Velasquez at the New Gallery

A collection of Spanish Art at the New Gallery contains such representation as it has been possible to acquire of Murillo, Ribera, and Zurbaran -- and even of the artists of our own century: Goya, Madrazo, Fortuny -- but nothing that vies for a moment in attractiveness and vitality with the work of Velasquez. Unfortunately, it does not include two of the most important of those canvases of Velasquez which have a resting-place in England -- Mr. Bankes's priceless ‘document' (for it is that and something besides), the first study, we mean, at Kingston Lacy, for the great Madrid picture of ‘Las Meninas,' and the yet more important, because the even more exceptional and more perfected picture, the astonishing ‘Venus,' whose home for many years has been at a small country house upon the borders of two counties in the North. The sketch -- the oil sketch, for Velasquez never made preparatory drawings -- the sketch of ‘Las Meninas' would have recalled appropriately the composition, and conveyed something of the character of a mature masterpiece whose actual presence can never be looked for here; and the recumbent ‘Venus' would have shown an almost austere artist winning for once an easy triumph in the treatment of a luxurious theme, more properly, or more habitually, Titian's. But, as it is, the representation of Velasquez, in Regent Street, affords ground for study. We could wish, for our own part, that decorative, even symmetrical, arrangement had been discarded, and that the master's works, as far as they are here, had been seen close together, with no distracting juxtaposition of paintings of a secondary rank. To have ranged the Velasquez canvases in order of date would have been at least to have facilitated reference and to have assisted observation.

Nothing, perhaps, is earlier, among the canvases of Velasquez now shown, than the large, somewhat straggling picture -- with perfect composition yet to learn -- of a ‘Peasant Boy Feeding Fowls. ' It comes from Ireland, and is lent by Lady Gregory. It does not, in every particular, want breadth of treatment: it is broader in treatment, indeed, than some things which may presumably have been painted not very long after it. The vigour of perception, the realistic outlook upon life, the point of view, in fact, is hardly less characteristic than in work avowedly mature; yet, to pass on from it to painting of the first Madrid, rather than of the Seville, period, is to move into the presence of a much greater accomplishment. Before taking another step, however, it may be well to glance at one picture like it in subject, and, it is scarcely too much to say, even richer in handling -- a picture not Velasquez's at all, yet a link in the chain of his history, for it is the work of his first master, whose harsh temper drove the youth from his painting-room -- Herrera el Viejo: it is a broad and finely treated representation of a bird upon the wing -- ‘A Partridge. ' This is one among the many interesting loans of Sir Clare Ford, whose opportunities of study have been exceptional, and whose devotion to Velasquez himself is indeed hereditary.