The Art Of Rubens

( Originally Published 1902 )

EUGENE FROMENTIN 'MAÎTRES D'AUTREFOIS'

RUBENS must never be compared to the Italians, under penalty of misunderstanding him and judging him falsely. If we mean by " style " the ideal of the pure and beautiful transcribed in formulas, he has no style. If by "grandeur," " loftiness," penetration " we mean the meditative and intuitive force of a great thinker, he has neither grandeur nor thought. If taste be requisite, he has no taste. If one delights in a restrained, concentrated, condensed art, like that of Leonardo da Vinci, for example, Rubens' art can only irritate by its habitual exaggerations. If all feminine types should bear some relation to the Dresden Madonna, or to the Mona Lisa, or to those of Bellini, Perugino, and Luini, — those delicate definers of grace and beauty in woman, — no indulgence can be felt for the abundant beauty and plump charms of Helena Fourment. Finally, if there be demanded from Rubens the conciseness, the rigid bearing, the peaceable gravity that painting wore when he began, very little would be left to him, except as a gesticulator, a man full of force, a sort of imposing athlete, with little cultivation.

On the other hand, he has taken a possession of the earth that no other man has. His painted work comprises about fifteen hundred productions, the most immense output that ever issued from one brain. To approach him we must add together the lives of several of the men most fertile in productiveness ; and if the importance, the dimensions, and the complicated character of his works be considered independently of their number, the spectacle is astounding, and gives the most lofty, even, we might say, the most religious, idea of human faculties.

The spectacular is his domain. His eye is the most marvellous prism of light and color that has ever been vouchsafed us. Passions, attitudes of the body, expressions of countenance, — all mankind in the multifarious incidents of the great drama of life, — passed through his brain, took from it stronger features, more robust forms, became amplified, but not purified, and transfigured into some unknown heroic mould. He stamps all with the directness of his character, the warmth of his blood, and the magnificence of his vision. There is a glory, a trumpet-call, in his grossest works. His was the special gift of eloquence. His language, to define it accurately, is what in literature is called oratorical. When he improvises he is not at his best; when he restrains his speech it is magnificent. It is prompt, sudden, abundant, and warm ; in all circumstances it is eminently persuasive. He strikes, astonishes, repels ; he irritates, but almost always convinces ; and when there is opportunity he can touch as no one else can do. Certain pictures of his are revolting, but there are others that bring tears to the eyes. His are the weaknesses and digressions, but also the magnetic fire, of a great orator. He some-times perorates and declaims, he beats the air with his huge arms ; but there are words which he can speak as no other man can.

All this leads to a still more complete definition, and we may apply a word to his art that is almost comprehensive. Rubens' art is lyric; he is the most lyrical of all painters. His imaginative promptness, the intensity of his style, his sonorous and progressive rhythm, — call all this lyric art and you will not be far from the truth. Here are much blood and physical vigor, but a winged spirit ; a man who fears not the horrible, but has a tender and truly serene soul ; here are hideousness and brutality, a total absence of taste in form, combined with an ardor which transforms ugliness into force, bloody brutality into terror. There are many who cannot follow him in his flights, who suspect the imagination which elevates him, but see only what attaches him to the common, to the too real,—the thick muscles, the redundant or careless design, the heavy types, the flesh, and the blood just under the skin, — the world of the material. What they fail to perceive is that he has formulas, a style, an ideal, and that these superior formulas, this style, this ideal, are in his palette. He was very earthly, more earthly than any of the masters whose equal he is, but the pure painter came to the aid of the material elements in him and set them free. His aim is the clear evidence of objects ; his element is light ; his means of exaltation is his palette.

And yet when I say that it was the painter in him that lifted him out of the material, that gives the exaltation, the lyric quality to his art, when I say that his ideal was in his palette and his handiwork, what do I mean ? Never was handiwork easier to seize or with fewer tricks and reticences. There never was a painter so little mysterious, either when thinking, composing, coloring, or executing. Not one of his tones is rare in itself.

Brown undertones, with two or three active colors to make one believe in the wealth of a vast canvas ; broken grays obtained by dull mixture ; all the intermediary grays between deep black and pure white, — consequently very little coloring-matter and the greatest brilliancy of color, great luxury obtained with small expense, light without excessive brightness, extreme sonorousness from a small number of instruments, a keyboard in which nearly three-fourths of the keys are neglected, but which the painter runs over, skipping many notes and touching it when necessary at the two ends ; — such, in the mixed language of music and painting, is the habit of this great practitioner. He who has seen one of his pictures knows them all. His colors are very simple, and only appear so complicated on account of the results achieved by the painter, and the part he makes them play. Nothing can be more limited than the number of primary tints, nor more foreseen than the manner in which they are op-posed; nothing is more simple than the habit by virtue of which he shades them, and yet nothing more unexpected than the result which is produced. The means are simple, the method elementary, but employed by a hand magnificently agile, adroit, sensitive, and composed.

Whence, then, comes his fire ? At what moment is he carried away ? Is it when he executes some extravagant gesture, a moving object, an eye that gleams, a mouth that shouts, tangled hair, a bristling beard, a hand that grasps ? Is it when he imbues many yards of canvas with a glowing tint, when he makes his red ripple in waves, so that everything round this red glows with its reflection ? Is it when he passes from one strong color to another, circulating through neutral tones as if this rebellious and sticky paint were the most manageable of materials ? Did this painting, which puts the beholder into a fever, burn the hands whence it issued, fluid, easy, natural, healthy, and ever virgin, no matter at what moment you surprise it ? Where, in a word, is the effort in this art, which might be called forced, and which is yet but the intimate expression of a mind which never was forced ?

Rubens' so-called "impetuosity" is a way of feeling, rather than a disorderly way of painting. The brush is as calm as the soul is hot and ready to rush forward. Nothing is more deceptive than this apparent fever, re-strained by profound calculation, expressed by a mechanism practised in every exercise. There is ever the same method, the same coolness, the same calculation. A calm and intelligent premeditation directs his most startling and moving effects.

Let me make my meaning clearer by a comparison. Did you ever close your eyes during the execution of a brilliant piece of orchestral music ? Sound gushes everywhere ; it seems to leap from one instrument to the other; and as it is very tumultuous, in spite of the perfect harmony, it might well be believed that everything was agitated, that the hands of the players trembled, that the same musical frenzy had seized the instruments and those who held them. The performers so move the audience that it seems impossible that they should be sitting calmly before their music-rests. One is surprised to see them peaceable, self-contained, attentive to the movement of the conductor's wand, which leads, sustains, dictates to each what he should do, and which is itself only the agent of a mind fully awake and of great knowledge. Thus Rubens wields, during the execution of his works, the ebony baton which commands, dictates, and conducts. His is the imperturbable will, the master faculty, which directs most obedient instruments,— the technical faculties.—ADAPTED FROM THE FRENCH.

H. TAINE 'PHILOSOPHIE DE L'ART DANS LES PAYS-BAS'

RUBENS is to Titian what Titian was to Raphael and Raphael to Phidias. Never did artistic sympathy clasp nature in such a wide em-brace. Ancient boundaries seem removed to give his genius infinite scope. He has no respect for historic proprieties ; he groups together real and allegorical figures, — cardinals with a naked Mercury. He has no deference for the moral order; he fills the ideal heaven of mythology and of the gospel with coarse characters. He has no dread of exciting physical sensibility, and pushes the horrible to extremes, through all the tortures of the flesh and all the contortions of howling agony. In his art all the animal instincts of human nature appear on the stage ; those which convention had excluded as gross he reproduces as true, and mingles them with the other human emotions as they are intermingled in life. The whole of human nature is in his grasp, save its loftiest heights. Hence it is that his creativeness is the vastest that we have seen, comprehending as it does all types, and the innumerable diversities stamped on humanity by the play of natural forces.

For the same reason, in the representation of the body he comprehended more profoundly than any one else the essential characteristics of organic life ; and herein surpasses the Venetians, as they surpass the Florentines. No one has shown so vividly the decay and bloom of life—now the dull and flabby corpse, now the freshness of living flesh, the blooming athlete, the mellow suppleness of a yielding torso in the form of a well-fed adolescent, the soft rosy cheeks and placid candor of a girl whose blood was never quickened or eyes bedimmed by thought, troops of dimpled cherubs and merry cupids, the delicacy, the exquisite melting rosiness of infantile skin.

In like manner in the representation of action he appreciated more keenly than any other painter the essential feature of animal and moral life ; that is to say, the instantaneous movement which it is the aim of the plastic arts to seize. In this again he surpasses the Venetians as they surpass the Florentines. No other painter has endowed figures with such spirit, with such impulsive gestures, with an impetuosity so abandoned and furious, — such a universal commotion and tempest of swollen and writhing muscles. His personages speak, their repose itself is suspended on the verge of action; not only the face, but the entire attitude conspires to manifest the rushing stream of their thought, feeling, and complete being ; we hear the inward utterance of their emotions. He was therefore capable of amplifying the forces he found around and within him, the forces that underlie and manifest the overflow and triumph of existence ; on the one hand, gigantic joints, herculean shapes and shoulders, red and colossal muscles, truculent and bearded heads, overnourished bodies teeming with succulence, the luxuriant display of white and rosy flesh; on the other, the rude instincts which impel human nature to seek food, drink, strife, and pleasure, the savage fury of the combatant, the enormity of the big-bellied Silenus, the sensual joviality of the Faun, the boldness, the energy, the broad joyousness of the Flemish type.

He heightens these effects again by their composition and the accessories with which he surrounds them, — the magnificence of lustrous silks, embroidered simars, golden brocades, groups of naked figures, modern costumes and antique draperies, an inexhaustible accumulation of arms, standards, colonnades, Venetian stairways, temples, canopies, ships, animals, and ever novel and imposing scenery, as if, outside of ordinary nature, he possessed the key of a thousand times richer nature, whereon his magician's hand might draw forever. Yet the freedom of his imagination never leads to confusion ; but on the contrary, he creates with a jet so vigorous and prodigal that his most complicated productions seem like the irresistible outflow of a surfeited brain. Like the Indian deity, he relieves his fecundity by creating worlds ; and from the matchless folds and hues of his tossed simars to the snowy whites of his flesh, or the pale silkiness of his blond tresses, there is not a tone in any of his canvases which does not appear to have been placed there purposely to afford him delight.— FROM THE FRENCH.

GUSTAV F. WAAGEN 'PETER PAUL RUBENS, HIS LIFE AND GENIUS'

A THOROUGH Fleming in temperament and character, Rubens led his countrymen back to the very point whence sprang their original excellence, the lively perception of natural forms, and the development of the faculty of color. But the spirit of the times in which he lived, and the peculiar temper of his own mind, naturally prevented these characteristic qualities from being exhibited as they would have been in the age of the Van Eycks. It had been the aim of the latter, as far as their means allowed, in the coloring as well as in the execution of their works, so to imitate nature that their pictures, whether looked at closely or contemplated from a distance, should produce, as nearly as possible, the same effect. The principal thing with Rubens, on the contrary, was the general effect ; and though he painted the details with the greatest truth, he contented himself with making them subordinate to the whole, so as to resemble nature at a certain distance. The means which were at his command in his own time for the accomplishment of his purpose, — a better knowledge of the laws of perspective and of chiaroscuro, that breadth of style first introduced by Titian and his school, and then so admirably practised by Michelangelo da Caravaggio and the Carracci, —these he had mastered with the greatest energy during his long residence in Italy, and the more successfully as they perfectly accorded with the nature of his own genius. But instead of that genuine religious enthusiasm, long since vanished, which had formerly inspired the Van Eycks, so as even to spread a certain solemnity over their scenes of passion, the mind of Rubens was so imbued with the love for dramatic representation that he imparted life and movement even to subjects which properly demanded a certain calmness and repose in the treatment.

A most glowing and creative fancy, inexhaustible in the conception of new forms full of life and vigor, would naturally find even the easiest method of painting tedious, and thus feel the necessity of acquiring some means of transferring its creations to the canvas in the shortest time possible. His rare technical skill and his extraordinary faculty of color aided Rubens admirably in accomplishing this object. He rapidly attained the art of placing, with a master hand, the right tones in the right places, without trying all kinds of experiments with the colors on the pictures themselves; and after he had with ease blended them together, he knew how to give to the whole picture the last finish by a few master touches in those parts which he had left unpainted for the purpose. This mode of treatment, so characteristic of the turn of Rubens' mind, is the reason why his pictures bear the stamp of an original lively burst of fancy more than those of any other painter. Hence Rubens, beyond any artist of modern times, may be styled a " sketcher," in the highest and best sense of the word.

As a colorist, he might be called the painter of light, as Rembrandt is the painter of darkness. With Rubens everything is imbued with the pure element of broad light ; the different colors are brought close together in luxuriant contrast, but in their harmonious relation to each other they celebrate a common triumph. No other painter has ever known how to produce such a full and satisfactory tone of light, such a deep chiaroscuro united with such general brilliancy. Few can be compared to him in the admirable gradations in the keeping of the whole, and in the manner in which each variety of surface is distinctly pronounced ; the coloring of his flesh in particular has such a vivid transparency of tone, such a glow of life, that it is easy to understand how Guido Reni should have been struck with wonder upon beholding a picture of Rubens for the first time, and exclaim, " Does this painter mix blood with his colors ? "

The creative fancy of Rubens was capable of conceiving every possible variety of subject at all fitted for the pencil, and the sphere was indeed ample from which his remarkable cultivation of mind enabled him to select. Thus he painted subjects from the Bible, from the legends of saints, from ancient and modern history, and from classical mythology ; portraits and conversation pieces, battle and hunting pieces, grotesques and landscapes. He made every subject conform to his own nature, and he accordingly treated all such as were foreign to it in a most capricious manner. Therefore it is that while all his works bear the true stamp of genius, and captivate us by the originality and freshness of thought exhibited in them, as well as by the masterly keeping, the vigor and glow of the coloring, and the talent displayed in the treatment altogether, yet the gratification we derive from them is ever in proportion to the harmony which existed between the subject and his own natural disposition. . . . But in subjects which really required to be treated in a dramatic style, more particularly in those wherein the expression of power, grandeur, and strongly excited passions were admissible, and where he consequently could give free scope, unshackled, unreproved, to all the inspirations of his genius,—there we recognize Rubens in all his glory. I have no hesitation in pronouncing him the greatest of all modern painters when he had to deal with subjects depending on the momentary expression of powerfully excited passion which can only be firmly seized and developed in the imagination. - FROM THE GERMAN, BY ROBERT R. NOEL.

EUCÉNE VÉRON 'RUBENS, SA VIE ET SES OEUVRES'

THE entire work of Rubens is evidence of the superb calm of his nature. Much as he loves life and movement, admirably as he renders by significant gesture and attitude the emotional and dramatic, through it all the serenity of his genius is unmoved. His painting recalls the impersonal ac-cents of the Homeric songs. This serenity in the midst of the most violent appearances was part of the temperament of the man—truly a wonderful constitution, and one of which I cannot instance another example. Other poets and other artists, even the greatest, have found it necessary to be exalted out of themselves for the time being, to be, as it were, temporarily in-spired to attain certain conceptions and realize such effects; while Rubens, better privileged by nature, found within himself a reserve force sufficient to represent the most terrible and emotional scenes without any such self-exaltation. One might compare him to the giants of the fairy tales, who lift with one finger a burden which would crush an army. But their power was physical; Rubens' power was mental. He was by nature super-normal. His imagination, without becoming heated, without strain, without departing from the habitual serenity of its normal condition, conceived and portrayed scenes of the greatest dramatic effect as easily as scenes of the lightest and most playful sort. The one demanded no more effort from him than the other. This is the quality that distinguishes Rubens from all other artists, namely, the possession of power in a normal and permanent state ; the unexplainable persistence in him of a quality of mind which was not emotion,— for emotion presupposes, by its very definition, a suspension of habitual conditions,-but which produced the same effects as are produced in others by their evanescent emotions. His artistic temperament had all the advantages which the others found in their passion, with the difference that with him passion was constant, and so left him all the calm, all the clearness, of the coldest self-possession.

It follows that Rubens' works were not dependent upon his mood, but flowed from his hand with an almost incredible facility and spontaneity, without groping and without hesitations. He is essentially an improvisator, but he improvised because his imagination was a magnifying-glass which showed him, at first glance, things with all the augmentation needed to render them expressive ; with all the exaggeration, which, without yet taking them out of reality, elevated them by both significance and color into the highest domain of art. Whatever the subject his eye or his thought touched upon he immediately transformed — I say transformed, not idealized ; idealization was not the tendency of his genius —and reclothed with a superior intensity, multiplying the facets by which it should lay hold of the eye, and developing instantly in the subject what might be called the essence of its reality.

This is the principal trait of his extraordinary genius : that his imagination was to the face of the moral and physical world of reality, seen or re-constructed in his memory, a sort of marvellous mirror which had the faculty of reproducing these spectacles, catching them in their most striking and expressive moment of reality, and at the same time spontaneously adding to them the necessary enlargement or augmentation.— FROM THE FRENCH.