The Perspective Landscape Scene in the English Theatre, 1660-1682
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This dissertation has been 63—4670 microfilmed exactly as received JACKSON, Allan Stuart, 1934- THE PERSPECTIVE LANDSCAPE SCENE IN THE ENGLISH THEATRE, 1660-1682. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1962 Speech—Theater University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan DIAGRAMS DIAGRAM Page 1 Seventeenth-Century Theatre Ground Plans . 178 2 The Plan of the Hall Theatre Reconstructed by Boswell from Webb's Ground Plan for Mustapha (l 665) ........................ 179 3 Restoration Scene Change Sequence from Southern ...... ........................... 180 4 Restoration Scene Change Sequence from Langhans.......................... 183 ix 89 artists have been called the "Roman School" of painters. Their works directly influenced a northern group known as the Italianate Dutch. These were Cornells Van Poelenbergh, Bartholomaeus Breenbergh, and Jan Both. Engravings of works by all these men were collected in England. Another influence came from the Dutch painters Frans de Momper, Philip de Koninck, Jacob van Ruisdale, and Cornells Vroom, and from the Flemish painters Gillis Van Coninxloo, the Brueghel family, and Joos De Momper. These two styles repre sented by these painters will be referred to as "the northern groups." Inigo Jones seems to have been influenced about equally by the older "Italianate" painters and the Flemish. The last major influence was from native English pro- . vincial painting. This style differed from artist to artist, a result of the fact that the men were often self taught, or taught by craftsmen who had had little foreign training. The English works typically had a feeling of freshness of approach to subject matter; that is, they lacked the sophisticated and mannered tricks of the foreign schools. They usually showed a clumsiness in handling perspective and foreshortening. Some times the figures and animals were gauche and wooden and the landscapes airless and static. These traits often show up in the extant works of such scene painters as Streater, Aggas, and Fuller. The foreign and English artists mentioned in the previous paragraphs were most often in the collections of the great English manor houses and in the Royal collection. They were therefore not only the most populart but the most available, for young.artists to study and copy. It should be noted that two of the most notable painters of the age, Rembrandt and Rubens, are not listed above. Also, the Spanish and Venetian painters did not have much effect on the English until the early eighteenth century. In order to understand the methods used or known at this time, Henry and Margaret Ogden in English Taste in Land scape in the Seventeenth Century trace all the printed works and art treatises of the time."*- They find the basic sources are: Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman (1622); Edward Norgate, Miniatura (164-9) J The Whole Art of Drawing, Etc., by Alexander Browne (1669); and William Faithorne, The Art of Graving and Etching (1662). Two anonymous works, Albert Purer Revived (n.d.) and A Drawing Book (1664-), were popular. Finally, William Salmon's Polygraphice (1672) included in its four chapters on landscapes, material from all the other works mentioned. The Ogdens analysed the latter important book aB follows: The first edition (1672) contains four chapters on landscape. Book I, Chapter xiii, is a condensed version of Peacham'b chapter on landscape with two additions, probably both from Albert Purer Revived. The first addition is the direction "Make you Landskip to shoot (as it were) away, one part lower than another, making the nearest hill or place highest, and ^"Ogden and Ogden, op. cit., pp. 9-12. 91 those that are farther off, to shoot away under that, that the Landskip may appear to be taken from the top of an hill." • • .The second addition is the familiar passage on motions which appear first in Haydocke and which was incorporated in Albert Purer Revived, as well as in Browne's Ars Pictoria. • • • The second chapter on landscape, Book II, Chapter xxvii, constitutes the fourth printed version of Norgate's early "Miniatura" . • • • The third chapter on landscape, Book III, Chapter ix, is entitled "Of Colours for Landskip." It consists of seven short paragraphs, telling how to mix light and dark greens, and how to color trees, woods, fires, azure skies, red skies, and night skies. Because they are so condensed, these rather inconsequential remarks are difficult to trace to a source, but apparently they are not borrowed from any of the texts already discussed. This is the shortest and least significant chapter on landscape in Polygraphice. The fourth chapter on landscape, Book III, Chapter xxiii, is also entitled "Of Colours for Landskip," and its opening paragraph likewise deals with the problem of obtaining satisfactory greens for landscape painting. The next six paragraphs consist of a close rendering of the sections in Albert Purer Revived on coloring landscapes, buildings, and skies. This is their fourth ap pearance since the publication of that work in 1652• Thus Salmon must be given credit for in cluding in his book all the main texts on land scape which were readily available in rival publications•^ This passage gives some indication of the importance of landscape painting in England by 1672. Edward Norgate, whose Miniatura was widely circulated, said landscape painting was "an Art soe new in England, and soe lately come a shore, as all the language within our fower seas cannot find it a name, but a borrowed one, and that from a people that are noe great Lenders but upon good securitie, the Dutch.Norgate mentions Brill, 2Ibid., p. 78. ^T. S. Boase, op. cit.. pp. 260-295* 92 Elshimer, Momper, Bruegel, and Conlngsloo as the best painters of landscapes. Charles I had a great many paintings by these men; and he brought Alexander Keirincx and Cornells van Poelenburgh to England. They imported the Italianate style of romantic landscape to the British artists. Heretofore, art histories have confined themselves to British portraits of this time, but there is evidence that landscapes were also important. The reason for the neglect is that most landscapes were painted by non-English artists working in a foreign style. There were three groups of artists active in England in the late Commonwealth and during the reign of Charles II. The first was the foreign artists who were imported to do special commissions. Rubens and a group of French artists were of this type. They had little impact on the art in England. The second group was a large number of Italian-trained Dutch artists of the "Soman School" who made their homes in London. The English government encouraged Dutch immigration to England in the l67Cs, but many of these men had come earlier than that. These artists had a great influence on taste and painter's style of this period. Before moving to the Restoration painters, it is interesting to see how much Inigo Jones had been influenced in his scene designs by foreign artists. The two Figures 51 and 52 (which are also compared in Simpson and Bell's catalogue of 1---5------- These men were: Landscapists: Alexander Keirincx, Cornelis van Poelenburgh, Hendrick Dankerts, Jan Siberechts, Steenwyck, Jan Wyck, Dirck van den Bergen, Gerard Soest; Sea painters: the two van de Veldes; and Sporting scenes: Francis Barlow. 93 Jones' work) show that while the two scenes differ in that Jones' is a sketch and the Parigi set is an engraving they are identical scenes. In Figure 31 is the painter's elevation by Jones for a shutter for Davenant's Luminalia (1638)* scene i» "night." Figure 30 is for the whole set with tree wings, Hotice that the shutter is almost an exact copy of the right side of Adam Elsheimer's "The Flight into Egypt" (Fig. 32). Evidently the scenes of Jones' were for the most part copies of famous easel paintings or scene designs; they can be traced to their sources by a little comparative detection work. Figure 30 Figure 31 Inigo Jones. Luminalia. 1638 "Night," The Shutter. Inigo Jones. Luminalia, 1638, "Night," The Scene There is every reason to suspect that the Restoration artists were also prone to use composition and ideas from famousy fashionable artists of the "Flemish School" and the "Roman School." The native English painters who were influenced by the foreign artists were Robert Walker, Richard Greenburgh, Gilbert Jackson, Edward Bower, John Eycke, and the scene painters Robert Aggas, both Robert Streater the elder and 9^ Figure 32 Adam Elsheimer. "The Flight into Egypt." Robert the younger, Isaac Fuller, Thomas Stevenson, and perhaps John Greenhill, a painter of theatrical figures. These men were most influenced by the "Roman School" of Brill, Elsheimer, Claude, and Poussin, and by the older northern, "Flemish School." Their work looks like combinations of these styles. Their back scenes for the theatre must have resembled rather provincial copies of Claude's paintings, with Flemish style trees on the wings. The conclusion of the Ogdens' book on English land scapes of the seventeenth century clarifies this foreign in fluence. It is clear that the heroic and pastoral land scapes of Titian, Claude, Poussin, Gaspar, and Salvator Rosa were the most highly regarded during the last four decades of the century, in spite of the fact that the works of these painters were not widely owned in England. There is a parallel between their vogue and that of Lankrinck, who enjoyed the highest 95 reputation of any landscapist working in England largely because he painted in the manner of the great Italians and in spite of the fact that he was not a prolific painter* As a matter of fact, the highest regard was reserved for those whose works were least common. The prestige of the great Italian painters reflected in the con noisseur treatises was to be seen still more clearly in the vogue for their followers of Northern birth: van Poelenburg, Breenbergh, Aseelyn, Both, and Berchem, to name only the more important ones.