LITMIR.BIZ

      Panini, who obtained celebrity as a painter of architectural subjects, was born at Piacenza, and studied in Rome. His settled place of abode was that city, but for some time he lived in Paris, and in 1732 he was elected a member of the French Academy.

      Of the life of Van der Helst, one of the most distinguished of the Dutch portrait painters, little is known, except that he resided constantly at Amsterdam, and was in good practice there as a portrait painter. He had a part in founding the Painters' Guild there, whilst his likeness of Paul Potter at the Hague (1654), and his partnership with Bakhuizen, who laid in the backgrounds of some of his pictures in 1668, indicate a constant companionship with the best artists of the time. His masterpiece is in the Museum at Amsterdam. It contains thirty-five portraits, whole length, and represents a banquet given by a company of the civil-guard of Amsterdam, in commemoration of the Peace of Münster, in 1648. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his Journey to Flanders and Holland, says of that work that it "is, perhaps, the first picture of portraits in the world, comprehending more of those qualities which make a perfect portrait than any other I have ever seen." Whilst delighted with Van der Helst, Sir Joshua was disappointed by Rembrandt; and certainly "Van der Helst attracts by qualities entirely differing from those of Rembrandt and Frans Hals: nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the strong concentrated light and the deep gloom of Rembrandt, and the contempt of chiaroscuro peculiar to his rival, except the contrast between the rapid sketchy touch of Hals and the careful finish of Van der Helst."

      About the life of this marine painter nothing is known. His pictures usually represent views near Amsterdam, "with a variety of shipping and boats, and a number of small figures, correctly drawn, and handled with spirit. His ships are well drawn, his colouring clear and transparent, and his skies and water light and floating" (Bryan).

      Agostino was the elder brother of Annibale Carracci (see under 9) and cousin of Lodovico (see under 28). It was he who composed the well-known sonnet in which the aims of the Eclectic School are set forth. He was the most learned of the Carracci, being painter, engraver, poet, and musician, and well versed in the arts and sciences generally. His pictures are rare. The best is the "Communion of St. Jerome" in the Academy at Bologna. His prints are numerous; his engraving of Tintoretto's "Crucifixion," executed at Venice in 1589, was highly praised by that artist. In the same year Agostino returned to Bologna, and became the principal teacher in the school of the Carracci. He afterwards went to Rome to assist Annibale in the frescoes for the Farnese Palace. He executed the "Cephalus and Aurora" and "Galatea" in that series; his success excited the jealousy of Annibale, and caused a feud between the two brothers. Agostino thereupon left Rome for Parma, where he died shortly afterwards.

      William Van de Velde, the younger, was the son of an artist of the same name, and the two together were the most famous sea-painters of their time. The father was specially commissioned by the East India Company to paint several of their ships. The son was for a time engaged in painting the chief naval battles of the Dutch. In 1675 they were both established in England, living at Greenwich, as painters to King Charles II., who granted each of them a pension of £100 a year; the father "for taking and making draughts of sea-fights"; and the son "for putting the said draughts into colours." The Vandeveldes, thus employed, "produced," says Macaulay, "for the king and his nobles some of the finest sea-pieces in the world." "The palm," says Walpole, "is not less disputed with Raphael for history than with Vandevelde for sea-pieces." But in no branch of art has the English School of this century made more conspicuous advance than in sea-painting, and those who are fresh from reminiscences of Turner or Lee, or, amongst later artists, of Hook and Moore and Brett, will hardly be inclined to agree at this day with such high praise of Vandevelde. "It is not easily understood," says Ruskin, "considering how many there are who love the sea, and look at it, that Vandevelde and such others should be tolerated. Foam appears to me to curdle and cream on the wave sides, and to fly flashing from their crests, and not to be set astride upon them like a peruke; and waves appear to me to fall, and plunge, and toss, and nod, and crash over, and not to curl up like shavings; and water appears to me, when it is grey, to have the grey of stormy air mixed with its own deep, heavy, thunderous, threatening blue, and not the grey of the first coat of cheap paint on a deal floor."

      "It is not easy to understand," perhaps, but two helps towards understanding may be mentioned in Ruskin's own words. First, previous painters – including even the Venetians, sea-folk though they were – had all treated the sea conventionally. Vandevelde and his fellows, at any rate, endeavoured to study it from nature. Bakhuizen, as we shall see, like Turner after him, used to go to sea in all weathers, the better to obtain "impressions." Hence the Dutch sea-painting did mark an advance, and how great was its influence on later artists and sea-lovers we know from the case of Turner, who "painted many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde, and always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of his early study of him." And this grey and opaque rendering of the sea by the Dutch was to some extent due to natural causes. "Although in artistical qualities lower than is easily by language expressible, the Italian marine painting usually conveys an idea of three facts about the sea, – that it is green, that it is deep, and that the sun shines on it. The dark plain which stands for far-away Adriatic with the Venetians, and the glinting swells of tamed wave which lap about the quays of Claude, agree in giving the general impression that the ocean consists of pure water, and is open to the pure sky. But the Dutch painters, while they attained considerably greater dexterity than the Italian in mere delineation of nautical incident, were by nature precluded from ever becoming aware of these common facts; and having, in reality, never in all their lives seen the sea, but only a shallow mixture of sea-water and sand; and also never in all their lives seen the sky, but only a lower element between them and it, composed of marsh exhalation and fog-bank, – they are not to be with too great severity reproached for the dulness of their records of the nautical enterprise of Holland. We only are to be reproached, who, familiar with the Atlantic, are yet ready to accept with faith, as types of sea, the small waves en papillote and peruke-like puffs of farinaceous foam, which were the delight of Bakhuizen and his compeers"97 (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. v. ch. i. § 20; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 30; On the Old Road, i. 283; Harbours of England, p. 18). The storms of Van der Velde are certainly unattractive, but the silvery

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