J.M.W. Turner, Dolbadern Castle, 1800.

Oil on canvas, 119.4 x 90.2 cm.

Royal Academy of Arts, London.

 

 

Landscape and Watercolour Painting

 

 

The first landscape painter of any importance in the history of English art is Richard Wilson[10]. Before him one or two names might be mentioned, but they have left no serious trace of their influence in the school.

Richard Wilson was born in 1714; chronologically he comes before Hogarth and Gainsborough. No time could have been more unfavourable for his artistic success than this, for his countrymen, engrossed in Hogarth’s essentially English productions, had no eyes for any one else, and indeed Wilson is an English artist only in name. In painting portraits, he slowly gathered together a little sum of money, which, in addition to a few loans, enabled him to realise the dream of his youth – a journey to Italy.

In Francesco Zuccarelli’s studio in Venice, he realised landscape was his vocation. But it was a late discovery, and it is a question if he was not as much influenced by Claude Lorrain’s pictures as by the Italian scenery that he had come so far to see. However, there is more talent than originality in his painting; his chief inspiration certainly came from Claude Lorrain and Joseph Vernet. The latter was very close to Wilson, and it was he who brought the English artist the few days of success that he ever enjoyed during his lifetime in his own country. It was on the faith of Vernet’s word that his first pictures were bought, and that he was elected a member on the foundation of the Academy. But he had scarcely returned to London when his painting rapidly fell into disfavour. His academic brothers spared him neither epigrams nor admonitions of a severer character. Wilson remained incorrigible.

He was quite bewitched by high art, and could not regard things in a simple light. Like many French painters since, such as Bidauld and Bertin, he sought a false ideal, and, in spite of the undeniable talent of the painter, the fact could not but be apparent to the British mind, already accustomed to Gainsborough’s charming natural style. Since Wilson’s death there has been a powerful reaction in his favour among his countrymen; his pictures are sold at a high price, and he is generally called the English Claude. This exaggeration is as absurd as the neglect in which he suffered during his lifetime. It is hard to understand why Wilson ever thought of leaving Italy where he had magnificent scenery, his favourite study, constantly before his eyes.

After an absence of five years, devoted to steady work, he returned so laden with studies, designs, and sketches, that when King George III gave him an order for a view of Kew Gardens, instead of painting the superb reality, he substituted an Italian scene illuminated by a southern sun, and, indeed, it only faintly resemblanced the desired landscape. The king had the cruelty to return the picture to the artist.

But what excuse can one find to justify these theories, which not only authorise, but, under the pretext of idealising, encourage such mystifications? It is not only in England that they had their rise (there they were quickly repressed), but we all know a country where the art-patrons have for a long time countenanced this principle.

Wilson always believed that Providence only created nature to serve as a surrounding for Niobe’s misfortunes, and that ruins are the most beautiful architecture in the world. I know that he often sheds a transparent light on his distances, but at the same sacrifices that Claude Lorrain himself could not always avoid, skilful as he was in effects of light. The foregrounds are opaque, heavy, and bituminous, whilst large trees with thick black foliage stand on either side. From such a frame, arranged like the dark hall of a diorama, the light shines out brightly and creates some illusion. Suppress the surroundings and the charm disappears. Poor Richard, as his friends called him, doubtless possessed a very valuable talent for execution; his ambition was high but imperfect; he is one of the illustrious victims of the narrow idealism which raged so long in the French school. He was doomed to succumb fatally in a country which loved the literal representation of itself in Hogarth’s pictures, and at the same time admired itself in Gainsborough’s. In France, Wilson would have been covered with honour and glory.

And now I repeat what I have already said: Gainsborough is the father of English landscape. He proceeded on a contrary plan to that of Wilson. He also painted portraits – we have already considered him in that calling – but first he studied landscape. He did not wait until a spirit from on high should influence him under other skies; he never left his island, and the Suffolk woods always seemed to him the most beautiful in the world. I do not know how Italian scenery might have affected him, but, of a more vigorous mind than Wilkie, of more extensive views than Wilson, I do not doubt but that he would have returned, certainly with ardent admiration, but also true to his talent.

Gainsborough’s few landscapes give a very complete idea of his art. In the backgrounds of his portraits, in the Fisherman’s Family, in the Little Girl and the Jug, and in the Little Swineherd, one recognises the truthfulness of the landscape painter in the exact harmony between the chief subject and the scenery, and the accuracy with which this is arranged. But his deep knowledge of nature does not show itself in these pictures as clearly as in The Cottage Door, belonging to the Duke of Westminster. The expression of Gainsborough’s landscapes is full of sweetness and homely charm. There are no grand effects of colouring, the tints are not numerous or brilliant, but harmoniously varied. A cottage half concealed under luxurious trees, a murmuring brook bordered with weeping willows, a bridge leading towards the open country over which is spread a soft light; on the threshold of the cottage a group of half-clothed children awaiting or having their breakfast; with them, the young mother nursing her baby – such is The Cottage Door, a splendid page from Jean-Jacques Rousseau or an idyll from Mme. George Sand.

The Landscape with Animals has a still more decided touch of nature. It is the subject endlessly diversified by the masters of Flemish landscapes. The swift and vivid impression produced by it forms the whole interest. We see how the early morning breeze has swept away the clouds from a bright blue sky; a herd of cows, driven by a rustic, passes by a pond, and clumsily make their way towards a rich pasturage. The warm and moist atmosphere in The Cottage Door is of an unparalleled transparency and clearness in this little picture. The artist has given it his finest tints, and an air of perfect serenity, as in his beautiful painting in the National Gallery, The Watering Place.

George Morland, a talented but good-for-nothing fellow, shows also in some of his rustic scenes that charm which never forsakes Gainsborough. Frederick Wedmore, in his interesting work, Studies in English Art, compares Morland at great length to this celebrated artist. We would not have made such a comparison.