and accurately, with special attention to detail, describing minutely sky and mountain, tree and flower. His work is very impressive and has had a strong influence on the subsequent art of his country. (See Plate 7.) He is lacking in enthusiasm, and devotes himself too much to the antique. He is somewhat cold and formal, but his style is very original. He is opposed to naturalism, the taking of nature literally as it is seen. On the contrary his pictures are full of thought, and he describes painting as "an image of things incorporeal rendered sensible through imitation of form." He considers that the idea should first be conceived clearly, and then reproduced by means of external forms, used as symbols, and treated so as to enable the spectator to "Painting, understand the idea in the picture. It is Spanish and French," by very remarkable that he should have arrived at these views at this early period. We also see that his pictures reflect his own moods. very strongly. In a very fine painting, "In Arcady," he depicts some youthful shepherds coming accidentally upon a tomb with the inscription "Et in Arcadia ego," and this Gerard W. picture is full of the melancholy thoughts that filled his own soul. Claude devoted his whole time to painting pure landscape (see Plate 8), and he abandoned the human motive almost entirely in his pictures, although, as Turner also did with some of his, he still gave them classical names. He seems to have been the first to fully realize the great importance of this branch of art, and he was also the first to fill his paintings with light; and he gives expression to all the varying effects of sunshine, its sparkle in the early morning dew, its dazzling midday radiance on the water, its rosy hues towards evening. For this, and the beauty and originality of his work, if one artist were to be chosen as the founder of modern landscape painting, that title would be rightly given to Claude. His influence has been very great and has had a lasting effect. Even Turner, two hundred years later, was anxious to show that he could rival the work of his illustrious predecessor. The composition of some of his pictures is strongly reminiscent of Claude, and later still we see traces of this master in Corot's paintings. Ruskin fails to appreciate the greatness of Claude, and is unable to see the ideal in his work, though he gives him credit for the remarkable feat of first of all artists putting the sun in the heavens in his "Modern pictures.' Anyone who could produce such a revolution in the art of his day as this means is entitled to far more than the grudging praise accorded by Ruskin, and well deserves the great honour in which he has been universally held by succeeding generations. Painters." Vol. I. 2 "Claude Gellée," by It is interesting to note that these artists, while great lovers of nature, were all idealists, and so far from copying nature exactly, they had no hesitation in putting buildings or scenery of one part of the country into a view of another, if it made the composition of the picture better. Samuel Palmer wrote: "When I was setting out for Italy I expected to see Claude's magical combinations; miles apart I found the disjointed members, which he had 'suited to the desires of his mind'; these were the beauties, but the beautiful, the ideal Helen was his own." Thus we see at the very beginning of modern landscape art, the sub |