42 The Car hon- House Pictures. [JULY, 



anc 1 . (so to speak) common-place aspects only. His works are, in painting, 

 what pastorals are in poetry ; which, to produce their most perfect effects, 

 must avoid all that is in the slightest degree forced, exaggerated, or 

 outre. It was for other painters to improve upon their models, and add to 

 them, and heighten, and embellish, and contrast, and collect half a hundred 

 incompatible things together, to increase the effect of their productions. 

 It was enough for him to paint Nature as he found her; and whenever he 

 departs from this system, he shews beneath himself. 



We have some admirable specimens of Cuyp ten in number ; forming 

 perhaps, upon the whole, a better and more characteristic selection than 

 that from the works of any other master, except Rembrandt. One of the 

 best is a large landscape, in that peculiar style of the master which unites 

 the airy and elegant pencilling of Both, and the soft and rich tenderness of 

 Claude, to an imaginative and almost mysterious character belonging to 

 Cuyp alone. It has none of those large, solid figures and cattle in the 

 fore-ground, which are in their way so fine, and which also produce so 

 admirable an effect in throwing into distance the landscape portion of the 

 scene. The front is occupied, and the distance produced, by means of a 

 dark and broken fore-ground, with lofty trees running all over the canvass 

 through and beyond which the landscape appears, dressed in a veil of 

 woven air and sunshine. Another, of a different description, but inimitably 

 fine, represents a black boy holding the horses of two cavaliers, in front of 

 a dark landscape, in which a distant town is seen across a river, and, 

 farther on, a misty distance. The mingled (ruth and force of this piece 

 are the perfection of art in this line ; since they present only nature itself, 

 and nothing either besides or beyond it. There are several others of a 

 similar character with the last-named, and almost equally vigorous, spirited, 

 and natural ; and there is one large river scene, in which nothing but the 

 craft and the water are visible, which is admirable for the truth of feeling 

 pervading it throughout. 



Continuing among the Flemish landscape-painters, we have, by Both, 

 only one piece, though a very charming one, and combining the delightful 

 characteristics of this artist's style in as great a degree as any one picture 

 can be expected to do. It is a large landscape, with figures in front, 

 representing the scripture incident of Philip baptizing the Euntich. 



By the natural, vigorous, and delightfully unaffected Hobbima we have 

 two pictures, forming a pair. One is on his favourite subject, of a little 

 picturesque village, seen in a distant light, through a dark net-work of 

 intervening forest-trees. The other is a more open scene, with a water- 

 mill. These works are not of a kind to require particular description or 

 commendation : they are very pleasing examples of this artist's manner of 

 treating his subject; but they are nothing more. 



The rest of the works by the Flemish landscape-painters need not be 

 particularized. There are specimens, more or less perfect and characteristic, 

 of Berghem, Ruysdael, Wynants, and Du Jardin but none among them 

 that we have not seen greatly surpassed in other collections. There are 

 also a few specimens of those masters who do not exactly rank as land- 

 scape-painters, but who devoted their efforts chiefly to the delineation of 

 scenes and subjects connected with towns and cities ; such as Vander- 

 heyden, Lingleback, &c. But even of these latter the present collection 

 does not include any demanding a particular description. We shall, there- 

 fore, at once pass on to that class of the Flemish masters who illustrated 

 actual character, manners, and life, as they are connected with, and grow 

 out of the society, habits, &c. of towns and cities. 



