Velazquez; an account of his life and works

Front matter

F

LONDON

THE SPANISH SERIES

Preface

For nearly two centuries Velazquez was but a name in the dictionary of the arts. His tercentenary, celebrated on 6th of June 1899, three hundred years from the day of his birth in Seville, was the first commemoration of the event that could be said to possess any special and international significance. One can discover few parallels to the quick neglect which overtook his paintings after his death in 1660, or to the equally rapid and sustained appreciation they have gained during the last few decades. To-day Velazquez has come anew into his kingdom of fame. He is, above all, acclaimed the painters' painter ; he is not an old master, but one whose influence lives still in contemporary art.

Much has been written about Velazquez, and thanks to the perfection of modern photography, every one may become acquainted with his pictures. And this last is of supreme import-

vii viii VELAZQUEZ

ance, for the one way to know Velazquez is to approach him through his pictures. Many writers have dealt in luminous and scholarly fashion with his art, and in venturing to add yet another volume to those that have appeared, the present writers would ask their readers to bear in mind the modest limitation of their purpose.

The object of this little book, then, is to induce the reader to turn to the pictures of Velazquez, the plates of many of which are here reproduced. It is not an exhaustive treatise on the painter's work, nor a full biographical essay, still less is it a handbook to explain his pictures. It is just an invitation, as it were, to look more carefully at the pictures themselves. Velazquez is the last painter in the world to be made the subject of a lengthy biography. This essay does not pretend to add any new knowledge to the now familiar facts of his life or to the appraisement made already of his perfect art. Almost all the biographical details are quoted from Pacheco's record of his pupil, or are drawn from Professor Carl Justi's very full work on the subject. In questions as to the chronology and authenticity of certain pictures important facts have been

PREFACE ix taken from Senor de Beruete's splendid volume on Velazquez. Much help, too, has been gained from the works of Mr. R. A. L. M. Stevenson, Sir Walter Armstrong, and Mr. Charles Ricketts. For permission to reproduce many of the pictures, thanks are given to Messrs. J. Lacoste, Braun Clement, Hanfstaengl, and Messrs. Mansell & Co.

But although the last word on Velazquez has probably been uttered, there are many to whom his pictures are still not truly known. The fact that he is the painters' painter has been insisted upon so strongly that som.e have been deluded into the belief that his art appeals exclusively to artists. It is unquestionably true that those who understand the technique of painting, can appreciate best the supreme quality of the master's work, but all lovers of beautiful things can learn to see and delight in the special charm of his pictures.

In conclusion, it is admitted that much might have been added to this essay. Discussions on the authenticity of this or that picture have been passed over quickly ; few statements have been made on the theories of Velazquez' art ; and the writers feel that much might have been said

X VELAZQUEZ

differently. However, apologies for work that is done are useless. Yet they who take on themselves to criticise great paintings must pause often ashamed at their facile presumption. Criticism is, after all, no more than the statements of individual minds. To remember this is especially needful in the case of a painter like Velazquez.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE MAN AND HIS AGE I

II. EARLY PICTURES PAINTED IN SEVILLE . 24

II Early Pictures Painted In Seville

Velazquez, with his singular gift of observation, chose, as was natural, the common objects around him as the subjects of his first pictures ; he was nspired by the types of the ^Romanza piccaresca,' then so widespread in Spain. Nor need this surprise us. Already in the sixteenth century Spain had been moved by a new and popular love of direct observation of Nature. In 1533 had appeared El Lazarillo de Tormes, the first of these picaresque romances. The book was written by Mendoza. Then, in the very year in which Velazquez was born, was published the finer Guzman de Alfarache, by Mateo Aleman, a writer of Seville. The fashion for this manner of story spread; in 1605 appeared Perez de Leon's La Picara Justina^ followed in 161 5 by Marcos de Obregon^ the work of Vicente Espinel. Then came a whole series of romances, iVd^z/^/^i* Ejemplaras^ taking for their subjects the lives of the common people. At the same time, bodegones^ kitchen and tavern scenes, were the most approved expression in art.

We may well believe the significance of this new movement in literature, in painting, rich, as it was, in local colour and in the strong types and manners of the people, to the young Velazquez, with his Spanish temperament of accepting the circumstances of life as they were around him, quite simply, as the Spaniard always accepts. But the interpretation was his own, heightened by his genius of insight.

Nobody could give a more exact account of the main inclination of his art in these first years than his master Pacheco. And we find confirmation in Antonio Palomino's Museo PictSrico, who draws his information from the writings of the Aragonese painter Giuseppe Martinez, Goya's master, whose manuscript. Practical Letters on the Art of Painting, was not printed until 1866, more than a hundred years after Palomino's history, as well as from the manuscripts of other authors, especially the painters Fray Juan Rizi and Lazaro Diaz del Valle. Already we have read what Pacheco writes of the diligent work of his pupil, and of his genius in painting these bodegones. Listen to what Palomino says :

'Velazquez, in his early days, took to representing with singular fancy and notable genius, beasts, birds, fishes, fish-markets, and tipplinghouses, with a perfect imitation of Nature ; as also beautiful landscapes and figures of men and women, differences of meats and drinks, fruits of every sort and kind, all manner of furniture, household goods, or any other necessary, which poor beggarly people and others in low life make use of, with so much strength of expression and such colouring that it seemed to be Nature itself/

Already Velazquez was a portrait-painter. But he chose, by preference, it would seem, objects, not people, as his models; probably for the reason that at this stage he could learn more from such work ; things that did not move could be studied longer, and with closer persistence. And the figures, introduced, as was the custom, to enliven these bodegones, are treated in the same manner as the objects, and are neither more nor less alive. They stand against their dark backgrounds in the hard studio light of this first manner, accurate, perfect, petrified life almost. Truth of resemblance was the inspiration of these pictures, all so Spanish in their absolute fidelity to facts. Velazquez cared little for his subject as a subject ; from the first, how he painted, and not what he painted, was the question he considered. He was too capable a painter to lose his way ; he did not try, as yet, to embark on imaginative art. It is told that once, when his choice of subjects was questioned, he answered that he would rather be the first of vulgar painters than the second of refined ones. Perhaps no great painter was ever a more patient student. Each picture was a fresh problem that he set himself to solve perfectly. And there is a scrupulous exactness of statement in these early pictures — in the figures, in these plates of eggs and fish, pestles and mortars, jugs, glasses and kitchen-tables — all seen so finely, or rather the truth of their appearance as expressed by light shown so finely, that our interest is held in things not in themselves specially interesting ; and we come to understand that great art can be shown in the commonest and simplest subjects.

Some dozen pictures belong to this period of youth.

The first in date is probably the * Two Young Men at a Meal,' one of five canvases of Velazquez that were captured after the battle of Vittoria, in 181 3, by the Duke of Wellington from the coach of the fleeing ex-king Joseph Bonaparte, and now at Apsley House. Antonio

Ponz, in his Viage de Espana, mentions such a picture as being in the king's room at the palace; and Palomino gives a detailed description of a bodegone that would certainly seem to be this : * Two poor persons eating at a scanty board on which are sundry earthen vessels, oranges, bread, and other objects ; all treated with remarkable care.' Then the inventory of the Palace in 1772 notes a picture in the following way : ' A picture which represents a table on which are plates, dishes, and a pitcher ; at this table two half-length figures are seated. By Velazquez.' These notices point to the high estimation in which the early work of Velazquez was held.

The picture is almost a monochrome, as indeed are almost all these first works, even the admirable ^ Water- Carrier,' always regarded as the masterpiece among them. This picture, too, is at Apsley House. But although neither the subject nor the arrangement in the ' Two Young Men at a Meal ' offer in themselves interest, though the solid painting gives a heaviness that at first repels and surprises, like all the pictures of Velazquez, the work appeals by its truth, by the strength of the drawing, by the harmony of the tone.

With this picture we can class ' The Vintager/ at present in the possession of Messrs. Knoedler, London ; ^ The Steward,' belonging to Sir J. C. Robinson, and ' The Musicians,' a picture of special interest, discovered recently in Ireland by Mr. Langton Douglas,^ and bought by Dr. Bode for the Berlin Museum. Then the small portrait-head of a man in the Prado, with its frank realism, painted in a literal and rather hard manner, belongs to this period, probably a little later. Modern criticism has removed many early pictures from Velazquez : the * Adoration of the Shepherds ' and * The Dead Warrior ' of the National Gallery, both the work, it would seem, of Zurbaran, are two ; the ' Child with a Basket of Grapes,' in the Salting Collection, is another ; the better-known ' Spanish Beggar,' called also ' The Toper,' in the Cook Gallery, Doughty House, Richmond, is now attributed to a Dutch painter. These are a few out of many now discredited pictures.

But of all this group of bodegones the most important are ' The Breakfast,' at St. Petersburg, the ' Old Woman Preparing an Omelette,' in the Cook Collection, and * The Water-Carrier.' A de-

^ A similar bodegone, which might be a replica, or a copy, of the Berlin picture, was in the Canaveral Collection in Seville.

scription of them in detail would be superfluous ; thanks to the present perfection of photography, every one knows the two pictures in England ; the other is reproduced at the end of this book. All three have the same qualities, the figures are life-size, half-length, and in each the lighting strikes them obliquely from the left side, and fairly high up, proving they were painted in a studio lighted by a window high in the wall, which is what we should expect in a room in Seville. They are perfect in drawing, very solidly painted, and the tone is dark, the design cautious even to timidity, though in the case of * The Water-Carrier ' we find a more masterly grouping, much stronger self-possession in the execution, with already that gift for selection and suppression that carries us forward to later pictures. And although those who have been to Madrid to see Velazquez, and recall the shimmering quality in such pictures as ^ The Infanta in Red' and * The Tapestry Weavers,' must, perhaps, experience surprise and disappointment, when for the first time they are brought face to face with this dark and dim picture, hanging in the poorly lighted gallery in Apsley House, its qualities will assert themselves. And the longer you wait with the picture, the more it will mean to you. Just as with the other pictures, you will find yourself accepting it as you accept a scene in life. It is just because these pictures are so true that they seem so simple.

The religious pictures have perhaps less interest. Velazquez was not a religious painter. Yet, produced as they probably were under the admonition of Pacheco, perhaps, or in response to the call of religious Seville, they are true to his natural sources of inspiration. Here, as always, he drew his materials directly from the life around him. Thus in such a picture as ' Christ in the House of Martha,' in the National Gallery, we find a Scriptural scene rendered in exactly the manner of a bodegone\ but for its title the picture would be classed with the * Old Woman Preparing an Omelette,' to which it might well be a companion work. And even in ^ The Epiphany ' in the Prado, the most important and accomplished Scriptural piece, we recognise two models, the king who kneels on the left of the picture and the attendant, who in *The Water-Carrier' are the Corsican and the boy with the glass. This is the first dated picture of the young Velazquez ; dated 16 19, it was painted in his twentieth year, a fact sufficiently surprising when we consider the serious qualities of the work.

It has been said that Velazquez was wanting in imagination ; it would be truer to say that his eyes governed his imagination. Imagination does not depend upon outside things ; nor does it express itself always in * fancies of the mind,' as it did in El Greco, for instance. The word is used commonly in too restricted a sense ; penetrating insight is also part of its expression. And no painter had a more searching observation than Velazquez had, even from the first ; but it was, as it were, directed always to one point, searching it to the uttermost. Always the artist paints best — is in the truest meaning of the word imaginative — when he expresses that which moves him most. And for this reason Velazquez, singularly master of himself, never tried to turn his imagination to evolve from within, it just assimilated and used things around him ; and because he himself was interested so completely in the problems of colour and light which these things gave him, he succeeds in interesting us.

In * The Epiphany ' we have the qualities noted already in * The Water- Carrier,' in the ' Old Woman Cooking,' in all the bodegones.

The hour is night. The Virgin is seated showing the Child to the kings ; two are kneeling, one stands, as they offer their cups of gold. Joseph is by the Mother ; the boy-attendant, who figures in so many pictures, is opposite on the left ; a landscape with trees and mountains, and a beautiful gleaming sky forms the background. The tone is exceedingly sombre, with an exaggerated hardness, and we recognise the rules of Pacheco in the still fettered design. Not a picture, with its ugly and very ordinary persons, that would attract the unpurposed visitor to the Sala Velazquez in the Prado ; for it did not occur to Velazquez that the men and women of Scriptural times could be different from those of his own. But wait, look longer, forget the disappointment of the picture's dark colour. Seriously conceived, with all the expressions and incidents of the story finely seen, this work, too, convinces because of its truth.

We have but few more pictures to close this period of youth. There are the first religious pieces, painted for the Calceate Friars, probably about 1617, the ^Immaculate Conception' and 'St. John the Evangelist.' The pictures are mentioned first by Cean Bermudez, both are described by Carl Justi in his work on Velazquez ; at the beginning of the last century they were

C in the possession of Sir Bartle Frere, then English minister in Seville. Then three religious pictures, * Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus/ in the collection of Don Manuel de Soto, Zurich ; ^ St. Peter,' the property of Senor A. de Beruete, and * The Virgin delivering the Chasuble to St. Ildefonso,' in the Archiepiscopal Palace at Seville, are held as undoubtedly authentic by Senor A. de Beruete, who certainly knows as much about such a question as any one living. The present writer has only seen the picture last named. Saint Ildefonso, whose profile is probably a portrait of some ecclesiastic, kneels before the Virgin, who is surrounded by angels. He is dressed in black relieved with a white collar. The figures are a little less than life-size. All, except the saint and one angel, have been abominably repainted ; the condition of the whole picture is bad.

We have come to the year 1622, when at the age of twenty-three Velazquez went for the first time to Madrid, and the bent of his future life was changed. This chapter may close. It would be profitless to wait now and seek to discover the origin of the style of these early paintings. Already we have spoken of the forming influences upon the young painter in Seville. It was a patient study of Nature, suggested by Pacheco, that was the directing impulse of his art. But if Velazquez owed the technical ability, the fine drawing, the understanding of tone, in part to his study with and admonition from Pacheco, he owed him nothing on the personal side ; he painted his own inventions, and his methods are in accordance with them, so that these works are a complete expression of himself at this date. One thing impresses us as we note the careful workmanship of all these pictures, and then carry our imagination forward to such pictures as the late portraits, or to * Las Hilanderas ' and * Las Meninas ' : Velazquez' easy mastery was not attained easily. In these bodegones and first Scriptural pieces we have clear insight, deliberation, and fine character, but not facility. Thus his early work, above all, tells us that Velazquez was a student.

Ill

FIRST PORTRAITS PAINTED AT THE COURT IN MADRID

The death of Philip III., that fell so unexpectedly on Spain in 162 1, marks the turningpoint in the life of Velazquez. Conscious, as he might well be, of a new hope of patronage from the young Philip IV., then in his fifteenth year, he went from the southern city to the Court at Madrid, and gained liberty for a freer expression of his art that largely affected the tendencies of his work. The new King was known to have a love of and appreciation for the arts ; and his minister the Count-Duke of Olivares had been at one time a resident in Seville, where his father was alcaide of the Alcazar.

Velazquez was now twenty-three years old ; he had married Juana Pacheco, his master's daughter, and was the father of two little girls, Francisca, baptized on May 18, 1619, and Ignacia, baptized on January 29, 1621. And in spite of the success he had attained in Seville,

S6 the result of the sound qualities in his early work, he had scarcely yet found an opportunity for adequate self-expression.

We must remember that by 1621 the naturalistic movement had spent much of its force in Andalusia. Roelas was dead ; true, Zurbaran's work was still being done, but already a period of sentiment, marking the decline of naturalism, was drawing near ; and this was especially so in Seville, the centre of religious painting, where the Church was the artists' only patron. To Velazquez two courses had opened. He might have given himself up to the influence of Pacheco, endeavouring so to conform to the trend of the current religious art ; or he might, with certain differences, still ally himself wholly with the naturalistic movement begun by the picaresque writers, continue to paint bodegones^ and strive by close and systematic study of common life, as the ground of revolt against conventionality and mannerism with their results of carelessness and bad drawing, to give to that expression in art greater consideration and a wider acceptance. The cogency of temperament, as we have seen, had impelled him so far to the latter course. Now had come the opportunity that was to make good his choice.

A first visit to Madrid, however, made in 162 1, was marked by failure. Velazquez did not succeed in gaining an audience with the King, the object of his visit ; although Pacheco, believing as he always did in his genius, had provided him with letters of introduction to many persons of influence, and among them to Don Juan Fonseca y Figueroa, a former canon of Seville Cathedral, but now sumiller de cortina'^ in the King's household, who, himself a painter, at once was the friend of the young Sevillian.

But meanwhile Velazquez, at the suggestion of Pacheco, painted a portrait of Luis de Gongora, the great poet. Unfortunately this portrait, like so many other early pictures, has been lost ; for certainly it is not the portrait of Gongora in the Prado (Plate xx.), which denies its attribution, and seems in its dry and hard manner of painting to have more of the qualities of Zurbaran than those special to Velazquez at this time.

In this first visit of Velazquez to the Court one thing is especially to our purpose. He visited

^ This office was an important one; its duties v-ere : (i) to look after the royal prayer-books ; (2) to arrange the hours for celebrating mass ; (3) to accompany the king to chapel, and there to raise and draw the curtain at stated times.

the Palace at Madrid, those of the Pardo and Aranjuez, and the monastery of the Escorial ; and considering all that we know of these royal residences, their singular charm, their treasures of pictures, tapestries, and beautiful things, we may well be confident that Velazquez, always so sensitive of sight, was wrought upon by all that he saw. Then, remembering how many of his later pictures were to reproduce that luminous gloom — an atmosphere which is the special character of the great rooms in the royal Palaces — it is not perhaps fanciful to suppose, that now he began first to think of that problem he was to solve of painting a room full of space.

In the spring of the next year, 1623, Velazquez once more came to Madrid, this time as a servant of the Count-Duke, whose interest Fonseca had gained at last ; with a sum of fifty ducats for his travelling expenses, and a promise that he should paint the portrait of the King. Pacheco came with his son-in-law, they boarded in Fonseca's house, and the first work of Velazquez was to paint the portrait of their friend. This picture, too, has been lost, but Pacheco tells us of the admiration that it gained. Hardly was it finished when it was taken to the Palace by a son of the Count of Penaranda, the chamber-

Iain of the Infante Don Ferdinand. All the royal household looked and approved, even the King ; and it was decided that Velazquez should paint a portrait of Don Ferdinand. This commission was changed afterwards to an order to paint the King himself.

But, owing to manifold occupations, connected probably with the visit of Charles of England to the Court, the King could not give a sitting until August 30. Again success ! Olivares declared that this was * the first real portrait of the King that had been painted ; he promised that all former ones should be removed from the Palace, and that henceforth Velazquez alone should paint His Majesty.'^

It is not possible to affirm exactly which was this first portrait of Philip IV. Pacheco tells us merely that Velazquez ' made the first portrait of the King on August 30, 1623, as well as a sketch of the Prince of Wales, who paid him a hundred crowns for it'; then, further on, he writes, * having finished the portrait of his Majesty on horseback, the whole done from nature, including the landscape.' ^ There is, it will be remembered, the famous equestrian portrait described by

1 Pacheco, Arte de la Pintura, i. 134.

Palomino, which was shown publicly in the Calle Mayor in front of San Felipe el Real, and which was so esteemed that poets wrote sonnets and long encomiums on its merits. And we may well think that this was the portrait of which Pacheco writes, a picture destroyed, it is supposed, in the fire at the Palace in 1734. Then where is the portrait-sketch of Charles of England? We have no trace of it except the reference that Pacheco gives.

Yet, although the loss of so many early pictures is sad indeed to the lover of Velazquez, we have in the Prado two portraits of the King when young — the standing portrait in black (No. 1070, Plate IX.), which may have been painted earlier than the equestrian portrait, and in preparation for it, as was suggested first by Senor Cruzada Villaamil ; and the bust portrait (No. 1071, Plate VIIL), which almost certainly is a study for the standing picture.^ Both these portraits are splendid examples that speak clearly enough of the power Velazquez had when first he came to the Court. Then about four years later — the date is fixed by the apparent age of the prince — Velazquez painted the standing portrait of the Infante Don Carlos (Plate X.),

^ See note at the end of the chapter, page 53.

which hangs in the Prado as a pendant to the early portrait of the King; a picture of even greater interest. It is the finest portrait of these years.

Look carefully at these portraits, and also at the other portraits that would seem to belong to the years 1623 till 1628, when Rubens made his visit to Madrid; the portrait of the King in the Boston Museum, very similar to the Prado portrait, if, indeed, we may regard this as an original and not a copy of the picture in the Palace of Villahermosa ; ^ the portrait of a young man in the Munich Pinakothek ; the splendid Olivares with a whip at Dorchester House ; ' The Lady in Black ' in Berlin ; the Geographer (Plate XXI.) in the Museum of Rouen, which may well belong to this period also, although the head probably was repainted later, perhaps from the Court buffoon, Pablillos of Valladolid, with whose portrait this picture certainly has a resemblance ; and then contrast all these portraits with that portrait of a man (Plate XIV.) painted earlier in Seville, and with the figures in the bodegones and in the first Scriptural pieces. The heavy technique of the early Sevillian manner has disappeared almost,

^ See note at the end of the chapter, page 53.

only here and there do we find touches of the old hard manner of painting ; the cautious designs give place to more ample spacing, the dark backgrounds, the heavy brown flesh-tints to more delicate and cooler keys of colour.

It is the distinction of this wonderful series of portraits that impresses us first ; the figures of such perfect simplicity without any accessories — a glove thrown on a table, a letter, the hat of the sitter, that is all — stand just at ease against a cool grey wall, a table, or a curtain. Each portrait shows, above all, what is called a sense of style. Now, what is style? Certainly we do not mean the manner of painting — the style of Velazquez : it is a personality beyond any mannerism, something that expresses as closely, as fully, and as simply as possible the truth of Nature. Thus we give the highest praise that we can to these portraits when we say that they have style.

Then note the individuality of their special qualities. In the royal galleries Velazquez saw portraits by Titian, by Moro, by Sanchez Coello, and by others ; the figures of these masters stand out from dark backgrounds, the key of their colours is warm. But, with that independence which characterised him throughout his life, Velazquez chose backgrounds that were grey, his tones are cool and cold. We do not mean, of course, that these masters had no influence on his development ; such a statement were impossible, unless indeed we would wish to call Velazquez singularly obtuse. From Titian assuredly he learned much ; the use of a piece of white linen, or a gold chain, for instance ; then in the wonderful portraits of El Greco, whose aims here are so akin to his own, he may well first have seen the subtle and fascinating effects gained by painting a portrait in predominating harmonies of blacks and greys. But he never attempted to imitate either the one painter or the other, and if he left the beaten track, it was due alone to his fine fidelity of observation. Imagination is not only a matter of invention, and this seeing things for oneself is, after all, the most considerable achievement of the artist.