470 APPENDIX TO PART II

Poussin’s Flora [No. 732.]

§ 45. A few rooms on, facing this landscape-which throughout may be described as the very type of a painter-like frigidity, the Niobe of landscapes, the dullest, flattest, joylessest formality of propriety in wood and water: the trees and grass afraid to be green, the sky too grand to be blue, the water too polite to be noisy or to move, the moss taken off the tiles, and the beads out of the timbers and the cracks out of the stones, and the whole thing coloured like the world in a fainting fit, as if the man who did it had never seen a brighter colour than a Dutch fog, and had painted an Italian landscape by hearsay; or as if he had never seen, or at any rate never enjoyed, a tint of colour or an energetic form in his life, and had about as much sensation as a tortoise and as much hilarity as a Quaker-opposite this picture, I say, is that one of the Triumph of Flora¹ with a sky as blue as a gentian, and massy white clouds, as pure as snow; and a burning distance, all orange gold, as if all summer and autumn were gathered into one sunset over deep, deep blue hills, carried down by fiery flakes among the figures; the trees filling all the blue sky with stars of blossom, and the figures one bright, unrestrainable riot of pure delight-a Keats-like revel of body and soul of most heavenly creatures-limbs and raiment, thoughts and feelings all astir, one laugh of life and of colour; two blue-winged Cupids dancing as they drag the car, or dragging it rather by their dancing unconsciously; a nymph with dusky yellow dress, and bright brown hair with a white rose in it, and fair, light limbs-a very autumnal sunbeam, made mortal, dancing first of all; Flora herself, a sweet throned intense personified gladness; another nymph stooping as she flies along to gather a (celandine?), but all so pure and yet so wildly glad, that one might think the spring wind had turned a drift of loose rose leaves into living creatures.

Note especially of the tree above, it has more white blossoms than leaves, and they are like hawthorn blossom exaggerated-much larger than real hawthorn-I think, compared with the figures, they would be about the size of a wine-glass each flower, and the leaves smaller than flowers. It is an ideal of spring blossom; compare that which I saw at Vevay, apple-blossom against blue hills. The celandine is almost white, best in shade, and may have been meant for a daisy; if it ever were, it is very coarse and large, and square petalled. [Note.] I forgot that the figures which come against the sunset in this picture increase its heat in a glorious way; they have red dresses, or fragments of dress, their limbs are burning orange red-half sunshine, half bronzed flesh; and just between the limbs and (under the arm?) of one or two fragments of the most intense orange dress complete sparks of fire, which bring the colour of the sky down among them. As an example of increase of warmth of colour by sympathy into one flash, it would be difficult to match it.

Rubens: “The Village Fête,” No. 2115.

§ 46. Compare with this spirit of pure revelry, true classic-nay, better than true classic-the revel of Rubens, a crowd of peasants, near some place, drinking, dancing like baboons, hauling each other by the part of the body where a waist should be, kissing, and-men and women alike-fighting for pots of beer. I never thought Rubens vulgar till to-day; but as, yesterday, I

¹ [For another reference to this picture, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xviii. § 28.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]