Читать книгу Landscapes - Émile Michel - Страница 7

It was near the banks of the Rhine that the first manifestation of Christian art in Germany appeared. The river, by facilitating interaction between Cologne and the South of Europe and Flanders, procured prosperity and culture for this city and for the surrounding country at an earlier date than the rest of Germany. Torn by violent strife, it was not until much later that the other parts of Germany attained the same degree of cultural development. The poetry of the Minnesang certainly abounded in picturesque features; the mystery of the great forests, the return of spring flowers, and the songs of constantly singing birds; and yet, all these poetical details, inspired by a love of nature, did not appeal to German painters. In the pictures of the early Rhenish School, for instance, a few flowers and plants, presented in a very summary fashion, were timidly depicted under the feet of the saints, or were to be seen against the gold used for a background to these figures.

Stefan Lochner’s work is more impressive and individualistic. Lochner went to live in Cologne around 1440, and died there on December 24th, 1451. He was the painter of the admirable triptych of the Adoration of the Magi, the altarpiece of Cologne Cathedral. We have in his work that charm of purity, softness, and delicacy which is to be found in the pictures of Fra Angelico and Memling, who had preceded him. Like them, he delighted in painting the Virgin, and with the sweet, candid type of woman he depicts, he associates the softest harmonies and the most delicate perfumes of nature as being worthy of her. Birds are singing among the rosebushes in the background, and ripe strawberries and spring violets are to be seen in the grass at her feet.

A little later, when Germany was again torn by internal strife, art began to decline, and its incoherent efforts were the outcome of the agitated life of the period. But from the very midst of those troubled times one great master emerged, whose genius moved German art forward.

Albrecht Dürer, Fir Tree (Picea abies), 1495–1496.

Watercolour and gouache on paper, 29.3 × 19.4 cm.

The British Museum, London.

Albrecht Dürer, View of Val D’Arco in South Tyrol, c.1495.

Pen drawing in brown Indian ink and with gouache and topped by black Indian ink, 22.3 × 22.2 cm.

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Superior though he was to his predecessors and to his contemporaries, both as a painter and an engraver, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), was not free from the old traditions. He was influenced by various masters. For more than three years he studied under Michael Wolgemut, and was influenced later by Jacopo de Barbari and by Andrea Mantegna. He belongs essentially to his times and, like his fellow artists, as a painter, he was a somewhat belated representative of the Middle Ages at the time of the Renaissance movement. But in his landscape drawings, both in his choice of subjects and in his interpretation of nature, he is absolutely original and distinctly an innovator. The town in which he was born, and in which he lived and died, does not account for his genius, but it was nevertheless instrumental in calling it forth.

The name Dürer has become intimately associated with Nuremberg. Like Bruges and Venice, the historical aspect of the place appeals to the imagination. His father had come from Hungary, and had settled in Nuremberg as a goldsmith in 1455. He married the daughter of a citizen there and had eighteen children. Albrecht, the third of these children, was born on May 21st, 1471 and, like many Italian artists of that epoch, served his apprenticeship in his father’s workshop. It was in this way that he acquired the skill of hand and somewhat dry precision which we see in his pictures and etchings. In 1486 he entered the studio of a painter who had a great reputation at that time in Nuremberg. This painter was Michael Wolgemut, a stiff and formal artist, who owes the place he now occupies in the history of art to his illustrious pupil.

Dürer learnt his profession in this studio, where the roughness and coarseness of his fellow students frequently tried his patience. Outside the studio the young artist obtained more direct and profitable instruction from nature. He painted his own portrait and that of his various acquaintances. He sketched or painted in watercolour the horizon which he saw from his window, the plants and flowers he gathered when out walking, and animals dead or alive. In this way he learnt to observe and to paint whatever he saw, only troubling to satisfy himself with his work. Everything seemed to him worth painting and the most insignificant objects worth observing. He endeavoured to copy to the best of his ability the infinite diversity of their forms, proportions, and substances.

By the perfection of his work, he obliges us to have the same admiration for reality that he himself had. Even when he had arrived at the most masterly certainty and decision, he retained that respectful simplicity which is the supreme charm of great talent. With his active mind and keen intelligence, he soon found the perspective before him too limited. Young and ardent, he longed to see something new, to learn more, to know the great works of the past and to enjoy the picturesque beauties of neighbouring countries. Italy, with its monuments and works of art, attracted him and, at the age of nineteen, in 1490, he went abroad, with very little money, but rich in hope and confidence. He went through Alsace, Basel, Augsburg, the Tyrol, and, crossing the Alps, made straight for Venice. Many attempts have been made to fix exactly the itinerary and dates of this journey and of the sketches from nature that he made on the way. The precocity of the young artist’s talent and the fact that there were no dates on his sketches, make it impossible to decide whether they should be attributed to this first journey or to his second pilgrimage (1505–1507). The first journey has even been contested by some of Dürer’s biographers, but it is now proved to have taken place. Fascinated by the beauty of the landscape, he must have stayed some time in Trent and made several drawings. First there is the general view, also in watercolour, in which he shows the picturesque situation of Trent with the river, towers, palaces, cathedral and amphitheatre of mountains closing in the horizon. There is also another sketch, touched slightly with watercolour, which represents the Chateau at Trent with its high walls and one of the city gates.

Albrecht Dürer, Ruin of a Castle on top of a Rock near a River (“Altes Schloss”), 1495.

Watercolour and gouache on paper, 15.3 × 24.9 cm.

Private collection.

Two months after his return to Nuremberg, Dürer married a young girl named Agnes Frey, with whom he received a dowry of 200 florins. He has left us several faithful portraits of her, painted at different times. Although he was only twenty-three years of age, his talent was mature. He lived a simple, frugal life, content with the moderate return he received for his hard work. He had a few orders for his pictures, and his etchings began to attract attention and to be in demand. He made use of his landscape sketches for the backgrounds of his compositions, but, whilst he subordinated these to the subjects treated, we must acknowledge that he scarcely succeeded in giving perfect cohesion to the whole picture. Except in his portraits, particularly those of himself, which are masterly, his painting is cold, thin, somewhat dry, and rarely harmonious. It is evident from his pictures that he respected tradition and was influenced by the remembrance of the masterpieces he had seen in Italy. But the direct study of nature continued to give him the satisfaction which it had always given him. In the presence of nature he was neither a slave nor an exponent of any school. He gave himself full liberty. “Man’s resources are very limited in comparison with God’s creations,” he himself said. And as he felt that his own admiration for the works of the past paralysed his creative energy, he strongly insisted, “In order to paint a good picture it was no use hoping to take anything from a human work, as no man on earth had within him entire beauty… Art is contained in nature and the Master is he who can extract it from nature.”

It was for himself and for his own satisfaction that he sketched the view from his own window of the housetops that formed the horizon to which he was accustomed. There is also a sketch of one of the picturesque views of the town near his home. In his drawing he has reproduced, with scrupulous exactness and a perfect understanding of aerial perspective, the walls of the former boundary of Nuremberg as far as the Thiergartner Gate, with a glimpse of one of the more distant parts of the town in the background. Dürer was one of the first to understand the peculiar beauty of big trees, and with loving patience he set himself to render their imposing outline, their intermingled branches and their masses of leaves. We have an example of this in his conscientious study of a Pine Tree, in the study in red chalk.

Hans Thoma, German Landscape, 1890.

Oil on canvas, 113 × 88.8 cm.

Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

Albrecht Dürer, Fisherman’s House on a Lake, near Nuremberg, c.1496.

Watercolour on paper, 21.3 × 22.5 cm. The British Museum, London.

Albrecht Dürer, The Large Turf, c.1503.

Watercolour and gouache on paper, 41 × 32 cm.

Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna.

The simplest vegetation had a charm for Dürer, and he had the gift of communicating this charm to us. In a sketch which is very carefully studied, we have a medley of plants on the banks of a peaceful river. Everything is mingled in that disorder so dear to nature. The stalks and leaves are all intertwined, some of them stiff and straight, others flexible and easily bent. Dürer excelled in making the most of this chaos, which to another artist might have seemed hopeless. Without appearing to emphasise, and with marvellous ease and dexterity, he gives to each plant its own special characteristic, its bright or dull tissue, its delicate veining, its capricious twists and turns. The outline of the plants seems at first to be of extreme simplicity, but when analysed it is most complex. Light and shade have full play, changing the perspective, and emphasising the prominent parts. The sapling rushes tremblingly up, rising from the roots, plunged in the transparent water, right up to the top of the pointed stems. It is the infinite richness of nature itself, with its eternal life and youth, which a wonderful artist reveals to us here. This study of a simple tuft of grasses, which we might have passed without noticing, captivates us, owing to the naturalness and grace which the artist has put into it.

Dürer, like Leonardo, excelled in lending interest to trifling things, but in his studies of landscape he understood, better than Leonardo, how to represent the whole. He always treats these studies with the required delicacy and breadth. He brings out clearly the chief characteristics of the subjects that have tempted him, and makes of these so many special themes, which so appeal to the imagination that they remain engraved in our memory. He evidently liked this wild and rocky country with its melancholy and absolutely modern poetry, for he sketched at least two other studies while there. The first of these bears the name of Valley of Kalkreuth, the place where it was executed, and this title is in his own handwriting. The sketch entitled Altes Schloss is perhaps still more expressive, as it is more finished and all the details lend themselves to the general impression. It represents an old castle, in the midst of the woods, perched on a peak bristling with dark pine trees, whose outlines stand out strongly against the light sky. A more striking picture could not be conceived, nor one that appeals more strongly to the imagination, than that of this feudal Burg, separated from the rest of the world, and whose high walls must have contained so many mysterious lives.

Albrecht Dürer, The Water Mill, c.1498.

Watercolour and gouache on paper, 25.1 × 36.7 cm.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

Such as they are, Dürer’s landscape drawings are a revelation. They defy all comparison with the works of his predecessors or of his contemporaries. In order to appreciate their worth, they must be compared with the interpretations which had hitherto been given of nature, and we must go to Rembrandt to find such talent combined with such sincerity.

For some inexplicable reason, after his second visit to Venice in 1507, Dürer’s landscape studies became more rare. He was probably absorbed by the numerous commissions he received, for he scarcely ever found time for sketching the country around Nuremberg. He studied the subjects that appealed to him with great conscientiousness, and always put his best work into them. One of his pictures depicts a mountainous district. Another represents a pool of water at sunset, with a fisherman’s cottage with rushes, reeds and aquatic plants all around it.

Dürer’s life was a busy one to the very end. Although he had almost entirely given up landscape, despite that at the commencement of his career it had given him such pleasure, he always intended to return to it. At the end of his Treatise on Proportion, published in 1527, a year before his death, he announced his intention of devoting himself, before anything else, to the study of the art of landscape painting, if God spared his life. It is to be regretted that he was not able to do this, as it would be most interesting to know what the great artist’s ideas were on this subject. Entirely alone, and independently of all rules, he had learnt to see nature as it is, to comprehend it, and to express its sovereign charm.

Adam Elsheimer, Flight into Egypt, 1609.

Oil on copper, 31 × 41 cm.

Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Dürer’s landscape sketches from nature, therefore, constitute an exception, not only in his own work, but in the history of the whole German school. It is not surprising that they exercised no influence over the development of that school. In the first place, they were unknown, as they were either hidden away in his own portfolios or scattered about in various collections. But had they been accessible they would not have been appreciated at their true value. Landscape painting in those days was treated in an extremely conventional way, and Dürer’s absolute sincerity, coupled with his impeccable science, would have been considered too great a novelty. As a landscapist, therefore, Dürer stands alone in German art, and in order to appreciate his worth we have only to consider the work of his contemporaries and pupils.

In Germany, after Dürer, we have to wait for nearly a century before finding, in Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610), a landscapist of any great value. Elsheimer went to Rome at the age of twenty-two, and there was especially influenced. Curious to search out new paths, he delighted in discovering the most solitary and picturesque spots where nature had freely put forth her wealth of beauty. Plants with large leaves are generally to be found in the foreground of his pictures; hop, ivy and wild vines climb up the trunks of the trees and fall in thick garlands from the branches. The artist’s kindliness won for him the friendship of his numerous fellow artists of the foreign colony in Rome. This, no doubt, accounts for the reputation he won and the important place his compatriots continue to attribute to him in the history of art, for certainly his own talent does not suffice to account for the rank assigned to him. His name is, nevertheless, the only one we can give as a landscapist of the German school down to the Romanticism of the nineteenth century. This school seems to have foundered completely during the period of the religious wars and the internal strife which so long disturbed the tranquillity of the whole of Germany.