Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, Shearjashub Spooner [big screen ebook reader .TXT] 📗

lash him to the mast head, and there he remained, absorbed in admiration, and endeavoring to transfer to his sketch-book, a correct picture of the sublime scene with which he was surrounded. His grandson, Horace Vernet, painted an excellent picture of this scene, which was exhibited in the Louvre in 1816, and attracted a great deal of attention. VERNET AT ROME.

Vernet arrived at Rome in 1732, and became the scholar of Bernardino Fergioni, then a celebrated marine painter, but Lanzi says, "he was soon eclipsed by Joseph Vernet, who had taken up his abode at Rome." Entirely unknown in that metropolis of art, always swarming with artists, Vernet lived for several years in the greatest poverty, subsisting by the occasional sale of a drawing or picture at any price he could get. He even painted panels for coach builders, which were subsequently sawed out and sold as works of great value. Fiorillo relates that he painted a superb marine for a suit of coarse clothes, which brought 5000 francs at the sale of M. de Julienne. Finding large pictures less saleable, he painted small ones, which he sold for two sequins a-piece, till a Cardinal, one day gave him four louis d'or for a marine. Yet his ardor and enthusiasm were unabated; on the contrary, he studied with the greatest assiduity, striving to perfect himself in his art, and feeling confident that his talents would ultimately command a just reward.

VERNET'S "ALPHABET OF TONES."

It was the custom of Vernet to rise with the lark, and he often walked forth before dawn and spent the whole day in wandering about the surrounding country, to study the ever changing face of nature. He watched the various hues presented by the horizon at different hours of the day. He soon found that with all his powers of observation and pencil, great and impassioned as they were, he could not keep pace with the rapidly changing and evanescent hues of the morning and evening sky. He began to despair of ever being able to represent on canvass the moving harmony of those pictures which nature required so little time to execute in such perfection, and which so quickly passed away. At length, after long contemplating how he could best succeed in catching and transferring these furtive tints to his canvass, bethought himself of a contrivance which he called his Alphabet of tones, and which is described by Renou in his "Art de Peindre."

The various characters of this alphabet are joined together, and correspond to an equal number of different tints; if Vernet saw the sun rise silvery and fresh, or set in the colors of crimson; or if he saw a storm approaching or disappearing, he opened his table and set down the gradations of the tones he admired, as quickly as he could write ten or twelve letters on a piece of paper. After having thus noted down in short hand, the beauties of the sky and the accidental effects of nature, he returned to his studio, and endeavored to make stationary on canvass the moving picture he had just been contemplating. Effects which had long disappeared were thus recomposed in all their charming harmony to delight the eye of every lover of painting.

VERNET AND THE CONNOISSEUR.

Vernet relates, that he was once employed to paint a landscape, with a cave, and St. Jerome in it; he accordingly painted the landscape, with St. Jerome at the entrance of the cave. When he delivered the picture, the purchaser, who understood nothing of perspective, said, "the landscape and the cave are well made, but St. Jerome is not in the cave." "I understand you, Sir," replied Vernet, "I will alter it." He therefore took the painting, and made the shade darker, so that the saint seemed to sit farther in. The gentleman took the painting; but it again appeared to him that the saint was not in the cave. Vernet then wiped out the figure, and gave it to the gentleman, who seemed perfectly satisfied. Whenever he saw strangers to whom he shewed the picture, he said, "Here you see a picture by Vernet, with St. Jerome in the cave." "But we cannot see the saint," replied the visitors. "Excuse me, gentlemen," answered the possessor, "he is there; for I have seen him standing at the entrance, and afterwards farther back; and am therefore quite sure that he is in it."

VERNET'S WORKS.

Far from confining himself within the narrow limits of one branch of his profession, Vernet determined to take as wide a range as possible. At Rome, he made the acquaintance of Lucatelli, Pannini, and Solimene. Like them, he studied the splendid ruins of the architecture of ancient Rome, and the noble landscapes of its environs, together with every interesting scene and object, especially the celebrated cascades of Tivoli. He paid particular attention to the proportions and attitudes of his figures, which were mostly those of fishermen and lazzaroni, as well as to the picturesque appearance of their costume. Such love of nature and of art, such assiduous study of nature at different hours of the day, of the phenomena of light, and such profound study of the numerous accessories essential to beauty and effect, made an excellent landscape painter of Vernet, though his fame rests chiefly on the unrivalled excellence of his marine subjects. Diderot remarks, that "though he was undoubtedly inferior to Claude Lorraine in producing bold and luminous effects, he was quite equal to that great painter in rendering the effects of vapor, and superior to him in the invention of scenes, in designing figures, and in the variety of his incidents."

At a later period, Diderot compared his favorite painter to the Jupiter of Lucian, who, tired of listening to the lamentable cries of mankind, rose from table and exclaimed: 'Let it hail in Thrace!' and the trees were immediately stripped of their leaves, the heaviest cut to pieces, and the thatch of the houses scattered before the wind: then he said, "Let the plague fall on Asia!" and the doors of the houses were immediately closed, the streets were deserted, and men shunned one another; and again he exclaimed: 'Let a volcano appear here!' and the earth immediately shook, the buildings were thrown down, the animals were terrified, and the inhabitants fled into the surrounding country; and on his crying out: 'Let this place be visited with a death!' the old husbandman died of want at his door. Jupiter calls that governing the world, but he was wrong. Vernet calls it painting pictures, and he is right.

It was with reference to the twenty-five paintings exhibited by Vernet, in 1765, that Diderot penned the foregoing lines, which formed the peroration to an eloquent and lengthy eulogium, such as it rarely falls to a painter to be the subject of. Among other things, the great critic there says: "There is hardly a single one of his compositions which any painter would have taken not less than two years to execute, however well he might have employed his time. What incredible effects of light do we not behold in them! What magnificent skies! what water! what ordonnance! what prodigious variety in the scenes! Here, we see a child borne off on the shoulders of his father, after having been saved from a watery grave; while there, lies a woman dead upon the beach, with her forlorn and widowed husband weeping at her side. The sea roars, the wind bowls, the thunder fills the air with its peals, and the pale and sombre glimmers of the lightning that shoots incessantly through the sky, illuminate and hide the scene in turn. It appears as if you heard the sides of the ship crack, so natural does it look with its broken masts and lacerated sails; the persons on deck are stretching their hands toward heaven, while others have thrown themselves into the sea. The latter are swept by the waves against the neighboring rocks, where their blood mingles with the white foam of the raging billows. Some, too, are floating on the surface of the sea, some are about to sink, and some are endeavoring to reach the shore, against which they will be inevitably dashed to pieces. The same variety of character, action, and expression is observable among the spectators, some of whom are turning aside with a shudder, some are doing their utmost to assist the drowning persons, while others remain motionless and are merely looking on. A few persons have made a fire beneath a rock, and are endeavoring to revive a woman, who is apparently expiring. But now turn your eyes, reader, towards another picture, and you will there see a calm, with all its charms. The waters, which are tranquil, smooth, and cheerful-looking, insensibly lose their transparency as they extend further from the sight, while their surface gradually assumes a lighter tint, as they roll from the shore to the horizon. The ships are motionless, and the sailors and passengers are whiling away the time in various amusements. If it is morning, what light vapors are seen rising all around! and how they have refreshed and vivified every object they have fallen on! If it is evening, what a golden tint do the tops of the mountains assume! How various, too, are the hues of the sky! And how gently do the clouds move along, as they cast the reflection of their different colors into the sea! Go, reader, into the country, lift your eyes up towards the azure vault of heaven, observe well the phenomena you then see there, and you will think that a large piece of the canvass lighted by the sun himself has been cut out and placed upon the easel of the artist: or form your hand into a tube, so that, by looking through it, you will only be able to see a limited space of the canvass painted by nature, and you will at once fancy that you are gazing on one of Vernet's pictures which has been taken from off his easel and placed in the sky. His nights, too, are as touching as his days are fine; while his ports are as fine as his imaginative pieces are piquant. He is equally wonderful, whether he employs his pencil to depict a subject of everyday life, or he abandons himself completely to his imagination; and he is equally incomprehensible, whether he employs the orb of day or the orb of night, natural or artificial lights, to light his pictures with: he is always bold, harmonious, and staid, like those great poets whose judgment balances all things so well, that they are never either exaggerated or cold. His fabrics, edifices, costumes, actions, men and animals are all true. When near, he astonishes you, and, at a distance, he astonishes you still more."

VERNET'S PASSION FOR MUSIC

Vernet, notwithstanding he loved to depict the sea in its most convulsed and terrible aspects, was a perfect gentleman of the French school, whose manners were most amiable and engaging. What he most loved after painting was music. He had formed at Rome, an intimate friendship with Pergolesi, the composer, who afterwards became so celebrated, and they lived almost continually together. Vernet placed a harpsichord in his studio for the express use of his friend, and while the painter, carried away by his imagination, put the waters of the mighty main into commotion, or suspended persons on the towering waves, the grave composer sought, with the tips of his fingers, for the rudiments of his immortal melodies. It was thus that the melancholy stanzas of that chef d'œuvre of sadness and sorrow, the Stabat-Mater, were composed for a little convent in which one of Pergolesi's sisters resided. It seems to one