and sharply finished, productions; for precision of touch, which he terms sharp finishing, is just what it

wants.

Were any modern Academician to paint such hands and feet as may be found in this picture, he would be justly censured. And, as a further test of the truths and opinions to which we are here giving utterance-let these extremities be compared with the hands, feet, &c. in Rubens's Rape of the Sabines, which are numerous. We venture to predict, that it will soon appear whether we ought or ought not, to ascribe them to the pencil of Rubens himself, or to that of some pupil.

P. S. Saint George appears to have been a great favourite with Sir Peter Paul, whose fervid fancy was precisely of a description to catch from his romantic story the lambent flame of chivalrous inspiration and pictorial enterprise. Beside the abovementioned triumphs of the renowned knight, he painted, while in England, a Victory of St. George, still avoiding that equestrian exhibition of the Christian knight to which other artists had attached themselves. But-of this subject, he produced a very fine picture for Charles I. wherein the King of England is made to personate the victorious champion; and the Queen (Henrietta Maria) represents the proselyte princess, from whom St. George is gallantly receiving the fascinating girdle. Whether this allude to any hope or expectation entertained by the king or the painter, that the queen would become protestant, may be conjectured, but cannot now be ascertained. The picture, which belongs to British history, is in his Majesty's collection, and adorns the new Rubens room at

Windsor Castle, which has lately been judiciously arranged by Mr. Seguier. The landscape part of this curious picture, being portrayed from the banks of our own Thames, near Richmond,-the worklike Rubens's Lyric Ode to King Charles-is intimately connected with the national history.

AN ITALIAN SUMMER'S MORNING, WITH A
PROCESSION OF PEASANTRY.

JAN BOTH.

WHEN Jan Both migrated from Utrecht to Italy, he did not, like Rubens, continue to cherish his home recollections, but, roused to romantic ardour by the rocks, waterfalls, lakes, and luxuriant verdure of the land of classic landscape, resigned his earlier feelings, to the influence and imagery of its genial climate, which carried him almost to the opposite extreme; and hence instead of the dank meadows, and cool and willow-clad rivulets, of the Low Countries, which glide into "the lazy Scheldt"-passionately attached himself to those glowing southern sun-sets, and romantic, thorny-shaped trees-abundant in branches and scant of foliage, which he found shooting up from among the fissures between the granite and marble blocks of the Pennine Alps, and of Sienna and Tuscany; which were congenial to his own peculiar taste. His talent was like a flower or a tree that had sprung up in chilliness, transplanted and transported to a kindly climate, where it could bloom and fructify in wild luxuriance. Rocks, ruins, and waterfalls, wildness, and a warm atmosphere-were the elements

of his taste; and the interesting and beautiful effects of agricultural neglect, and the accidents of Nature -the genuine sources of legitimate variety in landscape-painting, he well knew to treasure up and transmute to pictorial gold. He could group and combine these rich beauties, in all their various forms and attitudes, and adapt them to the especial nature of each of his several landscape compositions.

The neighbourhood of the small lakes which lie between the foot of the Alps and the northern commencement of the Apennine mountains, traversed as they are by picturesque trains of mules and peasantry conveying their mercantile wares and market produce, were to our artist, paradisical scenes, in which his fancy and his pencil expatiated; and so keen and tenacious were his sensibilities, and so much beauty did he perceive in, and extract from, her minutest forms--so dear were they severally to his peculiar taste, that he appears unwilling to spare, or suppress, a single one-even where other landscape-painters would have thought, or inferred, that the necessary attention to breadth absolutely required such suppression. Hence his compositions are, perhaps, somewhat too much crowded with minute particulars —at least for what is at present, English and conventional in landscape-painting; but yet are extremely beautiful, and highly gratifying to those congenial tastes which love to linger and dwell on the details of Nature, and can trace elegance in a solitary oat, or bulrush, or mossy branch, as well as grandeur in a forest of pine or oak trees.

The present landscape has all the delightful characteristics of the master; and, being a morning scene, in which the spectator is taught to believe he

is looking southward, has more of cool grey than his sun-sets; and though it abounds in wild accidents of minute beauty, the breadth and harmony of the chiaroscuro are so little disturbed thereby, that after you have enjoyed the general effect by a distant view, you may approach and dwell severally upon the parts of which it consists, with no less delight.

Tracing, as in his works you may, almost every movement of his tasteful pencil, and the delicate perception and intense enjoyment of the more minute wildnesses of nature that must have attended on, or prompted, those movements, it is difficult to imagine a happier man in his professional concernment, than Jan Both must have been whilst practically engaged in his art.

He may be regarded as the contemporary, and in some degree as the rival, of Claude of Lorraine, for though born ten years after that distinguished painter, he died thirty-two years before him, having been accidentally drowned in the canal at Venice. His works are therefore comparatively few; and if Claude excelled him, it was not till after he was dead. Had he lived to the age of his rival, there is no knowing that the balance might not have preponderated the other way.

Those few pictures, however, amply justify the encomiums of his biographers. Pilkington and Strutt coincide in stating that "the warmth of his skies; the judicious and regular receding of his objects; and the sweetness of his distances, afford a pleasure superior to that produced by the works of almost any other artist. His tints are so admirably formed [selected] as to express not only the light of morning breaking from behind hills and woods, and diffusing

a warm glow over the whole face of Nature; and also the setting of the sun with its tinge in the clouds; but even the different hours of the day. By his glowing colouring, he obtained the distinction of being called Both of Italy." But perhaps this addition may have been used partly to distinguish him from his brother Andrew, who settled in his native city of Utrecht.

No person of taste who looks at the present picture, and who had the honour of Sir George Beaumont's acquaintance, will be surprised at the evident pleasure which the baronet enjoyed and expressed, in possessing so fine a picture from the pencil of John Both. Few pictures have more of what we deem the best evidence of a perfect landscape: namely that it leaves the connoisseur in doubt whether it be a view or a composition-so completely is the truth of Nature combined with the charms of Art. There are, doubtless, many such scenes in Nature, where the Tyrolean Alps break down among the lakes and rivers of Northern Italy, and it is more than possible that the mountain torrent, which forms a small cascade at the right hand corner of the picture, may feed the Adige, or some other streamlet of the Po.

The procession of mules laden with merchandise, is introduced with competent local knowledge, and painted with exquisite taste. The far off traveller passing near an immense granite rock, shows the devious winding of the rugged Alpine road. The distant lake, with the towers and villages beyond, and the more distant branch of the Apennine Mountains, melting as it were into the glowing atmosphere, are happily and harmoniously combined. And amid these ample features, the rising larks are not forgotten;