See Transcriber's Notes at end of Text.

ARTISTS PAST AND PRESENT

By the Same Author

The Works of James McNeill Whistler. Illustrated with
Many Reproductions of Etchings, Lithographs, Pastels and Paintings,
6-3/4 × 9-1/4 Inches. Boxed, $4.00 Net. (Postage 32 cents.)

A study of Whistler and his works, including etchings, lithographs, pastels, water-colors, paintings, landscapes. Also a chapter on Whistler's "Theory of Art."

The Same.—Limited Edition de Luxe. The Limited Edition
of the Above Work, Illustrated with Additional Examples
on Japan and India Paper. Printed on Van Gelder Hand-made
Paper, with Wide Margins. Limited to 250 Numbered
and Signed Copies, of which a few are left unsold. Boxed,
$15.00 Net. (Postage Extra.)

The Art of William Blake. Uniquely and Elaborately Illustrated.
Size 7-1/2 × 10-1/2 Inches. Wide Margins. Boxed, $3.50
Net. (Postage 25 cents.)

A volume of great distinction, discussing the art of Blake in several unusual phases, and dwelling importantly upon his Manuscript Sketch Book, to which the author has had free access, and from which the publishers have drawn freely for illustrations, many of which have never been published before.

Dans la Loge From a painting by Mary Cassatt

ARTISTS PAST AND PRESENT

RANDOM STUDIES

BY

ELISABETH LUTHER CARY

Author of "The Art of William Blake," "Whistler," Etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 1909

Copyright, 1909, by
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
NEW YORK

Published, September, 1909
The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

CONTENTS

[Pg vii]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg 1]

ARTISTS PAST AND PRESENT

I

Antoine Louis Barye

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art are two pictures by the Florentine painter of the fifteenth century called Piero di Cosimo. They represent hunting scenes, and the figures are those of men, women, fauns, satyrs, centaurs, and beasts of the forests, fiercely struggling together. As we observe the lion fastening his teeth in the flesh of the boar, the bear grappling with his human slayer, and the energy and determination of the creatures at bay, our thought involuntarily bridges a chasm of four centuries and calls up the image of the Barye bronzes in which are displayed the same detachment of vision, the same absence of sentimentality, the same vigor and intensity if not quite the same strangeness of imagination. It is manifestly unwise to carry the parallel very far, yet there is still another touch of similarity in the beautiful surfaces. Piero's fine, delicate handling of pigment is in the same manner of expression as Barye's exquisite manipulation of his metal after the casting, his beautiful thin patines that do not suppress but reveal sensitive[Pg 2] line and subtle modulation. We know little enough of Piero beyond what his canvases tell us. Of Barye we naturally know more, although everything save what his work confides of his character and temperament is of secondary importance, and he is interesting to moderns, especially as the father of modern animal sculpture, and not for the events of his quiet life.

Portrait of Antoine Louis Barye From a painting by J. F. Millet

Antoine Louis Barye, born at Paris September 15, 1796, died June 25, 1875, in the same year with Corot and at the same age. The circumstances under which he began his career have been told in detail by more than one biographer, but it would be difficult rightly to estimate the importance and singularity of his work without some review of them. His father was a jeweler of Lyons, who settled in Paris before Antoine was born, and whose idea of education for his son was to place him at less than fourteen with an engraver of military equipments from whom he learned to engrave on steel and other metals, and later with a jeweler from whom he learned to make steel matrixes for molding reliefs from thin metals. A certain stress has been laid on this lack of schooling in the conventional sense of the word, but it is difficult to see that it did much harm, since Barye, though he was not a correct writer of French, was a great reader, keenly intelligent in his analysis of the knowledge he gained from books, and with extraordinary power of turning it to his own[Pg 3] uses. Such a mind does not seriously miss the advantages offered by a formal training, and it might fairly be argued that the manual skill developed at the work-bench was in the long run more valuable to him than the abstract knowledge which he might have acquired in school could possibly have been. Be that as it may, up to the time of his marriage in 1823 he had a varied apprenticeship. At sixteen he was drawn as a conscript and was first assigned to the department where maps in relief are modeled. Before he was twenty-one he was working with a sculptor called Bosio, and also in the studio of the painter, Baron Gros. He studied Lamarck, Cuvier and Buffon. He competed five times for the Prix de Rome at the Salon, once in the section of medals and four times in the section of sculpture, succeeding once (in the first competition) in gaining a second prize. He then went back to the jeweler's bench for eight years, varying the monotony of his work by modeling independently small reliefs of Eagle and Serpent, Eagle and Antelope, Leopard, Panther, and other animals.

In 1831 he sent to the Salon of that year the Tiger Devouring a Gavial of the Ganges, a beautiful little bronze, seven and a half inches high, which won a Second Medal and was bought by the Government for the Luxembourg. This was the beginning of his true career. In the same Salon was exhibited his Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, but[Pg 4] the powerful realism and energy of the animal group represented what henceforth was to be Barye's characteristic achievement, the realization, that is, of what the Chinese call the "movement of life;" the strange reality of appearance that is never produced by imitation of nature and that makes the greatness of art. The tiger clutches its victim with great gaunt paws, its eyes are fixed upon the prey, its body is drawn together with tense muscles, its tail is curled, the serpent is coiled about the massive neck of its destroyer with large undulating curves. The touch is everywhere certain, the composition is dignified, and the group as an exhibition of extraordinary knowledge is noteworthy.

A lithograph portrait of Barye by Gigoux, made at about this time, shows a fine head, interested eyes, a firm mouth and a determined chin. His chief qualities were perseverance, scientific curiosity, modesty and pride, and that indomitable desire for perfection so rarely encountered and so precious an element in the artist's equipment. He was little of a talker, little of a writer, infinitely studious, somewhat reserved and cold in manner, yet fond of good company and not averse to good dinners. Guillaume said of him that he had the genius of great science and of high morality, which is the best possible definition in a single phrase of his artistic faculty. He had the kind of sensitiveness, or self-esteem, if you will, that frequently[Pg 5] goes with a mind confident of its merits, but not indifferent to criticism or sufficiently elevated and aloof to dispense with resentment. In 1832 he sent to the Salon his Lion Crushing a Serpent, and in 1833 he sent a dozen animal sculptures, a group of medallions and six water-colors. That year he was made chevalier of the Legion of Honour, but the following year nine groups made for the Duke of Orleans were rejected by the Salon jury, and again in 1836 several small pieces were rejected, although the Seated Lion, later bought by the government, was accepted. The reasons for the rejections are not entirely clear, but Barye was an innovator, and in the field of art the way of the innovator is far harder than that of the transgressor. Charges of commercialism were among those made against him, and he—the least commercial of men—took them deeply to heart. His bitterness assumed a self-respecting but an inconvenient and unprofitable form, as he made up his mind to exhibit thereafter only in his own workshop, a resolution to which he held for thirteen years. After the rejection of his groups in 1834 he happened to meet Jules Dupré, who expressed his disgust with the decision. "It is quite easy to understand," Barye replied, "I have too many friends on the jury." This touch of cynicism indicates the ease with which he was wounded, but it was equally characteristic of him that in planning his simple revenge[Pg 6] he hurt only himself. He did indeed refrain from sending his bronzes to the Salon and he did act as his own salesman, and the result was the incurrence of a heavy debt. To meet this he was obliged to sell all his wares to a founder who wanted them for the purpose of repeating them in debased reproductions. His own care in obtaining the best possible results in each article that he produced, his reluctance to sell anything of the second class, and his perfectly natural dislike to parting with an especially beautiful piece under any circumstances, did not, of course, work to his business advantage, although the amateurs who have bought the bronzes that came from his own refining hand have profited by it immensely. It would be a mistake, however, to think of him as a crushed or even a deeply misfortunate man. He simply was poor and not appreciated by the general public according to his merits. After 1850, however, he had enough orders from connoisseurs, many of them Americans, and also from the French government to make it plain that his importance as an artist was firmly established at least in the minds of a few. He sold his work at low prices which since his death have been trebled and quadrupled, in fact, some of his proofs have increased fifty-fold, but the fact that he was not overwhelmed with orders gave him that precious leisure to spend upon the perfecting of his work which, we may fairly assume, was worth more to him than money.

From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq. Lion devouring a Doe ("LION DEVORANT UNE BICHE")

From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq. Bull thrown to Earth by a Bear ("TAUREAU TERRASSÉ PAR UN OURS") From a bronze by Barye

[Pg 7]

Nor was he entirely without honor in his own country. At the Universal Exposition of 1855 he received the Grand Medal of Honour in the section of artistic bronzes, and in the same year the Officer's Cross of Legion of Honour—a dignity that is said to have reached poor Rousseau only when he was too near death to receive the messengers. In 1868 Barye was made Member of the Institute, although two years earlier he had been humiliated by having his application refused. And from America, in addition to numerous proofs of the esteem in which he was held there by private amateurs, he received through Mr. Walters in 1875 an order to supply the Corcoran Gallery at Washington with an example of every bronze he had made. This last tribute moved him to tears, and he replied, "Ah! Monsieur Walters, my own country has never done anything like that for me!" These certainly were far from being trivial satisfactions, and Barye had also reaped a harvest of even subtler joys. One likes to think of him in Barbizon, living in cordial intimacy with Diaz and Rousseau and Millet and the great Daumier. Here he had sympathy, excellent talk of excellent things, the company of artists working as he did, with profound sincerity and intelligence, and he had a chance himself to paint in the vast loneliness of the woods where he could let his imagination roam, and could find a home for his tigers and lions and bears studied in menageries and in[Pg 8] the Jardin des Plantes. It is pleasant also to think of him among the five and twenty Amis du Vendredi dining together at little wineshops on mutton and cheese and wine with an occasional pâté given as a treat by some member in funds for the moment. He was not above enthusiasm for "un certain pâté de maquereau de Calais" and he was fond of the theater and of all shows where animals were to be seen. It is pleasantest of all to think of him at his work, the beauty of which he knew and the ultimate success of which he could hardly have doubted.

From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq. A Lioness From a bronze by Barye

In what does the extraordinary quality of this work consist? The question is not difficult to answer, since, like most of the truly great artists, Barye had clear-cut characteristics among which may be found those that separate him from and raise him above his contemporaries. Scientific grasp of detail and artistic generalization are to be found in all his work where an animal is the subject, and this combination is in itself a mark of greatness. If we should examine the exceptionally fine collection of Barye bronzes belonging to the late Mr. Cyrus J. Lawrence, and consisting of more than a hundred beautiful examples, or the fine group in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, we should soon learn his manner and the type established by him in his animal subjects. In the presence of so large a number of the works of a single artist, certain features common to the[Pg 9] whole accomplishment may easily be traced. One dominating characteristic in this case is the ease with which the anatomical knowledge of the artist is worn. Even in the early bronzes the execution is free, large, and quite without the dry particularity that might have been expected from a method the most exacting and specific possible. Barye from the first went very deeply into the study of anatomy, examining skeletons, and dissecting animals after death to gain the utmost familiarity with all the bones and muscles, the articulations, the fur and skin and minor details. His reading of Cuvier and Lamarck indicates his interest in theories of animal life and organism. He took, also, great numbers of comparative measurements that enabled him to represent not merely an individual specimen of a certain kind of animal, but a type which should be true in general as well as in particular. He would measure, for example, the bones of a deer six months old and those of a deer six weeks old, carefully noting all differences in order to form a definite impression of the normal measurements of the animal at different ages. He made comparative drawings of the skulls of cats, tigers, leopards, panthers, the whole feline species, in short, seeking out the principles of structure and noting the dissimilarities due to differences in size. He made innumerable drawings of shoulders, heads, paws, nostrils, ears, carefully recording the[Pg 10] dimensions on each sketch. Among his notes was found a minute description of the characteristic features of a blooded horse.

He was never content with merely an external observation of a subject when he had it in his power to penetrate the secrets of animal mechanism. He first made sketches of his subjects, of course, but frequently he also modeled parts of the animal in wax on the spot to catch the characteristic movement. His indefatigable patience in thus laying the groundwork of exact knowledge suggests the thoroughness of the old Dutch artists. He followed, too, the recommendation of Leonardo—so dangerous to any but the strongest mind—to draw the parts before drawing the whole, to "learn exactitude before facility."

From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq. The Prancing Bull ("TAUREAU CABRÉ") From a bronze by Barye

A story is told of a visit paid him by the sculptor Jacquemart: "I will show you what I have under way, just now," said he to his friend, and looking about his studio for a moment, drew out a couple of legs and stood them erect. After a few seconds of puzzled thought he remembered the whereabouts of the other members, and finally drew out the head from under a heap in a corner. And the statue once in place was conspicuous for its fine sense of unity. It was not, of course, this meticulous method, but the use he made of it, that led Barye to his great results. His mind was strengthened and enriched by every fragment of knowledge with which he fed it. It all went[Pg 11] wholesomely and naturally to the growth of his artistic ideas, and he does not appear to have been interested in acquiring knowledge that did not directly connect itself with these ideas. By his perfect familiarity with the facts upon which he built his conceptions he was fitted to use them intelligently, omit them where he chose, exaggerate them where he chose, minimize them where he chose. They did not fetter him; they freed him; and he could work with them blithely, unhampered by doubts and inabilities. It is most significant both of his accuracy and his freedom that in constructing his models he dispensed with the rigid iron skeleton on which the clay commonly is built. Having modeled the different parts of his composition, he brought them together and supported them from the outside by means of crutches and tringles, after the fashion of the boat builders, thus enabling himself to make alterations, corrections and revisions to the very end of his task. The definitive braces were put in place only at the moment of the molding in plaster.

Panther seizing a Deer From a bronze by Barye

For small models he preferred to use wax which does not dry and crack like the clay. He also sometimes covered his plaster model with a layer, more or less thick, of wax, upon which he could make a more perfect rendering of superficial subtleties. Occasionally, as in the instance of The Lion Crushing the Serpent, cast by Honoré Gonon, he employed the process called à cire perdue, in[Pg 12] which the model is first made in wax, then over it is formed a mold from which the wax is melted out by heat. The liquid bronze is poured into the matrix thus formed, and when this has become cold the mold is broken off, leaving an almost accurate reproduction of the original model, which is also, of course, unique, the wax model and the mold both having been destroyed in the process. Upon his patines he lavished infinite care. Theodore Child has given an excellent description of the difference between this final enrichment of a bronze as applied by a master and the patine of commerce. "The ideal patine," he says, "is an oxydation and a polish, without thickness, as it were, a delicate varnish or glaze, giving depth and tone to the metal. Barye's green patine as produced by himself has these qualities of lightness and richness of tone, whereas the green patine of the modern proofs is not a patine, not an oxydation, but an absolute application of green color in powder, a mise en couleur, as the technical phrase is. In places this patine will be nearly a millimeter thick and will consequently choke up all delicate modeling, soften all that is sharp, and render the bronze dull, mou, heavy. To produce Barye's fine green patine, requires time and patience, and for commercial bronze is impracticable. Barye, however, was never a commercial man. When a bronze was ordered he would never promise it at any fixed date; he would ask for one or two or three[Pg 13] months; 'he did not know exactly, it would depend on how his patine came.'"

His patines are by no means all green; some of them are almost golden in their vitality of color—the "patine médaillé," as in The Walking Deer, which is a superb example; some are dark brown approaching black. The most beautiful in color and delicacy which I have seen is that on Mr. Lawrence's Bull Felled by a Bear (Taureau terrassé par un ours), a bronze which seems to me in many particulars to remain a masterpiece unsurpassed by the more violent and splendid later works. Another remarkable example of the effect of color possible to produce by a patine is furnished by the Lion Devouring a Doe (Lion devorant une biche), dated 1837. The green lurking in the shadows and the coppery gleam on the ridge of the spine, the thigh, and the bristling mane, the rich yet bright intermediate tones, give a wonderful brilliancy and vitality to the magnificent little piece in which the ferocity of nature and the charm and lovableness of art are commingled. In his interesting book on Barye, published by the Barye Monument Association, Mr. De Kay has referred to this work as an example of Barye's power to reproduce the horrible and to make one's blood run cold with the ferocity of the destroying beast. It seems to me, however, that it is one of the pieces in which Barye's power to represent the horrible without destroying the[Pg 14] peace of mind to be found in all true art, is most obvious. With his capacity for emphasizing that which he wishes to be predominant in his composition he has brought out to the extreme limit of expression the strength of the lion and its savage interest in its prey. The lashing tail, the wrinkled nose, the concentrated eyes are fully significant of the mood of the beast, and were the doe equally defined the effect would be disturbing. But the doe, lying on the ground, is treated almost in bas-relief, hardly distinguishable against the massive bulk of its oppressor. The appeal is not to pity, but to recognition of the force of native instincts. Added to this is the beauty, subtly distinguished and vigorously rendered, of the large curves of the splendid body of the lion. Even among the superb later pieces it would be difficult to find one with greater beauty of flowing line and organic composition.

In the illustration we can see the general contour from one point of view, but we cannot see the rhythm of the curves balancing and repeating each other from the tip of the uplifted tail to the arch of the great neck. Nor is a particle of energy sacrificed to these beautiful contours. The body is compact, the head large and expressive of power, the thick paws rest with weight on the ground. There is none of the pulling out of forms so often employed to give grace and so usually suggestive of weakness. The composition is at once absolutely graceful and eloquent[Pg 15] of immense physical force. In the Panther Seizing a Deer (Panthère saississant un Cerf), one of the largest of the animal groups, we have again the characteristic double curves, the fine play of line, and the appropriate fitting of the figures into a long oval, and also the minimizing of the cruelty of the subject by the reticent art with which it is treated. We see clearly enough the angry jaws, the curled tail, the weight of the attacking beast falling on the head of its victim, dragging it toward the ground. Nothing is slighted or compromised. We see even the gash in the flesh made by the panther's claws and the drops of blood trickling from the wound. But we have to thank Barye's instinct for refined conception that these features of the work do not claim and hold our attention which is absorbed by the vital line, the gracious sweep of the contours, the lovely surface, and the omission of all irrelevant and unreasonable detail.

Many of Barye's subjects included the human figure and in a few instances the human figure alone preoccupied him. Occasionally he was very successful in this kind. The small silver reproduction of Hercules Carrying a Boar has the remarkable quality of easy force. The figure of Hercules is without exaggerated muscles, is normally proportioned and quietly modeled. His burden rests lightly on his shoulders, and his free long stride indicates that the labor is joy. This is the ancient, not the modern[Pg 16] tradition, and the little figure corresponds, curiously enough, with one of the male figures in the Piero di Cosimo mentioned at the beginning of this article. In the latter case the strong man is engaged in combat with a living animal, but he carries his strength with the same assurance and absence of effort in its exercise. Barye, however, does not always give this happy impression when he seeks to represent the human figure. If we compare, for example, the bronze made in 1840 for the Duke of Montpensier (Roger Bearing off Angelica on the Hippogriff) with any of the animal groups of that decade or earlier, we can hardly fail to be amazed at the lack of unity in the composition and the distracting multiplicity of the details. If we compare the Hunt of the Tiger with the Asian Elephant Crushing Tiger the great superiority of the latter in the arrangement of the masses, the dignity of the proportions, and in economy of detail, is at once evident. The figures of the four stone groups on the Louvre, however, have a certain antique nobility of design and withal a naturalness that put them in the first class of modern sculpture, I think.

From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq. The Lion and the Serpent ("LION AU SERPENT") From a bronze by Barye

One point worthy of note in any comparison between Barye's animals and his human beings is the intensity and subtlety of expression in the former and the absence of any marked expression in the latter. His men are practically masked. No passion or emotion makes its[Pg 17] impression on their features. Even their gestures, violent though they may be, seem inspired from without and not by the impulse of their own feelings. His animals on the contrary show many phases of what must be called, for lack of a more exact word, psychological expression. A striking instance of this is found in the contrast between the sketch for The Lion Crushing the Serpent and the finished piece. In the sketch there is terror in the lion's face, his paw is raised to strike at the reptile, his tail is uplifted and lashing, the attitude and expression are those of terror mingled with rage and the serpent appears the aggressor. In the finished bronze the lion is calmer and in obvious possession of the field. The fierce claws pushing out from their sheathing, the eyes that seem to snarl with the mouth, the massive paw resting on the serpent's coiled body combine to give a subtle impression of certain mastery, and the serpent is unquestionably the victim and defendant in the encounter. It is by such intuitive reading of the aspect of animals of diverse kinds, that Barye awakens the imagination and leads the mind into the wilderness of the untamed world. He is perhaps most himself when depicting moods of concentration. The fashion in which he gathers the great bodies together for springing upon and holding down their prey is absolutely unequaled among animal sculptors. His mind handled monumental compositions with greater success, I think,[Pg 18] than compositions of the lighter type in which the subject lay at ease or exhibited the pure joy of living which we associate with the animal world.

Two exceptions to this statement come, however, at once to my mind—the delightful Bear in his Trough and the Prancing Bull. The former is the only instance I know of a Barye animal disporting itself with youthful irresponsibility, and the innocence and humor of the little beast make one wish that it had not occupied this unique place in the list of Barye's work. The Prancing Bull also is a conception by itself and one of which Barye may possibly have been a little afraid. With his extraordinary patience it is not probable that he had the opposite quality of ability to catch upon the fly, as it were, a passing motion, an elusive and swiftly fading effect. But in this instance he has rendered with great skill the curvetting spring of the bull into the air and the lightness of the motion in contrast with the weight of the body. This singular lightness or physical adroitness he has caught also in his representation of elephants, the Elephant of Senégal Running, showing to an especial degree the agility of the animal despite its enormous bulk and ponderosity.

While Barye's most important work was accomplished in the field of sculpture, his merits as a painter were great. His devotion to the study of structural expression was too stern to permit him to lapse into mediocrity, whatever[Pg 19] medium he chose to use, and the animals he created, or re-created, on canvas are as thoroughly understood, as clearly presented, as artistically significant as those in bronze. With every medium, however, there is, of course, a set of more or less undefinable laws governing its use. Wide as the scope of the artist is there are limits to his freedom, and if he uses water-color, for example, in a manner which does not extract from the medium the highest virtue of which it is capable he is so much the less an artist. It has been said of Barye that his paintings were unsatisfactory on that score. About a hundred pictures in oil and some fifty water-colors have been put on the list of his works. Mr. Theodore Child found his execution heavy, uniform, of equal strength all over, and of a monotonous impasto which destroys all aerial perspective. I have not seen enough of his painting in oils either to contradict or to acquiesce in this verdict; but his water-colors produce a very different impression on my mind. He uses body-color but with restraint and his management of light and shade and his broad, free treatment of the landscape background give to his work in this medium a distinction quite apart from that inseparable from the beautiful drawing. In the painting that we reproduce the soft washes of color over the rocky land bring the background into delicate harmony with the richly tinted figure of the tiger with the effect of variety in unity[Pg 20] sought for and obtained by the masters of painting. The weight and roundness of the tiger's body is brought out by the firm broad outline which Barye's contemporary Daumier is so fond of using in his paintings, the interior modeling having none of the emphasis on form that one looks for in a sculptor's work. In his paintings indeed, even more than in his sculpture, Barye shows his interest in the psychological side of his problem. Here if ever he sees his subject whole, in all its relations to life. The vast sweep of woodland or desert in which he places his wild creatures, the deep repose commingled with the potential ferocity of these creatures, their separateness from man in their inarticulate emotions, their inhuman passions, their withdrawn powerfully realized lives, their self-sufficiency, their part in nature—all this becomes vivid to us as we look at his paintings and we are aware that the portrayal of animal life went far deeper with Barye than a mere anatomical grasp of his subject. Corot did not find his tigers sufficiently poetic and altered, it is said, the tiger drawn for one of his own paintings until he succeeded in giving it a more romantic aspect. Barye's poetry, however, was the unalterable poetry of life. He found his inspiration in realities but that is not to say that his realities were external ones. He excluded nothing belonging to the sentiment of his subject and comparison of his work with that of other animal sculptors and painters [Pg 21] deepens one's respect for the penetrating insight with which he sought his truths.

Asian Elephant crushing Tiger From a bronze by Barye

Since Barye's death and the great increase in the prices of his work, many devices have been used to sell objects bearing his name, but not properly his work. For example, he produced for the city of Marseilles some objects in stone (designed for the columns of the gateway), which were never done in bronze; since his death these have been reduced in size and produced in bronze as his work. Works of the younger Barye signed by the great name are also confused with those of the father. Further still, to the confusion of inexperienced collectors, the bronzes of Méne, Fratin, and Cain, all artists of importance, but hardly increasing fame, have had the signatures erased and that of Barye substituted. It is therefore inadvisable to attempt at this date the collection of Barye's bronzes without special knowledge or advice. The great collections of early and fine proofs have been made. At the sale of his effects after his death the models with the right of reproduction were sold, and in many instances these modern proofs are on the market bearing the name of Barye, with no indication of their modernity. Some of these are so cleverly done that great knowledge is required to detect them, and if they were sold for a moderate price, would be desirable possessions. Certain dealers frankly sell a modern reproduction as modern and at an[Pg 22] appropriate price, but I know of one only, M. Barbédienne, who puts a plaque with his initials on each piece produced by him.

During Barye's lifetime he had, however, in his employ, a man named Henri, who possessed his confidence to a full degree. A few pieces are found with the initial of this man, showing that they were done under his supervision and not that of Barye, but whether before or after the death of the latter is not yet determined.[Pg 23]

[Pg 24]

[Pg 25]

THE ART OF MARY CASSATT

II

The Art of Mary Cassatt

Some fifteen years ago, on the occasion of an exhibition in Paris of Miss Cassatt's work a French critic suggested that she was then, perhaps, with the exception of Whistler, "the only artist of an elevated, personal and distinguished talent actually possessed by America." The suggestion no doubt was a rash one, since, as much personal and distinguished work by American artists never leaves this country, the data for comparison must be lacking to a French critic; but it is certainly true that, like Whistler, Miss Cassatt early struck an individual note, looked at life with her own eyes, and respected her intellectual instrument sufficiently to master it to the extent, at least, of creating a style for herself. Born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she studied first at the Philadelphia Academy, and later traveled through Spain, Italy, and Holland in search of artistic knowledge and direction. In France she came to know the group of painters including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas, and especially influenced by the work of Degas, she turned to him for[Pg 26] the counsel she needed, receiving it in generous measure. It was a fortunate choice, the most fortunate possible, if she wished to combine in her art the detached observation characteristic in general of the Impressionist school with a passionate pursuit of all the subtlety, eloquence and precision possible to pure line. The fruit of his influence is to be found in the technical excellence of her representations of life, the firmness and candor of her drawing, her competent management of planes and surfaces, and the audacity with which she attacks difficult problems of color and tone. The extreme gravity of her method is the natural result of working under a master whose intensity and austerity in the pursuit of artistic truth are perhaps unequaled in the history of modern art.

Her choice of subject is not, however, the inspiration of any mind other than her own. She has taken for the special field in which to exercise her vigorous talent that provided by the various phases of the maternal relation. Her wholesome young mothers with their animated children, comely and strong, unite the charm of great expressiveness with that of profoundly scientific execution. The attentive student of art is well aware how easily the former quality unsupported by the latter may degenerate into the cloying exhibition of sentiment, and is equally aware of the sterility of the latter practised for itself alone.[Pg 27] With expressiveness for her goal and the means of rendering technical problems for her preoccupation, Miss Cassatt has arrived at hard-earned triumphs of accomplishment. One has only to turn from one of her recently exhibited pictures to another painted ten or twelve years ago to appreciate the length of the way she has come. The earlier painting, an oil color, is of a woman in a striped purple, white, and green gown, holding a half-naked child, who is engaged in bathing its own feet, with the absorbed expression on its face common to children occupied with such responsible tasks. The bricky flesh tints of the faces and hands, and the greenish half-tones of the square little body are too highly emphasized, but a keen perception of facts of surface and construction is obvious in the well-defined planes of the child's anatomy, in the foreshortened, thin little arm pressing firmly on the woman's knee and in the stout little legs, hard and round and simply modeled. There is plenty of truth in the picture, but in spite of an almost effective effort toward harmony of color, it lacks what the critics call "totality of effect." The annotation of the various phenomena is too explicit, the values are not finely related, and there is little suggestion of atmosphere.

In the later picture this crudity is replaced by a beautiful fluent handling and the mastery of tone. The subject is again a woman and child, the latter just out of its[Pg 28] bath, its flesh bright and glowing, its limbs instinct with life and ready to spring with uncontrollable vivacity. The modeling of the figures is as elusive as it is sure, and in the warm, golden air by which they seem to be enveloped, the well-understood forms lose all suggestion of the hardness and dryness conspicuous in the early work. Another recent painting of a kindred subject, Le lever de bébé, shows the same synthesis of detail, the same warmth and richness of tone, the same free and learned use of line. Obviously, Miss Cassatt has come into the full possession of her art and is no longer constrained by the struggle, sharp and hard as it must have been, with her exacting method—a method that has not at any time permitted the sacrifice of truth to charm. Since art is both truth and charm, record and poetry, there is a great satisfaction in watching the flowering of a positive talent, after the inevitable stages of literalism are passed, into the beauty of intelligent generalization. In all the later work there is the important element of ease, a certain graciousness of style, that enhances to a very great degree the beauty of the serious, dignified canvases. And from the beginning these have shown the admirable qualities of serenity and poise. There is no superficiality or pettiness about these homely women with their deep chests and calm faces, peacefully occupying themselves with their sound, agreeable children. The air of health, of [Pg 29] fresh and normal vigor, is the characteristic of the chosen type, and lends a suggestion of the Hellenic spirit to the modern physiognomies.

Child Resting From an etching by Mary Cassatt

If, however, in her technique and in the feeling of quietness she conveys, Miss Cassatt recalls the classic tradition, she is intensely modern in her choice of natural, unhackneyed gesture, and faces in which individuality is strongly marked and from which conventional beauty is absent. Occasionally, as in the picture shown at Philadelphia in 1904, and in the fine painting owned by Sir William C. Van Horne, we have a face charming in itself and modeled in a way to bring out its refinement, but in the greater number of instances the rather heavy and imperfect features of our average humanity are reproduced without compromise, with even a certain sense of triumph in the beautiful statement of sufficiently ugly facts and freedom from a fixed ideal.

Nothing, for example, could be less in the line of academic beauty than the quiet bonneted woman in the opera-box shown at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1907. She has her opera-glass to her eyes and her pleasant refined profile is cut sharply against the light balustrade of the balcony. Other figures in adjoining boxes are mere patches of color and of light and shade, telling, nevertheless, as personalities so acutely are the individual values perceived and discriminated. The color is personal and[Pg 30] interesting, the difficult perspective of the curving line of boxes is mastered with amazing skill; the fidelity of the drawing to the forms and aspects of things seen gives expression to even the inanimate objects recorded—and to painters who have tried it we recommend the subtlety of that simply modeled cheek! The whole produces the impression of solid reality and quick life and we get from it the kind of pleasure communicated not by the imitation but by the evocation of living truth. We note things that have significance for us for the first time—the fineness of the hair under the dark bonnet, the pressure of the body's weight on the arm supported by the railing, the relaxation of the arm holding the fan, and very clever painting by artists of less passionate sincerity takes on a meretricious look in contrast with this closeness of interpretation.

This, perhaps, is the chief distinction of Miss Cassatt's art—closeness of interpretation united to the Impressionist's care for the transitory aspect of things. She follows the track of an outline as sensitively if not as obviously as Ingres, and she exacts from line as much as it is capable of giving without interference with the expressiveness of the whole mass. She takes account of details with an unerring sense for their appropriateness. She selects without forcing the note of exclusion, and she thus becomes an artist of sufficiently general appeal to be understood[Pg 31] at once. She is not merely intelligent, but intelligible; her art has no cryptic side. It is only the initiated frequenter of galleries who will pause to reflect how tremendously it costs to be so clear and plain.

In her etchings and drawings Miss Cassatt early arrived at freedom of handling. The more responsive medium gave her an opportunity to produce delightful studies of domestic life while she was still far from having attained an easy control of pigment and brush. Her dry-points, pulled under her own direction and enriched with flat tints of color, are interesting and expressive, rich in line and large and full in modeling. The color was not, however, wholly an improving experiment. Under the friendly influence of time it may become an element of beauty, since in no case is it either commonplace or crude, but in its newness it lacks something of both delicacy and depth. The later etchings without color are more nearly completely satisfying. The three charming interpretations of children recently sent over to this country are full of freshness and life, and are admirable examples of the brilliant use of pure line. The attitude of the child in the etching reproduced here is, indeed, quite an extraordinary feat of richness of expression with economy of means. The heavy little head sagging against the tense arm, the small, childish neck and thin shoulder are insisted upon just sufficiently to render the mood of light[Pg 32] weariness, and the little face, full of individuality, is tenderly observed and modeled with feeling. The psychological bent of the artist, her interest in the portrayal of mental and moral qualities, is nowhere more clearly revealed than in her drawings of children. She has never been content to reproduce merely the physical plasticity and delicacy of infancy, but has shown in her joyous babies and dreamy little girls at least the potentiality of strong wills and clear minds. Great diversity of character and temperament are displayed in the expressive curves of the plump young faces, and the eyes, in particular, questioning, exultant, wondering, reflective or merry, betray a penetrating and subtle insight into the dawning personality under observation.

From the Wilstach Collection, Philadelphia. On the Balcony From a painting by Mary Cassatt

One of her earliest works recently has been added to the Wilstach collection in Philadelphia. It shows a man and two women on a balcony. The straight line of the balcony railing stretches across the foreground without any modification of its rigid linear effect. The man's figure is in shadow, barely perceptible as to detail, yet indicated without uncertainty of drawing or vagueness of any kind, a solid figure the "tactile values" of which are clearly recognized. One of the women is bending over the railing in a half-shadow while the other lifts her face toward the man in an attitude that makes exacting requirements of the artist's knowledge of foreshortening. [Pg 33] The whole is duskily brilliant in color, full of the sense of form, simple, dignified, sturdy, opulent. It shows that Miss Cassatt held at the beginning of her career as now, valuable ideals of competency and lucidity in the interpretation of life.

Woman with a Fan From a painting by Mary Cassatt

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MAX KLINGER

III

Max Klinger

Max Klinger is one of the most interesting and representative figures in the art of Germany to-day. Essentially German in manner of thought and feeling, he has brought into the stiff formality of early nineteenth century German painting and sculpture a plasticity of mind and an elevation of purpose and idea that suggest (as most that is excellent in Germany does suggest) the influence of Goethe. In his restless interrogation of all the forms of representative art, his work in the mass shows a curious mingling of fantasy, imagination, brusque realism, antique austerity, and modern science. The enhancing of the sense of life is, however, always the first thought with him, and lies at the root of his method of introducing color into sculpture, not by the means of a deadening pigment but by the use of marbles of deep tints and positive hues, and of translucent stones. As an artist, his chief distinction is this unremitting intention to convey in one way or another the sense of the vitalizing principle in animate objects. We may say of him that his[Pg 38] drawing is sometimes poor, that his imagination may be clumsy and infelicitous, that his treatment of a subject is frequently coarse and even crude, but we cannot deny that out of his etchings and paintings, and out of his great strange sculptured figures looks the spirit of life, more often defiant than noble, more often capricious than beautiful, but not to be mistaken, and the rarest phenomenon in the art product of his native country. He unites, too, a profound respect for the art of antiquity with a stout modern sentiment, a union that gives to his better work both dignity and force. What he seems to lack is the one impalpable, delicate, elusive quality that makes for our enjoyment of so many imperfect productions, and the lack of which does so much to blind us to excellence in other directions—the quality of charm, which in the main depends upon the possession by the artist of taste.

Beethoven From a statue in colored marble by Max Klinger

Max Klinger was born in Leipzig on the eighteenth of February, 1857. His father was a man of artistic predilections, and in easy circumstances, so that the choice of a bread-winning profession for the son was not of first importance. As Klinger's talent showed itself at a very early age, it was promptly decided that he should be an artist. He left school at the age of sixteen, and went to Karlsruhe, where Gussow was beginning to gather about him a large number of pupils. In 1875 he followed Gussow [Pg 39] to Berlin, where he came also under the influence of Menzel. Gussow's teaching was all in the line of individualism and naturalism. He led his pupils straight to nature for their model, and encouraged them to paint only what they themselves saw and felt. For this grounding in the representation of plain facts Klinger has been grateful in his maturer years, and looks back to his first master with admiration and respect as having early armed him against his tendency toward fantasy and idealism. His early style in the innumerable drawings of his youth is thin and weak, without a sign of the bold originality characterizing his recent work, and he obviously needed all the support he could get from frank and sustained observation of nature. His first oil-painting, exhibited in Berlin in 1878, showed the result of Gussow's influence in its solidity and practical directness of appeal, but a number of etchings, executed that year and the next—forerunners of the important later series—indicate the natural bent of the young artist's mind toward symbolic forms and unhackneyed subjects.

About the art of drawing as distinguished from that of painting he has his own opinions, expressed with emphasis in an essay called Malerei und Zeichnung. Drawing, etching, lithography and wood-engraving he considers preeminently adapted to convey purely imaginative thoughts such as would lose a part of their evanescent[Pg 40] suggestiveness by translation into the more definite medium of oil-color, and he holds Griffelkunst, or the art of the point in as high estimation as any other art for the interpretation of ideas appropriate to it, an opinion not now as unusual as when he first announced it to his countrymen. For about five years after the close of his student period, he occupied himself chiefly with etchings, turning out between 1879 and 1883 no fewer than nine of the elaborate "cycles" which are so expressive of his method of thought, and of the best qualities of his workmanship. In these cycles he delights in following a development not unlike that of a musical theme, beginning with a prelude and carrying the idea through manifold variations to its final expression. His curious history of the finding of a glove which passes through different symbolic forms of individuality in the dreams of a lover, is a fair example of his eccentric and somewhat lumbering humor in the use of a symbol in his earlier years. His etchings for Ovid's Metamorphoses show the same violent grasp of the lighter side of his subject, but in his landscape etchings of 1881 we have ample opportunity to see what he could do with a conventionally charming subject treated with conventional sentiment and without symbolic intention. The moonlight scene which he calls Mondnacht, has all the subtle exquisite feeling for harmony and tone to be gained from a Whistler nocturne.[Pg 41] The dim light on the buildings, the soft sweep of the clouds across the dark sky, the impalpable rendering, the grave and deep beauty of the scene combine to express the essence of night and its mystery. The oil-painting Abend, of 1882, also bears eloquent testimony to Klinger's power to evoke purely pictorial images of great loveliness.

In 1882, after about a year of study in Munich, he painted the important frescoes for the Steglitz Villa, in which the influence of Boecklin played freely. It was in Paris, however, where he studied between 1883 and 1885, that Klinger received his strongest and most definite impulse toward painting. His Judgment of Paris revealed the fact that the young painter had come into possession of himself, and could be depended upon for qualities demanding constraint and a measure of severity. In choosing a legend of antiquity for the subject of his picture, he may have felt a psychological obligation to obey the greater influences of the antique tradition. At all events he rather suddenly developed a style of great maturity and firmness. From Paris he went back to Berlin, but in 1889 he started for Rome, where he spent four profitable years. The fruit of this Roman period has continued to ripen up to the present time, although since 1893 Klinger has made his home in Leipzig, his wanderjahre apparently over and done with. He not[Pg 42] only painted in Rome a Pietà, a Crucifixion, and a number of pictures in which problems of open-air painting are attacked, but he conceived there the powerful series of etchings on the subject of death, and there he made his first attempts in colored sculpture. From his earliest years, the image of death had often solicited him, and some of his interpretations are filled with dignity and pathos. In the slender, rigid figure on a white draped bed, from the etching cycle entitled Eine Liebe, there is the suggestion of a classic tomb, severe and impressive in outline, while nothing could be more poignant than the emotional appeal of the Mutter und Kind in the second death series. To turn from these to the two religious paintings executed in Rome, is to realize that eccentric as Klinger often is, both in choice of subject and treatment, his attitude toward the mysteries and problems of man's existence is that of a serious thinker with a strong artistic talent, but a still stronger intelligence. It is not, however, until we reach the period which he devotes to sculpture, that we find in his art the quality of nobility, a certain breadth, which in spite of innovations in execution and almost trivial symbolic detail, impresses upon his conceptions the classic mark.

He began his studies for his great polychromatic statue of Beethoven as early as 1886, fifteen years before its completion. In 1892 it was reported in Rome that he had[Pg 43] turned to sculpture as a new field in which to prove himself a master, and his first exhibited figure placed him above the rank of the amateur. He threw himself into his new work with his usual energy, making himself familiar with the technicalities of marble cutting in order to follow the execution with intelligence at every stage. He sought for his material with unwearying zest, taking long journeys into Italy, Greece and the Pyrenees to procure marble with the soft, worn, rich quality produced by exposure to the weather; with this he combined onyx and brilliant stones, bronze, ivory and gold, always with the intention of creating an impression of life in addition to producing a decorative result. His strong decorative instinct comes to his aid, however, in avoiding the incoherence that would seem inevitable from the mixture of so many and such diverse materials, and the equally strong intellectual motive always obvious in his work also tends to hold it together in a more or less dignified unity. The Cassandra, his second colored statue, finished in Leipzig in 1895, and now in possession of the Leipzig Museum, is especially free from eccentricity and caprice. The beautiful Greek head, with its deep-set eyes and delicate mouth, is expressive of intense but normal feeling. The flesh is represented by warm-toned marble, the hair is brownish-red, the garment is of alabaster, yellowish-red with violet tones, and the figure stands on a pedestal of[Pg 44] Pyranean marble. In color effect, however, the Beethoven is the most striking. In Les Maîtres Contemporains, M. Paul Mongré thus describes it:

"The pedestal, half rock, half cloud, which supports the throne of the Olympian master, is of Pyranean marble of a dark violet-brown; the eagle is of black marble, veined with white, its eyes are of amber. The nude bust of Beethoven is of white Syrian marble, with light yellowish reflections, the drapery, hanging in supple folds, is of Tyrolean onyx with yellow-brown streaks in it. The throne of bronze is of a dull brown tone, except in the curved arms, which are brilliantly gilded. Five angel heads in ivory are placed like a crown on the inside of the back of the throne; their wings are studded with multi-colored gems and with antique fluorspar; the back of the throne is laid with blue Hungarian opals." All these different elements, the French critic maintains, are held together in reciprocal cohesion, and are kept subordinated to the bold conception of Beethoven as the Jupiter of music—"the godlike power accumulated and concentrated, on the point of breaking forth in lightnings; the eagle in waiting, ready to take flight, as the visible thought of Jupiter, before whom will spring up a whole world, or the musical image of a world: that is what is manifested by this close alliance of idea and form."

Cassandra From a statue in colored marble by Max Klinger

This monument to Beethoven is a performance designed [Pg 45] to express not merely the artistic interest of the subject for Klinger, but the abounding enthusiasm of the latter for the great musician's genius. Immediately after leaving Rome, Klinger also brought to completion a series of etchings called Brahms-phantasie, and intended to illustrate the emotions aroused by the compositions of Brahms. In 1901 he made a portrait bust of Liszt, and his drawings for the Metamorphoses were dedicated to Schumann. In the autumn of 1906 his Brahms memorial was placed in the new Music Hall in Hamburg. This memorial monument has the form of a powerful Hermes with the head of Brahms. The Muse of tone is apparently whispering secrets of art into the ears of the master. His debt, therefore, to the masters of music may be considered as fully and promptly paid, and the impression of hero-worship conveyed by these ardent tributes is a reminder that the artist is young in temperament, Teutonic in origin, and untouched by the modern spirit of indifference to persons. Unlike many German artists of the present day, he did not find in Paris the atmosphere that suited him. In spite of his years there and in Rome, he has remained undisturbed by any anti-German influence. His compatriots speak with pride of the intensely national character of his mind, and have early recognized his importance, as perhaps could hardly have failed to be the case with powers so far from humble, and a method so far from[Pg 46] patient. France also has paid him more than one tribute of appreciation, and the general feeling toward him seems now to be that expressed by one of his German admirers in America: "Why criticize him? He is so overwhelming, so overpowering intellectually that the best we can do is to try to understand him."[Pg 47]

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ALFRED STEVENS

IV

Alfred Stevens

An exhibition of the paintings of Alfred Stevens was held in April and May, 1907, at the city of Brussels, and later in May and in June at the city of Antwerp. The collection comprised examples from the museums at Brussels, Antwerp, Paris and Marseilles, and from the galleries of many private owners. It was representative in the fullest sense of the word, showing the literal tendencies of the artist's youth in such pictures as Les Chasseurs de Vincennes (1855) tightly painted, conscientiously modeled, with only the deep, resonant red of a woman's cape to indicate the magnificent color-sense soon to be revealed; or Le Convalescent, in which the two sympathetic women hovering over the languid young man in a Paris drawing-room are photographically true to the life of the time, without, however, conveying its spiritual or intellectual expression; showing also the rich and grave middle period in which beauty of face and form and the charm of elegant accessories are rendered with singular intensity and perfect sincerity; as[Pg 50] in Les Visiteuses, Désespérée, etc.; and, finally, showing the psychological synthesis of the later years, which reveals itself in such works as Un Sphinx Parisien, baffling in its fixed introspective gaze, and executed with an impeccable technique.

Many of the early pictures have a joyousness of frank workmanship, a directness of attack and a simplicity of arrangement that appeal to the world at large more freely than the subtler blonde harmonies of the later years. The Profil de Femme (1855) in which M. Lambotte discerns the influence of Rembrandt, is more suggestive to the present writer of familiarity with Courbet's bold, heavy impasto and sharp transitions from light to shadow. The Réverie of the preceding year has also its suggestions of Courbet, in spite of the delicately painted flowers in the Japanese vase; but in the pictures of the next few years, the robust freshness of the painter's Flemish vision finds expression in color-schemes that resemble nothing so much as the gardens of Belgium in springtime, filled with hardy blossoms and tended by skillful hands; La Consolation of 1857, for example, in which the two black-robed women form the heavy note of dead color against which are relieved the pink and white of their companion's gown, the pale yellow of the wall, the blue of the floor and the low, softly brilliant tones of the beautiful tapestry curtain.[Pg 51] Another painting of about the same time has almost the charm of Fantin-Latour's early renderings of serious women bending over their books or their sewing. In La Liseuse the girl's face is absorbed and thoughtful, the color harmony is quiet, the white dress, the dull red of the chair, the blue and yellow and green wools on the table, forming a pattern of closely related tones as various in its unity as the motley border of an old-fashioned dooryard. In other examples we have reminiscences of that time of excitement and esthetic riot when the silks and porcelains and enamels of the Far East came into the Paris of artists and artisans and formed at once a part of the baggage of the Parisian atelier. L'Inde à Paris is a particularly delightful reflection of this period of "Chinoiseries." It depicts a young woman in a black gown of the type that Millais loved, leaning forward with both hands on a table covered with an Indian drapery. On the table stands the miniature figure of an elephant. The background is of the strong green so often used by Manet and the varied pattern of the table cover gives opportunity for assembling a number of rich and vivid yet quiet hues in an intricate and interesting color composition.

La Parisienne Japonaise is a subject of the kind that enlisted Whistler's interest during the sixties—a handsome girl in a blue silk kimono embroidered with white[Pg 52] and yellow flowers, and a green sash, looks into a mirror that reflects a yellow background and a vase of flowers. The colors are said to have faded and changed, to the complete demoralization of the color-scheme, but it is still a picture of winning charm, less reserved and dignified than Whistler's Lange Leizen of 1864, but with passages of subtle color and a just relation of values that have survived the encroachments of time.

From a very early period Stevens adopted the camel's-hair shawl with its multi-colored border as the model for his palette and the chief decoration of his picture. It is easier, says one of his French critics, to enumerate the paintings in which such a shawl does not appear than those in which it does. It slips from the shoulders of the Désespérée and forms a wonderful contrast to the smooth fair neck and arm relieved against it; it is the magnificent background of the voluminous gauzy robe in Une Douloureuse Certitude; it falls over the chair in which the young mother sits nursing her baby in Tous les Bonheurs; it hangs in the corners of studios, it is gracefully worn by fashionable visitors in fashionable drawing-rooms; its foundation color is cream or red or a deep and tender yellow as soft as that of a tea-rose; it determines the harmony of the colored silks and bric-à-brac which are in its vicinity, it rules its surroundings with a truly oriental splendor, and it gives to the work in which it plays so[Pg 53] prominent a part an individuality supplementary to the artist's own. It is as important as the rugs in the pictures of Vermeer of Delft or Gerard Terborch.

L'Atelier From a painting by Alfred Stevens

The silks and muslins of gowns and scarves are also important accessories in these pictures which have a modernity not unlike that of the pictures of Velasquez, in which the ugliness of contemporary fashions turns to beauty under the learned rendering of textures and surfaces. Bibelots and furnishings, wall-hangings, pictures, rugs, polished floors, glass and silver and china and jewels are all likewise pressed into the service of an art that used what lay nearest to it, not for the purposes of realism but for the enchantment of the vision. M. Lambotte has pointed out that Stevens introduced mirrors, crystals and porcelains into his canvasses with the same intention as that of the landscape-painter who makes choice of a subject with a river, lake or pond, knowing that clear reflections and smooth surface aid in giving the effect of distance and intervening atmosphere. The same writer has told us that so far from reproducing the ordinary costumes of his period Stevens took pains to seek exclusive and elegant examples, chefs d'œuvres of the dressmaker's art, and that such were put at his service by the great ladies of the second empire. The beautiful muslin over-dress of the Dame en Rose is perhaps the one that most taxed his flexible brush.[Pg 54] It is diaphanous in texture, elaborately cut and trimmed with delicate laces and embroideries, and the rose of the under-robe, the snowy white of the muslin, the silver ornaments and the pale blonde hair of the wearer make the lightest and daintiest of harmonies accentuated by the black of the lacquer cabinet with its brilliant polychromatic insets.

Unlike Whistler, Stevens never abandoned the rich and complicated color arrangements of his youth for an austere and restricted palette. He nevertheless was at his best when his picture was dominated by a single color, as in the wonderful Fédora of 1882 or La Tricoteuse. In the former the warmly tinted hair and deep yellow fan are the vibrant notes, the creamy dress, the white flowers, the silver bracelet, and the white butterfly making an ensemble like a golden wheatfield swept by pale lights. The piquant note of contrast is given by the blue insolent eyes and the hardly deeper blue blossoms of the love-in-a-mist held in the languid hands.

In La Tricoteuse the composition of colors is much the same—a creamy white dress with gray shadows, reddish yellow hair, and a bit of blue knitting with the addition of a sharp line of red made by the signature. There is no austerity in these vaporous glowing arrangements of a single color. They are as near to the portraiture of full sunlight as pigment has been able to approach[Pg 55] and if it can be said that Whistler has "painted the soul of color," it certainly can be said that Stevens here has painted its embodied life. For the most part we have, however, to think of Alfred Stevens as a portraitist of the ponderable world; a Flemish lover of brilliant appearances, a scrupulous translator of the language of visible things into the idiom of art. In the picture entitled L'Atelier, which we reproduce, is a more or less significant instance of his artistic veracity. On the crowded wall, forming the background against which is seen the model's charming profile, is a picture which obviously is a copy of the painting of La Fuite en Egypte by Breughel. Two versions of the same subject, one, the original by Breughel the elder, the other, a copy by his son, now hang in the Brussels Museum, alike in composition but differing in tone, the son's copy having apparently been left in an unfinished condition with the brown underpainting visible throughout. That this, and not the elder Breughel's, is the original of the picture in Steven's L'Atelier is clear at the first glance, the warm tonality having been accurately reproduced and even the drawing of the tree branches, which differs much in the two museum pictures having conformed precisely to that in the copy by the younger Breughel. It is by this accuracy of touch, this respect for differences of texture and material, this recognition of the part played in the[Pg 56] ensemble by insignificant detail, this artistic conscience, in a word, that Stevens demonstrates his descent from the great line of Flemish painters and makes good their tradition in modern life. Many of his sayings are expressive of his personal attitude toward art. For example:

"It is first of all necessary to be a painter. No one is wholly an artist who is not a perfect workman."

"When your right hand becomes too facile—more facile than the thought that guides it, use the left hand."

"Do not put into a picture too many things which attract attention. When every one speaks at once no one is heard."

Concerning technique, he says to his pupils: "Paint quantities of flowers. It is excellent practice. Use the palette knife to unite and smooth the color, efface with the knife the traces of the brush. When one paints with a brush the touches seen through a magnifying glass are streaked with light and shade because of the hairs of the brush. The use of the palette knife renders these strokes as smooth as marble, the shadows have disappeared. The material brought together renders the tone more beautiful. Marble has never an ugly tone."

"One may use impasto, but not everywhere. Your brush should be handled with reference to the character of what you are copying ... do not forget that an[Pg 57] apple is smooth. I should like to see you model a billiard ball. Train yourself to have a true eye."

These are precepts that might be given by any good painter, but few of the moderns could more justly claim to have practiced all that they preached.

As a creative artist Stevens had his limitations. His lineal arrangements are seldom entirely fortunate and his compositions, despite the skill with which the given space is filled, lack except in rare instances the serenity of less crowded canvasses. He invariably strove to gain atmosphere by his choice and treatment of accessories but he rarely used the delicate device of elimination. Nevertheless he was a great painter and a great Belgian, untrammeled by foreign influences. He not only drank from his own glass but he drank from it the rich old wines of his native country.
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A SKETCH IN OUTLINE OF JACQUES CALLOT

V

A Sketch in Outline of Jacques Callot

In the Print Room of the New York Public Library are a large number of etchings by Jacques Callot, which are a mine of wealth to the painter-etcher of to-day, curious of the methods of his predecessors. Looking at the portrait of Callot in which he appears at the height of his brief career with well formed, gracious features, ardent eyes, a bearing marked by serenity and distinction, an expression both grave and genial, the observer inevitably must ask: "Is this the creator of that grotesque manner of drawing which for nearly three centuries has borne his name, the artist of the Balli, the Gobbi, the Beggars?" In this dignified, imaginative countenance we have no hint of Callot's tremendous curiosity regarding the most fantastic side of the fantastic times in which he lived. We see him in the rôle least emphasized by his admirers, although that to which the greater number of his working years were dedicated: the rôle, that is, of moralist, philosopher and historian, one deeply impressed by the sufferings and cruelties of which he became a sorrowful critic.[Pg 62]

There surely never was an artist whose life and environment were more faithfully illustrated by his art. To know one is to know the other, at least as they appear from the outside, for with Callot, as with the less veracious and ingenuous Watteau, it is the external aspect of things that we get and from which we must form our inferences. Only in his selection of his subjects do we find the preoccupation of his mind; in his rendering he is detached and impersonal, helping us out at times in our knowledge of his mental attitude with such quaint rhymes as those accompanying Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre, but chiefly confining his hand to the representation of forms, relations and distances, with as little concern as possible for the expression of his own temperament, or for psychological portraiture of any sort.

In the little history, more or less authenticated, of his eventful youth is the key to his charm as an artist, a charm the essence of which is freedom, an easy, informal way of looking at the visible world, a light abandon in the method of reproducing it, an independence of the tool or medium, resulting in art which, despite its minuteness of detail, seems to "happen" as Whistler has said all true art must. The beginning was distinctly picturesque, befitting a nature to which the world at first unfolded itself as a great Gothic picturebook filled with strange, eccentric and misshapen figures.[Pg 63]

One spring day in 1604, a band of Bohemians, such as are described in Gautier's Le Capitaine Fracasse, might have been seen journeying through the smiling country of Lorraine on their way to Florence to be present there at the great Fair of the Madonna. No gipsy caravan of to-day would so much as suggest that bizarre and irresponsible company of men, women, and children, clad in motley rags, some in carts, some trudging on foot, some mounted on asses or horses rivaling Rosinante in bony ugliness, the men armed with lance, cutlass and rifle, a cask of wine strapped to the back of one, a lamb in the arms of another. A couple of the swarming children were decked out with cooking utensils, an iron pot for a hat, a turnspit for a cane, a gridiron hanging in front apron wise. Chickens, ducks, and other barnyard plunder testified to the marauding course of the troop whose advent at an inn was the signal for terrified flight on the part of the inmates. The camp by night, if no shelter were at hand, was in the forest, where the travelers tied their awnings to the branches of trees, built their fires, dressed their stolen meats, and lived so far as they could accomplish it on the fat of the land—for the most part of their way a rich and lovely land of vine-clad hills and opulent verdure.

The period was lavish in curious gay figures to set against the peaceful background of the landscape.[Pg 64] Strolling players of the open-air theaters, jugglers, fortune-tellers, acrobats, Pierrots, and dancers amused the pleasure-loving people. The band of Bohemians just described was but one of many. Its peculiarity consisted in the presence among its members of a singularly fair and spirited child, about twelve years of age, whose alert face and gentle manner indicated an origin unmistakably above that of his companions. This was little Jacques Callot, son of Renée Brunehault and Jean Callot, and grandson of the grandniece of the Maid of Orleans, whose self-reliant temper seems to have found its way to this remote descendant.

Already determined to be an artist, he had left home with almost no money in his pocket and without the consent of his parents, set upon finding his way to Rome, where one of his playfellows—the Israel Henriet, "son ami," whose name is seen upon so many of the later Callot prints—was studying.

Falling in with the gipsies, he traveled with them for six or eight weeks, receiving impressions of a flexible, wanton, vagabond life that were never entirely to lose their influence upon his talent, although his most temperate and scholarly biographer, M. Meaume, finds little of Bohemianism in his subsequent manner of living. Félibien records that according to Callot's own account, when he found himself in such wicked company, "he[Pg 65] lifted his heart to God and prayed for grace not to join in the disgusting debauchery that went on under his eyes." He added also that he always asked God to guide him and to give him grace to be a good man, beseeching Him that he might excel in whatever profession he should embrace, and that he "might live to be forty-three years old." Strangely enough this most explicit prayer was granted to the letter, and was a prophecy in outline of his future.

Arriving in Florence with his friends the Bohemians, fortune seemed about to be gracious to him. His delicate face with its indefinable suggestions of good breeding attracted the attention of an officer of the Duke, who took the first step toward fulfilling his ambition by placing him with the painter and engraver, Canta Gallina, who taught him design and gave him lessons in the use of the burin. His taste was already for oddly formed or grotesque figures, and to counteract this tendency Gallina had him copy the most beautiful works of the great masters.

Possibly this conventional beginning palled upon his boyish spirit, or he may merely have been impatient to reach Israel and behold with his own eyes the golden city described in his friend's letters. At all events, he shortly informed his master that he must leave him and push on to Rome. Gallina was not lacking in sympathy,[Pg 66] for he gave his pupil a mule and a purse and plenty of good advice, and started him on his journey.

Stopping at Siena, Callot gained his first notion of the style, later to become so indisputably his own, from Duccio's mosaics, the pure unshadowed outline of which he bore in mind when he dismissed shading and cross-hatching from the marvelously expressive little figures that throng his prints. He had hardly entered Rome, however, when some merchants from the town of Nancy, his birthplace, recognized him and bore him, protesting, back to his home.

Once more he ran away, this time taking the route to Italy through Savoy and leading adventurous days. In Turin he was met by his elder brother and again ignominiously returned to his parents. But his persistence was not to go unrewarded. The third time that he undertook to seek the light burning for him in the city of art, he went with his father's blessing, in the suite of the ambassador dispatched to the Pope by the new duke, Henry II.

It is said that a portrait of Charles the Bold, engraved by Jacques from a painting, was what finally turned the scale in favor of his studying seriously with the purpose of making art his profession. He had gained smatterings of knowledge, so far as the use of his tools went, from Dumange Crocq, an engraver and Master of the[Pg 67] Mint to the Duke of Lorraine, and from his friend Israel's father, chief painter to Charles III. He had the habit also of sketching on the spot whatever happened to attract his attention.

In truth he had lost but little time. At the age of seventeen he was at work, and very hard at work, in Rome under Tempesta. Money failing him, he became apprenticed to Philippe Thomassin, a French engraver, who turned out large numbers of rubbishy prints upon which his apprentices were employed at so much a day. Some three years spent in this fashion taught Callot less art than skill in the manipulation of his instruments. Much of his early work is buried in the mass of Thomassin's production, and such of it as can be identified is poor and trivial. His precocity was not the indication of rapid progress. His drawing was feeble and was almost entirely confined to copying until 1616, when, at the age of twenty-four, he began regularly to engrave his own designs, and to show the individuality of treatment and the abundant fancy that promptly won for him the respect of his contemporaries.

While he was in Thomassin's studio, it is reported that his bright charm of face and manner gained him the liking of Thomassin's young wife—much nearer in age to Callot than to her husband—and the jealousy of his master. He presently left the studio and Rome[Pg 68] as well, never to return to either. It is the one misadventure suggestive of erratic tendencies admitted to Callot's story by M. Meaume, although other biographers have thrown over his life in Italy a sufficiently lurid light, hinting at revelries and vagaries and lawless impulses unrestrained. If, indeed, the brilliant frivolity of Italian society at that time tempted him during his early manhood, it could only have been for a brief space of years. After he was thirty all unquestionably was labor and quietness.

From Rome he went to Florence, taking with him some of the plates he recently had engraved. These at once found favor in the eyes of Cosimo II, of the Medici then ruling over Tuscany, and Callot was attached to his person and given a pension and quarters in what was called, "the artist's gallery." At the same time he began to study under the then famous Jules Parigi, and renewed his acquaintance with his old friend Canta Gallina, meeting in their studios the most eminent artists of the day—the bright day not yet entirely faded of the later Renaissance.

Portrait of Jacques Callot Engraved by Vosterman after the painting of Van Dyck

Still his work was copying and engraving from the drawings of others. Had he been under a master less interested and sympathetic than the good Parigi, it is possible that his peculiar talent would never have declared itself. At all events, Parigi urged him, and the [Pg 69] urging seems to have been necessary, to improve his drawing, to drop the burin and study the great masters. Especially Parigi prayed him to cultivate his precious talent for designing on a very small scale the varied and complicated compositions with which his imagination teemed. His taste for whatever was fantastic and irregular in aspect had not been destroyed by his study of the beautiful. The Bohemian side of human nature, the only nature for which he cared, still fascinated his mind, whether it had or had not any influence upon his activities, and Parigi's remonstrances were silenced by his appreciation of the comic wit sparkling in his pupil's sketches.

We see little of Callot among his friends of this period, but the glimpses we get reveal a lovable and merry youth in whose nature is a strain of sturdy loyalty, ardent in work and patient in seeking perfectness in each individual task undertaken, but with a curious contrasting impatience as well, leading him frequently to drop one thing for another, craving the relaxation of change. An anecdote is told of him that illustrates the sweet-tempered blitheness of spirit with which he quickly won affection.

In copying a head he had fallen into an error common among those who draw most successfully upon a small scale, he had made it much too large. His fellow-students were prompt to seize the opportunity of jeering at him,[Pg 70] and he at once improvised a delightful crowd of impish creatures on the margin of his drawing, dancing and pointing at it in derision.

His progress under Parigi's wise instruction was marked, but it was four years after his arrival in Florence before he began to engrave to any extent from his own designs. In the meantime, he had studied architecture and aerial and linear perspective, and had made innumerable pen and pencil drawings from nature. He had also begun to practice etching, attaining great dexterity in the use of the needle and in the employment of acids.

In 1617—then twenty-five years old—he produced the series of plates which he rightly deemed the first ripe fruits of his long toil in the domain of art. These were the delightful Capricci di varie figure in which his individuality shone resplendent. They reproduced the spectacle of Florence as it might then have been seen by any wayfarer; street people, soldiers, officers, honest tradesmen and rogues, mandolin players, loiterers of the crossways and bridges, turnpike-keepers, cut-throats, buffoons and comedians, grimacing pantaloons, fops, coquettes, country scenes, a faithful and brilliant study of the time, the manners, and the place. Parigi was enthusiastic and advised his pupil to dedicate the plates to the brother of the Grand Duke.[Pg 71]

After this all went well and swiftly. Passing over many plates, important and unimportant, we come three years later to the Great Fair of Florence, pronounced by M. Meaume, Callot's masterpiece. "It is doubtful," says this excellent authority, "if in Callot's entire work a single other plate can be found worthy to compete with the Great Fair of Florence. He has done as well, perhaps, but never better."

At this time his production was, all of it, full of life and spirit, vivacious and fluent, the very joy of workmanship. He frequently began and finished a plate in a day, and his long apprenticeship to his tools had made him completely their master. In many of the prints are found traces of dry point, and those who looked on while he worked have testified that when a blank space on his plate displeased him he was wont to take up his instrument and engrave a figure, a bit of drapery, or some trees in the empty spaces, directly upon the copper, improvising from his ready fancy.

For recreation he commonly turned to some other form of his craft. He tried painting, and some of his admirers would like to prove that he was a genius in this sort, but it is fairly settled that when once he became entangled in the medium of color he was lost, producing the heaviest and most unpleasing effects, and that he produced no finished work in this kind. He contributed[Pg 72] to the technical outfit of the etcher a new varnish, the hard varnish of the lute-makers which up to that time had not been used in etching, and which, substituted for the soft ground, enabled him to execute his marvelous little figures with great lightness and delicacy, and also made it possible for him to keep several plates going at once, as he delighted to do, turning from one to another as his mood prompted him.

This Florentine period was one of countless satisfactions for him. More fortunate than many artists, he won his fame in time to enjoy it. His productions were so highly regarded during his lifetime that good proofs were eagerly sought, and to use Baldinucci's expression, were "enfermées sous sept clefs." He was known all over Europe, and about his neck he wore a magnificent gold chain given him by the Grand Duke Cosimo II, in token of esteem. In the town which he had entered so few years before in the gipsy caravan, he was now the arbiter of taste in all matters of art, highly honored, and friend of the great. When Cosimo died and the pensions of the artists were discontinued, Callot was quite past the need of princely favors, and could choose his own path. He had already refused offers from Pope and emperor and doubtless would have remained in Florence had not Prince Charles of Lorraine determined to reclaim him for his native place.[Pg 73]

In 1621 or 1622 he returned to Nancy, never again to live in Italy. He went back preeminent among his countrymen. He had done in etching what had not been done before him and much that has not been done since. He had created a new genre and a new treatment. He had been faithful to his first lesson from Duccio and had become eloquent in his use of simple outline to express joy, fear, calm or sorrow, his work gaining from this abandonment of shadows a largeness and clearness that separates him from his German contemporaries and adds dignity to the elegance and grace of his figures. His skill with the etching needle had become so great that technical difficulties practically did not exist for him. What he wished to do he did with obvious ease and always with distinction. His feeling for synthesis and balance was as striking as his love of the curious, and as these qualities seldom go together in one mind, the result was an art extremely unlike that of other artists. It was characteristic of him that he could not copy himself, and found himself completely at a loss when he tried to repeat some of his Florentine plates under other skies.

Arrived at Nancy, he found Henry II, the then reigning Duke of Lorraine, ready to accord him a flattering welcome, and under his favor he worked with increasing success. Among the plates produced shortly[Pg 74] after his return is one called Les Supplices, in which is represented all the punishments inflicted throughout Europe upon criminals and legal offenders. In an immense square the revolting scenes are taking place, and innumerable little figures swarm about the streets and even upon the roofs of the houses. Yet the impression is neither confused nor painful. A certain impersonality in the rendering, a serious almost melancholy austerity of touch robs the spectacle of its ignoble suggestion. Inspection of this remarkable plate makes it easy to realize Callot's supreme fitness for the tasks that shortly were to be laid upon him.

He was chosen by the Infanta Elisabeth-Claire-Eugenie of Austria to commemorate the Siege of Breda, in a series of etchings, and while he was in Brussels gathering his materials for this tremendous work he came to know Van Dyck, who painted his portrait afterward engraved by Vosterman, a superb delineation of both his face and character at this important period of his eminent career. Soon after the etchings were completed, designs were ordered by Charles IV, for the decorations of the great carnival of 1627. Callot was summoned to Paris to execute some plates representing the surrender of La Rochelle in 1628, and the prior attack upon the fortress of St. Martin on the Isle of Ré. In Paris he dwelt with his old friend Israel Henriet, who dealt largely[Pg 75] in prints and who had followed with keen attention Callot's constantly increasing renown. Henriet naturally tried to keep his friend with him in Paris as long as possible, but Callot had lost by this time the vagrant tendencies of his youth. He was married and of a home-keeping disposition, and all that Henriet could throw in his way of stimulating tasks and congenial society, in addition to the formidable orders for which he had contracted, detained him hardly longer than a year. Upon leaving he made over all his Parisian plates save those of the great sieges to Henriet, whose name as publisher appears upon them.

Callot's return to Nancy marked the close of the second period of his art, the period in which he painted battles with ten thousand episodes revealed in one plate, and so accurately that men of war kept his etchings among their text-books for professional reference. The next demand that was made upon him to represent the downfall of a brave city came from Louis XIII, upon the occasion of his entering Nancy on the 25th of September, 1633. By a ruse Richelieu had made the entry possible, and the inglorious triumph Louis deemed worthy of commemoration by the accomplished engraver now his subject. Neither Callot's high Lorraine heart nor his brilliant instrument was subjugated, however, and he respectfully begged the monarch to absolve him from a[Pg 76] task so revolting to his patriotism. "Sire," he said, "I am of Lorraine, and I cannot believe it my duty to do anything contrary to the honor of my Prince and my Country." The king accepted his remonstrance in good part, declaring that Monsieur of Lorraine was very happy to have subjects so faithful in affection. Certain courtiers took Callot to task, however, for his refusal to obey the will of His Majesty, and to them Callot responded that he would cut off his thumb rather than do violence to his sense of honor. Some of the artist's historians have made him address this impetuous reply to the king himself, but M. Meaume reminds us that, familiar with courts, he knew too well the civility due to a sovereign to make it probable that he so forgot his dignity. Later the king tried to allure Callot by gifts, honors and pensions, but in vain. The sturdy gentleman preferred his oppressed prince to the royal favor, and set himself to immortalizing the misfortunes of his country in the superb series of etchings which he called "Les Misères de la Guerre." He made six little plates showing in the life of the soldier the misery he both endures and inflicts upon others. These were the first free inspiration of the incomparable later set called "Les Grandes Misères," "a veritable poem," M. Meaume declares, "a funeral ode describing and deploring the sorrows of Lorraine." These sorrows so much afflicted him[Pg 77] that he would gladly have gone back to Italy to spend the last years of his life, had not the condition of his health, brought on by his indefatigable labor, prevented him.

He lived simply in the little town where he had seen his young visions of the spirit of art, walking in the early morning with his elder brother, attending mass, working until dinner time, visiting in the early afternoon with the persons, many of them distinguished and even of royal blood, who thronged his studio, then working until evening. He rarely attended the court, but grew constantly more quiet in taste and more severe in his artistic method, until the feeling for the grotesque that inspired his earlier years were hardly to be discerned. Once only, in the tremendous plate illustrating the Temptation of Saint Anthony, did he return to his old bizarre vision of a world conceived in the mood of Dante and Ariosto.

Callot died on the 24th of March, 1635, at the age of forty-three. Still a young man, he had passed through all the phases of temperament that commonly mark the transit from youth to age. And he had used his art in the manner of a master to express the external world and his convictions concerning the great spiritual and ethical questions of his age. He enunciated his message distinctly; there were no tender gradations, no uncertainties[Pg 78] of outline or mysteries of surface in his work. It is the grave utterance of the definite French intelligence with a note of deeper suggestion brought from those regions of ironic gloom in which the Florentine recorded his sublime despair.[Pg 79]

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CARLO CRIVELLI

VI

Carlo Crivelli

Among the more interesting pictures acquired by the Metropolitan Museum within the past two years are the panels by Carlo Crivelli, representing respectively St. George and St. Dominic.

Crivelli is one of the fifteenth century Italian masters who show their temperament in their work with extraordinary clearness. His spirit was ardent and his moods were varying. With far less technical skill than his contemporary, Mantegna, he has at once a warmer and more brilliant style and a more modern feeling for natural and significant gesture. His earliest known work that bears a date is the altar-piece in S. Silvestro at Massa near Fermo; but his most recent biographer, Mr. Rushworth, gives to his Venetian period before he left for the Marches, the Virgin and Child now at Verona, and sees in this the strongest evidences of his connection with the School of Padua. Other important pictures by him are at Ascoli, in the Lateran Gallery, Rome, in the Vatican, in the Brera Gallery at Milan, in the Berlin[Pg 82] Gallery, in the National Gallery at London, in Frankfurt (the Städel Gallery), in the Museum of Brussels, in Lord Northbrook's collection, London, in the Boston Museum, in Mrs. Gardiner's collection at Boston, and in Mr. Johnson's collection at Philadelphia. The eight examples in the National Gallery, although belonging for the most part to his later period, show his wide range and his predominating characteristics, which indeed are stamped with such emphasis upon each of his works that despite the many and great differences in these, there seems to be little difficulty in recognizing their authorship. No. 788, The Madonna and Child Enthroned, surrounded by Saints, an altarpiece painted for the Dominican Church at Ascoli in 1476, is the most elaborate and pretentious of the National Gallery compositions, but fails as a whole to give that impression of moral and physical energy, of intense feeling expressed with serene art, which renders the Annunciation (No. 739) both impressive and ingratiating. The lower central compartment is instinct with grace and tenderness. The Virgin, mild-faced and melancholy, is seated on a marble throne. The Child held on her arm, droops his head, heavy with sleep, upon her arm in a babyish and appealing attitude curiously opposed to the dignity of the Child in Mantegna's group which hangs on the opposite wall. His hand clasps his mother's finger and[Pg 83] his completely relaxed figure has unquestionably been studied from life. At the right and left of the Virgin are St. Peter and St. John, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Dominic, whole-length figures strongly individualized and differentiated. St. John in particular reveals in the beauty of feature and expression Crivelli's power to portray subtleties and refinements of character without sacrificing his sumptuous taste for accessories and ornament. The Saint, wearing his traditional sheep skin and bearing his cross and scroll, bends his head in meditation. His brows are knit, his features, ascetic in mold and careworn, are eloquent of serious thought and moral conviction. By the side of St. Peter resplendent in pontifical robes and enriched with jewels, he wears the look of a young devout novice not yet so familiar with sanctity as to carry it with ease. He stands by the side of a little stream, in a landscape that combines in the true Crivelli manner direct realism with decorative formality. The St. Dominic with book and lily in type resembles the figure in the Metropolitan, but the face is painted with greater skill and has more vigor of expression. Above this lower stage of the altarpiece are four half-length figures of St. Francis, St. Andrew the Apostle, St. Stephen and St. Thomas Aquinas, and over these again are four pictures showing the Archangel Michael trampling on the Dragon, St. Lucy the Martyr, St. Jerome and St.[Pg 84] Peter, Martyr, all full length figures of small size and delicately drawn, but which do not belong to the original series. The various parts of the altarpiece were enclosed in a splendid and ornate frame while in the possession of Prince Demidoff in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the whole is a magnificent monument to Crivelli's art. The heavy gold backgrounds and the free use of gold in the ornaments, together with the use of high relief (St. Peter's keys are modeled, for example, almost in the round, so nearly are they detached from the panel) represent his tendency to overload his compositions with archaic and realistic detail, but here as elsewhere the effect is one of harmony and corporate unity of many parts. The introduction of sham jewels, such as those set in the Virgin's crown and in the rings and medallions worn by Peter, fails to destroy the dignity of the execution. It may even be argued that these details enhance it by affording a salient support to the strongly marked emotional faces of the saints and to the vigorous gestures which would be violent in a classic setting.

St. Dominic From a panel by Carlo Crivelli

A quite different note is struck in the grave little composition belonging to an altarpiece of early date in which two infant angels support the body of Christ on the edge of the tomb. Nothing is permitted to interrupt the simplicity of this pathetic group. In the much more [Pg 85] passionate rendering of a similar subject—the Pietà in Mr. Johnson's collection—the child angels are represented in an agony of grief, their features contorted and their gestures despairing. The little angels of the National Gallery picture, on the contrary, are but touched by a pensive sorrow. One of them rests his chin upon the shoulder of the Christ half tenderly, half wearily; the other in fluttering robes of a lovely yellow, applies his slight strength to his task seriously but without emotion. The figure of Christ, tragically quiet, with suffering brows, the wound in the side gaping, is without the suggestion of extreme physical anguish that marks the figure in the Boston Pietà. The sentiment with which the panel is inspired is one of gentleness, of resignation, of self-control and piety. The same sentiment is felt in the companion panel, now in the Brussels Gallery—The Virgin and the Child Jesus—which originally, with the Pietà, formed the central double compartment of a triptych at Monte Fiore, near Fermo. The sad coloring of the Virgin's robe—a dull bluish green with a gold pattern over an under robe of pale ashes of roses, the calm, benign features, the passive hands, are all in the spirit of subdued feeling. The child alone, gnomish in expression and awkward in a straddling attitude upon his mother's knee, fails to conform to the general gracious scheme.

In the Annunciation already mentioned, we have[Pg 86] another phase of Crivelli's flexible genius—a phase in which are united the pomp and splendor of his fantastic taste with the innocence and sweetness of his most engaging feminine type. It would be difficult to imagine a more demure and girlish Virgin than the small kneeling figure in the richly furnished chamber at the right of the panel. The glory of her fate is symbolized by the broad golden ray falling from the heavens upon her meekly bowed head. Her face is pale with the dim pallor that commonly rests upon Crivelli's flesh tones, and her clasped hands have the exaggerated length of finger and also the look of extraordinary pliability which he invariably gives. Outside the room in the open court kneels the Angel of the Annunciation and by his side kneels St. Emedius, the patron of Ascoli, with a model of the city in his hands. These figures are realistic in gesture and expression, interested, eager, responsive, filled with quick life and joyous impulse. The richly embroidered garment of the angel, his gilded wings, his traditional attitude, neither overpower nor detract from the vivid individuality of the beautiful face so firmly yet so freely modeled within its delicate hard bounding line. This feeling of actuality in the scene is carried still farther by the introduction of a charming little child on a balcony at the left, peering out from behind a pillar with naive curiosity and half-shy, half-bold determination [Pg 87] to see the end of the adventure. All this is conceived in the spirit of modernity and the personal quality is unmistakable and enchanting. There is no excess of emotion nor is there undue restraint. There is a blithe sense of the interest of life and the personality of human beings that gives a value to the subject and a meaning beyond its accepted symbolism. On the technical side, also, the panel has remarkable merit even for this expert and careful painter. His Venetian fondness for magnificent externals finds ample expression in the rich accessories. A peacock is perched on the casement of the Virgin's room, flowers and fruits, vases and variegated marbles all come into the plan of the handsome environment, and are justified artistically by the differentiation of textures, the gradation of color, the research into intricacies of pattern, the light firm treatment of architectural structure, and the skilful subordination of all superficial detail to the elements of the human drama, the figures of which occupy little space, but are overwhelming in significance.

In the Metropolitan Museum, New York. St. George From a panel by Carlo Crivelli

It is interesting to compare this Annunciation with the two small sextagonal panels of the same subject in the Städel Museum at Frankfurt which are earlier in date. In many respects the compositions are closely similar. There is the same red brick wall, the same Oriental rug hanging from the casement, the types of Angel[Pg 88] and Virgin are the same, but in the Frankfurt panel there is more impetuous motion in the gesture of the Angel, who hardly pauses in his flight through air to touch his knee to the parapet. His mouth is open and the words of his message seem trembling on his lips. Although all the outlines are severely defined with the sharpness of a Schiavone, the interior modeling is sensitive and delicate and in the case of the Virgin, tender and softly varied, so that the curve of the throat and chin seem almost to ripple with the breathing, the young chest swells in lovely gradation of form under the close bodice, and the whole figure has a graciousness of contour, a slim roundness and elasticity by which it takes its place among Crivelli's many realizations of his ideal type as at least one of the most lovable if not the most characteristic and personal. Especially fine, also, is the treatment of the drapery in these two admirable little panels. The mantle surrounding the angel billows out in curling folds as eloquent of swift movement as the draperies of Botticelli's striding nymphs; and the opulent line of the Virgin's cloak is superb in its lightly broken swirl about the figure. The hair, too, of both the Angel and the Virgin, waves in masses at once free and formal, with something of the wild beauty of Botticelli's windblown tresses. The analogy between the two painters, the ardent and poetic Florentine and the no less ardent and at times almost as poetic Venetian [Pg 89] (if we accept his own claim to the title), might be further dwelt upon, although it would be easy to overemphasize it. One attribute, certainly, they had in common and it is the one that most completely separates each of them from his fellows—the exultant verve, that is, with which the human form is made to communicate energy of movement in their compositions. It is impossible to believe that either of them ever painted a tame picture. If, however, Crivelli could not be tame he could be insipid, escaping tameness by what might be called the violence of his affectation. The St. George in the Metropolitan Museum is an instance of his occasional use of a type so frail and languid in its grace and so sentimental in gesture and expression as to suggest caricature. Another example dated 1491 is the Madonna and Child Enthroned in the National Gallery. On either side of the melancholy Madonna are St. Francis and St. Sebastian. The latter is pierced by arrows and tied to a pillar, but so far from wearing the look of suffering or of calm endurance, he has a trivial glance of deprecation for the observer, and his figure is wholly wanting in the force of young manhood. A striking contrast to this effeminate mood may be found in No. 724, also a Madonna Enthroned, between St. Jerome and St. Sebastian, a late signed picture of Crivelli's declining talent, with a predella below the chief panel in which appear St. Catherine,[Pg 90] St. Jerome in the Wilderness, the Nativity, the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian again, and St. George and the Dragon. The little compartment containing the scene of the Nativity is quite by itself among Crivelli's works for intimate and homely charm. The simplicity of the surroundings and the natural attitudes of the people have an almost Dutch character, borne out by the meticulous care for detail in the execution united to an effect of chiaro-oscuro very rare in early Italian art and hardly to be expected in a painter of Crivelli's Paduan tendencies. The St. George is more characteristic, with an immense energy in its lines. In arrangement it recalls the St. George of Mrs. Gardiner's collection and despite its small size is almost the equal of that magnificent example in concentration and fire.

In the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Pietà From a panel by Carlo Crivelli

Still another type, and one that combines dignity and much spirituality with naive realism, is the Beato Ferretti (No. 668), showing an open landscape with a village street at the right and a couple of ducks in a small pond at the left, the Beato kneeling in adoration with a vision of the Virgin and Child surrounded by the Mandorla or Verica glory appearing above. The kneeling saint is realistically drawn and his face wears an expression of intense piety. The landscape is marked by the bare twisted stems of trees, that seem to repeat the rigid and conceivably tortured form of the saint. A beautiful [Pg 91] building with a domed roof is seen at the right. At the top of the picture across the cloud-strewn sky is a festoon of fruits, Crivelli's characteristic decoration.

In the Städel Gallery at Frankfort. A Panel by Carlo Crivelli (a)

In all these pictures Crivelli reveals himself as an artist filled with emotional inspiration, to whom the thrill of life is more than its trappings, and one, moreover, who observes, balances and differentiates. The society of his saints and angels is stimulating; the element of the unexpected enters into his work in open defiance of his pronounced mannerism. It is possible to detect beneath the close and manifold coverings of his ornate decoration a swift flame of imaginative impulse such as Blake sent into the world without such covering. He would have pleased Blake by this nervous energy and by his pure bright coloring, despite the fact that he signed himself "Venetus." He painted in tempera and finished his work with care and deliberation. It is remarkable that so little of his mental fire died out in the slow process of his execution. It is still more remarkable that in spite of his reactionary tendencies, his archaistic use of gold and relief at a moment when all great artists were renouncing these, he is intensely modern in his sentiment. He seems to represent a phase of human development at which we in America have but recently arrived; a phase in which appreciation of ancient finished forms of beauty is united to a restless eagerness[Pg 92] and the impulse toward exaggerated self-expression. He is supposed to have been born about 1440, which would make him a contemporary of the two Bellini, of Hans Memling and of Mantegna. Had he only been able to give his imagination a higher range—had he possessed a more controlling spiritual ideal, had the touch of self-consciousness that rests like a grimace on the otherwise lovely aspect of much of his painting, been eliminated, he would have stood with these on the heights of fifteenth century art. We are fortunate to have in America the Boston Museum Pietà, which shows him in one of his most temperate moods, the Pietà of Mr. Johnson's collection, which is the emphatic expression of his least restrained moments, the St. George of Mrs. Gardiner's collection, in which his grasp of knightly character and pictorial grace is at its best, and these two strongly contrasted types of the Metropolitan Museum.

In the Städel Gallery at Frankfort. A Panel by Carlo Crivelli (b)

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REMBRANDT AT THE CASSEL GALLERY

VII

Rembrandt at the Cassel Gallery

The art gallery of Cassel is well known to connoisseurs as containing a group of Rembrandts of the first order. The earliest example is a small painting of a boy's head supposed to be a portrait of the artist at the age of twenty or one and twenty; Dr. Bode considers 1628 too late rather than too early as the probable date, and the same authority warns us against considering such studies in the light of serious portraiture: "It had never occurred to the young artist," he says, "to make a dignified portrait of himself at the time when he painted these pictures." The execution is clumsy, the color is dull and heavy and of the brownish tone common to Rembrandt's early painting, and much of the drawing—as in the rings of hair escaping to the surface from the thick curling mass—is meaningless and indefinite, but the distribution of light and shade is not unlike that of Rembrandt's later work and the touch has a certain bold freedom that seems to have been his from the first whenever he served as his own model, even while his handling was still hard and prim[Pg 96] in his portraits of others. Another work ascribed to his early period, about 1634, is the "Man with a Helmet," also commonly known as a self-portrait, fluent in execution and vivacious and lifelike in expression, yet not without that hint of conscious pose common with the artist in his endeavors to force the note of character. The blunt, strong features are strikingly like those of the authenticated portraits of the artist, but Dr. Karl Voll, Director of the Alt Pinakothek at Munich, declares that the idea of a "self-portrait," attractive as it is, can hardly in this case be upheld. Whoever the sitter may have been, the painting is an amazing example of dexterity of hand and acute observation. The sharp glitter of the helmet, the contrasting flesh-like quality of the painting in the face, the light vigorous drawing of the moustache and hair, give an impression of the artist's mastery of his craft hardly to be surpassed at any period of his life. Far less poetic in its color-scheme and chiaro-oscuro than the youthful portrait belonging to Mrs. Gardiner's collection, it is even more eloquent of the ease with which he managed his tools. Of a still greater charm, with subtler problems met and solved, is the portrait of Saskia van Ulenburgh, whom he married in Amsterdam in the year 1634, the probable date of the Cassel portrait. At all events the young woman carries in her hand a spray of rosemary, the symbol of betrothal, and her dress has the richness of a[Pg 97] Dutch bride's equipment. Here we see Rembrandt's art in perhaps its most delicate and psychologically interesting phase. The character revealed by the small pretty features has neither extraordinary force nor marked individuality. The lines are neither deep-cut nor broad. One is reminded of a fine little etching in which the plate has been bitten only to a moderate depth and which requires a sensitive handling in the printing to produce anything like richness. Yet the result is rich in the fullest sense of the term. It depends for its quality not only upon the splendid color-scheme formed by the dark red of the velvet hat and gown, the white of the feather, the gold and gray and dull blue of the trimmings and ornaments, the beautiful jewels, with which Rembrandt then as later produced an appearance of great magnificence, the bright red-gold of the hair falling lightly over the softly modeled brow, and the fair warm tones of the flesh glowing as from living health and physical energy: it depends as much upon the deep research into the expression that has resulted in the intimate portraiture possible only to genius and seldom found even in the work of the great masters, never, so far as the writer's observation has gone, in the work of their later years. The smile that hesitates at the corner of the whimsical little mouth, the tender modulations of surface on the forehead and about the straight-gazing honest eyes, the swift suggestions of movement and play[Pg 98] of mood in the flexible contours, the gaiety and sweetness and singular purity of the girlish face, are evoked with magisterial authority and precision. Never surely has there been a finer example of Dutch care and thoroughness in the observation and rendering of minute detail united to breadth of effect. The painting of the jewels and embroideries is wrought to a singularly perfect finish. It is almost as though the artist had set himself to extract the utmost beauty of which the textures of stuffs and gems are capable, to prove how much more enchanting was the beauty of the brilliant blond demure little face daintily poised above them. Dr. Bode calls the picture "one of the most attractive, not only of his early pictures, but of all his works."

Courtesy of Berlin Photographic Company. Saskia From a portrait by Rembrandt

To Rembrandt's early years also are ascribed certain careful studies of old men's heads and several portraits of younger men. Among these are one of the writing-master Coppenol and one of the poet Krul, the former painted in 1632, the latter in 1633. The Krul portrait is the more striking of the two, and the pictorial costume with the broad hat casting its lucent shadow over the fine brow, the silken jacket with its gleaming reflections and the wide white ruffles at neck and sleeve on which the light blazes full, adds to the dignity and richness of the effect. It is easy, however, to agree with Dr. Voll in ranking the splendid portrait of an unknown man, of some [Pg 99] five or six years later date, far above the Krul portrait in artistic quality. Although excessively warm in tone it has in addition to excellent construction and a lifelike aspect a nobility of bearing that imposes itself directly and irresistibly upon the spectator.

The portrait of Coppenol is not easily analyzed and Dr. Bode notes that the likeness to the authenticated portraits of the famous drawing master is not altogether convincing. Simpler and homelier in appearance than the portrait of Krul, this solid and even heavy figure seated comfortably in an armchair, the well-drawn hands busy with mending a quill pen, the glance reflective, but hardly thoughtful, the mouth under the small fair moustache slightly indeterminate, the head covered with short hair, the smooth fat face three-quarters in light, presents at first glance a commonplace aspect enough. But returning to it from the Krul or even from the more masterly later portrait, the spectator is certain to be deeply impressed by the quiet yet searching execution that takes account of every significant change in plane or outline in the large cheek and full chin. From the very commonplace of the pose and type one gains a special pleasure, since the power of the artist to irradiate an ordinary subject is the more clearly seen. The serene light enveloping the good head and falling gently on the background brings no thought of method or pigment to the mind, and the fleshlike quality[Pg 100] of the face and hands is as near imitation of reality as is possible within the bounds of synthetic art. It is easy to agree with Dr. Bode's opinion that the homely simple portraits painted in ordinary costume and under ordinary conditions of light during Rembrandt's first three years in Amsterdam are intellectually more worth while than the earlier more personal works. The theory is that he turned them out in competition with his contemporaries and eclipsed them on their own ground.

The portrait of "Rembrandt's Father in Indoor Dress," of the preceding year (1631), is in a quite different manner, and closely resembles the painting in Boston of an old man with downcast eyes, from the same model. The bald head and scanty beard, the wrinkled face and slightly uncertain mouth, are familiar to all students of Rembrandt's art. In 1631 Rembrandt was still in his father's house and one gains some notion of the old miller's amiability from the frequency with which he appeared in etchings and paintings and the variety of the poses which he took on behalf of his ardent son, adjusting his expression to his assumed character with no little dramatic skill. Never in his later years did Rembrandt so delicately render the patience and discipline of age. In this alert, unprepossessing yet kindly face we can read a not too fanciful history of the temperament of the sitter. We see, at all events, the mark of a sympathetic mind.[Pg 101]

The next picture in the collection to mark a special period and one of brilliant achievement in Rembrandt's career is the so-called "Woodcutter's Family," belonging to the decade between 1640 and 1650. After an old fashion the Holy Family is represented as seen in a painting before which a curtain is partly drawn. The mother sits by the side of a cradle from which she has lifted the child who clings to her neck while she presses him to her in a close embrace. In the farther corner of the room is the figure of the father in his carpenter's apron, and in the center a cat is crouching near some dishes on the floor. The room is filled with a mild sunlight that filters through the air and falls across the figures of the mother and child and across the broad expanse of floor. The simplicity and poetic feeling in lighting and gesture are worthy of Rembrandt's prime, and there is no trace of the extreme drama that marks the religious compositions at Munich. The color is beautiful and the tone mysterious. Nevertheless one misses the precious quality of the earlier craftmanship as it shines in such lovely paintings as the "Saskia" and the "Portrait of a Young Woman." In these the painter shows that he was still young, that he had arrived at a skill of hand that permitted him to use his medium with ease and certainty, but that he had not yet ceased to attempt what lay just beyond his powers. His brush still sought out subtle refinements of modeling with the patience that allied[Pg 102] him to the earlier Dutch and Flemish masters. He had, no doubt, the instinctive feeling of ardent youth, the assumption of time ahead for the carrying out of all projects, and his brilliant manipulations of his pigment showed neither haste, nor as yet the complete confidence that leaves untold the detail of the story for the imagination of the audience to supply. He was not ready to sacrifice everything else to that light and atmosphere of which he made his own world in his later years. Characteristic of his most winning use of this light that he created for his own purposes is the portrait of Nicholas Bruyningh, Secretary of one of the divisions of the Courts of Justice at Amsterdam: one of the most salient and brilliant of the Rembrandts in the Cassel Gallery. This portrait belongs to the year 1652 when the artist was about forty-five years old, and it is a superb example of matured genius. The subject offered an opportunity for daring handling and pictorial arrangement upon which Rembrandt seized with a full understanding of its possibilities. The beautiful gay face with its suggestion of irresponsibility glows from a mist of atmosphere that veils all minor detail, leaving in strong relief the mass of curling hair, the smiling dark eyes, the smiling mouth unconcealed by the slight moustache, the firmly modeled nose and pliant chin, with the tasseled collar below catching the point of highest light. It is the poetry of good humor, of physical beauty, of content with [Pg 103] life and life's adventures. It also marks what Herr Knackfuss calls Rembrandt's "softer manner" in which all sharp outlines of objects are effaced, and the lights gleam from a general darkness. More than "The Sentinel," which sometimes is given as the starting point for this departure in style, it has the appearance of a dramatic emergence from shadow. From having been a painstaking craftsman Rembrandt at this time had become a dramatist selecting from his material those elements best adapted to sway the emotions. He has lost himself—or found himself—in the expression of character; not merely character as one element in a picture's interest, but character as the element. In this picture of Nicholas Bruyningh we cannot escape from the merry careless temperament. We cannot as in the early portrait of Saskia linger in dalliance over charming accessories and beautifully discriminated textures until we reach by moderate degrees the eloquence of the profoundly studied face. Bruyningh's face is like the "tirade" of a French play—it is rendered at white heat and in one inconceivably long breath. Its significance is so intensified as to produce a profound feeling in a sympathetic spectator.

Courtesy of Berlin Photographic Company. In the Cassel Museum. Nicholas Bruyningh From a portrait by Rembrandt

If we compare it with the badly named "Laughing Cavalier" of Franz Hals we see clearly enough the difference between drama and realism. Drama as defined by Robert Louis Stevenson consists not of incident but of[Pg 104] passion that must progressively increase in order that the actor may be able to "carry the audience from a lower to a higher pitch of interest and emotion." This also defines Rembrandt's painting at all periods. As one approaches the human face in his pictures one becomes aware of an emotional quality that is irresistible, and in a portrait like that of Bruyningh the emotional quality is almost isolated from incident or detail. It is the great moment of the third act when the audience holds its breath.

"The Standard Bearer" is not accepted by Dr. Bode as a fine work or even as certainly original, the version of the same subject in Baron G. du Rothschild's collection having made much deeper an impression upon him. The Cassel version is nevertheless a work of great distinction, the grave and beautiful face and shining armor looking out of a luminous atmosphere that has more of the Rembrandtesque quality than many authenticated works of Rembrandt's riper period. The work is engaging, personal, striking, and if not entirely great certainly possessed of many of the qualities of greatness.

While the Cassel collection does not contain any of the superb self portraits of Rembrandt's later years, the one example in this kind having authority without great interest, it does include one biblical picture of unusual importance belonging to the year 1656, the "Jacob Blessing his Grandchildren," which is, however, unfinished.[Pg 105] The square, direct brush strokes suggest those of Hals, the drapery is thinly painted with a flowing medium, the black shadows on the face of Jacob cut sharply into the half tones, there is little discrimination in the textures and the background comes forward. But the faces of the children are charming in characterization, recalling the simple tenderness of the "Girl Leaning Out of the Window" at Dulwich, one of the most enchanting embodiments of youth ever achieved by Rembrandt, and the woman, Israelitish in type, with large eyes and features rather abruptly defined, is an attractive attempt to realize feminine beauty, a task in which Rembrandt was never dexterous, however.

Of the two landscapes, that with the ruined castle is the most impressive, but neither compares favorably with the dainty perfection of the landscape etchings.

If we add to these examples the studies of old men's heads and the delightful portrait of the artist's sister holding a pink in her hand, we realize that the group as a whole covers many phases of Rembrandt's constantly changing inspiration. He betrayed in his later works the impatience of those to whom few years are left in which to complete their accomplishment, but he kept the sensitiveness of his youth well into his brief prime, although he transferred it from the field of form to that of light. It betrays itself in the quality of that light[Pg 106] which absorbs all that is ugly, coarse, or ultra real in its poetizing glamour. From the tender explicit craftsmanship of the wonderful Saskia to the golden mist enveloping the figure of Nicholas Bruyningh, is a long step, but not longer than many a painter has taken in his progress from youth to maturity. The special comment upon Rembrandt's character as a painter which we are able to gather from the Cassel pictures is that in casting off the trammels of particularity he did not become less receptive to poetic influences. He grew more and more a dreamer, and in losing the clear objective manner of his early portraits he substituted not the idle carelessness which in the work of a painter's later years is apt to be condoned as freedom, but the generalization that excludes vulgarities of execution and makes necessary increased mastery of the difficult craft of painting.[Pg 107]

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FANTIN-LATOUR

VIII

Fantin-Latour

Fantin-Latour was born in 1836, was the son of a painter, and was educated at Paris under his father's guidance and that of Lecoq and Boisbaudeau, professor at a little art school connected with the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. One of the most interesting painters of the little group in France whose work began to come before the public about the middle of the nineteenth century, a close friend of Whistler, a passionate admirer of Delacroix, and an inspired student of the old masters, he managed to preserve intact an individuality that has a singular richness and simplicity seen against the many-colored tapestry of nineteenth-century art. Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and Nicolaas Maas, Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer of Delft, Watteau and Chardin, Van Dyck, Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese were his true masters and his copies of their works are said by his enlightened critic, M. Arsène Alexandre, to have a masterly quality of their own, to be far removed from the conventionality of facsimiles, and to bear upon an underlying[Pg 110] fidelity of transcription an impress of individual sentiment. He sought to be faithful to the originals beyond external imitation, by seeking to render the original tone of the painting in its first freshness, as it appeared before time and varnish had yellowed and darkened it. He thus made himself familiar with the technical methods of the great periods of painting, and, coming into his inheritance of modern ideas and ideals, he was able to achieve a beauty of execution much too rarely sought by his contemporaries, although his intimate companions like himself frequented the Louvre with a considerable assiduity, spending upon the old masters the enthusiasm which they withheld from the later academic school of painting.

His earlier subjects were largely Biblical and historical. He then passed to domestic scenes and in 1859, 1861, and 1863 was painting his pictures of Les Liseurs and Les Brodeuses which showed the charming face of his sister with her sensitive smiling mouth and softly modeled brows, and later that of his wife. At the Salon of 1859 he and Whistler both submitted subjects drawn from family life, Whistler his At the Piano with his own sister and his niece, little Annie Haden, for the models, and Fantin his painting of young women embroidering and reading, only to have their canvases refused. Fantin was not, however, a martyr to his predilections in art. He early obtained admission to the Salon although he had enough rejected[Pg 111] work to permit him to appear among the painters exhibiting in the famous little "Salon des Refusés" of 1863. He received medals and official recognitions. But his modesty of taste led him to hold himself somewhat apart and exclusive among those who shared his likings. His portrait of himself, painted in 1858, shows a dreamy young man with serious, almost solemn, eyes, sitting before his easel, and looking into the distance with the expression of one who sees visions.

As a matter of fact he did see visions and attempted to fix them with his art. An ardent lover of music, he was eager to translate the emotions aroused by it into the terms of his own art. As early as 1859 he was in England, to which he returned in 1861 and 1864, and while there he was surrounded by a group of people who shared his enthusiasm for German music. There he first became familiar with Schumann's melodies, and made the rare little etching representing his English friends, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, playing one of Schumann's compositions, Edwards with his flute and Mrs. Edwards at the piano. In 1862 he had the very tempered satisfaction of finding that Wagner, already beloved by him, had reached the public taste through the labors of the courageous Pasdeloup. "I always regret," he wrote to Edwards, "seeing the objects of my adoration adored by others, especially by the masses. I am very jealous when I love."[Pg 112]

In order to celebrate Wagner's triumph over these masses, however, he at once made the lithograph called Venusberg, from which sprang the very different oil version of the same subject which together with the Hommage à Delacroix, the story of which M. Bénédite has recounted, was admitted to the Salon of 1864. Fantin's lithographs, a number of which are in the print room of the Lenox Library building in New York City, show clearly his preoccupation with music, and an interesting article on this phase of his temperament appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, September 15, 1906. Naturally a worshiper, he did not confine himself to commemorating only the musicians who were his favorites. In lithography and painting he exalted such diverse heroes of the different arts as Stendhal, Hugo, Baudelaire, Delacroix, Manet, Schumann, Weber, Berlioz, and Wagner. In 1877 his enthusiasm for Wagner revived in his work, and compositions based on the Ring music followed each other in rapid succession. Wolfram gazing at the evening star, or following with enchanted eyes Elizabeth's ghostly figure as it moves slowly up the hill toward the towers of Wartburg; the Rhine maidens playing with rhythmic motions in the swirling waters, with Alberic, crouched in the foreground, watching them; Sieglinde, giving Siegmund to drink, as hounded and pursued he sinks at the door of Hunding's dwelling; the evocation of Kundry by Klingner; [Pg 113] Siegfried blowing his horn and receding from the enticements of the Rhine maidens—these are among the subjects that engaged him. It would be difficult to describe his manner of interpretation. Quite without theatrical suggestion, it combines a dramatic use of dark and light and a feeling for palpable atmosphere hardly equaled by Rembrandt himself, with a remarkably certain touch. Nothing could better emphasize the value of technical drill to a poetic temperament than these imaginative drawings. In them Fantin gives full rein to his emotional delight in tender visions and twilight dreams. The lovely rhythm of his lines, the rise and fall of his sensitive shadows and lights that play and interplay in as strict obedience to law as the waves of the sea, his delicate modeling by which he brings form out of nebulous half-tones with the slightest touches, the least discernible accents, the accurate bland drawing, the ordered composition, the subtle spacing, the innumerable indications of close observation of life—all these qualities combine to give an impression of fantasy and reality so welded and fused as to be indistinguishable to the casual glance.

In the Brooklyn Art Museum. Portrait of Mme. Maître From a painting by Fantin-Latour

In spite of the assiduous study of Dutch and Italian masters, Fantin's work is characteristically French in both its fantasy and its realism. Not only the grace of the forms and the elegance of the gestures, but the sentiment[Pg 114] of the composition and the quality of the color, are undisguisedly Gallic. He is closer to Watteau than to any other painter but his firmer technic and more patient temperament give him an advantage over the feverish master of eighteenth-century idyls. His art throbs with a fuller life and in his airiest dreams his world is made of a more solid substance. For melancholy he offers serenity, for daintiness he offers delicacy.

His technique, especially in his later work, is quite individual in its character. He models with short swift strokes of the brush—not unlike the brush work in some of Manet's pictures. His pigment is rather dry and often almost crumbly in texture, but his values are so carefully considered that this delicately ruffled surface has the effect of casting a penumbra about the individual forms, of causing them to swim in a thickened but fluent atmosphere, instead of suggesting the rugosity of an ill-managed medium.

In his paintings of flowers he found the best possible expression for his subtle color sense. The letters written to him by Whistler in the sixties show how fervently these paintings were admired by the American master of harmony, and also how much good criticism came to him from his comrade whose enthusiasm for Japanese art already was fully awakened.

As a portraitist, Fantin was peculiarly fortunate. His[Pg 115] exquisitely painted flower studies, his pearly-toned beautifully drawn nudes, his lithographs with their soft darks and tender manipulations of line, his ambitious imaginative compositions, are none of them so eloquent of his personality as his portraits with their absolute integrity, their fine divination, and their fluent technique. The portrait which we reproduce is of Madam Maître, was painted in 1882, and was acquired by the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1906. It represents a woman of middle years with a sincere and thoughtful face and a quiet bearing. The felicities of Fantin's brush are seen in the way in which the silk sleeve follows the curve of the round firm arm, and the soft lace of the bodice rests against the throat and is relieved almost without contrast of color against the white skin. The touches of pure pale blue in the fan and the delicate tints of the rose are manifestations of the artist's restrained and subtle management of color, but above all there is a perfectly unassuming yet uncompromising rendering of character. There is nothing in the plain refined features that cries out for recognition of a temperament astutely divined. They have the calm repose that indicates entire lack of self-consciousness, no quality is unduly insisted upon, there is neither sentimentality nor brutal realism in the handling, the sitter simply lives as naturally upon the canvas as we feel that she must have lived in the world.[Pg 116] It is for such sweet and logical truth-telling, such mild and strict interpretation, that we must pay our debt of appreciation to Fantin, the painter of ideal realities and of actual ideals.[Pg 117]

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CARL LARSSON

IX

Carl Larsson

The accomplished Swedish critic, Georg Nordensvan, opens his monograph on Carl Larsson with the statement that the latter is unquestionably the most popular artist of the present day in his own country, and that he is equally popular as a man. It is not often that the personality of an artist seems so essentially connected with his work as in Larsson's case. His gay, pugnacious, independent, yet amiable temper of mind is so directly reflected in the character of his various production as to make a consideration of the two together an almost necessary prelude to any account of him. He has insisted upon expressing his individuality at whatever cost of traditional and conventional technique and he has at the same time unconsciously represented the frankest, most wholesome, and, on the whole, most characteristic side of the Swedish character. A rather daring and flippant humor enters into his paintings. One of his portraits of himself shows him standing, his happy reddish face aglow, against a yellowish-brown[Pg 120] wall. He is dressed in a long, yellowish-brown smoking frock, and holds in his raised hand a pencil from which appears to spring a little feminine figure supposed to represent his genius. "This figure carries what looks like a quantity of small round cookies," says his critic, "possibly to symbolize the adequacy with which his genius provides for his nourishment."

Another shows him with his little girl sitting on his head, maintaining her equilibrium by planting stout feet on his shoulders. The painter wears a house-jacket, loose slippers and baggy trousers, his face beams with good-humor; the child is brimming with laughter; the little scene is instinctive with the spirit of intimate domesticity, and the drawing, free and easy, without apparent effort in the direction of elegant arrangement or expressiveness of line, is nevertheless singularly nervous and vigorous.

My Family From a painting by Carl Larsson

In still another portrait, he is sitting before his easel, his little girl on one knee, his canvas on the other with the easel serving only as a prop. His eyes are turned toward a mirror which is outside the picture and the reflection in which he is using as a model; the child's eyes are fixed on the canvas watching the growth of the design. These are "self-portraits" in more than the usual sense. It is the rarest thing in art to find a painter representing his own aspect with such complete lack of [Pg 121] self-consciousness. No characteristics seem especially to be emphasized, none betray exaggeration, there apparently is neither distortion nor idealization, nor is there any attempt to select a mood that shall preserve a favorable impression of the sitter. Nothing could, however, more favorably present a character to the critical scrutiny of strangers than this superb good faith. The least sentimental of us must recognize with frank delight the wholesome sweetness of the world these kindly faithful records open to us.

Larsson was born at Stockholm in 1853. From the age of thirteen he depended upon his own labors for support; retouching photographs at first. Later he entered the elementary school of the academy where he received honors. He drew from the antique and from the model and began to make drawings for illustration when he was about eighteen. The public knew him first through his drawings for the comic paper called Kasper, and he shortly became a much sought after illustrator for papers and books. The first book illustrated by him was a collection of stories by Richard Gustafsson, the editor of Kasper, the next was Anderson's "Tales." In the latter he succeeded Isidor Törnblom, who died in 1876 after having executed only a few drawings for the first part. He became bold and rapid in improvisation, and light and easy in execution—qualities[Pg 122] that he never lost. He was obliged to make of his academic studies a side issue, bread-winning taking necessarily the first place with him. No doubt it is to this necessity that he owes that prompt adaptation of his facility to various uses, that practical application of his freshly acquired knowledge which give to the simple compositions of his earlier period an especial spontaneity. He had no time to fix himself in ruts of practice. To draw from the Antinous one day and the next to press one's Greek outline into service for the representation of little dancing girls and happy babies is to effect that union between art and life which makes the first moving and the second beautiful; the union in which Daumier found the source of his prodigious strength. In his early years Larsson was anything but a realist. His fancy turned to unusual and vast subjects, and his natural impatience caused him to launch himself upon them with very inadequate preliminary study. The first canvas attempted by him during the study-time in Paris (time which he won at the Academy) was nearly ten feet high and represented a scene from the deluge with figures double life size. Naturally, he found himself unable to cope with the difficulties that promptly arose and was obliged to give it up. In 1877, when he was twenty-four years old, he painted a three-quarter length portrait of a woman standing, which was his best work of[Pg 123] that period. The genre pictures which he sent home to Stockholm at about the same time awakened little enthusiasm and spread the impression that he had no future as a painter and would be obliged to content himself with illustration. As an illustrator he became thoroughly successful, turning out a large amount of work and gaining for himself in Stockholm the very inappropriate name of "the Swedish Doré." He made enough money in this branch of art to try painting again in Paris, but with almost no success until the Spring of 1883, when he exhibited at the Salon a couple of small water-colors, the subjects taken from the field and garden life of Grez, a little painting village that lies south of the Fontainebleau forest. These pictures won a medal and were bought in Gothenburg. Other similar subjects followed, all distinguished, Nordensvan affirms, by the same pleasing delicacy of handling, the same glow and splendor of sunlight, and the same glad color-harmony. He now was in a position to marry, and pictures of family life presently appeared in great numbers. These are altogether charming—spirited, vivid, original, and full of an indescribable freshness and heartiness. Sometimes he painted his young wife holding her baby, sometimes he painted his two boys parading as mimic soldiers; sometimes it was his little girl hiding under the great, handsome dining-table; or a young people's party in[Pg 124] the characteristic dining-room, all the furniture and decorations of which are reproduced with crisp naturalism.

Not the least charm of his paintings lies in the beauty of these handsome interiors in which detail has the precise definition found in the work of the old Dutch artists. While Larsson's technique lacks the exquisite finish of a Terborch or Vermeer of Delft he tells almost as many truths about a house and its occupants as they do. If we consider, for example, the charming composition which he calls "The Sluggard's Melancholy Breakfast" ("Sjusofverskans dystra frukost") we find worthy of note not only the pensive and rather cross little girl sitting alone at the table with her loaf of bread and cup of milk, but also the long tablecloth with its handsome conventional design, obviously a bit of artistic handicraft since it is signed and dated above the fringe at one end, the decoration on the wall, possibly the lower part of a painted window, with its significant motto "Arte et Probitate"; the graceful pattern of the chairs, the big pitcher full of flowers and fruits, the plain ample dishes, the polished floor of the passage-way at the end of which a door opens on the green fields with a child's figure half-seen standing on the threshold, the fine rich color harmony of greens and reds and blues and browns held together by a subtlety of tone that involves no loss of strength.[Pg 125]

His outdoor scenes are hardly less personal in their portraiture. There is the one called "Apple-Bloom" with a Larsson child in a pink sunbonnet clinging to the slim stem of a young apple-tree; in the distance some long low red buildings behind a board fence, in the foreground the pale green of spring grass; there is the one in which the larger part of the picture is filled with delicate field growth, thin sprays of pink, blue and white blossoms, and long slender leaves, at the top of the canvas a little thicket of trees with a small bright head peering between the branches; there is the one in which a baby lies on the greensward under the trees; each has an indescribable charm of individuality. Doubtless resembling a hundred other groves or meadows, these have an expression of their own distinguishing them from their kind. It is the genius of the close observer for discrimination between like things.

Whatever the subject, the treatment is always brilliant, frank and joyous. Larsson's brushwork is light and flowing; he has, indeed, a certain French vivacity of technique, but his motives and his personal point of view are so purely Scandinavian as to leave no other impression on the mind. Nor is he merely the painter of the Swedish type. He is the painter of intimate home life and character as found within his own walls. Hardly any other family in Sweden is known so well as his, and[Pg 126] the variety and enthusiasm of his mind lend spontaneity to these domestic pictures, so that one does not easily tire of the strong smiling creatures naturally and effectively presented to our vision.

In the field of mural decoration also he has shown marked originality. Under the encouragement of Mr. Pontus Furstenberg, one of the foremost patrons of art in Sweden, he tested himself on a series of paintings for a girl's school in Gothenburg. He accomplished his task in a manner entirely his own, taking for his subjects typical figures of women in Sweden at different periods of history—a Viking's widow; the holy Brigitta; a noble house mother of the time of the Vasas, etc.—but although his manner of painting was free and blithe it hardly satisfied the most severe critics on account of its lack of architectonic qualities and the absence in it of anything like monumental simplicity. He has continued, however, to go his own way in mural decoration and holds to the principle that the walls should look flat and that the harmony of color and line should be balanced and proportioned with regard to decorative and not to realistic effect. His subjects are apt to be fanciful and are executed in a semi-playful spirit not in the least familiar to an uninventive age, as where the spirit of the Renaissance is represented by a young woman seated high on a step-ladder, looking toward the sky, [Pg 127] with Popes and Cardinals seated on the rungs below gazing in adoration, while underneath them all yawns the grave filled with skeletons, from which the Renaissance has risen.

A Painting by Carl Larsson

On the subject of home arts and handicrafts Larsson has emphatic ideas and urges on his compatriots the desirability of preserving their national types. "Take care of your true self while time is," he says, "again become a plain and worthy people. Be clumsy rather than elegant: dress yourselves in furs, skins, and woolens, make yourselves things that are in harmony with your heavy bodies, and make everything in bright strong colors; yes, in the so-called gaudy peasant colors which are needed contrasts to your deep green pine forests and cold white snow." He has made designs for haute-lisse weaving which were executed by the Handicraft Guild and which were practically open air painting translated into the Gobelin weave. In all that he does he is free from the trammels of convention; but his chief triumphs are in a field that is sadly neglected in modern art. As a painter of family life he is surpassed by none of his contemporaries.
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JAN STEEN

X

Jan Steen

Jan Steen was born in Leyden about 1626, which would make him nineteen years younger than Rembrandt. He is said to have studied first under Nicolas Knüpfer and then possibly under Adriaen van Ostade in Harlem, and finally under Jan van Goyen at the Hague. In 1648 he was enrolled in the Painter's Guild at Leyden, and the following year he married Margaretha van Goyen, the daughter of his latest master. His father was a well-to-do merchant and beer-brewer and Steen himself at one time ran a brewery, though apparently not with great success. He incontestably was familiar with the life of drinking places and houses in which rough merrymaking was the chief business. Many of his subjects are drawn from such sources and his brush brings them before us with their characteristic features sharply observed and emphasized. He has been accused of a moralizing tendency and it may at least be said that he permits us to draw our own moral from perverted and unpolished facts. In his least restrained[Pg 132] moments he is a kind of Dutch Jordaens, less exuberant, less sturdy and florid and gesticulatory; but with the same zest for living, the same union of old and young in any festival that includes good meat and good drink with song and dance and horse-play. If we compare "Die Lustige Familie" at Amsterdam with that ebullient rendering of the same subject by Jordaens entitled "Zoo de ouden zongen: Zoo pypen de jongen" that hangs in the Antwerp Museum, we have no difficulty in perceiving the points of similarity. There even are likenesses in the color-schemes of the two painters, Jordaen's silvery yellows for once meeting their match; but we find in Steen's picture a more subtle discrimination in the characters and temperaments lying beneath the physical features of the gay company.

Oftentimes Steen indulges in a gay and harmless badinage as different as possible from the bold and keen irony of his wilder themes. In "Die Katzentanz Stunde" of the Rijks museum at Amsterdam the laughing children putting the wretched little cat through a course of unwelcome instruction, the excited pose of the dog, the concentration of the girl upon her dance-music, are rendered with joyous freedom and animation, and suggest a childlike mood. The lovely Menagerie of the Hague is conceived in a still milder and gentler temper, the demure child among her pets, feeding her lamb, with[Pg 133] her doves flying about her head and the faithful little Steen dog in the background, is an idyllic figure. Indeed the entire composition has a tenderness and almost a religious depth of sentiment that make it unique among the painter's achievements. Another charming composition in which homely pleasures enjoyed with moderation and in a mood of simple merriment are delicately depicted is "Der Wirtshausgarten" in Berlin, in which the young people and their elders together with the happy dog are having a quiet meal under a green arbor. Family pets play an important part in all these scenes of domestic life; apparently Jan Steen even more than other Dutch painters was interested in the idiosyncrasies of the animals about him and was amused by incidents including them. His pictures gain by this a certain suggestion of kindliness and community of good feeling that is refreshing in the midst of the frequent vulgarity of theme and sentiment. Reminiscences of the exquisite feeling shown in "Die Menagerie" continually occur in such incidents as a girl feeding her parrot, the play of children with the friendly dogs and cats of the noisy inn, and especially in the importance given to the expressions and attitudes of the dumb creatures. The dog is nearly always in the foreground, invariably characterized with the utmost vivacity and clearness, and usually playing his cheerful part in whatever of lively occupation his[Pg 134] masters are engaged in. In "Die Lustige Familie" he joins his voice to the family concert with an expression of canine agony.

Frequently the subjects are obviously drawn from the life of his own family circle and the portraits of his children in these canvases are always sympathetic and delightful, giving a peculiarly intimate character to the artist's works in this kind. In "Das Nikolausfest" at Amsterdam the little girl in the foreground—apparently the little Elisabeth born in 1662, who figures in so many of the later paintings—is a particularly engaging figure.

These simpler "feasts" and family gatherings in which gay laughter reigns in place of brawling, constitute a delightful phase of Steen's art, yet curiously they are seldom as beautiful in their esthetic qualities as the tavern scenes and incidents of low and vicious life. The picture in the Louvre, however, "Das Familien Mahl," contradicts this generalization in the sheer loveliness of color, in the light that streams through the window hung with vines, and in the delicately discriminated textures of the gowns and furnishings. In this picture the figure of the woman nursing her child in the background has an amplitude of line and graciousness of pose that places it on a plane with Millet's renderings of similar subjects, while the painting in itself is of a quality never achieved by the poetic Frenchman.[Pg 135]

Occasionally we find compositions by Steen in which only two or three figures are introduced, although as a rule he crowds every inch of his canvas with human beings and still-life. A very beautiful example of these compositions is seen in "Die Musikstunde" of the National Gallery, London. The daintiness and innocence of the young girl's profile, the refinement of the man's face, and the enchanting tones of the yellow bodice and blue skirt make of this picture a worthy sequel to "Die Menagerie."

Another composition of two figures is "Das Trinkerpaar" in the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam. A woman is drinking from a glass, and a man standing at one side holds a jug and looks at her with an expression of concern. The painting of the woman's right hand which she holds to her breast is delightful and so is the clear half-tone of her face. An attractive one-figure composition, also in the Rijks Museum, is "Die Scheuermagd," a scullery maid scouring a metal pitcher on the top of a cask. The discriminations of texture in this picture, the wood and metal surfaces, the cotton of the woman's blouse, the rather coarse skin of her bared arms and the more delicate texture of her full throat, are especially noteworthy. Several compositions in which two or three figures are grouped are variations of one theme, an invalid visited by her physician. In several instances[Pg 136] the title, the rather lackadaisical expression of the lady, and the significant glances of her companions, indicate that love-sickness is the malady. The color in these pictures is usually beautiful and the types are cleverly differentiated, the entire story becoming apparent to the spectator by particularities of gesture and feature, neither exaggerated nor emphasized unduly, but acutely observed and rendered at their precise value in the expressiveness of the whole. A very fine example of these "Doktorbilder" is in the collection of the New York Historical Society. The doctor is bleeding his patient, and there are several people in the room. The rich costumes are distinguished by the indescribable blond yellows and silvery blues that make Steen's color harmonies at their best singularly delicate and blithe.

Among the compositions in which many figures in a complicated environment tax the artist's technical skill to the utmost, are several representations of the bean feast, that saturnalia of Germany, upon which abundant eating and drinking are in order. One of the most beautiful of these pictures is in the Cassel Gallery. Steen himself, portly and flushed, sits at the table, grimacing good-naturedly at the racket assailing his ears. His handsome wife is in the foreground, her large free gesture and unrestrained pose bringing out the opulent beauty of her form draped in shining silken stuffs. Her face,[Pg 137] turned toward the little urchin who has found the bean in the cake and thus won the right to wear a paper crown as king of the revels, is dimpled with smiles. The two children are babyish in figure and expression and the little dog is more serious than is his wont upon these occasions. A couple of men are making a din with bits of brass and iron, and the place is in complete disorder with eggshells and kitchen utensils scattered about on the floor, yet the aspect of the scene is curiously removed from vulgarity. Both beauty and character have been ideals of the artist. He has not only grasped the loveliness of external things but he has delved rather deeply into the individualities of these roistering Hollanders. You do not feel as you do with Jordaens that excess of flesh and the joys of the palate are all the world holds for the revelers. The world holds, for one thing, appreciation of rich accessories. The columned bedstead, the handsome rugs, the carved furniture, the glint of gold in the ornate picture frame, especially the sheen of the silk skirts, the soft thick velvet and fur of the sacques and bodices, these, while they are not uncommon in the Dutch interiors of the period combine to produce an impression of esthetic well-being that tempers the unctuous physical satisfactions of a merry-making class. With Jordaens it is the satyr in man that sets the standard of enjoyment, except in his religious pictures which often[Pg 138] are filled with genuine and noble emotion, and in which he rises superior to Steen where the latter works in the same kind. Nothing could be more commonplace or characterless in color and form than Steen's rendering of the dinner at Emmaus. Occasionally, however, he is equally without inspiration in his lustiest subjects. In the "Fröhliche Heimkehr" at Amsterdam, a merry enough scene of people returning from a boatride in high spirits, there is neither charm of color (save in the yellow jacket of a girl who leans over the side of the boat) nor subtlety of characterization.

Fully to appreciate Steen, we should know his pictures in the Louvre and at Amsterdam. They cover a wide range and comprise a considerable number of masterpieces. The life he depicts in them is not of a very high order, but he has seen the possibilities for pictorial representation in his surroundings as almost no other painter of his time. His people are alive and their living is active and fervent. What they do they do with zest. There is energy in the painter's line and vitality in his color. Nothing is dull or tame in his family drama. All has a touch of moving beauty. In the "Schlechte Gesellschaft" of the Louvre or the more vulgar "Nach dem Gelage" of the Rijks Museum—least rewarding of pictures for the moralist—how rich in beauties of color and line is the composition, how tender in modeling are[Pg 139] the forms, how bewitching to the eye the fine enamel of the surface!

In the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, is one characteristic example: "The old rat comes to the trap at last," which badly needs cleaning, and one new purchase attributed to Steen in the lists of his work but hardly typical or even characteristic. The subject is a kitchen scene. In it we have neither Steen's charm of color nor his perfection of finish. Yet the turn of the woman's head, the unaffected merriment of her expression and that of the youth, and the type to which her face belongs sufficiently recall such examples of the artist's work as "Das Galante Anerbieten" at Brussels with which indeed it has more in common than with any other of Jan Steen's pictures known to me.

Steen's own portrait, painted by himself and hanging now in the Amsterdam Museum, shows a face upon which neither wild living nor ardent toil has left unhappy marks. His serious eyes look frankly out from under arched brows. His mouth is firm though smiling slightly. The high, bold nose and strong chin, the well-shaped head and thoughtful brow indicate a character more decided and more praiseworthy than the legends adrift concerning his life would lead us to expect in him.
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ONE SIDE OF MODERN GERMAN PAINTING

XI

One Side of Modern German Painting

The best substitutes for the judgments of posterity are the judgments of foreigners. A group of pictures by the artists of one country, taken to another country for exhibition and criticism, is subjected to something the same test as the pictures of one generation coming under the scrutiny of another generation.

When a collection of pictures by modern German artists was exhibited in America in 1909, the American people were prompt in their recognition of a certain quality which they termed national. The critics—many of them—saw this quality from the adverse side and were far from complimentary to the Germans in their comparisons between American art and German art, but a general impression was given of a vitality sufficiently marked to make itself felt by the least initiated observer. A number of the pictures by the older men had little enough of this vitality, but where it existed it was so decided as to leaven the mass. And there was almost none of the sentimentality characterizing the Teutonic ideal as it[Pg 144] had manifested itself in the pictures formerly brought to this country.

Compared, then, with the paintings of American artists and with those of the Frenchmen, whose work we have known so much better than that of any other country, compared also with the work of the modern Spaniards, whose paintings were on exhibition the same winter at the Hispanic Museum, we find the special character of the German painting to exist in a resolute individualism, a determination to express the inner life of the artist, his temperament and predilections and his mood at whatever cost of technical facility. Expressiveness, getting the idea into circulation, getting something said, this appears to be the common goal of the German painter of the present day.

In such case, of course, the idea is of particular importance. If it is to take precedence over purely esthetic qualities it is reasonable to expect it to be an idea of no little importance. Let us examine some of the painters represented in the exhibition arranged for America, and see whether in most cases the idea is emotional as with the artists of China and Japan, and therefore peculiarly appropriate to translation by rhythms of line and harmonies of color, or intellectual, and therefore demanding a complex and difficult expression and the solution of technical problems that do not come into the question at[Pg 145] all when nothing else is required than to evoke an especial mood or temper of soul.

The oldest of the painters represented was Adolf von Menzel, who was born in 1815 and died in his ninetieth year. As he began work at an early age his accomplishment practically covers the period of the nineteenth century. He has been designated by one of his German critics as three Menzels in one: the first, the historian of the Freiderician period; the second, the historian of his own time, recording the court life in which he played his part; the third, the acute observer of the life of the streets and workrooms and a commentator on the amusing details of the passing show.

A number of his sketches were shown at the exhibition, a couple of landscapes, a ballroom scene and a theater subject, beside a little mediaeval subject in gouache. These displayed his dexterity of hand which was truly astounding, and also his memory, as the "Théâtre Gymnase" was painted fully a year after he left Paris. The ballroom supper was painted in an ironic mood and the gluttony of his fellow humans, their unattractive personalities, their curious aspect of the educated animal, appear with an intense and pitiless fidelity to the fact which is of the essence of intellectual realism, but which could equally have been achieved through the medium of words. In spite of a cultivated color sense and a fine control[Pg 146] over his instrument he was from first to last essentially an illustrator. It was difficult for him to omit any detail that would add to the piquancy or fulness of his story, however much the omission might have done for his general effect. He said himself, "There should be no unessentials for the artist," and he advised his pupils to finish as much as possible and not to sketch at all. This passion for completeness rarely accompanies a strong feeling for the romantic aspects of nature or for atmospheric subtleties. Neither does the painter who observes human nature closely and represents it with a detailed commentary upon its characteristics usually convey the impression of any subjective emotion.

Menzel is no exception to this rule. In his work he appears as emotionless as a machine, but his accomplishment is not mechanical. It is, on the contrary, the record of a busy, highly individualized, accurate mind. A Berlin man, he had the alertness, the clear-cut effectiveness, the energy, and the coldness typical of a cosmopolitan product. If we compare his "Ball Supper" in which the glare of lights, the elaboration of costume, the rapacity and shallow glittering superficiality of a Court festivity are presented almost as though in hackneyed phrases, so devoid is the picture of any meaning beyond the obvious, with the "Steel Foundry" in which the unsentimental acceptance of labor as a necessary factor in civilization[Pg 147] is conspicuous, it is clear that his mind was free from dreams and visions whichever side of society he looked upon. In this respect his influence is salutary. It is like a cool and wholesome breeze blowing away all miasmic vapors, and there is a positively exhilarating quality in his firm assumption of the power of the human being over his material. His workmen are men of strong muscle and prompt brain. In the "Steel Foundry" we see their efficient handling of the great bars of metal with admiration as we should in life, and we note what in modern times is not always present for notation, the intelligence and interest in their faces. In one corner of the room, behind a screen or partition, a little group is devouring luncheon. Here we strike once more the note of the ballroom supper in the munching eagerness of the eaters, but seen in juxtaposition with the physical force and effort of the workers it ceases to be revolting, and seems to symbolize the lusty joy of living with a sympathetic zest of realization.

In all of Menzel's work we have this sense of physical and mental competency. It shows nothing of the abnormal or decadent, and it must also be admitted that only in a few instances does it show anything of esthetic beauty. He was able to paint crowds of people and he managed to get a remarkable unity of effect in spite of his devotion to detail, but his masses of light and shade are not[Pg 148] held in that noble harmonious relation achieved by the peasant Millet who was Menzel's contemporary, his lines have no rhythmic flow, his color, though often charming, is seldom held together in a unified tone. Some one has called him "the conscience of German painting," but he is more than that. He is both conscience and brain. It is always possible to obtain an intellectual satisfaction from his point of view. What is lacking is emotion.

We feel this lack in other Berlin masters. Professor Max Liebermann is one of the most distinguished of the modern group, and his large, cool, definite art is innocent of the moving quality. He was represented in the exhibition by a portrait of Dr. Bode, a vigorous little composition called "The Polo-players," the "Flax Barn at Laren," and "The Lace Maker." The last two were especially typical of his steady detachment from his subject. The old lace maker, bending over her bobbins, suggests only absorption in her task. There is no ennobling of her form, no idealizing of her features, no enveloping of her occupation with sentiment, nothing but the direct statement of her personality which is neither subtle nor complex and the description of what she is doing. But she is intensely real, more real, even, than Menzel's closely observed individuals. Liebermann, born in 1847, was the leader of the new tendency characterizing the Germany of the seventies, the tendency toward constant[Pg 149] reference to nature as opposed to the old-fashioned conventionalism and Academic methods. There could have been no safer leader for a band of rebels since he was the sanest of thinkers and worked out a style in which the classic qualities of nobility in the disposition of lines and spaces and remarkable purity of form played a prominent part.

Courtesy of Berlin Photographic Company. Peasant Women of Dachauer From a painting by Leibl

Observing his "Flax Barn," in comparison with the work of his compatriots, its fine freedom from triviality of detail was apparent, and the beauty of its cool light, spread over large spaces and diffused throughout the interior of the low shed, made itself felt. One noted also, as elements of the picture's peculiarly dignified appeal, the severe arrangement of the figures with the long row of workers under the windows, the long threads of flax passing over their heads to the women in the foreground, and the almost straight line formed in turn by these women. The composition, quite geometrical in its precision, gave a sense of deep repose in spite of the vitality of the individual figures and the impression they made of being able to turn and move at will, an impression nearly always missed by Leibl, Liebermann's great forerunner in the painting of humble life. We get much the same austere effect from the almshouse pictures of old men and women on benches in the open square, always arranged in a geometrical design, and always calm in gesture and mild[Pg 150] in type, which appear from time to time in the foreign exhibitions of Liebermann's work.

Liebermann has done for the Germans something of what Millet did for the French. He has built his art upon the daily life of the poor, but while, like Millet, he has introduced a monumental element into his work, it is clearer, more closely reasoned, more firmly knit than Millet's art, and at the same time less emotional. Liebermann's hospitality to purely technical ideas, his interest in problems of light and air, his diligent analysis of motion, his ability to translate a scene from the life of the laboring class without sentimentality, without prettiness or eloquence or any of the attributes that catch the multitude, give to his art a touch of coldness that is not without its charm for those who care for a highly developed orderly product of the mind.

Most of the Berlin men who are in any degree notable share somewhat in this attribute. Arthur Kampf, although he has less than Liebermann of cool detachment, has both elegance and gravity. He could hardly have had a better representation by any one or two canvases than by the "Charity" and the "Two Sisters" of the American exhibition. In the first he depicts a street scene with its contrasts of poverty and wealth. A man and woman in evening dress, returning from their evening's pleasure, are besought by poor people clustering around a soup[Pg 151] stall and drop coin into the insistent hands. The smoking caldron of soup in the center and the circle of sharply differentiated faces form an admirable composition, the apparently accidental lines of which play into a dignified linear scheme. The "Two Sisters" reveals the influence of Velasquez in its flat modeling and subtle characterization, and in its atmospheric grays enlivened with geranium reds. Both of these pictures indicate a modern temper of mind in the fluency of their technique and the realism of their treatment together with the attention paid to the tonal quality and to the character of the space composition. Kampf, however, although a young man—he was born in 1864—has passed through many phases of development which are recorded in his many-sided art. His subjects range from the historical themes of his wall decorations at Magdeburg and Aachen through portraiture in which he grasps characters essentially diverse and suggests with unerring instinct the dominant quality, scenes of labor as in his "Bridge-Building," scenes of brutality and excitement as in his "Bull-fight," scenes from the drama of the Biblical story, scenes of domestic life as in his delicately humorous picture of the absorbed reader eating his breakfast with the morning paper propped up in front of him, and scenes of peaceful holiday-making among the poor as in his idyllic "Sunday Afternoon" which shows a peasant boy playing his[Pg 152] harmonicum under the trees, with his old father and mother sitting by in placid enjoyment. Various as these pictures are and closely as the manner has in each case been adapted to the special subject, we nowhere miss the note of individuality, although in such a portrait as that of the Kaiser, which was shown in America, it unquestionably is subdued. Neither do we miss the note of locality. Born at Aachen, Kampf is a true Rheinlander and one of his German critics notes that we must look to this fact for the explanation of his special qualities, declaring that without the Rheinlander's cheerfulness and energetic temperament, and without the background of the ancient Rhenish culture, he would be inconceivable. On the other hand his turning to drama and romance for his inspiration speaks of his Duesseldorfian training and his realism of representation allies him to Menzel. At forty-two he was made president of the Royal Academy of Art in Berlin, and it is probable that the wholesome Rhenish energy of which his critic speaks will save him from sinking into the formalism of the academic tradition.

In his art, however, as in that of his compatriots, it is apparent that the world of ideas is the world in which he lives, and he works to express his mind rather than his soul, his thoughts rather than his emotions, if we follow[Pg 153] the indefinite and arbitrary division between thought and feeling that does service as a symbol of a meaning difficult to express clearly.

There were other interesting painters represented in the Berlin group at the American Exhibition, Otto Engel, Fritz Berger, Hans Hartig—and of all it is more or less true that the idea in their work is more important than the feeling. It is true also that the tradition of the peasant Leibl, a great painter, but invariably cold, rests upon most of them. His wonderful manipulation of pigment is equaled by none of them, but his accurate, detached observation, his balanced rendering, the firmness of his method, have entered more or less into their scheme of art. And it is to be noted that his ideas and theirs are ideas appropriate to the painter's medium. Menzel's literary bent is not shared by them, his predilection for a story to illustrate almost never appears among the younger Berlin painters, and he cannot in any real sense be considered their prototype.

When we turn to the older members of the modern Munich school we find the influence of Boecklin dominant. Arnold Boecklin, a Swiss by birth, and possessed of the Swiss ingenuity of mind, has been the subject of endless discussion among the Germans of the present day. He exhausted his very great talent in painting a symbolic world, and by his appreciation of the value of[Pg 154] coherence he made his paintings impressive. They are each a perfectly coherent arrangement of parts, making a whole which has the appearance of simplicity, however numerous the elements composing it may be. By a combined generalization and intensity he turned the actual world which he studied closely enough, into his own unreality. Thus, in his Italian landscapes, he reveals the architectonic structure of his scene stripped of all incidental ornament, the upright and horizontal lines left severe and uncompromised, and the blue of the heavens and the sea, and the dark green of the cypresses, pushed to an almost incredible depth. Everything is more significant than in nature, yet nature has provided the elements of significance. It is in his ability to see things whole and to co-ordinate the selected details that Boecklin is most an artist. This largeness of generalization gives him power over the imagination, and is, perhaps the only, certainly the chief source of his power. His color by its very intensity overdoes the intended effect. The imagination instead of being stimulated is sated, and his obvious symbolism fails to pique the curiosity. Moreover, his handling of paint lacks sensitiveness. He has something of the disregard shown by the English painter Watts for the beauty inherent in his material which might as well be clay or textile as pigment in his hands. But his appreciation of the effect upon the mind of noble arrangements[Pg 155] of space and mass raises him to a much higher place as an artist than he can be said to occupy as a painter.

Fiddling Death From a portrait by Arnold Boecklin

Franz von Stuck is Boecklin's most distinguished follower. When we turn from the examples of Boecklin's work, by no means the most impressive examples, exhibited in America, to Stuck's "Inferno" we perceive both the influence of Boecklin and the powerful individuality that mingles with it.

There is Boecklin's insistence upon the symbol, and upon the bodying forth of things unseen, there is the solid violence of color, there is the pompous statement of the half-discerned truths which more sensitive artists are content to whisper. But there is also a splendid arabesque of line and a deeper reading of the spiritual content of the subject.

If we compare Stuck with William Blake whose fancy also was haunted by Dantesque conceptions, we see how much more impressive Blake's visions of the unreal world are and we find the reason in their swift energy of conception and in the artist's tenacity in holding his conception. With both Boecklin and Stuck we feel that the manner of rendering the conception becomes more important than the initial conception, and this seldom, if ever, is true of Blake. In spite of Boecklin's superb restraint in the disposition of his masses, when it comes to color he is at the mercy of the material pigment and permits it to[Pg 156] obliterate where it should enhance and reveal. His forms, also, and even more than Stuck's, lose vitality under the weight of significance forced upon them, while Blake's emerge from the blank panel clean and strong and unencumbered. We feel that Blake, with all his struggle to utter truth by means of symbol, never allows his mind to lose the idea that "Living form is eternal existence," but in Boecklin's pictures "living form" is often buried beneath his colored clays.

Thus we see that it cannot truly be said of him and his followers that the idea is of first importance to them. It is their material that is of first importance, otherwise they would learn so to subordinate their material as to support and disclose their idea. This is the more obvious that their idea is emotional and therefore perfectly suited to expression through the medium of art. Liebermann's ideas although they are intellectual are not of a kind that cannot appropriately be translated into pictures, and his respect for them leads him to fit his manner of expression closely to their requirements. Like Leibl he is a painter and a thinker in one, and the faculties of the two work in complete coordination.

Painters of Boecklin's type, on the other hand, wish to produce in the observer a strong emotion, but they become slaves to their medium because their own emotion is not sufficiently powerful to conquer their minds, which become[Pg 157] diverted by the colors and forms they produce. One of Blake's swift upward soaring lines has more power to carry the imagination heavenward than all the versions of Boecklin's "Island of Death."

Against Boecklin's followers, whose minds are more or less befogged by their lack of appreciation of paint as a means to an end, we must place Wilhelm Truebner who is a clear thinker and a great painter, with more warmth than Liebermann and with a reticent color sense, a feeling for expressive form, a love of reality, and no apparent desire to re-invent the grotesque. His elegance of line in itself sets him apart from most of his compatriots, and his knowledge of how to extract from his color scheme its essential beauty is greater than that of most modern painters, whatever their nationality. His blacks have the depth and luster without unctiousness characteristic of black as the great colorists use it, and in his touches of pale refined color enlivening a black and white composition, we have the delightful effect so often given by Manet, as of a bunch of bright flowers thrown into a shadowy corner.

If young Germany were content to follow in Truebner's footsteps we should soon have a revival of the ancient craftsmanship and conscience that animated Holbein and Dürer. Young Germany, however, has other plans. To learn of them the reader is referred to Meier-Graefe's[Pg 158] comprehensive and stimulating volume on modern art. The only representation of the painters of the immediate present given in the American exhibition was confined to the Scholle School, which, however, indicates clearly the creative impulse that is stirring in the younger painters. "A warlike state," Blake wrote, "never can produce Art. It will Rob and Plunder and accumulate into one place and Translate and Copy and Buy and Sell and Criticize, but not Make." This has been true of the Germans, but the present generation is bent upon making and it is natural that the strongest impulse toward originality should come to the Munich painters rather than to the cosmopolitan Berlin men.

The Scholle is a Munich association consisting of a group of young men who, taking the humble and fecund earth as their symbol, as the title of the society implies, seek to get into their painting the vigor and intensity of life and force which devotion to the healthy joys provided by our mother Earth is supposed to engender.

They are like the giant Antaeus whose strength was invincible so long as he remained in contact with the earth, but who easily was strangled when lifted into the upper air. Their strength also melts into helplessness when confronted by problems of atmosphere and the delicate veils of tone which enwrap the material world for the American painter.[Pg 159]

But the energy of these young Germans in their own field is something at which to wonder. They remind one of their critics of a band of lusty peasant boys journeying in rank from their University to the nearest beer garden, singing loud songs by the way. Leo Putz, Adolf Muenzer, Fritz Erler, are the leaders of the group, although Alex Salzmann and Ferdinand Spiegel were Erler's collaborators in the famous Wiesbaden frescoes which offended the taste of the Kaiser. These young men are entirely capable of offending a less conventional taste than the Kaiser's, but they all are doing something which has not been done in Germany for many a long year; they are busying themselves with the visible world and painting frankly what they see. It does not matter in the least that in their decorative work they give rein to their fancy and produce such symbolism as we find in Erler's "Pestilence," or that in the illustrations for Jugend they tell a story with keen appreciation of its literary significance. Their eyes are open upon the aspect of material things and they paint flesh that is palpitating with life, forms that live and move, and color that vibrates.

Here again as with Liebermann and Truebner the idea and the execution are in harmony, but with the Scholle painters the idea is apt to be a very simple one, depending upon straightforward representation for its impressiveness. Above all it reflects the national temper of mind,[Pg 160] for all these individualists are German to the core and not to be mistaken for any other race.

One characteristic of this national temper is directness. Not necessarily simplicity, of course, since the German painter as well as the German writer has frequently complex thoughts to express and uses corresponding elaborations of expression. But he does not often say one thing while seeming to say another; he does not often give double and contradictory meanings to the same subject. He does not present for your contemplation the disheartening spectacle of sophistication masquerading as innocence, or duplicity masquerading as frankness. To that extent he is an optimist, however deep his native pessimism may go in other directions.

There is, for example, a picture by the French artist Jacques Blanche, entitled "Louise of Montmartre," and known to many Americans, in which the girl to whom Paris irresistibly calls is shown in her boyish blouse and collar, her youthful hat and plainly dressed hair, in a nonchalant attitude, pretty and plebeian, with honest eyes, yet revealing in every line of her frank and fresh young face the potentiality of response to all the appeals made by the ruthless spirit of the city. It is impossible to discern at what points the artist has betrayed that artless physiognomy in order to reveal the secrets of temperament, but the thing is done.[Pg 161]

It is not what the German is interested in doing. His imagination works subjectively, giving form to his own conceptions, rather than objectively or as an interpreter of others. Hence the downright, and, in a sense, confiding aspect of so much of this brave art. Hence, also, its affinity with the American spirit, for the American still bends a rather unsuspecting gaze upon life and accepts character and temperament as they choose to present themselves. The German, however, is articulate and ratiocinating where we are more purely instinctive. We are not inclined to reason about our moods and we seldom are able to express them in our literature. In our art, on the other hand, especially in our landscape art, we manage to translate our subtlest emotion. We are able to suggest what is too delicate for analysis, and in this we stand almost alone in the painting of the present day.
[Pg 163][Pg 162]

[Pg 164]

[Pg 165]

TWO SPANISH PAINTERS

XII

Two Spanish Painters

Modern art, particularly American art, owes much to Velasquez and something to Goya, and modern painters have been prompt to acknowledge their indebtedness. But there has been a prevailing impression that with Goya's rich and unique achievement Spanish art stopped in its own country so completely as to be incapable of revival. The impression was disturbed in this country by the appearance in the galleries of the Hispanic Museum in New York, and also in Buffalo and in Boston, of the work of two modern Spaniards, one a painter who demonstrated by his methods and choice of subjects that the old Spanish traditions and ideals had not been forgotten, the other a singularly isolated individual who illumined for us a side of Spanish life which art previously had ignored. Both spoke a racy idiom and conveyed a sense of quickened vitality by freedom of gesture, unhackneyed arrangement, intensity of color, reality of type, yet in their influence upon the public they were as far as might be asunder.[Pg 166]

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida was born at Valencia, Spain, in 1863, and began seriously to study art at the age of fifteen. He studied at the Academy of his birthplace for several years and won there a scholarship entitling him to a period of study in Italy. He visited Paris also, where he was profoundly impressed, it is said, by two exhibitions in the French capital, one of the work of Bastien LePage, the other of the work of the German Menzel. The modern note is clearly felt in all his later painting, but certainly not the influence of either Bastien LePage or Menzel. The painter to whom he bears the most marked resemblance is Botticelli. The spiritual languor, the melancholy sentiment, the mystical tendency, the curiosity and interest in the unseen which are important characteristics of the Florentine who read his Dante to such good purpose do not appear in the work of this frank and lusty Valencian, but where else in modern painting do we find the gracile forms, the supple muscles, the buoyancy of carriage, the light impetuosity of movement, and the draperies blown into the shapes of wings and sails, which meet us here as in the pagan compositions of Botticelli?

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Swimmers From a painting by Sorolla

If we glance at Sorolla's young girls and young boys racing along the hot beach, or his bathers exulting in their "water joy," we recall at the same moment the "Primavera" with its swift-stepping nymphs, the wind[Pg 167] gods in the "Birth of Venus," or the "Judith" with her maid moving rapidly along a flower-strewn path. This joy of motion and this continual suggestion of youth and vitality form the link that binds together the so dissimilar ideals of the old and the modern master. Sorolla's inspiration is by far the simpler. His art reflects the brilliant sunshine of the Mediterranean coast, the tonic quality of the fresh air, and the unconventionality of life by the sea. All his people use natural gestures and express in their activity the untrammeled energy of primitive life. In looking at these children, and there is hardly a figure that has not the naïveté of childhood, we think less of the individuals portrayed than of the outdoor freshness of which they are a part. They are much more spirits of nature than the dryads and nereids and mermaids conceived by the Germans to express in symbol the natural forces. Nothing suggests the use of models, all has the look of spontaneity as though the artist had made his notes in passing, without the slightest regard to producing a picture, with only the idea of reproducing life. Life, however, appears in his canvases in a sufficiently decorative form, although not in the carefully considered patterns of those artists with whom the decorative instinct is supreme.

Observe, for example, the painting entitled "Sea Idyl." Two children are stretched on the beach, their[Pg 168] bright bodies wet and glistening and casting blue shadows on the sands. They are lying so close to the water's edge that the waves lap over them, the boy's skin shines like polished marble under the wet film just passing across it, and the girl's drenched garments cling with sharp chiseled folds to the form beneath like the draperies of some young Greek goddess just risen from the sea. The insolence of laughing eyes, the idle fumbling of young hands in the wet sand, the tingling life in the clean-cut limbs, the buoyancy of the waves that lift them slightly and hold them above the earth,—all are seen with unwearied eyes, and reproduced with energy.

The management of the pigment in this picture as in many of the others can be called neither learned nor subtle. Apparently the artist had in mind two intentions, the one to represent motion, the other to represent light, and he set about his task in the simplest way possible, with such simplicity, indeed, that the extraordinary character of the result would easily be missed by a pedant. It has not been missed by the public, who have entered with enthusiasm into the painter's mood, perceived the originality of his vision and the joyousness of his art, and have radiated their own appreciation of this vitalized, healthful world of happy people until they have increased the distrust of the pedant for an art so helplessly popular.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Bath—Jávea From a painting by Sorolla

[Pg 169]

The distrust is not unnatural. To follow the popular taste would lead us into strange errors in our judgments of art, and only rarely would produce a predilection capable of lasting over a generation. How is it, then, that we fearlessly may range ourselves on the side of the public in admiration of Sorolla's art? Because the painter has cast off the slavery of the conventional vision. He sees for himself, the rarest of gifts, and thus can well afford to paint like others. He spends, apparently, but little thought upon his execution, letting it flow easily according to his instinct for the appropriate. It is not a safe example to follow for painters who do not see with unusual directness. Often in searching out refinements of execution the eye discovers refinements of fact in the scene to be portrayed and makes its selection with greater distinction than would be possible at first sight. But Sorolla's prompt selective vision flies to its goal like a bee to a honey-bearing flower. He takes what he wants and leaves the rest with the dew still on it. His forces are neither scattered nor spent. His freshness is overmastering, and with our eyes on his creations we have that curious sense of possessing youth and health and freedom which we get sometimes from the sight of boys at their games. We are cheated into forgetfulness of the world's great age and our own lassitudes and physical ineffectiveness. This illusion is agreeable to the most[Pg 170] of us, hence our unreserved liking for Sorolla's art which produces it.

The art of Ignacio Zuloaga, on the contrary, produces the opposite impression of complete sophistication. In place of adolescent exultations and ebullient physical activities, we find in it the strange sorceries of a guileful civilization. There are smiling women with narrowed eyelids and powdered faces, old men practising dolorous rejuvenations, laughter that conceals more than it expresses, motions that are as calculated as those of the dance, serpentine forms, fervid passions, and underneath the sophistries a violent primeval temper. In spite of the flowerlike gaiety of the color in rich costumes, the glint of silver, the sweet cool blues, the pale violets, in the painter's versions of the typical toreador of Spain the types are bold, cruel, and sullen. In spite of the fragility and elegance of the women on balconies under soft laces the prevailing note is that of undisciplined ferocity of emotion. This too is Spain, but not the Spain of the beach and sea life.

Courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America. The Sorceresses of San Milan From a painting by Zuloaga

The rather numerous examples of what Mr. Christian Brinton has called Zuloaga's "growing diabolic tendency" make it clear that his art holds no place for spontaneity and the innocence due to ignorance, but where he keeps to Spanish subjects his work remains healthy. There is the picture entitled "The Sorceresses of San Milan" [Pg 171] in which three old women are seen against a dramatic landscape. These haggard jests of nature bring before us a Spain from which the American finds it impossible not to shrink with horror, but they are rich in dramatic quality and recall the power of Goya to endow the abnormal with imaginative splendor while holding to essential truth. They are diabolic, if you will, but not Mephistophelian. There is the abstract horror in them which we associate with unknown powers of darkness, but not the guile with which we endow a personal devil. In striking contrast to this group are the balcony pictures in which women of ripe aggressive beauty lounge gracefully in the open-air rooms with the same freedom of pose as within doors, haughty yet frank, opulent, languid yet animated, flowers that could have bloomed nowhere else than under a scorching sun.

Then there is the group of dancers and actors and singers in each of which we find the adroit mingling of the artificial with the real, and the appreciation of the fact that with the people of the stage much that is artificial to others becomes their reality. The most vivid of them all is Mlle. Lucienne Bréval as "Carmen." The sinuous figure is wrapped in a shawl apparently of a thousand colors; actually, a strong combination of yellow, green, and red. The skirt which the singer gathers in one hand and lifts sufficiently to show the small foot in its red slipper[Pg 172] has a dark vermilion ground on which is a pattern of large flowers of paler vermilion, boldly outlined with blue.

Over it droops the dark fringe of the shawl. A crimson flower is in the dark hair, and the footlights cast an artificial amber glow on the face. This tawny harmony is seen against a background of slightly acid green; at the other side of the canvas is a little table with two men seated at it. They look "made up," in the theatrical sense, and the table looks rather light and rickety; there is one solid natural stage property, the yellow jug on the table with its dull blue figure. The whole life and reality of the picture are in the Carmen smiling and muffled in the curious shawl, as if she were about to move in a fiery dance in which her brilliant wrappings would take a part as animated and vital as her own. No one but a Spaniard could invest a garment with such expressiveness.

Courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America. The Old Boulevardier From a painting by Zuloaga

"Paulette as Danseuse" is another stage figure. Here again the costume speaks with extraordinary eloquence. The colors are green and pink, and play delicately within a narrow range of varied tones. Under the short green jacket the low-cut bodice shows a finely modeled throat and a chest that seems almost to rise and fall with the breath, so palpitating with life is the fleshlike surface. The poise of the figure suggests that the dance has that moment ended, and the eyes and mouth are slightly[Pg 173] arched. The undulating line of the draperies, now tightly drawn about the figure, and again billowing into ampler curves, suggests the rhythm of the dance.

In another canvas we see Paulette once more, this time in walking costume, standing with her hands on her hips in a daintily awkward pose. Her lips, in the first picture upturned at the corners, mouselike, have widened in a frank smile, her eyes have lost their formal archness and look with detached interest upon the passing show, she still is supple, clear cut, with a flexible silhouette, but her gown would find it impossible to dance, and, as before, she and her gown are one.

In "The Actress Pilar Soler," on the other hand, Zuloaga dispenses as far as possible with definite aids to expression. The costume is undefined; the half-length figure, draped in black and placed high on the canvas, is seen against a dark greenish-blue background. The mass of the silhouette, unbroken as in an Egyptian statue, but with tremulous contours suggesting the fluttering of life in the dimly defined body, is sufficiently considered and distinguished; but it is the modeling of the face that holds the attention, a mere blur of tone, yet with all the planes understood and with a certain material richness of impasto that contributes to the look of solid flesh, the dark of the eyebrows making the only pronounced accent—a face that becomes more and more vital as you look at[Pg 174] it, with that indestructible vitality of which, among the Frenchmen, Carrière was master.

In several other canvases, notably in the first version of "My Cousin Esperanza," and the second version of "Women in a Balcony," Zuloaga has caught this effect of vague fleeting values, changes in surface so subtle as to be felt rather than seen, a kind of floating modeling that suggests form rather than insists upon it. And he has done this in the most difficult manner. Whistler long ago taught us to appreciate the effect, but he worked with thin layers of pigment, a sensitive surface upon which the slightest accent made an impression. Zuloaga, on the contrary, works with a full brush, and consequently a more unmanageable surface. He attains his success as a sculptor does against the odds of his material, but he seems better to suggest his special types in this way.

Courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America. Mercedès From a painting by Zuloaga

Often he makes his modeling with the sweep of his brush in one direction and another. "Candida Laughing" shows this method, and so does the "Village Judge," in which the pigment is still more freely swept about the bone of the cheek and the setting of the eye, telling its story of the way the human face is built up in the frankest and briefest manner. With the lovely "Mercedès," a fragile figure, elegant in type, the workmanship becomes again less outspoken. The haughty, graceful carriage, and the intense refinement of the features that glow with [Pg 175] a pale light beneath the fine lace of the scarf, demand and receive a daintier, more fastidious interpretation. In the portrait of Mrs. F Jr. there is a fresher manner, a breezier, crisper feeling throughout. The color harmony of gray and green is cool and lively, the poise of the figure lacks the touch of languor that is present in the fieriest of the typical Spaniards. We seem to have passed into another and cooler air.

The composition of this picture too, is especially admirable. The subject stands, bending forward a little, the left hand resting on the hip, the other fingering a string of pearls, a gauzy scarf is about the shoulder and floats away from the figure at the hips, the sky is atmospheric and there is a background of trees, river, and bridge. At the left of the canvas an iron balustrade, bent into free, graceful curves, comes into the composition, beautifully drawn and painted in a just value, adding in the happiest manner to the decorative effect.

This is the class of pictures in which Zuloaga is at his best. The types offer him adequate opportunity for exercising the faculty of astute discrimination with which he is gifted, without calling into play the ironic temper that broods with cold amusement over such a canvas as "The Old Boulevardier" than which cynicism can go but little farther. It might reasonably be argued that it is only in subjects which call forth as many evidences[Pg 176] as possible of the artist's temperament and character that we can fully measure his force. The impulse, however, that turns his gaze toward those physiognomies that offer the richest reward to the investigating scrutiny is a part of his force, as also his choice of subjects about which he can talk, as one of his French critics has put it in his own language.

Transcriber's Notes:

The word esthetic left as is throughout text. Compound words left as is throughour text. Alternative and original spelling has been maintained including Rijksmuseum and Rijks Museum.

Spelling and punctuation, by page number:

Page

3 - Tiger devouring a Gavial of the Ganges changed to Devouring.

12 - the patine of commerce[inserted . period] "The ideal

27 - fluent handling and the mystery of tone changed to mastery.

44 - In Les Mâitre Contemporains, M. Paul Mongré thus changed to Maître.

45 - but the abounding enthusisam of the latter changed to enthusiasm.

61 - the Gobbi, the Beggars?" inserted question mark and closing quotation marks.

74 - Years 1827 and 1828 changed to 1627 and 1628 respectively.

82 - (Städel Gallery) in the Museum of Brussels, changed to (Städel Gallery), in the Museum of Brussels,

84 - those set in the Virign's changed to Virgin's.

85 - physical anguish that mark the figure changed to marks.

92 - his most temperate moods, the Pieta changed to Pietà.

100 - 1831 changed to 1631.

132 - of the two painters, Jordaen's silvery Jordaen's left as is. Corrected it would have been Jordaens'. Jordaens was the painters name.

138 - In the "Frohliche Heimkehr" at Amsterdam changed to Fröhliche.

174 - slightest accent made an impresssion changed to impression.

174 - With the lovely "Mercedes," changed to Mercedès.