ART.
ONE of the last services to the cause of good Art, out of many which have been done by the Burlington Fine-Arts Club, has been the bringing together of the collection of about 136 works by the old landscape-painter, Girtin, which was recently on view at the quiet, hospitable gallery in Savile Row, well known to lovers of art.
Whatever may have been the part he played in the development of the British School of Water-colour Painting, there can be little doubt that the turning-point in that development was arrived at during the short artistic career of Thomas Girtin. The great Turner and Ile began life side by side, and their names are generally linked together in the art history of their time. We are by no means sure, however, that this constant association has not placed Girtin in a somewhat false position. We are too much accustomed to think of the two as of a pair of twin reformers in art, one of whom, had he lived long enough for his genius to attain full growth, might even have outshone the other, who is now acknow- ledged as the great luminary of landscape painting. There is really very little ground for this supposition. Drawings exist executed during Girtin's lifetime, which already show a develop- ment of Turner's art in a different direction from that of his fellow-student, and in the zenith of his career his most dis- tinguishing qualities were of a kind of which Girtin's works do not exhibit the germ. It is true that the two worked and sketched together as students, were possessed of kindred tastes, and availed themselves of the same opportunities of study, and that they proved alike that the medium in which they practised was capable of a wider application in the interpretation of nature than to the mere colouring of grey drawings in the manner of their predecessors. Which of the two was the real originator of the natural method of water-colour painting which gives its due value to the local hues- of objects under various influences of light is, however, an inquiry which has but slight bearing on their relative positions as artists. Its interest in the history of this art is of the same kind as that prolific, but not very profitable, sub- ject of discussion, the claims of the Van Eycks to the invention of oil painting. The honour also, such as it is, of introducing a variety of processes of rubbing, scrubbing, washing, pumping, and scratching up paper to produce texture and the like, may readily be conceded to Turner, without admitting that he was in any degree more strongly imbued with the true principles of 1 art than his fellow-student. Girtin, indeed, is said to have en- joyed, during his lifetime, a higher reputation as an artist, and he i seems to have formed a style of his own at a much earlier iperiod of life than Turner. The difference of their natures
is curiously illustrated in the use the two lads made of the works of other artists as means of instruction.
Turner was a pupil of Melton's, and Girtin of Dayes's, but it happened that each studied for practice the works of the other's teacher. Turner's copies from Dayes were so nearly fac-similes that they have deceived collectors, whereas Girtin's copies from Mallon have his own colour and handling engrafted upon the light and shade of the originals. A very interesting set of these. translations, not only from 'Melton, but from Canaletti, Piranesi, Hearne, Marlow, and Morhuid, are in this exhibition, contributed by Mr. Henderson, at whose father's house they were executed. It would seem that the processes of education adopted by these two students of art were the inverse of one another. Girtin acquired a style of his own by sketching from nature, and used it as a language to interpret the works of other artists. Turner, in the early part of his career, studied *he works of other artists in order to obtain a command of their style and manner, that he might apply them afterwards as he found occasion in the varied interpretation of nature. It was not until he had tried his hand against every painter in succession that he formed his own distinctive style. In the wide range of his practice he com- prised, absorbed, and finally assimilated all ; and it is fair to assume that among the original artists from whom he learnt an early lesson was the only friend and companion he ever seems to have cared for,—" honest Tom Girtin."
While, however, we do not perceive in the works of Girtin a versatile capacity which would ever have enabled him to rival the gigantic achievements of Turner, we are disposed to think that in speculating upon what he might have been, one is apt to forget what he really was, and to ignore his just claims as the founder of a school of painters, in whose practice the art he had taught branched off into various developments, into all or any of which he might himself have carried it, had he lived when they did. Probably the artist to whom, of all others, the English school of landscape in the next generation are most indebted for precept and example was John Varley, who all his life owned the obliga- tions he was under to Girtin. A well-selected set of Varley's earlier drawings would form a valuable and appropriate sequel to the Girtin exhibition. But Varley was a prolific painter, and in his later years repeated himself, and became mannered. This was not, however, until long after he bad handed down the traditions of his and Girtin's art to such pupils as David Cox, William Hunt, and Copley Fielding. In the age which succeeded Girtin's, the age of Constable, Dewint, and Cox, our leading landscape painters became more rapid and sketchy ; but although they cultivated the blottesque, they did not lose sight of the great principles of composition. Times have changed now, and the art has taken a new turn. Careful detail and laborious finish are once more sought after, but in efforts to be pretty and to imitate minutely, the philosophic element is, we fear, extinguished past hope of revival, at least in our day. English landscape art has, indeed, so changed its character since 1802, which ended the 27 years of Girtin's short life, that he would find it as difficult to recognise his off-springs as it seems to be for modern painters to comprehend the principles by which he was guided.
In the drawings now shown us, there is ample evidence of the masterly decision of Girtin's pencil, his uncompromising care and truthfulness, his exactness of eye, his unerring taste in form and colour. We see-but little of the manual labour he is said to have employed, unless it be in two highly-finished interiors of evidently the same building, though called respectively "Winchester Cathedral" (98) and "St. Albans Abbey" (104), two drawings which, more than any, provoke comparisons with Turner. What is, however, of all things in Girtin's drawings, the most worthy of observation by art students is the careful distribution of parts, and the artistic reliefs and contrasts upon which the unity of their impression always depends. There are valuable lessons to be learnt in observing the artist's variations of treatment of the same subject. We see him lingering about the picturesque old Ouse Bridge at York (now no more), painting it at all hours of the day, at one time in light and at another in shade. We see him comparing the effects on Bolton Abbey of a light-and-dark treatment in two equally impressive, but quite different pictures (8 and 16), taken from the same spot. And we pass from the large simplicity of his "Durham Cathedral" (30), rising high above the sunlit arches of the town bridge, to the same scene (38) at a later hour, when the bridge is darkened, and the church towers give out the broad glow of evening. He rises to high poetic feeling in the repose of twilight about " Guisborough "(22) and " Knaresborough " (134), andthe still, solemn effect of " Kirkstall" (91) against a broad curtain of cloud unveiling a gleam of light below. How tender is the glow that melts the hill-top over "Bala Lake" (35), a drawing in which we seem to trace the influence of Cozens! How grandly the tall towers of Lincoln (9) rise before a rolling rain- cloud over their broad base of sombre foliage ! And with what strength of hand those trees are drawn ! In not one line or form or wash of colour in all these drawings can we trace the slightest tendency to exaggeration. There is nothing ideal about Girtin's work. It is all plain, sober reality. His view of Richmond is no more than a simple, truthful type of a solid old Yorkshire town. How real it looks ! And in the small, neat architectural views of which there is here a whole series (50 to 54, &c.), painted more in the old manner, with blue shadows and conventional tinting, we can pin our faith on every stone.
Girtin seems to have felt that every scene has its own natural aspects and accompaniments, which furnish the appointed means of expressing its essential character. No Landscape-painter was ever happier in his introduction of figures. Turner was pecu- liarly rich in figure-incidents, and they were always appropriate to the scene; but Girtin's are incomparably better drawn, and they are always unobtrusive. There is a little group of Devonshire farmers, some on horseback, chatting in a corner of the Cathedral Close at Exeter (54), which might easily escape observation, but they are drawn with a precision and force of character worthy of George Cruikshank. See, too, the natural way in which he has placed a cart fording the stream in the village street of Kirkstall (68), com- posing as it does with the stray villagers so as to knit together the two sides of the picture. But the subjects in which he made the most effective use of living incidents are a wonderful series of views in Paris, twenty of which were etched by him just before his death, and published by his brother John in the following year. The quays are alive with people passing to and fro, for the most part mere animated dots that seem to move like restless ants. It is astonishing how they at the same time aid the per- spective, and place us at once in the heart of a great city amidst, the busy hum of men.
Various, however, as the drawings are which we have men- tioned, it will be observed that Girtin's range of subjects are almost limited to those in which the attention has to be confined to comparatively near objects, such as buildings. When he attempts mountain scenery, in his view of the Snowdon range (4), we miss altogether its open character and the mystery of distant hills. his choice of skies is necessarily limited to the requirements of his class of subjects. The clouds are of simple and decided forms, contrasting with the lines of the buildings, and rising in masses which compose with the foreground objects and prevent the mind from straying too much beyond them. But when an object of interest is remote from the eye, as the house and castle respec- tively in the two fine views of Harewood (94,106), the clouds lead on to the distance and connect themselves with it by a repetition of horizontal lines. Many instances occur of uncon- ventional methods of treatment, which prove his originality ; as in the bird's-eye view from the Wynd Cliff, near Chepstow (77), where he throws a strong light into the distance, support- ing it by a great white cloud, and thence brings down the eye to the long line of the castle on the river-bank ; in the "Stepping- Stones, Bolton Abbey " (37), with its broad, straight-edged, hill- shadow ; in "Battersea Reach" (102), with a white house telling out in the shade ; the "Rainbow on the Exe " (108), of which No. 96 is a palpable copy; in "Harewood" (101), with its -bridge treated as a solid mass; and last, not least, in the "Weird Windmill" (100), where he cleverly varies the spaces between -the cross of sails by carrying the ends of two out of the picture, dipping a third behind the house, and letting the fourth just touch the inner margin of the frame. His delicate senie of colour shows itself in the "Landscape, with a Wooden Bridge" (86), painted in his last year ; in "Dunrobin Castle" (24), with its fresh gamboge greens ; in the sketch of " Knaresborough Castle" (65) ; and in "Langwern Church" (81), a study in varied grey. From several drawings (45, 67, 68, 90),the blue has unfortunately -taken its departure, but one (73) which has so suffered still main- tains a brave mastery over a copy (103) made before the colour had flown.
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