this, I must speak of the works of a Spanish artist, called Fortuny, for singular as it may appear, this man's influence has within the last dozen years affected almost every painter of eminence in either country.

He was probably as original a genius as any that the Art world has ever known, and no less so in the shortcomings than in the successes of his work. With a power of drawing detail as marvel- lous in its way as that of Meissonnier—nay, really more marvellous, because attained seemingly without effort—he would nevertheless habitually leave at least half of his work hardly begun. With a power and ease of composition which I have never seen equalled amongst modern painters, he habitually disdained to compose at all, and threw his figures together with an insolence of neglect that can hardly be expressed in words. There would be—as, for instance, in the picture of the Alhambra, in this Gallery—a little bit glowing like a jewel in the middle of the picture, finished with the most delicate minuteness, and all round it a bare plastered wall and paved floor, destitute alike of interest and beauty. He would paint, as in a little picture here, a woman's figure with such delicacy of contour and light and shade as hardly to be surpassable, and he would surround it with a mass of coarsely daubed, dull green paint, representative -of absolutely nothing. There was a little picture here of a Bedouin Arab on a horse, against a white wall, man and horse oertainly not more than four inches high, in which every detail of horse and man was rendered with a fidelity, and yet a breadth, which, as I have said above, could only be compared to a Meissonnier, without the labour. That was the great attractiveness of the man's work, it looked so easy. It was hard to persuade oneself that any one could not produce similar results. Another very peculiar characteristic of it was its almost perfect use of -bright colour. Sense of the real beauty of colour (in gradation of tint) Fortuny, I believe, had little or none, but it seems to have been positively impossible for him to use wrong colour in com- bination. He puts the brightest of all bright tints together ; azure against emerald, and gold against rose, he heaps them one upon the other in a reckless prodigality of strength ; and yet, as far as I have seen, he is invariably justified by the result. To me, -these pictures of his (and I happen to have had the opportunity -of living in the same house with one for several years, during which time I studied it thoroughly) are stupifying, in their con- tradiction to all my preconceived notions of Art, and I can com- pare them with nothing that existed previously. That the man, -despite his genius, was all wrong with himself and his art, I do not think any one would doubt for a moment ; but as to referring his work to predecessors and a school, I cannot do it. The effect of this work on the mind of the Italian and Spanish artists seems to have been almost immediate,—probably followed directly on its recognition in Paris, where the artist's paintings sprang at once into popularity. Always ready for the contra- dictory and the bizarre, the style of Fortuny was the very one to captivate the French mind, and to this day his reputation is greatest in Paris. But the Italian and Spanish artists saw simply

• the facility and the beauty of the work, saw the perfect mastery over bright colour, attained apparently without effort and with little labour ; saw that if colour could be so manipulated, the subject-matter of the picture was of little importance, and that if they could once master the secret of the work, they might go on

producing ad infinitum, without the exercise of thought; and so, missing in their narrow interpretation what was undoubtedly the fact, that Fortuny's genius was great, and his pictures wonderful, not because of his method, but in spite of it, they set themselves deliberately to work to copy his eccentricities, in the hopes of sharing his fame. Such is an exceedingly weak and imperfect, but, I believe, in the main, correct, view of the rise of the Fortuny school in painting, that school which at present includes nearly all the artists of Italy and Spain. I do not know how to bring the style of the pictures vividly home to my readers. Try to imagine a world where there is no sunlight or shade, but over everything a ghastly glare (such as the gas companies tell us is the effect of the electric light), and then try to imagine crowds of people, in dresses of the most varied hues, moving rapidly about, intent upon nothing. Banish from their faces every trace of emotion, nobility, and thought, fill in the background with emerald trees, azure sky, and clouds of dust, and then you will have a typical picture of this school.

It is the old story of Crcesus, after all ; the artists have gained their wish, the only thing wanting to complete their triumph was the one essential that they never thought of acquiring. They have produced Fortunys by the dozen, by the thousand, but they are Fortunys only in their errors. The method and the trick have been learnt more or less successfully, but the light of genius which redeemed them both is for ever wanting.

In my next article, I will notice, as minutely as possible, the works of our English painters ; in this one I have not spoken of the subject-matter of the pictures, for the simple reason that it is the least important part in work of this class ; and as I would say nothing in praise, I thought it best to omit the names of