The Old Masters and Their Pictures

ined, but it is believed that he was well educated, and his classical learning in after life was reckoned

it the strong classical bent which it retained. Poussin studied regularly in the school of Domenichino. After some delay in attracting public notice, 'The Death of Germanicus,' and 'The Capture of Jerusalem,' which Poussin painted for Cardinal Ba

he attractions of the Eternal City proved too great for the painter, and in place of removing his household and studio to his native country, he lived for the rest of his years in Rome, and died there in 1665, when he was seventy-one years of age. Except what can be judged of him from his work, I do not know that much has been gathered of the private character and life of Nicol

n what looks like a closed portfolio, the painter has something of the severe air and haughty expression of an old Roman; still more, perhaps, of the French-Romans, if I may call them so, of whom revolutionary times nearly two centuries later, afforded so many examples

suffered from the classical atmosphere in which they had their being. They gained in that correctness which in its highest form becomes noble truthfulness,

fforts in landscape painting with marked respect. At the same time, however, the critic censures the painter for a want of thorough acquaintance with nature, and the laws of nature, ignorance not uncommon in any day, and nearly universal in Nicolas Poussin's day. 'The grea

pure and simple truth belongs to every age of nature, and adapts itself to the history of all time.' 'One of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced

gestion of anything in any of the spaces, the light wall is dead grey, the dark wall dead grey, and the windows dead black. How differently would nature have treated us. She would have let us see the Indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the Virgin at the angles; and the sharp, broken, broad shadows of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the carved Roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and

ease or accident, it would have attained; just as every individual human face has an ideal form, which but for sin and suffering it would present: and the

e; how like the clouds in the sky, the leaves on the trees, the very plumage of the birds! But pass on to another picture which may or may not have the same exact likeness, and we are possessed with quite another feeling; instead of being merely surprised by the cleverness of the imitation, we feel a thrill of delight at a reproduction of nature.

t explain to my readers the cause of the difference, I can Only show it to them as they may see it for themselves, and say that I suppose it proceeds fro

clouds of sunset, or sunrise, or high noon-clouds differing widely from each other, as you have no doubt observed. The trees are the beeches, or chestnuts, or pines, which would grow on the conformation of ro

been. Suppose the writer of the ballad had been a painter, he might have painted the story as intelligibly by the lone hill-side, the bleaching bones of the faithful hound and gallant grey, the two loathly blue-black birds satiat

an the bu

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ang the b

ever m

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he burn (no longer a burnie), 'roaring and reaming,' when the 'spate' is spreading desolation on every side. Don't you see how the picture would be spoilt, and the story of complete contrast left untold? I have taken advisedly an extreme and, therefore an unlikely case of

examples of Nicolas Poussin in the Na

when he had arrived he entered into the service of a landscape painter of good repute, to whom he was colour-boy as well as cook. The last is the account, so far, which Claude gave of himself to a friend, and it is hardly likely either that he misrepresented his history, or that his friend invented such details, though lately French authorities have questioned the authenticity of the narrative. Claude remained for nearly the entire remainder of a long life in Rome. He only once re-visited France, while he was yet a young man, under thirty years of age, in 1625 or 1627. He is supposed to have painted his earliest pictures and executed his etchings about this time, 1630 and to have painte

ugh to confer art glory on a country-house, and possibly for this reason England, in public and private collections, has more 'Claudes' than are held by any other country. But Claude'

s faith in its former idol. Mr Ruskin's adoption and proclamation of Turner's opinion shook the old faith still further. This reversal of a verdict with regard to Claude is peculiar; it is by no means uncommon for the decision of contemporaries to be set aside, and we shall hear of an instance presently, in the case of the painter Le Brun. In fact, it is often ominous with regard to a man's future fame, when he is 'cried up to the skies' in his own day. The prob

, he was to such a degree self taught, and only partially taught, that it is said he never learnt to paint

aude, whether justly or unjus

the strongest terms 'the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens, in which Claude, with the industry and intelligence of a Sevres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground.' But Mr Ruskin himself acknowledges, with a reservation, Claude's charm in foliage, and pronounces more conditionally his power, when it was at its best, in skies-

low or a sunny Claude on any wall where it may hang, and judg

agna, but while he tried to reproduce the hills and woodlands of Ital

sketch the date of the completed picture, and to whom sold. This book he called the 'Libro di Verita,' or, Book of Truth, and its apparent use was to check the sale of spurious paintings in Claude's name, even during his lifetime. The ' Book of Truth' is in possession of the Duke of Devonshire, and has been employed in recent years with reference to the en

ed in the National Gallery. Engra

d was appointed painter to the King, Louis XIV. Le Brun had enough influence with his royal master, and with the great minister Colbert, to succeed in establishing, while the painter was yet a young man, the Royal Academy of Art, of which he was the first member, and virtually the head, holding, in his own person, the directorship of the Gobelin tapestry works, which was to be the privilege of a member of

g, meditative, or original, to fail to profit by his outward good fortune. He wrote, as well as painted, artistic treatises, which were recei

aggeration of dramatic effect, over every other quality. Nicolas Poussin's quiet refinement of style became in Le Brun what is called academic (conventionally learned), pompous, and grandiose, and men decidedly preferred the degeneration. But later critics, who have not

th mock pastorals and Sèvres china. I don't know if his birth-place at Valenciennes, with its chief product of dainty lace, had anything to do with it, but the other items of poor Watteau's history are considerably removed from the very artificial grace which one connects with his name. He was the son of a carpenter, and strug

be said to be suited to such a work as the collection of 'fashionable figures,' which he engraved and left behind him. Yet, if we were to see at this moment some of his exquisite groups of ladies in sacques and Watteau hats, and cavaliers in flowing wigs and lace, cravats, I have no doubt that the most of us would admire them much, for they are exceeding

natural to the man, he ranked his genre pictures as high art; and when he was placed in the ordinary list of genre painters on his election as a member of the French Academy of Painting, Greuze resented the imputation, and withdrew from the Academy. He died in 1805, aged seventy-nine years. Greuz