E. V. Lucas

“ No lamb can ever have so entertained and exhilarated so many grown-up people. The children run and shout, Billy lowers his head and leaps and dances, the people rush to the doors to enjoy the fun. When there are no children he chases the hens or explores the back-gardens. Billy is fed with milk in an old oil can and at this formidable vessel he plunges several times a day, as though he had never eaten before, although he has been picking up trifles since dawn; and even when filled he rarely allows a stranger to pass without groping at his knees in an effort to derive sustenance from them. ”

“ Here again perfection is the only word. And more than perfection, for perfection is cold. This picture is warm. Its serenity is absolute; its charm is complete. You stand before it satisfied—except for that heightened emotion, that choking feeling and smarting eyes, which perfection compels. The picture is still the last word in the painting of a town. Not all the efforts of artists since have improved upon it; not one has done anything so beautiful. It is indeed because he painted these two pictures that I have for Jan Vermeer of Delft such a feeling of gratitude and enthusiasm. ”

“ Vermeer was not like that. But when it comes to perfection in the use of paint, when it comes to the perfect painter—why, here he is. His contemporary Rembrandt of the Rhine is a giant beside him; but ruggedness was part of his strength. His contemporary, Frans Hals of Haarlem, could dip his brush in red and transform the pigment into pulsating blood with one flirt of his wrist, and yet think of his splendid carelessnesses elsewhere. ”

“ The sun was golden through cracks in the heavy clouds, and the deer’s soft dapplings shone in its light, while when they moved in any number they twinkled, glittered, almost smouldered.
Now and then an old stag, with antlers so broad and branching that they seemed not his at all, but a borrowed head-dress assumed almost as if for a charade, would pass with dignity and extreme deliberation from one group to another; now and then a fawn would trot up to its mother on legs of such slender delicacy that their serviceableness for anything but the most exquisite decoration seemed impossible ”

“ I asked an artist, as we stood before it on the day before the sale, “why is it so good?” “Partly,” he said, “because he never wanted to show how cleverly he could paint. Everything has its true value. It is so simple and so sincere.” But this, of course, is not all. There is also the curious and exquisite alchemy of the painter’s mind; and how much of the painter is in this particular masterpiece may be gathered from the circumstance that (as I happen to know) it does not represent any real Dutch town at all but was an invention of his own. ”

“ The picture may not have such radiance as the “Pearl Necklace” at Berlin, or such charm as the “Woman Reading a Letter” at the Ryks, or such sheer beauty as the Mauritshuis “Girl’s Head,” but it is brilliant and satisfying. It does not give me such pleasure as certain others, to be named later, but it is in some ways perhaps finer. Vermeer is seated at his easel with his back to the world—a largish man with long hair under a black velvet cap, and the careful costume of a man who can pay for his bread. Nor does the studio suggest poverty. ”

“ There is an old picture-shop in the West-Central district of London, notable for the grime of its canvases, in the window of which there is to be seen at this moment—unless a confiding purchaser has just borne it off—a girl’s head and bust by some very indifferent Dutch hand, under which is printed on the frame the startling and courageous legend, “The Coral Necklace. By Jan Vermeer, of Delft.” ”

“ No painter paints only one religious subject. Where are the others? No painter paints only one portrait pure and simple as distinguished from portrait and genre. M. Vanzype, it is true, claims to have found another; but that would make only two. How indeed would he be allowed to paint no others, when he was Vermeer of Delft and lived in an age of Dutch prosperity and Dutch interest in art? ”

“ Mauve saw sheep also as a part of the universe, but rather as a part of Nature than of life. Nor had Mauve Millet’s wistful depths. But there is a flock of sheep by Mauve, passing over the Laren dunes, that reaches, perhaps, the highest mark of true and beautiful animal-painting. Among the Old Masters I recall with most pleasure the sheep of the Bassano family, father and sons. In the gallery at Vienna they have a room to themselves, and a more attractive collection of warm stables and mangers I never saw. ”

“ He has never been to London, but knows Brighton railway station. He cannot read or write.
The older I grow the more respect I have for the wise people who cannot read or write. The shepherd cannot read or write, yet conversation with him is as natural as if he knew all the jargons. I never find myself (who have both read and written more than is good for any one) hunting for words within his vocabulary. He has a sly, glancing humour that would make the fortune of an author, and observing eyes that would make the fortune of two. He misses nothing ”

“ Think of what has been happening in the world during the years since this sweet face was set upon canvas—the evolutions and tragedies, the lives lived and ended, the whole passionate fretted progress of the nations! “Monna Lisa” has smiled a century and more longer, and she has been looked upon every day for centuries: this child, not a whit less wonderful as a conquest of man over pigment, smiled unseen; for when she was bought at a Hague auction a few years ago by Herr Des Tombes for two florins thirty cents she was covered with grime. ”

“ He is an exotic, the most fastidiously select painter of our day, beyond Whistler even. Matthew Maris is alone: a reserved, half-mystical exile, who has always painted as little rather than as much as possible, and has never taken his brush in hand but to produce a masterpiece unique and haunting. ”

“ For Vermeer there, one must, as in Vienna, visit the home of a nobleman—the Duke of Arenberg—and here again one falls into the hands of a discreet and hospitable butler. The d’Arenberg mansion is in the Rue de la Régence, just under the crest of the fashionable hill. It is open to the picture lover,30 like that of Count Czernin, only on certain days. The gallery is small and chiefly Dutch, with a few good pictures in it. The Vermeer is isolated on an easel—the most unmistakable perhaps of all, although so cruelly treated by time, for it is a mass of cracks. ”

“ Franz Hals’ planes of black have never been equalled, but Vermeer’s planes of white seem to me quite as unapproachable. The whole picture has radiance and light and delicacy: painters20 gasp before it. It has more too: it is steeped in a kind of white magic as the “View of Delft” is steeped in the very radiance of the evening sun. Berlin is to me a rude and materialistic city with officials who have made inattention a fine art, and food that sends one to the “Continental Bradshaw” for trains to Paris; but this picture is leaven enough. It lifts Berlin above serious criticism. ”

“ The man who confidently had the legend printed on the frame must indeed have been a simpleton beyond appraisement—the very briniest salt of the soil. For consider: the copyists, the forgers, may do credible things with Corot, even with Raphael. Every day they are writing David Cox’s signature on old water-colours; false ascriptions are the life-blood of too many firms. That is true. But Vermeer—there is only one Vermeer! ”

“ Writing in another26 place some years ago I ventured to call the Mauritshuis picture of a girl’s head one of the most beautiful things in Holland. I retract that statement now, and instead say quite calmly that it is the most beautiful thing in Holland. And to me it is in many ways not only the most beautiful thing in Holland, but the most satisfying and exquisite product of brush and colour that I have anywhere seen. The painting of the lower lip is as much a miracle to me as the flower of the cow-parsley or the wing of a Small Heath. ”

“ Alas, the printer would have none of this sentiment—hence ‘William Allen Richardson.’”
I cannot say that this narrative satisfied me; but there was nothing in it to make one violently sceptical. Why should not William and Ellen have lived this idyllic rose-growing life? Why should not their names have been thus intertwined for ever, even if a little ungallantly? I had seen barges on the Thames called “William and Ellen,” I was sure; why not roses? I therefore went about saying that I now knew the whole history of William Allen Richardson, and the story was not doubted. ”

“ Yet the very word deer-park gives me a quickening of the pulse, and, I hope, always will. I came away wondering what Jamrach or Cross would want for a pair; but I have lost the wish for them. They should be kept more extraordinary than that. They must remain an event. I am even sorry for villagers who live near deer-parks; while having so much, they miss so much.
The other creature from romance that I group with the deer as making a red-letter day for a child, and indeed for some of us who are older, is the peacock. ”

“ A pastor in his native land, he sailed for England alone in May, 1782, bent upon seeing London and, for some unexplained reason, the Peak of Derbyshire. He knew the language perfectly, from books; and he brought to his adventure an open and tolerant mind, courage, determination and humour. As it turned out, he found himself in need of all these qualities. Indeed, no good traveller can be without any of them. ”

“ This new Vermeer is not absolutely his best; it is not so great and simple and strong as “The Milkmaid,” at the Ryks; it is not so radiant as “The Pearl Necklace,” at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin; it is not so exquisite and miraculous a counterfeit of life as the “Girl’s35 Head,” at the Mauritshuis; nor so enchanting and epoch-making as the “View of Delft,” in the same gallery. ”

“ Six William Marises1 follow, and then we come to another Dutch painter whose work is every year more and more desired of collectors—Anton Mauve, the pastoral poet of Holland, who did for its cows and sheep and blue-coated peasants what Israels has done for its fisher-folk and James Maris for its skies. The place that Mauve’s sincere and modest art has won in the eyes of the best connoisseurs is a refreshing proof that honesty in painting is ultimately the best policy, although the honest artist may have every opportunity of starving before the tide turns his way. ”

“ Annie has some of Delia’s charm; but oh, how much more had Delia! Annie also spreads her arms for an embrace and is curious about clothes; but Delia—no, there will never be another Delia.
It was while wandering at random regretting Delia that I came upon Gypsy.
Now, Gypsy also is not Delia; but Gypsy’s companionableness and merriment and candour go far to soften the loss. A Zoo with both Delia and Gypsy in it would be almost too fortunate—shall I put it like that? I found her in the Small Cats’ House, that abode of bright eyes and stealthy quicknesses, and, surely, she is out of place. ”

“ The mast said he could think of no life so pleasant as that of a mast. “One has the sun all day,” he said, “and the stars all night; one carries men and merchandise about the world; one lies in strange harbours and sees strange and entertaining sights. One is influencing the world all the time.” ”

“ An artist who sets out to depict sheep and makes an outrage must be crude indeed. No artist understood sheep better than Blake, although his type was, perhaps, a little too Eastern. But he made sheep lie about and occur exactly as sheep do. He did not force them into a picture, as Charles Jacque was a little too much inclined to do, nor pose them like Sidney Cooper. But then I have never seen sheep in real life like Sidney Cooper’s. My own favourite painters of sheep are Edward Calvert, Mauve, and J. F. Millet ”

“ Andrea with all his weakness was in a way greater than that: he had, one can see, finer thoughts, sweeter imaginings, a richer nature than a perfect painter needs; the phrase perfect painter limits him to the use of his brush, and one thinks of him (and not wholly because13 Browning was a man of genius) always as a human being too. But of Vermeer we know nothing save that he was a materialistic Dutchman who applied paint to canvas with a dexterity and charm that have never been equalled: in short, with perfection. ”