The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-04-28
MATERIALS FOR A HISTORY OF
OIL PAINTING. -.

hamented President of the Academy undertook,
nore than twenty years ago, for the cause OF his
art, is completed. It possible that the title of
r NE BOOK may give an incorrect idea of its object
70 hasty reader leading him TO expect work
egl 81 the geographical order like that which in old
days we owe to Vasari, and in our time to
,CayaIeaselle. But what Sir Charles Eastlake has
here modesty named materials" are in truth,
the history of oil-painting as an art from the
earliest period to the days of Reynolds and
Gains6orough. He is not ostens6ly engaged
tional influences which formed their style and
prescribed their subjects, with their ind-
yidual powers of treating them. His aim is
~ throughout to trace the gradual steps
by which o-colors superseded colors of
more perishabe or less effective ma
ture, and were then elaborated into
the magnificent art of which the lords para
mount were Van Eyck and Belini, Titan and
Veronese Correggio and Rubens, Rembrandt
and Velasquez. We might easily lengthen this
about 1t as it stands! Like an enumeration of
famous landscapes, what visions of glow and
glory does 1t call up But we have given it, not
with any wish to dwell upon these alluring
topics, but simply to convey to our readers q
true impression of the Importance and interest
of the subject dealt with in these volumes For,
by virtue OF the unity which always exists not
only between the nature and character of the
artist and his work. but also between the execu-
tive and the mental elements of it, the leading
pictorial qualities of the great oil-panters
involved in the history which processes, its
dominant idea, to record their technical pro-
cesses. This is especially true of the volume
first volume in the rudimentary efforts and old
traditionary methods of the early oil
painters ,n.,,. As the color system Of
we have with it description of his style and
place in the world of art-the force and purity
Of the Van Eycks and of Bellini and his con-
temporares; the glowing tenderness of Peru
gino; the intensity and more than microscopic
refinement of Leonardo da Vinci; the calm range
and equaole senatorial splendor OF Titan; the
mysterious imagination of Rembrandt; the
reggiescity of Correggio. Thus what at first
sight seems rather limited subject turns out
when duly handled, to be one of the highest in
terest to all who have any real care for art. And
it does not appear an exaggerated statement if
we say that Sir Charles has here given us
legacy hardly inferior in value to that which
England owes to his untirng eXertions in the
National Collection.
There is something, it seems to u.s. emnently
characteristic of Englishmen (and eminently
characteristic, it may be added OF the distin-
guished author), in the scheme of the book, as
here set forth. We often hear now, with an
iteration which would be tedious it not
graceful, lively and discursive of the
Englishman's practical helplessness and theo-
retical incapacity when compared with the style
in which people manage things in France or
Germany. And certainly the scheme of this book
does appear small in comparison with the vast
prctensions of such writer NJ Tane, in his
recent essays on the Italian and Flemish schools.
The one starts from oils and resins; the other
from the conformation of the country, the races
who have inhabited it from primeval times, and
the whole course of its subsequent history. Sir
Charles aims at showing the little steps by which
the employment of certain vehicles" led the
artists on to form their style; NJ. Taine processes
to account for the genius and works of
Hemling or Rubens by laws which com
PEELED their appearance, and governed their
hands by an irresistible fatality And NJ. Taines
book leaves one with the impression of clever
writer who has never once had glimpse of his
subject and in whose essay it is the least por-
tOn which bears reference either to what the
painters aimed at or to the merit of their work
art in his history, being truly DliniDa pars
sui; whilst in the other beside the exhaustive
nj he tpphnipnlitipS which nnthOr
undertakes to investigate, all that he has in
eluded in his progress, upon the style and value
of the artists has that peculiar authority which
belongs to the careful judgments of painter
upon his own profession The same contrast
holds good in respect to the style of the two
writers-Taine sparkling, cold, too clever for
confidence, untouched by the soul of his subject
and hence never touching the reader's Eastake
temperate, chaste, keeping always within the
phrase rather than exceeding measure, yet rising
with the occasion to a certain sedate and impress
sive eloquence when he describes those works of
which no one but the artist himself ade-
quately feel the amazing and unapproachable
excellences.
The volume opens with name which, even
after the lapse of six centuries, no one who has
loved and felt with the greatest of the Italian
poets write without a certain emotion. The
chapel in S. Maria Nuova at Florence, founded
by Folco Portinari, father to Dante's Beatrice"
was the place which the taste OF u descendant
and namesake of Folco, some hundred and fifty
years afterwards, converted into what one may
call the first collection of oil-paintings seen in
Italy. Sir Charles traces this innovation to the
s-a commercial connections which the Portinari
family had with Northwestern Europe. Besides
importing Flemish pictures, they appear to have
shown attention to Antonello of Messina, the
painter who still preserves the traditional credit
of introducing the new process into the South.
Italy, probably for nearly two thousand years
Gf the Etruscan tomb-pictures date so far back),
had been satisfied with methods in painting
which generally employed water the diluent
of the coors. And the climate of the sub-Apen-
nine districts was, in truth, just sufficiently free
from dampness and liberal in light to render
''fresco" and ''tempera, in their many varieties
possible. Yet, even there one who now
II visits the country can fail to observe that an
exceptionally favorable building and rarely
found conditions of careful guardianship are
essential to prolong the life of fresco for any
period which serious artist might nationally
desire AS we read that England is Within but
only just within, the ''wheat-growing circle
h so we may say of Italy and her famous
frescoes. One must descend to Sicily. or
Greece, Egypt to find climate genuinely
propitious to that delicate but delightful art
Only here and there GiottOs chapel at Padua
Monasterio Maggiore for Luini, perhaps a
Vatican ceiling for Michael Angelo-nakes one
feel by the contrast of its accidental preserva-
zion, how precarious that method to which
80 much of genius and so much of history was
entrusted Hence Qrrespectively of the peculiar
technical merits possessed by oil color in depth
and fusion of tint truth united with force OF
tone and facility in correction and fnish), there
is no cause for wonder that the Italians although
race singularly conservative by instinct, rapidly
adOpted the novel and more durable method