Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/107

in painting from him were not constrained to copy his peculiarities. Works more or less directly imitative, were, it is true, produced sometimes by liis younger contemporaries, but the best of these, men like de Hooch, Maes, Vermeer of Delft, were distinctly not imitators. They learned from the master to aim at a powerful touch, and to study the magic of light and shade ; they strove to follow him in his penetrating insight, his strong grasp of the essentials of his theme ; they did not, however, reproduce his special effects or use his palette. His example and teaching lifted their art altogether to a higher level, and gave them a certain feeling in their work common to them all, though this remained in each case fresh, original, and independent. Their works are an abiding lesson that simple, homely themes may be raised to artistic dignity by noble treatment.

What the painters of modern Britain seem to need at present is some impulse, some inspiration, which may elevate the character of design, and con- centrate on work worth achievement the high artistic powers which are now too much dissipated over trivialities. They need, too, some bond which may bind artists, old and young, more closely together, and generate that 'spirit of school' which existed of old, and still survives on the Continent. The value of such inspiration, of such a bond of union, was recognised by our older 'naturalists,' who were more ready than we are to admit how much the old masters have to teach the modern. If some such influence for good arises in our midst, then there seems no reason why new art should not come to attain the level of the old.

G. Baldwix Brown.

ON A PORTRAIT OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

IN the Bishop's Castle, at the Glasgow Exhibition, there are now on view some twenty-eight pictures professing to be portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. Any one examining these various 'por- traits,' must be struck with the curious diversity of feature and expression. Mere difference in the style of dress, of doing the hair, of pose, and of lighting, could not explain the extraordinary differ- ence in the colour of the eyes and the form of the features. Yet in regard to these last, the portraits do not agree. The truth is, there is every reason to believe that the Queen did not actually sit for any of the pictures ; there is no one of them that bears evidence of having been painted from life by a really competent artist. A number of the portraits have evidently been executed from mere descrip- tions given to those who have painted them, and not a few, as far as the head of the Queen is con- cerned, are but poor copies of such indifferent originals. When, therefore, several confirm each other, it is not to be inferred that this confirmation proves authenticity of likeness.

In those days it was customary for ladies to wear wigs and all sorts of additions to their own hair, done up in an extraordinary and ridiculous manner. The height of the fashion of that time is illustrated in the well-known portrait of Queen Elizabeth, by Zucchero, in starched ruff and towering coiffeure, bedizened with gewgaws. As will be seen, however, from the Bishop's Castle collection of portraits, Mary Stewart had evidently too much innate artistic feeling to submit to such eccentricities of fashion. Her concession, so far as it went, seems to have been modest and becoming. The testimony of the portraits is pretty unanimous in regard to this. The one point where she made a concession amounting to anything peculiar to our eyes, was in shaving the hair off the brow, in accordance with the custom of the time. It is largely this fashion that imparts a certain oddness to these portraits, and makes some careless people who judge superficially turn away doubtful whether Mary Stewart can have been so beautiful as she was reputed to be. But thoughtful observers look to the spirit revealed in a face rather than to mere peculiarities of physique or fashion.