ART.
OLD MASTERS AT BURLINGTON HOUSE.
HERE, for the twenty-second time, is a mixed company of the Immortals, and besides the familiar masters there is a collec- tion of English water-colourists. These we propose to deal with in another article. This week we notice the most re- markable oil-paintings, taking them in the order of the rooms.
Crome's Form gland Oak (39) is one of the finest works of a master. There are no more satisfying landscapes in the
National Gallery than the two great Cromes there ; and this is in some ways more remarkable,—for the colour and light, the green-blue and faintly flushed clouds of the sky, the green-gold of the tree, the cold shadows of the pool, and the rich ground out of which the foliage looms and twinkles into light, are a more choice and difficult effect to render. There are examples in this exhibition of the art of Hobbema and
Ruysdael from which Crome sprang ; and there is an example of his own work on the opposite wall, the Grove Scene (9),
which shows him following his masters uninspired : a glance from one to the other measures the difference between root and blossom. The oak, with its hoary stem, reminds one not a little of another blossom from the same stock, but in another cbuntry, Diaz.
There is a masterpiece of Turner's, too. The Sheerness (38) is to Vandervelde and Bakhuisen and Van der Capelle and the rest, what Crome's Oak is to Hobbema. Here again was the flowering of a school, the golden-misty manner of Turner's earlier sea-painting, the art of the Sun Rising in a Mist and Bligh Sands. He takes over the old pattern of the Dutch- men, the ship of the line standing high against the horizon, and the fishing-boat skimming past on the nearer swell ; but again, with what a difference ! Work like this is a master's in perfect equilibrium : the maze and welter of waves is rendered as never before, but with such accomplishment of handling in the drawing of the foam, that one admires its free- dom, but does not discover a trick in it. But the painter, having attained this mastery, forthwith tired of his formula, and the other sea-piece in this room shows what happened,—Wreckers (21). Whether it was that lie had looked on Rubens when he glittered, or had became enamoured of a water-colour practice, he developed this later manner, in which there is more colour but not so sound, and more light but not so satisfying, and more sparkle but also more trick in the touch on the waves and clouds. Close to this hangs an example of still earlier work than the Shierness,—namely, the Kilgarrait Castle (18), a solemn, wooded height and castle just touched by dawn, which shows Turner emerging from Wilson. But in one corner is an unmistakably Turnerian boulder. In the large gallery are two Lowther Castle views of 1810 (131 and 135), fine both of them, and the finer for the yellowing of the varnish. Between them hangs a Claude-Turner, Mercury and Herse (133), Claude's down to the crude, disturbing colours of dress on the foreground figures.
On the same wall with the Oak of Crome and the Sheerness of Turner are hung, as if by way of punishment.and wansing, two paintings of Landseer's that set the teeth on edge; and on the opposite wall, poor Etty's Academy models play at being Hesperides painted by Rubens. They are flanked by two explosive sea-pieces by De Loutherbourg.
Of English portrait-painters, Reynolds here again gives of his splendid abundance. The most beautiful in colour is the Portrait of Mrs. Scott of Danesfield (35), warm white and grey and rose. This picture is not in the best condition, and others, like the Miss Kennedy (132), which Reynolds himself thought the "best coloured" he bad done (in 1770), have suffered more. The Contemplation : Portrait of the Hon—Mrs, Spencer (28) is one of the experiments after the "golden secret of Titian," in which Reynolds hovers on the verge of the open secret of furniture-polish ; and the same suspicion of heaviness clings to the Master Banbury (2) and the Young Fortune-Teller (137), and even to the portrait of himself (19), in many respects so masterly. Hoppner is amazing in his Mrs. Gwyn (15), a portrait that might pass for a Reynolds of the type of the Duchess of Devonshire at the Guelph : It is extremely simple in its flesh-painting, but it makes the too simple reds of Romney (27, 40, 44) look poverty-stricken ; alone they might pass, carried off by the grace of conception in the artist's work. Hoppner's portrait of his wife (31) is striking for its expression. The best Gainsborough here is the portrait of James Christie (4). Reynolds's Nymph, with Boy Piping (129) is fine in its broad and simple treatment of the nude torso of the nymph, but not otherwise pleasing.
Of Dutchmen, Rembrandt is this year absent, so there is no one in the Dutch gallery to keep the boisterous Frank Hals in his place. Many things, no doubt, must be dropped in painting if expression and action are to be seized on the moment, but they ought to be resolutely dropped. A painter like this pretends to keep colour and texture, and puts us off' with leathery flesh and slaty shadows, and hair like thick wires. The merits are those of black and white ; the rest is vulgarity. The Queen lends a lovely Terburg and a Peter de Hooghe. The Terburg (92) is dignified in its composition of three figures round a table in a high, dark room, with the brass chandelier glimmering up above ; and the figure of the blonde lady standing up to read the letter, her face dappled over with shadows cast by her hair, and that of the page holding a tray beside her, are very beautiful. The De Hooghe (85) is not of his very finest ; not in effect so concentrated, nor in the outer sunlight so brilliant, as a De Hopei° can be ; but there are wonderful passages in it, like the modulation of colour in the hair of the man seated next the door. De Hooghe with blacker shadows and colder sunlight is the nearest formula by which to describe Jan Ver Meer of Delft, one of whose rare pictures is in this room,—The Soldier and the Laughing Girl (52). But comparisons apart, it is a most surprising and impressive composition. The soldier's great hat and face are a mass of shadow against the window, the laughing face of the woman fronts him, brilliantly lit, and behind her head are the blue-grey tones of the wall, with the meandering lines of a map on it. To revert to our comparison,. it is perhaps the curious closeness and intensity of the com- position of this that makes the De Hooghe seem a little scat- tered. Of landscape there is a Ruysdael (77) that reminds one of the superb example in the National Gallery. This has the same- effect of cloud-shadows playing over a wide stretch of country.. Velasquez reappears in the position of last year, but with nothing so superb as the best then. The little Infanta Maria Theresa (112) is admirable in face and dress, and the dog is perfect ; but the whole picture wants the atmosphere of the painter's supreme work. The face of the Olivarez (113) is first-rate, the rest is loose Tintorettesque work. The Philip IV. (116) does not seem to be the work of Velasquez at all. It is. finein its way—the colour of the dress especially—but the texture all through, and the flesh-painting, are like nothing. we know of by Velasquez. It is true that there are great differences between works attributed to. his hand by high authority—between, say, either Philip of the .National Gallery- and the portrait of the Admiral recently bought—but the latter is conceivably the work of the painter, seeing things, hotter than usual; the portrait in question has more vital differences. In the same room, are a finely painted head of a Saint Simeon, by Ribera (106), and two Vandycks,—a Queen Henrietta Maria (123), in which there is too much Vandyck-• brown, and a Duke of Richmond and Lennox (1.25), beautifully . conceived as colour, but a little dead in the face.
Of the primitive painters of Italy and the Netherlands,. there are one or two interesting examples,—a Virgin and Child with St. John, finely composed, by Montagna (156); a Nativity, by Altdorfer (158) ; Mabuse's Adoration of the Magi (161) s and works ascribed to Bouts (162), Van der Goes (160), and Memling (167).
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