Domenichino were content with an empty landscape formula, based on imperfect understanding of the romantic side of Titian's genius. Claude inherited this formula, and transformed it into a pleasing artificial poetry. The secret of his taste was a passionate admiration of Italy, not only for the purity of her air, the brightness of her sunshine, the shapeliness of her trees and mountains, the extent of her plains, or the clearness of her sea, but more than all for the fallen columns, the shattered walls, and the crumbling arches that recalled her glorious history. Founding his art upon the dull tradition of the Eclectics, he made the masses graceful, filled void spaces with appropriate detail, drew trees that had some resemblance to the trees of nature, painted a sea that could glitter with waves that actually seemed to splash, and spread over all a sky that was like a real sky—no convenient conventional twilight, but veritable day, with a warm sun in full view.
His sketches are even fresher and more natural than his paintings, and show how large a store of charming material he found time to amass. It must always be a matter for regret that the example of his predecessors, though it could not stifle his love of nature, was strong enough to fetter it with the formal ideals of the Grand Style. Hence come the ill-drawn patriarchs, the weak-knee'd heroes, the brickfaced nymphs, and pinchbeck architecture that are dragged in to dignify scenes upon which their presence is the one obvious blot.
Of the landscape of Gaspar Poussin and Salvator Rosa it is unnecessary to speak at length, since their method differs but slightly from that of Claude. Their touch was heavier than his, their paint was thicker and less translucent, they often worked on dark red grounds, they preferred abrupt or rugged forms, sharp oppositions of light and shadow, with rolling storm-clouds, to his gentle graceful outlines, delicate gradations of tone, and perfect serenity of summer air, but in all essentials they may be classed with him. The spirit of their work was infected, like his, with the poisonous tradition that landscape was a branch of historical painting, and the disease thus induced made further progress in the art impossible.
So lasting were its effects that our first great landscape painter, Richard Wilson, was unable to shake it off. His work, with all its poetry, its skill, its refinement, is too often marred by the
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