The truth
is that he passed a large part of his life in Italy and that his
landscape is Italianate. But more conspicuously still, it is
ideal--ideal in the sense intended by Goethe in saying, "There are no
landscapes in nature like those of Claude." There are not, indeed.
Nature has been transmuted by Claude's alchemy with lovelier results
than any other painter--save always Corot, shall I say?--has ever
achieved. Witness the pastorals at Madrid, in the Doria Gallery at Rome,
the "Dido and AEneas" at Dresden, the sweet and serene superiority of the
National Gallery canvases over the struggling competition manifest in
the Turners juxtaposed to them through the unlucky ambition of the great
English painter. Mr. Ruskin says that Claude could paint a small wave
very well, and acknowledges that he effected a revolution in art, which
revolution "consisted mainly in setting the sun in heavens." "Mainly" is
delightful, but Claude's excellence consists in his ability to paint
visions of loveliness, pictures of pure beauty, not in his skill in
observing the drawing of wavelets or his happy thought of painting
sunlight.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29