ART
WE are moving today from a period of classicism in painting into a period of romanticism. This marked reaction to the post-Cezanne search for formal values will catch many on the wrong foot when they come to study the great French eclectics of the seventeenth century. I confess myself more at home with Claude than with Poussin' splendid works by both of whom dominate the loan exhibi- tion at Messrs. Wildenstein in aid of the Merchant Navy Comforts Service. (The entrance is 2s. 6d., the catalogue—carefully annotated by Denys Sutton and Anthony Blunt—is is. 6d., and those who have to earn their living will be glad to know that-tlie exhibition is open on Saturday afternoons.) It is the sort of show to delight the connoisseurs and art-historians, for there are endless games to be played here in detection and revaluation. The Earl of Plymouth's Body of Phocion carried out of Athens; for example, a complex Poussin, marred perhaps by the peculiarly uncomfortable tree on the right, but containing, as in the little central group of figures, some delightful passages, poses many problems in connection with its twin in the Louvre. The precise point where Poussin's influence meets the individuality of his pupils and disciples may he argued in front of the Italian Landscape by his brother-in-law, Gaspard Poussin —an admirable example of the heroic type of classical landscape com- position which was to have such an effect upon the English painters of the eighteenth and very early nineteenth centuries—and before the very fine idealised landscape of Francisque Millet, suffused with a soft and dusty bloom. Poussin's self-conscious and intellectually reasoned compositions of statuesque figures ranged parallel to the footlights and the spectator, with all their echoes of Corneille and the atmosphere of the century, are but the crowning summit of a generation that turned, almost without exception to Rome. Almost the only painters to work against the tide were the brothers Le Nain, of whom Antoine and Mathieu are here represented by excellent pictures' grey and sombre beside the carefully considered reds and blues of Poussin (which so frequently " jump " from their surround- ings) but informed by life and not art. As indeed are some of the other works—Bourdon's little self-portrait sketch, for instance, and Philippe de Champaigne's Abbe de Saint Cyran—though of less importance. The Claudes, too, return us to nature, to the poetry of atmosphere and twilight. Some of them are difficult to discern beneath the pea-soup of the yeais ; but the elegiac and moving beauty of his Enchanted Castle is profound and superb.
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Just how lovely the delicate detail of Claude's trees and distant horizons is beneath the blackening varnish may be seen at the National Gallery, where some of the Dulwich College pictures, returned from their war-time fastnesses in Wales, are on view pending the rebuild- ing and restoration of their own home south of the river. It is good to see these masterpieces again. Among my favourites are the captivating early Geinsborough of a Lady and Gentleman, the portrait of Philip IV of Spain, whether by Velasquez or not, the Canaletto, the bold head attributed to Piero di Cosimo, a Ruysdael- but it becomes invidious to pick and choose. Even the Poussin-
Rinaldo and Armida—is especially good. M. H. MmonEToN.
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