MR. ARMSTRONG ON VELAZQUEZ.*
IN this volume we have two numbers of the Portfolio bound together, the first dealing with the Life, the second with the Art, of Velazquez. The plan leads to a certain amount of repetition, but has its advantages for exposition. A common index to the two parts would have been a con- venience.
Mr. Armstrong has a keen eye, unusual conversance with galleries of painting and the history of art, an open mind, the courage to express new judgments, and a lucid style as a writer. With these gifts he writes a good, but might have written a more complete, book on Velazquez. The volume before us, judged as a summary of the literature of the subject, to form one of a series of such summaries, deserves considerable praise. But if we compare the results with the claims the author makes for his method, one may be somewhat disappointed. His ideal is a bringing together of all the pieces in a master's work so thoroughly that the logic of the complete chain should justify each of its links, and extrude as an evident impossibility the works spuriously attributed to the painter. As a good working principle we need not quarrel with the conception, though it takes for granted that a man works in the order of time consistently with the order of logic that his work afterwards reveals,—a rash assumption. But in the absence of chronological evidence it may be all we have to go upon. It is when we inquire into the actual results of Mr. Armstrong's inquiry that we complain. The existing state of the literature of the subject is this. In the books of Stirling, Ford, and Carl Justi we have the works attributed to Velazquez viewed in the light of known docu- ments, and to a certain extent critically judged. Mr. Stevenson's recent work, reviewed in these columns, takes, on the other hand, the acknowledged masterpieces as material for a disquisition on the principles of modern painting. What, then, remains for the critic ? There are three things possible. He may go on the search for farther documents. This will de- mand devotion and perseverance, both because of the difficulties thrown in the way of research by the Spanish Royal house, and the confusion in which its records are kept. Still a prize might be forthcoming, since Velazquez was a Court official, and evidence might turn up bearing on the dates of his work. Or the critic might embark on a purging of the list of the works attributed to Velazquez, based on close study of all pretended examples. Or he might traverse the field of Mr. Stevenson's speculations as a contribution to esthetics. It is the second of these tasks that Mr. Arm- strong's book attempts, since his Life is a recapitulation of known documents, and he does not directly engage on Mr. Stevenson's field. Now instead of a discussion and judgment on all the pictures attributed to the master, Mr. Armstrong limits himself to a list of the best known and most generally admitted. For example, there is no discussion of Lord Savile's picture recently hung in the National Gallery, Sir Francis Cook's head of the painter is admitted without question, and there is nothing like a thorough overhauling (of the lists of previous writers. Nor, when we examine such novel
• Vsiasquss : a Study of his Life and Art. By Walter Armstrong. London : Seeley and 0o. suggestions as Mr. Armstrong makes, do they appear always reasonable or very conclusive. The most important of these suggestions concerns the part due to the pupils of Velazquez in the works commonly ascribed to him. It is well known that of the Royal portraits a number of replicas exists,—copies made for presentation. It is reasonable to suppose that many of these were, in whole or part, the work of pupils, especially as we know that Velazquez had such pupils, and that they attained considerable skill in imitating his style. One of them was Mazo, his son-in-law, another Juan de Pareja, the Moorish attendant whose portrait he painted in Rome. Works by both exist, but few in number, and it is natural to suppose that others are to be sought among works attributed to the master. Juan de Pareja, on the evidence of the pictures known to be his, could never lay claim to anything first-rate. But Mr. Armstrong is astonishingly generous to Mazo. He proposes to hand over to him, in whole or part, the full-length Philip in the National Gallery, the Boar-Hunt in the same collection, and the Don Balthasars in the Riding School in the Hertford and Westminster collections. What is the evidence ? The full-length Philip Mr. Armstrong argues to be a copy by Mazo possibly retouched by Velazquez. Now this Philip is not a duplicate picture. (Mr. Armstrong arbitrarily supposes a lost original.) It came to this country from Madrid ; it is a remarkable decorative creation, arguing extraordinary originality on its maker's part. If Mr. Armstrong dates it rightly, Mazo was seventeen years of age when it was painted, and the argument for his having painted it is that the painting of the costume is too loose and facile !* As a matter of fact, arguing from the apparent age of the sitter, Mr. Armstrong's date is too early, and it might be maintained that, as in the case of the earlier head and shoulders at Madrid, the costume is of later style than the head. But these concessions go but a short way to help a slender case. The supposition that the "Boar Hunt" is Mazo's depends on a similarity of grouping between this and the "View of Saragossa" at Madrid. The reasonable inference on that resemblance is that Mazo worked on the strikingly original landscape departure of his master. But Mr. Armstrong finds his strongest case in the two pictures of the Riding School. He asserts that the boy and horse in these two are facsimiles, touch for touch, and argues from this that both must be slavish copies from a third original now lost. We cannot vouch for the closeness of the facsimile, not having seen the second version since it hung at the Academy; but even granting the identity of these figures, what is proved ? The remaining portions are not identical, therefore no third picture was slavishly copied ; and if there was copying, we may suppose that one of them was copied from the other without the superfluity of a third. Farther, the version seen last winter at the New Gallery is one of the most beautiful things in the master's work, and was evidently no copy, since we can trace a number of alterations of the original design. As to the King and Queen in prayer at Madrid, we should be glad to hand them over to some other painter ; but the same is true of the " Coronation of the Virgin " and the " Crucifixion," which are doubtless by Velazquez. The portrait at Dulwich might be a copy by a feeble hand, but would hardly fall in with Mr. Armstrong's idea of Mazo's manner.
Another suggestion of Mr. Armstrong's is that the series of dwarfs and buffoons belongs to the time after the disgrace of Olivares, the patron of Velazquez. He supposes that there may have been an interruption of Royal sittings just then, and that the comparatively advanced style of this work may result from a greater sense of freedom in dealing with such subjects. This makes the argument from style rather flexible. It is a point that cannot be settled on the evidence; such evidence as there is doubtfully dates one of the dwarfs.
Mr. Armstrong attenuates the influence of Rubens on Velazquez, a matter the biographers have felt bound to dis- cuss. He sees that in the manner of painting of " The Topers " there is no trace of his influence, and suggests that it was rather a certain freedom in the subject that the Flemish master instigated. The truth is that if we did not know that Rubens visited the Court and conversed with Velazquez we should never dream of tracing his influence in this picture at all. It is the most natural development in the world from • There is evidence for Mazo's style in a number of pictures at Madrid, but we have reason to believe that the picture attributed to him at the National Gallery is a modern forgery.
the " Aguador " and the " Nativity." The great man in Velazquez shows himself in this, that he went his own way, regardless of what might have tempted his taste and his ambition, but did not properly belong to his talent.
We make these criticisms against a certain pretension in the book to be more complete and infallible than it is, but we gladly admit that it will be found a readable and, on the whole, reasonable account of the life and art of the painter. The reproductions are good, very much better than those in Mr. Stevenson's book.
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