Fu Lei's Romantic landscape painter

After the Revolution,

The characters of the new era have created a new situation in art, just as in literature.

Thoughts have changed, and feelings have changed.

The history of painting is full of their works and glory.

What makes this glorious is a kind of painting landscape painting that is comprehensively influenced by history, literature and art.

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(April 7, 1908 – September 3, 1966), courtesy name Nu'an, was a famous translator, writer, educator, art critic, and one of the important founders of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy (Minjin).

In his early years, he studied art theory at the University of Paris, France, and translated a large number of French works. After returning to China, he taught at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts (now Nanjing Academy of arts), taught art history and French, and was highly accomplished in art and music theory and appreciation, and devoted himself to the translation and introduction of French literature.

He is the author of "The Book of Fu Lei", "John Christopher", "Colonel Shabby", "Human Comedy" and so on.

(*April 7 is Mr. Fu Lei's birthday.) ）

The formula for historical landscape painting set by Poussin has been a law revered by French landscape painters for two centuries. It is so tightly defined about the structure of nature and figures, and how it fits in with the classical spirit, no bold painter dares to change it. People continue to think that human beings are the only artistic materials, and only by the placement of characters can they naturally appear beautiful.

The Louvre is filled with works of this kind from this era.

Loren, Twilight in the Harbor, 1639, oil on canvas, 103cm×137cm, Louvre, Paris

Loren was a painter who grew up on great landscapes. But his "Morning Dawn", his "Dusk", illuminating the merchant port by the sea, all the interspersed with all the branches show that human beings are the masters of nature - this is the principle of historical landscape painting.

Loren, Morning Light in the Harbor, 1648, oil on canvas, 149.1cm×196.7cm, National Gallery, London

In the early 18th century, Watteau painted pools and walkway shades in the Luxembourg Gardens. But his landscape paintings were not made for the landscape itself. The protagonist in the painting is always a crowd of people singing and dancing wildly.

Wartow, "The Isle of West Moss in Zhoufa", 1717, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris

Flagonard, Swing, 1767-1768, oil on canvas, 81cm×64cm, Wallace Collection, London

Fragonard has interspersed landscapes from his hometown of Grasse in his works, but his trees and meadows are merely the background for his characters.

Du Perey's River, oil on canvas, Frick Collection, New York

At that time, some critics, in addition to historical landscape paintings, had produced a kind of pastoral landscape painting. Rocks and trees, replaced by farm tools. The townspeople replaced the knights and nobles. But the spirit of the work is unchanged. The simple and simple realm of loving the countryside was originally a fashion at that time, and the painters only made it to cater to the social psychology, and did not have the real interest in landscape painting.

Jean Jacques Rousseau is praising nature, and Diderot is singing about nature: "Oh! Nature, how beautiful you are, how great, how majestic! "It was the philosophy of the time, the ethos of the time. But this philosophy has not yet reached the stage of blossoming, and landscape art has only remained in that opportunistic stage.

Twenty Lectures on Masterpieces of World Art (Color Plate Edition), Fu Lei, Wenjin Publishing House, May 2021.

In 1796, when David was making a huge historical painting, a Salon critic wrote in his dissertation: "I definitely do not mention landscape painting, it is an improper painting." ”

At the beginning of the 19th century, several painters began to see dutch landscape painters and works by Constable, daring to boldly depict sunsets, dawns, or twilight scenes; but official critics were still obsessed with historical landscape paintings. Perthes, an early art critic of the time, defined the historical landscape in 1817, saying: "Historical style is an art of combining landscapes, and the criterion of the combination is to select the most beautiful and greatest scenery in nature to place characters, and the actions of such figures are either of a historical nature or represent an idea." In this occasion, the scenery must be able to help the character, make his behavior more moving, and stimulate the audience's imagination more. "This is almost the definition of tragedy, and the scenery is nothing more than a set on stage.

However, after the Great Revolution, in the imperial era, the characters of the new era created a new situation in art as in literature. Thoughts have changed, and feelings have changed. The earliest of this group of painters was Corot, born in 1796; followed by Diaz, born in 1809; Dupré born in 1811; and Théodore Rousseau born in 1812.

1830 was the year when these painters reached their mature age and the year when the foundations of Romantic literature were laid; for the next 30 years, the history of painting was filled with their work and glory. What makes this glorious is a kind of painting that is comprehensively influenced by history, literature and art -- landscape painting.

Du Perret has been called "the first Romantic painter". His fine intellect, clear mind, and rich thoughts often occupy the position of advisor among his painters, giving them a good influence. Part of his work is preserved in the Louvre, most notably a landscape painting entitled Morning. It is not only a special work in his personal works, but also characteristic in the whole of Romantic painting.

There are no great landscapes or accidents prescribed by historical landscape paintings, not even a single figure. We saw only a corner of the creek, an oak tree next to the stream, and two ordinary trees in the distance reflecting the shadows in the water.

This is by no means a scenic spot in nature. The river also has no twists and turns. The oak tree is not a century-old tree, and its lines have no dignity and majesty. And oak trees are accompanied by just some bushes of the same form. There were a few rocks piled up by the stream, and two elk were drinking water.

The structure has no elegant symmetry, and the branches of each scene have no decorative role. The whole theme is placed on one side of the picture, and the whole picture does not have a subversive generalization. There is also no prospect for deliberate management, no accurate sketch, and enough to be the focus of the whole painting. Here a solid backbone is only a vague outline of things wrapped around it. Grass and trees seem to be shrouded in clouds, they are all reflected in the shadow of the reflection, they do not really exist, but people guess that they exist. Poussin used to collect flowers, plants, stones and stones while walking, and took him home to do deep research. This era of careful scrutiny is over.

The skyline is depicted very low, occupying the largest position in the map.

So, what is the charm of this painting? It is in the poetry it implies. The emotion that the author wants to evoke is an elusive emotion felt in a situation where the East is white, the morning light is faint, and everything is awakened in the hazy night.

Loren once painted a picture of the sunrise. It was a magnificent and majestic scene. Du Perey did not have such ambitions. His score is more complex and delicate, because it is appealing to the heart, and the tone of sentiment is more elusive than the clear thought.

What the author wants to attract to the audience is the realm of the first awakening of all things at dawn, and the emotions triggered by this realm are extremely dense and fleeting. But he was reluctant to depict humans working on docks or on the main road in the morning light. His object was only two elk drinking water by the stream they knew, only the nectar-laden grass and trees looking up in the dawn, and only the budding flowers swaying in the breeze. What he wants to depict is this intricate set of sensations that evoke in our minds all sorts of idyllic scenes and intimate and intimate moods in nature.

In order to express this new subject matter, the artist had to break with the old tradition and search for new techniques. Historical landscape paintings, like classical literature, are generally for thoughtful people to enjoy. As for the romantic landscape paintings, they were made for sensitive minds. The new truth overthrows the old truth, the symmetrical configuration in the composition, the unity of the image depiction, the interspersed figures to increase the nobility of the whole painting... All these rules collapsed. From now on, when the artist places his central figure in the picture, he no longer bases himself on traditional laws, but on his own tastes. He no longer sacrificed himself to preserve his solemn and great face. He interspersed the most insignificant things in the figures, which were considered insufficient by previous painters. As for the waterfalls, caves, castles, ruins and the like that are common in historical landscape paintings, those that were respected as noble by the past have all been abandoned.

But we must not say that the Romantics abandoned all the laws of drawing, and there are quite a few basic principles that no school of painting can ignore. That is, as in Du Perère's Morning, its main object is the oak tree, and everything else is subordinate to it: another oak tree hidden behind, a bush, a miscellaneous tree reflecting the reflection on the stream, all maintain a subordinate relationship with the main object. There are also different scenes near and far in the painting, and there are also different intensities and weaknesses, and the color of hot and cold are staggered. And, as in the Classical school, there are concerns about making a consistent impression, and the distribution of all branches and leaves is aimed at obtaining this unity: the sky that occupies the greatest part of the map is the illumination of the morning light; the light revealed in the middle of the dense foliage is faint; and it is all surrounded by an uncertain fog.

Here we should pay attention to two points: First, the emotion evoked by this picture is by no means plastique. We are not moved by the beauty of its lines, the beauty of its colours, or the beauty of its tufts of elk. The confluence of these trifles evokes an impression of pure spirit in the viewer. In front of it, we simply grasp an incredible emotion and forget everything about the novelty of composition and technique it contains.

The landscape of the modern era is only the beginning here, and Romanticism is also in the initial stage of expression. Its development trend is not only a kind of Du Perre, that is, Du Perre's sentiments also have more refined confessions.

Rousseau's work is greater and more peculiar than that. Because of his difficult situation, his spirit was full of troubles and bitterness. His father, a parisian craftsman, went bankrupt because of poor management, which made Rousseau taste poverty for a long time. His young wife went crazy and had to divorce him. His art has been misunderstood, and for more than 20 years critics have only sneered at him. Until the Revolution of 1848, his works were rejected annually by the censorship committee of the Salon.

He had the temperament of a poet. He is not expressing the secret dreams of the morning light and twilight, but to determine the vitality that nature wants to contain. During the Renaissance, Donatello had already made this ambition, and he was in extreme distress in pursuit of physical and spiritual impressions of life. But what Rousseau wanted to elaborate was not human life, but life in nature. His feelings, his imagination, enabled him to grasp the spirits of the most despicable creatures with ease. He said to himself that he heard the sound of trees. Their movements, their different forms, taught him to understand the whispers of the forest. He guessed the meaning and enthusiasm of the flower's gesture.

When a person reaches this point, whether a poet or a painter, his eyes are clairvoyant, they can see into the heart within the form. Nature is a supernatural world, but it is familiar to him. With suspicion and vigilance, his heart is only lonely and lonely, and his days are completely spent in the wild, facing the easel, facing nature. Once, while working in the fields, he met a friend who said, "What a pleasure here!" I want to live in silence forever like this. "Yes, the less he has contact with the world, the more he has contact with nature; when he does not want to interact with the crowd, he goes to talk to nature. The so-called nature here is not just the landscape, not just the clouds of the sky, but all the living things and non-living things in nature.

To be elusive and to confess nothing, this is the ambition of the painter Rousseau. This ambition often led him to despair. How many works were destroyed when they were about to be completed! Like Leonardo da Vinci, he continued to invent special methods, to produce special colors and oils, so much so that many of his works became dull and unrecognizable through impure chemistry.

Among his masterpieces is "The Night of Fontainebleau". The landscape behaves like a wonderful building. On both sides stood several large trees, like two bell towers in front of the great temple; the intersecting branches resembled vaults; a vast plain unfolded in the middle; among them there were cattle and sheep, ponds, and isolated trees. Under the trees on both sides, there are scattered rocks and short plants, flowers bloom everywhere, and duckweed floating on the pool.

Rousseau's The Night of Fontainebleau, circa 1850, oil on canvas, 142cm×197.5cm, Louvre, Paris

What the author wants to confess is the silent and invisible vitality circulating under this jungle and above the plain. The majesty of the trunk indicates its independent character, the endless wilderness indicates the magnificence of heaven and earth, and the spread of cattle and sheep indicates rich animal husbandry; even the microcosm of flowers and grasses also reveals their thriving life. However, the author understands that the power of synthesis is the strongest, so he does not seek the expression of trivialities; and after all the small branches are gathered, the most important thing is a brilliant light, turning a picture into a symphony. So he repeatedly revised and applied the color; if he still could not get the desired effect after various inquiries, he turned to the painful despair. In the midst of suffering, either the unfinished work was destroyed, or after the frenzy, the clear consciousness made him suddenly perceive great harmony.

Like Du Peret, Rousseau did not seek to express the truth of nature, but the face of nature that had been contemplated by his heart. He replaces accurate reality with his personality, characters, and visions, and he celebrates the potential vitality of the universe. His paintings are nothing more than lyric poems, nothing less than expressions of a spiritual realm. He himself has said that he created illusions to deceive himself, and that he used his inventions as food for the spirit.

Through the efforts of Du Peret, Rousseau and his contemporaries, landscape painting has reached a degree of independence, it has lost its former auxiliary role, decorative role, it is already a landscape painting for "landscape". We have already said that this is the product of the whole epoch, and has the same reasons as romantic literature that it had to happen, and that this is due to the unanimous spiritual demands of the people of the time. Like Romantic literature, landscape painting can express more than the above-mentioned people, because its lyrical aspects are many, and the tone used for lyricism changes from time to time. Our following mention of Corot is to illustrate the culmination of the success of this new school.

In terms of life, Corot is already a happy child compared to Rousseau. He was 16 years older than Rousseau and lived 8 years longer. The rise and fall of the Romantics was witnessed by him. His life was entirely a calm day. His works are devoid of revolutionary color and have always been tolerated by government salons. When the review committee decided not to award him a silver medal, his friends cast a gold medal for him. He was not at all affected by the sorrow that Rousseau experienced. At the age of 77, when he first felt sick, he and his friends said, "I have nothing to complain about my fate." I enjoy health, I have a love of nature, and I can devote my life to painting. My family is full of good people. I have sincere friends because I have never sinned against anyone. Not only can I not complain about my fate, but I should be especially grateful for it. ”

Corot, Memories of Montefontaine, 1864, oil on canvas, 65cm×89cm, Louvre, Paris

In terms of art itself, Corot's works are a few more than Rousseau's. His environment allowed him to work with peace of mind, and his artistic genius slid out like a stream of water. In his twilight years, his works were already stereotyped, known as the "Cro-Pai". In contrast to Rousseau's appearance and Corot's, then, the nature that Rousseau saw was the connection of the various parts of the landscape, the outline of the trees and the land. He was like an innocent child, wandering in nature, full of curiosity about every grass and tree: the knots of the branches, the crests of the rocks, almost all like the personality of the creatures in fairy tales. But he did not know that beyond the trees and rocks, there was an atmosphere (atmosphére) wrapped around them, and the change of light was only an unimportant branch for him. The sunlight he depicts, always a calm sunset, is in a position of direct reflection with the trees, because this can show the majesty of the trees.

As for Corot, he turned these natural scenes, which are purely visual, into a pastoral lyric poem. Silver clouds, verdant trees, a few understated branches swaying in the air, and the dark forest gap on the ground reflects the shadows and dances of several vague night gods. The shadow of the tree is no longer as fixed as Rousseau's, and its three-dimensionality disappears and melts in the atmosphere of light floating. The contours of all the plants on the ground are broken, filling the space between heaven and earth, and what gives nature a unified atmosphere is an atmosphere that has never been expected by previous generations. In this way, the natural world becomes infinite, uncertain, full of mysteries and mysteries, and in his paintings everything trembles, like the endless sound of the strings of a violin. So free, so lively, half hazy, half clear, this is the realm of Verlaine's poetry.

Modern landscape painting not only reached its peak by Corot, but also began a new stage by him. His discovery about atmosphere led the Impressionists to analyze the study of outer light. He takes the atmosphere as the main tone of a painting, and summarizes the various colors in this one harmony. Here, landscape painting has a musical connotation, because this atmosphere is not only the tone that governs everything, but also an intermediate color between the tone and other colors.

In terms of the system of painting history, Romantic landscape painting only makes this style get rid of the status of the past subordinate to the history painting of figure painting, and become a free lyrical painting. However, in addition to this precise meaning, there was also a technological revolution.

The orthodox official school has always adhered to the law of "couleur locale" as the law of color. They believe that everything has a fixed color, for example, the tree is green, the grass is green, and so on. Because they work indoors for many years, they are accustomed to watching things in the gray and white light that is not dim, and they never know that under the sun, the colors of all things are infinitely changing.

Now, the Romantic painters painted in the outer light, clustered in the forest of Fontainebleau on the outskirts of Paris, they saw the differences in the morning, sunset, noon and night scenes, and saw the flowers, plants, trees and stones in different colors during this time. Within half a century, it had a great impact, enlightening the extreme naturalistic style of later painters who founded Impressionism.

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