SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

PORTRAITS OF TWO GENTLEMEN

National Gallery

The bigly seen and broadly handled head of the man in black should help the student to realise and distinguish essentials from non-essentials in painting.

L. PORTRAITS OF TWO GENTLEMEN. BY REYNOLDS

[226]

CHAPTER XI

THE BRITISH SCHOOL

GAINSBOROUGH, CONSTABLE, LAWRENCE, TURNER, AND OTHERS

THE charm of Gainsborough lies in his intense personality. Except those paintings which are directly inspired by him, there are few that resemble his style; and this individuality, combined with his faculty to seize sweet and elusive expression, make him one of the most lovable of our painters, in spite of seemingly puerile lapses-for of ten his drawing could not well be weaker, nor could his composition. But he could draw, and when he is careless about it and about his construction; he gives us at least something to compensate for their loss in all he did. The colour scheme of " Mrs. Siddons " first attracts us. There is an absence of positive shadow in the flesh. Let us see how it is done.

The picture was evidently laid in in a cool monochrome, the flesh very sparingly glazed, and then accents, such as the black of the pupils, the nostril, the red of the mouth, a few streaks in the powdered hair, and the black velvet riband on the neck, just drawn with a small brush hi their respective places over the dry or nearly dry ground. [229] And, curiously enough, the effect is not hard, although a trifle thin.

In Gainsborough's paintings there is rarely any decided impasto. Perhaps because of their thinness his pictures do not crack ; but they are often chalky in their whiteness.

The blue and golden brown, with the black hat on the red setting, is a striking harmony ; and all these are but thinly stated. There was an old superstition that no picture was durable that was not loaded. Gainsborough settles that point for us, and we see that his meagre but clean white grounds uphold his light and freshness.

In the "Parish Clerk" the exquisite hand on the book is fine in the quality of its shadow, and is in direct contrast to " Mrs. Siddons." The light and shade of this picture are fused together in wet state, and very subtly.

The "Musidora" is somewhat patchy with its overglazed colour.

"The Duke of Bedford's" head is brimful of nature. There is also a portrait of a dignified old man, and a tenderly coloured group of "The Baillie Family."

The best technical lesson to be learnt from this artist's manner is the safeguarding of the fascinating freshness, and looseness of the sketch in the finished work. Why is the sketch often preferable to work completed from it? For one reason mainly : it is done in one painting, and therefore the light of the ground is not lost.

[230] What, when our pictures are overloaded, are we to do to restore something of this looseness? Firstly, we should scrape away the heavily loaded passages with the " plush mat," and then, if necessary, scumble a little light opaque colour over them. When this is thoroughly dry, we have a new ground over which the paint should no longer suffer from the want of transparency. This process gives little trouble, and will regain for our work what over-labouring will have lost for us.

Gainsborough's later landscapes are somewhat summary, dark, and scratchy. The earlier wood scene, " Village Cornard," more Dutch in feeling, has none of these faults ; it is juicy in colour, and more solidly handled.

GAINSBOROUGH

PORTRAIT OF MRS. SIDDONS

A fine example of the lightness of handling so characteristic of the master's manner.

LI. PORTRAIT OF MRS. SIDDONS. BY GAINSBOROUG

ROMNEY

There are Romneys in our gallery that have their charm, but there is a flat emptiness about them. The flesh is rarely flesh for the want of greys, and his red shadows are monotonously mannered. It is hardly fair to judge him by examples that are in many respects not his best.

CONSTABLE

Constable broke new ground ; and so strong was the prejudice against the greenness of his work that he was requested to brown his pictures in the early days. For all that, he has had more [233] influence on modern art than perhaps any other painter.

The " Flatford Mill," if seen alone, in spite of its hardness and lack of unity would appeal to lovers of light and nature, but by the side of his richer and more sparkling trio, next to be mentioned, it seems tame and uninspired. Such free use of the palette knife, as in his three notable canvases ("The Corn Field," "The Valley Farm," and "The Hay-Wain"), has always a taming effect on surrounding pictures that are painted without its aid, and, as with the craving for narcotics the doses of the reckless who are bitten with the craze, are gradually increased till the scintillations play havoc with a whole wall of neighbours. But there is a day of reckoning with these dust-traps, when all the glory is for ever departed. Constable could use his palette knife, but even with him the surfaces are sometimes a wee bit mechanical, as in the stag and tomb picture on the east wall, known as " The Cenotaph."

"The Valley Farm" is finely dramatic. The accidental shadows and the concentrated light on the white house are conceived and executed with real mastery.