ernst gombrich - the age of reason (ch. 23)

8/17/2019 Ernst Gombrich - The Age of Reason (Ch. 23)

1/17

3

THE

AGE OF REASON

England

and

France

eighteenth century

The

period round

about

r

7

had

seen

the

culmination

of the

Baroque

movement in

Catholic Europe.

The

Protestant

countries

could

not

help

being

in1presscd

by

this all-pervading fashion but, nevertheless, they did

not

actually

adopt

it.

This even

applies

to England during the Restoration

period,

when

the Stuart

court

Iboked towards France

and abhorred

the

taste

and outlooKUfthe

Puritans. It was

during

this

period

that

England

produced

her

greatest architect, Sir

Christopher Wren (r632-1723),

who

was

given the

task

of

rebuilding

London s churches

after

the

disastrous

fire

of

1666. It is

interesting to

con1pare his St Paul s Cathcdral,_figure

299

with a church of

the Ronun Baroque, built

only

some

twenty

years earlier,

page

436 jigure

282. We

see

that Wren

was definitely

influenced

by

the

groupings and

effects

of

the Baroque

architect,

although

he

himself

had

never been

to

Rome.

Like

Borromini s church, Wren s

cathedral,

which

is

much

larger in scale, consists

of

a central cupola, flanking towers,

and the

suggestion

of

a ten1ple fayade

to

frame

the main entrance. There

is

even

a definite similarity

between Borromini s llaroque towers and Wren s,

particularly

in the

second

storey. Nevertheless,

the

general itnpression

of the

two fayades is very different. St Paul s is not

curved.

There is

no

suggestion

of,rnovetncnt, rather ofstrength and

stability.

The way in

which

the p;i.red cohnnns arc used to give stateliness

and

nobility

to

the

£tyade recalls Versailles, page 448 jigure 291

rather

than

the Ronun

Baroque. Looking

at

the

details, we tnay

even wonder whether or not to

call Wren s style

Baroque.

There is

nothing of the

fi·eakish

or

fantastic in

his

decoration.

All his forn1s

adhere

strictly-

to

the

best n1odels

of the

Italian

Renaissance. Each

fonn

and

each part of the building can be

viewed by

itself

without

losing its intrinsic

meaning.

Cmnpared with

the exuberance

ofBorronllni, or of the architect ofMelk, Wren

in1presses us

as being

restrained

and

sober.

The

contrast

between Protestant

and

Catholic

architecture is

even

more

marked

when we

consider

the

interiors

ofWrcn s

churches-

for

instance

that ofSt Stephen Walbrook in L o n d o n . f \ ~ u r e ;oo.

A

church

like this

is

designed

mainly as

a hall where

the

£1ithful meet

for worship.

lts

aim

is not

to conjure up

a vision

of another

world,

but

rather

to allow

us to

collect


2/17

58 Ti lE

i\C>

Of Rci\SON


3/17

459 I,NCI.AND AND f-Illdoll, r675- 1710

JOO

Sir Christopher

Wr

en

turrri••r if

1/te

uu t

of

Sl

Step/tell

Wai Jrook,

t.,.

1ou, 16

72

our tho ughts. In the many churches he designed,

Wre

n e

nd

eavoured to

give ever

-n ew

variations on the th

eme

of such a hall, which would be

bo th dignified and simple.

As

with ch

ur

ches, so

wit

h castle

s. No

king ofEngland

cou

ld have

raised the prodigious sums to build a Versailles, a

nd no

English peer

wou

ld have cared to compete with the German pr incelings in luxury

and extravagwce. It

is

true that the building craze reached England . The

D uke

of

M arlborough s Blenheim Palace is even larger in scale than Prince

Eugene s Belvedere.

But

these were exceptions. The ideal

of

he

English eighteenth century was not the palace but the country house.

The architects of these

cou

ntry houses usually rejected the

extravagances

of

the Baroque style. It was their ambi ti

on

not to infi·inge

any rule

of

what they consider

ed

good taste , a

nd

so they were anxious

to keep as close ly

as

possible to the real or pretended laws

of

cla

ss

ical

archi tecture. Architects

of

the Italian Renaissance w

ho

had studi

ed

and

measured the ruins

of

classical buildings with scientific care had published

their findings in te

xtbo

oks to p rovide builders and craftsmen with patterns.

T he

mo

st famous

of

these books was

wr

it ten

by

Andrea Palladio, page

62

T his book ofPalladio s came to be considered the ultimate authority on all

rules

of

taste in archi tec

tur

e in eighteenth- cen

tur

y England. To bu

il

d o

ne

s

villa in the Palladian m anner was considered thelast word in

fas

hio

n.


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41 0 THE

AGE

Or- f


5/17

461 ENGLAND

A il ANCe, EIC H I CEN I lJRY

land

sc

ape garden as the ideal surroundings for their Palladian v

ill as.

Just

as

they had appealed to

the

authority ofan Italian architect fo r the rules

of

reason and taste

in

bu ildi

ng

, so they turned to a so

uthern

painter for a

standard

ofb

eau ty in scenery.

Th

eir idea of what nature sh

ou

ld l

ook

like

was largely derived from the paintings of Cla ude Lorrain . It is interesting

to compare the view

of

the lovely grounds o

fStourhead

in

Wilt

shire,

jig re302 which we re laid

ou

t before the middle of the eighteenth

century, with wo rks by these two masters.

Th

e

tem

ple in the background

again re calls Palladia s Villa Rotonda (which was,

in

its turn , modelled on

the Roman Panth

eo

n), while the whole vista

wit

h its lake, its bridge and

i

ts

evocation ofRoman buildings co nfirms

my

remarks on the influence

which the paintings of Claude Lorrain ,

page

396 jigure 255 were to have

on the beauty of the En glish landscape.

The position ofEnglish painters and sculptors

under

the

ru

le of taste

and reason was not always enviable. W e have seen that the victory of

Protestantism

in

England, and

the

Puritan

host

ili

ty

to images and

to

lux

ur

y had dealt the tradition

of

art in England a severe blow. Almost the

on

ly

purpo

se for which painting was still

in

demand was that ofsupplying

liken

ess

es, and even this function had largely been met by foreign artists

s

uch as

Holbein,

page

37

4

and VanDyck,

page 403

w

ho we

re ca lled to

Eng

land after they had estab

li

shed their reputations abroad.


6/17

462 THE

AGE

f

REASON

The fashionable gentlen1en of Lord

Burlington s

days had no objection

to

paintings or sculptures on puritan grounds, but

they

were not eager

to

place conunissions

with

na6ve artists who had not yet made a

natne

in the

outside

world.

If

they

wanted

a

painting

for

their

mansions

they

would

much rather

buy one which bore

the name

of

some fatuous Italian nuster.

They prided

thetnselves on

being

connoisseurs,

and

smne

of

thcn1

assetnbled the most admirable collections

of

old masters,

without,

however,

giving

much employment

to

the

painters

of

their time.

This

state

of

affairs greatly irritated a young English engraver,

who

had

to

make his living by illustrating books. His name was Wl11iam Hogarth

(1697-1764). He felt

that he had

it in him

to be

as

good

a painter

as

those

whose works were bought for hundreds of pounds frmn abroad, but he

knew that there

was

no

public for

conternporary

art

in

England. He

therefore

set out deliberately

to

create a new

type

of painting which

should

appeal to his

countrymen.

He

knew that they were

likely

to

ask

What

is

the use

of

a painting?

and he

decided

that, in

order

to

impress

people brought

up

in the puritan tradition, art must have an

obvious

purpose. Accordingly, he planned a number

of

paintings

which

should

teach the people the

rewards

of

virtue

and the

wages

of

sin. He ·would

show

a Rake s progress fi·om profligacy

and

idleness

to

crime and death,

or The

four

stages of cruelty frmn a

boy

teasing a cat to a grown-up s

brutal

murder. He

would

paint

these edifYing stories

and warning

examples in such a

way that

anyone who saw the series

of

pictures would

understand all

the

incidents

and

the lessons

they

taught.

His

paintings, in

fact, should resen1blc a kind

of

dumb show, in which all the characters

have their appointed task and

tnake

its n1eaning clear through gestures and

the usc

of

stage properti es. Hogarth hin1sclf

compared

this new

type of

painting

to

the art

of

the

l a y w ~ i g h t

and the theatrical

producer.

He

did

everything

to bring

out what

he

called

the character of

each ftgurc, not

only

through

his face but also through his dress and behaviour.

Each

ofhis

picture sequences can

be read

like a story or, rather, like a sermon. In this

respect, this type

of

art was not perhaps quite

as

new

as Hogarth

thought.

We

know

that

medieval art

used

itnages

to impart

a lesson,

and

this

tradition

of

the picture

sermon

had lived on in popular art

l p

tO

the time

of Hogarth. Crude

prints

had been

sold at fairs

to show the

fate

of

the

drunkard or the perils

of

gambling,

and

the ballad-mongers sold pamphlets

with

similar tales.

Hogarth, however,

was

no popular

artist

in

this sense.

He

had nnde

a careful study

of he

masters

of the

past

and of

their

way of

achieving pictorial effects. He knew the Dutch masters, such as Jan Steen,

who filled their pictures with hum.orous episodes fi·orn

the

life

of the

people and excelled in bringing

out

the characteristic expression of a type,

page

428 jigure

278 He also knew the

methods of

the Italian artists

of

his


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AND

1-l


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<

.J 64 THE

ACE

OF RJ..ASON

tragic scene, n1ade even

more

tragic by the grotesque dwarf, who

mocks it, and by the contrast with the two elegant visitors, who had

known the rake in the days of his prosperity.

Each

figure

and

each episode in

the

picture has its place

in

the

story Hogarth tells, but

that

alone would not suffice to

make it

a

good painting. What is renurkable in Hogarth

is

that, for all his

preoccupation with his subject-tnatter, he still

rctnained

a painter,

not

only

in the

way he

used his brush

and

distributed light

and

colour,

but

also

in the

considerable skill

he showed in

arranging his

groups. The

group round

the rake, for all its

grotesque

horror,

is as

carefillly composed

as any

Italian painting

of

he classical tradition.

Hogarth, in £:1-ct was very proud

of

his

understanding of

this

tradition.

He

was sure

that

he had found the

law

which governed

beauty. He

wrote

a

book,

which

he

called The Analysis of Beauty

to

explain the idea

that

an undulating line will always be nwre beautiful

than

an angular one.

Hogarth,

too,

belonged

to

the age

of

reason

and believed in teachable rules of taste,

but

he did not

succeed

in

converting his compatriots frorn their bias for the old tnasters. It

is

true

that

his picture-series earned

him_

great

£1 n1e and

a considerable

sum

ofnwney,

but his

reputation

was

due

less to

the

actual paintings

than to reproductions he made of thetn

in engravings which

were

bought by an eager public.

As

a painter, the connoisseurs

of the

period did not

take him seriously and, throughout his life,

he waged

a

grim

campaign against fashionable taste.

It

was only a

generation

later

that

an English painter was born

whose

art satisfied

the

elegant society

of eighteenth-centtuy

England

Sir Joshua Reynolds

r723-92).

Unlike Hogarth, Reynolds had

been to

Italy

and had

come,so agree

with

the connoisseurs

of

his

tin1e

that

the great tnasters

of

the Italian Renaissance

-Raphael,

Michelangelo,

Correggio and Titian- were the

unrivalled exen1plars

of

true art. He had absorbed the teaching

attributed to

the Carracci,

pa szes

390-1

that the only hope for an artist lay in the careful study

and in1itation of

what were

called the excellences of the ancient

masters-

the d r u g h t s m n s h ~ p ofRaphacl, the colouring of Titian,

and

so on. Later in his life,

when

Reynolds

had

nnde a career

as

an

artist in

England and

had becmne the first president of the newly

fotinded Royal Acaderny

of

Art,

he

expounded this acadetnic

doctrine

in a series of discourses, which still rnake interest ing

reading.

They

show that

Reynolds, like his conte tnporari es (such

as

Dr Johnson), believed in the rules

of

aste

and

the importance

of

authority

in art.

He

believed

that the

right

procedure in

art could,

to

a large extent,

be

taught, if students were given facilities for

studying


9/17

~ . N G L A N D

AND

fRANCE ~ . G H T E E N T H r : ~ . N T U R Y

the

recognized

masterpieces of Italian

paindng.

His lectures arc fu

of exhortations to

strive after lofty

and

dignified subjects, because

Reynolds believed that

only

the

grand

and impressive was worthy of

the

narnc

of

Great

Art. 'Instead

of

endeavouring

to

an1usc

mankind

with

the

n1inute

neatness

of

his

imhations,

the

genuine painter',

Reynolds

wrote

in his third Discourse 'must endeavour

to

im_provc

them

by the

grandeur

of

his ideas.'

From_

such a quotation it

might

easily appear that Reynolds was

rather

pompous

and

boring,

but

if we read his Discourses and

look

at

his pictures, we soon get rid

of

this prejudice. The £tct

is that

he

accepted the

opinions

about art which he found in the writings of

the influential critics

of

the

seventeenth

century, all

of

whon1

were

much concerned

with the dignity

ofwhat

was called 'history

painting'. We have seen how hard artists had

to

struggle against social

snobbery which

made people

look down on

painters

and

sculptors

because

they

worked

with their

hands,

J?af ,CS 287 8.

We know

how

artists

had to

insist

that

their real work was

not handiwork

but brain

work,

and

that

they

were no

less fit

to be

received into polite society

than

poets or scholars. It was

through

these discussions

that

artists

were led to

stress the itnportance

of poetic

invention in art,

and to

emphasize the elevated subjects

with which their

minds

were

concerned.

'Granted,' they

argued,

'that there may

be son1ething

tnenial in

painting

a portrait or a landscape from nature

where

the

hand merely

copies

what

the eye sees,

but

surely it requires

more than

mere craftsnnnship: it requires erudition and inugination to paint a

subject like Reni's

Aurora or

.Poussin's

Et in

Arcadia ego ?', paJ? CS

394-5 jigures

253 254.

We know

today

that there is

a fallacy

in

this

argmnent.

We know

that

there

is

nothing

undignifled

in

any

kind

of

handiwork

and that, rnoreover, it needs 1nore

than

a good eye

and

a

sure

band to

paint a

good portrait or

landscape.

Dnt every

period and

every society has its own prejudices

in

matters

of

art

and of taste-

ours, of course, not excluded. Indeed,

what

nukes it so interesting

to

examine

these ideas, which highly intelligent

people

in the

past took

so much for granted,

is

precisely

that

we learn in this

way

also

to

examine ourselves.

Reynolds was

an

intellectual, a friend

of Dr johnson and

his circle,

but

equally welcom_e

in

the elegant

country

houses

and town

nunsions of the powerful and

the wealthy.

And though he

sincerely

believed in the superiority of history painting,

and

hoped for its

revival

in

England, he accepted the fact

that

the only kind

of

art really

in denund in these circles was·

that

of portraiture. VanDyck had

established a standard of society portraits

that

all E.tshionable painters


10/17

466 i l ~ 1· REASON


11/17

ol 7 ~ N G L N D il ~ R A N C : I . EI GIIT[EN I H C cNTUi tY

J05

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Miss Ho les 111ir J

/1cr

t i t ~ : ,

1775

Oil nn ranv ts 91 S x

71.1 nn 36 1.:

x in;

\ V ~ I I a c c

<

ollcClion

London

Sir

Joshua Hcynolds

)ost•p J

Unretti,

1773

Oil 011 c a n v a ~ . 7J.7 x

f1 tl em

29

x

24Y i

in

l•riVltl colk·rtiort

ofsubsequent generations had

tried to reach. Reynolds could be

as flattering and as elegant as the

be

st o f

them,

bu t

he

liked

to

add

an extra interest to his paintings of

people to

bring

out t

he

ir character

and their role

in

society. T hus

figure 3 4 represents an intellectual

fi:om Dr j ohnson s circle, the Italian

scholar joseph Baret ti, who had

com

piled an English-I

talian

dictionary and later translated

Reynolds s D

iscourses

into Italian. It

is a perfect record, in

ti

mate without

being impertinent, and a good

pai

nting into the

bargain.

Even

w hen

he

had to paint a

child, Reynolds tried to make the

picture into more

than

a mere

po rtrait by care full y choosing his

setting.

Figure 3 5

sho ws

hi

s po rtrai t

of Miss

Bowles with her dog . We

remember that Velazquez, too, had

painted the po

rt

rait

of

a child and

dog, pag

e 41 o jig

ure

267.

13u t Velazquez had

been in

terested in

the

texture

and colour of

what

he saw. Reynolds wants to show

us

the touching love

of

the little girl for

her

pet. We are told

what tro

uble he took to gain the

child s confidence, before he set out to paint her. He was asked to the

house

and

sat beside h

er

at dinner wh ere

he

amused her so mu ch with

stories and tricks, that she

thought

him the most charming man in the

world. He made her look at something distant from the table and stole

he

r

plate; then he prete nded to l

ook

for it, then he contrived it should come

back to her w ithout h

er

knowing how. The

next

day s

he

was delighted to

be taken to his house, where sh e sat down w ith an expression fu ll ofglee,

the expression of whi ch he at on ce caught and never lost. No wonder tha t

the outcome is mo re

self

- conscious, and mu ch more thought out, than

Velazquez s straightforward arrangement. lt is true that,

if

we compare his

handling

of

paint

and

his treatment

of

he living skin and the fluffy f

ur with

that ofVelazquez,

we

may find R

eyno

lds disappoint

in

g

But

it would

hardly be fai r to expec t of him an effect at which he was no t aiming. He

wanted to

bring out

the character

of

the

sweet

child, and to

make

h

er

tenderness and her charm Ji

ve

for us. Today, wh

en

photographers have so


12/17

68

THh AGE or

REASON

accustomed

us to the trick

of

observing a child in a similar situation ,

we may find it difficult fully

to

appreciate the originality ofReynolds s

treatment. Uut we

must

not blame a n1aster for

the

imitations which have

spoHt his effects. Reynolds

never

allowed

the

interest

of

the

subject-matter

to upset the harmony of the painting.

In the

Wa11ace

Collection in London, where Reynolds s

portrait

of

Miss Bowles hangs, there is also the

portrait

of a girl of roughly the same

age by his greatest rival in

the

field

of portrait

painting,

Thomas

Gainsborough (1727-88), who was only

four

years his junior. It is the

portrait

of

Miss Haverfield, figure 306. Gainsborough painted the little

lady as she was tying the bow of her cape. There is nothing particularly

rnoving or interesting in

her

action.

She

is

just

dressing, we fancy,

to

go

for a walk. Dut

Gainsborough

knew how to invest the sim_plc movement

with

such grace and charm

that

we find it

as

satisfying

as

Reynolds s

invention

of a girl hugging

her pet.

Gainsborough was much less

interested in

invention than

Reynolds.

He

was

born

in rural Suffolk,

had a natural gift for painting, and never found it necessary

to

go

to

Italy

to

study the great masters. In con1parison with Reynolds and all his

theories

about the

importance

of

tradition, Gainsborough was almost a

self-tnade man. There

is

son1ething in the relationship of the two which

recalls

the

contrast between

the

learned Annibale Carracci, page 390

who wanted

to

revive the manner of Raphael,

and

the revolutionary

Caravaggio, page 392

who

wanted to acknowledge no teacher

except

nature. Reynolds, at any rate, saw

Gainsborough

somewhat in this light,

as a genius who refused

to

copy the masters, and, rnuch as he admired his

rival s skill, he felt bound to warn his students against his principles. Today,

after the passage of aln1ost two centuries, the two masters

do

not seen1 to

us so

very

dHferent. We realize

perhaps n1orc clearly

than they

did,

how

much

they

both owed

to

the t t ~ d i t i o n ofVan Dyck,

and to

the fashion of

their

titne. But,

if

we

return to

the

portrait of

Miss Haverfield with this

contrast in mind, we understand the particular qualities which dis6ngnish

Gainsborough

s

fi-esh and

unsophisticated

approach

from Reynolds s

more

laboured style. Gainsborough, we now sec, had no intention of

being highbrow ; he wanted to

paint straightforward unconventional

portraits in

which he could

display his brilliant

brushwork and

his sure

eye. And

so

he succeeds best where Reynolds disappo inted us. His

rendering

of

the fi·esh

cornplexion of

the child

and the shining

material

of the cape, his treatment of the frills

and

ribbons of the hat,

all

this

shows his consumnute skill in rendering

the texture

and surfaces

of

visible objects. The rapid

and

impatient strokes of the brush almost

remind

us

of

the work

of

Frans Hals,

page 417,.fiJ Jire 270. Dut Gainsborough

was a less robust artist. T here are, in n1any

of

his portraits, a delicacy

of


13/17

469 ENGLAND \ il FRANC:E

I H T N T

C:ENTURY

J0

6

Thoma s

Gainsboro ugh

M

ss

1 nwr/ield

t.17S0

il

on

c a n v : ~ i ,

11 7 6 x

101 9

C

lll

X

in

\V;albc( Collt Clion.

london

shades and a refinement of touch which rather recall the visions of

Watteau 454 jigure 8

Doth Reynolds and Gainsbo r

ou

gh we re

ra

ther unhappy to be

smothered with commissions for port raits when t hey wanted to pa

in

t

ot

her things. Bu t w hile Reynolds longed for t

im

e and

le is

ure to pa

int

ambitious mythological scenes or episodes from ancient history

Ga

in

sb

oro

ugh

wan

ted to paint the very

e c t ~

w hich his rival despised.

He wanted to paint landscapes. Fo r unlike Reynolds who was a man

about

t

ow

n Gainsborough loved

th

e qui

et co

un tryside a

nd amo

ng

th

e

few entertainmen ts he really enjoyed was chambe r mu sic. U

nf

or tunately


14/17

47 1GE O f REASON

Gainsborough could n

ot

find many buyers for his landscapes, and so a

large nu

mb

er of his pictures remained

mere

sketches don e for his ow n

enjoyment,figure307. In these he arranged the trees and hills of the English

countr

ys

ide into pictur

esque

scen

es

w

hi

ch remind us that this

wa

s the age

of the landscape

ga

rdener. For Gainsborough s sketch es arc no views

dra

wn

direct fi:om nature. They are landscape compositions , designed to

evoke and reflect a mood.

In the eig

ht

een th centur

y,

Eng

lish institutions and English taste became

the

adm

ired models

fo

r a

ll

people

in Europe

who longed for the rule

of

reason. For in England art had not been used to

enhan

ce the power and

glory of

god

-like rulers. T he public for which H ogarth catered, even the

people who posed for R

eynold

s s and G

ain

s

borou

g

h

s

portr

aits,

were

ordinary mor tals. We m

m b e

that in France,

too,

the heavy Baroque

grandeur o

fV

ersa illes had gone

out

of ashion

in

the early eig

ht

ee

nt

h

century in favour of the more delicate and intimate effects of Wattcau

s

Rococo ,

p

a,ee

454 jgure 298 .

Now this whole aristocratic dream-world

bebra

n to recede. Painters began to look at the li fe of he

ord

inary m en

and women of their time, to draw movi

ng

or amusing episodes which

could be spun out in to a story.

Th

e greates t of these was j ean-Baptistc

Simeon

C hardin (I699- 177


15/17

71 ENGLAN D AND

FRA

NC

E I

T I I

C:EN I U l t \


16/17

472 Ti l

AGE l j._ASON

restrained and, by conlparison ::Vith the scintillating paintings ofWatteau,

his works

may

seen1

to lack

brilliance. But

if

we study thern

in the

original,

we

soon

discover in then1

an unobtrusive

nnstery in the subtle

gradation

of tones and the seemingly artless

arrangement

of the scene

that

makes him

one of

the

most

lovable painters

of

the eighteenth century.

In France,

s

in England, the new interest in ordinary human beings

rather than

the trappings

ofpower benefited the

art

of

portraiture. Perhaps

the greatest

of

the French portraitists was not a

painter

but a sculptor, Jean

Antoine Houdon

(1741-1828).

In

his

wonderful

portrai t busts,

Houdon

carried on the tradition which had

been

started by

Dernini

more than a

hundred

years earlier, page

4J8 fiRurc

284. Figure 309 shows Houdon s bust

ofVo1tairc and allows us to see in the face

of

this great chan1pion

of

reason, the

biting

wit, the penetrating intelligence, and also the deep

compassion

of

a great

mind.

309

Jean-Antoine

Houdon

Voltaire

1781

Marble, height so.S ern,

1 0

in; Victoria ,mJ Albert

Muleum,

J.ondon


17/17

I

NG

LAN D A N D I UJNC

I:.

. I I G II TE [NTH I U HY

O

ernst gombrich - the age of reason (ch. 23)

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