The Story of Spanish PaintingCaffin, Charles H. (Charles Henry)
History
The Story of Spanish Painting
Caffin, Charles H. (Charles Henry)
Painters -- Spain; Painting, Spanish
The three landscapes originally attributed to Velasquez, but now
included by the Director of the Gallery among Mazo’s are: _The Fountain
of the Tritons_ (p. 122), _Calle de la Reina de Aranjuez_, and _The View
of Buen Retiro_. In the first named the tree-stem on the
left-foreground, sprinkled with leaves, is reminiscent of Velasquez, and
the beautiful little figures, so suggestively rendered, may have been
added by him. But the handling of the grey-green foliage of the further
trees, softly blurred against a bluish grey sky, is unlike the method of
Velasquez as seen in any of his landscape backgrounds. On the other
hand, the soft faint masses of tone, subsequently worked over with
little curly strokes, can be found to a greater or less extent in the
foliage parts of all Mazo’s landscapes in this room. The latter, it
should be observed, vary in subject, including views of buildings,
romantic scenes of rocks and waterfalls, sea-shore in combination with
cliffs and temple-ruins, and views more simply naturalistic. To each the
artist has adopted a technique suitable to the occasion, so that it is
not at first sight easy to recognise them as the work of one man.
Mazo, in fact, in his approach to landscape, shows nothing of the
timidity and indecision and tendency to follow closely his master, such
as characterise his portraits. Here he shows himself an original
experimenter, freely pursuing his own motive. In the case of _The
Fountain of the Tritons_ it has brought him to a method that anticipates
the impressionistic style of Corot. The peeps of sky through the soft
screen of trees; their very coloring, the single tree-stem in the
foreground and the envelope of cool grey atmosphere--Corot might have
painted them.
The _Calle de la Reina_ has again a strangely modern air, somewhat that
of a Jules Dupré, when he is not stirred to emotional effects. The
avenue, leading to the palace of Aranjuez, recedes in the shadow of tall
trees, which tower up in dark masses against a fine twilight sky. Its
light is dimly reflected in the grey-blue water of a shadowed lake on
the left of the foreground; the rest of the latter being enlivened with
figures which form the retinue of two arriving coaches. All these
sprinkled forms count as dark spots upon the pale-lighted sandy road. In
its truth of observation and simple nobility of feeling this landscape
would do honor to any school of any period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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