Ford Madox Brown,
Pretty Baa-Lambs, 1851-1859. Oil on panel, 61 x 72.6 cm.

Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Birmingham.

 

 

Landscape, Genre, and Historical Painting

 

 

Landscape and Rural Life

 

We have already spoken of English landscape in our study of Pre-Raphaelitism, but we must now return to the subject in order to mark the distinction between the Pre-Raphaelites and other landscape painters. They both possess one quality – that is a deep love of nature; but the expression of this sentiment differs fundamentally in the two cases.

The first, as we have said, and shown in many ways, strive their hardest to give a reverential, almost devotional, representation of nature with every smallest particular. The sublimity of creation reveals itself to their eyes by delicacy of construction; in the flowering grass, for instance, with its light firm blades and tiny feathery bloom, as much and even more than in the grand accumulations of rocks and mountains, rearing their lofty summits above the highest clouds.

The Pre-Raphaelites seek the closest union with Nature. Other painters, on the contrary, place Nature in a secondary position to their art. In her grandest moments, and in her sublimest display of power, they see nothing more than a magic spectacle, exhibiting to them splendid effects of light, colour, and form; they do not think of studying her for her own sake, and as food for meditation. The two schools have equal rights. If our established ideas on art incline us to prefer the second, Pre-Raphaelitism gathers adherents among those men who enter into the sweet and homely charm of country delights.

Hamilton Macallum set himself a difficult task in striving to reconcile these two extremes. With this idea he sought to unite exactitude of detail to a certain breadth of effect, in which he has often succeeded. His mode of treatment is both simple and easily explained. The picture is arranged with large masses of dark colouring, so disposed as to form good contrasts. Then, concentrating his attention on the principal subject of the painting, the central theme, either through its peculiar character or by the management of the light, he handles it with the most minute execution of detail, analysing it so strictly that one is misled with regard to the other parts of the work, which are, nevertheless, left in their rudimentary state, and recall the sketchiness of Cozot.

Macallum’s peculiar system was deserving of special mention, but he possesses other claims of interest on the French public, as he often exhibits in the Champs Elysees. We have not forgotten his grand oak, with its imposing branches, standing out so clearly from an overhanging cloudy sky. It was one of the finest landscapes of the Salon in 1867. Macallum also sent a view of the Gorge aux Loups, taken in the forest of Fontainebleau, to the Exposition Universelle. In it could be seen the same striking effect obtained by a seeming exactitude of detail based on a species of optical illusion skilfully arranged by the artist.

With regard to special effect, I ought to mention, among oil paintings, one which creates a great impression on the spectator. This picture, by Sir George Harvey, is Evening Calm, in the silent and lonely Scottish Moors.

But it is particularly among the works of watercolour painters that we must look for effective landscapes. Who can fail to admire the Turf Cutters, Snowdon, and Darley Cemetery, by the late David Cox? These productions, vibrating with movement and life, in which one sees so plainly the effect of the gusty wind, here driving great clouds before it, there sweeping the ground and blustering up the mountain’s steep ascent, concealing and revealing by turns the silver face of the moon on stormy nights – these impressive representations of nature remind us of the best works of Paul Huet, the French master, who has best succeeded in interpreting his extensive observations of such poetic beauties.

And again, think of the waters of the Mediterranean, lashed into fury and turbulence by the north-westerly wind, in John Brett’s watercolour painting; then look at Severn’s picture of the grand action of the huge waves, eternally rising and falling, on whose restless bosom one sees the broken reflection of the bright stars; and lastly, Whittaker’s paintings of enormous mountain torrents, bounding through masses of rock between snow-crowned heights. After observing all these works, who can fail to entertain a very high opinion of an art which, with such slight resources, can yet stir our feelings, and so ably present to our sight such magnificent views? The same impression is gained from Seymour Haden’s splendid and life-like etchings.

But it was only in later years that Landscape could properly be considered as forming a style of its own in the modern English school. Under that name, it had previously no existence. Nature in itself did not suffice as a motive of art. It was a frame, and a frame only, for some definite action, in which the human element exclusively monopolised attention and interest.

But, particularly since the French Exhibition of 1878, under the influence of the great French landscape painters – Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Troyon, Daubigny – a young school has sprung up, pledged to permanently divorce Landscape and Narrative. Of these youthful artists, Mark Fisher is the one whose talent, considerable in itself, has the most in common with the French, the least with the English school. There is in his art – see, for instance, his Meadow Pastures – so skilful a blending of Jacques Daubigny and Constant Troyon, that we are almost inclined to think it too skilful.

However, a careful examination of these fine studies of animals, so full of learning and sincerity, soon reconciles us to an art that belongs to the whole world, and to a talent that has no fatherland. Cecil Lawson and Alfred Parsons, two of the young leaders of this movement, are, on the other hand, completely English, and this is, in our eyes, no slight merit. It is true they have almost entirely taken away the human figure from landscape and aim at arousing our emotions only by the sentiment which natural scenery awakes in us; but it is, at any rate, with the nature with which they are familiar that they ask our sympathy.

I may add that in their interpretation of nature they exhibit to a considerable extent their own peculiar states of mind, somewhat romantic in the case of Lawson, keenly appreciative of grace of form in Parsons.