his mind there were no limits. He surveyed the whole range of human experience, at least on its darker side. Beauty in its obvious phases had no power over him, either because he rarely met with it, or, perhaps, because, disgusted with the shortness and precariousness of its tenure, he aimed rather at portraying that beauty of spirit, which, when the illusions of joy and hope are done with, emerges at last from the gloom of solitude.

The remaining examples of Dutch art need not detain us, for, though fine, they are not unique. In fact, the Dutch master of the second rank has little apart from his manual dexterity to recommend him. What he gains in perfection, he loses in variety. There is no effort to enlarge the scope of the problem, or to tempt new possibilities. He sets the same models time after time in the same pot-house or under the same sky, keeping with the steady industry of the manufacturer to the routine of practice that has certainly, within his narrow limits, made perfect; and we cease to wonder that what is done so often should be done so well.

From the hand of Van Dyck we have the most splendid and poetical of all his portraits of himself, while, side by side, Reynolds and Gainsborough still compete, as in life, for the highest honours.

The story goes that certain words used by the President in his eighth discourse were intended and taken to reflect upon Gainsborough's habitual manner; whereupon the latter planned and painted the "Blue Boy" as an answer to the implied challenge, and it has been currently pretended ever since that in this single example Gainsborough has shown that he was capable of that which, on the high authority of Reynolds, would have been too hard for Titian or Rubens. Now, if I abandon this legend, I do so with regret, having found that, in the field of art criticism at any rate, "old superstition" is generally preferable to "new hypocrisy"; but I venture to doubt, in the first place, whether Reynolds was pointing at anybody in particular, and, in the second, whether, supposing that Gainsborough was challenged, he has really solved, or so much as attempted, the problem.

Let us begin, however, by considering what was actually said: '

It ought (said Reynolds), in my opinion, to be indispensably observed that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm, mellow colour,

yellow, red, or a yellowish white, and that the blue, the gray, or the green colours be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support and set off these warm colours; and, for this purpose, a small proportion of cold colours will be found sufficient. Let this conduct be reversed, let the light be cold, and the surrounding colours warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters; and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens or Titian, to make a picture splendid or harmonious.

Now it should be borne in mind that it was a habit with Reynolds rarely, if ever, to allude to those whom he personally disliked, or whose closeness to his own eminence he resented. The most invulnerable of men, he was also the least provocative. The rule, moreover, which he lays down was, like all his theoretical positions, simply a deduction from a wide range of experience. That which had nearly always happened, probably happened for reasons the force of which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to evade. He is contrasting the method of the Venetians with that of the Romans and Florentines, and Gainsborough, as those who drag him in seem to forget, does not bear the slightest resemblance to either.

Then, again, it is to be noted that he speaks of a contrast between warm and cold masses balanced in a certain way. He does not deny that a picture otherwise planned will be clever, "convincing," or a masterpiece. But it will be out of the power of art to make it splendid or harmonious. And I hold that in general the qualities of splendour and harmony are foreign to Gainsborough's art, at least in that sense which Reynolds unquestionably intended. Gainsborough is light, delicate, spontaneous; but his facility added to the very abundance of his gifts, led him only too often into the temptation to be flimsy. The Blue Boy is splendid, not in Reynolds's sense, which was also the sense of Titian and Rubens, but metaphorically, on account of the mastery it displays. It is no solution, but an evasion of the problem how to surround cold light with warm colour so as to keep the whole in splendour and harmony. The painter exhausts his theme without once departing from his favourite blue key, though he has certainly allowed himself a free use of accidentals, especially in the shadows, into which he has infused more warmth than they would have shown. But there is no balance of contrasts, nor anything in the result to tell whether,

if he had really attempted Reynolds's problem, he would have succeeded. As an example of what he has just explained and enjoined, the President goes on to describe the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian; and it is open to anybody to convince the world, if he can, that, had Gainsborough painted the Bacchus and Ariadne over again on the principles of the Blue Boy, the effect would have been splendid and harmonious.

The transition from that which Gainsborough considered his finest portrait to Reynolds's masterpiece is easy and obvious. The Tragic Muse was painted in 1784, when Mrs. Siddons was at the height of her power and reputation. The dark tone of the picture seems to be involved by the subject, and to explain it, while the Muse herself looks to the full what Hazlitt called her, "not less than a goddess, or than a prophetess inspired by the gods."

No man was more fortunate in his sitters than Gainsborough, and, as he rarely failed to reach his opportunities, his likenesses keep for ever the charm which their originals showed for a day. But they remain likenesses and nothing more: while the best of Reynolds's portraits are monuments partaking of the dignity as well as of the permanence of history. For example, the portrait of Johnson is more than a likeness of the man as his friends saw him. It is a monument to what those friends saw who understood him, and what posterity has come to reverence in him.

It is often said that Reynolds borrowed the attitude of the Tragic Muse from Michelangelo's Isaiah, in the Sistine Chapel, and it is quite possible that—to quote what he says of Gray in a similar case "he had warmed his imagination with the remembrance of this noble figure." The attendant genii of the dagger and bowl certainly recall the mysterious youthful figures that guard the meditations or direct the visions of the Prophets and Sibyls. But the Tragic Muse herself related that on ascending her throne she spontaneously assumed the majestic attitude in which the painter has here immortalized her. And it may not be out of place to call attention to a curious piece of advice which the President gave to students in his twelfth discourse,' published in the very year in which this picture was exhibited

It is better to possess the model with the attitude you require, than to

1 1784.

place him with your own hands; by this means it happens often that the model puts himself in an action superior to your own imagination.

Herein we have probably an exact account of his own experience with the Tragic Muse.

Outside Apsley House Velasquez is rarely seen in English private collections—and seeing is not always believing-for the reason that none of our collectors have had such an opportuninty as that which came to Wellington in the Peninsula. He is represented here by a single specimen. Prince Balthazar Carlos, son of Philip IV, early showed a fondness and an aptitude for riding, which naturally delighted his father, the finest horseman in Spain. In this wonderful sketch Velasquez has left us an impression of what might have been seen any day in the riding-school. On the left the four-year-old prince gallops forward on a stout black pony: ante ora parentis frenato lucet in equo. He sits jauntily, and with the air of a full-blown great man. In fact, he seems already to promise the fulfilment of the hopes and the dreams of his father and Olivarez. Hard by, on the right, the all-powerful Count-Duke takes a spear from the obsequious riding-master, while the King and Queen with the little Princess survey the scene from a balcony.

Each of the figures is set with unerring dexterity in its just proportion of size and gradation of tone in a fluent medium of air. The building keeps its true distance without, as in the case of so many Dutch views, dwarfing the figures into insignificance. The execution is so rapid, and the impression given so momentary, that here, if anywhere, Velasquez seems, as Reynolds says of him, to paint with his will. Nothing seems to be employed but light and shadow: yet out of these he has evolved the whole illusion of depth and surface.1

1 [The Preface is unfinished, and was to have been continued with a fresh issue of reproductions from the pictures in the same collection.]

G

PICTURES AT DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, CHATSWORTH AND HARDWICK HALL

[1901: AET. 38]

HE present series of reproductions' has been compiled with the view of giving as complete an idea as possible of the general character of the collections at Devonshire House, Hardwick Hall, and Chatsworth.

Through the liberality of the present owner the finest examples have frequently been exhibited, especially during recent years, and are in consequence well known. These have been dealt with briefly. Of the rest some are still problematical; and if old attributions have been questioned, and in certain cases abolished, this has not been in forgetfulness of the respect that is still due to an old tradition with a pedigree, as against a new critic without a document.

At the time when the collection was made, the reaction which now governs opinion in favour of the archaic and the immature had not yet set in, so it appears, in consequence, that of the Italian school the older names are not represented. There is nothing of the first quality earlier than the Adoration of the Magi by Paul Veronese at Devonshire House (Plate II).

The head of the king kneeling in front is obviously a portrait; and with this exception the painter has reproduced the same models as occur in the similar treatment of the theme at Dresden. Nothing, however, in the whole range of the master's work surpasses this for depth and richness of colouring, and the art with which the lines of the composition are made to converge upon the main point.

Equally fine in its way, and eminently characteristic of Tintoretto,

1 Preface to the publication entitled, "The Masterpieces of the Duke of Devonshire's Collection of Pictures, Sixty Photogravures," etc. Franz Hanfstängl, London, 1901.