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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:41:49 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:41:49 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/13296-0.txt b/13296-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..593c746 --- /dev/null +++ b/13296-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9724 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13296 *** + +PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST + + +By JAMES HUNEKER + + +1910 + + + + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + + Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + Promenades of an Impressionist. 12mo, (_Postage_ 15 cents_), + _net_, $1.50. + + Egoists: A Book of Supermen. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Overtones: A Book of Temperaments. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Mezzotints in Modern Music. 12mo, $1.50. + + Chopin: The Man and His Music. With Portrait. l2mo, $2.00. + + Visionaries. 12mo, $1.50. + + Melomaniacs. 12mo, $1.50 + + + + + +TO: FREDERICK JAMES GREGG + + -"Let us promenade our prejudices."--Stendhal(?) + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. PAUL CÉZANNE + + II. ROPS THE ETCHER + + III. MONTICELLI + + IV. RODIN + + V. EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE + + VI. DEGAS + + VII. BOTTICELLI + +VIII. SIX SPANIARDS: + + "EL GRECO" + + "VELASQUEZ" + + GOYA + + FORTUNY + + SOROLLA + + ZULOAGA + + IX. CHARDIN + + X. BLACK AND WHITE: + + PIRANESI + + MERYON + + JOHN MARTIN + + ZORN + + BRANGWYN + + DAUMIER + + LALANNE + + LEGRAND + + GUYS + + XI. IMPRESSIONISM: + + MONET + + RENOIR + + MANET + + XII. A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU + +XIII. GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + XIV. LITERATURE AND ART + + XV. MUSEUM PROMENADES: + + PICTURES AT THE HAGUE + + THE MESDAG MUSEUM + + HALS OF HAARLEM + + PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM + + ART IN ANTWERP + + MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS + + BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL + + THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + PICTURES IN MADRID + + EL GRECO AT TOLEDO + + VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO + +CODA + + + + +PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST + + + + +I. PAUL CÉZANNE + + + +After prolonged study of the art shown at the Paris Autumn Salon you +ask yourself: This whirlpool of jostling ambitions, crazy colours, +still crazier drawing and composition--whither does it tend? Is there +any strain of tendency, any central current to be detected? Is it +young genius in the raw, awaiting the sunshine of success to ripen its +somewhat terrifying gifts? Or is the exhibition a huge, mystifying +_blague_? What, you ask, as you apply wet compresses to your weary +eyeballs, blistered by dangerous proximity to so many blazing +canvases, does the Autumn Salon mean to French art? + +There are many canvases the subjects of which are more pathologic than +artistic, subjects only fit for the confessional or the privacy of the +clinic. But, apart from these disagreeable episodes, the main note of +the Salon is a riotous energy, the noisy ebullition of a gang of +students let loose in the halls of art. They seem to rush by you, +yelling from sheer delight in their lung power, and if you are rudely +jostled to the wall, your toes trod upon and your hat clapped down on +your ears, you console yourself with the timid phrase: Youth must have +its fling. + + + + +PROMENADES + + + +And what a fling! Largely a flinging of paint pots in the sacred +features of tradition. It needs little effort of the imagination to +see hovering about the galleries the faces of--no, not Gérôme, Bonnat, +Jules Lefèvre, Cabanel, or any of the reverend _seigneurs_ of the old +Salon--but the reproachful countenances of Courbet, Manet, Degas, and +Monet; for this motley-wearing crew of youngsters are as violently +radical, as violently secessionistic, as were their immediate +forebears. Each chap has started a little revolution of his own, and +takes no heed of the very men from whom he steals his thunder, now +sadly hollow in the transposition. The pretty classic notion of the +torch of artistic tradition gently burning as it is passed on from +generation to generation receives a shock when confronted by the +methods of the hopeful young anarchs of the Grand Palais. Defiance of +all critical canons at any cost is their shibboleth. Compared to their +fulgurant colour schemes the work of Manet, Monet, and Degas pales and +retreats into the Pantheon of the past. They are become classic. +Another king has usurped their throne--his name is Paul Cézanne. + +No need now to recapitulate the story of the New Salon and the +defection from it of these Independents. It is a fashion to revolt in +Paris, and no doubt some day there will arise a new group that will +start the August Salon or the January Salon. + +"Independent of the Independents" is a magnificent motto with which to +assault any intrenched organisation. + + + + +PAUL CÉZANNE + + + +If riotous energy is, as I have said, the chief note of many of these +hot, hasty, and often clever pictures, it must be sadly stated that of +genuine originality there are few traces. To the very masters they +pretend to revile they owe everything. In vain one looks for a +tradition older than Courbet; a few have attempted to stammer in the +suave speech of Corot and the men of Fontainebleau; but 1863, the year +of the _Salon des Refusés_, is really the year of their artistic +ancestor's birth. The classicism of Lebrun, David, Ingres, Prudhon; +the romanticism of Géricault, Delacroix, Decamps; the tender poetry of +those true _Waldmenschen_, Millet, Dupré, Diaz, Daubigny, or of that +wild heir of Giorgione and Tiepolo, the marvellous colour virtuoso who +"painted music," Monticelli--all these men might never have been born +except for their possible impact upon the so-called "Batignolles" +school. Alas! such ingratitude must rankle. To see the major portion +of this band of young painters, with talent in plenty, occupying +itself in a frantic burlesque of second-hand Cézannes, with here and +there a shallow Monet, a faded Renoir, an affected Degas, or an +impertinent Gauguin, must be mortifying to the older men. + +And now we reach the holy precincts. If ardent youths sneered at the +lyric ecstasy of Renoir, at the severe restraint of Chavannes, at the +poetic mystery of Carrière, their lips were hushed as they tiptoed +into the Salle Cézanne. Sacred ground, indeed, we trod as we gazed and +wondered before these crude, violent, sincere, ugly, and bizarre +canvases. Here was the very hub of the Independents' universe. Here +the results of a hard-labouring painter, without taste, without the +faculty of selection, without vision, culture--one is tempted to add, +intellect--who with dogged persistency has painted in the face of +mockery, painted portraits, landscapes, flowers, houses, figures, +painted everything, painted himself. And what paint! Stubborn, with an +instinctive hatred of academic poses, of the atmosphere of the studio, +of the hired model, of "literary," or of mere digital cleverness, +Cézanne has dropped out of his scheme harmony, melody, +beauty--classic, romantic, symbolic, what you will!--and doggedly +represented the ugliness of things. But there is a brutal strength, a +tang of the soil that is bitter, and also strangely invigorating, +after the false, perfumed boudoir art of so many of his +contemporaries. + +Think of Bouguereau and you have his antithesis in Cézanne--Cézanne +whose stark figures of bathers, male and female, evoke a shuddering +sense of the bestial. Not that there is offence intended in his badly +huddled nudes; he only delineates in simple, naked fashion the horrors +of some undressed humans. His landscapes are primitive though suffused +by perceptible atmosphere; while the rough architecture, shambling +figures, harsh colouring do not quite destroy the impression of +general vitality. You could not say with Walt Whitman that his stunted +trees were "uttering joyous leaves of dark green." They utter, if +anything, raucous oaths, as seemingly do the +self-portraits--exceedingly well modelled, however. Cézanne's +still-life attracts by its whole-souled absorption; these fruits and +vegetables really savour of the earth. Chardin interprets still-life +with realistic beauty; if he had ever painted an onion it would have +revealed a certain grace. When Paul Cézanne paints an onion you smell +it. Nevertheless, he has captured the affections of the rebels and is +their god. And next season it may be some one else. + +It may interest readers of Zola's L'Oeuvre to learn about one of the +characters, who perforce sat for his portrait in that clever novel (a +direct imitation of Goncourt's Manette Salomon). Paul Cézanne bitterly +resented the liberty taken by his old school friend Zola. They both +hailed from Aix, in Provence. Zola went up to Paris; Cézanne remained +in his birthplace but finally persuaded his father to let him study +art at the capital. His father was both rich and wise, for he settled +a small allowance on Paul, who, poor chap, as he said, would never +earn a franc from his paintings. This prediction was nearly verified. +Cézanne was almost laughed off the artistic map of Paris. Manet they +could stand, even Claude Monet; but Cézanne--communard and anarchist +he must be (so said the wise ones in official circles), for he was +such a villainous painter! Cézanne died, but not before his apotheosis +by the new crowd of the Autumn Salon. We are told by admirers of Zola +how much he did for his neglected and struggling fellow-townsman; how +the novelist opened his arms to Cézanne. Cézanne says quite the +contrary. In the first place he had more money than Zola when they +started, and Zola, after he had become a celebrity, was a great man +and very haughty. + +"A mediocre intelligence and a detestable friend" is the way the +prototype of Claude Lantier puts the case. "A bad book and a +completely false one," he added, when speaking to the painter Emile +Bernard on the disagreeable theme. Naturally Zola did not pose his old +friend for the entire figure of the crazy impressionist, his hero, +Claude. It was a study composed of Cézanne, Bazille, and one other, a +poor, wretched lad who had been employed to clean Manet's studio, +entertained artistic ambitions, but hanged himself. The conversations +Cézanne had with Zola, his extreme theories of light, are all in the +novel--by the way, one of Zola's most finished efforts. Cézanne, an +honest, hard-working man, bourgeois in habits if not by temperament, +was grievously wounded by the treachery of Zola; and he did not fail +to denounce this treachery to Bernard. + +Paul Cézanne was born January 19, 1839. His father was a rich +bourgeois, and while he was disappointed when his son refused to +prosecute further his law studies, he, being a sensible parent and +justly estimating Paul's steadiness of character, allowed him to go to +Paris in 1862, giving him an income of a hundred and fifty francs a +month, which was shortly after doubled. With sixty dollars a month an +art student of twenty-three could, in those days, live comfortably, +study at leisure, and see the world. Cézanne from the start was in +earnest. Instinctively he realised that for him was not the rapid +ascent of the rocky path that leads to Parnassus. He mistrusted his +own talent, though not his powers of application. At first he +frequented the Académie Suisse, where he encountered as fellow-workers +Pissarro and Guillaumin. He soon transferred his easel to the +Beaux-Arts and became an admirer of Delacroix and Courbet. It seems +strange in the presence of a Cézanne picture to realise that he, too, +suffered his little term of lyric madness and wrestled with huge +mythologic themes--giant men carrying off monstrous women. +Connoisseurs at the sale of Zola's art treasures were astonished by +the sight of a canvas signed Cézanne, the subject of which was +L'Enlèvement, a romantic subject, not lacking in the spirit of +Delacroix. The Courbet influence persisted, despite the development of +the younger painter in other schools. Cézanne can claim Courbet and +the Dutchmen as artistic ancestors. + +When Cézanne arrived in Paris the first comrade to greet him was Zola. +The pair became inseparable; they fought for naturalism, and it was to +Cézanne that Zola dedicated his _Salons_ which are now to be found in +a volume of essays on art and literature bearing the soothing title of +Mes Haines. Zola, pitching overboard many friends, wrote his famous +eulogy of Manet in the _Evenement_, and the row he raised was so +fierce that he was forced to resign as art critic from that journal. +The fight then began in earnest. The story is a thrice-told one. It +may be read in Théodore Duret's study of Manet and, as regards +Cézanne, in the same critic's volume on Impressionism. Cézanne +exhibited in 1874 with Manet and the rest at the impressionists' +salon, held at the studio of Nadar the photographer. He had earlier +submitted at once to Manet's magic method of painting, but in 1873, at +Auvers-sur-Oise, he began painting in the _plein air_ style and with +certain modifications adhered to that manner until the time of his +death. The amazing part of it all is that he produced for more than +thirty years and seldom sold a canvas, seldom exhibited. His solitary +appearance at an official salon was in 1882, and he would not have +succeeded then if it had not been for his friend Guillaumin, a member +of the selecting jury, who claimed his rights and passed in, amid +execrations, both mock and real, a portrait by Cézanne. + +Called a _communard_ in 1874, Cézanne was saluted with the title of +anarchist in 1904, when his vogue had begun; these titles being a +species of official nomenclature for all rebels. Thiers, once +President of the French Republic, made a _bon mot_ when he exclaimed: +"A Romantic--that is to say, Communist!" During his entire career this +mild, reserved gentleman from Aix came under the ban of the critics +and the authorities, for he had shouldered his musket in 1871, as did +Manet, as did Bazille,--who, like Henri Regnault, was killed in a +skirmish. + +His most virulent enemies were forced to admit that Edouard Manet had +a certain facility with the brush; his quality and beauty of sheer +paint could not be winked away even by Albert Wolff. But to Cézanne +there was no quarter shown. He was called the "Ape of Manet"; he was +hissed, cursed, abused; his canvases were spat upon, and as late as +1902, when M. Roujon, the Director of the Beaux-Arts, was asked by +Octave Mirbeau to decorate Cézanne, he nearly fainted from +astonishment. Cézanne! That barbarian! The amiable director suggested +instead the name of Claude Monet. Time had enjoyed its little +whirligig with that great painter of vibrating light and water, but +Monet blandly refused the long-protracted honour. Another anecdote is +related by M. Duret. William II of Germany in 1899 wished to examine +with his own eyes, trained by the black, muddy painting of Germany, +the canvases of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, and Manet, acquired +by Director Tschudi for the Berlin National Gallery. He saw them all +except the Cézanne. Herr Tschudi feared that the Parisian fat would be +in the imperial fire if the Cézanne picture appeared. So he hid it. As +it was his Majesty nodded in emphatic disapproval of the imported +purchases. If he had viewed the Cézanne! + +At first blush, for those whose schooling has been academic, the +Cézanne productions are shocking. Yet his is a personal vision, though +a heavy one. He has not a facile brush; he is not a great painter; he +lacks imagination, invention, fantasy; but his palette is his own. He +is a master of gray tones, and his scale is, as Duret justly observes, +a very intense one. He avoids the anecdote, historic or domestic. He +detests design, prearranged composition. His studio is an open field, +light the chief actor of his palette. He is never conventionally +decorative unless you can call his own particular scheme decorative. +He paints what he sees without flattery, without flinching from any +ugliness. Compared with him Courbet is as sensuous as Correggio. He +does not seek for the correspondences of light with surrounding +objects or the atmosphere in which Eugène Carrière bathes his +portraits, Rodin his marbles. The Cézanne picture does not modulate, +does not flow; is too often hard, though always veracious--Cézannes +veracity, be it understood. But it is an inescapable veracity. There +is, too, great vitality and a peculiar reserved passion, like that of +a Delacroix _à ribbers_, and in his still-life he is as great even as +Manet. + +His landscapes are real, though without the subtle poetry of Corot or +the blazing lyricism of Monet. He hails directly from the Dutch: Van +der Near, in his night pieces. Yet no Dutchman ever painted so +uncompromisingly, so close to the border line that divides the rigid +definitions of old-fashioned photography--the "new" photography hugs +closely the mellow mezzotint--and the vision of the painter. An +eye--nothing more, is Cézanne. He refuses to see in nature either a +symbol or a sermon. Withal his landscapes are poignant in their +reality. They are like the grill age one notes in ancient French +country houses--little caseate cut in the windows through which you +may see in vivid outline a little section of the landscape. Cézanne +marvellously renders certain surfaces, china, fruit, tapestry. + +Slowly grew his fame as a sober, sincere, unaffected workman of art. +Disciples rallied around him. He accepted changing fortunes with his +accustomed equanimity. Maurice Denis painted for the Champ de Mars +Salon of 1901 a picture entitled Homage à Cézanne, after the +well-known _hommages_ of Fantin-Latour. This _homage_ had its uses. +The disciples became a swelling, noisy chorus, and in 1904 the Cézanne +room was thronged by overheated enthusiasts who would have offered +violence to the first critical dissident. The older men, the followers +of Monet, Manet, Degas, and Whistler, talked as if the end of the +world had arrived. Art is a serious affair in Paris. However, after +Cézanne appeared the paintings of that half-crazy, unlucky genius, +Vincent van Gogh, and of the gifted, brutal Gauguin. And in the face +of such offerings Cézanne may yet, by reason of his moderation, +achieve the unhappy fate of becoming a classic. He is certainly as far +removed from Van Gogh and Gauguin on the one side as he is from Manet +and Courbet on the other. Huysmans does not hesitate to assert that +Cézanne contributed more to accelerate the impressionist movement than +Manet. Paul Cézanne died in Aix, in Provence, October 23, 1906. + +Emile Bernard, an admirer, a quasi-pupil of Cézanne's and a painter of +established reputation, discoursed at length in the _Mercure de +France_ upon the methods and the man. His anecdotes are interesting. +Without the genius of Flaubert, Cézanne had something of the great +novelist's abhorrence of life--fear would be a better word. He +voluntarily left Paris to immure himself in his native town of Aix, +there to work out in peace long-planned projects, which would, he +believed, revolutionise the technique of painting. Whether for good or +evil, his influence on the younger men in Paris has been powerful, +though it is now on the wane. How far they have gone astray in +imitating him is the most significant thing related by Emile Bernard, +a friend of Paul Gauguin and a member of his Pont-Aven school. + +In February, 1904, Bernard landed in Marseilles after a trip to the +Orient. A chance word told him that there had been installed an +electric tramway between Marseilles and Aix. Instantly the name of +Cézanne came to his memory; he had known for some years that the old +painter was in Aix. He resolved to visit him, and fearing a doubtful +reception he carried with him a pamphlet he had written in 1889, an +eulogium of the painter. On the way he asked his fellow-travellers for +Cézanne's address, but in vain; the name was unknown. In Aix he met +with little success. Evidently the fame of the recluse had not reached +his birthplace. At last Bernard was advised to go to the Mayor's +office, where he would find an electoral list. Among the voters he +discovered a Paul Cézanne, who was born January 19, 1839, who lived at +25 Rue Boulegon. Bernard lost no time and reached a simple dwelling +house with the name of the painter on the door. He rang. The door +opened. He entered and mounted a staircase. Ahead of him, slowly +toiling upward, was an old man in a cloak and carrying a portfolio. It +was Cézanne. After he had explained the reason for his visit, the old +painter cried: "You are Emile Bernard! You are a maker of biographies! +Signac"--an impressionist--"told me of you. You are also a painter?" +Bernard, who had been painting for years, and was a friend of Signac, +was nonplussed at his sudden literary reputation, but he explained the +matter to Cézanne, who, however, was in doubt until he saw later the +work of his admirer. + +He had another atelier a short distance from the town; he called it +"The Motive." There, facing Mount Sainte-Victoire, he painted every +afternoon in the open; the majority of his later landscapes were +inspired by the views in that charming valley. Bernard was so glad to +meet Cézanne that he moved to Aix. + +In Cézanne's studio at Aix Bernard encountered some extraordinary +studies in flower painting and three death heads; also monstrous +nudes, giant-like women whose flesh appeared parboiled. On the streets +Cézanne was always annoyed by boys or beggars; the former were +attracted by his bohemian exterior and to express their admiration +shouted at him or else threw stones; the beggars knew their man to be +easy and were rewarded by small coin. Although Cézanne lived like a +bachelor, his surviving sister saw that his household was comfortable. +His wife and son lived in Paris and often visited him. He was rich; +his father, a successful banker at Aix, had left him plenty of money; +but a fanatic on the subject of art, ceaselessly searching for new +tonal combinations, he preferred a hermit's existence. In Aix he was +considered eccentric though harmless. His pride was doubled by a +morbid shyness. Strangers he avoided. So sensitive was he that once +when he stumbled over a rock Bernard attempted to help him by seizing +his arm. A terrible scene ensued. The painter, livid with fright, +cursed the unhappy young Parisian and finally ran away. An explanation +came when the housekeeper told Bernard that her master was a little +peculiar. Early in life he had been kicked by some rascal and ever +afterward was nervous. He was very irritable and not in good health. + +In Bernard's presence he threw a bust made of him by Solari to the +ground, smashing it. It didn't please him. In argument he lost his +temper, though he recovered it rapidly. Zola's name was anathema. He +said that Daumier drank too much; hence his failure to attain +veritable greatness. Cézanne worked from six to ten or eleven in the +morning at his atelier; then he breakfasted, repaired to the "Motive," +there to remain until five in the evening. Returning to Aix, he dined +and retired immediately. And he had kept up this life of toil and +abnegation for years. He compared himself to Balzac's Frenhofer (in +The Unknown Masterpiece), who painted out each day the work of the +previous day. Cézanne adored the Venetians--which is curious--and +admitted that he lacked the power to realise his inward vision; hence +the continual experimenting. He most admired Veronese, and was +ambitious of being received at what he called the "Salon de +Bouguereau." The truth is, despite Cézanne's long residence in Paris, +he remained provincial to the end; his father before becoming a banker +had been a hairdresser, and his son was proud of the fact. He never +concealed it. He loved his father's memory and had wet eyes when he +spoke of him. + +Bernard thinks that the vision of his master was defective; hence the +sometime shocking deformations he indulged in. "His _optique_ was more +in his brain than in his eye." He lacked imagination absolutely, and +worked slowly, laboriously, his method one of excessive complication. +He began with a shadow, then a touch, superimposing tone upon tone, +modelling his paint somewhat like Monticelli, but without a hint of +that artist's lyricism. Sober, without rhetoric, a realist, yet with a +singularly rich and often harmonious palette, Cézanne reported +faithfully what his eyes told him. + +It angered him to see himself imitated and he was wrathful when he +heard that his still-life pictures were praised in Paris. "That stuff +they like up there, do they? Their taste must be low," he would +repeat, his eyes sparkling with malice. He disliked the work of Paul +Gauguin and repudiated the claim of being his artistic ancestor. "He +did not understand me," grumbled Cézanne. He praised Thomas Couture, +who was, he asserted, a true master, one who had formed such excellent +pupils as Courbet, Manet, and Puvis. This rather staggered Bernard, as +well it might; the paintings of Couture and Cézanne are poles apart. + +He had, he said, wasted much time in his youth--particularly in +literature. A lettered man, he read to Bernard a poem in imitation of +Baudelaire, one would say very Baudelairian. He had begun too late, +had submitted himself to other men's influence, and wished for half a +century that he might "realise"--his favourite expression--his +theories. When he saw Bernard painting he told him that his palette +was too restricted; he needed at least twenty colours. Bernard gives +the list of yellows, reds, greens, and blues, with variations. "Don't +make Chinese images like Gauguin," he said another time. "All nature +must be modelled after the sphere, cone, and cylinder; as for colour, +the more the colours harmonise the more the design becomes precise." +Never a devotee of form--he did not draw from the model--his +philosophy can be summed up thus: Look out for the contrasts and +correspondence of tones, and the design will take care of itself. He +hated "literary" painting and art criticism. He strongly advised +Bernard to stick to his paint and let the pen alone. The moment an +artist begins to explain his work he is done for; painting is +concrete, literature deals with the abstract. He loved music, +especially Wagner's, which he did not understand, but the sound of +Wagner's name was sympathetic, and that had at first attracted him! +Pissarro he admired for his indefatigable labours. Suffering from +diabetes, which killed him, his nervous tension is excusable. He was +in reality an amiable, kind-hearted, religious man. Above all, simple. +He sought for the simple motive in nature. He would not paint a Christ +head because he did not believe himself a worthy enough Christian. +Chardin he studied and had a theory that the big spectacles and visor +which the Little Master (the Velasquez of vegetables) wore had helped +his vision. Certainly the still-life of Cézanne's is the only modern +still-life that may be compared to Chardin's; not Manet, Vollon, Chase +has excelled this humble painter of Aix. He called the Écoles des +Beaux-Arts the "Bozards," and reviled as farceurs the German +secessionists who imitated him. He considered Ingres, notwithstanding +his science, a small painter in comparison with the Venetians and +Spaniards. + +A painter by compulsion, a contemplative rather than a creative +temperament, a fumbler and seeker, nevertheless Paul Cézanne has +formed a school, has left a considerable body of work. His optic nerve +was abnormal, he saw his planes leap or sink on his canvas; he often +complained, but his patience and sincerity were undoubted. Like his +friend Zola his genius--if genius there is in either man--was largely +a matter of protracted labour, and has it not been said that genius is +a long labour? + +From the sympathetic pen of Emile Bernard we learn of a character +living in the real bohemia of Paris painters who might have figured in +any of the novels referred to, or, better still, might have been +interpreted by Victor Hugo or Ivan Turgenieff. But the Frenchman would +have made of Père Tanguy a species of poor Myriel; the Russian would +have painted him as he was, a saint in humility, springing from the +soil, the friend of poor painters, a socialist in theory, but a +Christian in practice. After following the humble itinerary of his +life you realise the uselessness of "literary" invention. Here was +character for a novelist to be had for the asking. The Crainquebille +of Anatole France occurs to the lover of that writer after reading +Emile Bernard's little study of Father Tanguy. + +His name was Julien Tanguy. He was born in 1825 at Plédran, in the +north of France. He was a plasterer when he married. The young couple, +accustomed to hardships of all kinds, left Saint-Brieuc for Paris. +This was in 1860. After various vicissitudes the man became a colour +grinder in the house of Edouard, Rue Clauzel. The position was meagre. +The Tanguys moved up in the social scale by accepting the job of +concierge somewhere on the Butte Montmartre. This gave Père Tanguy +liberty, his wife looking after the house. He went into business on +his own account, vending colours in the quarter and the suburbs. He +traversed the country from Argenteuil to Barbizon, from Ecouen to +Sarcelle. He met Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, all youthful and +confident and boiling over with admiration for Corot, Courbet, and +Millet. They patronised the honest, pleasant pedlar of colours and +brushes, and when they didn't have the money he trusted them. It was +his prime quality that he trusted people. He cared not enough for +money, as his too often suffering wife averred, and his heart, always +on his sleeve, he was an easy mark for the designing. This supreme +simplicity led him into joining the Communists in 1871, and then he +had a nasty adventure. One day, while dreaming on sentry duty, a band +from Versailles suddenly descended upon the outposts. Père Tanguy lost +his head. He could not fire on a fellow-being, and he threw away his +musket. For this act of "treachery" he was sentenced to serve two +years in the galleys at Brest. Released by friendly intervention he +had still to remain without Paris for two years more. Finally, +entering his beloved quarter he resumed his tranquil occupation, and +hearing that the Maison Edouard had been moved from the Rue Clauzel he +rented a little shop, where he sold material to artists, bought +pictures, and entertained in his humble manner any friend or luckless +devil who happened that way. Cézanne and Vignon were his best +customers. Guillemin, Pissarro, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Oller, +Messurer, Augustin, Signac, De Lautrec, symbolists of the Pont-Aven +school, neo-impressionists, and the young _fumistes_ of schools as yet +unborn, revolutionaries with one shirt to their back, swearing at the +official _Salon_ and also swearing by the brotherhood of man (with a +capital), assembled in this dingy old shop. Tanguy was a rallying +point. He was full of the milk of human kindness, and robbed himself +to give a worthless fellow with a hard-luck story some of the sous +that should have gone to his wife. Fortunately she was a philosopher +as well as an admirable housekeeper. If the rent was paid and there +was some soup-meat for dinner she was content. More she could not +expect from a man who gave away with both hands. But--and here is the +curious part of this narrative of M. Bernard's--Tanguy was the only +person in Paris who bought and owned pictures by Cézanne. He had +dozens of his canvases stacked away in the rear of his +establishment--Cézanne often parted with a canvas for a few francs. +When Tanguy was hard up he would go to some discerning amateur and +sell for two hundred francs pictures that to-day bring twenty thousand +francs. Tanguy hated to sell, especially his Cézannes. Artists came to +see them. His shop was the scene of many a wordy critical battle. +Gauguin uttered the paradox, "Nothing so resembles a daub as a +masterpiece," and the novelist Elémir Bourges cried, "This is the +painting of a vintager!" Alfred Stevens roared in the presence of the +Cézannes, Anquetin admired; but, as Bernard adds, Jacques Blanche +bought. So did Durand-Ruel, who has informed me that a fine Cézanne +to-day is a difficult fish to hook. The great public won't have him, +and the amateurs who adore him jealously hold on to their prizes. + +The socialism of Père Tanguy was of a mild order. He pitied with a +Tolstoyan pity the sufferings of the poor. He did not hate the rich, +nor did he stand at street corners preaching the beauties of torch and +bomb. A simple soul, uneducated, not critical, yet with an instinctive +_flair_ for the coming triumphs of his young men, he espoused the +cause of his clients because they were poverty-stricken, unknown, and +revolutionists--an æsthetic revolution was his wildest dream. He said +of Cézanne that "Papa Cézanne always quits a picture before he +finishes it. If he moves he lets his canvases lie in the vacated +studio." He no doubt benefited by this carelessness of the painter. +Cézanne worked slowly, but he never stopped working; he left nothing +to hazard, and, astonishing fact, he spent every morning at the +Louvre. There he practised his daily scales, optically speaking, +before taking up the brush for the day's work. Many of Vincent von +Gogh's pictures Tanguy owned. This was about 1886. The eccentric, +gifted Dutchman attracted the poor merchant by his ferocious +socialism. He was, indeed, a ferocious temperament, working like a +madman, painting with his colour tubes when he had no brushes, and +literally living in the _boutique_ of Tanguy. The latter always read +_Le Cri du Peuple_ and _L'Intransigeant_, and believed all he read. He +did not care much for Van Gogh's compositions, no doubt agreeing with +Cézanne, who, viewing them for the first time, calmly remarked to the +youth, "Sincerely, you paint like a crazy man." A prophetic note! Van +Gogh frequented a tavern kept by an old model, an Italian woman. It +bore the romantic title of The Tambourine. When he couldn't pay his +bills he would cover the walls with furious frescoes, flowers of +tropical exuberance, landscapes that must have been seen in a +nightmare. He was painting at this time three pictures a day. He would +part with a canvas at the extortionate price of a franc. + +Tanguy was the possessor of a large portrait by Cézanne, done in his +earliest manner. This he had to sell on account of pressing need. Dark +days followed. He moved across the street into smaller quarters. The +old crowd began to drift away; some died, some had become famous, and +one, Van Gogh, shot himself in an access of mania. This was a shock to +his friend. A second followed when Van Gogh's devoted brother went +mad. Good Father Tanguy, as he was affectionately called, sickened. He +entered a hospital. He suffered from a cancerous trouble of the +stomach. One day he said to his wife, who was visiting him: "I am +bored here... I won't die here... I mean to die in my own home." He +went home and died shortly afterward. In 1894 Octave Mirbeau wrote a +moving article for the _Journal_ about the man who had never spoken +ill of any one, who had never turned from his door a hungry person. +The result was a sale organised at the Hôtel Drouot, to which +prominent artists and literary folk contributed works. Cazin, +Guillemet, Gyp, Maufra, Monet, Luce, Pissarro, Rochegrosse, Sisley, +Vauthier, Carrier-Belleuse, Berthe Morisot, Renoir, Jongkind, +Raffaelli, *Helleu, Rodin, and many others participated in this noble +charity, which brought the widow ten thousand francs. She soon died. + +Van Gogh painted a portrait of Tanguy about 1886. It is said to belong +to Rodin. It represents the naïve man with his irregular features and +placid expression of a stoic; not a distinguished face, but +unmistakably that of a gentle soul, who had loved his neighbour better +than himself (therefore he died in misery). He it was who may be +remembered by those who knew him--and also a few future historians of +the futility of things in general--as the man who first made known to +Paris the pictures of the timid, obstinate Paul Cézanne. An odd fish, +indeed, was this same Julien Tanguy, little father to painters. + + + + +II. ROPS THE ETCHER + + + +I + +That personality in art counts, next to actual genius, heavier than +all other qualities, is such a truism that it is often forgotten. In +the enormous mass of mediocre work which is turned out annually by +artists of technical talent seldom is there encountered a strong, +well-defined personality. Imitation has been called the bane of +originality; suppress it as a factor, and nine-tenths of living +painters, sculptors, etchers would have to shut up shop. The stencil +is the support of many men who otherwise might have become useful +citizens, shoemakers, tailors, policemen, or vice-presidents. For this +reason the phrase "academic" should be more elastic in its meanings. +There are academic painters influenced by Corot or Monticelli, as well +as by David, Gros, or Meissonier. The "academic" Rodin has appeared in +contemporary sculpture; the great Frenchman found for himself his +formula, and the lesser men have appropriated it to their own uses. +This is considered legitimate, though not a high order of art; +however, the second-rate rules in the market-place, let the genius +rage as he will. He must be tamed. He must be softened; his divine +fire shaded by the friendly screens of more prudent, more conventional +talent. Even among men of genius up on the heights it is the +personality of each that enters largely into the equation of their +work. No one can confuse Whistler the etcher with the etcher +Rembrandt; the profounder is the Dutchman. Yet what individuality +there is in the plates of the American! What personality! Now, +Félicien Rops, the Belgian etcher, lithographer, engraver, designer, +and painter, occupies about the same relative position to Honoré +Daumier as Whistler does to Rembrandt. How seldom you hear of Rops. +Why? He was a man of genius, one of the greatest etchers and +lithographers of his century, an artist with an intense personal line, +a colossal workman and versatile inventor--why has he been passed over +and inferior men praised? + +His pornographic plates cannot be the only reason, because his +representative work is free from licence or suggestion. Giulio +Romano's illustrations to Aretino's sonnets are not held up as the +representative art of this pupil of Raphael, nor are the vulgarities +of Rowlandson, Hogarth, George Morland set against their better +attempts. Collectors treasure the engravings of the eighteenth-century +_éditions des fermiers-généraux_ for their capital workmanship, not +for their licentious themes. But Rops is always the Rops of the +Pornocrates! After discussing him with some amateurs you are forced to +realise that it is his plates in which he gives rein to an +unparalleled flow of animal spirits and _gauloiserie_ that are the +more esteemed. Rops the artist, with the big and subtle style, the +etcher of the Sataniques, of Le Pendu, of La Buveuse d'Absinthe and +half a hundred other masterpieces, is set aside for the witty +illustrator, with the humour of a Rabelais and the cynicism of +Chamfort. And even on this side of his genius he has never been +excelled, the Japanese alone being his equals in daring of invention, +while he tops them in the expression of broad humour. + +In the Luxembourg galleries there is a picture of an interesting man, +in an etcher's atelier. It is the portrait of Rops by Mathey, and +shows him examining at a window, through which the light pours in, a +freshly pulled proof. It depicts with skill the intense expression +upon his handsome face, the expression of an artist absolutely +absorbed in his work. That is the real Rops. His master quality was +intensity. It traversed like a fine keen flame his entire production +from seemingly insignificant tail-pieces to his agonised designs, in +which luxury and pain are inextricably commingled. + +He was born at Namur, Belgium, July 10, 1833, and died at Essonnes, +near Paris, August 23,1898. He was the son of wealthy parents, and on +one side stemmed directly from Hungary. His grandfather was Rops +Lajos, of the province called Alfod. The Maygar predominated. He was +as proud and fierce as Goya. A fighter from the beginning, still in +warrior's harness at the close, when, "cardiac and impenitent," as he +put it, he died of heart trouble. He received at the hands of the +Jesuits a classical education. A Latinist, he was erudite as were few +of his artistic contemporaries. The mystic strain in him did not +betray itself until his third period. He was an accomplished humourist +and could generally cap Latin verses with D'Aurevilly or Huysmans. +Tertullian's De Cultu Feminarum he must have read, for many of his +plates are illustrations of the learned Bishop of Carthage's attitude +toward womankind. The hot crossings of blood, Belgian and Hungarian, +may be responsible for a peculiarly forceful, rebellious, sensual, and +boisterous temperament. + +Doubtless the three stadia of an artist's career are the arbitrary +classification of critics; nevertheless they are well marked in many +cases. Balzac was a romantic, a realist, a mystic; Flaubert was +alternately romantic and realist. Tolstoi was never a romantic, but a +realist he was, and he is a mystic. Dostoïevski, from whom he absorbed +so much, taught him the formulas of his mysticism--though Tolstoi has +never felt the life of the soul so profoundly as this predecessor. +Ibsen passed through the three stages. Huysmans, never romantic, began +as a realistic pessimist and ended as a pessimistic mystic. Félicien +Rops could never have been a romantic, though the _macabre_ +romanticism of 1830 may be found in his designs. A realist, brutal, +bitter, he was in his youth; he saw the grosser facts of life, so +often lamentable and tender, in the spirit of a Voltaire doubled by a +Rabelais. There is honest and also shocking laughter in these early +illustrations. A _fantaisiste_, graceful, delicate--and +indelicate--emerged after the lad went up to Paris, as if he had +stepped out of the eighteenth century. Rops summed up in his book +plates, title-pages, and wood-cuts, illustrations done in a furious +speed, all the elegance, the courtly corruption, and Boucher-like +luxuriousness that may be detected in the moral _marquetrie_ of the +Goncourts. He had not yet said, "Evil, be thou my Good," nor had the +mystic delirium of the last period set in. All his afternoons must +have been those of a faun--a faun who with impeccable solicitude put +on paper what he saw in the heart of the bosk or down by the banks of +secret rivers. The sad turpitudes, the casuistry of concupiscence, the +ironic discolourations and feverish delving into subterranean moral +stratifications were as yet afar. He was young, handsome, with a +lithe, vigorous body and the head of an aristocratic Mephistopheles, a +head all profile, like the heads of Hungary--Hungary itself, which is +all profile. Need we add that after the death of his father he soon +wasted a fortune? But the reckless bohemian in him was subjugated by +necessity. He set to work to earn his bread. Some conception of his +labours for thirty-five years may be gleaned from the catalogue of his +work by Erastène Ramiro (whose real name is Eugène Rodrigues). Nearly +three thousand plates he etched, lithographed, or engraved, not +including his paintings or his experiments in various mediums, such as +_vernis mou_ and wood-engraving. + +The coarse legends of old Flanders found in Rops their pictorial +interpreter. Less cerebral in his abounding youth he made Paris laugh +with his comical travesties of political persons, persons in high +finance, and also by his shrewd eye for the homely traits in the life +of the people. His street scenes are miracles of detail, satire, and +fun. The one entitled Spring is the most noted. That legacy of hate, +inherited from the 1830 poets, of the bourgeois, was a merry play for +Rops. He is the third of the trinity of caricature artists, Daumier +and Gavarni being the other two. The liberal pinch of Gallic salt in +the earlier plates need not annoy one. Deliberately vulgar he never +is, though he sports with things hallowed, and always goes out of his +way to insult the religion he first professed. There is in this +Satanist a religious _fond_; the very fierceness of his attacks, of +his blasphemies, betrays the Catholic at heart. If he did not believe, +why should he have displayed such continual scorn? No, Rops was not as +sincere as his friends would have us believe. He made his Pegasus plod +in too deep mud, and often in his most winged flights he darkened the +blue with his satyr-like brutalities. But in the gay middle period his +pages overflow with decorative Cupids and tiny devils, joyful girls, +dainty amourettes, and Parisian _putti_--they blithely kick their legs +over the edges of eternity, and smile as if life were a snowball jest +or a game at forfeits. They are adorable. His women are usually +strong-backed, robust Amazons, drawn with a swirling line and a +Rubens-like fulness. They are conquerors. Before these majestic idols +men prostrate themselves. + +In his turbulent later visions there is no suspicion of the opium that +gave its inspiration to Coleridge, Poe, De Quincey, James Thomson, or +Baudelaire. The city of dreadful night shown us by Rops is the city +through whose streets he has passed his life long. Not the dream +cities of James Ensor or De Groux, the Paris of Rops is at once an +abode of disillusionment, of mordant joys, of sheer ecstasy and morbid +hallucinations. The opium of Rops is his imagination, aided by a +manual dexterity that is extraordinary. He is a master of linear +design. He is cold, deadly cold, but correct ever. Fabulous and +absurd, delicious and abominable as he may be, his spirit sits +critically aloft, never smiling. Impersonal as a toxicologist, he +handles his poisonous acids with the gravity of a philosopher and the +indifference of a destroying angel. There is a diabolic spleen more +strongly developed in Rops than in any of his contemporaries, with the +sole exception of Baudelaire, who inspired and spurred him on to +astounding atrocities of the needle and acid. This diabolism, this +worship of Satan and his works, are sincere in the etcher. A relic of +rotten Romanticism, it glows like phosphorescent fire during his last +period. The Church has in its wisdom employed a phrase for frigid +depravity of the Rops kind, naming it "morose delectation." Morose +Rops became as he developed. His private life he hid. We know little +or nothing of it save that he was not unhappy in his companionships or +choice of friends. He loathed the promiscuous methods by which some +men achieve admiration. But secret spleen there must have been--a +twist of a painter's wrist may expose his soul. He became a solitary +and ate the bitter root of sin, for, cerebral as he is, his discovery +of the human soul shows it as ill at ease before its maker. Flaubert +has said that "the ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope." But no +man may sun himself on this slope by the flames of hell without his +soul shrivelling away. Rodin, who admires Rops and has been greatly +influenced by him; Rodin, as an artist superior to the Belgian, has +revealed less preoccupation with the ignoble; at least, despite his +excursions into questionable territory, he has never been carried +completely away. He always returns to the sane, to the normal life; +but over the volcanic landscapes of Rops are strewn many moral +abysses. + + +II + +He had no illusions as to the intelligence and sincerity of those men +who, denying free-will, yet call themselves free-thinkers. Rops +frankly made of Satan his chief religion. He is the psychologist of +the exotic. Cruel, fantastic, nonchalant, and shivering atrociously, +his female Satan worshippers go to their greedy master in *fatidical +and shuddering attitudes; they submit to his glacial embrace. The +acrid perfume of Rops's maleficent genius makes itself manifest in his +Sataniques. No longer are his women the embodiment of Corbière's +"Éternel féminin de l'éternel jocrisse." Ninnies, simperers, and +simpletons have vanished. The poor, suffering human frame becomes a +horrible musical instrument from which the artist extorts exquisite +and sinister music. We turn our heads away, but the tune of cracking +souls haunts our ear. As much to Rops as to Baudelaire, Victor Hugo +could have said that he had evoked a new shudder. And singularly +enough Rops is in these plates the voice of the mediæval preacher +crying out that Satan is alive, a tangible being, going about the +earth devouring us; that Woman is a vase of iniquity, a tower of +wrath, a menace, not a salvation. His readings of the early fathers +and his pessimistic temperamental bent contributed to this truly +morose judgment of his mother's sex. He drives cowering to her corner, +after her earlier triumphs, his unhappy victim of love, absinthe, and +diabolism. Not for an instant does he participate personally in the +strained voluptuousness or terrific chastisements of his designs. He +has all the old monachal contempt of woman. He is cerebrally chaste. +Huysmans, in his admirable essay on Rops, wrote, "Car il n'y a de +réellement obscènes que les gens chastes"; which is a neat bit of +special pleading and quite sophistical. Rops did not lead the life of +a saint, though his devotion to his art was Balzacian. It would be a +more subtle sophistry to quote Paul Bourget's aphorism. "There is," he +writes, "from the metaphysical observer's point of view, neither +disease nor health of the soul; there are only psychological states." +The _états d'âmes_ of Félicien Rops, then, may or may not have been +morbid. But he has contrived that his wit in its effect upon his +spectators is too often profoundly depressing and morbid and +disquieting. + +The triumphant chorus of Rops's admirers comprises the most critical +names in France and Italy: Barbey d'Aurevilly, J.K. Huysmans, +Pradelle, Joséphin Péladan--once the _Sâr_ of Babylonian fame--Eugène +Demolder, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian poet; Camille Lemonnier, +Champsaur, Arsène Alexandre, Fromentin, Vittorio Pica, De Hérédia, +Mallarmé, Octave Uzanne, Octave Mirbeau, the biographer Ramiro and +Charles Baudelaire. The last first recognised him, though he never +finished the projected study of him as man and artist. In the newly +published letters (1841-66) of Baudelaire there is one addressed to +Rops, who saw much of the unhappy poet during his disastrous sojourn +in Brussels. It was the author of Les Fleurs du Mal who made the +clever little verse about "Ce tant bizarre Monsieur Rops... Qui n'est +pas un grand prix de Rome, mais dont le talent est haut, comme la +pyramide de Chéops." + +A French critic has called Rops "a false genius," probably alluding to +the malign characters of the majority of his engraved works rather +than to his marvellous and fecund powers of invention. Perverse +idealist as he was, he never relaxed his pursuit of the perfection of +form. He tells us that in 1862 he went to Paris, after much +preliminary skirmishing in Belgian reviews and magazines, to "learn +his art" with Bracquemond and Jacquemart, both of whom he never ceased +praising. He was associated with Daubigny, painter and etcher, and +with Courbet, Flameng, and Thérond. + +He admired Calmatta and his school--Bal, Franck, Biot, Meunier, +Flameng. He belonged to the International Society of Aquafortistes. He +worked in aquatint and successfully revived the old process, _vernis +mou_. A sober workman, he spent at least fourteen hours a day at his +desk. Being musical, he designed some genre pieces, notably that of +the truthfully observed Bassoonist. And though not originating he +certainly carried to the pitch of the artistically ludicrous those +progressive pictures of goats dissolving into pianists; of Liszt +tearing passion and grand pianos into tatters. He has contributed to +the gaiety of nations with his celebrated design: Ma fille! Monsieur +Cabanel, which shows a harpy-like mother presenting her nude daughter +as a model for that painter. The malicious ingenuity of Rops never +failed him. He produced for years numerous anecdotes in black and +white. The elasticity of his line, its variety and richness, the +harmonies, elliptical and condensed, of his designs; the agile, fiery +movement, his handling of his velvety blacks, his tonal gradations, +his caressing touch by which the metal reproduced muscular crispations +of his dry-point and the fat silhouettes of beautiful human forms, +above all, his virile grasp which is revealed in his balanced +ensembles--these prove him to be one of the masters of modern etching. +And from his cynical yet truthful motto: "J'appelle un chat un chat," +he never swerved. + +A student and follower of Jean Francois Millet, several landscapes and +pastorals of Rops recall the French painter's style. In his Belgian +out-of-doors scenes and interiors the Belgian heredity of Rops +projects itself unmistakably. Such a picture as Scandal, for example, +might have been signed by Israels. Le Bout de Sillon is Millet, and +beautifully drawn. The scheme is trite. Two peasants, a young woman +and a young man holding a rope, exchange love vows. It is very simple, +very expressive. His portraits of women, Walloons, and of Antwerp are +solidly built, replete with character and quaint charm. Charming, too, +is the portrait of his great-aunt. Scandal is an ambitious design. A +group of women strongly differentiated as to types and ages are +enjoying over a table their tea and a choice morsel of scandal. The +situation is seized; it is a picture that appeals. Ghastly is his +portrait of a wretched young woman ravaged by absinthe. Her lips are +blistered by the wormwood, and in her fevered glance there is despair. +Another delineation of disease, a grinning, skull-like head with a +scythe back of it, is a tribute to the artist's power of rendering the +repulsive. His Messalina, Lassatta, La Femme au Cochon, and La Femme +au Pantin should be studied. He has painted scissors grinders, flower +girls, "old guards," incantations, fishing parties, the rabble in the +streets, broom-riding witches, apes, ivory and peacocks, and a notable +figure piece, An Interment in the Walloon Country, which would have +pleased Courbet. + +It is in his incarnations of Satan that Rops is unapproachable. Satan +Sowing the Tares of Evil is a sublime conception, truly Miltonic. The +bony-legged demon strides across Paris. One foot is posed on Notre +Dame. He quite touches the sky. Upon his head is a broad-brimmed +peasant's hat, Quaker in shape. Hair streams over his skeleton +shoulders. His eyes are gleaming with infernal malice--it is the most +diabolic face ever drawn of his majesty; not even Franz Stuck's Satan +has eyes so full of liquid damnation. Scattering miniature female +figures, like dolls, to the winds, this monster passes over Paris, a +baleful typhoon. The moral is not far to seek; indeed, there is +generally a moral, sometimes an inverted one, in the Rops etchings. +Order Reigns at Warsaw is a grim commentary on Russian politics quite +opportune to-day. La Peine de Mort has been used by Socialists as a +protest against capital punishment. Les Diables Froids personifies the +impassible artist. It is a page torn from the book of hell. Rops had +read Dante; he knew the meaning of the lines: "As the rill that runs +from Bulicame to be portioned out amid the sinful women"; and more +than once he explored the frozen circles of Gehenna. Victor Hugo was +much stirred by the design, Le Pendu, which depicts a man's corpse +swinging under a huge bell in some vast and immemorial, raven-haunted, +decaying tower, whose bizarre and gloomy outlines might have been +created by the brain of a Piranesi. An apocalyptic imagination had +Félicien Rops. + + + + +III. MONTICELLI + + + +I + +Poor "Fada"! The "innocent," the inoffensive fool--as they christened +that unfortunate man of genius, Adolphe Monticelli, in the dialect of +the South, the slang of Marseilles--where he spent the last sixteen +years of his life. The richest colourist of the nineteenth century, +obsessed by colour, little is known of this Monticelli, even in these +days when an artist's life is subjected to inquisitorial methods. Few +had written of him in English before W.E. Henley and W.C. Brownell. In +France eulogised by Théophile Gautier, in favour at the court, admired +by Diaz, Daubigny, Troyon, and Delacroix, his hopes were cracked by +the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian war. He escaped to Marseilles, +there to die poor, neglected, half mad. Perhaps he was to blame for +his failures; perhaps his temperament was his fate. Yet to-day his +pictures are sought for as were those of Diaz two decades ago, though +there was a tacit conspiracy among dealers and amateurs not to drag +his merits too soon before the foot-lights. In 1900 at the Paris +Exposition a collection of his works, four being representative, +opened the eyes of critics and public alike. It was realised that +Monticelli had not received his proper ranking in the +nineteenth-century theatre of painting; that while he owed much to +Watteau, to Turner, to Rousseau, he was a master who could stand or +fall on his own merits. Since then the Monticelli pictures have been +steadily growing in favour. + +There is a Monticelli cult. America can boast of many of his most +distinguished specimens, while the Louvre and the Luxembourg are +without a single one. The Musée de Lille at Marseilles has several +examples; the private collections of M. Delpiano at Cannes and a few +collections in Paris make up a meagre list. The Comparative Exhibition +in New York, 1904, revealed to many accustomed to overpraising Diaz +and Fromentin the fact that Monticelli was their superior as a +colourist, and a decorator of singularly fascinating characteristics, +one who was not always a mere contriver of bacchanalian riots of +fancy, but who could exhibit when at his best a _justesse_ of vision +and a controlled imagination. + +The dictionaries offer small help to the student as to the doings of +this erratic painter. He was born October 24, 1824. He died June 29, +1886. He was of mixed blood, Italian and French. His father was a +gauger, though Adolphe declared that he was an authentic descendant of +the Crusader, Godefroy Monticelli, who married in 1100 Aurea Castelli, +daughter of the Duca of Spoleto. Without doubt his Italian blood +counted heavily in his work, but whether of noble issue matters +little. Barbey d'Aurevilly and Villiers de l'Isle Adam, two men of +letters, indulged in similar boasts, and no doubt in their poverty and +tribulations the oriflamme of aristocracy which they bravely bore into +the café life of Paris was a source of consolation to them. But it is +with brains, not blood, that painters mix their pigments, and the +legend of high birth can go with the other fictions reported by Henley +that Monticelli was an illegitimate offshoot of the Gonzagas; that he +was the natural son of Diaz; that Diaz kept him a prisoner for years, +to "steal the secret of his colours." + +Like many another of his temperament, he had himself to thank for his +woes, though it was a streak of ill-luck for him when the Prussians +bore down on Paris. He was beginning to be known. A pupil of Raymond +Aubert (1781-1857), he was at first a "fanatic of Raphael and Ingres." +Delacroix and his violently harmonised colour masses settled the +future colourist. He met Diaz and they got on very well together. A +Southerner, handsome, passionate, persuasive, dashing, with the +eloquence of the meridional, Monticelli and his musical name made +friends at court and among powerful artists. In 1870 he started on his +walk of thirty-six days from Paris to Marseilles. He literally painted +his way. In every inn he shed masterpieces. Precious gold dripped from +his palette, and throughout the Rhone valley there are, it is +whispered--by white-haired old men the memory of whose significant +phrases awakes one in the middle of the night longing for the valley +of Durance--that if a resolute, keen-eyed adventurer would traverse +unostentatiously the route taken by Monticelli during his Odyssey the +rewards might be great. It is an idea that grips one's imagination, +but unfortunately it is an idea that gripped the imagination of others +thirty years ago. Not an _auberge_, hotel, or hamlet has been left +unexplored. The fine-tooth comb of familiar parlance has been +sedulously used by interested persons. If there are any Monticellis +unsold nowadays they are for sale at the dealers'. + +In him was incarnate all that we can conceive as bohemian, with a +training that gave him the high-bred manner of a seigneur. He was a +romantic, like his friend Félix Ziem--Ziem, Marcellin, Deboutin, and +Monticelli represented a caste that no longer exists; bohemians, yes, +but gentlemen, refined and fastidious. Yet, after his return to his +beloved Marseilles, Monticelli led the life of an August vagabond. In +his velvet coat, a big-rimmed hat slouched over his eyes, he patrolled +the quays, singing, joking, an artless creature, so good-hearted and +irresponsible that he was called "Fada," more in affection than +contempt. He painted rapidly, a picture daily, sold it on the +_terrasses_ of the cafés for a hundred francs, and when he couldn't +get a hundred he would take sixty. Now one must pay thousands for a +canvas. His most loving critic, Camille Mauclair, who, above any one, +has battled valiantly for his art, tells us that Monticelli once took +eighteen francs for a small canvas because the purchaser had no more +in his pocket! In this manner he disposed of a gallery. He smoked +happy pipes and sipped his absinthe--in his case as desperate an enemy +as it had proved to De Musset. He would always doff his hat at the +mention of Watteau or Rubens. They were his gods. + +When Monticelli arrived in Marseilles after his tramp down from Paris +he was literally in rags. M. Chave, a good Samaritan, took him to a +shop and togged him out in royal raiment. They left for a promenade, +and then the painter begged his friend to let him walk alone so as not +to attenuate the effect he was bound to produce on the passersby, such +a childish, harmless vanity had he. His delight was to gather a few +chosen ones over a bottle of old vintage, and thus with spasmodic +attempts at work his days rolled by. He was feeble, semi-paralysed. +With the advent of bad health vanished the cunning of his hand. His +paint coarsened, his colours became crazier. His pictures at this +period were caricatures of his former art. Many of the early ones were +sold as the productions of Diaz, just as to-day some Diazs are palmed +off as Monticellis. After four years of decadence he died, repeating +for months before his taking off: "Je viens de la lune." He was one +whose brain a lunar ray had penetrated; but this ray was transposed to +a spectrum of gorgeous hues. Capable of depicting the rainbow, he died +of the opalescence that clouded his glass of absinthe. _Pauvre Fada!_ + + + + +II + +It is only a coincidence, yet a curious one, that two such dissimilar +spirits as Stendhal and Monticelli should have predicted their future +popularity. Stendhal said: "About 1880 I shall be understood." +Monticelli said in 1870: "I paint for thirty years hence." Both +prophecies have been realised. After the exhibition at Edinburgh and +Glasgow in 1890 Monticelli was placed by a few discerning critics +above Diaz in quality of paint. In 1892 Mr. Brownell said of +Monticelli in his French Art--a book that every student and amateur of +painting should possess--that the touch of Diaz, patrician as it was, +lacked the exquisiteness of Monticelli's; though he admits the +"exaggeration of the decorative impulse" in that master. For Henley +Monticelli's art was purely sensuous; "his fairy meadows and enchanted +gardens are that sweet word 'Mesopotamia' in two dimensions." Henley +speaks of his "clangours of bronze and gold and scarlet" and admits +that "there are moments when his work is as infallibly decorative as a +Persian crock or a Japanese brocade." D.S. MacColl, in his study of +Nineteenth-Century Painting, gives discriminating praise: +"Monticelli's own exquisite sense of grace in women and invention in +grouping add the positive new part without which his art would be the +mannerising of Rousseau," while Arthur Symons in his Studies in Seven +Arts declares all Monticelli's art "tends toward the effect of +music... his colour is mood ... his mood is colour." + +It remained, however, for Camille Mauclair, a Parisian critic in +sympathy with the arts of design, literature, and music, to place +Monticelli in his proper niche. This Mauclair has done with critical +tact. In his Great French Painters, the bias of which is evidently +strained in favour of the impressionistic school, in his +L'Impressionisme, and in his monograph on Watteau this critic declares +that Monticelli's art "recalls Claude Lorraine a little and Watteau +even more by its sentiment, and Turner and Bonington by its colour... +His work has the same subtlety of gradations, the same division into +fragments of tones (as in Watteau's 'Embarkment for Cythera'), the +same variety of execution, which has sometimes the opaqueness of china +and enamel and sometimes the translucence of precious stones or the +brilliancy of glass, metal, or oxides and seems to be the result of +some mysterious chemistry... Monticelli had an absolutely unique +perception of tonalities, and his glance took in certain shades which +had not been observed before, which the optic and chromatic science of +the day has placed either by proof or hypothesis between the principal +tones of the solar spectrum thirty years after Monticelli had fixed +them. There is magic and high lyric poetry in his art." I wrote of the +Monticellis exhibited at the Comparative Exhibition in New York: "At +the opposite end of the room there is A Summer Day's Idyll, upon which +Monticelli had squeezed all his flaming tubes. It seems orchestrated +in crushed pomegranate, the light suffusing the reclining figures like +a jewelled benediction. Marvellous, too, are the colour-bathed +creatures in this No Man's Land of drugged dreams... Do not the walls +fairly vibrate with this wealth of fairy tints and fantasy?" But it +must not be forgotten that he struck other chords besides blazing +sun-worshipping. We often encounter landscapes of vaporous melancholy, +twilights of reverie. +8888 +Monticelli once told an admiring young amateur that in his canvases +"the objects are the decorations, the touches are the scales, and the +light is the tenor," thereby acknowledging himself that he felt colour +as music. There was hyperæsthesia in his case; his eyes were +protuberant and, like the ears of violinists, capable of +distinguishing quarter tones, even sixteenths. There are affiliations +with Watteau; the same gem-like style of laying on the thick pâte, the +same delight in fairy-like patches of paint to represent figures. In +1860 he literally resuscitated Watteau's manner, adding a personal +note and a richness hitherto unknown to French paint. Mauclair thinks +that to Watteau can be traced back the beginnings of modern +Impressionism; the division of tones, the juxtaposition of tonalities. +Monticelli was the connecting link between Watteau and Monet. The same +critic does not hesitate to name Monticelli as one of the great +quartet of harmonists, Claude, Turner, Monet being the other three. +Taine it was who voiced the philosophy of Impressionism when he +announced in his Philosophie de l'Art that the principal personage in +a picture is the light in which all things are plunged. Eugène +Carrière also asserted that a "picture is the logical development of +light." Monticelli before him had said: "In a painting one must sound +the _C_. Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, all the great ones have sounded +the C." His C, his key-note, was the magic touch of luminosity that +dominated his picture. Like Berlioz, he adored colour for colour's +sake. He had a touch all Venetian in his relation of tones; at times +he went in search of chromatic adventures, returning with the most +marvellous trophies. No man before or since, not even those +practitioners of dissonance and martyrs to the enharmonic scale, +Cézanne, Gauguin, or Van Gogh, ever matched and modulated such widely +disparate tints; no man before could extract such magnificent +harmonies from such apparently irreconcilable tones. Monticelli +thought in colour and was a master of orchestration, one who went +further than Liszt. + +The simple-minded Monticelli had no psychology to speak of--he was a +reversion, a "throw back" to the Venetians, the decorative Venetians, +and if he had possessed the money or the leisure--he hadn't enough +money to buy any but small canvases--he might have become a French +Tiepolo, and perhaps the greatest decorative artist of France. Even +his most delicate pictures are largely felt and sonorously executed; +not "finished" in the studio sense, but complete--two different +things. + +Fate was against him, and the position he might have had was won by +the gentle Puvis de Chavannes, who exhibited a genius for decorating +monumental spaces. With his fiery vision, his brio of execution, his +palette charged with jewelled radiance, Monticelli would have been the +man to have changed the official interiors of Paris. His energy at one +period was enormous, consuming, though short-lived--1865-75. His lack +of self-control and at times his Italian superficiality, never backed +by a commanding intellect, produced the Monticelli we know. In truth +his soul was not complicated. He could never have attacked the +psychology of Zarathustra, Hamlet, or Peer Gynt. A Salome from him +would have been a delightfully decorative minx, set blithely dancing +in some many-hued and enchanted garden of Armida. She would never have +worn the air of hieratic lasciviousness with which Gustave Moreau +inevitably dowered her. There was too much joy of the south in +Monticelli's bones to concern himself with the cruel imaginings of the +Orient or the grisly visions of the north. He was Oriental _au fond_; +but it was the Orientalism of the Thousand and One Nights. He painted +scenes from the Decameron, and his _fêtes galantes_ may be matched +with Watteau's in tone. His first period was his most graceful; +ivory-toned languorous dames, garbed in Second Empire style, languidly +stroll in charming parks escorted by fluttering Cupids or stately +cavaliers. The "decorative impulse" is here at its topmost. In his +second period we get the Decameron series, the episodes from Faust, +the Don Quixote--recall, if you can, that glorious tableau with its +Spanish group and the long, grave don and merry, rotund squire +entering on the scene, a fantastic sky behind them. + +Painted music! The ruins, fountains, statues, and mellow herbage +abound in this middle period. The third is less known. Extravagance +began to rule; scarlet fanfares are sounded; amethysts and emeralds +sparkle; yet there is more thematic variety. Voluptuous, perfumed, and +semi-tragic notes were uttered by this dainty poet of the carnival of +life. The canvas glowed with more reverberating and infernal lights, +but lyric ever. Technique, fabulous and feverish, expended itself on +flowers that were explosions of colours, on seductive marines, on +landscapes of a rhythmic, haunting beauty--the Italian temperament had +become unleashed. Fire, gold, and purple flickered and echoed in +Monticelli's canvases. Irony, like an insinuating serpent, began to +creep into this paradise of melting hues. The masterful gradations of +tone became bewildered. Poison was eating the man's nerves. He +discarded the brush, and standing before his canvas he squeezed his +tubes upon it, literally modelling his paint with his thumb until it +almost assumed the relief of sculpture. What a touch he had! What a +subtle prevision of modulations to be effected by the careless scratch +of his nail or the whip of a knife's edge! Remember, too, that +originally he had been an adept in the art of design; he could draw as +well as his peers. But he sacrificed form and observation and +psychology to sheer colour. He, a veritable discoverer of tones--aided +thereto by an abnormal vision--became the hasty improviser, who at the +last daubed his canvases with a pasty mixture, as hot and crazy as his +ruined soul. The end did not come too soon. A chromatic genius went +under, leaving but a tithe of the gleams that illuminated his brain. +Alas, poor Fada! + + + + +IV. RODIN + + + +I + +Rodin, the French sculptor, deserves well of our new century; the old +one did so incontinently batter him. The anguish of his own Hell's +Portal he endured before he moulded its clay between his thick +clairvoyant fingers. Misunderstood, therefore misrepresented, he with +his pride and obstinacy aroused--the one buttressing the other--was +not to be budged from his formulas and practice of sculpture. Then the +world of art swung unwillingly and unamiably toward him, perhaps more +from curiosity than conviction. Rodin became famous. And he is more +misunderstood than ever. His very name, with its memory of Eugène +Sue's romantic rancour--you recall that impossible and diabolic Jesuit +Rodin in The Mysteries of Paris?--has been thrown in his teeth. He has +been called _rusé_, even a fraud; while the wholesale denunciation of +his work as erotic is unluckily still green in our memory. The +sculptor, who in 1877 was accused of "faking" his life-like Age of +Brass--now at the Luxembourg--by taking a mould from the living model, +also experienced the discomfiture of being assured some years later +that, not knowing the art of modelling, his statue of Balzac was only +an evasion of difficulties. And this to the man who had in the interim +wrought so many masterpieces. + +To give him his due he stands prosperity not quite as well as he did +poverty. In every great artist there is a large area of self-esteem; +it is the reservoir which he must, during years of drought and defeat, +draw upon to keep his soul fresh. Without the consoling fluid of +egoism, genius must perish in the dust of despair. But fill this +source to the brim, accelerate the speed of its current, and artistic +deterioration may ensue. Rodin has been called, fatuously, the second +Michael Angelo--as if there could ever be a replica of any human. He +has been hailed as a modern Praxiteles. And he is often damned as a +myopic decadent whose insensibility to pure line and deficiency in +constructional power have been elevated by his admirers into sorry +virtues. Yet is Rodin justly appraised? Do his friends not overdo +their glorification, his critics their censure? Nothing so stales a +demigod's image as the perfumes burned before it by his worshippers; +the denser the smoke the sooner crumble the feet of their idol. + +However, in the case of Rodin the fates have so contrived their +malicious game that at no point of his career has he been without the +company of envy, chagrin, and slander. Often, when he had attained a +summit, he would find himself thrust down into a deeper valley. He has +mounted to triumphs and fallen to humiliations, but his spirit has +never been quelled, and if each acclivity he scales is steeper, the +air atop has grown purer, more stimulating, and the landscape spreads +wider before him. He can say with Dante: "La montagna che drizza voi +che il mondo fece torti." Rodin's mountain has always straightened in +him what the world made crooked. The name of his mountain is Art. A +born non-conformist, Rodin makes the fourth of that group of +nineteenth-century artists--Richard Wagner, Henrik Ibsen, and Edouard +Manet--who taught a deaf and blind world to hear and see and think and +feel. + +Is it not dangerous to say of a genius that his work alone should +count, that his life is negligible? Though Rodin has followed +Flaubert's advice to artists to lead ascetic lives that their art +might be the more violent, nevertheless his career, colourless as it +may seem to those who better love stage players and the watery +comedies of society--this laborious life of a poor sculptor--is not to +be passed over if we are to make any estimate of his art. He, it is +related, always becomes enraged at the word "inspiration," enraged at +the common notion that fire descends from heaven upon the head of the +favoured neophyte of art. Rodin believes in but one +inspiration--nature. He swears he does not invent, but copies nature. +He despises improvisation, has contemptuous words for "fatal +facility," and, being a slow-moving, slow-thinking man, he admits to +his councils those who have conquered art, not by assault, but by +stealth and after years of hard work. He sympathises with Flaubert's +patient toiling days, he praises Holland because after Paris it seemed +slow. "Slowness is a beauty," he declared. In a word, Rodin has +evolved a theory and practice of his art that is the outcome--like all +theories, all techniques--of his own temperament. And that temperament +is giant-like, massive, ironic, grave, strangely perverse at times; +and it is the temperament of a magician doubled by that of a +mathematician. + +Books are written about him. De Maupassant describes him in Notre +Coeur with picturesque precision. He is tempting as a psychologic +study. He appeals to the literary, though he is not "literary." His +modelling arouses tempests, either of dispraise or idolatry. To see +him steadily, critically, after a visit to his studios in Paris or +Meudon, is difficult. If the master be there then you feel the impact +of a personality that is as cloudy as the clouds about the base of a +mountain and as impressive as the mountain. Yet a pleasant, +unassuming, sane man, interested in his clay--absolutely--that is, +unless you discover him to be more interested in humanity. If you +watch him well you may find yourself well watched; those peering eyes +possess a vision that plunges into your soul. And the soul this master +of marbles sees as nude as he sees the human body. It is the union of +artist and psychologist that places Rodin apart. These two arts he +practises in a medium that has hitherto not betrayed potentialities +for such almost miraculous performances. Walter Pater is quite right +in maintaining that each art has its separate subject-matter; +nevertheless, in the debatable province of Rodin's sculpture we find +strange emotional power, hints of the art of painting and a rare +musical suggestiveness. But this is not playing the game according to +the rules of Lessing and his Laocoön. + +Let us drop this old æsthetic rule of thumb and confess that during +the last century a new race of artists sprang up from some strange +element and, like flying-fish, revealed to a wondering world their +composite structures. Thus we find Berlioz painting with his +instrumentation; Franz Liszt, Tschaikowsky, and Richard Strauss +filling their symphonic poems with drama and poetry, and Richard +Wagner inventing an art which he believed to embrace the seven arts. +And there is Ibsen, who used the dramatic form as a vehicle for his +anarchistic ideas; and Nietzsche, who was such a poet that he was able +to sing a mad philosophy into life; and Rossetti, who painted poems +and made poetry that is pictorial. Sculpture was the only art that had +resisted this universal disintegration, this imbroglio of the arts. No +sculptor before Rodin had dared to break the line, dared to shiver the +syntax of stone. For sculpture is a static, not a dynamic art--is it +not? Let us observe the rules, though we preserve the chill spirit of +the cemetery. What Mallarmé attempted to do with French poetry Rodin +accomplished in clay. His marbles do not represent but present +emotion, are the evocation of emotion itself; as in music, form and +substance coalesce. If he does not, as did Mallarmé, arouse "the +silent thunder afloat in the leaves," he can summon from the vasty +deep the spirits of love, hate, pain, despair, sin, beauty, ecstasy; +above all, ecstasy. Now the primal gift of ecstasy is bestowed upon +few. In our age Keats had it, and Shelley; Byron, despite his passion, +missed it, and so did Wordsworth. We find it in Swinburne, he had it +from the first; but few French poets have it. Like the "cold devils" +of Félicien Rops, coiled in frozen ecstasy, the blasts of hell about +them, Charles Baudelaire can boast the dangerous attribute. Poe and +Heine knew ecstasy, and Liszt also; Wagner was the master adept of his +century. Tschaikowsky followed him close; and in the tiny piano scores +of Chopin ecstasy is pinioned in a few bars, the soul often rapt to +heaven in a phrase. Richard Strauss has shown a rare variation on the +theme of ecstasy; voluptuousness troubled by pain, the soul tormented +by stranger nuances. + +Rodin is of this tormented choir; he is master of its psychology. It +may be the decadence, as any art is in decadence which stakes the +parts against the whole. The same was said of Beethoven by the +followers of Haydn, and the successors of Richard Strauss will be +surely abused quite as violently as the Wagnerites abuse Strauss +to-day--employing against him the same critical artillery employed +against Wagner. That this ecstasy should be aroused by pictures of +love and death, as in the case of Poe and Baudelaire, Wagner and +Strauss, must not be adjudged as a black crime. In the Far East they +hypnotise neophytes with a bit of broken mirror, for in the kingdom of +art, as in the Kingdom of Heaven, there are many mansions. Possibly it +was a relic of his early admiration and study of Baudelaire that set +Wagner to extorting ecstasy from his orchestra by images of death and +love; and no doubt the temperament which seeks such combinations--a +temperament commoner in mediæval days than ours--was inherent in +Wagner. He makes his Isolde sing mournfully and madly over a corpse +and, throwing herself upon the dead body of Tristan, die shaken by the +sweet cruel pains of love. Richard Strauss closely patterns after +Wagner in his Salome, there is the head of a dead man, and there is +the same dissolving ecstasy. Both men play with similar counters--love +and death, and death and love. And so Rodin. In Pisa we may see +(attributed by Vasari) Orcagna's fresco of the Triumph of Death. The +sting of the flesh and the way of all flesh are inextricably blended +in Rodin's Gate of Hell. His principal reading for forty years has +been Dante and Baudelaire. The Divine Comedy and Les Fleurs du Mal are +the key-notes in this white symphony of Auguste Rodin's. Love and life +and bitterness and death rule the themes of his marbles. Like +Beethoven and Wagner he breaks the academic laws of his art, but then +he is Rodin, and where he achieves magnificently lesser men would +miserably perish. His large tumultuous music is for his chisel alone +to ring out and sing. + + + +II + +The first and still the best study of Rodin as man and thinker is to +be found in a book by Judith Cladel, the daughter of the novelist +(author of Mes Paysans). She named it Auguste Rodin, pris sur la vie, +and her pages are filled with surprisingly vital sketches of the +workaday Rodin. His conversations are recorded; altogether this little +picture has much charm and proves what Rodin asserts--that women +understand him better than men. There is a fluid, feminine, disturbing +side to his art and nature very appealing to emotional women. Mlle. +Cladel's book has also been treasure-trove for the anecdote hunters; +all have visited her pages. Camille Mauclair admits his indebtedness; +so does Frederick Lawton, whose big volume is the most complete life +(probably official) that has thus far appeared, either in French or +English. It is written on the side of Rodin, like Mauclair's more +subtle study, and like the masterly criticism of Roger Marx. Born at +Paris in 1840--the natal year of his friends Claude Monet and +Zola--and in humble circumstances, not enjoying a liberal education, +the young Rodin had to fight from the beginning, fight for bread as +well as an art schooling. He was not even sure of a vocation. An +accident determined it. He became a workman in the atelier of +Carrier-Belleuse, the sculptor, but not until he had failed at the +Beaux-Arts (which was a stroke of luck for his genius) and after he +had enjoyed some tentative instruction under the great animal +sculptor, Barye. He was never a steady pupil of Barye, nor did he long +remain with him. He went to Belgium and "ghosted" for other sculptors; +indeed, it was a privilege, or misfortune, to have been the +"ghost"--anonymous assistant--for half a dozen sculptors. He learned +his technique by the sweat of his brow before he began to make music +upon his own instrument. + +How his first work, The Man With the Broken Nose, was refused by the +Salon jury is history. He designed for the Sèvres porcelain works; he +made portrait busts, architectural ornaments for sculptors, +caryatides; all styles that are huddled in the yards and studios of +sculptors he had essayed and conquered. No man knew his trade better, +although we are informed that with the chisel of the _practicien_ +Rodin was never proficient--he could not or would not work at the +marble _en bloc_. His works to-day are in the leading museums of the +world and he is admitted to have "talent" by the academic men. Rivals +he has none, nor will he have successors. His production is too +personal. Like Richard Wagner, Rodin has proved a Upas tree for many +lesser men--he has reflected or else absorbed them. His closest +friend, the late Eugène Carrière, warned young sculptors not to study +Rodin too curiously. Carrière was wise, but his own art of portraiture +was influenced by Rodin; swimming in shadow, his enigmatic heads have +a suspicion of the quality of sculpture--Rodin's--not the mortuary art +of so much academic sculpture. + +A profound student of light and of movement, Rodin, by deliberate +amplification of the surfaces of his statues, avoiding dryness and +harshness of outline, secures a zone of radiancy, a luminosity, which +creates the illusion of reality. He handles values in clay as a +painter does his tones. He gets the design of the outline by movement +which continually modifies the anatomy--the secret, he believes, of +the Greeks. He studies his profiles successively in full light, +obtaining volume--or planes--at once and together; successive views of +one movement. The light plays with more freedom upon his amplified +surfaces--intensified in the modelling by enlarging the lines. The +edges of certain parts are amplified, deformed, falsified, and we see +that light-swept effect, that appearance as if of luminous emanations. +This deformation, he declares, was practised by the great sculptors to +snare the undulating appearance of life. Sculpture, he asserts, is the +"art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelled +figures." Finish kills vitality. Yet Rodin can chisel a smooth nymph +for you if he so wills, but her flesh will ripple and run in the +sunlight. His art is one of accents. He works by profile in depth, not +by surfaces. He swears by what he calls "cubic truth"; his pattern is +a mathematical figure; the pivot of art is balance, _i.e._, the +oppositions of volume produced by movement. Unity haunts him. He is a +believer in the correspondences of things, of the continuity in +nature; a mystic as well as a geometrician. Yet such a realist is he +that he quarrels with any artist who does not see "the latent heroic +in every natural movement." + +Therefore he does not force the pose of his model, preferring +attitudes or gestures voluntarily adopted. His sketch-books, as +copious, as vivid as the drawings of Hokusai--he is very studious of +Japanese art--are swift memoranda of the human machine as it dispenses +its normal muscular motions. Rodin, draughtsman, is as surprising and +original as Rodin, sculptor. He will study a human foot for months, +not to copy it, but to possess the secret of its rhythms. His drawings +are the swift notations of a sculptor whose eye is never satisfied, +whose desire to pin on paper the most evanescent movements of the +human machine is almost a mania. The French sculptor avoids studied +poses. The model tumbles down anywhere, in any contortion or +relaxation he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the method +adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiver +of surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a mere +scrawl, a few enveloping lines, a silhouette. But vitality is in it; +and for his purposes a mere memorandum of a motion. A sculptor has +made these extraordinary drawings not a painter. It will be well to +observe the distinction. He is the most rhythmic sculptor of them all. +And rhythm is the codification of beauty. Because he has observed with +a vision quite virginal he insists that he has affiliations with the +Greeks. But if his vision is Greek his models are Parisian, while his +forms are more Gothic than the pseudo-Greek of the academy. As W.C. +Brownell wrote years ago: "Rodin reveals rather than constructs +beauty... no sculptor has carried expression further; and expression +means individual character completely exhibited rather than +conventionally suggested." Mr. Brownell was also the first critic to +point out that Rodin's art was more nearly related to Donatello than +to Michael Angelo. He is in the legitimate line of French sculpture, +the line of Goujon, Puget, Rude, Barye. Dalou did not hesitate to +assert that the Dante portal is "one of the most, if not the most, +original and astonishing pieces of sculpture of the nineteenth +century." + +This Dante Gate, begun more than twenty years ago, not finished yet, +and probably never to be, is an astounding fugue, with death, the +devil, hell, and the passions as a horribly beautiful four-voiced +theme. I saw the composition a few years ago at the Rue de +l'Université atelier. It is as terrifying a conception as the Last +Judgment; nor does it miss the sonorous and sorrowful grandeur of the +Medici Tombs. Yet how different, how feverish, how tragic! Like all +great men working in the grip of a unifying idea, Rodin modified the +old technique of sculpture so that it would serve him as plastically +as does sound a musical composer. A deep lover of music, his inner ear +may dictate the vibrating rhythms of his forms--his marbles are ever +musical; not "frozen music" as Goethe said of Gothic architecture, but +silent swooning music. This gate is a Frieze of Paris, as deeply +significant of modern aspiration and sorrow as the Parthenon Frieze is +the symbol of the great clear beauty of Hellas. Dante inspired this +monstrous and ennobled masterpiece, but Baudelaire filled many of its +chinks and crannies with writhing ignoble shapes; shapes of dusky fire +that, as they tremulously stand above the gulf of fears, wave +ineffectual desperate hands. Heine in his Deutschland asks: + + Kennst du die Hölle des Dante nicht, + Die schreckliche Terzetten? + Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt + Den kann kein Gott mehr retten. + +And from the "singing flames" of Rodin there is no rescue. + +But he is not all tragedy and hell fire. Of singular delicacy, of +exquisite proportions are his marbles of youth, of springtide, and the +desire of life. In 1900, at his special exhibition, Paris, Europe, and +America awoke to these haunting visions. Not since Keats or Swinburne +has love been sung so sweetly, so romantically, so fiercely. Though he +disclaims understanding the Celtic spirit, one could say that there is +Celtic magic, Celtic mystery in his work. He pierces to the core the +frenzy and joy of love and translates them in beautiful symbols. +Nature is for him the sole theme; his works are but variations on her +promptings. He knows the emerald route and all the semitones of +sensuousness. Fantasy, passion, even paroxysmal madness there are; yet +what elemental power in his Adam as the gigantic first _homo_ +painfully heaves himself up from the earth to that posture which +differentiates him from the beasts. Here, indeed, the two natures are +at strife. And Mother Eve, her expression suggesting the sorrows and +shames that are to be the lot of her seed; her very loins seem crushed +by the ages that are hidden within them. You may walk freely about the +burghers of Calais, as did Rodin when he modelled them; that is one +secret of the group's vital quality. About all his statues you may +walk--he is not a sculptor of one attitude, but a hewer of men and +women. Consider the Balzac. It is not Balzac the writer of novels, but +Balzac the prophet, the seer, the great natural force--like Rodin +himself. That is why these kindred spirits converse across the years, +as do the Alpine peaks in that striking parable of Turgenieff's. No +doubt in bronze the Balzac will arouse less wrath from the +unimaginative; in plaster it produces the effect of some surging +monolith of snow. + +As a portraitist of his contemporaries Rodin is the unique master of +character. His women are gracious, delicious masks; his men cover many +octaves in virility and variety. That he is extremely short-sighted +has not been dealt with in proportion to the significance of this +fact. It accounts for his love of exaggerated surfaces, his formless +extravagance, his indefiniteness in structural design; possibly, too, +for his inability, or let us say lack of sympathy, for the monumental. +He is essentially a sculptor of the intimate emotions; he delineates +passion as a psychologist; and while we think of him as a cyclops +wielding a huge hammer destructively, he is often ardent in his search +of subtle nuance. But there is breadth even when he models an eyelid. +Size is only relative. We are confronted by the paradox of an artist +as torrential, as apocalyptic as Rubens and Wagner, carving with a +style wholly charming a segment of a baby's back so that you exclaim, +"Donatello come to life!" His slow, defective vision, then, may have +been his salvation; he seems to rely as much on his delicate tactile +sense as on his eyes. His fingers are as sensitive as a violinist's. +At times he seems to model tone and colour. A marvellous poet, a +precise sober workman of art, with a peasant strain in him like +Millet, and, like Millet, very near to the soil; a natural man, yet +crossed by nature with a perverse strain; the possessor of a +sensibility exalted, and dolorous; morbid, sick-nerved, and as +introspective as Heine; a visionary and a lover of life, very close to +the periphery of things; an interpreter of Baudelaire; Dante's alter +ego in his vast grasp of the wheel of eternity, in his passionate +fling at nature; withal a sculptor, always profound and tortured, +translating rhythm and motion into the terms of sculpture. Rodin is a +statuary who, while having affinities with both the classic and +romantic schools, is the most startling artistic apparition of his +century. And to the century he has summed up so plastically and +emotionally he has also propounded questions that only the unborn +years may answer. He has a hundred faults to which he opposes one +imperious excellence--a genius, sombre, magical, and overwhelming. + + + + +V. EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE + + + +Death has consecrated the genius of three great painters happily +neglected and persecuted during their lifetime--Manet, Monticelli, and +Carrière. Though furiously opposed, Manet was admitted to the +Luxembourg by the conditions of the Caillebotte legacy. There that +ironic masterpiece, Olympe--otherwise known as the Cat and +Cocotte--has hung for the edification of intelligent amateurs, though +it was only a bequest of triumphant hatred in official eyes. And now +the lady with her cat and negress is in the Louvre, in which +sacrosanct region she, with her meagre, subtle figure, competes among +the masterpieces. Yet there were few dissenting voices. Despite its +temperamental oscillations France is at bottom sound in the matter of +art. Genius may starve, but genius once recognised, the apotheosis is +logically bound to follow. No fear of halls of fame with a French Poe +absent. + +Eugène Carrière was more fortunate than his two famous predecessors. +He toiled and suffered hardship, but before his death he was +officially acknowledged though never altogether approved by the Salon +in which he exhibited; approved or understood. He fought under no +banner. He was not an impressionist. He was not a realist. Certainly +he could be claimed by neither the classics nor romantics. A +"solitary" they agreed to call him; but his is not the hermetic art of +such a solitary as Gustave Moreau. Carrière, on the contrary, was a +man of marked social impulses, and when in 1889 he received the Legion +of Honour, he was enabled to mingle with his equals--he had been +almost unknown until then. He was the most progressive spirit among +his brethren. Nowadays he is classed as an Intimist, in which category +and with such men as Simon Bussy, Ménard, Henri le Sidaner, Emile +Wéry, Charles Cottet, Lucien Simon, Edouard Vuillard, the Griveaus, +Lomont, Lobre, and others, he is still their master, still the +possessor of a highly individualised style, and in portraiture the +successor to such diverse painters as Prudhon, Ricard, and Whistler. + +Gabriel Seailles has written a study, Eugène Carrière, l'Homme et +l'Artiste, and Charles Morice has published another, Eugène Carrière. +The latter deals with the personality and ideas of one of the most +original thinkers among modern French painters. We have spoken of the +acerbity of Degas, of his wit, so often borrowed by Whistler and +Manet; we have read Eugène Fromentin's delightful, stimulating studies +of the old masters, but we doubt if Fromentin was as profound a +thinker as Carrière. Degas is not, though he deals in a more acid and +dangerous form of aphorism. It is one of the charms of the eulogy of +M. Morice to find embalmed therein so many phrases and speeches of the +dead painter. He was both poet and philosopher, let us call him a +seer, for his work fully bears out this appellation. A grand +visionary, he well deserves Jean Dolent's description of his pictures +as "realities having the magic of a dream." + +Carrière's career was in no wise extraordinary. He fled to no exotic +climes as did Paul Gauguin. His only tragedy was the manner of his +death. For three years previous he suffered the agonies of a cancer. +His bravery was admirable. No one heard him complain. He worked to the +last, worked as he had worked his life long, untiringly. Morice gives +a "succinct biography" at the close of his study. From it we learn +that Eugène Carrière was born January 29, 1849, at Gournay +(Seine-Inférieure); that he made his first steps in art at the +Strasbourg Academy; in 1869 he entered the Beaux-Arts, in Cabanel's +class. Penniless, he earned a precarious existence in designing +industrial objects. In 1870 he was made prisoner by the Prussians, +with the garrison of Neuf-Brisach, and taken to Dresden, where he was +confined in prison. After peace had been declared he resumed his +studies at the Beaux-Arts. In 1877 he married--an important event in +his art; thenceforward Madame Carrière and the children born to them +were his continual models, both by preference and also by force of +circumstances--he was too poor in the beginning to hire professional +models. He spent six months in London, which may or may not account +for his brumous colour; and in 1879, when he was thirty years old, he +exposed in the Salon of that year his Young Mother, the first of a +long series of Maternities. He was violently attacked by the critics, +and as violently defended. During the same year he attempted to win +the "prix de Rome" and gained honours for his sketch. Luckily he did +not attain this prize; and, still more luck, he left the school. + +In 1884 he received an honourable mention for a child's portrait; in +1885 a medal for his Sick Child, bought by the State; in 1886 Le +Premier voile was bought by the State and he was proposed for a medal +of honour and--singular dream of Frenchmen--he was decorated in 1889. +He died March 27, 1906. Not a long, but a full life, a happy one, and +at the last, glory--"_le soleil des morts_," as Balzac said--and a +competence for his dear ones. And it is to the honour of such writers +as Roger Marx, Anatole France, Hamel, Morice, Mauclair, Verhaeren, +Geffroy, that they recognised the genius of Carrière from the +beginning. In 1904 Carrière was made honorary president of the Autumn +Salon and was the chief guest of these young painters, who really +adored Paul Cézanne, and not the painter of an illusive psychology. I +wrote at that time: "Carrière, whose delicately clouded portraits, so +intimate in their revelation of the souls of his sitters, was not seen +at his best. He offered a large decorative panel for the Mairie of the +Thirteenth Arrondissement, entitled Les Fiancés, a sad-looking +betrothal party ... the landscape timid, the decorative scheme not +very effective... His tender notations of maternity, and his heads, +painted with the smoky enchantments of his pearly gray and soft +russet, are more credible than this _panneau_." Was Carrière a +decorative painter by nature--setting aside training? We doubt it, +though Morice does not hesitate to name him after Puvis de Chavannes +in this field. The trouble is that he did not make many excursions +into the larger forms. He painted a huge canvas, Les Théâtres +Populaires, in which the interest is more intimate than epical. He +also did some decorations for the Hotel de Ville, The Four Ages for a +Mairie, and the Christ at the Luxembourg and a view of Paris. +Nevertheless, it is his portraits that will live. + +Carrière was, first and last, a symbolist. There he is related to the +Dutch Seer, Rembrandt; both men strove to seek for the eternal +correspondence of things material and spiritual; both sought to bring +into harmony the dissonance of flesh and the spirit. Both succeeded, +each in his own way--though we need not couple their efforts on the +technical side. Rembrandt was a prophet. There is more of the +reflective poet in Carrière. He is a mystic. His mothers, his +children, are dreams made real--the magic of which Dolent speaks is +always there. To disengage the personality of his sitter was his first +idea. Slowly he built up those volumes of colour, light, and shadow, +the solidity of which caused Rodin to exclaim: "Carrière is also a +sculptor!" Slowly and from the most unwilling sitter he extorted the +secret of a soul. We speak of John Sargent as the master psychologist +among portraitists, a superiority he himself has never assumed; but +that magnificent virtuoso, an aristocratic Frans Hals, never gives us +the indefinite sense of things mystic beneath the epidermis of poor, +struggling humanity as does Eugène Carrière. Sargent is too +magisterial a painter to dwell upon the infinite little soul-stigmata +of men and women. Who can tell the renunciations made by the Frenchman +in his endeavour to wrest the enigma of personality from its abysmal +depths? + +As Canaille Mauclair says: "Carrière was first influenced by the +Spaniards, then by Ver Meer and Chardin ... formerly he coloured his +canvas with exquisite delicacy and with a distinction of harmonies +that came very near to Whistler's. Now he confines himself to bistre, +black and white, to evoke those dream pictures, true images of souls, +which make him inimitable in our epoch and go back to Rembrandt's +chiaroscuro." Colour went by the board at the last, and the painter +was dominated by expression alone. His gamut of tones became +contracted. "Physical magnetism" is exactly the phrase that +illuminates his later methods. Often cavernous in tone, sooty in his +blacks, he nevertheless contrives a fluid atmosphere, the shadows +floating, the figure floating, that arrests instant attention. He +became almost sculptural, handled his planes with imposing breadth, +his sense of values was strong, his gradations and degradation of +tones masterly; and he escaped the influences of the new men in their +researches after luminosity at all hazards. He considered +impressionism a transition; after purifying muddy palettes of the +academics, the division-of-tones painters must necessarily return to +lofty composition, to a poetic simplicity with nature, to a more +rarefied psychology. + +Carrière, notwithstanding his nocturnal reveries, his sombre +colouring, was not a pessimist. Indeed, the reverse. His philosophy of +life was exalted--an exalted socialism. He was, to employ Nietzsche's +pithy phrase, a "Yes-Sayer"; he said "Yes" to the universe. A man of +vigorous affirmations, he worshipped nature, not for its pictorial +aspects, but for the god which is the leaf and rock and animal, for +the god that beats in our pulses and shines in the clear sunlight. Nor +was it vague, windy pantheism, this; he was a believer--a glance at +his Christ reveals his reverence for the Man of Sorrows--and his +religious love and pity for mankind was only excelled by his hatred of +wrong and oppression. He detested cruelty. His canvases of childhood, +in which he exposes the most evanescent gesture, exposes the +unconscious helplessness of babyhood, are so many tracts--if you +choose to see them after that fashion--in behalf of mercy to all +tender and living things. He is not, however, a sentimentalist. His +family groups prove the absence of theatrical pity. Because of his +subtle technical method, his manner of building up his heads in a +misty medium and then abstracting their physical non-essentials, his +portraits have a metaphysical meaning--they are a _Becoming_, not a +_Being_, tangible though they be. Their fluid rhythms lend to them +almost the quality of a perpetual rejuvenescence. This may be an +illusion, but it tells us of the primary intensity of the painter's +vision. Withal, there is no scene of the merely spectral, no optical +trickery. The waves of light are magnetic. The picture floats in +space, seemingly compelled by its frame into limits. Gustave Geffroy +once wrote that, in common with the great masters, Carrière, on his +canvas, gives a sense of volume and weight. Whatever he sacrificed, it +was not actuality. His draughtsmanship never falters, his touch is +never infirm. + +I have seen his portraits of Verlaine, Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt, +Geffroy, of the artist himself and many others. The Verlaine is a +veritable evocation. It was painted at one _séance_ of several hours, +and the poet, it is said, did not sit still or keep silence for a +moment. He was hardly conscious that he was being painted. What a +head! Not that of the old faun and absinthe-sipping vagabond of the +Latin quarter, but the soul that lurked somewhere in Verlaine; the +dreamer, not the mystifier, the man crucified to the cross of +aspiration by his unhappy temperament. Musician and child, here is the +head of one of those pious, irresponsible mendicants who walked dusty +roads in the Middle Ages. It needed an unusual painter to interpret an +unusual poet. + +The Daudet face is not alone full of surface character, but explains +the racial affinities of the romancer. Here he is David, not Daudet. +The head of De Goncourt gives in a few touches--Carrière is ever +master of the essential--the irritable pontiff of literary +impressionism. Carrière was fond of repeating: "For the artist the +forms evoke ideas, sensations, and sentiments; for the poet, +sensations, ideas, sentiments evoke forms." Never expansively lyrical +as was Monticelli, Carrière declared that a picture is the logical +development of light. And on the external side his art is a continual +variation with light as a theme. Morice contends that he was a +colourist; that the blond of Rubens and the russet of Carrière are not +monochromes; that polychromy is not the true way of seeing nature +coloured. Certainly Carrière does not sacrifice style, expression, +composition for splashing hues. Yet his illuminating strokes appear to +proceed from within, not from without. He interrogates nature, but her +answer is a sober, not a brilliant one. Let us rather say that his +colouring is adequate--he always asserted that a sense of proportion +was success in art. His tone is peculiarly personal; he paints +expressions, the fleeting shades that cross the face of a man, a +woman, a child. He patiently awaits the master trait of a soul and +never misses it, though never displaying it with the happy cruelty of +Sargent and always judging mercifully. Notwithstanding his humble +attitude in the presence of nature, he is the most self-revealing of +painters. Few before him ever interpreted maternity as he has done. + +Carrière is not a virtuoso. He is an initiator--a man of rare +imagination. Above all, he escapes the rhetoric of the schools. His +apprehension of character is that of sympathetic genius. He divines +the emotions, especially in those souls made melancholy by sorrow; +uneasy, complex, feverish souls; them that hide their griefs, and +souls saturated with the ennuis of existence--to all he is interpreter +and consoler. He has pictured the _Weltschmerz_ of his age; and +without morbid self-enjoyment. A noble soul, an elevating example to +those artists who believe that art and life may be dissociated. +Carrière has left no school, though his spiritual influence has been +great. A self-contained artist, going his own way, meditating deeply +on art, on life, his canvases stand for his singleness and purity of +purpose. On the purely pictorial side he is, to quote M. Mauclair, "an +absolutely surprising painter of hands and glances." + +In the sad and anxious rectitude of his attire the artistic interest +in modern man is concentrated upon his head and hands; and upon these +salient points Carrière focussed his art. Peaceful or disquieted, his +men and women belong to our century. Spiritually Eugène Carrière is +the lineal descendant of the Rembrandt school--but one who has read +Dostoïevsky. + + + + +VI. DEGAS + + + +Let us suppose that gay old misogynist Arthur Schopenhauer persuaded +to cross the Styx and revisiting the earth. Apart from his disgust if +forced to listen to the music of his self-elected disciple Richard +Wagner, what painted work would be likely to attract him? Remember he +it was who named Woman the knock-kneed sex--since the new woman is +here it matters little if her figure conforms to old-fashioned, +stupid, masculine standards of beauty. But wouldn't the nudes of Degas +confirm the Frankfort philosopher in his theories regarding the +"long-haired, short-brained, unæsthetic sex," and also confirm his +hatred for the exaggerations of poet and painter when describing or +depicting her? We fear that Schopenhauer would smile his malicious +smile and exclaim: "At last the humble truth!" It is the presentation +of the humble truth that early snared the affections of Degas, who has +with a passionate calm pursued the evanescent appearances of things +his entire life. No doubt death will find him pencil in hand. You +think of Hokusai, the old man mad with paint, when the name of Degas +is mentioned. He was born in Paris July 19, 1834--his full name is +Hilaire Germain Edgard (or Edgar)--and there is one phrase that will +best describe his career: He painted. Like Flaubert, he never married, +but lived in companionship with his art. Such a mania could have been +described by Balzac. Yet no saner art ever issued from a Parisian +atelier; sane, clear, and beautiful. + +Degas is a painter's painter. For him the subject is a peg upon which +to hang superb workmanship. In amazement the public asked: How could a +man in the possession of his powers shut himself up in a studio to +paint ballet girls, washerwomen, jockeys, drabs of Montmartre, +shopgirls, and horses? Even Zola, who should have known better, would +not admit that Degas was an artist fit to be compared with such men as +Flaubert and Goncourt; but Zola was never the realist that is Degas. +Now it is difficult to keep asunder the names of Goncourt and Degas. +To us they are too often unwisely bracketed. The style of the painter +has been judged as analogous to the novelist's; yet, apart from a +preference for the same subjects for the "modernity" of Paris, there +is not much in Degas that recalls Goncourt's staccato, febrile, +sparkling, "decomposed", impressionistic prose. Both men are +brilliant, though not in the same way. Pyrotechnics are abhorrent to +Degas. He has the serenity, sobriety, and impersonality of the great +classic painters. He is himself a classic. + +His legend is slender. Possessing a private income, he never was +preoccupied with the anxieties of selling his work. He first entered +the atelier of Lamotte, but his stay was brief. In the studio of +Ingres he was, so George Moore declares, the student who carried out +the lifeless body of the painter when Ingres fell in his fatal fit. +There is something peculiarly interesting about this anecdote for the +tradition of Ingres has been carried on by Degas. The greatest master +of pure line, in his portraits and nudes--we have forgotten his chilly +_pastiches_ of Raphael--of the past century, Ingres has been and still +is for Degas a god on the peaks of Parnassus. Degas is an Ingres who +has studied the Japanese. Only such men as Pollajuolo and Botticelli +rank with Degas in the mastery of rhythmic line. He is not academic, +yet he stems from purest academic traditions. He is not of the +impressionists, at least not in his technical processes, but he +associated with them, exhibited with them (though rarely), and is as a +rule confused with them. He never exhibited in the Salons, he has no +disciples, yet it is doubtful if any painter's fashion of seeing +things has had such an influence on the generation following him. The +name of Degas, the pastels of Degas, the miraculous draughtsmanship of +Degas created an imponderable fluid which still permeates Paris. +Naturally, after the egg trick was discovered we encounter scores of +young Columbuses, who paint ballet girls' legs and the heads of +orchestral musicians and scenes from the racing paddock. + +Degas had three painters who, if any, might truthfully call themselves +his pupils. These are Mary Cassatt, Alexis Rouart, and Forain. The +first has achieved solid fame. The last is a remarkable illustrator, +who "vulgarised" the austere methods of his master for popular +Parisian consumption. That Renoir, Raffaelli, and Toulouse-Lautrec owe +much to Degas is the secret of Polichinello. This patient student of +the Tuscan Primitives, of Holbein, Chardin, Delacroix, Ingres, and +Manet--the precepts of Manet taught him to sweeten the wiriness of his +modelling and modify his tendency to a certain hardness--was willing +to trust to time for the verdict of his rare art. He associated daily +with Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Whistler, Duranty, Fantin-Latour, and the +crowd that first went to the Café Guerbois in the Batignolles--hence +the derisive nickname, "The Batignolles School"; later to the Nouvelle +Athènes, finally to the Café de la Rochefoucauld. A hermit he was +during the dozen hours a day he toiled, but he was a sociable man, +nevertheless, a cultured man fond of music, possessing a tongue that +was feared as much as is the Russian knout. Mr. Moore has printed many +specimens of his caustic wit. Whistler actually kept silent in his +presence--possibly expecting a repetition of the _mot_: "My dear +friend, you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent at +all." Manet good-naturedly took a browbeating, but the Academic set +were outraged by the irreverence of Degas. What hard sayings were his! +Poor Bastien-Lepage, too, came in for a scoring. Barricaded in his +studio, it was a brave man who attempted to force an entrance. The +little, round-shouldered artist, generally good-tempered, would pour a +stream of verbal vitriol over the head of the unlucky impertinent. + +In 1860 or thereabout he visited America, and in New Orleans he saw +the subject of his Interior of a Cotton Factory, which was shown as an +historical curiosity at the Paris exposition in 1900. While it is +implacably realistic there is little hint of the future Degas. The +name of the painter was in every French painter's mouth, and the +brilliant article of Huysmans concentrated his fame. Huysmans it was +who first saw that Degas had treated the nude as Rembrandt would if he +had been alive--making allowances for temperamental variations. Degas +knew that to grasp the true meaning of the nude it must be represented +in postures, movements which are natural, not studio attitudes. As +Monet exposed the fallacy of studio lighting, so Degas revealed the +inanity of its poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with the +fourth wall removed; Degas preferred the key-hole through which we +seem to peep upon the privacy of his ugly females bathing or combing +their hair or sleeping, lounging, yawning, quarrelling, and walking. +The simian and frog-like gestures and sprawling attitudes are far from +arousing amiable sensations. These poor, tired women, hard-working +laundresses, shopgirls, are not alluring, though they are not as +hideous as the women of Cézanne or Edvard Münch; but the veracity of +the "human document" (overworked phrase!) is there. Charles Morice has +said that to Cézanne a potato was as significant as a human +countenance. The pattern interested him in both. For Degas the beauty +of life lies in the moving line. He captures with ease the swift, +unconscious gesture. His models are never posed. They are nature +caught in the act. There is said to be a difference between the +epidermis of the professional model and the human who undresses only +to go to bed. Degas has recorded this difference. What an arraignment +of the corset are the creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What +lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! _Voilà l'animale!_ +he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some +girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! +Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a +douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayadères +and of drawing-room portraiture. + +Pity is deeply rooted in his nature. He is never tender, yet there is +veiled sympathy in the ballet-girl series. Behind the scenes, in the +waiting-rooms, at rehearsal, going home with the hawk-eyed mother, his +girls are all painfully real. No "glamour of the foot-lights," +generally the prosaic side of their life. He has, however, painted the +glorification of the danseuse, of that lady grandiloquently described +as _prima donna assoluta_. What magic he evokes as he pictures her +floating down stage! The pastel in the Luxembourg, L'Etoile, is the +reincarnation of the precise moment when the aerial creature on one +foot lifts graceful arms and is transfigured in the glow of the +lights, while about her beats--you are sure--the noisy, insistent +music. It is in the pinning down of such climaxes of movement that +Degas stirs our admiration. He draws movement. He can paint rhythms. +His canvases are ever in modulation. His sense of tactile values is +profound. His is true atmospheric colour. A feeling of exhilaration +comes while contemplating one of his open-air scenes with jockeys, +race-horses, and the incidental bustle of a neighbouring concourse. +Unexcelled as a painter of horses, as a delineator of witching +horsemanship, of vivid landscapes--true integral decorations--and of +the casual movements and gestures of common folk, Degas is also a +psychologist, an ironical commentator on the pettiness and ugliness of +daily life, of its unheroic aspects, its comical snobberies and +shocking hypocrisies; and all expressed without a melodramatic +elevation of the voice, without the false sentimentalism of Zola or +the morbidities of Toulouse-Lautrec. There is much Baudelaire in +Degas, as there is also in Rodin. All three men despised academic +rhetoric; all three dealt with new material in a new manner. + +It is the fashion to admire Degas, but it is doubtful if he will ever +gain the suffrage of the general. He does not retail anecdotes, though +to the imaginative every line of his nudes relates their history. His +irony is unremitting. It suffuses the ballet-girl series and the nude +sets. Irony is an illuminating mode, but it is seldom pleasant; the +public is always suspicious of an ironist, particularly of the Degas +variety. Careless of reputation, laughing at the vanity of his +contemporaries who were eager to arrive, contemptuous of critics and +criticism, of collectors who buy low to sell high (in the heart of +every picture collector there is a bargain counter), Degas has defied +the artistic world for a half-century. His genius compelled the +Mountain to come to Mahomet. The rhythmic articulations, the volume, +contours, and bounding supple line of Degas are the despair of +artists. Like the Japanese, he indulges in abridgments, deformations, +falsifications. His enormous faculty of attention has counted heavily +in his synthetical canvases. He joys in the representation of +artificial light; his theatres are flooded with it, and he is equally +successful in creating the illusion of cold, cheerless daylight in a +salle where rehearse the little "rats" and the older coryphées on +their wiry, muscular, ugly legs. His vast production is dominated by +his nervous, resilient vital line and by supremacy in the handling of +values. + +The Degas palette is never gorgeous, consisting as it does of cool +grays, discreet blues and greens, Chardin-like whites and +Manet-blacks. His procedure is all his own. His second manner is a +combination of drawing, painting, and pastel. "He has invented a kind +of engraving mixed with wash drawing, pastel crayon crushed with +brushes of special pattern." + + + + +VII. BOTTICELLI + + + +The common identity of the arts was a master theory of Richard Wagner, +which he attempted to put into practice. Walter Pater in his essay on +The School of Giorgione has dwelt upon the same theme, declaring music +the archetype of the arts. In his Essays Speculative John Addington +Symonds said some pertinent things on this subject. Camille Mauclair +in his Idées Vivantes proposes in all seriousness a scheme for the +fusion of the seven arts, though he deplored Wagner's efforts to reach +a solution. Mauclair's theory is that the fusion can only be a +cerebral one, that actually mingling sculpture, architecture, music, +drama, acting, colour, dancing can never evoke the sensation of unity. +Synthesis is not thus to be attained. It must be in the _idea_ of the +arts rather than their material realisation. A pretty chimera! Yet one +that has piqued the world of art in almost every century. It was the +half-crazy E.T.W. Hoffmann, composer, dramatist, painter, poet, stage +manager, and a dozen other professions, including that of genius and +drunkard, who set off a train of ideas which buzzed in the brains of +Poe, Baudelaire, and the symbolists. People who hear painting, see +music, enjoy odorous poems, taste symphonies, and write perfumes are +now classed by the omnipotent psychical police as decadents, though +such notions are as old as literature. Suarez de Mendoza in his +L'Audition Colorée has said that the sensation of colour hearing, the +faculty of associating tones and colours, is often a consequence of an +association of ideas established in youth. The coloured vowels of +Arthur Rimbaud, which must be taken as a poet's crazy prank; the +elaborate treatises by René Ghil, which are terribly earnest; the +remarks that one often hears, such as "scarlet is like a trumpet +blast"; certain pages of Huysmans, all furnish examples of this +curious muddling of the senses and mixing of genres. Naturally, it has +invaded criticism, which, limited in imagery, sometimes seeks to +transfer the technical terms of one art to another. + +Whistler with his nocturnes, notes, symphonies in rose and silver, his +colour-sonatas, boldly annexed well-worn musical phrases, that in +their new estate took on fresher meanings even if remaining knee-deep +in the kingdom of the nebulous. It must be confessed modern composers +have retaliated. Musical impressionism is having its vogue, while +poets are desperately pictorial. Soul landscapes and etched sonnets +are not unpleasing to the ear. What if they do not mean much? There +was a time when to say a "sweet voice" would arouse a smile. What has +sugar to do with sound? It may be erratic symbolism, this confusing of +terminologies; yet, once in a while, it strikes sparks. There is a +deeply rooted feeling in us that the arts have a common matrix, that +they are emotionally akin. "Her slow smile" in fiction has had marked +success with young people, but a "slow landscape" is still regarded +suspiciously. The bravest critic of art was Huysmans. He pitched +pell-mell into the hell-broth of his criticism any image that +assaulted his fecund brain. He forced one to _see_ his picture--for he +was primarily concerned not with the ear, but the eye. + +And Botticelli? Was Botticelli a "comprehensive"--as those with the +sixth or synthetic sense have been named by Lombroso? Botticelli, +beginning as a goldsmith's apprentice (Botticello, the little bottle), +ended as a painter, the most original in all Italy. His canvases have +a rare, mysterious power of evocation. He was a visionary, this Sandro +Filipepi, pupil of the mercurial Fra Lippo Lippi and the brothers +Pollajuolo, and his inward vision must have been something more than +paint and pattern and subject. A palimpsest may be discerned by the +imaginative--or, let us say, fanciful, since Coleridge long ago set +forth the categories--whose secrets are not to be deciphered easily, +yet are something more than those portrayed by the artist on the flat +surface of his picture. He painted the usual number of Madonnas, like +any artist of his period; yet he did not convince his world, or the +generations succeeding, that this piety was orthodox. Suspected during +his lifetime of strange heresies, this annotator and illustrator of +Dante, this disciple of Savonarola, has in our times been definitely +ranged as a spirit saturated with paganism, and still a mystic. +Doesn't the perverse clash in such a complex temperament give us +exotic dissonances? All Florence was a sounding-board of the arts when +Botticelli walked its narrow ways and lived its splendid coloured +life. His sensitive nature absorbed as a sponge does water the +impulses and motives of his contemporaries. The lurking secrets of the +"new learning"--doctrines that made for damnation, such as the +recrudescence of the mediæval conception of an angelic neuter host, +neither for Heaven nor Hell, not on the side of Lucifer nor with the +starry hosts--were said to have been mirrored in his pictures. Its +note is in Città di Vita, in the heresy of the Albigenses, and it goes +as far back as Origen. Those who read his paintings, and there were +clairvoyant theologians abroad in Florence, could make of them what +they would. Painted music is less understandable than painted heresy. +Matteo Palmieri is said to have dragged Botticelli with him into dark +corners of disbelief; there was in the Medicean days a cruel order of +intelligence that delighted to toy with the vital faith and ideals of +the young. It was more savage and cunning when Machiavelli, shrewdest +of men, wrote and lived. A nature like Botticelli's, which surrendered +frankly to ideas if they but wore the mask of subtlety, could not fail +to have been swept away in the eddying cross-currents of Florentine +intellectual movements. Never mere instinct, for he was a sexless sort +of man, moved him from his moral anchorage. Always the vision! He did +not palter with the voluptuousness of his fellow-artists, yet his +canvases are feverishly disquieting; the sting of the flesh is remote; +love is transfigured, not spiritually and not served to us as a barren +parable, but made more intense by the breaking down of the thin +partition between the sexes; a consuming emotion not quite of this +world nor of the next. The barren rebellion which stirred Botticelli's +bosom never quite assumed the concrete. His religious subjects are +Hellenised, not after Mantegna's sterner and more inflexible method, +but like those of a philosophic Athenian who has read and comprehended +Dante. Yet the illustrations show us a different Dante, one who would +not have altogether pleased the gloomy exile. William Blake's +transpositions of the Divine Comedy seem to sound the depths; +Botticelli, notwithstanding the grace of his "baby centaurs" and the +wreathed car of Beatrice, is the profounder man of the two. + +His life, veiled toward the last, was not a happy one, though he was +recognised as a great painter. Watteau concealed some cankering +secret; so Botticelli. Both belong to the band of the Disquieted. +Melancholy was at the base of the Florentine's work. He created as a +young man in joy and freedom, but the wings of Dürer's bat were +outstretched over his head: Melencolia! There is more poignant music +in the Primavera, in the weary, indifferent countenances of his lean, +neuropathic Madonnas--Pater calls them "peevish"--in his Venus of the +Uffizi, than in the paintings of any other Renaissance artist. The +veils are there, the consoling veils of an exquisite art missing in +the lacerated realistic holy people of the Flemish Primitives. +Joyfulness cannot be denied Botticelli, but it is not the golden joy +of Giorgione. An emaciated music emanates from the eyes of that sad, +restless Venus, to whom love has become a scourge of the senses. +Music? Yes, here is the "coloured hearing" of Mendoza. These canvases +of Botticelli seem to give forth the opalescent over-tones of an +unearthly composition. Is this Spring, this tender, tremulous virgin +whose right hand, deprecatingly raised, signals as a conductor at the +head of an invisible orchestra its rhythms? Hermes, supremely +impassive, hand on thigh, plucks the fruit as the eternal trio of +maidens with woven paces tread the measures of a dance whose music we +but overhear. Garlanded with blossoms, a glorious girl keeps time with +the pulsing atmospheric moods; her gesture, surely a divine one, shows +her casting flowers upon the richly embroidered floor of the earth. +The light filters through the thick trees; its rifts are as rigid as +candles. The nymph in the brake is threatening. Another epicene +creature flies by her. Love shoots his bolt in midair. Is it from +Paphos or Mitylene! What the fable! Music plucked down from the +vibrating skies and made visible to the senses. A mere masque laden +with the sweet, prim allegories of the day it is not. Vasari, blunt +soul, saw but its surfaces. Politian, the poet, got closer to the +core. Centuries later our perceptions, sharpened by the stations of +pain and experience traversed, lend to this immortal canvas a more +sympathetic, less literal interpretation. + +Music, too, in the Anadyomene of the Uffizi. Still stranger music. +Those sudden little waves that lap an immemorial strand; that +shimmering shell, its fan-spokes converging to the parted feet of the +goddess; her hieratic pose, its modesty symbolic, the hair that +serpentines about her foam-born face, thin shoulders that slope into +delicious arms; the Japanese group, blowing tiny, gem-like buds with +puffed-out cheeks; the rhythmic female on tiptoe offering her mantle +to Venus; and enveloping them all vernal breezes, unseen, yet sensed +on every inch of the canvas--what are these things but the music of an +art original at its birth and never since reborn? The larger rhythms +of the greater men do not sweep us along with them in Botticelli. But +his voice is irresistible. + +Modern as is his spirit, as modern as Watteau, Chopin, or Shelley, he +is no less ethereal than any one of these three; ethereal and also +realistic. We may easily trace his artistic ancestry; what he became +could never have been predicted. Technically, as one critic has +written, "he was the first to understand the charm of silhouettes, the +first to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, the +flexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the elegance +of the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, +and above all the carving of the hand; but even more he understood 'le +prestige insolent des grands yeux.'" + +For Pater his colour was cold, cadaverous, "and yet the more you come +to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is +no mere delightful quality of natural things but a spirit upon them by +which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you like this +peculiar quality of colour." Bernard Berenson goes further. For him +the entire picture, Venus Rising From the Sea, presents us with the +quintessence of all that is pleasurable to our imagination of touch +and movement... The vivid appeal to our tactile sense, the life +communicating movement, is always there. And writing of the Pallas in +the Pitti he most eloquently said: "As to the hair--imagine shapes +having the supreme life of line you may see in the contours of licking +flames and yet possessed of all the plasticity of something which +caresses the hand that models it to its own desire!" + +And after speaking of Botticelli's stimulating line, he continues: +"Imagine an art made up entirely of these quintessences of +movement-values and you will have something that holds the same +relation to representation that music holds to speech--and this art +exists and is called lineal decoration. In this art of arts Sandro +Botticelli may have had rivals in Japan and elsewhere in the East, but +in Europe never!... He is the greatest master of lineal design that +Europe ever had." + +Again music, not the music nor the symbolism of the emotions, but the +abstract music of design. Botticelli's appeal is also an auditive one. +Other painters have spun more intricate, more beautiful scrolls of +line; other painters sounded more sensuous colour music, but the +subtle sarabands of Botticelli they have not composed. There is here a +pleasing problem for the psychiatrist. Manifestations in paint of this +species may be set down to some mental lesion; that is how Maurice +Spronck classifies the sensation in writing about the verbal +sensitivity of the Goncourts and Flaubert. The latter, you may +remember, said that Salammbo was purple to him, and L'Education +Sentimentale gray. Carthage and Paris--a characteristic fancy! But why +is it that these scientific gentlemen who account for genius by +eye-strain do not reprove the poets for their sensibility to the sound +of words, the shape and cadences of the phrase? It appears that only +prose-men are the culpable ones when they hear the harping of +invisible harps from Ibsen steeplejacks, or recognise the colour of +Zarathustra's thoughts. In reality not one but thousands sit listening +in the chill galleries of Florence because of the sweet, sick, nervous +music of Botticelli; this testimony of the years is for the dissenters +to explain. + +_Fantastico, Stravaganie_, as Vasari nicknamed Botticelli, has +literally created an audience that has learned to see as he did, +fantastically and extravagantly. He passed through the three stages +dear to arbitrary criticism. Serene in his youthful years; troubled, +voluptuous, visionary during the Medicean period; sombre, mystic, a +convert to Savonarola at the end. He passed through, not untouched, a +great crisis. Certain political assassinations and the Pazzi +conspiracy hurt him to the quick. He noted the turbulence of Rome and +Florence, saw behind the gay-tinted arras of the Renaissance the +sinister figures of its supermen and criminals. He never married. When +Tommaso Soderini begged him to take a wife, he responded: "The other +night I dreamed I was married. I awoke in such horror and chagrin that +I could not fall asleep again. I arose and wandered about Florence +like one possessed." Evidently not intended by nature as a husband or +father. Like Watteau, like Nietzsche, grand visionaries abiding on the +other side of the dear common joys of life, these men were not tempted +by the usual baits of happiness. The great Calumnia in the Uffizi +might be construed as an image of Botticelli's soul. Truth, naked and +scorned--again we note the matchless silhouette of his +Venus--misunderstood and calumniated, stands in the hall of a great +palace. She points to the heavens; she is an interrogation mark, +Pilate's question. Botticelli was adored. But understood? An enigmatic +malady ravaged his being. He died poor and alone, did this composer of +luminous chants and pagan poems, this moulder of exotic dreams and of +angels who long for other gods than those of Good and Evil. A +grievously wounded, timid soul, an intruder at the portals of +paradise, but without the courage to enter or withdraw. He had visions +that rapt him up into the seventh heaven, and when he reported them in +the speech of his design his harassed, divided spirit chilled the +ardours of his art. And thus it is that many do not worship at his +shrine as at the shrine of Raphael, for they see the adumbration of a +paganism long since dead, but revived by a miracle for a brief +Botticellian hour. Madonna and Venus! The Christ Child and Bacchus! +Under which king? The artist never frankly tells us. The legends of +fauns turned monks, of the gods at servile labour in a world that had +forgotten them, are revived, but with more sublimated ecstasy than by +Heine, when we stand before Botticelli and listen to his pallid, muted +music. + +He was born at Florence in 1446; he died May 27, 1510; in 1515, +according to Vasari. A study of him is by Emile Gebhart, late of the +French Academy. It is erudite, although oddly enough it ignores the +researches of Morelli and Berenson. Gebhart attributes to Alessandro +di Mariano Filipepi about eighty-five pictures, many of which were +long ago in Morelli's taboo list--that terrible Morelli, the learned +iconoclast who brought many sleepless nights to Dr. Wilhelm Bode of +Berlin. Time has vindicated the Bergamese critic. Berenson will allow +only forty-five originals to Botticelli's credit. Furthermore, Gebhart +does not mention in his catalogue the two Botticellis belonging to +Mrs. Gardner of Boston, a lamentable oversight for a volume brought +out in 1907. Need we add that this French author by no means sees +Botticelli in the musical sense? He is chiefly concerned with his +historic environment. Gebhart's authorities are the Memoriale of +Francesco Albertini; Anonyme Gaddiano, the manuscript of the +Magliabecchiana, which precedes the Vasari edition; the Life of +Botticelli, by Vasari, and many later studies, the most complete, he +avers, being that of Hermann Ulmann of Munich, whose Sandro +Botticelli, which appeared in 1893, is rigorously critical. +Nevertheless, it is not as critical as Morelli's Italian Painters. +Details about the typical ears, hands, and noses of the painter may be +found therein. The last word concerning Botticelli will not be uttered +until his last line has vanished. And, even then, his archaic +harmonies may continue to sound in the ears of mankind. + + + + +VIII. SIX SPANIARDS + + + +"EL GRECO" + + + +Large or small, there has been a Greco cult ever since the +Greek-Spanish painter died, April 7, 1614, but during the last decade +it has grown into a species of worship. One hears the names of +Velasquez and El Greco coupled. His profound influence on the greatest +of the realists is blithely assumed, and for these worshippers, +Ribera, Zurbaran, Murillo are hardly to be ranked with the painter of +the Burial of the Count of Orgáz. While this undiscriminating +admiration may be deplored, there are reasons enough for the +canonisation of El Greco in the church of art. Violent to exaggeration +in composition, morbidly mystic, there are power and emotional quality +revealed in his work; above all else he anticipated Velasquez in his +use of cool gray tones, and as a pupil or at least a disciple of +Titian he is, as his latest biographer, Señor Manuel B. Cossio, names +him, "the last epigone of the Italian Renaissance." But of the man we +know almost nothing. + +We read his exhaustive study, a big book of over seven hundred pages +fortified by a supplementary volume containing one hundred and +ninety-three illustrations, poor reproductions of El Greco's +accredited works (El Greco, por Manuel B. Cossio). Señor Cossio has so +well accomplished his task that his book may be set down as +definitive. A glance at the bibliography he compiled shows that not +many writers on art have seen fit to pay particular attention to El +Greco. A few Spaniards, Señor Beruete heading them; Max Boehm, Carl +Justi (in his Diego Velasquez); Paul Lafond, William Ritter, Arthur +Symons, William Stirling, Signor Venturi, Louis Viardot, Wyzewa, +Havelock Ellis, and the inimitable Théophile Gautier--whose Travels in +Spain, though published in 1840, is, as Mr. Ellis truthfully remarks, +still a storehouse of original exploration. But the Cossio work, +naturally, tops them all. He is an adorer, though not fanatical, of +his hero, and it is safe to assert that all that is known to-day of El +Greco will be found in these pages. The origins of the painter, his +visit to Italy, his arrival at Toledo, are described with references +to original documents--few as they are. + +Then follows a searching and vivid exposition of the pictures in +Madrid, Toledo, and elsewhere, a technical and psychological analysis +which displays vast research, critical acumen, and the sixth sense of +sympathy. No pictures, sketches, sculptures, or _retablos_ escape +Cossio. He considers El Greco in his relations to Velasquez and modern +art. He has all the authorities at his tongue's tip; he views the man +and artist from every angle. + +"Domenico El Greco died at Toledo two years before his contemporary +Cervantes," says Cossio. Domenicos Theotocopoulos was his original +name, which was softened into Domenico Theotocopuli--which, no doubt +proving too much of a tongue-twister for the Spaniards, was quickly +superseded by a capital nickname, "The Greek." His birthplace was the +island of Crete and his birth-year between 1545 and 1550. Justi was +the first to demonstrate his Cretan ancestry, which was corroborated +in 1893 by Bikelas. In 1570, we learn through a letter written by +Giulio Clovio to Cardinal Farnese, El Greco had astonished Roman +artists by his skill in portraiture. He was said to be a pupil of +Titian, on Clovio's authority. Why he went to Spain has not been +discovered. He had a son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, a sculptor and +architect. Who the mother was history does not say. The painter took +up his abode in Toledo and is not known to have left Spain thereafter. +Pacheco visited him at Toledo and reported him to be as singular as +his paintings and of an extravagant disposition. He was also called a +wit and a philosopher. He wrote on painting, sculpture, and +architecture, it is said. He made money; was, like most of his adopted +countrymen, fond of litigation; lived well, loved music--and at his +meals!--and that is all we may ever record of a busy life; for he +painted many pictures, a careful enumeration of which makes Cossio's +book valuable. + +There are Grecos scattered over Europe and the two Americas. Madrid +and Toledo boast of his best work, but as far as St. Petersburg and +Bucharest he is represented. In the United States there are eleven +examples, soon to be increased by Mr. Archer M. Huntington's recent +acquisition from the Kann collection. In Boston at the Museum there is +the portrait of Fray Paravicino, a brilliant picture. (The worthy monk +wrote four sonnets in glorification of the painter, whom he calls +"Divino Griego." Quoted in one of the Cossio appendices.) There is an +Assumption of the Virgin in Chicago at the Art Institute, and an +Apostle, belonging to Charles Deering. In Philadelphia Mr. "J. Widner" +(read P.A.B. Widener) owns a St. Francis, and at the Metropolitan +Museum, hanging in Gallery 24, there is The Adoration of the +Shepherds, a characteristic specimen of Greco's last manner, and in +excellent condition. The gallery of the late H.O. Havemeyer contains +one of the celebrated portraits of the Cardinal Inquisitor D. Fernando +Nino de Guevara, painted during the second epoch, 1594 to 1604. It +furnishes a frontispiece for the Cossio volume. The same dignitary was +again painted, a variant, which Rudolph Kann owned, and now in the +possession of Mrs. Huntington. The cardinal's head is strong, +intellectual, and his expression proud and cold. Mr. Frick, at a +private club exhibition, showed his Greco, St. Jerome, a subject of +which the painter was almost as fond as of St. Francis (of Assisi). +The National Gallery, London, owns a St. Jerome, Madrid another. Mr. +Frick's example belongs to the epoch of 1584 to 1594. Mr. Erich in New +York possesses three pictures, St. Jerome, a portrait of St. Domingo +de Guzman and a Deposition. El Greco is a painter admired by painters +for his salt individualism. Zuloaga, the Spaniard, has several; Degas, +two; the critic Duret, two; John S. Sargent, one--a St. Martin. +Durand-Ruel once owned the Annunciation, but sold it to Mrs. H.O. +Havemeyer, and the Duveens in London possess a Disrobing of Christ. At +the National Gallery there are two. + +Gautier wrote that El Greco surpassed Monk Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe in +his pell-mell of horrors; "extravagant and bizarre" are the adjectives +he employs (said of most painters whose style is unfamiliar or out of +the beaten track). In the Baptism of Christ he finds a depraved +energy, a maleficent puissance; but the ardent colours, the tonal +vivacity, and the large, free handling excite the Frenchman's +admiration. Justi avers that Greco's "craving for originality +developed incredible mannerisms. In his portraits he has delineated +the peculiar dignity of the Castilian hidalgos and the beauty of +Toledan dames with a success attained by few." R.A. Stevenson devotes +to him a paragraph in his Velasquez. Referring to the influence of El +Greco upon the greater painter, he wrote: "While Greco certainly +adopted a Spanish gravity of colouring, neither that nor his modelling +was ever subtle or thoroughly natural... Velasquez ripened with age +and practice; Greco was rather inclined to get rotten with facility." +Mr. Ricketts says that "his pictures might at times have been painted +by torchlight in a cell of the Inquisition." Richard Ford in his +handbook of Spain does not mince words: "Greco was very unequal... He +was often more lengthy and extravagant than Fuseli, and as leaden as +cholera morbus." Ritter speaks of his "symphonies in blue minor" +(evidently imitating Gautier's poem, Symphony in White-Major). In +Havelock Ellis's suggestive The Soul of Spain there is mention of +Greco--see chapter Art of Spain. Ellis says: "In his more purely +religious and supernatural scenes Greco was sometimes imaginative, but +more often bizarre in design and disconcerting in his colouring with +its insistence on chalky white, his violet shadows on pale faces, his +love of green. [Mr. Ellis finds this 'predilection for green' +significant as anticipating one of the characteristics of the Spanish +palette.] His distorted fever of movement--the lean, twisted bodies, +the frenzied, gesticulating arms, the mannerism of large calves that +taper down to pointed toes--usually fails to convince us. But in the +audacities of his colouring he revealed the possibilities of new +harmonies, of higher, brighter, cooler keys." The Count Orgaz burial +scene at Toledo Mr. Ellis does not rank among the world's great +pictures. + +There is often a depressing morbidity in Greco; Goya is sane and +healthy by comparison. Greco's big church pieces are full of religious +sentiment, but enveloped in the fumes of nightmare. Curious it was +that a stranger from Greece should have absorbed certain not +particularly healthy, even sinister, Spanish traits and developed them +to such a pitch of nervous intensity. As Arthur Symons says, his +portraits "have all the brooding Spanish soul with its proud +self-repression." Señor Cossio sums up in effect by declaring that +Venice educated Greco in his art; Titian taught him technique; +Tintoretto gave him his sense of dramatic form; Angelo his virility. +But of the strong personality which assimilated these various +influences there is no doubt when confronted with one of his canvases, +every inch of which is signed El Greco. + + + + +"VELASQUEZ" + + + +Why so well-known and authoritative a work as Velasquez, by Aureliano +de Beruete, should have been so long in reaching America is a puzzle +when you consider the velocity with which the Atlantic Ocean is +traversed by so many mediocre books on art. The first Spanish edition +of the Beruete monograph appeared about 1897; the same year saw it in +French, and from the latter tongue it was translated into English by +Hugh E. Poynter in 1906. Señor Beruete is considered with reason as +the prime living authority on the great Spanish realist, though his +study is not so voluminous as that of Carl Justi. The Bonn professor, +however, took all Spain for his province. Velasquez and His Times is +the title of his work, the first edition of which came out in 1888, +the second in 1903. Beruete (whose portrait by Sorolla was one of that +master's most characteristic pictures at the recent Hispanic Society +exhibition in New York) is not at odds on many points with Justi; but +more sceptical he is, and to R.A.M. Stevenson's list of Velasquez +pictures, two hundred and thirty-four, Beruete opposes the +comparatively meagre number of eighty-nine. He reduces the number of +sketches and waves away as spurious the Velasquez "originals" in +Italy, several in the Prado, the very stronghold of the collection; +and of the eleven in that famous cabinet of the Vienna Imperial +Museum--to which we went as to a divine service of eye and soul--he +allows only seven as authentic. The portrait of Innocent X in the +Doria palace, Rome, is naturally a masterpiece, as is the bust +portrait of the same subject at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; but the +Boston Museum full-length of Philip IV is discredited as a copy, only +the Prince Don Baltasar Carlos Attended by a Dwarf being admitted in +the company of the true Velasquezes. + +Of the "supposed portrait of Cardinal Pamphili," a real Velasquez, now +hanging in the Hispanic Society, 156th Street, Beruete writes: "In the +winter of 1902 there appeared in Paris a bust portrait of a cardinal +brought from Italy by Messrs. Trotty & Co., which had been alluded to +by Professor A. Venturi of Rome in _L'Art_. It is life size, +representing a person about thirty years of age in the dress of a +cardinal, with smiling face and black hair, moustache and pointed +beard, good carriage and a touch of levity not in keeping with the +dignity and austerity of a prince of the Church. The beretta and cape, +of a fine red colour, the latter painted in a uniform tone and without +a crease, harmonise with the roseate hue of the features, and the +plain gray background. Every detail reveals the hand of Velasquez, and +it can be classed without hesitation among the characteristic works of +his second style. It is on that ground that I make mention of it here. +However, in Rome, at the house in which this picture was found, it was +held to be the portrait of Cardinal Pamphili, nephew of Innocent X, +who according to Palomino was painted in Rome by Velasquez at the same +time as the Pontiff, that is in 1650." + +Beruete believes Palomino was wrong in declaring that Velasquez +painted the young cardinal in Rome; Madrid was the likelier city. The +style proves an earlier date than 1650. The cardinal withdrew from the +cardinalate after three years, 1644-47 > and married. The portrait was +acquired by the American artist the late Francis Lathrop. Stevenson +grants to the Metropolitan Museum a fruit-piece by Velasquez. Not so +Beruete. J. H. McFadden of Philadelphia once owned the Doña Mariana of +Austria, second wife of Philip IV, in a white-and-black dress, gold +chain over her shoulder, hair adorned with red bows and red-and-white +feather, from the Lyne-Stephens collection in the New Gallery, +1895--and is so quoted by Stevenson; but he sold the picture and +Beruete has lost track of it. + +Whereas Stevenson in his invaluable book studies his subject broadly +in chapters devoted to the dignity of the Velasquez technique, his +colour, modelling, brushwork, and his impressionism, Beruete follows a +more detailed yet simpler method. Picture by picture, in each of the +three styles--he adopts Justi's and Stevenson's classification--he +follows the painter, dealing less with the man than his work. Not that +biographical data are missing--on the contrary, there are many pages +of anecdotes as well as the usual facts--but Beruete is principally +concerned with the chronology and attribution of the pictures. He has +dug up some fresh material concerning the miserable pay Velasquez +received, rather fought for, at the court of Philip, where he was on a +par with the dwarfs, barbers, comedians, servants, and other +dependants of the royal household. + +The painter has been criticised for his attachment to the king; but as +he was not of a religious nature and did not paint religious pieces +with the gusto of his contemporaries, the court was his only hope of +existence; either court or church. He made his choice early, and while +we must regret the enormous wasting of the hours consequent upon the +fulfilment of his duties as a functionary, master of the revels, and +what not, we should not forget how extremely precarious would have +been his lot as a painter without royal favour in the Spain of those +days. He had his bed, board, house, and though he died penniless--his +good wife Juana only survived him seven days--he had the satisfaction +of knowing that he owed no man, and that his daughter had married his +pupil Mazo. Velasquez was born at Seville in 1599; died at Madrid, +1660. His real name was Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez. He was a +Silva--for the "de" was acquired from the king after much pettifoggery +on the part of that monarch with the prognathic jaw--and he was of +Portuguese blood. He signed Velasquez--a magic grouping of letters for +the lovers of art--though born as he was in Spain his forefathers came +from Portugal. The mixed blood has led to furious disputes among +hot-headed citizens of the two kingdoms. As if it much mattered. +Velasquez's son-in-law, by the way, Juan Mazo, was the author of a +number of imitations and forgeries. He was a true friend of the +picture-dealers. + +Velasquez belonged to that rare family of sane genius. He was +eminently the painter of daylight and not a nocturnal visionary, as +was Rembrandt. Shakespeare, who had all the strings to his lyre, had +also many daylight moments. Mozart always sang them, and how blithely! +No one, not Beethoven, not Raphael, not Goethe--to name three widely +disparate men of genius--saw life as steadily as the Spaniard. He is a +magnificent refutation of the madhouse doctors who swear to you that +genius is a disease. Remember, too, that the limitations of Velasquez +are clearly defined. Imagination was denied to him, asserts Beruete; +he had neither the turbulent temperament of Rubens nor possessed the +strained, harsh mysticism of El Greco--a painter of imagination and +the only painter allowed by Beruete to have affected the Velasquez +palette. In a word, Velasquez was a puzzling comminglement of the +classic and the realist. He had the repose and the firm, virile line +of the classics, while his vision of actuality has never been +surpassed. The Dutch Terburg, Vermeer, Van der Helst, Frans Hals saw +as vividly the surfaces of things material; the last alone was the +match of Velasquez in brushwork, but not Rembrandt recorded in his +Anatomy Lesson the facts of the case as did Velasquez. + +Señor Beruete wittily remarks that Los Borrachos (The Topers) of +Velasquez is the truer anatomy lesson of the two. A realist, an +impressionist, as Stevenson has it, the Spaniard was; but he was also +something more. He had a magic hand to define, the rendering of the +magical mystery of space and atmosphere. Grant that he was not a +colourist in the sense the Venetians were, or Rubens, yet how much +more subtle, more noble, more intellectual, is his restricted tonal +gamut. Those silver-grays, resonant blacks, browns, blues, and reds +sing in your memory long after you have forgotten the tumultuous +golden waves breaking upon the decorative coasts of Rubens. We are +constrained to question the easy way Beruete and other critics deny +the attributes of imagination and poetry to Velasquez. There is, +perhaps, a more sublimated poetry in his pictures than in the obvious +religious and mythological and allegorical set pieces of Rubens, +Murillo, and how many others. His realism did not run to seed in the +delineation of subject. He was as natural as Cervantes--the one great +man of Spain who may be compared to him--and he saw the larger +patterns of life, while never forgetting that the chief function of a +painter is to paint, not to "think," not to rhapsodise, not to be +"literary" on canvas. His cool, measuring eye did more than record +sordid facts. He had a sort of enraptured vision of the earth as +beautiful, the innocence of the eye we encounter in children only. +Stevenson rages at those who say that Velasquez was not a +colourist--and Beruete is of them, though he quotes with considerable +satisfaction the critical pronouncement of Royal Cortissoz (in +_Harper's Magazine_, May, 1895) that Las Meninas is "the most perfect +study of colour and values which exists." + +The truth is, Stevenson, Cortissoz, and Beruete are all three in the +right. That Velasquez, when in Rome, studied the pictures there; that +he didn't care for Raphael; that he had very much admired the +Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto; that he had admired Rubens, with whom +he associated daily on the occasion of the Flemish master's visit of +nine months to Madrid--these are truths not to be denied. Beruete +claims that the Rubens influence is not to be seen in Velasquez, only +El Greco's. Every object, living or inanimate, that swam through the +eyeballs of the Spaniard--surely the most wonderful pair of eyes in +history--was never forgotten. His powers of assimilation were +unexcelled. He saw and made note of everything, but when he painted +his spectators saw nothing of any other man, living or dead. Was not +the spiritual impulse missing in this man? He couldn't paint angels, +because he only painted what he saw; and as he never saw angels he +only painted mankind. Life, not the "subject," appealed to him. He had +little talent, less taste, for the florid decorative art of Rubens and +the Venetians; but give him a simple, human theme (not pretty or +sentimental) and he recreated it, not merely interpreted the scene; so +that Las Meninas, The Spinners (Las Hilanderas), the hunting pictures, +the various portraits of royalty, buffoons, beggars, outcasts, are the +chronicles of his time, and he its master psychologist. + +Beruete says that Ribera more than Zurbaran affected Velasquez; "El +Greco taught him the use of delicate grays in the colouring of the +flesh." Hot, hard, and dry in his first period (Borrachos), he becomes +more fluid and atmospheric in the Breda composition (The Lances), and +in the third period he has attained absolute mastery of his material. +His salary at the court was two and sixpence a day in 1628. Even Haydn +and Mozart did better as menials. Yet some historians speak of the +liberality of Philip IV. An "immortal employee" indeed, as Beruete +names his idol. Luca Giordano called Las Meninas the "theology of +painting." Wilkie declared that the Velasquez landscapes possessed +"the real sun which lights us, the air which we breathe, and the soul +and spirit of nature." "To see the Prado," exclaims Stevenson, "is to +modify one's opinion of the novelty of recent art." To-day the +impressionists and realists claim Velasquez as their patron saint as +well as artistic progenitor. The profoundest master of harmonies and +the possessor of a vision of the real world not second to Leonardo's, +the place of the Spaniard in history will never be taken from him. + +Velasquez is more modern than all the moderns; more modern than +to-morrow. That sense of the liberation of the spirit which Mr. +Berenson is fond of adducing as the grandest attribute of the Space +Composers, Raphael and the rest, may be discovered in Las Meninas, or +in The Spinners, space overhead, with mystery superadded. The brumous +North was the home of mysticism, of Gothic architecture. The note of +tragic mystery was seldom sounded by the Italians. Faith itself seems +more real in the North. It remained for Rembrandt to give it out in +his chords of _chiaroscuro_. And is there more noble, more virile +music in all art than The Surrender of Breda? + +Mr. Berenson refers only once to Velasquez and then as an "impersonal" +painter. As a counterblast to his theory of impersonality let us quote +a few lines from R.A.M. Stevenson's Velasquez (that most inspiring of +all art monographs): "Is it wonderful," he asks, "that you can apply +Morelli's principles of criticism to the Pre-Raphaelite Italian +schools; that you can point to the thumbs, fingers, poses of the head, +ovals of the face and schemes of colour that the painters learned by +heart, and can even say from whom they learned? The later Venetians +broke away, and when you come to Velasquez the system holds good as +little as it can in our own day." But this charge holds good for many +painters of the Renaissance, painters of patterns. Velasquez, like the +great prose-master of France, Gustave Flaubert, is always in +modulation. No two canvases are rhythmically alike, except in the +matter of masterfulness. He, too, was a master of magnificent prose +painting, painting worth a wilderness of makers of frozen mediæval +patterns. Mr. Henry B. Fuller, the author of the Chevalier di +Pensieri-Vani, once spoke of the "cosy sublimity" in Raphael's Vision +of Ezekiel; one might paraphrase the epigram by describing the +pictures of Velasquez as boxed-in eternities. Dostoïevsky knew such a +sensation when he wrote of "a species of eternity within the space of +a square foot." But there are many connoisseurs who find evidences of +profounder and more naïve faith in the angular loveliness of the +Flemish Primitives than in all the religious art of Italy or Spain. + + + + +GOYA + + + +I + +Goya was a Titan among artists. He once boasted that "Nature, +Velasquez, and Rembrandt are my masters." It was an excellent +self-criticism. He not only played the Velasquez gambit in his +portraits, the gambit of Rembrandt in his sombre imaginative pieces, +but he boldly annexed all Spain for his sinister and turbulent art. He +was more truly Spanish in the range and variety of his performances +than any Spanish-born painter since Velasquez. Without the sanity, +solidity, nobility of Velasquez, whose vision and voice he never +possessed; without the luscious sweetness of Murillo, whose sweetness +he lacked, he had something of El Greco's fierceness, and much of the +vigour of Ribera. He added to these influences a temperament that was +exuberant, fantastic, morose, and pessimistic yet humorous, sarcastic, +sometimes melting, and ever masterful. He reminds one of an +overwhelming force. The man dominates the painter. A dozen comparisons +force themselves upon you when the name of Goya is pronounced: comets, +cataracts, whirlwinds, and wild animals. Anarch and courtier, atheist +and decorator of churches, his "whole art seems like a bullfight," +says Richard Muther. One might improve on this by calling him a subtle +bull, a Hercules who had read Byron. "Nature, Velasquez, and +Rembrandt!" cries MacColl in a too brief summary. "How inadequate the +list! Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Legion had a hand in the teaching." + +Goya incarnated the renaissance of old Spain and its art. Spanish art +has always come from without, for its foundations were northern and +Flemish. The Van Eycks and Van der Weyden were studied closely; Jan +Van Eyck visited Madrid. The Venetian influence was strong, and El +Greco his life long, and a pupil of Titian as he was, this gloomy +painter with the awkward name of Theotocopoulo endeavoured to forget +his master and became more Spanish than the Spanish. Ribera, +emotional, dramatic, realistic, religious, could sound the chords of +tenderness without the sentimentalism of Murillo. Goya stems more from +Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa than from any of his predecessors, except +Velasquez. The presence of Tiepolo, the last of the Venetians, in +Spain may have influenced him. Certainly Raphael Mengs, the "Saxon +pedant," did not--Mengs associated with Tiepolo at Madrid. It is in +company with the bravos of the brush, Caravaggio and Rosa, that Goya +is closely affiliated. We must go to Gustave Courbet for a like +violence of temperament; both men painted _con furia_; both were +capable of debauches in work; Goya could have covered the walls of +hell with diabolic frescoes. In music three men are of a like ilk: +Berlioz, Paganini, Liszt. Demoniacal, charged with electric energy, +was this trinity, and Goya could have made it a quartet. + +But if Spain was not a country of original artists--as was Italy, for +example--she developed powerful and astounding individualities. +Character is her _leit motìv_ in the symphony of the nations. The rich +virility and majestic seriousness of her men, their aptitudes for war, +statesmanship, and drama, are borne out in her national history. +Perhaps the climate plays its part. Havelock Ellis thinks so. "The +hard and violent effects, the sharp contrasts, the strong colours, the +stained and dusky clouds, looking as if soaked in pigment, may well +have affected the imagination of the artist," he writes. Certainly the +landscapes of Velasquez could not be more Spanish than they are; and, +disagreeing with those who say that he had no feeling for nature, the +bits of countryside and mountain Goya shows are truly peninsular in +their sternness. It may be well to remark here that the softness of +Tuscany is not to be found in the lean and often arid aspects of +Spain. Spain, too, is romantic--but after its own fashion. Goya +revived the best traditions of his country's art; he was the last of +the great masters and the first of the moderns. Something neurotic, +modern, disquieting, threads his work with devilish irregularity. He +had not the massive temper of Velasquez, of those men who could paint +day after day, year after year, until death knocked at their ateliers. +As vigorous as Rubens in his sketches, Goya had not the steady, slow +nerves of that master. He was very unequal. His life was as disorderly +as Hals's or Steen's, but their saving phlegm was missing. In an +eloquent passage--somewhere in his English Literature--Taine speaks of +the sanity of genius as instanced by Shakespeare. Genius narrowly +escapes nowadays being a cerebral disorder, though there was Marlowe +to set off Shakespeare's serene spirit, and even of Michael Angelo's +mental health and morals his prime biographer, Parlagreco, does not +speak in reassuring terms. Goya was badly balanced, impulsive, easily +angered, and not slow to obey the pull of his irritable motor centres +when aroused. A knife was always within reach. He drove the Duke of +Wellington from his presence because the inquisitive soldier asked too +many questions while his portrait was being blocked out. A sword or a +dagger did the business; but Wellington returned to the studio and, as +Mr. Rothenstein tells us, the portrait was finished and is now at +Strathfieldsaye. A sanguine is in the British Museum. His exploits in +Rome may have been exaggerated, though he was quite capable of eloping +with a nun from a convent, as is related, or going around the top of +the Cecilia Metella tomb supported only by his thumbs. The agility and +strength of Goya were notorious, though in a land where physical +prowess is not the exception. He was picador, matador, banderillero by +turns in the bull ring. After a stabbing affray he escaped in the +disguise of a bull-fighter. + +If he was a _dompteur_ of dames and cattle, he was the same before his +canvas. Anything that came to hand served him as a brush, an old brown +stick wrapped up in cloth, a spoon--with the latter he executed that +thrilling Massacre, May 2, 1808, in the Prado. He could have painted +with a sabre or on all fours. Reckless to the degree of insanity, he +never feared king or devil, man or the Inquisition. The latter reached +out for him, but he had disappeared, after suffering a dagger-thrust +in the back. When on the very roof of his prosperity, he often slipped +downstairs to the company of varlets and wenches; this friend of the +Duchess of Alba seemed happier dicing, drinking, dancing in the +suburbs with base-born people and gipsies. A _genre_ painter, Goya +delighted in depicting the volatile, joyous life of a now-vanished +epoch. He was a historian of manner as well as of disordered souls, +and an avowed foe of hypocrisy. + +Not "poignantly genteel," to use a Borrovian phrase, was he. Yet he +could play the silken courtier with success. The Arabs say that "one +who has been stung by a snake shivers at a string," and perhaps the +violence with which the painter attacked the religious may be set down +to the score of his youthful fears and flights when the Inquisition +was after him. He was a sort of Voltaire in black and white. The +corruption of churchmen and court at this epoch seems almost +incredible. Goya noted it with a boldness that meant but one +thing--friends high in power. This was the case. He was admired by the +king, Charles IV, and admired--who knows how much!--by his queen, +Marie Louise of Parma, Goya painted their portraits; also painted the +portraits of the royal favourite and prime minister and Prince de la +Paz, Manuel Godoy--favourite of both king and queen. Him, Goya left in +effigy for the scorn of generations to come. "A grocer's family who +have won the big lottery prize," was the witty description of +Théophile Gautier when he saw the picture of the royal family. + +Curiously enough, this Goya, who from the first plucked success from +its thorny setting, was soon forgotten, and until Gautier in 1840 +recorded his impressions in his brilliant Voyage en Espagne, critical +literature did not much concern itself with the versatile Spaniard. +And Gautier's sketch of a few pages still remains the most +comprehensive estimate. From it all have been forced to borrow; +Richard Muther in his briskly enthusiastic monograph and the section +in his valuable History of Modern Painting; Charles Yriarte, Will +Rothenstein, Lafond, Lefort, Condé de la Vinaza--all have read Gautier +to advantage. Valerian von Loga has devoted a study to the etchings, +and Don Juan de la Rada has made a study of the frescoes in the church +of San Antonio de la Florida; Carl Justi, Stirling Maxwell, C.G. +Hartley should also be consulted. Yriarte is interesting, inasmuch as +he deals with the apparition of Goya in Rome, an outlaw, but a blithe +one, who, notebook in hand, went through the Trastevere district +sketching with ferocious rapidity the attitudes and gestures of the +vivacious population. A man after Stendhal's heart, this Spaniard. And +in view of his private life one is tempted to add--and after the +heart, too, of Casanova. Notwithstanding, he was an unrivalled +interpreter of child-life. Some of his painted children are of a +dazzling sweetness. + + + +GOYA + + + +II + +Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born March 30 (or 31), 1746, at +Fuentetodos, near Saragossa, Aragon. He died at Bordeaux, France, +where he had gone for his health, April 16, 1828--Calvert, possibly by +a pen slip, makes him expire a month earlier. He saw the beginnings of +French romanticism, as he was himself a witness of the decadence of +Spanish art. But his spirit has lived on in Manet and Zuloaga. +Decadent he was; a romantic before French romanticism, he yet had +borrowed from an earlier France. Some of his gay Fêtes Champêtres +recall the influence of Watteau--a Watteau without the sweet elegiac +strain. He has been called a Spanish Hogarth--not a happy simile. +Hogarth preaches; Goya never; satirists both, Goya never deepened by a +pen stroke the didactic side. His youth was not extraordinary in +promise; his father and mother were poor peasants. The story of his +discovery by a monk of Saragosela--Father Felix Salvador of the +Carthusian convent of Aula Dei--is not missing. He studied with José +Martinez. He ran away in 1766. He remained, say some, in Italy from +1769 to 1774; but in 1771 he appeared in Saragossa again, and the year +1772 saw him competing for the painting about to be undertaken in the +cathedral. He married Josefa Bayeu, the sister of the court painter. +He has told us what he thought of his jealous, intriguing +brother-in-law in a portrait. In 1775 he was at Madrid. From 1776 he +executed forty-six tapestry cartoons. In 1779 he presented to the king +his etchings after Velasquez. His rise was rapid. He painted the +queen, with her false teeth, false hair, and her infernal simper, and +this portrait was acclaimed a masterpiece. + +His religious frescoes, supposed to be _ad majorem Dei gloriam_, were +really for the greater glory of Goya. They are something more than +secular, often little short of blasphemous. That they were tolerated +proves the cynical temper of his times. When the fat old scoundrel of +a Bourbon king ran away with all his court and the pusillanimous +Joseph Bonaparte came upon the scene, Goya swerved and went through +the motions of loyalty, a thing that rather disturbs the admirers of +the supposedly sturdy republican. But he was only marking time. He +left a terrific arraignment of war and its horrors. Nor did he spare +the French. Callot, Hell-Breughel, are outdone in these swift, ghastly +memoranda of misery, barbarity, rapine, and ruin. The hypocrite +Ferdinand VII was no sooner on the throne of his father than Goya, hat +in hand but sneer on lip and twinkle in eye, approached him, and after +some parleying was restored to royal favour. Goya declared that as an +artist he was not personally concerned in the pranks of the whirligig +politic. Nevertheless he was bitterly chagrined at the twist of +events, and, an old man, he retired to his country house, where he +etched and designed upon its walls startling fancies. He died +disillusioned, and though nursed by some noble countrymen, his career +seemed to illustrate that terrifying picture of his invention--a +skeleton lifts its gravestone and grinningly traces with bony finger +in the dust the word _Nada_--Nothing! Overtaxed by the violence of his +life and labours--he left a prodigious amount of work behind +him--soured by satiety, all spleen and rage, he was a broken-down +Lucifer, who had trailed his wings in the mud. But who shall pass +judgment upon this unhappy man? Perhaps, as he saw the "glimmering +square" grow less, the lament of Cardinal Wolsey may have come to a +brain teeming with memories. Goya had always put his king before his +God. But in his heart he loved the old romantic faith--the faith that +hovered in the background of his art. Goya is not the first son of his +mother church who denied her from sheer perversity. What a nation! +Cervantes and Lope da Vega, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada--most glorious +of her sex, saint and genius--and Goya! Spain is the land of great and +diverse personalities. But with Calderon we must now say: "Let us to +our ship, for here all is shadowy and unsettled." + +Goya, as Baudelaire pointed out more than half a century ago, executed +his etchings by combining aquatint and the use of the dry point. A few +years before his death he took up lithography, then a novelty. His +Caprices, Proverbs, and Horrors of War may outlive his paintings. His +colour scheme was not a wide one, blacks, reds, browns, and yellows +often playing solo; but all modern impressionism may be seen on his +canvases--harsh dissonances, dots, dabs, spots, patches, heavy planes, +strong rhythmic effects of lighting, heavy impasto, luminous +atmosphere, air, sunshine, and vibrating movements; also the +strangeness of his material. Manet went to him a beginner. After +studying the Maja desnuda at the Prado Museum he returned to France +and painted the Olympe, once of the Luxembourg, now in the Louvre. The +balcony scenes of Goya, with their manolas--old-fashioned +grisettes--must have stirred Manet; recall the Frenchman's Balcony. +And the bull-fights? Oh! what an iron-souled master was there--Goya +when he slashed a bull in the arena tormented by the human brutes! +None of his successors matches him. The same is the case with that +diverting, devilish, savoury, and obscene series he called Caprices. +It is worth remembering that Delacroix was one of the first artists in +Paris who secured a set of these rare plates. The witch's sabbaths and +the modern version of them, prostitution and its symbolism, filled the +brain of Goya. He always shocks any but robust nerves with his hybrid +creatures red in claw and foaming at mouth as they fight in midair, +hideous and unnamable phantoms of the dark. His owls are theologians. +The females he often shows make us turn aside our head and shudder. +With implacable fidelity he displayed the reverse of war's heroic +shield. It is something more than hell. + +Sattler, Charlet, Raffet, James Ensor, Rethel, De Groux, Rops, Edvard +Münch (did you ever see his woman wooed by a skeleton?), and the rest +of these delineators of the morbid and macabre acknowledge Goya as +their progenitor. He must have been a devil-worshipper. He pictures +the goat devil, horns and hoofs. Gautier compares him to E.T.W. +Hoffmann--Poe not being known in Paris at that time--but it is a +rather laboured comparison, for there was a profoundly human side to +the Spaniard. His perception of reality was of the solidest. He had +lived and loved and knew before Flaubert that if the god of the +Romantics was an upholsterer the god of eighteenth-century Spain was +an executioner. The professed lover of the Duchess of Alba, he painted +her nude, and then, hearing that the Duke might not like the theme so +handled, he painted her again, and clothed, but more insolently +uncovered than before. At the Spanish museum in New York you may see +another portrait of this bold beauty with the name of Goya scratched +in the earth at her feet. Her attitude is characteristic of the +intrigue, which all Madrid knew and approved. At home sat Mrs. Goya +with her twenty children. + +Goya was a man of striking appearance. Slender in youth, a graceful +dancer, in middle life he had the wide shoulders and bull neck of an +athlete. He was the terror of Madrileñan husbands. His voice had +seductive charm. He could twang the guitar and fence like ten devils. +A gamester, too. In a word, a figure out of the Renaissance, when the +deed trod hard on the heels of the word. One of his self-portraits +shows him in a Byronic collar, the brow finely proportioned, marked +mobile features, sombre eyes--the ideal Don Juan Tenorio to win the +foolish heart of an Emma Bovary or a bored noblewoman. Another, with +its savage eye--it is a profile--and big beaver head-covering, recalls +Walt Whitman's "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." A giant +egoist, and as human, all too human, a fellow as Spain ever begot, +Goya is only hinted at in Baudelaire's searching quatrain beginning: +"Goya, cauchemar plein de choses inconnues." _Fleurs du Mal_ would be +a happy title for the work of Francisco Goya if to "The Flowers of +Evil" were added "and Wisdom." Goya is often cruel and lascivious and +vulgar, but he is as great a philosopher as painter. And to offset his +passionate gloom there are his visions of a golden Spain no longer in +existence; happy, gorgeous of costume, the Spain of sudden coquetries, +of fans, masques, bull-fights, and fandangos, of a people dancing on +the rim of a fire-filled mountain, pious, capricious, child-like, +romantic, and patriotic--the Spain of the eighteenth century. Goya is +its spokesman, as is Velasquez the mirror of Philip's more spacious +times. Velasquez--Goya! poles asunder, yet both born to the artistic +purple. And the stately aristocrat who signed himself Velasquez is not +more in tune with the twentieth-century _Zeitgeist_ than that +coarse-fibred democrat of genius, Francisco Goya. + + + + +FORTUNY + + + +Mariano Fortuny: what a magic-breeding name! The motto of this lucky +Spanish painter might have been "Fortuny Fortunatus." Even his sudden +death, at the early age of thirty-six, came after he had executed a +number of masterpieces, an enormous quantity of water-colours, +etchings, ceramics, damascene swords and chased ornaments; it followed +on the heels of sudden glory. His name was in the mouth of artistic +Europe, and the sale of the contents of his studio at Rome in 1875 +brought eight hundred thousand francs. Yet so slippery is fame that +Fortuny's name to-day is seldom without a brace of epithets, such as +"garish," or "empty." His work is neither. He is a virtuoso. So was +Tiepolo. He is a Romantic; so the generation preceding him. The +Orientalist par excellence, he has somehow been confounded with +Meissonier and Gérôme, has been called glittering like the former, +hard as was the latter. It is true there are no emotional undertones +in his temperament, the brilliant overtones predominating; but it is +also true that when he died his manner was changing. He had said that +he was tired of the "gay rags" of the eighteenth century, and his +Strand of Portici shows a new line of departure. Edouard Manet made +special appeal to Fortuny; Manet, who had derived from Goya, whose +Spanish _fond_ is undeniable. Perhaps the thrice-brilliant Fortuny's +conscience smote him when he saw a Frenchman so successfully absorbing +the traditions of Goya; but it was not to be. He passed away at the +very top of his renown, truly a favourite of the gods. He was admired, +imitated, above all parodied; though, jealously as are his pictures +guarded, he has been put on the shelf like one of the amazing painted +bibelots in his work. + +The injustice of this is patent. Between Fortuny and Meissonier there +lies the gulf that separates the genius and the hard-working man of +talent. Nevertheless Meissonier's statue is in the garden of the +Louvre, Meissonier is extolled as a master, while Fortuny is usually +described in patronising terms as a facile trifler. The reverse is the +truth. No one has painted sunlight with more intensity; he was an +impressionist before the word was coined. He is a colourist almost as +sumptuous as Monticelli, with a precision of vision never attained by +the Marseilles rhapsodist. His figures are as delicious as Watteau's +or Debucourt's--he recalls the latter frequently--and as an +Orientalist he ranks all but a few. Gérôme, Guillaumet, Fromentin, +Huguet are not to be mentioned in the same breath with Fortuny as to +the manipulation of material; and has Guillaumet done anything +savouring more of the mysterious East than Fortuny's At the Gate of +the Seraglio? The magician of jewelled tones, he knew all the subtler +modulations. His canvases vibrate, they emit sparks of sunlight, his +shadows are velvety and warm. Compared with such a picture as The +Choice of a Model, the most laboriously minute Meissonier is as cold +and dead as a photograph--Meissonier, who was a capital fan painter, a +patient miniaturist without colour talent, a myopic delineator of +costumes, who, as Manet said, pasted paper soldiers on canvas and +called the machine a battle-field. + +The writer recalls the sensations once evoked by a close view of +Fortuny's Choice of a Model at Paris years ago, and at that time in +the possession of Mr. Stewart. Psychology is not missing in this +miracle of virtuosity; the nude posing on the marble table, the +absolute beauty of the drawing, the colouring, the contrast of the +richly variegated marble pillars in the background, the +eighteenth-century costumes of the Academicians so scrupulously yet so +easily set forth, all made a dazzling ensemble. Since Fortuny turned +the trick a host of spurious pictures has come overseas, and we now +say "Vibert" at the same time as "Fortuny," just as some enlightened +persons couple the names of Ingres and Bouguereau. In the kingdom of +the third rate the mediocre is conqueror. + +Listen to this description of La Vicaria (The Spanish Wedding), which +first won for its painter his reputation. Begun in 1868, it was +exhibited at Goupil's, Paris, the spring of 1870 (some say 1869), when +the artist was thirty-two years old. Théophile Gautier--whose genius +and Théodore de Banville's have analogies with Fortuny's in the matter +of surfaces and astounding virtuosity--went up in the air when he saw +the work, and wrote a feuilleton that is still recalled by the old +guard. The following, however, is not by Gautier, but from the pen of +Dr. Richard Muther, the erudite German critic: "A marriage is taking +place in the sacristy of a rococo church in Madrid. The walls are +covered with faded Cordova leather hangings figured in gold and dull +colours, and a magnificent rococo screen separates the sacristy from +the middle aisle. Venetian lustres are suspended from the ceiling, +pictures of martyrs, Venetian glasses in carved oval frames hang on +the wall, richly ornamented wooden benches and a library of missals +and gospels in sparkling silver clasps, and shining marble tables and +glistening braziers form part of the scene in which the marriage +contract is being signed. The costumes are those of the time of Goya. +An old beau is marrying a young and beautiful girl. With affected +grace and a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered hat +under his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature in the +place which the _escribano_ points out with an obsequious bow. He is +arrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing a white silk +dress trimmed with flowered lace and has a wreath of orange blossoms +in her luxuriant black hair. As a girl friend is talking to her she +examines with abstracted attention the pretty little pictures upon her +fan, the finest she ever possessed. A very piquant little head she +has, with her long lashes and black eyes. Then, in the background, +follow the witnesses, and first of all a young lady in a swelling silk +dress of the brightest rose colour. Beside her is one of the +bridegroom's friends in a cabbage-green coat with long flaps and a +shining belt, from which a gleaming sabre hangs. The whole picture is +a marvellous assemblage of colours in which tones of Venetian glow and +strength, the tender pearly gray beloved of the Japanese, and a +melting neutral brown each sets off the other and gives a shimmering +effect to the entire mass." + +Fortuny was a gay master of character and comedy as well as of +bric-a-brac. Still life he painted as no one before or after him; if +Chardin is the Velasquez of vegetables, Fortuny is the Rossini of the +rococo; such lace-like filigrees, _fiorturi_, marbles that are of +stone, men and women that are alive, not of marble (like +Alma-Tadema's). The artificiality of his work is principally in the +choice of a subject, not in the performance. How luminous and silky +are his blacks may be noted at the Metropolitan Museum in his portrait +of a Spanish lady. There is nothing of the _petit-maître_ in the +sensitive and adroit handling of values. The rather triste expression, +the veiled look of the eyes, the _morbidezza_ of the flesh tones, and +the general sense of amplitude and grace give us a Fortuny who knew +how to paint broadly. The more obvious and dashing side of him is +present in the Arabian Fantaisie of the Vanderbilt Gallery. It must be +remembered that he spent some time copying, at Madrid, Velasquez and +Goya, and as Camille Mauclair enthusiastically declares, these copies +are literal "identifications." They are highly prized by the Marquise +Carcano (who owned the Vicaria), Madrazo, and the Baron Davillieu--the +last named the chief critical authority on Fortuny. + +In the history of the arts there are cases such as Fortuny's, of +Mozart, Chopin, Raphael, and some others, whose precocity and +prodigious powers of production astonished their contemporaries. +Fortuny, whose full name was Mariano José Maria Bernardo Fortuny y +Carbó, was born at Reus, a little town in the province of Tarragona, +near Barcelona. He was very poor, and at the age of twelve an orphan. +His grandfather, a carpenter, went with the lad on foot through the +towns of Catalonia exhibiting a cabinet containing wax figures painted +by Mariano and perhaps modelled by him. He began carving and daubing +at the age of five; a regular little fingersmith, his hands were never +idle. He secured by the promise of talent a pension of forty-two +francs a month and went to Barcelona to study at the Academy. Winning +the prize of Rome in 1857, he went there and copied old masters until +1860, when, the war between Spain and Morocco breaking out, he went to +Morocco on General Prim's staff, and for five or six months his brain +was saturated with the wonders of Eastern sunlight, exotic hues, +beggars, gorgeous rugs, snake-charmers, Arabs afoot or circling on +horseback with the velocity of birds, fakirs, all the huge glistening +febrile life he was later to interpret with such charm and exactitude. + +He returned to Rome. He made a second trip to Africa. He returned to +Spain. Barcelona gave him a pension of a hundred and thirty-two francs +a month, which amount was kept up later by the Duke de Rianzarès until +1867. He went to Paris in 1866, was taken up by the Goupils, knew +Meissonier and worked occasionally with Gérôme. His rococo pictures, +his Oriental work set Paris ablaze. He married the daughter of the +Spanish painter Federigo Madrazo, and visited at Madrid, Granada, +Seville, Rome, and, in 1874, London. He contracted a pernicious fever +at Rome and died there, November 21, 1874, at the age of thirty-six. +His funeral was imposing, many celebrities of the world of art +participating. He was buried in the Campo Varano. + +In 1866 at Rome he began etching, and in fifteen months finished a +series of masterpieces. His line, surprisingly agile and sinuous, has +the finesse of Goya--whom he resembled at certain points. He used +aquatint with full knowledge of effects to be produced, and at times +he recalls Rembrandt in the depth of his shadows. His friend the +painter Henri Regnault despaired in the presence of such versatility, +such speed and ease of workmanship. He wrote: "The time I spent with +Fortuny is haunting me still. What a magnificent fellow he is! He +paints the most marvellous things, and is the master of us all. I wish +I could show you the two or three pictures he has in his hand or his +etchings and water-colours. They inspired me with a real disgust of my +own. Ah, Fortuny, you spoil my sleep!" + +Standing aloof from the ideas and tendencies of his times and not a +sweeper of the chords that stir in human nature the heroic or the +pathetic, it is none the less uncritical to rank this Spaniard as a +brainless technician. Everything is relative, and the scale on which +Fortuny worked was as true a medium for the exhibition of his genius +as a museum panorama. Let us not be misled by the worship of the +elephantine. It is characteristic of his temperament that the big +battle piece he was commissioned by the Barcelona Academy to paint was +never finished. Not every one who goes to Rome does as the Romans do. +Dowered by nature with extraordinary acuity of vision, with a +romantic, passionate nature and a will of steel, Fortuny was bound to +become a great painter. His manual technique bordered on the fabulous; +he had the painter's hand, as his fellow-countryman Pablo de Sarasate +had the born hand of the violinist. That he spent the brief years of +his life in painting the subjects he did is not a problem to be posed, +for, as Henry James has said, it is always dangerous to challenge an +artist's selection of subject. Why did Goya conceive his _Caprichos_? +The love of decorative beauty in Fortuny was not bedimmed by +criticism. He had the lust of eye which not the treasures of Ormuz and +Ind, or ivory, apes, and peacocks, could satisfy. If he loved the +kaleidoscopic East, he also knew his Spain. We have seen at the +Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts a tiny picture, the court-yard of a +Spanish inn through which passes a blinding shaft of sunlight, which +would make envious Señor Sorolla. Fortuny has personal charm, a +quality usually missing nowadays, for painters in their desire to be +truthful are tumbling head over heels into the prosaic. Individuality +is vanishing in the wastes of an over-anxious realism. If Fortuny is a +daring virtuoso on one or two strings, his palette is ever enchanting. +Personally he was a handsome man, with a distinguished head, his body +broad and muscular and capable of enduring fatigues that would have +killed most painters. Allied to this powerful physique was a seductive +sensibility. This peasant-born painter was an aristocrat of art. Old +Mother Nature is an implacable ironist. + + + + +SOROLLA Y BASTIDA + + + +We might say of the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida that he +was one of those who came into the world with a ray of sunshine in +their brains--altering the phrase of Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Señor +Sorolla is also one of the half-dozen (are there so many?) great +living painters. He belongs to the line of Velasquez and Goya, and he +seldom recalls either. Under the auspices of the Hispanic Society of +America there was an exhibition of his works in 1909, some two hundred +and fifty in all, hung in the museum of the society, West 156th +Street, near Broadway. The liveliest interest was manifested by the +public and professional people in this display. Those who saw +Sorolla's art at the Paris Exposition, 1900, and at the Georges Petit +Gallery, Paris, a few years ago need not be reminded of his virile +quality and masterly brush-work. Some art lovers in this city are +aware of his Sad Inheritance, the property of Mr. John E. Berwind, +which has been hung in the Sunday-school room of the Ascension Church, +Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. It is one of the artist's few pictures +in which he feels the _Weltschmerz_. His is a nature bubbling over +with health and happiness. + +He is a Valencian, was born in 1863 of poor parents, and by reason of +his native genius and stubborn will power he became what he is--the +painter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let there be no mincing +of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet painted so +directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard. He is an +impressionist, but not of the school of Monet. His manner is his own, +cunningly compounded as it is of the proceeds of half a dozen artists. +His trip to Rome resulted in nothing but a large eclectic canvas +without individuality; what had this pagan in common with saints or +sinners! He relates that in Paris Bastien-Lepage and Menzel affected +him profoundly. This statement is not to be contradicted; nevertheless +Sorolla is the master of those two masters in his proper province of +the portrayal of outdoor life. Degas was too cruel when he called +Bastien the "Bouguereau of the modern movement"; Bastien academicised +Manet and other moderns. He said nothing new. As for Menzel, it would +be well here to correct the notion bandied about town that he +discovered impressionism before the French. He did not. He went to +Paris in 1867. Meissonier at first, and later Courbet, influenced him. +His Rolling Mill was painted in 1876. It is very Courbet. The Paris +Exposition, 1867, picture shows the influence of Monet--who was in the +Salon of 1864; and Monet was begat by Boudin, who stemmed from +Jongkind; and Jongkind studied with Isabey; and they came from Turner, +idolater of the Sun. Remember, too, that Corot and Courbet called +Eugène Boudin "roi des ciels." Monet not only studied with him but +openly admitted that he had learned everything from him, while Boudin +humbly remarked that he had but entered the door forced by the +Dutchman Jongkind. Doubtless Sorolla found what he was looking for in +Bastien, though it would be nearer the truth to say that he studied +the Barbizons and impressionists and took what he needed from them +all. + +He is a temperament impressionable to the sun, air, trees, children, +women, men, cattle, landscapes, the ocean. Such swift, vivid notation +of the fluid life about him is rare; it would be photographic were it +not the personal memoranda of a selecting eye; it would be transitory +impressionism were it not for a hand magical in its manipulation of +pigments. Brain and brush collaborate with an instantaneity that does +not perplex because the result is so convincing. We do not intend to +quote that musty flower of rhetoric which was a favourite with our +grandfathers. It was the fashion then to say that +Nature--capitalised--took the brush from the hand of the painter, +meaning some old duffer who saw varnish instead of clear colour, and +painted the picture for him. Sorolla is receptive; he does not attempt +to impose upon nature an arbitrary pattern, but he sees nature with +his own eyes, modified by the thousand subtle experiences in which he +has steeped his brain. He has the tact of omission very well +developed. After years of labour he has achieved a personal vision. It +is so completely his that to copy it would be to perpetrate a +burlesque. He employs ploys the divisional _taches_ of Monet, spots, +cross-hatchings, big sabre-like strokes à la John Sargent, indulges in +smooth sinuous silhouettes, or huge splotches, refulgent patches, +explosions, vibrating surfaces; surfaces that are smooth and oily +surfaces, as in his waters, that are exquisitely translucent. You +can't pin him down to a particular formula. His technique in other +hands would be coarse, crashing, brassy, bald, and too fortissimo. It +sometimes is all these discouraging things. It is too often deficient +in the finer modulations. But he makes one forget this by his +_entrain_, sincerity, and sympathy with his subject. As a composer he +is less satisfactory; it is the first impression or nothing in his +art. Apart from his luscious, tropical colour, he is a sober narrator +of facts. Ay, but he is a big chap, this amiable little Valencian with +a big heart and a hand that reaches out and grabs down clouds, skies, +scoops up the sea, and sets running, wriggling, screaming a joyful +band of naked boys and girls over the golden summer sands in a sort of +ecstatic symphony of pantheism. + +How does he secure such intensity of pitch in his painting of +atmosphere, of sunshine? By a convention, just as the falsification of +shadows by rendering them darker than nature made the necessary +contrasts in the old formula. Brightness in clear-coloured shadows is +the key-note of impressionistic open-air effects. W.C. +Brownell--French Art--puts it in this way: "Take a landscape with a +cloudy sky, which means diffused light in the old sense of the term, +and observe the effect upon it of a sudden burst of sunlight. What is +the effect where considerable portions of the scene are suddenly +thrown into marked shadow, as well as others illuminated with intense +light? Is the absolute value of the parts in shadow lowered or raised? +Raised, of course, by reflected light. Formerly, to get the contrast +between sunlight and shadow in proper scale the painter would have +painted the shadows darker than they were before the sun appeared. +Relatively they are darker, since their value, though heightened, is +raised infinitely less than the parts in sunlight. Absolutely, their +value is raised considerably. If, therefore, they are painted lighter +than they were before the sun appeared they in themselves seem truer. +The part of Monet's pictures that is in shadow is measurably true, far +truer than it would have been if painted under the old theory of +correspondence, and had been unnaturally darkened to express the +relation of contrast between shadow and sunlight." + +Like Turner, Monet forced the colour of his shadows, as MacColl points +out, and like Monet, Sorolla forces the colour of his shadows--but +what a compeller of beautiful shadows--forces the key to the very +verge of the luminous abyss. Señor Beruete, the Velasquez expert, +truthfully says of Sorolla's method: "His canvases contain a great +variety of blues and violets, balanced and juxtaposed with reds and +yellows. These, and the skilful use of white, provide him with a +colour scheme of great simplicity, originality, and beauty." There are +no non-transparent shadows, and his handling of blacks reveals a +sensitive feeling for values. Consider that black-gowned portrait of +his wife. His underlying structural sense is never obscured by his +fat, flowing brush. + +It must not be supposed that because of Sorolla's enormous _brio_ his +general way of entrapping nature is brutal. He is masculine and +absolutely free from the neurasthenic _morbidezza_ of his +fellow-countryman Zuloaga. (And far from attaining that painter's +inches as a psychologist.) For the delineation of moods nocturnal, of +poetic melancholy, of the contemplative aspect of life we must not go +to Sorolla. He is not a thinker. He is the painter of bright mornings +and brisk salt breezes. He is half Greek. There is Winckelmann's +_Heiterkeit_, blitheness, in his groups of romping children, in their +unashamed bare skins and naïve attitudes. Boys on Valencian beaches +evidently believe in Adamic undress. Nor do the girls seem to care. +Stretched upon his stomach on the beach, a youth, straw-hatted, stares +at the spume of the rollers. His companion is not so unconventionally +disarrayed, and as she has evidently not eaten of the poisonous apple +of wisdom she is free from embarrassment. Balzac's two infants, +innocent of their sex, could not be less carefree than the Sorolla +children. How tenderly, sensitively, he models the hardly nubile forms +of maidens. The movement of their legs as they race the strand, their +dash into the water, or their nervous pausing at the rim of the +wet--here is poetry for you, the poetry of glorious days in +youth-land. Curiously enough his types are for the most part more +international than racial; that is, racial as are Zuloaga's Basque +brigands, _manolas_, and gipsies. + +But only this? Can't he paint anything but massive oxen wading to +their buttocks in the sea; or fisher boats with swelling sails +blotting out the horizon; or a girl after a dip standing, as her +boyish cavalier covers her with a robe--you see the clear, pink flesh +through her garb; or vistas of flower gardens with roguish maidens and +courtly parks; peasants harvesting, working women sorting raisins; +sailors mending nets, boys at rope-making--is all this great art? +Where are the polished surfaces of the cultured studio worker; where +the bric-a-brac which we inseparably connect with pseudo-Spanish art? +You will not find any of them. Sorolla, with good red blood in his +veins, the blood of a great, misunderstood race, paints what he sees +on the top of God's earth. He is not a book but a normal nature-lover. +He is in love with light, and by his treatment of relative values +creates the illusion of sun-flooded landscapes. He does not cry for +the "sun," as did Oswald Alving; it comes to him at the beckoning of +his brush. His many limitations are but the defects of his good +qualities. + +Sorolla is sympathetic. He adores babies and delights in dancing. His +babies are irresistible. He can sound the _Mitleid_ motive without a +suspicion of odious sentimentality. What charm there is in some of his +tiny children as they lean their heads on their mothers! They fear the +ocean, yet are fascinated by it. Near by is a mother and child in bed. +They sleep. The right hand of the mother stretches, instinctively, +toward the infant. It is the sweet, unconscious gesture of millions of +mothers. On one finger of the hand there is just a hint of gold from a +ring. The values of the white counterpane and the contrast of +dark-brown hair on the pillow are truthfully expressed. One mother and +babe, all mothers and babes, are in this picture. Turn to that old +rascal in a brown cloak, who is about to taste a glass of wine. A snag +gleams white in his sly, thirsty mouth. The wine tastes fine, eh! You +recall Goya. As for the boys swimming, the sensations of darting and +weaving through velvety waters are produced as if by wizardry. But you +never think of Sorolla's line, for line, colour, idea, actuality are +merged. The translucence of this sea in which the boys plash and +plunge is another witness to the verisimilitude of Sorolla's vision. +Boecklin's large canvas at the new Pinakothek, Munich, is often cited +as a _tour_ _de force_ of water painting. We allude to the mermaids +and mermen playing in the trough of a greenish sea. It is mere +"property" water when compared to Sorolla's closely observed and +clearly reproduced waves. Rhythm--that is the prime secret of his +vitality. + +His portraiture, when he is interested in his sitters, is excellent. +Beruete is real, so Cossio, the author of the El Greco biography; so +the realistic novelist Blanco Ibañez; but the best, after those of +his, Sorolla's, wife and children, is that of Frantzen, a +photographer, in the act of squeezing the bulb. It is a frank +characterisation. The various royalties and high-born persons whose +counterfeit presentments are accomplished with such genuine effort are +interesting; but the heart is missing. Cleverness there is in the +portraits of Alphonse; and his wife's gorgeous costume should be the +envy of our fashionable portrait manufacturers. It is under the skies +that Sorolla is at ease. Monet, it must not be forgotten, had two +years' military service in Morocco; Sorolla has always lived, +saturated himself in the rays of a hot sun and painted beneath the +hard blue dome of Spanish skies. + +Sorolla is a painting temperament, and the freshening breezes and +sunshine that emanate from his canvases should drive away the odours +of the various chemical cook-shops which are called studios in our +"world of art." + +One cannot speak too much of the large-minded and cultivated spirit of +Archer Milton Huntington, who is the projector and patron of the +exhibitions at the Hispanic Society Museum. Sorolla y Bastida, through +the invitation of Mr. Huntington, made this exhibition. + + + + +IGNACIO ZULOAGA + + + +We are no longer with Sorolla and his vibrating sunshine on Valencian +sands, or under the hard blue dome of San Sebastian; the two-score +canvases on view in 1909 at the Hispanic Museum were painted by a man +of profounder intellect, of equally sensual but more restrained +temperament than Sorolla; above all, by an artist with different +ideals--a realist, not an impressionist, Ignacio Zuloaga. It would not +be the entire truth to say that his masterpieces were seen; several +notable pictures, unhappily, were not; but the exhibition was finely +representative. Zuloaga showed us the height and depth of his powers +in at least one picture, and the longer you know him the more secrets +he yields up. + +In Paris they say of Sorolla that he paints too fast and too much; of +Zuloaga that he is too lazy to paint. Half truths, these. The younger +man is more deliberate in his methods. He composes more elaborately, +executes at a slower gait. He resents the imputation of realism. The +fire and fury of Sorolla are not his, but he selects, weighs, +analyses, reconstructs--in a word, he composes and does not improvise. +He is, nevertheless, a realist--a verist, as he prefers to be called. +He is not cosmopolitan, and Sorolla is: the types of boys and girls +racing along the beaches of watering places which Sorolla paints are +cosmopolitan. Passionate vivacity and the blinding sunshine are not +qualities that appeal to Zuloaga. He portrays darkest--let us rather +say greenest, brownest Spain. The Basque in him is the strongest +strain. He is artistically a lineal descendant of El Greco, Velasquez, +Goya; and the map of his memory has been traversed by Manet. He is +more racial, more truly Spanish, than any painter since Goya. He +possesses the genius of place. + +Havelock Ellis's book, The Soul of Spain, is an excellent corrective +for the operatic Spain, and George Borrow is equally sound despite his +bigotry, while Gautier is invaluable. Arsène Alexandre in writing of +Zuloaga acutely remarks of the Spanish conspiracy in allowing the +chance tourist only to scratch the soil "of this country too well +known but not enough explored." Therefore when face to face with the +pictures of Zuloaga, with romantic notions of a Spain where castles +grow in the clouds and moonshine on every bush, prepare to be shocked, +to be disappointed. He will show you the real Spain--the sun-soaked +soil, the lean, sharp outlines of hills, the arid meadows, and the +swift, dark-green rivers. He has painted cavaliers and dames of +fashion, but his heart is in the common people. He knows the bourgeois +and he knows the gipsy. He has set forth the pride of the vagabond and +the garish fascinations of the gitana. Since Goya, you say, and then +wonder whether it might not be wiser to add: Goya never had so +complicated a psychology. A better craftsman than Goya, a more varied +colourist, a more patient student of Velasquez, of life, though +without Goya's invention, caprice, satanism, and _fougue_. + +Zuloaga was not born poor, but with genius; and genius always spells +discontent. He would not become an engineer and he would paint. His +family, artists and artisans, did not favour his bent. He visited +Italy, almost starved in Paris, and after he knew how to handle his +tools he starved for recognition. It is only a few years since he +exhibited the portrait of his uncle, Daniel Zuloaga, and his cousins. +It now hangs in the Luxembourg; but Madrid would have none of him; a +Spanish jury rejected him at Paris in 1900, and not possessing the +means of Edouard Manet he could not hire a gallery and show the world +the stuff that was in him. He did not sulk; he painted. Barcelona took +him up; Paris, the world, followed suit. To-day he is rich, famous, +and forty. He was born at Eibar, 1870, in the Basque province of +Viscaya. He is a collector of rare taste and has housed his treasures +in a gallery at his birthplace. He paints chiefly at Segovia, in an +old church, though he wanders over Spain, sometimes afoot, sometimes +in his motor car, often accompanied by Rodin in the latter, and +wherever he finds himself he is at home and paints. A bull-fighter in +the ring, as was Goya--perhaps the legend stirred him to imitation--he +is a healthy athlete. His vitality, indeed, is enormous, though it +does not manifest itself in so dazzling a style as Sorolla's. The +demerits of literary comparisons are obvious, yet we dare to think of +Sorolla and Zuloaga as we should of Théophile Gautier and Charles +Baudelaire. In one is the clear day flame of impersonality; the other +is all personality, given to nocturnal moods, to diabolism and +perversities, cruelties and fierce voluptuousness. Sorolla is pagan; +Gothic is Zuloaga, a Goth of modern Spain. He has more variety than +Sorolla, more intellect. The Baudelairian strain grows in his work; it +is unmistakable. The crowds that went to see the "healthy" art of +Sorolla (as if art had anything in common with pulse, temperature, and +respiration) did not like, or indeed understand, many of Zuloaga's +magnificent pictorial ideas. + +He paints in large _coups_, but his broad, slashing planes are not +impressionistic. He swims in the traditional Spanish current with joy. +Green with him is almost an obsession--a national symbol certainly. +His greens, browns, blacks, scarlets are rich, sonorous, and magnetic. +He is a colourist. He also is master of a restrained palette and can +sound the silver grays of Velasquez. His tonalities are massive. The +essential bigness of his conceptions, his structural forms, are the +properties of an eye swift, subtle, and all-embracing. It seems an +image that is at once solidly rooted in mother earth and is as +fluctuating as life. No painter to-day has a greater sense of +character, except Degas. The Frenchman is the superior draughtsman, +but he is no more vital in his interpretation of his ballet girls, +washerwomen, and grisettes than is Zuloaga in his delineations of +peasants, dwarfs, dogs, courtesans, scamps, zealots, pilgrims, +beggars, drunkards, and working girls. What verve, what grip, what +bowels of humanity has this Spaniard! A man, not a professor of +academic methods. He has no school, and he is a school in himself. +That the more serene, poetic aspects and readings of life have escaped +him is merely to say that he is not constituted a contemplative +philosopher. The sinister skein to be seen in some of his canvases +does not argue the existence of a spiritual bias but is the +recognition of evil in life. It is not very pleasant, nor is it +reassuring, but it is part of the artist, rooted deep in his Spanish +soul along with the harsh irony and a cruel spirit of mockery. He +refuses to follow the ideals of other men, and he paints a spade a +spade; at least the orchestration, if brutal, is not lascivious. A +cold, impartial eye observes and registers the corruption of cities +small and great and the infinitely worse immoralities of the open +country. Sometimes Zuloaga's comments are witty, sometimes +pessimistic. If he has studied Goya and Manet, he also knows Félicien +Rops. + +The only picture in the Zuloaga exhibition that grazes the border-land +of the unconventional is Le Vieux Marcheur. It is as moral as Hogarth +and as bitter as Rops. It recalls the Montmartre days of the artist +when he was acquainted with Paul Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Two +women are crossing a bridge. Their actuality is impressed upon the +retina in a marvellous ly definite way. They live, they move. One is +gowned in dotted green, the other in black. There is a little +landscape with water beyond the iron railing. A venerable minotaur is +in pursuit. He wears evening clothes, an overcoat is thrown across his +left arm, under his right he carries waggishly a cane. His white tie +and hat of sober silk are in respectable contrast with his air of +fatuousness--the Marquis of Steyne en route; the doddering hero of +Mansfield in A Parisian Romance, or Baron Hulot. The alert expression +of the girls, who appear to be loitering, tells us more at a glance +than a chapter of Flaubert, Zola, or De Maupassant. Is it necessary to +add that the handling takes your breath away because of its consummate +ease and its realisation of the effects sought? Note the white of the +old party's spats, echoed by the bit of stocking showing a low shoe +worn by one of the girls; note the values of the blacks in the hat, +coat, trousers, shoe tips of the man. The very unpleasantness of the +theme is forgotten in the supreme art of its presentation. + +M. Alexandre, the French critic, may argue valiantly that Zuloaga must +not be compared with Goya, that their methods and themes are +dissimilar. True, but those witches (Les Sorcières de San Millan) are +in the key of Goya, not manner, but subject-matter--a hideous crew. At +once you think of the _Caprichos_ of Goya. The hag with the distaff, +whose head is painted with a fidelity worthy of Holbein; the monkey +profile of the witch crouching near the lantern, that repulsive +creature in spectacles--Goya spectacles; the pattern hasn't varied +since his days--these ladies and their companions, especially that +anonymous one in a hood, coupled with the desperate dreariness of the +background, a country dry and hard as a volcanic cinder, make a +formidable ensemble. Zuloaga relates that the beldames screeched and +fought in his studio when he posed them. You exclaim while looking at +them: "How now, you secret black and midnight hags!" Hell hovers hard +by; each witch of the unholy trio has the evil eye. + +As a painter of dwarfs Zuloaga has not been surpassed by any one but +Velasquez. His Gregorio, the monster with the huge head, the +sickening, livid, globular eye, the comical pose--you exclaim: What a +brush! The picture palpitates with reality, an ugly reality, for the +tall old couple are not prepossessing. The topography of the country +is minutely observed. But this painter does not wreak himself in +ugliness or morbidities; he is singularly happy in catching the +attitudes and gestures of the peasants as they return from the +vintage; of picadors, matadors, chulos, in the ring or lounging, +smoking, awaiting the signal. The large and celebrated family group of +the matador Gallito--which is to remain permanently in the Hispanic +Society's museum--is a superb exemplar of the synthetic and rhythmic +art of the Spaniard. Each character is seized and rendered. The strong +silhouettes melt into a harmonious arabesque; the tonal gamut is +nervous, strong, fiery; the dull gold background is a foil for the +scale of colour notes. It is a striking picture. Very striking, too, +is the portrait of Breval as Carmen, though it is the least Spanish +picture in the collection; Breval is pictured on the stage, the lights +from below playing over her features. The problem is solved, as +Besnard or Degas has solved it, successfully, but in purely personal +manner. It is the picture in the Metropolitan Museum that is bound to +attract attention, as it is a technical triumph; but it is not very +characteristic. + +We saw dark-eyed, graceful manolas on balconies--this truly Spanish +motive in art, as Spanish as is the Madonna Italian--over which are +thrown gorgeous shawls, smiling, flirting; with languorous eyes and +provocative fans, they sit ensconced as they sat in Goya's time and +centuries before Goya, the Eternal Feminine of Spain. Zuloaga is her +latest interpreter. Isn't Candida delicious in green, with black +head-dress of lace--isn't she bewitching? Her stockings are green. The +wall is a most miraculous adumbration of green. Across the room is +another agent of disquiet in Nile green, Mercedes by name. Her +aquiline nose, black eyes, and the flowers she wears at the side of +her head bewilder; the sky, clouds, and landscape are all very lovely. +This is a singularly limpid, loose, flowing picture. It has the paint +quality sometimes missing in the bold, fat massing of the Zuloaga +colour chords. The Montmartre Café concert singer is a sterling +specimen of Zuloaga's portraiture. He is unconventional in his poses; +he will jam a figure against the right side of the frame (as in the +portrait of Marthe Morineau) or stand a young lady beside an +ornamental iron gate in an open park (not a remarkable portrait, but +one that pleases the ladies because of the textures). The head of the +old actor capitally suggests the Spanish mummer. And the painter's +cousin, Esperanza! What cousins he boasts! We recall The Three +Cousins, with its laughing trio and the rich colour scheme. Our +recollection, too, of The Piquant Retort, and its brown and scarlet +harmonies; of the Promenade After the Bull-fight, which has the +classical balance and spaced charm of Velasquez; and that startling +Street of Love overbalances any picture except one in this exhibition, +and that is The Bull-fighter's Family. The measuring eye of Zuloaga, +his tremendous vitality, his sharp, superb transference to canvas of +the life he has elected to represent and interpret are at first sight +dazzling. The performance is so supreme--remember, not in a niggling, +technical sense--a half-dozen men beat him at mere pyrotechnics and +lace _fioritura_--that his limitations, very marked in his case, are +overlooked. You have drunk a hearty Spanish wine; oil to the throat, +confusion to the senses. You do not at first miss the soul; it is not +included in the categories of Señor Zuloaga. Zuloaga, like his +contemporary farther north, Anders Zorn, is a man as well as a +painter; the conjunction is not too frequent. The grand manner is +surely his. He has the modulatory sense, and Christian Brinton notes +his sonorous acid effects. He paints beggars, dwarfs, work-girls, +noblemen, bandits, dogs, horses, lovely women, gitanas, indolent +Carmens; but real, not the pasteboard and foot-lights variety of +Merimée and Bizet. Zuloaga's Spain is not a second-hand Italy, like +that of so many Spanish painters. It is not all bric-a-brac and +moonlight and chivalric tinpot helmets. It is the real Spain of +to-day, the Spain that has at last awakened to the light of the +twentieth century after sleeping so long, after sleeping, +notwithstanding the desperate nudging it was given a century ago by +the realist Goya. Now, Zuloaga is not only stepping on his country's +toes, but he is recording the impressions he makes. He, too, is a +realist, a realist with such magic in his brush that it would make us +forgive him if he painted the odour of garlic. + +Have you seen his Spanish Dancers? Not the dramatic Carmencita of +Sargent, but the creature as she is, with her simian gestures, her +insolence, her vulgarity, her teeth--and the shrill scarlet of the +bare gum above the gleaming white, His street scenes are a transcript +of the actual facts, and inextricably woven with the facts is a sense +of the strange beauty of them all. His wine harvesters, venders of +sacred images, or that fascinating canvas My Three Cousins--before +these, also before the Promenade After the Bull-fight, you realise +that by some miracle of nature the intensity of Goya and his sense of +life, the charm of Velasquez and his sober dignity are recalled by the +painting of a young Spanish artist who a decade ago was unknown. Nor +is Zuloaga an eclectic. His force and individuality are too patent for +us to entertain such a heresy. A glance at Jacques-Emile Blanche's +portrait of the Spanish painter explains other things. There is the +physique of a man who can work many hours a day before an easel; there +are the penetrating eyes of an observer, spying eyes, slightly cruel; +the head is an intellectual one, the general conformation of the face +harmonious and handsome. The body is that of an athlete, but not of +the bull-necked sort we see in Goya. The temperament suggested is +impetuous, controlled by a strong will; it has been fined down by +study and the enforced renunciations of poverty-haunted youth. Above +all, there is race; race in the proud, resolute bearing, race in the +large, firm, supple, and nervous hands. Indeed, the work of Zuloaga is +all race. He is the most Spanish painter since Goya. + + + + +IX. CHARDIN + + + +Zola, as reported by George Moore, said of Degas: "I cannot accept a +man who shuts himself up all his life to draw a ballet girl as ranking +co-equal in dignity and power with Flaubert, Daudet, and Goncourt." +This remark gives us the cue for Zola's critical endowment; despite +his asseverations his naturalism was only skin deep. He, too, was +swayed by his literary notions concerning the importance of the +subject. In painting the theme may count for little and yet a great +picture result; in Zola's field there must be an appreciable subject, +else no fiction. But what cant it is to talk about "dignity." Zola +admits ingrained romanticism. He would not see, for instance, that the +Degas ballet girls are on the same plane as the Ingres odalisques; +that a still-life by Chardin outweighs a big canvas by David; and it +must be admitted that the world is on the side of Zola. The heresy of +the subject will never be stamped out, the painted anecdote will +always win the eye of the easily satisfied majority. + +It may be remembered that the great Spaniard began his apprenticeship +to art by copying still-life, which he did in a superlative manner; +his Bodegones, or kitchen pieces, testify to this. Chardin, who led as +laborious an existence as Degas, shutting himself away from the world, +studied surfaces with an intensity that Zola, the apostle of realism, +would have misunderstood. Later the French painter devoted himself +with equal success to genre and figure subjects; but for him there was +no such category as still-life. Everything of substance, shape, +weight, and colour is alive for the eye that observes, and, except +Velasquez, Vermeer, and a few others, no man was endowed with the eye +of Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, an eye microscopic in intensity and +that saw the beautiful in the homely. + +Edmond Pilon has published a comprehensive little monograph in the +series Les Maîtres de L'Art. M. Pilon is as sympathetic as he is just +in his critical estimates of the man and his work. There is not much +to relate of the quotidian life of the artist. His was not a romantic +or a graceful figure among his contemporaries, the pastellist La Tour, +Fragonard, and the rest, nor had his personality a jot of the +mysterious melancholy of Watteau. His artistic ancestry was Dutch; in +the footsteps of De Hooch, the younger Teniers, Vermeer, Terburg, +Kalf, he trod, rather plodded, producing miracles of light, colour, +finish. A long patience his career, he never indulged in brilliancy +for the mere sake of brilliancy; nevertheless he was an amazing +virtuoso of the brush. He was born in the Rue de Seine, Paris, +November 2,1699. His father, Jean Chardin, a joiner, was a man of +artistic instinct whose furniture and marquetrie were admired and in +demand. The lad began his tuition under Cazes, but soon went to the +atelier of Coypel. Later he worked under the eye of Carle Vanloo in +the restoration of the large gallery at Fontainebleau. His painting of +a barber-chirurgeon's sign drew upon him the notice of several artists +of influence and he became a member of the Academy of St. Luc. When he +exhibited for the first time in public, in the Place Dauphine, 1728, +Watteau had been dead seven years; Coypel, Allegrain, Vanloo, Troy, +and the imitators of the pompous art of Le Brun were the vogue. Colour +had become a conventional abstraction; design, of the most artificial +sort, the prime requisite for a sounding reputation. The unobtrusive +art of Chardin, who went to nature not to books for his inspiration, +was not appreciated. He was considered a belated Dutchman, though his +superior knowledge of values ought to have proved him something else. +Diderot, alone among the critics of his epoch, saluted him in company +with the great Buffon as a man whom nature had taken into her +confidence. + +In 1728 he was received at the Academy as painter of fruit and +flowers. He married his first wife, Marguerite Saintan, in 1731, and +his son, J.B. Chardin, was born the same year. In 1735 he lost his +wife and infant daughter, and the double blow drove him into +retirement, but he exposed his pictures from time to time. He was made +counsellor of the Academy in 1743, and in 1744 married the second +time, a widow, Françoise Marguerite Pouget by name. This was a happy +marriage; Madame Chardin, a sensible, good-tempered bourgeoise, +regulated the household accounts, and brought order and peace into the +life of the lonely artist. Hereafter he painted without interruptions. +He received from the king a pension of five hundred francs, his son +obtained the prix de Rome for a meritorious canvas, and if he had had +his father's stable temperament he would have ended an admirable +artist. But he was reckless, and died at Venice in a mysterious +manner, drowned in a canal, whether by murder or suicide no one knew. +Chardin never recovered his spirits after this shock. The king offered +him lodging in the gallery of the Louvre (Logement No. 12). This was +accepted, as much as he disliked leaving his comfortable little house +in the Rue Princesse. As he aged he suffered from various ailments and +his eyes began to give him trouble; then it was he took up pastels. +December 6, 1779, he died, his wife surviving him until 1791. + +He was a man of short stature, broad-shouldered and muscular. Liked by +his friends and colleagues for his frankness, there was a salt savour +in his forthright speech--he never learned to play the courtier. His +manners were not polished, a certain rusticity clung to him always, +but his honesty was appreciated and he held positions of trust. +Affectionate, slow--with the Dutch slowness praised by Rodin--and +tenacious, he set out to conquer a small corner in the kingdom of art, +and to-day he is first among the Little Masters. This too convenient +appellation must not class him with such myopic miniaturists as +Meissonier. There are breadth of style, rich humanity, largeness of +feeling, apart from his remarkable technique, that place him in the +company of famous portrait painters. He does not possess what are +called "general ideas"; he sounds no tragic chords; he has no spoor of +poetry, but he sees the exterior world steadily; he is never obvious, +and he is a sympathetic interpreter in the domestic domain and of +character. His palette is as aristocratic as that of Velasquez: the +music he makes, like that of the string quartet, borders on +perfection. + +At his début he so undervalued his work that Vanloo, after reproaching +the youth for his modesty, paid him double for a picture. Another time +he gave a still-life to a friend in exchange for a waistcoat whose +flowery pattern appealed to him. His pictures did not fetch fair +prices during his lifetime; after more than half a century of hard +work he left little for his widow. Nor in the years immediately +subsequent to that of his death did values advance much. The engraver +Wille bought a still-life for thirty-six livres, a picture that to-day +would sell for thousands of dollars. At the beginning of the last +century, in 1810, when David was ruler of the arts in Paris, the two +masterpieces in pastel, now in the Louvre, the portraits of Chardin +aux besicles, and the portrait of Marguerite Pouget, his second +spouse, could have been bought for twenty-four francs. In 1867 at the +Laperlier sale the Pourvoyeuse was sold for four thousand and fifty +francs to the Louvre, and forty years later the Louvre gave three +hundred and fifty thousand francs to Madame Emile Trépard for Le Jeune +Homme au Violon and l'Enfant au Toton. Diderot truly prophesied that +the hour of reparation would come. + +He is a master of discreet tonalities and a draughtsman of the first +order. His lighting, more diffused than Rembrandt's, is the chief +actor in his scene. With it he accomplishes magical effects, with it +he makes beautiful copper caldrons, humble vegetables, leeks, carrots, +potatoes, onions, shining rounds of beef, hares, and fish become +eloquent witnesses to the fact that there is nothing dead or ugly in +nature if the vision that interprets is artistic. It is said that no +one ever saw Chardin at work in his atelier, but his method, his +_facture_ has been ferreted out though never excelled. He employs the +division of tones, his _couches_ are fat and his colour is laid on +lusciously. His colour is never hot; coolness of tone is his chief +allurement. Greuze, passing one of his canvases at an exhibition, a +long time regarded it and went away, heaving a sigh of envy. The +frivolous "Frago," who studied with Chardin for a brief period, even +though he left him for Boucher, admired his former master without +understanding him. Decamps later exclaimed in the Louvre: "The whites +of Chardin! I don't know how to recapture them." He might have added +the silvery grays. M. Pilon remarks that as in the case of Vermeer the +secret of Chardin tones has never been surprised. The French painter +knew the art of modulation, while his transitions are bold; he +enveloped his objects in atmosphere and gave his shadows a due share +of luminosity. He placed his colours so that at times his work +resembles mosaic or tapestry. He knew a century before the modern +impressionists the knack of juxtaposition, of opposition, of tonal +division; his science was profound. He must have studied Watteau and +the Dutchmen closely. Diderot was amazed to find that his surpassing +whites were neither black nor white, but a neuter--but by a subtle +transposition of tones looked white. Chardin worked from an +accumulation of notes, but there are few sketches of his in existence, +a _sanguine_ or two. The paucity of the Velasquez sketches has piqued +criticism. Like Velasquez, Chardin was of a reflective temperament, a +slow workman and a patient corrector. + +The intimate charm of the Chardin interiors is not equalled even in +the Vermeer canvases. At the Louvre, which contains at least thirty of +the masterpieces, consider the sweetness of Le Benedicite, or the +three pastels, and then turn to the fruits, flowers, kitchen utensils, +game, or to La Raie Ouverte, that magnificent portrait of a skatefish, +with its cat slyly stealing over opened oysters, the table-cloth of +such vraisemblance that the knife balanced on the edge seems to lie in +a crease. What bulk, what destiny, what _chatoyant_ tones! Here are +qualities of paint and vision pictorial, vision that has never been +approached; paint without rhetoric, paint sincere, and the expression +in terms of beautiful paint of natural truths. In Chardin's case--by +him the relativity of mundane things was accepted with philosophic +phlegm--an onion was more important than an angel, a copper stew-pan +as thrilling as an epic. And then the humanity of his youth holding a +fiddle and bow, the exquisite textures of skin and hair, and the +glance of the eyes. You believe the story told of his advice to his +confrère: "Paint with sentiment." But he mixed his sentiment with +lovely colours, he is one of the chief glories of France as a +colourist. + + + + +X. BLACK AND WHITE. + + + +I + +Some Frenchman has called the theatre a book reversed. It is a happy +epigram. By a similar analogy the engraving or mezzotint might be +described as a reversed picture. And with still more propriety black +and white reproductions may be compared to the pianoforte in the hands +of a skilful artist. The pianoforte can interpret in cooler tones +orchestral scores. It gives in its all-formal severity the line; the +colour is only suggested. But such is the tendency of modern music +toward painting that the success of a pianoforte virtuoso to-day +depends upon his ability to arouse within his listeners' imagination +the idea of colour--in reality, the emotional element. The engraver +evokes colour by his cunning interplay of line and cross hatching; the +mezzotinter by his disposition of dark masses and white spaces. +Indeed, the mezzotint by reason of its warm, more sympathetic, and +ductile medium has always seemed more colourful in his plates than the +most laboriously executed steel engravings. In this sense the scraper +beats the burin, while the etcher, especially if he be a painter, +attains a more personal vision than either one of these processes. +"The stone was made for the mystics," say the Pennells. The revival of +lithography by contemporary artists of fame is very welcome. + +Above all, the appeal of engraving, mezzotint, and etching is to the +refined. It is an art of a peculiarly intimate character. Just as some +prefer the exquisite tonal purity and finished performances of the +Kneisel String Quartet to the blare and thunder of the Philharmonic +Society; just as some enjoy in silence beautiful prose more than our +crude drama, so the lovers of black and white may feel themselves a +distinctive class. They have at their elbow disposed in portfolios or +spaced on walls the eloquent portraiture, the world's masterpieces, +marine views, and landscapes. There is no better way to study painting +historically than in the cabinet of an engraving collector. +Furthermore, divested of bad or mediocre paint--many famous pictures +by famous names are mere cartoons, the paint peeled or peeling +off--the student and amateur penetrates to the very marrow of the +painter's conception, to the very skeleton of his technical methods. + + + + + +PIRANESI + + + +I + +"Battlements that on their restless fronts bore stars" is a line from +Wordsworth that Thomas de Quincey approvingly quotes in regard to his +opium-induced "architectural dreams," and, aptly enough, immediately +after a page devoted to Piranesi, the etcher, architect, and +visionary. You may find this page in The Confessions of an English +Opium Eater, that book of terror, beauty, mystification, and fudge (De +Quincey deluded himself quite as much as his readers in this +autobiography, which, like the confessions of most distinguished men, +must not be taken too literally): "Many years ago," he wrote, "when I +was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who +was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, +called his Dreams, which record the scenery of his own soul during the +delirium of a fever. Some of them (described only from memory of Mr. +Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of +which stood all sorts of engines and machinery expressive of enormous +power put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of +the walls, you perceived a staircase, and upon it, groping his way +upward, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther and +you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, without any +balustrade, and allowing no step onward to him who had reached the +extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor +Piranesi? You suppose, at least, that his labours must in some way +terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of +stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this +time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eyes, +and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poor +Piranesi on his aspiring labours, and so on, until the unfinished +stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall." + +This plate was evidently one of the Carceri set--sixteen in all--which +the etcher improvised after some severe cerebral malady. What would we +not give to have heard the poet of Kubla Khan describing the fantastic +visions of the Venetian artist to the English opium eater! The +eloquence of the prose passage we have transcribed has in it some +faint echoes of Coleridge's golden rumble. That these two men +appreciated the Italian is something; perhaps they saw chiefly in his +work its fantastic side. There was no saner craftsman than Piranesi +apart from certain of his plates; no more solid construction in a +print can be shown than his various interpretations of the classic +ruins of Rome, the temples at Pæstum. He was a great engraver and +etcher whose passion was the antique. He deliberately withdrew from +all commerce with the ideas and art of his own times. He loved +architecture for architecture's sake; not as a decoration, not as a +background for humanity, but as something personal. It was for him +what the human face was for Rembrandt and Velasquez. That he was +called the Rembrandt of Architecture is but another testimony to the +impression he made upon his contemporaries, though the title is an +unhappy one. Piranesi even in his own little fenced-off coign of art +is not comparable to the etcher of the Hundred Guilder print, nor are +there close analogies in their respective handling of darks and +lights. + +It might be nearer the mark to call Piranesi--though all such +comparisons are thorns in the critical flesh--the Salvator Rosa of +architecture, for there is much of Salvator's unbridled violence, +fantasy, and genius for deforming the actual that is to be encountered +in some of Piranesi's works. His was not a classic temperament. The +serene, airy, sun-bathed palaces and temples which Claude introduced +into his foregrounds are seldom encountered in Piranesi. A dark Gothic +imagination his, Gothic and often cruel. In his etching of public +buildings at Rome or elsewhere, while he is not always faultless in +drawing or scrupulous in observation, such was the sincerity and +passion of the man that he has left us the noblest transcriptions of +these stately edifices and monuments. It is in the rhythmic expression +of his personal moods that his sinister romantic imaginings are +revealed, and with a detail and fulness that are positively +overwhelming. + +It should not be forgotten that in the eighteenth and in the early +part of the nineteenth centuries Piranesi achieved widespread +popularity. He was admired outside of Italy, in England, in France, +and Germany. A generation that in England read Vathek and Mrs. +Radcliffe, supped on the horrors of Melmoth and Frankenstein, knew +E.T.W. Hoffmann and the German romantic literature, could be relied on +to take up Piranesi, and for his lesser artistic side. Poe knew his +work and Baudelaire; we see that for De Quincey he was a kindred +spirit. The English mezzotinter John Martin must have studied him +closely, also Gustave Doré. + +The Carceri (1750) of Piranesi are indoor compositions, enclosed +spaces in which wander aimlessly or deliriously the wraiths of damned +men, not a whit less wretched nor awful than Dante's immemorial mob. +Piranesi shows us cavernous abodes where appalling engines of torture +fill the foreground, while above, at vertiginous heights, we barely +discern perilous passageways, haunted windows peering out upon the +high heavens, stone-fretted ceilings that are lost in a magic mist. By +a sort of diabolic modulation the artist conducts our eye from these +dizzy angles and granitic convolutions down tortuous and tumultuous +staircases that seemingly wind about the axis of eternity. To traverse +them would demand an eternity and the nerves of a madman. Lower +barbaric devices reveal this artist's temperament. He is said to have +executed the prison set "during the delirium of fever." This is of the +same calibre as the clotted nonsense about Poe composing when +intoxicated or Liszt playing after champagne. It is a credible +anecdote for Philistines who do not realise that even the maddest +caprice, whether in black and white, marble, music, or verse, must be +executed in silence and cold blood. Piranesi simply gave wing to his +fancy, recalling the more vivid of his nightmares--as did Coleridge, +De Quincey, Poe, Baudelaire, and the rest of the drug-steeped choir. +We recall one plate of Piranesi's in which a miserable devil climbs a +staircase suspended over an abyss; as he mounts each step the lower +one crumbles into the depths below. + +The agony of the man (do you recall The Torture by Hope of Villiers de +l'Isle-Adam?) is shown in his tense, crouching attitude, his hands +clawing the masonry above him. Nature is become a monstrous fever, +existence a shivering dread. You overhear the crash of stone into the +infernal cellarage--where awaits the hunted wretch perhaps a worse +fate than on the pinnacles above. It is a companion piece to Martin's +Sadak searching for the Waters of Oblivion. Another plate depicts with +ingenuity terraces superimposed upon terraces, archways spaced like +massive music, narrow footways across which race ape-like men, half +naked, eagerly preparing some terrible punishments for criminals +handcuffed and guarded. They are to walk a sharp-spiked bridge. +Gigantic chains swing across stony precipices, a lamp depends from a +roof whose outlines are merged in the gray dusk of dreams. There is +cruelty, horror, and a sense of the wickedly magnificent in the +ensemble. What crimes were committed to merit such atrocious +punishment? The boldness and clearness of it all! With perspicacity +George Saintsbury wrote of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony: "It +is the best example of dream literature that I know--most writers who +have tried this style have erred, inasmuch as they have endeavoured to +throw a portion of the mystery with which the waking mind invests +dreams over the dream itself. Any one's experience is sufficient to +show that this is wrong. The events of dreams, as they happen, are +quite plain and matter of fact, and it is only in the intervals that +any suspicion occurs to the dreamer." + +Certainly Piranesi remembered his dreams. He is a realist in his +delineation of details, though the sweep and breadth of an ideal +design are never absent. He portrays ladders that scale bulky joists, +poles of incredible thickness, cyclopean block and tackling. They are +of wood, not metal nor marble, for the art of Piranesi is full of +discriminations. Finally, you weary. The eye gorged by all the mystic +engines, hieroglyphs of pain from some impossible inquisition--though +not once do we see a monkish figure--all these anonymous monkey men +scurrying on what errand Piranesi alone knows; these towering arches, +their foundations resting on the crest of hell (you feel the +tremendous impact of the architectural mass upon the earth--no mean +feat to represent or rather to evoke the sense of weight, of pressure +on a flat surface); the muffled atmosphere in these prisons from which +no living prisoner emerges; of them all you weary, for the normal +brain can only stand a certain dose of the delirious and the +melancholy. This aspect, then, of Piranesi's art, black magic in all +its potency, need no longer detain us. His Temples of Pæstum sound a +less morbid key than his Carceri, and as etchings quite outrank them. + + + + +II + +Giambattista Piranesi was born at Venice in 1720. Bryan says that +about 1738 his father sent him to Rome, where he studied under +Valeriani, through whom he acquired the style of Valeriani's master, +Marco Ricci of Belluno. With Vasi, a Sicilian engraver, he learned +that art. Ricci and Pannini were much in vogue, following the example +of Claude in his employment of ruins as a picturesque element in a +composition. But Piranesi excelled both Ricci and Pannini. He was an +architect, too, helping to restore churches, and this accounts for the +proud title, Architect of Venice, which may be seen on some of his +plates. He lived for a time in Venice, but Rome drew him to her with +an imperious call. And, notwithstanding the opposition of his father, +to Rome he went, and for forty years devoted himself to his master +passion, the pictorial record of the beloved city, the ancient +portions of which were fast vanishing owing to time and the greed of +their owners. This was Piranesi's self-imposed mission, begun as an +exalted youth, finished as an irritable old man. Among his +architectural restorations, made at the request of Clement XIII, were +the two churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Il Priorato. Lanciani +says that Il Priorato is "a mass of monstrosities inside and out." It +is his etching, not his labour as an architect, that will make +Piranesi immortal. He seems to have felt this, for he wrote that he +had "executed a work which will descend to posterity and will last so +long as there will be men desirous of knowing all that has survived +the ruins of the most famous city of the universe." + +In the black-and-white portrait of the etcher by F. Polonzani, we see +a full-cheeked man with a well-developed forehead, the features of the +classic Roman order, the general expression not far removed from a +sort of sullen self-satisfaction. But the eyes redeem. They are full, +lustrous, penetrating, and introspective. The portrait etched by the +son of Piranesi, after a statue, discovers him posed in a toga, the +general effect being classic and consular. His life, like that of all +good workmen in art, was hardly an eventful one. He married +precipitately and his wife bore him two sons (Francesco, the etcher, +born at Rome, 1748--Bryan gives the date as 1756--died at Paris, 1810) +and a daughter (Laura, born at Rome, 1750--date of death unknown). +These children were a consolation to him. Both were engravers. +Francesco frequently assisted his father in his work, and Bryan says +that Laura's work resembled her father's. She went to Paris with her +brother and probably died there. She left some views of Rome. +Francesco, with his brother Pietro, attempted to found an academy in +Paris and later a terra cotta manufactory. + +The elder Piranesi was of a quarrelsome disposition. He wrangled with +an English patron, Viscount Charlemont, and, like Beethoven, destroyed +title-pages when he became displeased with the subject of his +dedications. He was decorated with the Order of Christ and was proud +of his membership in the London Society of Antiquaries. It is said +that the original copper plates of his works were captured by a +British man-of-war during the Napoleonic conflict. This probably +accounts for the dissemination of so many revamped and coarsely +executed versions of his compositions. His besetting fault was a +tendency toward an Egyptian blackness in his composition. Fond of +strong contrasts as was John Martin, he is, at times, as great a +sinner in the handling of his blacks. An experimenter of audacity, +Piranesi's mastery of the technique of etching has seldom been +equalled, and even in his inferior work the skilful printing atones +for many defects. The remarkable richness and depth of tone, brought +about by continuous and innumerable bitings, and other secret +processes known only to himself, make his plates warm and brilliant. +Nobility of form, grandeur of mass, a light and shade that is +positively dramatic in its dispersion over wall and tower, are the +characteristic marks of this unique etcher. He could not resist the +temptation of dotting with figures the huge spaces of his ruins. They +dance or recline or indulge in uncouth gestures. His shadows are +luminous--you may gaze into them; his high lights caught on some +projection or salient cornice or silvering the August porticoes of a +vanished past, all these demonstrate his feeling for the dramatic. And +dramatic is the impression evoked as you study the majestic temples +that were Pæstum, the bare, ruined arches and pillars that were Rome. +It is Pæstum that is the more vivid. It tallies, too, with the +Piranesi plates; while Rome has visibly changed since his day. His +original designs for chimneys, Diverse Maniere d'Adornare i Camini, +are pronounced by several critics as "foolish and vulgar." He left +nearly two thousand etchings, and died at Rome November 9, 1778. His +son erected a mediocre statue by Angolin for his tomb in Il Priorato. +A manuscript life of Piranesi, which was in London about 1830, is now +lost. Bryan's dictionary gives a partial list of his works "as +published both by himself in Rome and by his sons in Paris. The plates +passed from his sons first to Firmin-Didot, and ultimately into the +hands of the Papal Government." + +De Quincey's quotation of Wordsworth is apposite in describing +Piranesi's creations: "Battlements that on their restless fronts bore +stars"; from sheer brutal masonry, gray, aged, and moss-encrusted, he +invented a precise pattern and one both passionate and magical. + + + + +MERYON + + + +Until the recent appearance of the Baudelaire letters (1841-66) all +that we knew of Meryon's personality and art was to be found in the +monograph by Philippe Burty and Béraldi's Les Graveurs du XIX Siècle. +Hamerton had written of the French etcher in 1875 (Etching and +Etchers), and various anecdotes about his eccentric behaviour were +public property. Frederick Wedmore, in his Etching in England, did not +hesitate to group Meryon's name with Rembrandt's and Jacquemart's (one +feels like employing the Whistlerian formula and asking: Why drag in +Jacquemart?); and to-day, after years of critical indifference, the +unhappy copper-scratcher has come into his own. You may find him +mentioned in such company as Dürer, Rembrandt, and Whistler. The man +who first acclaimed him as worthy of associating with Rembrandt was +the critic Charles Baudelaire; and we are indebted to him for new +material dealing with the troubled life of Charles Meryon. + +On January 8, 1860, Baudelaire wrote to his friend and publisher, +Poulet-Malassis, that what he intends to say is worth the bother of +writing. Meryon had called, first sending a card upon which he +scrawled: "You live in a hotel the name of which doubtless attracted +you because of your tastes." Puzzled by this cryptic introduction, the +poet then noted that the address read: Charles Baudelaire, Hôtel de +Thébes. He did not stop at a hotel bearing that name, but, fancying +him a Theban, Meryon took the matter for granted. This letter was +forwarded. Meryon appeared. His first question would have startled any +but Baudelaire, who prided himself on startling others. The etcher, +looking as desperate and forlorn as in the Bracquemond etched portrait +(1853), demanded news of a certain Edgar Poe. Baudelaire responded +sadly that he had not known Poe personally. Then he was eagerly asked +if he believed in the reality of this Poe. Charles began to suspect +the sanity of his visitor. "Because," added Meryon, "there is a +society of littérateurs, very clever, very powerful, and knowing all +the ropes." His reasons for suspecting a cabal formed against him +under the guise of Poe's name were these: The Murders in the Rue +Morgue. "I made a design of the Morgue--an orang-outang. I have been +often compared to a monkey. This orang-outang assassinated two women, +a mother and daughter. Et moi aussi, j'ai assassiné moralement deux +femmes, la mère et sa fille. I have always taken this story as an +allusion to my misfortunes. You, M. Baudelaire, would do me a great +favour if you could find the date when Edgar Poe, supposing he was not +assisted by any one, wrote his tale. I wish to see if this date +coincides with my adventures." After that Baudelaire knew his man. + +Meryon spoke with admiration of Michelet's Jeanne d'Arc, though he +swore the book was not written by Michelet. (Not such a wild shot, +though not correct in this particular instance, for the world has +since discovered that several books posthumously attributed to +Michelet were written by his widow.) The etcher was interested in the +cabalistic arts. On one of his large plates he drew some eagles, and +when Baudelaire objected that these birds did not frequent Parisian +skies he mysteriously whispered "those folks at the Tuileries" often +launched as a rite the sacred eagles to study the omens and presages. +He was firmly convinced of this. After the termination of the trying +visit Baudelaire, with acrid irony, asks himself why he, with his +nerves usually unstrung, did not go quite mad, and he concludes, +"Seriously I addressed to Heaven the grateful prayers of a pharisee." + +In March the same year he assures the same correspondent that +decidedly Meryon does not know how to conduct himself. He knows +nothing of life, neither does he know how to sell his plates or find +an editor. His work is very easy to sell. Baudelaire was hardly a +practical business man, but, like Poe, he had sense enough to follow +his market. He instantly recognised the commercial value of Meryon's +Paris set, but knew the etcher was a hopeless character. He wrote to +Poulet-Malassis concerning a proposed purchase of Meryon's work by the +publisher. It never came to anything. The etcher was very suspicious +as to paper and printing. He grew violent when the poet asked him to +illustrate some little poems and sonnets. Had he, Meryon, not written +poems himself? Had not the mighty Victor Hugo addressed flattering +words to him? Baudelaire, without losing interest, then thought of +Daumier as an illustrator for a new edition of Les Fleurs du Mal. It +must not be supposed, however, that Meryon was ungrateful. He was +deeply affected by the praise accorded him in Baudelaire's Salon of +1859. He wrote in February, 1860, sending his Views of Paris to the +critic as a feeble acknowledgment of the pleasure he had enjoyed when +reading the brilliant interpretative criticism. He said that he had +created an epoch in etching--which was the literal truth--and he had +saved a rapidly vanishing Paris for the pious curiosity of future +generations. He speaks of his "naïve heart" and hoped that Baudelaire +in turn would dream as he did over the plates. This letter was signed +simply "Meryon, 20 Rue Duperré." The acute accent placed over the "e" +in his name by the French poet and by biographers, critics, and +editors since was never used by the etcher. It took years before +Baudelaire could persuade the Parisians that Poe did not spell his +name "Edgard Poë." And we remember the fate of Liszt and Whistler, who +were until recently known in Paris as "Litz" and "Whistler." With the +aid of Champfleury and Banville, Baudelaire tried to bring Meryon's +art to the cognisance of the Minister of Beaux-Arts, but to no avail. +Why? + +There was a reason. Bohemian as was the artist during the last decade +of his life, he did not always haunt low cafés and drink absinthe. His +beginnings were as romantic as a page of Balzac. He was born a +gentleman _à la main gauche_. His father was the doctor and private +secretary of Lady Stanhope. Charles Lewis Meryon was an English +physician, who, falling in love with a ballet dancer at the Opéra, +Pierre Narcisse Chaspoux, persuaded her that it would be less selfish +on her part if she would not bind him to her legally. November +23,1821, a sickly, nervous, and wizened son was born to the pair and +baptised with his father's name, who, being an alien, generously +conceded that much. There his interest ceased. On the mother fell the +burden of the boy's education. At five he was sent to school at Passy +and later went to the south of France. In 1837 he entered the Brest +naval school, and 1839 saw him going on his maiden voyage. This first +trip was marred by the black sorrow that fell upon him when informed +of his illegitimate birth. "I was mad from the time I was told of my +birth," he wrote, and until madness supervened he suffered from a +"wounded imagination." He was morbid, shy, and irritable, and his +energy--the explosive energy of this frail youth was amazing; because +he had been refused the use of a ship boat he wasted three months +digging out a canoe from a log of wood. Like Paul Gauguin, he saw many +countries, and his eyes were trained to form, though not colour--he +suffered from Daltonism--for when he began to paint he discovered he +was totally colour-blind. The visible world for him existed as a +contrapuntal net-work of lines, silhouettes, contours, or heavy dark +masses. When a sailor he sketched. Meryon tells of the drawing of a +little fungus he found in Akaroa. "Distorted in form and pinched and +puny from its birth, I could not but pity it; it seemed to me so +entirely typical of the inclemency and at the same time of the +whimsicality of an incomplete and sickly creation that I could not +deny it a place in my _souvenirs de voyage_, and so I drew it +carefully." This bit of fungus was to him a symbol of his own gnarled +existence. + +Tiring of ship life, he finally decided to study art. He had seen New +Zealand, Australia, Italy, New Caledonia, and if his splendid +plate--No. 22 in M. Burty's list--is evidence, he must have visited +San Francisco. Baudelaire, in L'Art Romantique, speaks of this +perspective of San Francisco as being Meryon's most masterly design. +In 1846 he quit seafaring. He was in mediocre health, and though from +a cadet he had attained the rank of lieutenant it was doubtful if he +would ever rise higher. His mother had left him four thousand dollars, +so he went over to the Latin Quarter and began to study painting. That +he was unfitted for, and meeting Eugène Bléry he became interested in +etching. A Dutch seventeenth-century etcher and draughtsman, Reiner +Zeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too, Ducereau and Nicolle. +"An etching by the latter of a riverside view through the arch of a +bridge is like a link between Meryon and Piranesi," says D.S. MacColl. +Meryon also studied under the tuition of a painter named Phelippes. He +went to Belgium in 1856 on the invitation of the Duc d'Aremberg, and +in 1858 he was sent to Charenton suffering from melancholy and +delusions. He left in a year and returned to Paris and work; but, as +Baudelaire wrote, a cruel demon had touched the brain of the artist. A +mystic delirium set in. He ceased to etch, and evidently suffered from +the persecution madness. In every corner he believed conspiracies were +hatching. He often disappeared, often changed his abode. Sometimes he +would appear dressed gorgeously at a boulevard café in company with +brilliant birds of prey; then he would be seen slinking through mean +streets in meaner rags. There are episodes in his life that recall the +career of another man of genius, Gerard de Nerval, poet, noctambulist, +suicide. It is known that Meryon destroyed his finest plates, but not +in a mad fit. Baudelaire says that the artist, who was a +perfectionist, did not wish to see his work suffer from rebiting, so +he quite sensibly sawed up the plates into tiny strips. That he was +suspicious of his fellow-etchers is illustrated in the story told by +Sir Seymour Haden, who bought several of his etchings from him at a +fair price. Two miles away from the atelier the Englishman was +overtaken by Meryon. He asked for the proofs he had sold, "as they +were of a nature to compromise him"; besides, from what he knew of +Haden's etchings he was determined that his proofs should not go to +England. Sir Seymour at once returned the etchings. Now, whether +Meryon's words were meant as a compliment or the reverse is doubtful. +He was half crazy, but he may have seen through a hole in the +millstone. + +Frederick Keppel once met in Paris an old printer named Beillet who +did work for Meryon. He could not always pay for the printing of his +celebrated Abside de Notre Dame, a masterpiece, as he hadn't the +necessary ten cents. "I never got my money!" exclaimed the thrifty +printer. Enormous endurance, enormous vanity, diseased pride, outraged +human sentiment, hatred of the Second Empire because of the particular +clause in the old Napoleonic code relating to the research of +paternity; an irregular life, possibly drugs, certainly alcoholism, +repeated rejections by the academic authorities, critics, and dealers +of his work--these and a feeble constitution sent the unfortunate back +to Charenton, where he died February 14, 1868. Baudelaire, his +critical discoverer, had only preceded him to a lunatic's grave six +months earlier. Inasmuch as there is a certain family likeness among +men of genius with disordered minds and instincts, several comparisons +might be made between Meryon and Baudelaire. Both were great artists +and both were born with flawed, neurotic systems. Dissipation and +misery followed as a matter of course. + +Charles Meryon was, nevertheless, a sane and a magnificent etcher. He +executed about a hundred plates, according to Burty. He did not avoid +portraiture, and to live he sometimes manufactured pot-boilers for the +trade. To his supreme vision was joined a miraculous surety of touch. +Baudelaire was right--those plates, the Paris set, so dramatic and +truthful in particulars, could have been sold if Meryon, with his +wolfish visage, his fierce, haggard eyes, his gruff manner, had not +offered them in person. He looked like a vagabond very often and too +often acted like a brigand. The Salon juries were prejudiced against +his work because of his legend. Verlaine over again! The etchings were +classic when they were born. We wonder they did not appeal +immediately. To-day, if you are lucky enough to come across one, you +are asked a staggering price. They sold for a song--when they did +sell--during the lifetime of the artist. Louis Napoleon and Baron +Haussmann destroyed picturesque Paris to the consternation of Meryon, +who to the eye of an archæologist united the soul of an artist. He +loved old Paris. We can evoke it to-day, thanks to these etchings, +just as the Paris of 1848 is forever etched in the pages of Flaubert's +L'Education Sentimentale. + +But there is hallucination in these etchings, beginning with Le +Stryge, and its demoniac leer, "insatiable vampire, l'eternelle +luxure." That gallery of Notre Dame, with Wotan's ravens flying +through the slim pillars from a dream city bathed in sinister light, +is not the only striking conception of the poet-etcher. The grip of +reality is shown in such plates as Tourelle, Rue de la Tisseranderie, +and La Pompe, Notre Dame. Here are hallucinations translated into the +actual terms of art, suggesting, nevertheless, a solidity, a sharpness +of definition, withal a sense of fluctuating sky, air, clouds that +make you realise the _justesse_ of Berenson's phrase--tactile values. +With Meryon the tactile perception was a sixth sense. Clairvoyant of +images, he could transcribe the actual with an almost cruel precision. +Telescopic eyes his, as MacColl has it, and an imagination that +perceived the spectre lurking behind the door, the horror of enclosed +spaces, and the mystic fear of shadows--a Poe imagination, romantic, +with madness as an accomplice in the horrible game of his life. One is +tempted to add that the romantic imagination is always slightly mad. +It runs to seed in darkness and despair. The fugitive verse of Meryon +is bitter, ironical, defiant; a whiff from an underground prison, +where seems to sit in tortured solitude some wretch abandoned by +humanity, a stranger even at the gates of hell. + +Sir Seymour Haden has told us that Meryon's method was to make a +number of sketches, two or three inches square, of parts of his +picture, which he put together and arranged into a harmonious whole. +Herkomer says that he "used the burin in finishing his bitten work +with marvellous skill. No better combination can be found of the +harmonious combination of the two." Burty declared that "Meryon +preserves the characteristic detail of architecture... Without +modifying the aspect of the monument he causes it to express its +hidden meaning, and gives it a broader significance by associating it +with his own thought." His employment of a dull green paper at times +showed his intimate feeling for tonalities. He is, more so than +Piranesi, the Rembrandt of architecture. Hamerton admits that the +French etcher was "one of the greatest and most original artists who +have appeared in Europe," and berates the public of the '60s for not +discovering this. Then this writer, copying in an astonishingly +wretched manner several of Meryon's etchings, analysing their defects +as he proceeds, asserts that there is false tonality in Le Stryge. +"The intense black in the street under the tower of St. Jacques +destroys the impression of atmosphere, though at a considerable +distance it is as dark as the nearest raven's wing, which cannot +relieve itself against it. This may have been done in order to obtain +a certain arrangement of black and white patches," etc. This was done +for the sheer purpose of oppositional effects. Did Hamerton see a fine +plate? The shadow is heavy; the street is in demi, not total, +obscurity; the values of the flying ravens and the shadow are clearly +enunciated. The passage is powerful, even sensational, and in the +Romantic, Hugoesque key. Hamerton is wrong. Meryon seldom erred. His +was a temperament of steel and fire. + + + + +JOHN MARTIN, MEZZOTINTER + + + +The sitting-room was long and narrow. A haircloth sofa of +uncompromising rectitude was pushed so close to the wall that the +imprints of at least two generations of heads might be discerned upon +the flowered wall-paper--flowers and grapes of monstrous size from +some country akin to that visited by the Israelitish spies as related +in the Good Book. A mahogany sideboard stood at the upper end of the +room; in one window hung a cage which contained a feeble canary. As +you entered your eyes fell upon an ornamental wax fruit piece under a +conical glass. A stuffed bird, a robin redbreast, perched on a frosted +tree in the midst of these pale tropical offerings, glared at you with +beady eyes. Antimacassars and other things of horror were in the room. +Also a centre table upon which might have been found Cowper's poems, +the Bible, Beecher's sermons, and an illustrated book about the Holy +Land by some hardworking reverend. It was Aunt Jane's living-room; in +it she had rocked and knitted for more than half a century. There were +a few pictures on the wall, a crayon of her brother, a bank president +with a shaved upper lip, a high, pious forehead, and in his eyes a +stern expression of percentage. Over the dull white marble mantelpiece +hung a huge mezzotint, of violent contrast in black and white, a +picture whose subject had without doubt given it the place of honour +in this old-fashioned, tasteless, homely, comfortable room. It bore +for a title The Fall of Nineveh, and it was designed and mezzotinted +by John Martin. + +Let us look at this picture. It depicts the downfall of the great city +upon which the wrath of God is visited. There are ghastly gleams of +lightning above the doomed vicinity. A fierce tempest is in progress +as the invading hosts break down the great waterways and enter +dry-shod into the vast and immemorial temples and palaces. The +tragedy, the human quality of the design, is summed up by the agitated +groups in the foreground; the king, surrounded by his harem, makes a +gesture of despair; the women, with loose-flowing draperies, surround +him like frightened swans. A high priest raises his hand to the stormy +heavens, upon which he is evidently invoking as stormy maledictions. A +warrior swings his blade; to his neck clings a fair helpless one, half +nude. There are other groups. Men in armour rush to meet the foe in +futile agitation. On temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, on +the efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms +affrighted humanity. The impression is grandiose and terrific. Exotic +architecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dusty +corridors of legend or history--these and a hundred other details are +enclosed within the frame of this composition. Another picture which +hangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is +colourless in comparison. The Englishman had greater imagination than +the German, though he lacked the latter's anatomical science. To-day +in the Pinakothek, Munich, Kaulbach holds a place of honour. You may +search in vain at the London National Gallery for the paintings of a +man who once was on the crest of popularity in England, whose Biblical +subjects attracted multitudes, whose mezzotints and engravings were +sold wherever the English Bible was read. John Martin, painter, +mezzotinter, man of gorgeous imagination, second to De Quincey or the +author of Vathek, is to-day more forgotten than Beckford himself. + +Heinrich Heine in his essay, The Romantic School, said that "the +history of literature is a great morgue, wherein each seeks the dead +who are near or dear to him." Into what morgue fell John Martin before +his death? How account for the violent changes in popular taste? +Martin suffered from too great early success. The star of Turner was +in the ascendant. John Ruskin denied merit to the mezzotinter, and so +it is to-day that if you go to our print-shops you will seldom find +one of his big or little plates. He has gone out of fashion--fatal +phrase!--and only in the cabinets of old collectors can you get a peep +at his archaic and astounding productions. William Blake is in vogue; +perhaps Martin--? And then those who have garnered his plates will +reap a harvest. + +Facts concerning him or his work are slight. Bryan's dictionary +accords him a few paragraphs. When at the British Museum, a few years +ago, I asked Mr. Sidney Colvin about the Martins in his print-room. +There are not many, not so many as in a certain private collection +here. But Mr. Colvin told me of the article written by Cosmo Monkhouse +in the Dictionary of National Biography, and from it we are enabled to +present a few items about the man's career. He was born at Hayden +Bridge, near Hexham, Northumberland, July 19, 1789. His father, +Fenwick Martin, a fencing-master, held classes at the Chancellor's +Head, Newcastle. His brothers, Jonathan (1782-1838) and William +(1772-1851), have some claim on our notice, for the first was an +insane prophet and incendiary, having set fire to York Minster in +1829; William was a natural philosopher and poet who published many +works to prove the theory of perpetual motion. "After having convinced +himself by means of thirty-six experiments of the impossibility of +demonstrating it scientifically, it was revealed to him in a dream +that God had chosen him to discover the great cause of all things, and +this he made the subject of many works" (Jasnot, Vérités positives, +1854). Verily, as Lombroso hath it, "A hundred fanatics are found for +a theological or metaphysical statement, but not one for a geometric +problem." + +The Martin stock was, without doubt, neurasthenic. John was +apprenticed when fourteen to Wilson, a Newcastle coach painter, but +ran away after a dispute over wages. He met Bonifacio Musso, an +Italian china painter, and in 1806 went with him to London. There he +supported himself painting china and glass while he studied +perspective and architecture. At nineteen he married and in 1812 lived +in High Street, Marylebone, and from there sent to the Academy his +first picture, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (from Tales +of the Genii). The figure of Sadak was so small that the framers +disputed as to the top of the picture. It sold to Mr. Manning for +fifty guineas. Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy, +encouraged Martin, and next year he painted Adam's First Sight of Eve, +which he sold for seventy guineas. In 1814 his Clytis was shown in an +ante-room of the exhibition, and he bitterly complained of his +treatment. Joshua, in 1816, was as indifferently hung, and he never +forgave the Academy the insult, though he did not withdraw from its +annual functions. In 1817 he was appointed historical painter to +Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. He etched about this time +Character of Trees (seven plates) and the Bard at the Academy. In 1818 +he removed to Allsop Terrace, New (Marylebone road). In 1819 came The +Fall of Babylon, Macbeth (1820), Belshazzar's Feast (1821), which, +"excluded" from the Academy, yet won the £200 prize. A poem by T.S. +Hughes started Martin on this picture. It was a national success and +was exhibited in the Strand behind a glass transparency. It went the +round of the provinces and large cities and attracted thousands. +Martin joined the Society of British Artists at its foundation and +exhibited with them from 1824 to 1831, and also in 1837 and 1838, +after which he sent his important pictures to the Royal Academy. + +In 1833 The Fall of Nineveh went to Brussels, where it was bought by +the Government. Martin was elected member of the Belgian Academy and +the Order of Leopold was conferred on him. His old quarrels with the +Academy broke out in 1836, and he testified before a committee as to +favouritism. Then followed The Death of Moses, The Deluge, The Eve of +the Deluge, The Assuaging of the Waters, Pandemonium. He painted +landscapes and water-colours, scenes on the Thames, Brent, Wandle, +Wey, Stillingbourne, and the hills and eminences about London. About +this time he began scheming for a method of supplying London with +water and one that would improve the docks and sewers. He engraved +many of his own works, Belshazzar, Joshua, Nineveh, Fall of Babylon. +The first two named, with The Deluge, were presented by the French +Academy to Louis Philippe, for which courtesy a medal was struck off +in Martin's honour. The Ascent of Elijah, Christ Tempted in the +Wilderness, and Martin's illustrations (with Westall's) to Milton's +Paradise Lost were all completed at this period. For the latter Martin +received £2,000. He removed to Lindsey House, Chelsea, in 1848 or +1849, and was living there in 1852, when he sent to the Academy his +last contribution, Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. November 12, +1853, while engaged upon his last large canvases, The Last Judgment, +The Great Day of Wrath, and The Plains of Heaven, he was paralysed on +his right side. He was removed to the Isle of Man, and obstinately +refusing proper nourishment, died at Douglas February 17, 1854. After +his death three pictures, scenes from the Apocalypse, were exhibited +at the Hall of Commerce. His portrait by Wangemann appeared in the +_Magazine of Fine Arts_. A second son, Leopold Charles, writer, and +godson of Leopold, King of Belgium, was an authority on costumes and +numismatics (1817-89). His wife was a sister of Sir John Tenniel of +_Punch_. + +John Martin was slightly cracked; at least he was so considered by his +contemporaries. He was easily affronted, yet he was a very generous +man. He bought Etty's picture, The Combat, in 1825 for two or three +hundred guineas. There are at the South Kensington Museum three +Martins, watercolours, and one oil; at Newcastle, an oil. At the time +of his decease his principal works were in the collections of Lord de +Tabley, Dukes of Buckingham and Sutherland, Messrs. Hope and +Scarisbruck, Earl Grey and Prince Albert. The Leyland family of +Nantchvyd, North Wales, owns the Joshua and several typical works of +Martin. Wilkie, in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, describes +Belshazzar's Feast as a "phenomenon." Bulwer declared that Martin was +"more original and self-dependent than Raphael or Michael Angelo." In +the Last Essays of Elia there is one by Charles Lamb entitled +Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Production of Modern Art. +The name of Martin is not mentioned, but several of his works are +unmistakably described. "His towered architecture [Lamb is writing of +Belshazzar's Feast] are of the highest order of the material sublime. +Whether they were dreams or transcripts of some elder +workmanship--Assyrian ruins old--restored by this mighty artist, they +satisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions of the glories of +the antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled." +"Literary" art critic as he was, Lamb put his finger on Martin's +weakest spot--his figure painting. The entire essay should be read, +for it contains a study of the Joshua in which this most delicious of +English prose writers speaks of the "wise falsifications" of the great +masters. Before his death the critics, tiring of him sooner than the +public, called Martin tricky, meretricious, mechanical. To be sure, +his drawing is faulty, his colour hot and smoky; nevertheless, he was +not a charlatan. As David Wilkie wrote: "Weak in all these points in +which he can be compared to other artists," he had the compensating +quality of an imposing, if at times operatic, imagination. Monkhouse +justly says that in Martin's illustrations to Milton the smallness of +scale and absence of colour enable us to appreciate the grandeur of +his conceptions with a minimum of his defects. + +In sooth he lacked variety. His pictures are sooty and apocalyptic. We +have seen the Mountain Landscape, at South Kensington, The Destruction +of Herculaneum, at Manchester, another at Newcastle whose subject +escapes us, and we confess that we prefer the mezzotints of Martin, +particularly those engraved by Le Keux--whose fine line and keen sense +of balance corrected the incoherence of Martin's too blackened shadows +and harsh explosions of whites. One looks in vain for the velvety tone +of Earlom, or the vivid freshness of Valentine Green, in Martin. He +was not a colourist; his mastery consisted in transferring to his huge +cartoons a sense of the awful, of the catastrophic. He excelled in the +delineation of massive architecture, and if Piranesi was his superior +in exactitude, he equalled the Italian in majesty and fantasy of +design. No such cataclysmic pictures were ever before painted, nor +since, though Gustave Doré, who without doubt made a study of Martin, +has incorporated in his Biblical illustrations many of Martin's +overwhelming ideas--the Deluge, for example. James Ensor, the Belgian +illustrator, is an artist of fecund fancy who, alone among the new +men, has betrayed a feeling for the strange architecture, dream +architecture, we encounter in Martin. Coleridge in Kubla Khan, De +Quincey in opium reveries, Poe and Baudelaire are among the writers +who seem nearest to the English mezzotinter. William Beckford's +Vathek, that most Oriental of tales, first written in French by a +millionaire of genius, should have inspired Martin. Perhaps its mad +fantasy did, for all we know--there is no authentic compilation of his +compositions. Heine has spoken of Martin, as has Théophile Gautier; +and his name, by some kink of destiny, is best known to the present +generation because of Macaulay's mention of it in an essay. + +The Vale of Tempe is one of Martin's larger plates seldom seen in the +collector's catalogue. We have viewed it and other rare prints in the +choice collection referred to already. Satan holding council, after +Milton, is a striking conception. The Prince of Eblis sits on a vast +globe of ebony. About him are tier upon tier of faces, the faces of +devils. Infernal chandeliers depend from remote ceilings. Light gashes +the globe and the face and figure of Satan; both are of supernal +beauty. Could this mezzotint, so small in size, so vast in its shadowy +suggestiveness, have stirred Baudelaire to lines that shine with a +metallic poisonous lustre? + +And there is that tiny mezzotint in which we find ourselves at the +base of a rude little hill. The shock of the quaking earth, the silent +passing of the sheeted dead and the rush of the affrighted multitudes +tell us that a cosmic tragedy is at hand. In a flare of lightning we +see silhouetted against an angry sky three crosses at the top of a sad +little hill. It is a crucifixion infinitely more real, more intense +than Doré's. Another scene--also engraved by Le Keux: On a stony +platform, vast and crowded, the people kneel in sackcloth and ashes; +the heavens thunder over the weeping millions of Nineveh, and the Lord +of Hosts will not be appeased. Stretching to the clouds are black +basaltic battlements, and above rear white-terraced palaces as swans +that strain their throats to the sky. The mighty East is in penitence. +Or, Elijah is rapt to heaven in a fiery whirlwind; or God creates +light. This latter is one of the most extraordinary conceptions of a +great visionary and worthy of William Blake. Or Sadak searching for +the waters of oblivion. Alas, poor humanity! is here the allegory. A +man, a midget amid the terrifying altitudes of barren stone, lifts +himself painfully over a ledge of rock. Above him are vertiginous +heights; below him, deadly precipices. Nothing helps him but +himself--a page torn from Max Stirner is this parable. Light streams +upon the struggling egoist as he toils to the summit of consciousness. +Among the designs of nineteenth-century artists we can recall none so +touching, so powerful, so modern as this picture. Martin was not +equally successful in portraying celestial episodes, though his +paradises are enormous panoramas replete with architectural beauties. +His figures, as exemplified in Miltonic illustrations, are more +conventional than Fuseli's and never naively original as are Blake's. +Indeed, of Blake's mystic poetry and divination Martin betrays no +trace. He is not so much the seer as the inventor of infernal +harmonies. Satan reviewing his army of devils is truly magnificent in +its depiction of the serried host armed for battle; behind glistens +burning Tophet in all its smoky splendour. Satan in shining armour +must be a thousand feet high; he is sadly out of scale. So, too, in +the quarrel of Michael and Satan over the sleeping Adam and Eve. Blake +is here recalled in the rhythms of the monstrous figures. Bathos is in +the design of Lucifer swimming in deepest hell upon waves of fire and +filth; yet the lugubrious arches of the caverns in the perspective +reveal Blake's fantasy, so quick to respond to external stimuli. +Martin saw the earth as in an apocalyptic swoon, its forms distorted, +its meanings inverted; a mad world, the world of an older theogony. +But if there was little human in his visions, he is enormously +impersonal; if he assailed heaven's gates on wings of melting wax, or +dived deep into the pool of iniquity, he none the less caught glimpses +in his breathless flights of strange countries across whose sill no +human being ever passes. There is genuine hallucination. He must have +seen his ghosts so often that in the end they petrified him, as did +the Statue Don Giovanni. Martin was a species of reversed Turner. He +spied the good that was in evil, the beauty in bituminous blacks. He +is the painter of black music, the deifier of Beelzebub, and also one +who caught the surge and thunder of the Old Testament, its majesty and +its savagery. As an illustrator of sacred history, the world may one +day return to John Martin. + + + + +ZORN + + + +Anders Zorn--what's in a name? Possibly the learned and amiable father +of Tristram Shandy or that formidable pedant Professor Slawkenbergius +might find much to arouse his interest in the patronymic of the great +Swedish painter and etcher. What Zorn means in his native tongue we do +not profess to know; but in German it signifies anger, wrath, rage. +Now, the Zorn in life is not an enraged person--unless some lady +sitter asks him to paint her as she is not. He is, as all will testify +who have met him, a man of rare personal charm and sprightly humour. +He, it may be added, calls yellow yellow, and he never paints a +policeman like a poet. In a word, a man of robust, normal vision, a +realist and an artist. False realism with its hectic, Zola-like +romanticism is distasteful to Zorn. He is near Degas among the +Frenchmen and Zuloaga among the new Spaniards; near them in a certain +forthright quality of depicting life, though unlike them in technical +and individual methods. + +Yes, Zorn, that crisp, bold, short name, which begins with a letter +that abruptly cuts both eye and ear, quite fits the painter's +personality, fits his art. He is often ironic. Some fanciful theorist +has said that the letters Z and K are important factors in the career +of the men who possess them in their names. Camille Saint-Saëns has +spoken of Franz Liszt and his lucky letter. It is a very pretty idea, +especially when one stakes on zero at Monte Carlo; but no doubt Anders +Zorn would be the first to laugh the idea out of doors. + +We recall an exhibition a few years ago at Venice in the art gallery +of the Giardino Reale. Zorn had a place of honour among the boiling +and bubbling Secessionists; indeed, his work filled a large room. And +what work! Such a giant's revel of energy. Such landscapes, riotous, +sinister, and lovely. Such women! Here we pause for breath. Zorn's +conception of womanhood has given offence to many idealists, who do +not realise that once upon a time our forebears were furry and +indulged in arboreal habits. Zorn can paint a lady; he has signed many +gentle and aristocratic canvases. + +But Zorn is also too sincere not to paint what he sees. Some of his +models are of the earth, earthy; others step toward you with the +candid majesty of a Brunhilda, naked, unashamed, and regal. They are +all vital. We recall, too, the expressions, shocked, amazed, even +dazed, of some American art students who, fresh from their golden +Venetian dreams, faced the uncompromising pictures of a man who had +faced the everyday life of his day. For these belated visionaries, +whose ideal in art is to painfully imitate Giorgione, Titian, or +Tiepolo, this modern, with his rude assault upon the nerves, must seem +a very iconoclast. Yet Zorn only attempts to reproduce the life +encircling him. He is a child of his age. He, too, has a perception of +beauty, but it is the beauty that may be found by the artist with an +ardent, unspoiled gaze, the curious, disquieting beauty of our time. +Whistler saw it in old Venetian doorways as well as down Chelsea way +or at Rotherhithe. Zorn sees it in some corner of a wood, in some +sudden flex of muscle or intimate firelit interior. And he loves to +depict the glistening curves of his big model as she stands in the +sunlight, a solid reproach to physical and moral anæmia. A pagan, by +Apollo! + +As an etcher the delicacy of his sheathed lion's paw is the principal +quality that meets the eye, notwithstanding the broad execution. +Etching is essentially an impressionistic art. Zorn is an +impressionist among etchers. He seems to attack his plate not with the +finesse of a meticulous fencing-master but like a Viking, with a broad +Berserker blade. He hews, he hacks, he gashes. There is blood in his +veins, and he does not spare the ink. But examine closely these little +prints--some of them miracles of printing--and you may discern their +delicate sureness, subtlety, and economy of gesture. Fitzroy +Carrington quotes the Parisian critic Henri Marcel, who among other +things wrote of the Zorn etchings: "Let us only say that these +etchings--paradoxical in their coarseness of means and fineness of +effect--manifest the master at his best." + +Coarseness of means and fineness of effect--the phrase is a happy one. +Coarse is sometimes the needle-work of Zorn, but the end justifies the +means. He is often cruel, more cruel than Sargent. His portraits prove +it. He has etched all his friends, some of whom must have felt +honoured and amused--or else offended. The late Paul Verlaine, for +example, would not have been pleased with the story of his life as +etched by the Swede. It is as biting a commentary--one is tempted to +say as acid--as a page from Strindberg. Yes, without a touch of +Strindberg's mad fantasy, Zorn is kin to him in his ironic, witty way +of saying things about his friends and in front of their faces. +Consider that large plate of Renan. Has any one so told the truth +concerning the ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer of +France? The large, loosely modelled head with its fleshy curves, its +super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontifical +expression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania of +certitude"--here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous disdainer of democracies, +and planner of a phalanstery of superior men years before Nietzsche's +superman appeared. Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker; +also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, is it not, +to evoke with needle, acid, paper, and ink the dualism of such a brain +and temperament as was Renan's? + +He is not flattering to himself, Zorn. The Henry G. Marquand, two +impressions, leaves one rather sad. An Irish girl, Annie, is superb in +its suggestion of form and colour. Saint-Gaudens and his model is +excellent; we prefer the portrait. The Evening Girl Bathing is rare in +treatment--simple, restrained, vital. She has turned her back, and we +are grateful, for it is a beautiful back. The landscape is as +evanescent as Whistler, the printing is in a delicate key. The Berlin +Gallery contains a Zorn, a portrait striking in its reality. It +represents Miss Maja von Heyne wearing a collar of skins. She could +represent the Maja of Ibsen's epilogue, When We Dreamers Awake; Maja, +the companion of the bear hunter, Ulfheim. As etched, we miss the +massiveness, the rich, vivid colour, yet it is a plate of distinction. + +Among his portraits are the Hon. Daniel S. Lamont, Senator "Billy" +Mason, the Hon. John Hay, Mr. and Mrs. Atherton Curtis, and several +big-wigs of several nations. An oil-painting is an impressionistic +affair, showing some overblown girls dressing after their bath. The +sun flecks their shoulders, but otherwise seems rather inclined to +retire modestly. Evidently not the midnight sun. + +We have barely indicated the beauties in which the virile spirit of +Anders Zorn comes out at you from the wall--a healthy, large-hearted, +girted Swede is this man with the Z. + + + + +BRANGWYN + + + +The name of Frank Brangwyn may fall upon unresponsive ears; yet he has +a Continental reputation and is easily the foremost English +impressionist. New York has seen but little of his work; if we mistake +not, there was a large piece of his, a Gipsy Tinker in the open air, +hung several seasons ago at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Mr. +Kennedy shows extraordinary etchings of his at the Wunderlich +Galleries. We call them extraordinary not alone because of their size, +but also because Brangwyn is practically the first among latter-day +artists to apply boldly to etching the methods of the impressionists. +Etching in its essential nature is an impressionistic art. We do not +mean to assert that Brangwyn uses the dot or dash or broken dabs in +his plates, for the very good reason that he is working in black and +white; nevertheless a glance at his plates will show you a new way of +conquering old prejudices. Whistler it was who railed at large +etchings. He was not far wrong. In the hands of the majority of +etchers a large plate is an abomination, diffused in interest, coarse +of line; but Brangwyn is not to be considered among this majority. He +is a big fellow in everything. Besides, Whistler was using the +familiar argument, _pro doma sua_. The same may be said of Poe, who +simply would not hear of a long poem (shades of Milton!) or of Chopin, +who lost his way in the sonata form, though coming out in the gorgeous +tropical land, the thither side of sonatas and other tonal animals. + +Because Catullus and Sappho did not write epics that is no reason why +Dante should not. It is the old story of the tailless fox. Brangwyn as +well as Anders Zorn has been called a rough-and-ready artist. For +exquisite tone and pattern we must go to Whistler and his school. +Brangwyn is never exquisite, though he is often poetic, even epical. +Look at that Bridge, Barnard Castle. It is noble in outline, lovely in +atmosphere. Or at the Old Hammersmith--"swell," as the artist slang +goes. The Mine is in feeling and mass Rembrandtish; and as we have +used the name of the great Dutchman we may as well admit that to him, +despite a world of difference, Brangwyn owes much. He has the sense of +mass. What could be more tangibly massive than the plate called +Breaking Up of the Hannibal? Here is a theme which Turner in The +Fighting Téméraire made truly poetic, and Seymour Haden in his +Agamemnon preserved more than a moiety of sentiment, not to mention +the technical prowess displayed; but in the hulk of this ugly old +vessel of Brangwyn's there is no beauty. However, it is hugely +impressive. His landscapes are not too seldom hell-scapes. + +The Inn of the Parrot is quaint with its reversed lettering. The Road +to Montreuil is warm in colour and finely handled. How many have +realised the charm of the rear view of Santa Maria Salute? It is one +of the most interesting of Brangwyn's Venetian etchings. His vision of +Saint Sophia, Constantinople, has the mystic quality we find in the +Dutchman Bauer's plates. A Church at Montreuil attracts the eye; +London Bridge is positively dramatic; the Old Kew Bridge has delicacy; +the Sawyers with their burly figures loom up monstrously; the Building +of the New Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, recalls, as +treated by the impressionistic brush of Brangwyn (for the needle seems +transformed into a paint-loaded spike), one of H.G. Wells's terrific +socialistic structures of the year 2009. Remember that Brangwyn is +primarily a painter, an impressionist. He sees largely. His dream of +the visible world (and like Sorolla, it is never the world invisible +with him) is one of patches and masses, of luminous shadows, of +animated rhythms, of rich arabesques. He is sib to the Scotch. His +father is said to have been a Scottish weaver who settled in Bruges. +Frank saw much of the world before settling in London. He was born at +Bruges, 1867. The Golden Book of Art describes him as a one-time +disciple of William Morris. He has manufactured glass, furniture, +wall-paper, pottery. His curiosity is insatiable. He is a mural +decorator who in a frenzy could cover miles of space if some kind +civic corporation would but provide the walls. As the writer of the +graceful preface to the Wunderlich catalogue has it: "He gets the +character of his theme. His art is itself full of character." +Temperament, overflowing, passionate, and irresistible, is his +key-note. In music he might have been a Fritz Delius, a Richard +Strauss. He is an eclectic. He knows all schools, all methods. He is +Spanish in his fierce relish of the open air, of the sights--and we +almost said sounds--of many lands, but the Belgian strain, the touch +of the mystic and morose, creeps into his work. We have caught it more +in his oils than etchings. It is not singular, then, that his small +etched plates do not hold the eye; they lack magnetic quality. It is +the Titan, rude and raging, dashing ink over an acre of white paper, +that rivets you. The stock attitudes and gestures he does not give +you; and it is doubtful if he will have an audience soon in America, +where the sleek is king and prettiness is exalted over power. + + + + +DAUMIER + + + +Mr. Frank Weitenkampf, the curator of the Lenox Library print +department, shows nineteen portfolios which hold about seven hundred +lithographs by Honoré Daumier. This collection is a bequest of the +late Mr. Lawrence, and we doubt if the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris +surpasses it; that is, in the number of detached examples. There the +works of the great artist are imbedded in the various publications for +which he laboured so many years--such at _La Caricature, Les Beaux +Arts, L'Artiste, Les Modes Parisiennes, La Gazette Musicale, Le +Boulevard,_ and _Masques et Visages_. The Lawrence lithographs are +representatives, though not complete; the catalogue compiled by Loys +Delteil comprises 3,958 plates; the paintings and drawings are also +numerous. But an admirable idea of Daumier's versatile genius may be +gleaned at the Lenox Library, as all the celebrated series are there: +Paris Bohemians, the Blue Stockings, the Railways, La Caricature, +Croquis d'Expressions, Emotions Parisiennes, Actualités, Les +Baigneurs, Pastorales, Moeurs Conjugales, the Don Quixote plates, +Silhouettes, Souvenirs d'Artistes, Types Parisiens, the Advocates and +Judges, and a goodly number of the miscellanies. Altogether an +adequate exhibition. + +Honoré Daumier, who died February 11, 1879, was almost the last of the +giants of 1830, though he outlived many of them. Not affiliated with +the Barbizon group--though he was a romantic in his hatred of the +bourgeois--several of these painters were intimate friends; indeed, +Corot was his benefactor, making him a present of a cottage at +Valmondois (Seine-et-Oise), where the illustrator died. He was blind +and lonely at the end. Corot died 1875; Daubigny, his companion, 1878; +Millet, 1875, and Rousseau, with whom he corresponded, died 1867. In +1879 Flaubert still lived, working heroically upon that monument of +human inanity, Bouvard et Pécuchet; Maupassant, his disciple, had just +published a volume of verse; Manet was regarded as a dangerous +charlatan, Monet looked on as a madman; while poor Cézanne was only a +bad joke. The indurated critical judgment of the academic forces +pronounced Bonnat a greater portraitist than Velasquez, and Gérôme and +his mock antiques and mock orientalism far superior to Fromentin and +Chasseriau. It was a glorious epoch for mediocrity. And Daumier, in +whom there was something of Michael Angelo and Courbet, was admired +only as a clever caricaturist, the significance of his paintings +escaping all except a few. Corot knew, Daubigny knew, as earlier +Delacroix knew; and Balzac had said: "There is something of the +Michael Angelo in this man!" + +Baudelaire, whose critical _flair_ never failed him, wrote in his +Curiosités Esthétiques: "Daumier's distinguishing note as an artist is +his certainty. His drawing is fluent and easy; it is a continuous +improvisation. His powers of observation are such that in his work we +never find a single head that is out of character with the figure +beneath it. ... Here, in these animalised faces, may be seen and read +clearly all the meannesses of soul, all the absurdities, all the +aberrations of intelligence, all the vices of the heart; yet at the +same time all is broadly drawn and accentuated." Nevertheless one must +not look at too many of these caricatures. At first the Rabelaisian +side of the man appeals; presently his bitterness becomes too acrid. +Humanity is silly, repulsive; it is goat, pig, snake, monkey, and +tiger; but there is something else. Daumier would see several sides. +His pessimism, like Flaubert's, is deadly, but at times reaches the +pitch of the heroic. He could have echoed Flaubert's famous sentence: +"The ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope." Yet what wit, what +humour, what humanity in Daumier! His Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are +worth a wilderness of Dorés. And the Good Samaritan or The Drinkers. +The latter is as jovial as Steen or Hals. + +A story went the rounds after his death which neatly illustrates his +lack of worldliness. His modesty was proverbial, and once Daubigny, on +introducing him to an American picture dealer, warned him not to ask +less than five thousand francs for the first picture he sold to the +man. The American went to Daumier's atelier, and seeing a picture on +the easel, asked, "How much?" The artist, remembering Daubigny's +warning, answered, "Five thousand francs." The dealer immediately +bought it, and on demanding to see something else, Daumier put another +canvas on the easel, far superior to the one sold. The Yankee again +asked the price. The poor artist was perplexed. He had received no +instructions from Daubigny regarding a second sale; so when the +question was repeated he hesitated, and his timidity getting the +better of him, he replied: "Five hundred francs." "Don't want it; +wouldn't take it as a gift," said the dealer. "I like the other +better. Besides, I never sell any but expensive pictures," and he went +away satisfied that a man who sold so cheaply was not much of an +artist. This anecdote, which we heard second hand from Daubigny, may +be a fable, yet it never failed to send Daubigny into fits of +laughter. It may be surmised that, despite his herculean labours, +extending over more than half a century, Daumier never knew how to +make or save money. + +He was born at Marseilles in 1808. His father was a third-rate poet +who, suspecting his own gift, doubted the talent of his son, though +this talent was both precocious and prodigious. The usual thing +happened. Daumier would stick at nothing but his drawing; the attempt +to force him into law studies only made him hate the law and lawyers +and that hatred he never ceased to vent in his caricatures. He knocked +about until he learned in 1829 the technics of lithography; then he +soon became self-supporting. His progress was rapid. He illustrated +for the Boulevard journals; he caricatured Louis Philippe and was sent +to jail, Sainte-Pélagie, for six months. Many years afterward he +attacked with a like ferocity Napoleon III. + +Look at his frontispiece--rather an advertisement--of Victor Hugo's +Les Châtiments. It is as sinister, as malign as a Rops. The big book, +title displayed, crushes to earth a vulture which is a travesty of the +Napoleonic beak. Daumier was a power in Paris. Albert Wolff, the +critic of _Figaro_, tells how he earned five francs each time he +provided a text for a caricature by Daumier, and Philipon, who founded +several journals, actually claimed a share in Daumier's success +because he wrote some of the silly dialogues to his plates. + +Daumier was the artistic progenitor of the Caran d'Aches, the +Forains--who was it that called Forain "Degas en +caricature"?--Willettes, and Toulouse-de-Lautrecs. He was a political +pamphleteer, a scourger of public scamps, and a pictorial muck-raker +of genius. His mockery of the classic in art was later paralleled by +Offenbach in La Belle Hélène. But there were other sides to his +genius. Tiring of the hurly-burly of journalism, he retired in 1860 to +devote himself to painting. + +His style has been pronounced akin to that of Eugène Carrière; his +sense of values on a par with Goya's and Rembrandt's (that Shop Window +of his in the Durand-Ruel collection is truly Rembrandtesque). This +feeling for values was so remarkable that it enabled him to produce an +impression with three or four tones. The colours he preferred were +grays, browns, and he manipulated his blacks like a master. Mauclair +does not hesitate to put Daumier among the great painters of the past +century on the score of his small canvases. "They contain all his +gifts of bitter and profound observation, all the mastery of his +drawings, to which they add the attractions of rich and intense +colour," declares Mauclair. Doubtless he was affected by the influence +of Henri Monnier, but Daumier really comes from no one. He belongs to +the fierce tribe of synics and men of exuberant powers, like Goya and +Courbet. A born anarch of art, he submitted to no yoke. He would have +said with Anacharsis Cloots: "I belong to the party of indignation." +He was a proud individualist. That he had a tender side, a talent for +friendship, may be noted in the affectionate intercourse he maintained +for years with Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Dupré, Geoffroy, the sculptor +Pascal, and others. He was very impulsive and had a good heart with +all his misanthropy, for he was an idealist reversed. The etching of +him by Loys Delteil is thus described by a sympathetic commentator: +"Daumier was very broad-shouldered, his head rather big, with slightly +sunken eyes, which must, however, have had an extraordinary power of +penetration. Though the nose is a little heavy and inelegant, the +projecting forehead, unusually massive like that of Victor Hugo or of +Beethoven and barred with a determined furrow, reveals the great +thinker, the man of lofty and noble aspirations. The rather long hair, +thrown backward, adds to the expression of the fine head; and finally +the beard worn collarwise, according to the prevailing fashion, gives +to Daumier's face the distinctive mark of his period." This etched +portrait may be seen in several states at the Lenox Library. + + + + +LALANNE'S ETCHINGS + + + +How heavily personality counts in etching may be noted in the etched +work of Maxime Lalanne which is at the Keppel Galleries. This skilful +artist, so deft with his needle, so ingenious in fancy, escapes great +distinction by a hair's breadth. He is without that salt of +individuality that is so attractive in Whistler. Of him Hamerton +wrote: "No one ever etched so gracefully as Maxime Lalanne; ... he is +essentially a true etcher... There have been etchers of greater power, +of more striking originality, but there has never been an etcher equal +to him in a certain delicate elegance." This is very amiable, and +Joseph Pennell is quite as favourable in his judgment. "His ability," +wrote Mr. Pennell in Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen, "to express a +great building, a vast town, or a delicate little landscape has never +been equalled, I think, by anybody but Whistler." Mr. Pennell modestly +omits his own name; but the truth is that Pennell is as excellent if +not more individual a draughtsman as Lalanne, and when it comes to +vision, to invention, and to the manipulation of the metal he is the +superior of the Frenchman. The American etcher rates Lalanne's lines +above Titian's. Whistler and Titian would be big companions indeed for +the clever-mannered and rather pedantic Lalanne. + +Let us admit without balking at Hamerton that his line is graceful. He +belongs to the old-fashioned school which did not dream, much less +approve, of modern tonal effects in their plates. A Lalanne etching is +as clean and vivid as a photograph (not an "art" photograph). It is +also as hard. Atmosphere, in the material as well as the poetic sense, +is missing. His skies are disappointing. Those curly-cue clouds are +meaningless, and the artist succeeds better when he leaves a blank. At +least some can fill it with the imagination. Another grave defect is +the absence of modulation in his treatment of a landscape and its +linear perspective. Everything seems to be on the same plane of +interest, nor does he vary the values of his blacks--in foreground, +middle distance, and the upper planes the inking is often in the same +violent key. Such a capital plate, for example, which depicts a fire +in the port of Bordeaux is actually untrue in its values. Dramatic in +feeling and not without a note here and there of Rembrandt, this +particular composition fails, just fails to hit the bull's-eye. + +After all, we must judge a man in his genre, as Keppel _père_ puts it. +Maxime Lalanne's style is that of a vanished generation in etching. He +was a contemporary of Meryon, but that unhappy man of genius taught +him nothing. Born at Bordeaux in 1827, Lalanne died in 1886. He was a +pupil of Jean Gigoux (1806-94), a painter whose gossipy souvenirs +(1885) pleased Paris and still please the curious. (Gigoux it was who +remained in Balzac's house when the novelist died; though he was not +visiting the master of the house.) From this painter Lalanne evidently +imbibed certain theories of his art which he set forth in his Treatise +on Etching (1866). + +Strangely enough, illustrator as he was, his transpositions into black +and white of subjects by Troyon, Ruysdael, Crome, Constable, and many +others are not so striking either in actual technique or individual +grasp as his original pieces. Constable, for instance, is thin, +diffuse, and without richness. Mezzotinted by the hands of such a man +as Lucas, we recognise the real medium for translating the English +painter. A master of the limpid line, Lalanne shows you a huddled bit +of Amsterdam or a distant view of Bordeaux, or that delicious prospect +taken on a spot somewhere below the Pont Saint-Michel, with the Pont +Neuf and the Louvre in the background. He had a feeling for those +formal gardens which have captured within their enclosure a moiety of +nature's unstudied ease. The plate called Aux Environs de Paris +reveals this. And what slightly melancholy tenderness there is in Le +Canal à Pont Sainte-Maxence. There are several states of the "Villers" +etching, an attractive land and seascape, marred, however, by the +clumsy sameness of the blacks in the foreground. + +Without possessing Meryon's grim power in the presentation of old +Paris streets and tumble-down houses, Lalanne has achieved several +remarkable plates of this order. One is his well-known Rue des +Marmousets. This street is almost as repellent-looking as Rue +Mouffetard at its worst period. Ancient and sinister, its reputation +was not enticing. In it once dwelt a pastry cook who, taking his crony +the barber into his confidence, literally made mince-meat of a +stranger and sold the pies to the neighbours. + +Messire Jacques du Breul, in his Le Théâtre des Antiquités de Paris +(1612), remarks, not without critical unction, in his quaint French: +"De la chair d'icelui faisit des pastez qui se trouvoient meilleurs +que les aultres, d'autant que la chair de l'homme est plus délicate à +cause de la nourriture que celle des aultres animaux." Every one to +his taste, as the old politician said when he kissed the donkey. When +you study the Lalanne etching of this gruesome alley you almost expect +to see at the corner Anatole France's famous cook-shop with its +delectable odours and fascinating company. + +The scenes of Thames water-side, Nogent, Houlgate Beach, at Richmond, +or at Cusset are very attractive. His larger plates are not +convincing, the composition does not hang together; the eye vainly +seeks focussing centres of interest. Beraldi was right when he said +that Lalanne has not left one surpassing plate, one of which the world +can say: There is a masterpiece! Yet is Maxime Lalanne among the +Little Masters of characteristic etching. His appeal is popular, he is +easily comprehended of the people. + + + + +LOUIS LEGRAND + + + +The etched work of the brilliant Frenchman Louis Legrand is at last +beginning to be appreciated in this country. French etchings, unless +by painter-etchers, have never been very popular with us. We admire +Meryon and Helleu's drypoints, Bracquemond, Jacquemart; Félix Buhot +has a following; Lalanne and Daubigny too; but in comparison with the +demand for Rembrandt, Whistler, Seymour Haden, or Zorn the Paris men +are not in the lead. There is Rops, for example, whose etchings may be +compared to Meryon's; yet who except a few amateurs seeks Rops? Louis +Legrand is now about forty-five, at the crest of his career, a +versatile, spontaneous artist who is equally happy with pigments or +the needle. His pastels are much sought, but his dry-points have +gained for him celebrity. Though a born colourist, the primary gift of +the man is his draughtsmanship. His designs, swift and supple +notations of the life around him, delight the eye by reason of their +personal touch and because of the intensely human feeling that he +infuses into every plate. Legrand was one of the few pupils of +Félicien Rops, and technically he has learned much of his master; but +his way of viewing men and women and life is different from that of +the Belgian genius. He has irony and wit and humour--the two we seldom +bracket--and he has pity also; he loves the humble and despised. His +portraits of babies, the babies of the people, are captivating. +Imagine a Rops who has some of Millet's boundless sympathy for his +fellow-humans and you have approximately an understanding of Louis +Legrand. + +He is a native of Dijon, the city that gave birth to Bossuet, but +Legrand is not that kind of Burgundian. Several critics pretend to see +in his work the characteristics of his native Côte d'Or; that, +however, may be simply a desire to frame the picture appropriately. +Legrand might have hailed from the south, from Daudet's country; he is +exuberant as he is astute. The chief thing is that he has abundant +brains and in sheer craftsmanship fears few equals. Like Whistler, his +principal preoccupation is to suppress all appearance of technical +procedures. His method of work is said to be simplicity itself; +obsessed by his very definite visions, he transfers them to the +scratched plate with admirable celerity. Dry-point etching is his +principal medium. With his needle he has etched Montmartre, its +cabarets, its angels--in very earthly disguise--its orators, poets, +and castaways, and its visiting tourists--"God's silly sheep." He has +illustrated a volume of Edgar Poe's tales that displays a _macabre_ +imagination. His dancers are only second to those of Edgar Degas, and +seen from an opposite side. His peasants, mothers, and children, above +all, babies, reveal an eye that observes and a brain that can +co-ordinate the results of this piercing vision. Withal, he is a poet +who extracts his symbols from everyday life. + +This is what Camille Mauclair said of him at the time of his début: + +"An admirably skilful etcher, a draughtsman of keen vision, and a +painter of curious character, who has in many ways forestalled the +artists of to-day. Louis Legrand also shows to what extent Manet and +Degas have revolutionised the art of illustration, in freeing the +painters from obsolete laws and guiding them toward truth and frank +psychological study. Legrand is full of them without resembling them. +We must not forget that besides the technical innovation [division of +tones, study of complementary colours] impressionism has brought us +novelty of composition, realism of character, and great liberty in the +choice of subjects. From this point of view Rops himself, in spite of +his symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group if +it were not that any kind of classification in art is useless and +inaccurate. However that may be, Louis Legrand has signed some volumes +with the most seductive qualities." + +Gustave Kahn, the symbolist poet who was introduced to the English +reading world in one of the most eloquent pages of George Moore, +thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist. We side with Mauclair in +not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He is +anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also +shockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le +paing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the fist, +and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinched +fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. He is +well dressed. His silk hat is shiny, his mustache curled in the true +Adolphe fashion. His face is vile. The woman cries aloud and protects +herself with her hands. In Marthe Baraquin, by Rosny senior, you will +find the material for this picture, though Legrand found it years ago +in the streets. Unpleasant, truly, yet a more potent sermon on man's +cruelty to woman than may be found in a dozen preachments, fictions, +or the excited outpourings at a feminist congress. Legrand presents +the facts of the case without comment, except the irony--such dismal +irony!--of the title. In this he is the true pupil of Rops. + +However, he does not revel long among such dreary slices of life. The +Poe illustrations are grotesque and shuddering, but after all make +believe. The plate of The Black Cat piles horror on horror's head +(literally, for the demon cat perches on the head of the corpse) and +is, all said, pictorial melodrama. The Berenice illustration is, we +confess, a little too much for the nerves, simply because in a +masterly manner Legrand has exposed the most dreadful moment of the +story (untold by Poe, who could be an artist in his tact of omission). +The dental smile of the cataleptic Berenice as her necrophilic cousin +bends over the coffin is a testimony to a needle that in this instance +matches Goya's and Rops's in its evocation of the horrific. We turn +with relief to the ballet-girl series. The impression gained from this +album is that Legrand sympathises with, nay loves, his subject. Degas, +the greater and more objective artist, nevertheless allows to sift +through his lines an inextinguishable hatred of these girls who labour +so long for so little; and Degas did hate them, as he hated all that +was ugly in daily life, though he set forth this ugliness, this +mediocrity, this hatred in terms of beautiful art. Legrand sees the +ugliness, but he also sees the humanity of the _ballateuse_. She is a +woman who is brought up to her profession with malice aforethought by +her parents. These parents are usually noted for their cupidity. We +need not read the witty history of the Cardinal family to discover +this repellent fact. Legrand sketches the dancer from the moment when +her mother brings her, a child, to undergo the ordeal of the first +lesson. + +The tender tot stands hesitating in the doorway; one hand while +holding the door open seems to grasp it as the last barrier of defence +that stands between her and the strange new world. She is attired in +the classical figurante's costume. Behind, evidently pushing her +forward, is the grim guardian, a bony, forbidding female. Although you +do not see them, it is an easy feat to imagine the roomful of girls +and dancing master all staring at the new-comer. The expression on the +child's face betrays it; instinctively, like the generality of +embarrassed little girls, her hand clasps her head. In less than a +minute she will weep. + +Another plate, L'ami des Danseuses, is charged with humanity. The +violinist who plays for the ballet rehearsals sits resting, and facing +him are two young dancers, also sitting, but stooping to relieve their +strained spines and the tendons of their muscular legs. The old fellow +is giving advice from the fulness of a life that has been not too +easy. The girls are all attention. It is a genre bit of distinction. +Upon the technical virtuosity in which this etcher excels we shall not +dwell. Some of his single figures are marvels. The economy of line, +the massing of lights and darks, the vitality he infuses into a woman +who walks, a man who works in the fields, a child at its mother's +breast, are not easily dealt with in a brief study. We prefer to note +his more general qualities. His humour, whether in delineating a +stupid soldier about to be exploited by camp followers, or in his +Animales, is unforced. It can be Rabelaisian and it can be a record of +simple animal life, as in the example with the above title. A cow +stands on a grassy shore; near by a stolid peasant girl sits slicing +bread and eating it. Cow and girl, grass and sky and water are woven +into one natural pattern. The humour inheres in several sly touches. +It is a comical Millet. Very Millet-like too is the large picture, +Beau Soir, in which a field labourer bends over to kiss his wife, who +has a child at her breast. A cow nuzzles her apron, the fourth member +of this happy group. The Son of the Carpenter is another peasant +study, but the transposition of the Holy Family to our century. A +slight nimbus about the mother's head is the only indication that this +is not a humble household somewhere in France. Maternal Joy, Mater +Inviolata are specimens of a sane, lovely art which celebrate the +joys, dolors, and exaltations of motherhood. We prefer this side of +the art of Legrand to his studies of sinister jail-birds, _hetairai_, +noctambules, high kickers, and private bars, the horrors of Parisian +night life. Whatever he touches he vivifies. His leaping, audacious +line is like the narrative prose of a Maupassant or a Joseph Conrad. +Every stroke tells. + +His symbolical pictures please us least. They doubtless signify no end +of profound things, yet to us they seem both exotic and puerile. We go +back to the tiny dancers, tired to sleepiness, who sit on a sofa +waiting to be called. Poor babies! Or to the plate entitled Douleur. +Or to the portraits of sweet English misses--as did Constantin Guys, +Legrand has caught the precise English note--or any of the children +pieces. If he knows the psychology of passion, knows the most intimate +detail of the daily life of _les filles_, Legrand is master too of the +psychology of child life. This will endear him to English and American +lovers of art, though it is only one of his many endowments. His wit +keeps him from extremes, though some of his plates are not for +puritans; his vivid sympathies prevent him from falling into the +sterile eccentricities of so many of his contemporaries; if he is +cynical he is by the same taken soft-hearted. His superb handling of +his material, with a synthetic vision superadded, sets apart Louis +Legrand in a profession which to-day is filled with farceurs and +fakers and with too few artists by the grace of God. + + + + +GUYS, THE ILLUSTRATOR + + + +Practitioners of the noble art of illustration are, as we know, modest +men, but no matter the degree of their modesty they are all distanced +by the record in shyness still maintained by Constantin Guys. This +artist was once a living protest against Goethe's assertion that only +fools are modest, and the monument recently erected to his memory in +Paris is provocation enough to bring him ferrying across the Styx to +enter a disclaimer in the very teeth of his admirers. So set in his +anonymity was he that Charles Baudelaire, his critical discoverer, was +forced to write a long essay about his work and only refer to the +artist as C.G. The poet relates that once when Thackeray spoke to Guys +in a London newspaper office and congratulated him on his bold +sketches in the _Illustrated London News_, the fiery little man +resented the praise as an outrage. Nor was this humility a pose. His +life long he was morbidly nervous, as was Meryon, as was Cézanne; but +he was neither half mad, like the great etcher, nor a cenobite, as was +the painter of Aix. Few have lived in the thick of life as did Guys. +To employ the phrase of Turgenieff, life, like grass, grew over his +head. In the Crimean camps, on the Parisian boulevards, in London +parks, Guys strolled, crayon in hand, a true reporter of things seen +and an ardent lover of horses, soldiers, pretty women, and the mob. +Baudelaire called him the soldier-artist. He resembled in his restless +wanderings Poe's man of the multitude, and at the end of a long life +he still drew, as did Hokusai. + +Who was he? Where did he receive his artistic training? Baudelaire did +not tell, nor Théophile Gautier. He went through the Crimean campaign; +he lived in the East, in London and Paris. Not so long ago the art +critic Roger Marx, while stopping at Flushing, Holland, discovered his +baptismal certificate, which reads thus: "Ernestus Adolphus Hyacinthus +Constantinus Guys, born at Flushing December 3, 1805, of Elizabeth +Bétin and François Lazare Guys, Commissary of the French Marine." The +baptism occurred January 26, 1806, and revealed the fact that he had +for godfather an uncle who held a diplomatic position. Guys told his +friends that his full family name was Guys de Sainte-Hélène--which may +have been an amiable weakness of the same order as that of Barbey +d'Aurevilly and of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, both of whom boasted noble +parentage. However, Guys was little given to talk of any sort. He was +loquacious only with his pencil, and from being absolutely forgotten +after the downfall of the Second Empire to-day every scrap of his work +is being collected, even fought for, by French and German collectors. +Yet when the Nadar collection was dispersed, June, 1909, in Paris, his +aquarelles went for a few francs. Félix Fénéon and several others now +own complete sets. In New York there are a few specimens in the +possession of private collectors, though the Lenox Library, as a rule +rich in such prints, has only reproductions to show. + +The essay of Charles Baudelaire, entitled Le Peintre de la Vie +Moderne, to be found in Volume III of his collected works (L'Art +Romantique), remains thus far the standard reference study concerning +Guys, though deficient in biographical details. Other critical studies +are by Camille Mauclair, Roger Marx, Richard Muther, and George +Grappe; and recently Elizabeth Luther Cary in a too short but +admirably succinct article characterised the Guys method in this +fashion: "He defined his forms sharply and delicately, and used within +his bounding line the subtlest variation of light and shade. His +workmanship everywhere is of the most elusive character, and he is a +master of the art of reticence." Miss Cary further speaks of his +"gentle gusto of line in motion, which lately has captivated us in the +paintings of the Spaniard Sorolla, and long ago gave Botticelli and +Carlo Crivelli the particular distinction they had in common." +Mauclair mentions "the most animated water-colour drawings of Guys, +his curious vision of nervous elegance and expressive skill," and +names it the impressionism of 1845, while Dr. Muther christened him +the Verlaine of the crayon because, like Verlaine, he spent his life +between the almshouse and a hospital, so said the German critic. +Furthermore, Muther believes it was no mere chance that made of +Baudelaire his admirer; in both the decadent predominated--which is +getting the cart before the horse. Rops, too, is recalled by Guys, who +depicted the gay grisette of the faubourgs as well as the nocturnal +pierreuse of the fortifications. "Guys exercised on Gavarni an +influence which brought into being his Invalides du sentiment, his +Lorettes vielles, and his Fourberies de femmes." + +It is not quite fair to compare Guys with Rops, or indeed with either +Gavarni or Daumier. These were the giants of French illustration at +that epoch. Guys was more the skirmisher, the sharpshooter, the +reporter of the moment, than a creative master of his art. The street +or the battle-field was his atelier; speed and grace and fidelity his +chief claims to fame. He never practised his art within the walls of +academies; the material he so vividly dealt with was the stuff of +life. The very absence of school in his illustrations is their chief +charm; a man of genius this, self-taught, and a dangerous precedent +for fumblers or those of less executive ability. From the huge mass of +his work being unearthed from year to year he may be said to have +lived crayon in hand. He is the first of a long line of newspaper +illustrators. His profession was soldiering, and legend has it that he +accompanied Byron to Missolonghi. The official career of his father +enabled the youth to see much of the world--Greece, the Balkans, +Turkey, Persia, and perhaps India. On returning to France he became an +officer of dragoons and for some time led the life of a dandy and man +about town. With his memory, of which extraordinary tales are told, he +must have stored up countless films of impressions, all of which were +utilised years later. + +In 1845 we find him installed at Paris, though no longer in the army. +Then it was he began to design. He became contributor to many +periodicals, among the rest the _Illustrated London News_ and _Punch_. +For the former journal he went to the Crimean war as accredited art +correspondent. The portfolio containing the Crimean set is now most +sought for by his admirers. He is said to have originated the +expression "taken on the spot," in the title of one of his +instantaneous sketches. Few draughtsmen could boast his sure eye and +manual dexterity. The Balaklava illustration is as striking in its way +as Tennyson's lines, though containing less of poetic heroism and more +ugly realism. Like the trained reporter that he was, Guys followed a +battle, recording the salient incidents of the engagement, not +overemphasising the ghastliness of the carnage, as did Callot or Goya +or Raffet, but telling the truth as he saw it, with a phlegm more +British and German than French. Though he had no Dutch blood in his +veins, he was, like Huysmans, more the man of Amsterdam than the man +of Paris. He noted the changing and shocking scenes of hospital life, +and sympathy without sentimentality drops from his pen. He is drily +humorous as he shows us some plumaged General peacocking on foot, or +swelling with Napoleonic pride as he caracoles by on his horse. And +such horses! Without a hint of the photographic realism of a Muybridge +and his successors, Guys evokes vital horses and riders, those seen by +the normal vision. The witching movement of beautiful Arabian steeds +has not had many such sympathetic interpreters. + +In Turkey he depicted episodes of daily life, of the courts of the +Sublime Porte itself, of the fête of Baïram, which closes the fast of +Ramadan. His Turkish women are not all houris, but they bear the stamp +of close study. They are pretty, indolent, brainless creatures. In his +most hurried crayons, pen-and-ink sketches, and aquarelles Guys is +ever interesting. He has a magnetic touch that arrests attention and +atones for technical shortcomings. Abbreviation is his watchword; his +drawings are a species of shorthand notations made at red-hot tempo, +yet catching the soul of a situation. He repeats himself continually, +but, as M. Grappe says, is never monotonous. In love with movement, +with picturesque massing, and broad simple colour schemes, he +naturally gravitated to battle-fields. In Europe society out of doors +became his mania. Rotten Row, in the Bois, at Brighton or at +Baden-Baden, the sinuous fugues of his pencil reveal to succeeding +generations how the great world once enjoyed itself or bored itself to +death. No wonder Thackeray admired Guys. They were kindred spirits; +both recognised and portrayed the snob mundane. + +As he grew older Guys became an apparition in the life of Paris. The +smash-up of the Empire destroyed the beloved world he knew so well. +Poor, his principal pleasure was in memory; if he couldn't actually +enjoy the luxury of the rich he could reproduce its images on his +drawing-pad. The whilom dandy and friend of Baudelaire went about +dressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a nodding +acquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's +reign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness to +all comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feast +this watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys did +not waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five he began to go +down-hill. His habits had never been those of a prudent citizen, and +as his earning powers grew less some imp of the perverse entered his +all too solitary life. With this change of habits came a change of +theme. Henceforth he drew _filles_, the outcasts, the scamps and +convicts and the poor wretches of the night. He is now a forerunner of +Toulouse-Lautrec and an entire school. This side of his career +probably caused Dr. Muther to compare him with Paul Verlaine. +Absinthe, the green fairy of so many poets and artists, was no +stranger to Guys. + +In 1885, after dining with Nadar, his most faithful friend, Guys was +run over in the Rue du Havre and had his legs crushed. He was taken to +the Maison Dubois, where he lived eight years longer, dying at the +venerable age of eighty-seven, though far from being a venerable +person. Astonishing vitality! He did not begin to draw, that is, for a +living, until past forty. His method of work was simplicity itself, +declare those who watched him at work. He seemingly improvised his +aquarelles; his colour, sober, delicate, was broadly washed in; his +line, graceful and modulated, does not suggest the swiftness of his +execution. He could be rank and vulgar, and he was gentle as a refined +child that sees the spectacle of life for the first time. The +bitterness of Baudelaire's flowers of evil he escaped until he was in +senile decadence. In the press of active life he registered the shock +of conflicting arms, the shallow pride of existence and the mere joy +of living, all in a sane manner that will ever endear him to lovers of +art. + +George Moore tells the following anecdote of Degas: Somebody was +saying he did not like Daumier, and Degas preserved silence for a long +while. "If you were to show Raphael," he said at last, "a Daumier, he +would admire it; he would take off his hat; but if you were to show +him a Cabanel, he would say with a sigh, 'That is my fault.'" + +If you could show Raphael a croquis by Constantin Guys he would +probably look the other way, but Degas would certainly admire and buy +the drawing. + + + + +XI. IMPRESSIONISM + + + +I - MONET + + + +The impressionists claim as their common ancestors Claude Lorraine, +Watteau, Turner, Monticelli. Watteau, Latour, Largillière, Fragonard, +Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen are their sponsors in the matters of +design, subject, realism, study of life, new conceptions of beauty and +portraiture. Mythology, allegory, historic themes, the neo-Greek and +the academic are under the ban--above all, the so-called "grand +style." Impressionism has actually elevated genre painting to the +position occupied by those vast, empty, pompous, frigid, smoky, +classic pieces of the early nineteenth century. However, it must not +be forgotten that modern impressionism is only a new technique, a new +method of execution--we say new, though that is not exactly the case. +The home of impressionism is in the East; it may be found in the vivid +patterns woven in Persia or in old Japan. In its latest avatar it is +the expression of contemporaneous reality. Therein lies its true +power. The artist who turns his face only to the past--his work will +never be anything but an echo. To depict the faces and things and pen +the manners of the present is the task of great painters and +novelists. Actualists alone count in the future. The mills of the +antique grind swiftly--like the rich, they will be always with us--but +they only grind out imitations; and from pseudo-classic marbles and +pseudo-"beautiful" pictures may Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies, deliver +us. + +That able and sympathetic writer D.S. MacColl has tersely summed up in +his Vision of the Century the difference between the old and new +manner of seeing things. "The old vision had beaten out three separate +acts--the determination of the edges and limits of things, the +shadings and the modellings of the spaces in between with black and +white, and the tintings of those spaces with their local colour. The +new vision that had been growing up among the landscape painters +simplifies as well as complicates the old. For purposes of analysis it +sees the world as a mosaic of patches of colour, such and such a hue, +such and such a tone, such and such a shape... The new analysis looked +first for colour and for a different colour in each patch of shade or +light. The old painting followed the old vision by its three processes +of drawing the contours, modelling the chiaroscura in dead colour, and +finally in colouring this black-and-white preparation. The new +analysis left the contours to be determined by the junction, more or +less fused, of the colour patches, instead of rigidly defining them as +they are known to be defined when seen near at hand or felt... 'Local +colour' in light or shade becomes different not only in tone but in +hue." + +To the layman who asked, "What is impressionism?" Mauclair has given +the most succinct answer in his book L'Impressionisme: "In nature," he +declares, "no colour exists by itself. The colouring of the object is +pure illusion; the only creative source of colour is the sunlight, +which envelops all things and reveals them, according to the hours, +with infinite modifications... The idea of distance, of perspective, +of volume is given us by darker or lighter colours; this is the sense +of values; a value is the degree of light or dark intensity which +permits our eyes to comprehend that one object is further or nearer +than another. And as painting is not and cannot be the imitation of +nature, but merely her artificial interpretation, since it has only at +its disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the only +means that remain for expressing depth on a flat surface. Colour is +therefore the procreatrix of design... Colours vary with the intensity +of light... Local colour is an error; a leaf is not green, a tree +trunk is not brown... According to the time of day, _i. e._, according +to the greater or smaller inclination of the rays (scientifically +called the angle of incidence), the green of the leaf and the brown of +the tree are modified... The composition of the atmosphere... is the +real subject of the picture... Shadow is not absence of light, but +light of a different quality and of a different value. Shadow is not +part of the landscape where light ceases, but where it is subordinated +to a light which appears to us more intense. In the shadow the rays of +the spectrum vibrate with a different speed. Painting should therefore +try to discover here, as in the light parts, the play of the atoms of +solar light, instead of representing shadows with ready-made tones +composed of bitumen and black... In a picture representing an interior +the source of light [windows] may not be indicated; the light +circulating, circling around the picture, will then be composed of the +_reflections_ of rays whose source is invisible, and all the objects, +acting as mirrors for these reflections, will consequently influence +each other. Their colours will affect each other even if the surfaces +be dull. A red vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a very +subtle but mathematically exact exchange between this blue and this +red; and this exchange of luminous waves will create between the two +colours a tone of reflections composed of both. These composite +reflections will form a scale of tones complementary of the two +principal colours. + +"The painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the +solar spectrum and discard all the others;... he will, furthermore, +instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon his canvas +touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed [Claude Monet has +added black and white] and leave the individual rays of each of these +colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight +upon the eye of the beholder." This is called _dissociation_ of tones; +and here is a new convention; why banish all save the spectrum? We +paint nature, not the solar spectrum. + +Claude Monet has been thus far the most successful practitioner of +impressionism; this by reason of his extraordinary analytical power of +vision and native genius rather than the researches of Helmholtz, +Chevreul, and Rood. They gave him his scientific formulas after he had +worked out the problems. He studied Turner in London, 1870; then his +manner changed. He had been a devoted pupil of Eugène Boudin and could +paint the discreet, pearly gray seascapes of his master. But Turner +and Watteau and Monticelli modified his style, changed his way of +envisaging the landscape. Not Edouard Manet but Claude Monet was the +initiator of the impressionistic movement in France, and after +witnessing the rout and confusion that followed in its wake one is +tempted to misquote Nietzsche (who said that the first and only +Christian died on the cross) and boldly assert that there has been but +one impressionist; his name, Monet. "He has arrived at painting by +means of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour +spots which dissociate the tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of +objects through the arabesque of their vibrations." How his landscapes +shimmer with the heat of a summer day! Truly, you can say of these +pictures that "the dawn comes up like thunder." How his fogs, wet and +clinging, seem to be the first real fogs that ever made misty a +canvas! What hot July nights, with few large stars, has Monet not +painted! His series of hayricks, cathedrals, the Thames are precious +notations of contemporary life; they state facts in terms of exquisite +artistic value; they resume an epoch. It is therefore no surprise to +learn that in 1874 Monet gave the name (so variously abused) to the +entire movement when he exhibited a water piece on the Boulevard des +Capucines entitled Impression: Soleil Levant. That title became a +catchword usually employed in a derisive manner. Monet earlier had +resented the intrusion of a man with a name so like his, but succumbed +to the influence of Monet. One thing can no longer be +controverted--Claude Monet is the greatest landscape and marine +painter of the second half of the last century. Perhaps time may alter +this limit clause. + +What Turgenieff most condemned in his great contemporary, +Dostoïevsky--if the gentle Russian giant ever condemned any one--was +Feodor Mikhailovitch's taste for "psychological mole runs"; an +inveterate burrowing into the dark places of humanity's soul. Now, if +there is a dark spot in a highly lighted subject it is the question, +Who was the first impressionist? According to Charles de Kay, Whistler +once told him that he, James the Butterfly, began the movement; which +is a capital and characteristic anecdote, especially if one recalls +Whistler's boast made to a young etcher as to the initiative of Corot. +Whistler practically said: "Before Corot was, I am!" And he adduced +certain canvases painted with the misty-edged trees long before--but +why continue? Whistler didn't start Corot--apart from the +chronological difficulties in the way--any more than Courbet and Manet +started Whistler; yet both these painters played important rôles in +the American master's art. So let us accept Mauclair's dictum as to +Claude Monet's priority in the field of impressionism. Certainly he +attained his marked style before he met Manet. Later he modified his +own paint to show his sympathy with the new school. Monet went to +Watteau, Constable, Monticelli for his ideas, and in London, about +1870, he studied Turner with an interest that finally bordered on +worship. And why not? In Turner, at the National Gallery, you may find +the principles of impressionism carried to extravagant lengths, and +years before Monet. Consider Rain, Steam and Speed--the Great Western +Railway, that vision of a locomotive dashing across a bridge in +chromatic chaos. Or the Sea Piece in the James Orrock collection--a +welter of crosshatchings in variegated hues wherein any school of +impressionism from Watteau's Embarkment to Monet's latest manner or +the _pointillisme_ of Signac and Seurat may be recognised. And there +is a water-colour of Turner's in the National Gallery called Honfleur, +which has anticipated many traits of Boudin and the Manet we know when +he had not forgotten Eugène Boudin's influence. + +Let us enjoy our Monet without too many "mole runs." As De Kay pointed +out, it was not necessary for Monet to go to London to see Constables. +In the Louvre he could gaze upon them at leisure, also upon Bonington; +not to mention the Venetians and such a Dutchman as Vermeer. It is +therefore doubly interesting to study the Monets at Durand-Ruel's. +There are twenty-seven, and they range as far back as 1872, Promenade +à Trouville, and come down to the Charing Cross Bridge, 1904, and the +two Waterloo Bridge effects, 1903. It is a wide range in sentiment and +technique. The Mills in Holland of 1874 is as cool and composed as +Boudin. Sincerity and beauty are in the picture--for we do not agree +with those who see in Monet only an unemotional recorder of variations +in light and tone. He can compose a background as well as any of his +contemporaries, and an important fact is overlooked when Monet is +jumbled indiscriminately with a lot of inferior men. Monet knew how to +_draw_ before he handled pigment. Some lansdcape painters do not; many +impressionists trust to God and their palette-knife; so the big men +are sufferers. Monet, it may be noted, essayed many keys; his +compositions are not nearly so monotonous as has been asserted. What +does often exhaust the optic nerve is the violent impinging thereon of +his lights. He has an eagle eye, we have not. Wagner had the faculty +of attention developed to such an extraordinary pitch that with our +more normal and weaker nerves he soon exhausts us in his flights. Too +much Monet is like too much Wagner or too much sunshine. + +The breezy effect with the poplars painted flat is an example very +unlike Monet. The church of Varengeville at Dieppe (1880) is a classic +specimen; so is the Pourville beach (1882). What delicate greens in +the Spring (1885)! What fine distance, an ocean view, in the Pourville +picture! Or, if you care for subdued harmonies, there is the ice floe +at Vétheuil (1881). + +The London pictures tell of the older artist--not so vigorous, a vein +of tenderness beginning to show instead of his youthful blazing +optimism. Claude Monet must have had a happy life--he is still a +robust man painting daily in the fields, leading the glorious life of +a landscapist, one of the few romantic professions in this prosaic +age. Not so vain, so irritable as either Manet or Whistler, Monet's +nerves have never prompted him to extravagances. Backbiters declare +that Monet is suffering from an optical degeneration--poor, overworked +word! Monet sees better, sees more keenly than his fellow-men. What a +misfortune! Ibsen and Wagner suffered, too, from superior brains. If +Monet ever suffered seriously from a danger to his art it +was--success. He was abused in the beginning, but not as severely as +Manet. But success perched on Monet's palette. His pictures never seem +to suggest any time but high noon, in spirit, at least. And he is +never sad. Yet, is there anything sadder under the sun than a soul +incapable of sadness? + +In his very valuable contribution to the history of the cause, +Théodore Duret, the biographer and friend of Whistler and Manet has in +his Les Peintres Impressionistes held the scales very much in favour +of Manet's priority in the field over Monet. It is true that in 1863 +Manet had drawn upon his head the thunderous wrath of Paris by +exhibiting his Déjeuner sur l'Herbe and Olympe--by no means a +representative effort of the painter's genius, despite its diabolic +cleverness. (It reveals a profound study of Titian, Cranach, and +Goya.) But his vision was in reality synthetic, not analytic; he was a +primitive; he belongs to the family of Velasquez, Ribera, Goya. He +studied Hals--and with what glorious results in Le Bon Bock! He +manipulated paint like an "old master" and did astounding things with +the higher tones of the colour scale. He was not an impressionist +until he met Monet. Then in audacity he outstripped his associates. +Discouraged by critical attacks, his courage had been revived by +Charles Baudelaire, who fought for Richard Wagner as well as for Poe +and Manet. To the painter the poet scornfully wrote: "You complain +about attacks? But are you the first to endure them? Have you more +genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud, I must tell you that +they are models, each in his own way, and in a very rich world, while +you are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." Sinister and +disquieting that last phrase, and for those who see in impressionism +the decadence of painting (because of the predominance given to the +parts over the whole) it is a phrase prophetic. + +Manet is a classic. His genuine power--technically speaking--lies in +the broad, sabre-like strokes of his brush and not in the niggling +_taches_ of the impressionists--of which the _reuctio ad absurdum_ is +pointillisme. He lays on his pigments in sweeping slashes and his +divisions are large. His significance for us does not alone reside in +his consummate mastery of form and colour, but in his forthright +expression of the life that hummed about him. He is as actual as Hals. +Study that Boy With the Sword at the Metropolitan Museum--is there +anything superficial about it? It is Spanish, the Spain of Velasquez, +in its beautiful thin, clear, flat painting, its sober handling of +values. The truth is that Manet dearly loved a fight, and being _chef +d'école_, he naturally drifted to the impressionists' camp. And it is +significant that Duret did not give this virile spirit a place in his +new volume, confining the estimate of his genius to the preface. +Mauclair, on the contrary, includes Manet's name in his more +comprehensive and more scientific study, as he also includes the name +of Edgar Degas--Degas, who is a latter-day Ingres, plus colour and a +new psychology. + +The title of impressionism has been a misleading one. If Degas is an +impressionist, pray what then is Monet? Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne are +impressionists, and in America there is no impropriety in attaching +this handle to the works of Twachtmann, J. Alden Weir, W.L. Metcalf, +Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Robert Reid, Ernest Lawson, Paul +Cornoyer, Colin Campbell Cooper, Prendergast, Luks, and Glackens. But +Manet, Degas! It would have been a happier invention to have called +the 1877 group independents; independent they were, each man pursuing +his own rainbow. We may note an identical confusion in the mind of the +public regarding the Barbizon school. Never was a group composed of +such dissimilar spirits. Yet people talk about Millet _and_ Breton, +Corot _and_ Daubigny, Rousseau _and_ Dupré. They still say Goethe +_and_ Schiller, Beethoven _and_ Mozart, Byron _and_ Shelley. It is the +result of mental inertia, this coupling of such widely disparate +temperaments. + +Nevertheless, divided tones and "screaming" palette do not always a +picture make; mediocrity loves to mask itself behind artistic +innovations. For the world at large impressionism spells +improvisation--an easy-going, slatternly, down-at-the-heel process, +facile as well as factitious. Albert Wolff must have thought these +things when he sat for his portrait to Manet. His surprise was great +when the artist demanded as many sittings as would have done the +painstaking Bonnat. Whistler shocked Ruskin when he confessed to +having painted a nocturne in two days, but with a lifetime experience +in each stroke of the brush. Whistler was a swift worker, and while he +claimed the honour of being the originator of impressionism--didn't he +"originate" Velasquez?--he really belongs to the preceding generation. +He was impressionistic, if you will, yet not an impressionist. He was +Japanese and Spanish, never Watteau, Monticelli, Turner, or Monet. + +MacColl has pointed out the weakness of the scientific side of +impressionism. Its values are strictly æsthetic; attempts to paint on +a purely scientific basis have proved both monotonous and ludicrous. +The experiments of the neo-impressionists (the 1885 group), of Signac, +Seurat, were not very convincing. Van Rhysselberge, one of the few +painters to-day who practise _pointillisme_, or the system of dots, is +a gifted artist; so is Anquetin. The feminine group is headed by the +name of Berthe Morisot (the wife of Eugène Manet, a brother of Edouard +and the great granddaughter of Fragonard), a pupil of Manet, the most +individual woman painter that ever lived; and Mary Cassatt, a pupil of +Degas, though more closely allied to the open-air school in her +methods. Miss Cassatt possesses a distinguished talent. As a school +impressionism has run down to a thin rill in a waste of sand. It is +more technical than personal, and while it was lucky to have such an +exponent as Claude Monet, there is every reason to believe that +Monet's impressionism is largely the result of a peculiar penetrating +vision. He has been imitated, and Maufra and Moret are carrying on his +tradition--yet there is but one Monet. + +We know that the spectral palette is a mild delusion and sometimes a +dangerous snare, that impressionism is in the remotest analysis but a +new convention supplanting an old. Painters will never go back to the +muddy palette of the past. The trick has been turned. The egg of +Columbus has been once more stood on end. Claude Monet has taught us +the "innocence of the eye," has shown us how to paint air that +circulates, water that sparkles. The sun was the centre of the +impressionistic attack, the "splendid, silent sun." A higher pitch in +key colour has been attained, shadows have been endowed with vital +hues. (And Leonardo da Vinci, wonderful landscapist, centuries ago +wrote learnedly of coloured shadows; every new discovery is only a +rediscovery.) The "dim, religious light" of the studio has been +banished; the average palette is lighter, is more brilliant. And +Rembrandt is still worshipped; Raphael is still on his pedestal, and +the millionaire on the street continues to buy Bouguereau. The amateur +who honestly wishes to purge his vision of encrusted painted +prejudices we warn not to go too close to an impressionistic +canvas--any more than he would go near a red-hot stove or a keg of +gunpowder. And let him forget those toothsome critical terms, +decomposition, recomposition. His eyes, if permitted, will act for +themselves; there is no denying that the principles of impressionism +soundly applied, especially to landscape, catch the fleeting, +many-hued charm of nature. It is a system of coloured stenography--in +the hands of a master. Woe betide the fumbler! + + + + +II - RENOIR + + + +The secret of success is never to be satisfied; that is, never to be +satisfied with your work or your success. And this idea seems to have +animated Auguste Renoir during his long, honourable career of painter. +In common with several members of the impressionistic group to which +he belonged, he suffered from hunger, neglect, obloquy; but when +prosperity did at last appear he did not succumb to the most dangerous +enemy that besets the artist. He fought success as he conquered +failure, and his continual dissatisfaction with himself, the true +critical spirit, has led him to many fields--he has been portraitist, +genre painter, landscapist, delineator of nudes, a marine painter and +a master of still-life. This versatility, amazing and +incontrovertible, has perhaps clouded the real worth of Renoir for the +public. Even after acknowledging his indubitable gifts, the usual +critical doubting Thomas grudgingly remarks that if Renoir could not +draw like Degas, paint land and water like Monet or figures like +Manet, he was a naturally endowed colourist. How great a colourist he +was may be seen at the Metropolitan Museum, where his big canvas, La +Famille Charpentier, is now hung. + +Charpentier was the publisher of Zola, Goncourt, Flaubert, and of the +newer realists. He was a man of taste, who cultivated friendships with +distinguished artists and writers. Some disappointment was experienced +at the recent public sale of his collection in Paris. The _clou_ of +the sale was undoubtedly the portrait of his wife and two children. It +was sold for the surprising sum of 84,000 francs to M. Durand-Ruel, +who acted in behalf of the Metropolitan Museum. Another canvas by +Renoir fetched 14,050 francs. A _sanguine_ of Puvis de Chavannes +brought 2,050 francs, and 4,700 francs was paid for a Cézanne picture. + +The Charpentier Family, originally entitled Portrait de Madame +Charpentier et Ses Filles, was painted in 1878, first exhibited at the +Salon of 1879, and there we saw and admired it. The passage of the +years has tempered the glistening brilliancies and audacious chromatic +modulations to a suave harmony that is absolutely fascinating. The +background is Japanese. Mme. Charpentier is seated on a canopy +surrounded by furniture, flowers; under foot a carpet with arabesque +designs. She throws one arm carelessly over some rich stuff; the hand +is painted with masterly precision. The other arm has dropped in her +lap. She is an interesting woman of that fine maternal type so often +encountered in real France--though not in French fiction, alas! Her +gaze is upon her children, two adorable little girls. A superb dog, a +St. Bernard, with head resting on paws, looks at you with watchful +eyes. One of the girls sits upon his shaggy hide. The mother is in +black, a mellow reception robe, tulle and lace. White and blue are the +contrasting tones of the girls--the blue is tender. A chair is at the +side of a lacquer table, upon which are flowers. Renoir flowers, dewy, +blushing. You exclaim: "How charming!" It is normal French painting, +not the painting of the schools with their false ideal of pseudo-Greek +beauty, but the intimate, clear, refined, and logical style of a man +who does not possess the genius of Manet, Degas, or Monet, but is +nevertheless an artist of copiousness, charm, and originality. Charm; +yes, that is the word. There is a voluptuous magnetism in his colour +that draws you to him whether you approve of his capricious designs or +not. The museum paid $18,480 for the Charpentier portrait, and in +1877, after an exposition in the rue Le Peletier, sixteen of his +paintings, many of them masterpieces, netted the mortifying sum of +2,005 francs. + +Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges, February 25, 1840. His +father was a poor tailor with five children who went to Paris hoping +to better his condition. At the age of twelve the boy was painting on +porcelain--his father had picked up some rudiments of the art at +Limoges. Auguste did so well, displayed such energy and taste, that he +soon fell to decorating blinds, and saved, in the course of four +years, enough money to enable him to enter the atelier of Gleyre. +There he met Sisley, Bazille--afterward shot in the Franco-Prussian +war--and Claude Monet. They became friends and later allies in the +conflict with the Parisian picture public. Renoir made his first +offering to the Salon in 1863. It was refused. It was a romantic +bit--a nude lady reclining on a bed listening to the plucked music of +a guitar. It seems that the guitarist, and not the lady, was the cause +of offence. It is a convention that a thousand living beings may look +at an undressed female in a picture, but no painted man may be allowed +to occupy with her the same apartment. In 1864 Renoir tried +again--after all, the Salon, like our own academy, is a +market-place--and was admitted. He sent in an Esmeralda dancing. Both +these canvases were destroyed by the painter when he began to use his +eyes. In 1868 his Lise betrayed direct observation of nature, +influenced by Courbet. Until 1873 he sent pictures to the Salon; that +year he was shut out with considerable unanimity, for his offering +happened to be an Algerian subject, a Parisian woman dressed in +Oriental costume, and--horrors!--the shadows were coloured. He was +become an impressionist. He had listened, or rather looked at the +baleful pyrotechnics of Monet, and so he joined the secessionists, +though not disdaining to contribute annually to the Salon. In 1874 his +L'allee Cavalière au Bois de Boulogne was rejected, an act that was +evidently inspired by a desire to sacrifice Renoir because of the +artistic "crimes" of Edouard Manet. Otherwise how explain why this +easily comprehended composition, with its attractive figures, daring +hues, and brilliant technique, came to have the door of the Salon +closed upon it? + +The historic exposition at Nadar's photographic studio, on the +Boulevard des Capucines, of the impressionists, saw Renoir in company +with Monet, Sisley, and the others. His La Danseuse and La Loge were +received with laughter by the discerning critics. Wasn't this the +exhibition of which Albert Wolff wrote that some lunatics were showing +their wares, which they called pictures, etc.? (No, it was in 1875.) +From 1868 to 1877 Renoir closely studied nature and his landscapes +took on those violet tones which gave him the nickname of Monsieur +Violette. Previously he had employed the usual clear green with the +yellow touches in the shadows of conventional _paysagistes_. But +Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, and Renoir had discovered each for himself +that the light and shade in the open air vary according to the hours, +the seasons, the atmospheric conditions. Monet and Pissarro in +painting snow and frost effects under the sun did not hesitate to put +blue tones in the shadows. Sisley was fond of rose tones, Renoir saw +violet in the shadows. He enraged his spectators quite as much as did +Monet with his purple turkeys. His striking Avant le bain was sold for +one hundred and forty francs in 1875. Any one who has been lucky +enough to see it at Durand-Ruel's will cry out at the stupidity which +did not recognise a masterly bit of painting with its glowing, +nacreous flesh tints, its admirable modelling, its pervading air of +vitality. Renoir was never a difficult painter; that is, in the sense +of Monet or Manet or Gauguin. He offended the eyes of 1875, no doubt, +but there was in him during his first period much of Boucher; his +female nudes are, as Camille Mauclair writes, of the eighteenth +century; his technique is Boucher-like: "fat and sleek paint of soft +brilliancy laid on with the palette-knife with precise strokes around +the principal values; pink and ivory tints relieved by strong blues +similar to those of enamels; the light distributed everywhere and +almost excluding the opposition of the shadows; vivacious attitudes +and decorative convention." + +Vivacious, happy, lyrical, Renoir's work has thus far shown no hint of +the bitter psychology of Edgar Degas. His nudes are pagan, child women +full of life's joy, animal, sinuous, unreasoning. His _genre_ tableaux +are personal enough, though in the most commonplace themes, such as +Déjeuner and The Box--both have been exhibited in New York--the +luminous envelope, the gorgeous riot of opposed tones, the delicious +dissonances literally transfigure the themes. In his second manner his +affinities to Claude Monet and impressionism are more marked. His +landscapes are more atmospheric, division of tones inevitably +practised. Everything swims in aerial tones. His portraits, once his +only means of subsistence, are the personification of frankness. The +touch is broad, flowing. Without doubt, as Theodore Duret asserts, +Renoir is the first of the impressionistic portrait painters; the +first to apply unflinchingly the methods of Manet and Monet to the +human face--for Manet, while painting in clear tones (what magic there +is in his gold!), in portraiture seldom employed the hatchings of +colours, except in his landscapes, and only since 1870, when he had +come under the influence of Monet's theories. Mauclair points out that +fifteen years before _pointillisme_ (the system of dots, like eruptive +small-pox, instead of the touches of Monet) was invented, Renoir in +his portrait of Sisley used the stipplings. He painted Richard Wagner +at Palermo in 1882. In his third manner--an arbitrary +classification--he combines the two earlier techniques, painting with +the palette-knife and in divided tones. Flowers, barbaric designs for +rugs, the fantastic, vibrating waters, these appear among that long +and varied series of canvases in which we see Paris enjoying itself at +Bougival, dancing on the heights of Montmartre, strolling among the +trees at Armenonville; Paris quivering with holiday joys, Paris in +outdoor humour--and not a discordant or vicious note in all this +psychology of love and sport. The lively man who in shirt sleeves +dances with the jolly, plump salesgirl, the sunlight dripping through +the vivid green of the tree leaves, lending dazzling edges to +profiles, tips of noses, or fingers, is not the sullen _ouvrier_ of +Zola or Toulouse-Lautrec--nor are the girls kin to Huysmans's Soeurs +Vatard or the "human document" of Degas. Renoir's philosophy is not +profound; for him life is not a curse or a kiss, as we used to say in +the old Swinburne days. He is a painter of joyous surfaces and he is +an incorrigible optimist. He is also a poet. The poet of air, +sunshine, and beautiful women--can we ever forget his Jeanne Samary? A +pantheist, withal a poet and a direct descendant in the line of +Watteau, Boucher, Monticelli, with an individual touch of mundane +grace and elegance. + +Mme. Charpentier it was who cleverly engineered the portrait of +herself and children and the portrait of Jeanne Samary into the 1879 +Salon. The authorities did not dare to refuse two such distinguished +women. Renoir's prospects became brighter. He married. He made money. +Patrons began to appear, and in 1904, at the autumn Salon, he was +given a special _salle_, and homage was done him by the young men. No +sweeter gift can come to a French painter than the unbidden admiration +of the rising artistic generation. Renoir appreciated his honours; he +had worked laboriously, had known poverty and its attendant +bedfellows, and had won the race run in the heat and dust of his +younger years. In 1904, describing the autumn exhibition, I wrote: "In +the Renoir _salle_ a few of the better things of this luscious brush +were to be found, paintings of his middle period, that first won him +favour. For example, Sur la Terrasse, with its audacious crimson, like +the imperious challenge of a trumpet; La Loge and its gorgeous +fabrics; a Baigneuse in a light-green scheme; the quaint head of +Jeanne Samary--a rival portrait to Besnard's faun-like Réjane--and a +lot of Renoir's later experimentings, as fugitive as music; exploding +bouquets of iridescence; swirling panels, depicting scenes from +Tannhäuser; a flower garden composed of buds and blossoms in colour +scales that begin at a bass-emerald and ascend to an altitudinous +green where green is no longer green but an opaline reverberation. We +know how exquisitely Renoir moulds his female heads, building up, cell +by cell, the entire mask. The simple gestures of daily life have been +recorded by Renoir for the past forty years with a fidelity and a +vitality that shames the anæmic imaginings and puling pessimisms of +his younger contemporaries. What versatility, what undaunted desire to +conquer new problems! He has in turn painted landscapes as full of +distinction as Monet's. The nervous vivacity of his brush, his love of +rendered surfaces, of melting Boucher-like heads, and of a dazzling +Watteau colour synthesis have endeared him to the discriminating." He +may be deficient in spiritual elevation--as were Manet, Monet, and the +other Impressionists; but as they were primarily interested in +problems of lighting, in painting the sun and driving the old mud gods +of academic art from their thrones, it is not strange that the new men +became so enamoured of the coloured appearances of life that they left +out the ghosts of the ideal (that dusty, battered phrase) and +proclaimed themselves rank sun-worshippers. The generation that +succeeded them is endeavouring to restore the balance between +unblushing pantheism and the earlier mysticism. But wherever a Renoir +hangs there will be eyes to feast upon his opulent and sonorous colour +music. + + + + +III - MANET + + + +In the autumn of 1865 Théodore Duret, the Parisian critic, found +himself in the city of Madrid after a tour of Portugal on horseback. A +new hotel on the Puerta del Sol was, he wrote in his life of Manet, a +veritable haven after roughing it in the adjacent kingdom. At the +mid-day breakfast he ate as if he had never encountered good cooking +in his life. Presently his attention was attracted by the behaviour of +a stranger who sat next to him. The unknown was a Frenchman who abused +the food, the service, and the country. He was so irritable when he +noticed Duret enjoying the very _plats_ he had passed that he turned +on him and demanded if insult was meant. The horrible cuisine, he +explained, made him sick, and he could not understand the appetite of +Duret. Good-naturedly Duret explained he had just arrived from +Portugal and that the breakfast was a veritable feast. "And I have +just arrived from Paris," he answered, and gave his name, Edouard +Manet. He added that he had been so persecuted that he suspected his +neighbour of some evil pleasantry. The pair became friends, and went +to look at the pictures of Velasquez at the Prado. Fresh from Paris, +Manet was still smarting from the attacks made on him after the +hanging of his Olympia in the Salon of 1865. Little wonder his nerves +were on edge. A dozen days later, after he had studied Velasquez, +Goya, and El Greco, Manet, in company with Duret, returned to Paris. +It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. + +About eight years ago Duret's definitive biography of Manet appeared, +Histoire de Edouard Manet et de Son Oeuvre. No one was better +qualified to write of the dead painter than Théodore Duret. A critic +of perspicacity, his enthusiasm was kindled during the birth throes of +impressionism and has never been quenched. Only a few years ago, after +a tribute to Whistler, he wrote of Manet in the introduction to his +volume on Impressionism, and while no one may deny his estimate, yet +through zeal for the name of his dead friend he attributed to him the +discoveries of the impressionists. Manet was their leader; he would +have been a leader of men in any art epoch; but he did not invent the +fulminating palette of Monet, and, in reality, he joined the +insurgents after they had waged their earlier battles. His +"impressionistic" painting, so called, did not date until later; +before that he had fought for his own independence, and his method was +different from that of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne and the rest. +Nevertheless, because of his notoriety--fame is hardly the word--he +may be fairly called the leader of the school. + +As a rule he was not an irascible man, if the unpleasant nature of the +attacks upon him is taken into consideration. With the exception of +Richard Wagner and Ibsen, I know of no artist who was vilified during +his lifetime as was Manet. A gentleman, he was the reverse of the +bohemian. Duret writes of him that he was shocked at the attempt to +make of him a monster. He did not desire to become _chef d'école_, nor +did he set up as an eccentric. When he gave his special exhibition his +catalogue contained a modest declaration of the right of the artist to +his personal vision. He did not pretend to have created a new school, +and he asked the public to judge his work as that of a sincere +painter; but even that mild pronunciamento was received with jeers. +The press, with a few exceptions, was against him, and so were nearly +all the artists of influence. Zola's aggressive articles only made the +situation worse. Who was this Zola but a writer of doubtful taste and +sensational style! The whole crowd of realists, naturalists, and +impressionists--the Batignolles school was the mocking title given the +latter--were dumped into the common vat of infamy and critical vitriol +poured over them. + +The main facts of Manet's career may be soon disposed of. His mother +was Eugénie Désirée Fournier; she was the goddaughter of Charles +Bernadotte, King of Sweden. Her father, a prefect at Pau, had rendered +services to Bernadotte which the latter did not forget. When she +married, in 1831, Auguste Manet, a distinguished judge of the Seine +tribunal, Bernadotte made her many valuable presents and a dowry. Her +three sons were Edouard, Eugène, and Gustave. They inherited from +their rich grandfather, Fournier. Edouard was born at Paris, Rue +Bonaparte, January 23, 1832. His brother Eugène became a doctor of +medicine and later married one of the most gifted of women painters, +Berthe Morisot, who died in 1895, after winning the praise of the most +critical pens in all Europe. Edouard was intended for the bar, but he +threw up his studies and swore he would become a painter. Then he was +sent abroad. He visited South America and other countries, and kept +his eyes wide open, as his sea-pieces proved. After his mother became +a widow he married, in 1863, Susanne Leenhoff, of Delft, Holland. She +was one of the early admirers of Schumann in Paris and played the A +minor piano concerto with orchestra there, and, it is said, with +success. She was an admirer of her husband's genius, and during all +the turmoil of his existence she was a friend and counsellor. + +The young couple lived with the elder Mme. Manet in the Rue de +Saint-Pétersbourg, and their weekly reception became a rallying centre +for not only _les Jeunes_, but also for such men as Gambetta, Emile +Ollivier, Clemenceau, Antonin Proust, De Banville, Baudelaire, +Duranty--with whom Manet fought a duel over a trifle--Zola, Mallarmé, +Abbé Hurel, Monet, and the impressionistic group. Edouard entertained +great devotion for his mother. She saw two of her sons die, Edouard in +1883 (April 30) and Gustave in 1884. (He was an advocate and took +Clemenceau's place as municipal councillor when the latter was elected +Deputy.) Mme. Manet died in 1885. The painter was stricken with +locomotor ataxia, brought on by protracted toil, in 1881. For nearly +three years he suffered, and after the amputation of a leg he +succumbed. His obsequies were almost of national significance. His +widow lived until 1906. + +_Manet et manebit_ was the motto of the artist. He lived to paint and +he painted much after his paralytic seizure. He was a brilliant +raconteur, and, as Degas said, was at one time as well known in Paris +as Garibaldi, red shirt and all. The truth is, Manet, after being +forced with his back to the wall, became the active combatant in the +duel with press and public. He was unhappy if people on the boulevard +did not turn to look at him. "The most notorious painter in Paris" was +a description which he finally grew to enjoy. It may not be denied +that he painted several pictures as a direct challenge to the world, +but a painter of offensive pictures he never was. The execrated +Picnic, proscribed by the jury of the Salon in 1861, was shown in the +Salon des Refusés (in company with works by Bracquemond, Cazin, +Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J.P. Laurens, Legros, Pissarro, +Vollon, Whistler--the mildest-mannered crew of pirates that ever +attempted to scuttle the bark of art), and a howl arose. What was this +shocking canvas like? A group of people at a picnic, several nudes +among them. In vain it was pointed out to the modest Parisians (who at +the time revelled in the Odalisque of Ingres, in Cabanel, Gérôme, +Bouguereau, and other delineators of the chaste) that in the Louvre +the Concert of Giorgione depicted just such a scene; but the mixture +of dressed and undressed was appalling, and Manet became a man marked +for vengeance. Perhaps the exceeding brilliancy of his paint and his +unconventional manner of putting it on his canvas had as much to do +with the obloquy as his theme. And then he would paint the life around +him instead of producing _pastiches_ of old masters or sickly +evocations of an unreal past. + +He finished Olympia the year of his marriage, and refused to exhibit +it; Baudelaire insisted to the contrary. It was shown at the Salon of +1865 (where Monet exhibited for the first time) and became the scandal +of the day. Again the painter was bombarded with invectives. This +awful nude, to be sure, was no more unclothed than is Cabanel's Venus, +but the latter is pretty and painted with soap-suds and +sentimentality. The Venus of Titian is not a whit more exposed than +the slim, bony, young woman who has just awakened in time to receive a +bouquet at the hands of her negress, while a black cat looks on this +matutinal proceeding as a matter of course. The silhouette has the +firmness of Holbein; the meagre girl recalls a Cranach. It is not the +greatest of Manet; one could say, despite the bravura of the +performances, that the painter was indulging in an ironic joke. It was +a paint pot flung in the face of Paris. Olympia figured at the 1887 +exhibition in the Pavilion Manet. An American (the late William M. +Laffan) tried to buy her. John Sargent intervened, and a number of the +painter's friends, headed by Claude Monet, subscribed a purse of +twenty thousand francs. In 1890 Monet and Camille Pelletan presented +to M. Fallières, then Minister of Instruction, the picture for the +Luxembourg, and in 1907 (January 6), thanks to the prompt action of +Clemenceau, one of Manet's earliest admirers, the hated Olympia was +hung in the Louvre. The admission was a shock, even at that late day +when the din of the battle had passed. When in 1884 there was held at +the École des Beaux-Arts a memorial exposition of Manet's works, +Edmond About wrote that the place ought to be fumigated, and Gérôme +"brandished his little cane" with indignation. Why all the excitement +in official circles? Only this: Manet was a great painter, the +greatest painter in France during the latter half of the nineteenth +century. Beautiful paint always provokes hatred. Manet won. Nothing +succeeds like the success which follows death. (Our only fear nowadays +is that his imitators won't die. Second-rate Manet is as bad as +second-rate Bouguereau.) If he began by patterning after Hals, +Velasquez, and Goya, he ended quite Edouard Manet; above all, he gave +his generation a new vision. There will be always the battle of +methods. As Mr. MacColl says: "Painting is continually swaying between +the _chiaroscuro_ reading of the world which gives it depth and the +colour reading which reduces it to flatness. Manet takes all that the +modern inquisition of shadows will give to strike his compromise near +the singing colours of the Japanese mosaic." + +What a wit this Parisian painter possessed! Duret tells of a passage +at arms between Manet and Alfred Stevens at the period when the +former's Le Bon Bock met for a wonder with a favourable reception at +the Salon of 1873. This portrait of the engraver Belot smoking a pipe, +his fingers encircling a glass, caused Stevens to remark that the man +in the picture "drank the beer of Haarlem." The _mot_ nettled Manet, +whose admiration for Frans Hals is unmistakably visible in this +magnificent portrait. He waited his chance for revenge, and it came +when Stevens exhibited a picture in the Rue Lafitte portraying a young +woman of fashion in street dress standing before a portière which she +seems about to push aside in order to enter another room. Manet +studied the composition for a while, and noting a feather duster +elaborately painted which lies on the floor beside the lady, +exclaimed: "Tiens! elle a done un rendezvous avec le valet de +chambre?" + + + + +XII. A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU + + + +New biographical details concerning Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) +may never be forthcoming, though theories of his enigmatic personality +and fascinating art will always find exponents. Our knowledge of +Watteau is confined to a few authorities: the notes in D'Argenville's +Abrégé de la Vie des Plus Fameux Peintres; Catalogue Raisonné, by +Gersaint; Julienne's introduction to the Life of Watteau by Count de +Caylus--discovered by the Goncourts and published in their brilliant +study of eighteenth-century art. Since then have appeared monographs, +études, and articles by Cellier, Mollet, Hanover, Dohme, Müntz, +Séailles, Claude Phillips, Charles Blanc, Virgile Joez, F. Staley, +Téodor de Wyzewa, and Camille Mauclair. Mauclair is the latest and one +of the most interesting commentators, his principal contribution being +De Watteau à Whistler, a chapter of which has been afterward expanded +into a compact little study entitled Watteau and translated from the +French text by Mme. Simon Bussy, the wife of that intimate painter of +twilight and poetic reverie, Simon Bussy, to whom the book is +dedicated. + +It is the thesis put forth and cleverly maintained by Mauclair that +interests us more than his succinct notation of the painter's life. It +is not so novel as it is just and moderate in its application. The +pathologic theory of genius has been overworked. In literature +nowadays "psychiatrists" rush in where critics fear to tread. Mahomet +was an epilept; so was Napoleon. Flaubert died of epilepsy, said his +friends; nevertheless, René Dumesnil has proved that his sudden +decease was caused not by apoplexy but by hystero-neurasthenia. Eye +strain played hob with the happiness of Carlyle, and an apostle of +sweetness and light declared that Ibsen was a "degenerate"--Ibsen, who +led the humdrum exterior life of a healthy _bourgeois_. Lombroso has +demonstrated--to his own satisfaction--that Dante's mystic +illumination was due to some brand of mental disorder. In fact, this +self-styled psychologist mapped anew the topography of the human +spirit. Few have escaped his fine-tooth-comb criticism except +mediocrity. Painters, poets, patriots, musicians, scientists, +philosophers, novelists, statesmen, dramatists, all who ever +participated in the Seven Arts, were damned as lunatics, decadents, +criminals, and fools. It was a convenient inferno in which to dump the +men who succeeded in the field wherein you were a failure. The height +of the paradox was achieved when a silly nomenclature was devised to +meet every vacillation of the human temperament. If you feared to +cross the street you suffered from agoraphobia; if you didn't fear to +cross the street, that too was a very bad sign. If you painted like +Monet, paralysis of the optical centre had set in--but why continue? + +It is a pity that this theory of genius has been so thoroughly +discredited, for it is a field which promises many harvestings; there +is mad genius as there are stupid folk. Besides, normality doesn't +mean the commonplace. A normal man is a superior man. The degenerate +man is the fellow of low instincts, rickety health, and a drunkard, +criminal, or idiot. The comical part of the craze--which was +short-lived, yet finds adherents among the half-baked in culture and +the ignorant--is that it deliberately twisted the truth, making men of +fine brain and high-strung temperament seem crazy or depraved, when +the reverse is usually the case. Since the advent of Lombroso +"brainstorms" are the possession of the privileged. Naturally your +grocer, tailor, or politician may display many of the above symptoms, +but no one studies them. They are not "geniuses." + +All this to assure you that when Camille Mauclair assumes that the +malady from which Antoine Watteau died was also a determining factor +in his art, the French critic is not aping some modern men of science +who denounce the writings of Dostoïevsky because he suffered from +epileptic fits. But there is a happy mean in this effort to correlate +mind and body. If we are what we think or what we eat--and it is not +necessary to subscribe to such a belief--then the sickness of the body +is reflected in the soul, or vice versa. Byron was a healthy man +naturally, when he didn't dissipate, and Byron's poems are full of +magnificent energy, though seldom in the key of optimism. The revolt, +the passion, the scorn, were they all the result of his health? Or of +his liver? Or of his soul? Goethe, the imperial the myriad-minded +Goethe, the apostle of culture, the model European man of the +nineteenth century--what of him? Serenity he is said to have attained, +yet from the summit of eighty years he confessed to four weeks of +happiness in a long lifetime. Nor was he with all his superb manhood +free from neurotic disorders, neurotic and erotic. Shelley? Ah! he is +a pronounced case for the specialists. Any man who could eat dry +bread, drink water, and write such angelic poetry must have been quite +mad. Admitted. Would there were more Shelleys. Browning is a fair +specimen of genius and normality; as his wife illustrated an unstable +nervous temperament allied to genius. George Borrow was a rover, a +difficult man to keep as a friend, happy only when thinking of the +gipsies and quarrelling when with them. Would Baudelaire's magic verse +and prose sound its faint, acrid, sinister music if the French poet +had led a sensible life? Cruel question of the dilettante for whom the +world, all its splendor, all its art, is but a spectacle. It is +needless to continue, the list is too large; too large and too +contradictory. The Variations of Genius would be as profound and as +vast a book as Lord Acton's projected History of Human Thought. The +truth is that genius is the sacrificial goat of humanity; through some +inexplicable transposition genius bears the burdens of mankind; +afflicted by the burden of the flesh intensified many times, burdened +with the affliction of the spirit, raised to a pitch abnormal, the +unhappy man of genius is stoned because he staggers beneath the load +of his sensitive temperament or wavers from the straight and narrow +path usually blocked by bores too thick-headed and too obese to +realise the flower-fringed abysses on either side of the road. And +having sent genius in general among the goats, let us turn to +consumptive genius in particular. + +Watteau was a consumptive; he died of the disease. A consumptive +genius! It is a hard saying. People of average health whose pulse-beat +is normal in _tempo_ luckily never realise the febrile velocity with +which flows the blood in the veins of a sick man of genius. But there +is a paradox in the case of Watteau, as there was in the case of +Chopin, of Keats, of Robert Louis Stevenson. The painter of +Valenciennes gave little sign of his malady on his joyous lyrical +canvases. Keats sang of faëry landscapes and Chopin's was a virile +spirit; the most cheerful writer under the sun was Stevenson, who even +in his Pulvis et Umbra conjured up images of hope after a most +pitiless arraignment of the universe and man. And here is the paradox. +This quartet of genius suffered from and were slain by consumption. +(Stevenson died directly of brain congestion; he was, however, a +victim to lung trouble.) That the poets turn their sorrow into song is +an axiom. Yet these men met death, or what is worse, met life, with +defiance or impassible fronts. And the world which loves the lilting +rhythms of Chopin's mazourkas seldom cares to peep behind the screen +of notes for the anguish ambushed there. Watteau has painted the +gayest scenes of pastoral elegance in a land out of time, a No-Man's +Land of blue skies, beautiful women, gallant men, and lovely +landscapes, while his life was haunted by thoughts of death. + +The riddle is solved by Mauclaìr: These flights into the azure, these +evocations of a country west of the sun and east of the moon, these +graceful creatures of Watteau, the rich brocade of Chopin's harmonies, +the exquisite pictures of Keats, the youthful joy in far-away +countries of Stevenson, all, all are so many stigmata of their +terrible affliction. They sought by the magic of their art to create a +realm of enchantment, a realm wherein their ailing bodies and wounded +spirits might find peace and solace. This is the secret of Watteau, +says Mauclair, which was not yielded up in the eighteenth century, not +even to his followers, Pater, Lancret, Boucher, Fragonard, whose pagan +gaiety and artificial spirit is far removed from the veiled melancholy +of Watteau. As we see Chopin, a slender man, morbid, sickly, strike +the martial chord in an unparalleled manner, Chopin the timid, the +composer of the Heroic Polonaise, so Watteau, morbid, sickly, timid, +slender, composes that masterpiece of delicate and decorative +joyousness, The Embarkment for Cythera, which hangs in the Louvre (a +gorgeous sketch, the final version, is at Potsdam in the collection of +the German Emperor). In these works we find the aura of consumption. + +None of Watteau's contemporaries fathomed the meaning of his art: not +Count de Caylus, not his successors, who all recognised the masterly +draughtsman, the marvellous colourist, the composer of pastoral +ballets, of matchless _fêtes galantes_, of conversations, of +miniatures depicting camp life, and fanciful decorations in the true +style of his times. But the melancholy poet that was in the man, his +lyric pessimism, and his unassuaged thirst for the infinite--these +things they did not see. Caylus, who has left the only data of value, +speaks of Watteau's hatred of life, his aversion at times from the +human face, his restlessness that caused him to seek new +abodes--Chopin was always dissatisfied with his lodgings and always +changing them. The painter made friends in plenty, only to break with +them because of some fancied slight. Chopin was of umbrageous nature, +Liszt tells us. Watteau never married, and never, as far as is known, +had a love affair. He is an inspired painter of women. (Perhaps, +because of his celibacy.) He loved to depict them in delicious poses, +under waving trees in romantic parks or in the nude. A gallant artist, +he was not a gallant man. He had the genius of friendship but not the +talent for insuring its continuity. Like Arthur Rimbaud, he suffered +from the nostalgia of the open road. He disappeared frequently. His +whereabouts was a mystery to his friends. He did not care for money or +for honours. He was elected without volition on his part as a member +of the Academy. Yet he did not use this powerful lever to further his +welfare. Silent, a man of continent speech, he never convinced his +friends that his art was chaste; yet he never painted an indelicate +stroke. His personages, all disillusionised, vaguely suffer, make love +without desire--disillusioned souls all. L'Indifférent, that young man +in the Louvre who treads the earth with such light disdain, with such +an airy expression of sweetness and _ennui_, that picture, Mauclair +remarks, is the soul of Watteau. And, perhaps, spills his secret. + +Mauclair does not like the coupling of Watteau's name with those of +Boucher, Pater, Lancret, De Troy, Coypel, or Vanloo. They imitated him +as to externals; the spirit of him they could not ensnare. If Watteau +stemmed artistically from Rubens, from Ruysdael, from Titian (or +Tiepolo, as Kenyon Cox acutely hints) he is the father of a great +school, the true French school, though his stock is Flemish. Turner +knew him; so did Bonington. Delacroix understood him. So did Chardin, +himself a solitary in his century. Without Watteau's initiative +Monticelli might not be the Monticelli we know, while Claude Monet, +Manet, Renoir are the genuine flowering of his experiments in the +division of tones and the composition of luminous skies. + +Mauclair smiles at Caylus for speaking of Watteau's mannerisms, the +mannerisms that proclaim his originality. Only your academic, +colourless painter lacks personal style and always paints like +somebody he is not. Watteau's art is peculiarly personal. Its +peculiarity--apart from its brilliancy and vivacity--is, as Mauclair +remarks, "the contrast of cheerful colour and morbid expression." +_Morbidezza_ is the precise phrase; _morbidezza_ may be found in +Chopin's art, in the very feverish moments when he seems brimming over +with high spirits. Watteau was not a consumptive of the Pole's type. +He did not alternate between ecstasy and languor. He was cold, +self-contained, suspicious, and inveterately hid the state of his +health. He might have been cured, but he never reached Italy, and that +far-off dream and his longing to realise it may have been the basis of +his last manner--those excursions into a gorgeous dreamland. He +yearned for an impossible region. His visions on canvas are the +shadowy sketches of this secret desire that burned him up. It may have +been consumption--and Mauclair makes out a strong case--and it may +have been the expression of a rare poetic temperament. Watteau was a +poet of excessive sensibility as well as the contriver of dainty +masques and ballets. + +In literature one man at least has understood him, Walter Pater. +Readers of his Imaginary Portraits need not be reminded of A Prince of +Court Painters, that imaginative reconstruction of an almost obscure +personality. "His words as he spoke of them [the paintings of Rubens] +seemed full of a kind of rich sunset with some moving glory within +it." This was the Watteau who is summed by Pater (a distant kinsman, +perhaps, of the Pater Watteau tutored) as a man who had been "a sick +man all his life. He was always a seeker after something in the world, +that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all." Camille +Mauclair eloquently ends his study with the confession that the mere +utterance of Watteau's name "suffices to evoke in men's minds a memory +of the melancholy that was his, arrayed in garments of azure and rose. +Ah! crepuscular Psyche, whose smile is akin to tears!" + + + + +XIII. GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + + +I - GAUGUIN + + + +The key-note to the character of Paul Gauguin, painter and sculptor, +may be found in his declaration that in art there are only +revolutionists or plagiarists. A brave speech. And a proud man who +uttered it; for unless he wished to avoid its implications he must +needs prove his sincerity. In the short, adventurous, crowded life +vouchsafed him, Paul Gauguin proved himself indeed a revolutionary +painter. His maxim was the result of hard-won experiences. He was born +at Paris June 7, 1848--a stormy year for France; he died at Dominique +May 9, 1904. His father was a native of Brittany, while on his +mother's side he was Peruvian. This mixed blood may account for his +wandering proclivities and his love for exotic colouring and manners. +To further accentuate the rebellious instincts of the youth his +maternal grandmother was that Flora Tristan, friend of the anarchistic +thinker Proudhon. She was a socialist later and a prime mover in the +Workman's Union; she allied herself with Père Enfantin and helped him +to found his religion, "Mapa," of which he was the god, Ma, and she +the goddess, Pa. Enfantin's career and end may be recalled by students +of St. Simon and the socialistic movements of those times. Paul's +father, Clovis Gauguin, wrote in 1848 the political chronicle on the +_National_, but previous to the _coup d'etat_ he left for Lima, there +to found a journal. He died of an aneurism in the Straits of Magellan, +a malady that was to carry off his son. After four years in Lima the +younger Gauguin returned to France. In 1856 a Peruvian grand-uncle +died at the extraordinary age of one hundred and thirteen. His name +was Don Pio de Tristan, and he was reported very rich. But Paul got +none of this wealth, and at fourteen he was a cabin-boy, feeble of +health but extremely curious about life. He saw much of life and +strange lands in the years that followed, and he developed into a +powerfully built young sailor and no doubt stored his brain with +sumptuous images of tropical scenery which reappeared in his canvases. +He traversed the globe several times. He married and took a position +in a bank. On Sundays he painted. His hand had itched for years to +reproduce the landscapes he had seen. He made friends with Degas, +Cézanne, Pissarro, Renoir, Monet, Guillaumin, and Manet. He called +himself an amateur and a "Sunday painter," but as he was received on +terms of equality with these famous artists it may be presumed that, +autodidact as he was, his versatile talent--for it literally was +versatile--did not escape their scrutiny. He submitted himself to +various influences; he imitated the Impressionists, became a +Neo-Impressionist of the most extravagant sort; went sketching with +Cézanne and Van Gogh, that unfortunate Dutchman, and finally announced +to his friends and family that "henceforward I shall paint every day." +He gave up his bank, and Charles Morice has said that his life became +one of misery, solitude, and herculean labours. + +He painted in Brittany, Provence, at Martinique, in the Marquesas and +Tahiti. He had parted with the Impressionists and sought for a new +_æsthetik_ of art; to achieve this he broke away not only from +tradition, even the tradition of the Impressionists, but from Europe +and its civilisation. To this half-savage temperament devoured by the +nostalgia of the tropics the pictures of his contemporaries bore the +fatal stamp of the obvious, of the thrice done and used up. France, +Holland, Spain, Italy--what corner was there left in these countries +that had not been painted thousands of times and by great masters! The +South Seas, Japan, China--anywhere away from the conventional studio +landscape, studio models, poses, grimaces! At Pont-Aven in 1888, +between trips made to Martinique and Provence, Gauguin had attained +mastery of himself; Cézanne had taught him simplicity; Degas, his +avowed admirer, had shown him the potency of the line; Renoir's warm +colouring had spurred him to a still richer palette; and Manet had +given him sound advice. A copy of the Olympe, by Gauguin, finished +about this time, is said to be a masterpiece. But with Degas he was +closer than the others. A natural-born writer, his criticisms of the +modern French school are pregnant with wit and just observation. What +was nicknamed the School of Pont-Aven was the outcome of Gauguin's +imperious personality. A decorative impulse, a largeness of style, and +a belief that everything in daily life should be beautiful and +characteristic sent the painters to modelling, to ceramics and +decoration. Armand Seguin, Emile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Filiger, +Serusier, Bonnard, Vuillard, Chamaillard, Verkade, O'Conor, Durio, +Maufra, Ranson, Mayol, Roy, and others are to-day happy to call +themselves associates of Paul Gauguin in this little movement in which +the idolatry of the line and the harmonies of the arabesque were +pursued with joyous fanaticism. + +Gauguin in an eloquent letter tells of his intercourse with Vincent +Van Gogh, who went mad and killed himself, not, however, before +attempting the life of his master. Mauclair has said of Van Gogh that +he "left to the world some violent and strange works, in which +Impressionism appears to have reached the limit of its audacity. Their +value lies in their naïve frankness and in the undauntable +determination which tried to fix without trickery the sincerest +feelings. Amid many faulty and clumsy works Van Gogh has also left +some really beautiful canvases." Before Gauguin went to Tahiti his +Breton peasants were almost as monstrous as his later Polynesian +types. His representations of trees also seem monstrous. His endeavour +was to get beyond the other side of good and evil in art and create a +new synthesis, and thus it came to pass that the ugly and the formless +reign oft in his work--the ugly and formless according to the old +order of envisaging the world. + +In 1891 and 1892, at Tahiti, Gauguin painted many +pictures--masterpieces his friends and disciples call them--which were +later shown at an exhibition held in the Durand-Ruel Galleries. Paris +shuddered or went into ecstasy over these blazing transcriptions of +the tropics; over these massive men and women, nude savages who stared +with such sinister magnetism from the frames. The violent +deformations, the intensity of vision, the explosive hues--a novel +gamut of rich tones--and the strangeness of the subject-matter caused +a nine days' gossip; yet the exhibition was not a great success. +Gauguin was too new, too startling, too original for his generation; +he is yet for the majority, though he may be the Paint God of the +twentieth century. Cut to the heart by his failure to make a dazzling +reputation, also make a little money--for he was always a poor man--he +left Paris forever in 1895. He was sick and his life among the +Marquisians did not improve his health. He took the part of the +natives against the whites and was denounced as a moral castaway. In +1904 he wrote Charles Morice: "I am a savage." But a savage of talent. +In reality he was a cultivated man, an attractive man, and a billiard +player and a fencer. Paint was his passion. If you live by the pen you +may perish by the pen. The same is too often the case with the palette +and brush hero. + +Though Paul Gauguin failed in his search for a synthesis of the ugly +and the beautiful, he was nevertheless a bold initiator, one who +shipwrecked himself in his efforts to fully express his art. With all +his realism he was a symbolist, a master of decoration. A not too +sympathetic commentator has written of him: "Paul Gauguin's robust +talent found its first motives in Breton landscapes, in which the +method of colour spots may be found employed with delicacy and placed +at the service of a rather heavy but very interesting harmony. Then +the artist spent a long time in Tahiti, whence he returned with a +completely transformed manner. He brought back from those regions some +landscapes treated in intentionally clumsy and almost wild fashion. +The figures are outlined in firm strokes and painted in broad, flat +tints on canvas that has the texture of tapestry. Many of these works +are made repulsive by their aspect of multicoloured, crude, and +barbarous imagery. Yet one cannot but acknowledge the fundamental +qualities, the lovely values, the ornamental taste, and the impression +of primitive animalism. On the whole, Paul Gauguin has a beautiful, +artistic temperament which, in its aversion to virtuosity, has perhaps +not sufficiently understood that the fear of formulas, if exaggerated, +may lead to other formulas, to a false ignorance which is as dangerous +as false knowledge." + +All of which is true; yet Paul Gauguin was a painter who had something +new to say, and he said it in a very personal fashion. + + + + +II - TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + + +I once attended at Paris an exhibition devoted to the work of the late +Count Toulouse-Lautrec. There the perverse genius of an unhappy man +who owes allegiance to no one but Degas and the Japanese was seen at +its best. His astonishing qualities of invention, draughtsmanship, and +a diabolic ingenuity in sounding the sinister music of decayed souls +have never been before assembled under one roof. Power there is and a +saturnine hatred of his wretched sitters. Toulouse-Lautrec had not the +impersonal vision of Zola nor the repressed and disenchanting irony of +Degas. He loathed the crew of repulsive night birds that he pencilled +and painted in old Montmartre before the foreign invasion destroyed +its native and spontaneous wickedness. Now a resort for easily +bamboozled English and Americans, the earlier Montmartre was a rich +mine for painter-explorers. Raffaelli went there and so did Renoir; +but the former was impartially impressionistic; the latter, ever +ravished by a stray shaft of sunshine flecking the faces of the +dancers, set it all down in charming tints. Not so Toulouse-Lautrec. +Combined with a chronic pessimism, he exhibited a divination of +character that, if he had lived and worked hard, might have placed him +not far below Degas. He is savant. He has a line that proclaims the +master. And unlike Aubrey Beardsley, his affinity to the Japanese +never seduced him into the exercise of the decorative abnormal which +sometimes distinguished the efforts of the Englishman. We see the +Moulin Rouge with its hosts of deadly parasites, La Goulue and her +vile retainers. The brutality here is one of contempt, as a blow +struck full in the face. Vice has never before been so harshly +arraigned. This art makes of Hogarth a pleasing preacher, so drastic +is it, so deliberately searching in its insults. And never the +faintest exaggeration or burlesque. These brigands and cut-throats, +pimps and pickpurses are set before us without bravado, without the +genteel glaze of the timid painter, without an attempt to call a +prostitute a _cocotte_. Indeed, persons are called by their true names +in these hasty sketches of Lautrec's, and so clearly sounded are the +names that sometimes you are compelled to close your ears and eyes. +His models, with their cavernous glance, their emaciated figures, and +vicious expression, are a commentary on atelier life in those days and +regions. Toulouse-Lautrec is like a page from Ecclesiastes. + + + + +XIV. LITERATURE AND ART + + + +I - CONCERNING CRITICS + + + +The annual rotation of the earth brings to us at least once during its +period the threadbare, thriceworn, stale, flat, and academic +discussion of critic and artist. We believe comparisons of creator and +critic are unprofitable, being for the most part a confounding of +intellectual substances. The painter paints, the composer makes music, +the sculptor models, and the poet sings. Like the industrious crow the +critic hops after these sowers of beauty, content to peck up in the +furrows the chance grains dropped by genius. This, at least, is the +popular notion. Balzac, and later Disraeli, asked: "After all, what +are the critics? Men who have failed in literature and art." And +Mascagni, notwithstanding the laurels he wore after his first success, +cried aloud in agony that a critic was _compositore mancato_. These be +pleasing quotations for them whose early opus has failed to score. The +trouble is that every one is a critic, your gallery-god as well as the +most stately practitioner of the art severe. Balzac was an excellent +critic when he saluted Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme as a +masterpiece; as was Emerson when he wrote to Walt Whitman. What the +mid-century critics of the United States, what Sainte-Beuve, master +critic of France, did not see, Balzac and Emerson saw and, better +still, spoke out. In his light-hearted fashion Oscar Wilde asserted +that the critic was also a creator--apart from his literary worth--and +we confess that we know of cases where the critic has created the +artist. But that a serious doubt can be entertained as to the relative +value of creator and critic is hardly worth denying. + +Consider the painters. Time and time again you read or hear the +indignant denunciation of some artist whose canvas has been ripped-up +in print. If the offender happens to be a man who doesn't paint, then +he is called an ignoramus; if he paints or etches, or even sketches in +crayon, he is well within the Balzac definition--poor, miserable +imbecile, he is only jealous of work that he could never have +achieved. As for literary critics, it may be set down once and for all +that they are "suspect." They write; ergo, they must be unjust. The +dilemma has branching horns. Is there no midway spot, no safety ground +for that weary Ishmael the professional critic to escape being gored? +Naturally any expression of personal feeling on his part is set down +to mental arrogance. He is permitted like the wind to move over the +face of the waters, but he must remain unseen. We have always thought +that the enthusiastic Dublin man in the theatre gallery was after a +critic when he cried aloud at the sight of a toppling companion: +"Don't waste him. Kill a fiddler with him!" It seems more in +consonance with the Celtic character; besides, the Irish are +music-lovers. + +If one could draw up the list of critical and creative men in art the +scale would not tip evenly. The number of painters who have written of +their art is not large, though what they have said is always pregnant. +Critics outnumber them--though the battle is really a matter of +quality, not quantity. There is Da Vinci. For his complete writings +some of us would sacrifice miles of gawky pale and florid mediæval +paintings. What we have of him is wisdom, and like true wisdom is +prophetic. Then there is that immortal gossip Vasari, a very biassed +critic and not too nice to his contemporaries. He need not indulge in +what is called the woad argument; we sha'n't go back to the early +Britons for our authorities. Let us come to Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose +Discourses are invaluable--and also to be taken well salted; he was +encrusted with fine old English prejudices. One of his magnificent +sayings and one appreciated by the entire artistic tribe was his +ejaculation: "Damn paint!" Raphael Mengs wrote. We wish that Velasquez +had. What William Blake said of great artists threw much light on +William Blake. Ingres uttered things, principally in a rage, about his +contemporaries. Delacroix was a thinker. He literally anticipated +Chevreul's discoveries in the law of simultaneous contrasts of colour. +Furthermore, he wrote profoundly of his art. He appreciated Chopin +before many critics and musicians--which would have been an impossible +thing for Ingres, though he played the violin--and he was kind to the +younger men. + +Need we say that Degas is a great wit, though not a writer; a wit and +a critic? Rousseau, the landscapist, made notes, and Corot is often +quoted. If Millet had never written another sentence but "There is no +isolated truth," he would still have been a critic. Constable with his +"A good thing is never done twice"; and Alfred Stevens's definition of +art, "Nature seen through the prism of an emotion," forestalled Zola's +pompous pronouncement in The Experimental Novel. To jump over the +stile to literature, Wordsworth wrote critical prefaces, and Shelley, +too; Poe was a critic; and what of Coleridge, who called painting "a +middle quality between a thought and a thing--the union of that which +is nature with that which is exclusively human"? There are plenty of +examples on the side of the angels. Whistler! What a critic, wielding +a finely chased rapier! Thomas Couture wrote and discoursed much of +his art. Sick man as he was, I heard him talk of art at his country +home, Villiers-le-Bel, on the Northern Railway, near Paris. This was +in 1878. William M. Hunt's talks on art were fruitful. So are John +Lafarge's. The discreet Gigoux of Balzac notoriety has an entertaining +book to his credit; while Rodin is often coaxed into utterances about +his and other men's work. There are many French, English, and American +artists who write and paint with equal facility. In New York, Kenyon +Cox is an instance. But the chiefest among all the painters alive and +dead, one who shines and will continue to shine when his canvases are +faded--and they are fading--is Eugène Fromentin, whose Maîtres +d'autrefois is a classic of criticism. Since his day two critics, who +are also painters, have essayed both crafts, George Clausen and D.S. +MacColl. + +Professor Clausen is a temperate critic, MacColl a brilliant, +revolutionary one. The critical temper in either man is not dogmatic. +Seurat, the French Neo-Impressionist, has defended his theories; +indeed, the number of talented Frenchmen who paint well and write with +style as well as substance is amazing. Rossetti would no longer be a +rare bird in these days of piping painters, musicians who are poets, +and sculptors who are painters. The unfortunate critic occasionally +writes a play or an opera (particularly in Paris), but as a rule he is +content to echo that old German who desperately exclaimed: "Even if I +am nothing else, I am at least a contemporary." + +Let us now swing around the obverse side of the medal. A good showing. +You may begin with Wincklemann or Goethe--we refer entirely to critics +of paint and painters--or run down the line to Diderot, Blanc, +Gautier, Baudelaire, Zola, Goncourt, who introduced to Europe Japanese +art; Roger Marx, Geoffroy, Huysmans, Camille Mauclair, Charles Morice, +and Octave Mirbeau. Zola was not a painter, but he praised Edouard +Manet. These are a few names hastily selected. In England, Ruskin too +long ruled the critical roast; full of thunder-words like Isaiah, his +vaticinations led a generation astray. He was a prophet, not a critic, +and he was a victim to his own abhorred "pathetic fallacy." Henley was +right in declaring that until R.A.M. Stevenson appeared there was no +great art criticism in England or English. The "Velasquez" is a +marking stone in critical literature. It is the one big book by a big +temperament that may be opposed page by page to Fromentin's critical +masterpiece. Shall we further adduce the names of Morelli, Sturge +Moore, Roger Fry, Perkins, Cortissoz, Lionel Cust, Colvin, Ricci, Van +Dyke, Mather, Berenson, Brownell, and George Moore--who said of Ruskin +that his uncritical blindness regarding Whistler will constitute his +passport to fame, "the lot of critics is to be remembered by what they +have failed to understand." Walter Pater wrote criticism that is +beautiful literature. If Ruskin missed Whistler, he is in good +company, for Sainte-Beuve, the prince of critics, missed Balzac, +Stendhal, Flaubert, and to Victor Hugo was unfair. Yet, consider the +Osrics embalmed in the amber of Sainte-Beuve's style. He, like many +another critic, was superior to his subject. And that is always fatal +to the water-flies. + +George III once asked in wonderment how the apples get inside the +dumplings. How can a critic criticise a creator? The man who looks on +writing things about the man who does things. But he criticises and +artists owe him much. Neither in "ink-horn terms" nor in an "upstart +Asiatic style" need the critic voice his opinions. He must be an +artist in temperament and he must have a _credo_. He need not be a +painter to write of painting, for his primary appeal is to the public. +He is the middle-man, the interpreter, the vulgariser. The +psycho-physiological processes need not concern us. One thing is +certain--a man writing in terms of literature about painting, an art +in two dimensions, cannot interpret fully the meanings of the canvas, +nor can he be sure that his opinion, such as it is, when it reaches +the reader, will truthfully express either painter or critic. Such are +the limitations of one art when it comes to deal with the ideas or +material of another. Criticism is at two removes from its theme. +Therefore criticism is a makeshift. Therefore, let critics be modest +and allow criticism to become an amiable art. + +But where now is the painter critic and the professional critic? +"Stands Ulster where it did?" Yes, the written and reported words of +artists are precious alike to layman and critic. That they prefer +painting to writing is only natural; so would the critic if he had the +pictorial gift. However, as art is art and not nature, criticism is +criticism and not art. It professes to interpret the artist's work, +and at best it mirrors his art mingled with the personal temperament +of the critic. At the worst the critic lacks temperament (artistic +training is, of course, an understood requisite), and when this is the +case, God help the artist! As the greater includes the lesser, the +artist should permit the critic to enter, with all due reverence, his +sacred domain. Without vanity the one, sympathetic the other. Then the +ideal collaboration ensues. Sainte-Beuve says that "criticism by +itself can do nothing. The best of it can act only in concert with +public feeling ... we never find more than half the article in +print--the other half was written only in the reader's mind." And +Professor Walter Raleigh would further limit the "gentle art." +"Criticism, after all, is not to legislate, nor to classify, but to +raise the dead." The relations between the critic and his public open +another vista of the everlasting discussion. Let it be a negligible +one now. That painters can get along without professional criticism we +know from history, but that they will themselves play the critic is +doubtful. And are they any fairer to young talent than official +critics? It is an inquiry fraught with significance. Great and small +artists have sent forth into the world their pupils. Have they +always--as befits honest critics--recognised the pupils of other men, +pupils and men both at the opposite pole of their own theories? Recall +what Velasquez is reported to have said to Salvator Rosa, according to +Boschini and Carl Justi. Salvator had asked the incomparable Spaniard +whether he did not think Raphael the best of all the painters he had +seen in Italy. Velasquez answered: "Raphael, to be plain with you, for +I like to be candid and outspoken, does not please me at all." This +purely temperamental judgment does not make of Velasquez either a good +or a bad critic. It is interesting as showing us that even a master +cannot always render justice to another. Difference engenders hatred, +as Stendhal would say. + +Can the record of criticism made by plastic artists show a generous +Robert Schumann? Schumann discovered many composers from Chopin to +Brahms and made their fortunes by his enthusiastic writing about them. +In Wagner he met his Waterloo, but every critic has his limitations. +There is no Schumann, let the fact be emphasised, among the +painter-critics, though quite as much discrimination, ardour of +discovery, and acumen may be found among the writings of the men whose +names rank high in professional criticism. And this hedge, we humbly +submit, is a rather stiff one to vault for the adherents of criticism +written by artists only. Nevertheless, every day of his humble career +must the critic pen his _apologia pro vita sua_. + + + + +II - ART IN FICTION + + + +Fiction about art and artists is rare--that is, good fiction, not the +stuff ground out daily by the publishing mills for the gallery-gods. +It is to France that we must look for the classic novel dealing with +painters and their painting, Manette Salomon, by Goncourt. Henry James +has written several delightful tales, such as The Liar, The Real +Thing, The Tragic Muse, in which artists appear. But it is the +particular psychological problem involved rather than theories of art +or personalities that steer Mr. James's cunning pen. We all remember +the woman who destroyed a portrait of her husband which seemed to +reveal his moral secret. John S. Sargeant has been credited with being +the psychologist of the brush in this story. There is a nice, fresh +young fellow in The Tragic Muse, who, weak-spined as he is, prefers at +the last his painting to Julia Dallow and a political career. In The +Real Thing we recognise one of those unerring strokes that prove James +to be the master psychologist among English writers. Any discerning +painter realises the value of a model who can take the pose that will +give him the pictorial idea, the suggestiveness of the pose, not an +attempt at crude naturalism. With this thesis the novelist has built +up an amusing, semi-pathetic, and striking fable. + +There are painters scattered through English fiction--can we ever +forget Thackeray! Ouida has not missed weaving her Tyrian purples into +the exalted pattern of her romantic painters. And George Eliot. And +Disraeli. And Bernard Shaw--there is a painting creature in Love Among +the Artists. George Moore, however, has devoted more of his pages to +paint and painters than any other of the latter-day writers. The +reason is this: George Moore went to Paris to study art and he drifted +into the Julian atelier like any other likely young fellow with hazy +notions about art and a well-filled purse. But these early experiences +were not lost. They cropped up in many of his stories and studies. He +became the critical pioneer of the impressionistic movement and first +told London about Manet, Monet, Degas. He even--in an article +remarkable for critical acumen--declared that if Jimmy Whistler had +been a heavier man, a man of beef, brawn, and beer, like Rubens, he +would have been as great a painter as Velasquez. To the weighing +scales, fellow-artists! retorted Whistler; yet the bolt did not miss +the mark. Whistler's remarks about Mr. Moore, especially after the +Eden lawsuit, were, so it is reported, not fit to print. + +In Mr. Moore's first volume of the half-forgotten trilogy, Spring +Days, we see a young painter who, it may be said, thinks more of +petticoats than paint. There is paint talk in Mike Fletcher, Moore's +most virile book. In A Modern Lover the hero is an artist who succeeds +in the fashionable world by painting pretty, artificial portraits and +faded classical allegories, thereby winning the love of women, much +wealth, popular applause, and the stamp of official approbation. This +Lewis Seymour still lives and paints modish London in rose-colour. +Moore's irony would have entered the soul of a hundred "celebrated" +artists if they had had any soul to flesh it in. When he wrote this +novel, one that shocked Mrs. Grundy, Moore was under the influence of +Paris. However, that masterpiece of description and analysis, Mildred +Lawson in Celibates--very Balzacian title, by the way--deals with +hardly anything else but art. Mildred, who is an English girl without +soul, heart, or talent, studies in the Julian atelier and goes to +Fontainebleau during the summer. No one, naturally, will ever describe +Fontainebleau better than Flaubert, in whose L'Education Sentimentale +there are marvellous pictures; also a semi-burlesque painter, +Pellerin, who reads all the works on æsthetics before he draws a line, +and not forgetting that imperishable portrait of Jacques Arnoux, art +dealer. Goncourt, too, has excelled in his impression of the forest +and its painters, Millet in particular. Nevertheless, let us say in +passing that you cannot find Mildred Lawson in Flaubert or Goncourt; +no, not even in Balzac, whose work is the matrix of modern fiction. +She is her own perverse, cruel Mooresque self, and she lives in New +York as well as London. + +In both Daudet and Maupassant--Strong as Death is the latter's +contribution to painter-psychology--there are stories clustered about +the guild. Daudet has described a Salon on varnishing day with his +accustomed facile, febrile skill; you feel that it comes from Goncourt +and Zola. It is not within our scope to go back as far as Balzac, +whose Frenhofer in The Unknown Masterpiece has been a model for the +younger man. Poe, Hawthorne, Wilde, and Robert Louis Stevenson have +dealt with the theme pictorial. Zola's The Masterpiece (L'Oeuvre) is +one of the better written books of Zola. It was a favourite of his. +The much-read and belauded fifth chapter is a faithful transcription +of the first Salon of the Rejected Painters (Salon des Refusés) at +Paris, 1863. Napoleon III, after pressure had been brought to bear +upon him, consented to a special salon within the official Salon, at +the Palais de l'Industrie, which would harbour the work of the young +lunatics who wished to paint purple turkeys, green water, red grass, +and black sunsets. (Lie down, ivory hallucinations, and don't wag your +carmilion tail on the chrome-yellow carpet!) It is an enormously +clever book, this, deriving in the main as it does from Manette +Salomon and Balzac's Frenhofer. The fight for artistic veracity by +Claude Lantier is a replica of what occurred in Manet's lifetime. The +Breakfast on the Grass, described by Zola, was actually the title and +the subject of a Manet picture that scandalised Paris about this +epoch. The fantastic idea of a nude female stretched on the grass, +while the other figures were clothed and in their right minds, was too +much for public and critic, and unquestionably Manet did paint the +affair to create notoriety. Like Richard Wagner, he knew the value of +advertising. + +All the then novel theories of _plein air_ impressionism are discussed +in the Zola novel, yet the work seems clumsy after Goncourt's Manette +Salomon, that breviary for painters which so far back as 1867 +anticipated--in print, of course--the discoveries, the experiments, +the practice of the naturalistic-impressionistic groups from Courbet +to Cézanne, Monet to Maufra, Manet to Paul Gauguin. There are verbal +pictures of student life, of salons, of atelier and open air. No such +psychologic manual of the painter's art has ever appeared before or +since Manette Salomon. It was the Goncourts who introduced Japanese +art to European literature--they were friends of the late M. Bing, a +pioneer collector in Paris. And they foresaw the future of painting as +well as of fiction. + + + + +XV. MUSEUM PROMENADES + + + +PICTURES AT THE HAGUE + +There are two new Rembrandts in the galleries of the Mauritshuis, lent +by Prof. A. Bredius, director of the Royal Picture Gallery at The +Hague. Neither is an "important" picture in the professional sense of +that word, but they are Rembrandts--at least one is indubitable--and +that suffices. The more credible of the pair is a small canvas +depicting Andromeda manacled to the rocks. Her figure is draped to the +waist; it is a solid Dutch figure, ugly as the one of Potiphar's wife +(in an etching by Rembrandt), and no deliverer is in sight. The flesh +tones are rather cold, a cadaverous white, but it is a Rembrandt +white. The picture as a whole is sketchy and without charm or mystery. +Nevertheless, the lion's paws are there. The other shows us a woman +reading at a table. The colouring is warm and the still-life +accessories are richly and minutely painted. Not a likely Rembrandt, +either in theme or notably so in treatment. We must bow, however, to +the judgment of the learned Bredius who made the ascription. These two +works are not as yet in the catalogue. It is a pity the catalogue to +this gallery is not as complete as those of the Rijks Museum. To +visitors they offer an abridged one, dated 1904. There are since then +many new pictures, notably a sterling Chardin, marvellously painted, +and an excellent landscape by Van Cuyp, both loans of Dr. Bredius. + +Otherwise this little collection is as choice and as entertaining as +ever. The usual tourist makes at once for the overrated Young Bull by +Paul Potter and never looks at the magnificent Weenix across the room, +the Dead Swan, with its velvety tones. The head of a young girl by +Vermeer, with its blue turban and buff coat, its pearl earrings, is +charming. And the View of Delft seems as fresh as the day it was +painted. The long façade of the houses and warehouses and the churches +and towers facing the river are rendered with a vivacity of colour, a +solidity in drawing, and an absence of too marked literalism which +prove that this gifted artist had more than one style. The envelope is +rich; there is air, though it be stagnant. Down-stairs is an +allegorical subject, The New Testament, which is not very convincing +as a composition, but warm in tint. The Diana and Her Companions must +have inspired Diaz and many other painters. But the real Vermeer, the +Vermeer of the enamelled surfaces and soft pervasive lighting, is at +Amsterdam. + +No place is better than The Hague for the study of the earlier +Rembrandt. Dr. Tulp's Anatomical Lecture is, after the Potter bull, +the most gazed-at canvas in the Mauritshuis. It is not in a good +condition. There are evidences of over-varnishing and cobbling; nor is +it a very inspiring canvas. The head of Dr. Tulp is superb in +characterisation, and there is one other head, that of a man with +inquiring eyes, aquiline profile, the head strained forward (his name +is given in the critical works on Rembrandt), which arrests the +attention. An early composition, we are far from the perfection of The +Syndics. The self-portrait of the painter (1629) is a favourite, +though the much-vaunted feather in the head-gear is stiff; perhaps +feathers in Holland were stiff in those days. But the painters flock +to this portrait and never tire of copying its noble silhouette. The +two little studies of the painter's father and mother are +characteristic. One, of the man, is lent by Dr. Bredius. Rembrandt's +brother (study of an old man's head) shows a large old chap with a +nose of richest vintage. The portrait is brown in tone and without +charm. The Susanna Bathing is famous, but it is not as attractive as +Simeon in the Temple, with its masterly lighting, old gold in the +gloom. The Homer never fails to warm the cockles of the imagination. +What bulk! What a wealth of smothered fire in the apparel! The big +Saul listening to the playing of David is still mystifying. Is Saul +smiling or crying behind the uplifted cloak? Is he contemplating in +his neurasthenia an attempt on David's life with a whizzing lance? His +sunken cheeks, vague yet sinister eye, his turban marvellous in its +iridescence, form an ensemble not to be forgotten. David is not so +striking. From afar the large canvas glows. And the chiaroscuro is +miraculous. + +The portrait of Rembrandt's sister, the Flight Into Egypt, the small, +laughing man, the negroes, and the study of an old woman, the latter +wearing a white head-dress, are a mine of joy for the student. The +sister's head is lent by Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot, the art expert. + +There are only thirty-odd Rembrandts in Holland out of the five +hundred and fifty he painted. Of this number eighteen are in the +Mauritshuis. Holland was not very solicitous formerly of her masters. +Nowadays sentiment has changed and there is a gratifying outcry +whenever a stranger secures a genuine old master. As for the copies, +they, like the poor, are always with us. America is flooded every year +with forged pictures, especially of the minor Dutch masters, and +excellent are these imitations, it must be confessed. + +There are only four specimens of Frans Hals here; portraits of Jacob +Pieterez, Aletta Hanemans, his wife; of William Croes, and the head of +a man, a small picture in The Jolly Toper style. The lace collar is +genuine Hals. + +Let us close our catalogue and wander about the galleries. German and +English are the tongues one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally. +The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at by hundreds. As a +picture painted by a very young man it is noteworthy. The head of the +beast is nobly depicted. But what of the remainder of this +insignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaningless +landscape? The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeins +are--two anyhow--of splendid quality. Of the Rubenses it is better to +defer mention until Antwerp is reached. They are of unequal value. The +same may be said of the Van Dycks. Look at that baby girl standing by +a chair. A Govert Flinck. How truthful! The De Heems are excellent +fruit and flower pieces. Excellent, too, the Huysums, Hondecoeters, +and Weenixes. There is a dead baby of the Dutch school (1661) which is +as realistic as a Courbet. We admired the small Memlic, or Memling, +and, naturally, the Metsus, Mierevelts, and Mierises. The Holy Virgin +and Infant Christ, by Murillo, is tender and sleek in colour. It hangs +near the solitary Velasquez of the museum, a portrait of +Charles-Baltasar, son of King Philip IV of Spain. It is not a +remarkable Velasquez. + +The Pieter Lastman, a Resurrection of Lazarus, is of interest because +this painter was a preceptor of Rembrandt. William Kalf's still-life +is admirable, and the Aert Van den Neer moonlight scene (purchased +1903) is a lovely example of this artist. Indeed, all the minor +Dutchmen are well represented. Potter's much-praised Cow in the Water +is faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over at our own +Academy exhibitions. The Van Goyen waterscapes are not all of prime +quality, but there are two that are masterpieces. Amsterdam excels in +both Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels. The Distant View of Haarlem of +the latter proved a disappointment. The colour is vanished quite, the +general effect flat. The Bol portrait of Admiral de Ruyter is a +sterling specimen. The Van de Veldes and Wouvermans are excellent. The +Good Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture, with its tricky light +and dark. The Teniers and Ostades no longer interest us as they did. +Perhaps one tires soon of genre pictures. The inevitable toper, the +perambulating musician, the old woman standing in a doorway, the +gossips, the children, and the dog not house-broken may stand for the +eternal Ostade, while the merry-makings of David Teniers are too much +alike. However, this touch of spleen is the outcome of seeing so many +bituminous canvases. + +Probably in no other painter's name have so many sins been committed +as in Rembrandt's. His _chiaroscuro_ is to blame for thousands of +pictures executed in the tone of tobacco juice. All the muddy browns +of the studio, with the yellow smear that passes for Rembrandtish +light, are but the monkey tricks of lesser men. His pupils often made +a mess of it, and they were renowned. Terburg's Despatch is an +interesting anecdote; so too Metsu's Amateur Musicians. There are the +average number of Dutch Italianate painters, Jan Both and the rest, +men who employed southern backgrounds and improvised bastard Italian +figures. Schalcken's candlelight scenes are not missing, though Dou +leads in this rather artificial genre. And every tourist led by a +guide hears that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse somewhere +in his picture. You leave Holland obsessed by that white animal. + +Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the surface of the artistic +attractions in this Hague gallery. Not the least of them is to look +out on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around the +emerald islet in the middle. The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and +months could not stale its variety. There are important omissions, and +some of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch. +But the Rembrandts are there, and there are the Potters, the Rubenses, +the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens--his Oyster Feast is here--the landscape +and marine painters, not to mention the portraiture, the Murillo, +Palma Vecchio, and the Titian. The single Roger van der Weyden, an +attribution, is a Crucifixion, and hangs near the Memlig. It is an +interesting picture. Of the sculpture there is not much to write. +Houdon, Hendrick de Keyser, Verhulst, Falconet, Blommendael, and +Xavery make up a meagre list. + +At Baron Steengracht's house--admission by personal card--on the +Vyverberg there is a wonderful Rembrandt, Bathsheba After Her Bath, a +golden-toned canvas, not unlike the Susanna over at the Mauritshuis. +It was painted in 1643, about a year after he had finished The Night +Watch, a jewel of a Rembrandt and the clou of this collection. There +are some weak modern pictures and examples by Terburg, Metsu, Flinck, +Jordaens, Cuyp, Potter, Brouwer--the smoker, a fine work; a Hobbema +mill and others. In the Municipal Museum, full of curiosities in +furniture, armour, and costumes, there is a gallery of modern +paintings--Israel, David Bles, Mesdag, Neuhuys, Bisschop, J. Maris, +Weissenbruch, Bosboom, Blommers, and Mauve. There are also Mierevelts, +Jan Ravensteyns, Honthorst, Van Goyen, Van Ceulen, and a lot of +shooting-gallery (Doelen) and guild panoramas; there are miles of them +in Holland, and unless painted by Hals, Van der Heist, Elias, and a +few others are shining things of horror, full of staring eyes, and a +jumble of hands, weapons, and dry colours. But they are viewed with +religious awe by the Dutch, whose master passion is patriotic +sentiment. + +There is the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the Wood), the royal villa, +a little over a mile from The Hague, in which De Wit's grisailles may +be seen. The Japanese and orange rooms are charming; the portraits by +Everdingen, Honthorst, Jordaens, and others are of historic interest. + + + + +THE MESDAG MUSEUM + + + +When we were last at The Hague the Mesdag Museum had just opened +(1903). There was no catalogue, and while the nature of this great +gift to the city was felt it was not until a second visit (in 1909) +that its extraordinary value was realised. The catalogue numbers three +hundred and forty-four pictures by modern artists, and there is also a +valuable collection of objects of art, bronzes, pottery, furniture, +and tapestries. Philip Zilcken (a well-known Dutch etcher) in his +introduction calls attention to the rare quality of the Mesdag Museum +and tells us that Mr. and Mrs. Mesdag van Houten bought for their own +pleasure without any thought of forming a gallery for the Dutch +nation. That came later. W.H. Mesdag is the well-known marine painter +whose paintings may be seen in almost every gallery on the Continent. +A native of Groningen (1831), he studied under Roelofs and while in +Brussels lived with his relative, Alma-Tadema; the latter is a +Frieslander. Mesdag excels in marines, painting great sweep of waters +with breadth and simplicity. His palette is cool and restrained, his +rhythmic sense well developed, and his feeling for outdoors truly +Dutch. He belongs to the line of the classic Dutch marinists, to Van +der Velde, Backhuizen, and Van Goyen. His wife, a woman of charm and +culture, died in the spring of last year. She signed her work S. +Mesdag van Houten. Her gift lies in the delineation of forest views, +interiors, portraits, and still-life. Her colour is deep and rich. + +A cursory walk around the various rooms on the Laan van Meerdervoort +impresses one with this idea: with what envy must any curator of any +museum in the world study this collection. Mesdag began gathering his +treasures at a time when the Barbizon school was hardly known; when a +hundred other painters had not been tempted by the dealers into +overproduction; when, in a word, fancy prices were not dreamed of. The +Alma-Tademas are among his best, little as we admire his vital marbles +and lifeless humans. An early portrait of his wife is here. +Bastien-Lepage has a preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, the +Mesdag Museum is rich in _frottis_, painted-in pictures, by such men +as Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupré. As we admire the +etchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to see half a dozen of +his paintings, chiefly scenes in the Orient. The same misty, fantastic +quality is present; he manipulates his colour, thinly laid on, as if +it were some sort of plastic smoke. Impressionistic as are these +canvases, there is a subdued splendor in them all. Bauer feels the +East. His etchings recall Rembrandt's line; but his paintings are +miles away in sentiment and handling. Bisschop (1828-1904) is +represented by a fine still-life, and among the various Blommers is +one with children playing in the water and on the sands; vividly +seized, this example. + +The late Théophile de Bock was an interpreter of nature and his +brush-work was fat and rich. His work is well known in America and +gains in value every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteen +specimens here of his best period. The Emile Bretons are early and +therefore different from his commercial productions. Of the Corots, +twelve in number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a weak one. +The famous Early Morning and View at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon are hung. +The first depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow stream in +which is reflected a cloudless sky. In the centre two women in white +caps. The second is more elaborate in composition. The middle distance +is occupied by picturesque buildings dating probably from the Middle +Ages. In the foreground four persons are under the shadow of some +trees. An unusual scheme for Corot. His well-known characteristics are +present in the dozen; the tremulous leafage, the bright, pure light, +the Italian softness. And what do you say to a half-dozen Courbets, +all of his strong period, landscapes, still-life, a nude study, a dead +roe, a sunlit path, and a lake scene! Good Courbets are not numerous, +and these are good. The nude is a woman recumbent upon draperies. The +_pâte_ is heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the silhouette +firm, yet delicate. The portrait of the artist by himself is massive. +It was probably painted in Ste. Pélagie. + +Coutures two, twenty-five Daubignys, and one of his son Karl. Daubigny +the elder is here in all his manners, dark pictures with big +foregrounds, intimate bits of wooded interiors, sand-hills, +streamlets, moonlights, coast scenes, evening effects, sunsets at sea, +twilights, sheep, broken rocks, and a study in crayon. + +Decamps and Delacroix come next in order. There are three of the +former, among the rest his Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one a +portrait of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his colour was most +sonorous and brilliant, are here, with a study of an undraped female +figure. La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau. +Dupré has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The one +Fortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels +are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of the +Binnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously rich +gamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered in +America. He should be better known; while his ideas are not +particularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was +Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and Matthys (the +latter living in London), are to be seen here in unexampled states. +Mauve, too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags, Taco Mesdag, a +brother and his wife are present. Also Ter Meulen, a gifted Dutch +artist. We have seldom seen better George Michels. The Monticelli +up-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a mountain path in the south of +France. The sun is disappearing behind a cluster of trees. Rocks in +the foreground. The scheme of colour is low for Monticelli, the forms +sharply accented. He could see line when he wished. The smaller +example is an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay the +colours on. + +Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture Hagar and Ishmael, +another the wonderful Resting Vintager. Alone these Millets would +cause a sensation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a trifle too +rhetorical for the simple-minded painter. Brown predominates in the +colour scale, the composition is rather conventional, an echo, +perhaps, of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the Vintager is +a masterpiece. Seated among the vines in the blaze of the sun, he is +resting and has removed his heavy sabots. The relaxed attitude after +arduous labour is wonderfully expressed. The atmosphere indicates +stifling sultriness. + +Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau--halt! There are twelve of this +French master, dramatic and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura is +the celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But it is too +bituminous in parts. A greater composition, though only a drawing, is +Les grands chênes du vieux Bas-Bréau. Four large trees illumined by +sun-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk and pastel; Storm Van's +Gravesande; seven Troyons, one, Le retour du Marché, a masterpiece; +Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets; Weissenbruchs; +Zilcken etchings and two De Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery, +designed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and Gothic brass, +Oriental portières and brass, old Delft, Japanese armour, various +weapons and lanterns, Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch and +Scandinavian, and a magnificent assortment of Satsuma pottery, Cmail +cloisonné, Japanese bronzes, Persian pottery, Spanish brasses, +majolica and bronzes and sculptures by Mattos, Constantin, Meunier, +and Van Wijk--the list fills a pamphlet. Next door is the studio of +the aged Mesdag, a hale old Dutchman who paints daily and looks +forward to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octogenarians are not +few. The climate is propitious; above all, the absence of hurry and +worry. To see The Hague without visiting this collection would be a +regrettable omission. + + + + +HALS OF HAARLEM + + + +In writing of Holland more is said of its windmills than its flowers. +It is a land of flowers. Consider the roll-call of its painters who +their life long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces. Both the +De Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose work still lives in the +mezzotints of Earlom--like David de Heem, he was fond of introducing +insects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety peaches and +roses--Seghers, Van Aelst and his talented pupil Rachel Ruysch, Cuyp, +Breughel (Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den Broeck, Margaretha +Rosenboom, Maria Vos, Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf, and many others +who excelled in this pleasing genre. Their canvases are faded, the +colours oxidised, but on the highways and by-ways the miracle is daily +renewed--flowers bloom at every corner, fill the window-boxes of +residences, crowd the hotel balconies, and are bunched in the hands of +the peddlers. A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses, +chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leaves +that are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivy +is used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht _Carsjens_ at +Leyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in a +floating garden. Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of Baron +Steengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone. It is full of +ivy growing low. Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention. +They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenious +surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away to +imitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden little +leafy lanes--what quips and quirks we have come across a few miles +away from the town! To see Haarlem and its environs in June when the +bulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle. In +the fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of the +various farms as the train passes. The many-coloured vegetable carts +remind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here. + +The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a tall +tower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by +Christian Müller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the +world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand +pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful +organist produce adequate musical results. We had the pleasure of +hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a few +Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by the +A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonic +quality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy +squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so +mellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secret +of the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and the +blue of the old Delft china? There are no fancy "barnyard stops," as +John Runciman has named the combinations often to be found in +latter-day instruments. You understood after hearing the Haarlem organ +why Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues. Modern music, with its +orchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be a +sacrilege on this key-board. + +The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us. The Dutch claim +him as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg. +At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you may +ride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal. +But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in the +United States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort at +either town. Regrettable as was the burning of the old church at +Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerous +pictures painted in that picturesque region. Of course it will be, or +has been, rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and did not once +think of 125th Street; the old town is slightly unlike its modern +namesake. What a charm there is in this venerable forest. The Dutch of +Amsterdam, less than half an hour away, come down here on Sunday +afternoons for the tranquillity and the shade. You must know that the +sun-rays can be very disturbing in July. The canals intersecting the +town are pretty. They may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't look +so. Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though the people won't +acknowledge it. It is the case in Venice, which on hot August +afternoons is not at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget it +all in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float by, steered by a blond +youngster of ten and poled by his brothers. From the chimney comes a +light smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old sunlit towpath of +your boyhood; a tightening at your heart warns you of homesickness, or +hay fever. Oh, to be on the Erie Canal, you exclaim, as you sneeze. + +But the Town Hall Museum is hard by. It is the glory of Haarlem as the +Rijks Museum is the glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the bell +and the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and you are free to the +room where are hung ten large paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals. +Here are the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in chronological +order. Drop the catalogue and use your own eyes. The first impression +is profound; not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rembrandt's +profundity, but because of the almost terrifying vitality of these +portraits. Prosaic men and women, great trenchermen, devourers of huge +pasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-tankards, they live with +such vitality on the canvases of Hals that you instinctively lower +your voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly officers, +sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-looking old women regents are not +so disquieting as Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands with +you across the centuries, and finally you wonder why they don't step +out the frame and greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, of +obvious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid paint, but handled +by the greatest master of the brush that ever lived--save Velasquez. +How thin and unsubstantial modern painting is if compared to this +magician, how even his greatest followers, Manet and Sargent, seem +incomplete. Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, his +elliptical handling, never had the smiling confidence of Hals in +facing a problem. The Frenchman is more subtle, also more evasive; and +there is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact that we +encounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist--himself a great painter. Hals +had not the poetic vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a more +dexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according to the rubric of sheer +paint, sheer brush-work, not Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such a +virtuoso. Despite his almost incredible swiftness of execution, Hals +got closer to the surfaces of what is called "actual" life than any of +the masters with the exception of the supreme Spaniard. + +At Haarlem you may follow his development; his first big picture +painted in 1616; his last in 1664. He died at eighty-four. But at +eighty odd he painted two important canvases, the portraits of the +regents and of the lady regents. More summary as regards the +execution, with a manifest tendency toward simplifications, these two +pictures are very noble. The group of ladies, each a portrait of +character, pleases some more than the male group. They are not so +firmly modelled, and into them all has crept a certain weariness as of +old age; but what justness of expression, what adjustment of puzzling +relations! One lady follows you over the gallery with her stern gaze. +It recalls to us the last judgment look which a maiden aunt was wont +to bestow upon us years ago. The men regents will live into eternity +if the canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleasing, yet it +cannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere that circulates about the +vigorously modelled figures at the table. What a colourist! What +nuances he produces on a restrained key-board! The tones modulate, +their juxtaposition causes no harsh discords. The velvet black, +silvery grays, whites that are mellow without pastiness, and the reds +and yellows do not flare out like scarlet trumpets; an aristrocratic +palette. Really you begin to realise that what you formerly considered +grandfather tales are the truth. The great painters have been and are +not with us to-day. It is not a consoling pill to swallow for apostles +of "modernity." Hals is more modern than Sargent. + +These corporation and regent pieces are chronologically arranged. No. +88 is considered the masterpiece. It shows the officers of the +Arquebusiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures. Again each +man is a portrait. This was painted in 1633. The Regents of the +Elizabeth Hospital (1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style; +nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that chamber is alone worth the +journey across the Atlantic. Hals shows us not the magic of life but +the normal life of daylight in which move with dignity men and women +undismayed by the mysteries that hem them about. He has a daylight +soul, a sane if not poetic soul, and few painters before him so +celebrated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of the real. + + + + +PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM + + + + +I + +The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representative home of old Dutch +art. The Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety, +but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night +Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch +has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the +large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only +in temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed. +We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one +gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better +lighted than in its old quarters, The Night Watch now shows more +clearly the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the background, and +the cracks of the canvas are ill-concealed by the heavy coating of +varnish. If all the faults of this magnificent work are more plainly +revealed its excellences are magnified. How there could have been any +dispute as to the lighting is incredible. The new catalogue, the +appendices of which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes the +picture thus: + +"The Night Watch, or the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and of +Lieutenant van Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad daylight, +leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers. At their head, standing in the +foreground about the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenant +conversing. The former wears a dark dress, the latter a yellow costume +with a white sash, causing a brilliant effect of light. Near the +Captain, also standing out in full light, is a little girl, a dead +white cock hanging from her waistband." + +Then follow the names of the other personages in this strange scene. + +A commonplace happening is transfigured by the magic of a seer into a +significant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window looking +out upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman, +Eugène Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this canvas +full of flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled and confused. +The draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired; hands are carelessly +painted, the grouping haphazard, without symmetry, the general rhythm +full of syncopations, cross accents, and perverse pauses--empty +spaces, transitions not accounted for. And yet this painting without +personal charm--it is almost impersonal--grips your soul. It is not +alone the emotional quality of the paint. There are greater colourists +than Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in monochrome, +modelling with light. No, not the paint alone, not the mystery of the +envelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combined +makes an assault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that Captain +Cocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to the +spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strange +attribute by the genius of the painter, this Dutchman becomes the +protagonist in a soundless symphony of light and shadow. The waves +that emanate from the canvas suffuse your senses but do not soothe or +satisfy. The modern nervous intensity, missing absolutely in Hals and +his substantial humans, is present in Rembrandt. We say "modern" as a +sop to our vanity, but we are the "ancients," and there is no mode of +thought, no mood that has not been experienced and expressed by our +ancestors. Rembrandt is unlike any other Dutch painter--Hals, Vermeer, +Teniers, Van der Heist--what have these in common with the miller's +son? But he is as Dutch as any of them. A genius is only attached to +his age through his faults, said a wise man. Rembrandt is as universal +as Beethoven, a Dutchman by descent, as Bach, a Hungarian by descent, +as Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. But we must go to Leonardo da Vinci +if we wish to find a brother soul to Rembrandt's. + +There is a second child back of that iridescent and enigmatic girl +with the dead fowl. And the dog that barks as Jan Van Koort ruffles +his drum, what a spectre dog! No, the mystery of The Night Watch is +insoluble, because it is the dream of a poet. Its light is morning +light, yet it is the mystic light of Rembrandt, never seen on sea or +land. In The Syndics, that group of six linen-drapers, Rembrandt shows +with what supreme ease he can beat Hals at the game of make-believe +actuality. Now, according to the accustomed order of development, The +Night Watch should have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it by +two decades, and the later work contains far better painting and a +sharper presentment of the real. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninth +symphony; but composed before his Fifth, The Syndics. One figure in +this latter picture has always fascinated us. It is of the man, +Volkert Janz, according to Professor J. Six, who stoops over, his hand +poised on a book. Rembrandt has seldom painted with more sensitiveness +eyes, subtle corners of the mouth, and intimate expression. This +syndic is evidently superior to his fellows, solid, sensible Dutch men +of affairs. + +There is a landscape, purchased in 1900, a stone bridge, lighted by +rays darting through heavy storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of the +etchings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though the +Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece in +portraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is +bulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent gleams of the apparel +the chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the +anatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is more +corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on +anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait of +his father, is an ancient copy and a capital one. Old dame Elizabeth +Bas, with her coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handkerchief, is +a picture you return to each day of your stay. + +Hals at Amsterdam is interesting. There is the so-called portrait of +the painter and his wife, two full-length figures; the Jolly Toper, +half-length figure, large black hat, in the left hand a glass; and the +insolent lute-player, a copy, said to be by Dirck Hals, the original +in the possession of Baron Gustave Rothschild at Paris. And a fine +copy it is. + +The three Vermeers are of his later enamelled period. One is a young +woman reading a letter; she is seen in profile, standing near a table, +and is dressed in a white skirt and blue loose jacket. The Letter +shows us in the centre of a paved room a seated lady, lute in hand. +She has been interrupted in her playing by a servant bringing a +letter. To the right a tapestry curtain has been looped up to give a +view of the scene. The new Vermeer--purchased from the Six gallery in +1908--is now called The Cook; it was formerly known as The Milkmaid. A +stoutly built servant is standing behind a table covered with a green +cloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassau +earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from a +can. The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against the +white wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brown +petticoat, a dark-blue apron turned back, and a white cap on the head. +The light falls on the scene through a window to the left, above the +table. + +This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet galleries. It displays more +breadth than the Lady Reading a Letter, and its colouring is +absolutely magical. The De Hoochs are of prime quality. Greater art is +the windmill and moonlit scene of Hobbema, as great a favourite as his +Mill, though both must give the precedence to the Alley of +Middleharnais in the Royal Academy, London. But where to begin, where +to end in this high carnival of over three thousand pictures! The +ticketed favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes lag behind +their reputation. The great Van der Helst--and a prime portraitist he +is, as may be seen over and over again--is The Company of Captain +Bicker, a vast canvas. When you forget Hals and Rembrandt it is not +difficult to conjure up admiration for this work. The N. Maes Spinner +is very characteristic. Cuyp and Van Goyen are here; the latter's view +of Dordrecht is celebrated. So is the Floating Feather of +Hondecoester, a finely depicted pelican. The feather is the least part +of the picture. Asselijn's angry swan is an excellent companion piece. +We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises, +and other sterling Dutch painters. There is the gallery of Dutch and +Flemish primitives about which a volume might be written; their +emaciated music appeals. In expressiveness the later men did not excel +them. The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue +supplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master, +possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories are +Dutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table. Across their +knees are napkins. The white is from a Spanish palette. A youth +attired in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spectators, is +pouring out wine or water. The canvas is large, the execution flowing; +perhaps it portrays the disciples at Emmaus. + +The portraits of Nicholas Hasselaer and his wife Geertruyt van Erp, by +Hals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummate +artistry that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke of which sings +out, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught the +trick of brush-work--at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent could +have produced the collar and cuffs. A Whistler, a full-length, in +another gallery, looks like an unsubstantial wraith by comparison. Two +weeks' daily attendance at this excellently planned collection did no +more than fix the position of the exhibits in the mind. There is a +goodly gathering of such names as Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, and +others at the Rijks, but the display of modern Dutch pictures at the +Municipal Museum is more representative. The greatest Josef Israels we +ever saw in the style is his Jew sitting in the doorway of a house, a +most eloquent testimony to Israels' powers of seizing the "race" and +the individual. Old David Bles is here, and Blommers, De Bock, +Bosboom, Valkenburg, Alma-Tadema, Ary Scheffer--of Dutch +descent--Roelofs, Mesdag, Mauve, Jakob Maris, Jongkind, and some of +the Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupré, and others. The Six gallery is +not so accessible as it was some years ago. No doubt its Rembrandts +and Vermeers will eventually find their way into the Rijks Museum. + + + + +II + +Who was Herri met de Bles? Nearly all the large European galleries +contain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases the +pictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are more +erudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in former +years, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes. +Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint. +Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism for +overpainting. Between varnish and retouching it is difficult to tell +where the old master leaves off and the "restorer" begins. Bles, for +example, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fascinating subject to the +student; but are we really looking at his work? The solitary picture +of his here, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might have been +painted a year ago. (It is an attribution.) Yet this painter is +supposed to have been born at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died at +Liège, 1521. He was nicknamed Herri, for Hendrick, met de Bles, +because he had a tuft of white in his hair (a forerunner of Whistler). +The French called him Henri à la Houppe; the Italians +"Civetta"--because of the tiny owl he always introduced into his work. +He was a landscapist, and produced religious and popular scenes. Bles +has had many works saddled upon him by unknown imitators of Metsu, +Joost van Kleef, Lucas, and Dürer--who worked at Antwerp between 1520 +and 1550. Thierry Vellert was also an imitator. In the old Pinakothek, +Munich, there is a Henricus Blesius, which is said to be a +counterfeit, and others are in Karlsruhe, Milan, Brussels, and at the +Prado. + +The circular picture in the Rijks shows us in various episodes Adam +and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the Creation until the Fall. Around +the edge are signs of the zodiac. The colour is rich, the figures +delicate. The story is clearly told and is not unlike a "continuous +performance." You see Adam asleep and over him stoops the Almighty; +then Eve is shown. The apple scandal and the angel with the flaming +sword are portrayed with a vivid line that recalls the miniaturist. A +rare painter. + +Roeland Savery is an artist whose name, we confess, was not known to +us until we saw his work in the Rijks. The rich _pâte_ and +bouquet-like quality of his colour recall Monticelli. His compositions +are composed, like Monticelli's, but much more spirited than the +latter. A stag hunt, a poet crowned at the feast of animals, Elijah +fed by the ravens, and the fable of the stag among the cows prove the +man's versatility. He was born about 1576 and died at Utrecht, 1639. A +pupil of his father, he first worked in Courtrai. The Bronzino Judith +holding the head of Holophernes is a copy, the original hanging in the +Pitti Palace. At Vienna there is a replica. Among the Bols (Cornelis, +1613-66) the portraits of Roelof Meulenaer and his wife, Maria Rey, +attract because of their vitality and liberalism. Then we come across +the oft-engraved Paternal Advice, by Gerard ter Borch (1617-81). Who +doesn't remember that young lady dressed in white satin and standing +with her back to you? The man in officer's uniform, admonishing her, +is seated next to a woman drinking from a wine-glass. The texture of +the dress and the artfully depicted glass are the delight of amateurs. +As a composition it is not remarkable. The man is much too young to be +the father of the blond-haired lady, and if the other one is her +mother, both parents must have retained their youth. The portrait of +Helena van der Schalcke is that of a quaint Dutch child standing; a +serious little body carrying a basket on her right arm like a good +housewife. It is a capital Ter Borch. Two beautiful Albert Cuyps are +painted on the two sides of a copper panel. On one side two merchants +stand at a wharf; on the other two men sit sampling wine in a cellar. +The colour is singularly luminous. + +Let us pass quickly the Schalckens and Gerard Dous. Dou's +self-portrait is familiar. He leans out of a window and smokes a clay +pipe. The candle-light pictures always attract an audience. Govert +Flinck (1615-60, pupil of Rembrandt) is a painter who, if he lived +to-day, would be a popular portraitist. Wherever you go you see his +handiwork, not in the least inspired, but honest, skilful, and genial. +Look at the head of the tax-collector Johannes Wittenbogaert, covered +with a black cap. So excellent is it that it has been attributed to +Rembrandt. Boland, we believe, engraved it as genuine Rembrandt. +Gerard van Honthorst's Happy Musician is another picture of prime +quality, and a subject dear to Hals. Hoogstratten's Sick Lady is an +anecdote. The young woman does not seem very ill, but the doctor +gravely holds up a bottle of medicine and you feel the dread moment is +at hand. How to persuade the patient to swallow the dose? She is +stubborn-looking. The Pieter de Hoochs are now in the same gallery +with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride. These interiors, painted with a minute, +hard finish, lack the charm and the colour quality of Vermeer. With +sunlight Hooch is successful, but his figures do not move freely in an +atmospheric envelope, as is the case with Vermeer's. The Small Country +House is the favourite. In front of a house a well-dressed man and +woman are seated at a table. She is squeezing lemon juice into a +glass. Behind her a servant is carrying a glass of beer, and farther +away a girl cleans pots and pans. The composition is the apotheosis of +domestic comfort, conjugal peace, and gluttony. We like much more The +Pantry, wherein a woman hands a jug to her little girl. The adjoining +room, flooded with light, is real. + +There is one Van der Helst we could not pass. It looks like the +portrait of a corpulent woman, but is that of Gerard Bicker, bailiff +of Muiden. A half-length figure turned to the left, the bailiff a +well-fed pig, holds a pair of gloves in his right hand which he +presses against his Gargantuan chest. His hair is long and curly. The +fabrics are finely wrought. Holbein the younger is represented by the +portrait of a young man. It is excellent, but doubtless a copy or an +imitation. To view five Lucas van Leydens in one gallery is not an +everyday event. His engravings are rare enough--that is, in good +states; "ghosts" are aplenty--and his paintings rarer. Here they are +chiefly portraits. Rachel Ruysch, the flower painter, has a superior +in Judith Lyster, a pupil of Frans Hals. She was born at Haarlem, or +Zaandam, about 1600, and died 1660. She married the painter Jan +Molener. Her Jolly Toper faces the Hals of the same theme, in a +cabinet, and reveals its artistic ancestry. Judith had the gift of +reproducing surfaces. We need not return to the various Maeses; +indeed, this is only a haphazard ramble among the less well-known +pictures. Consider the heads of Van Mierevelt; those of Henrick Hooft, +burgomaster of Amsterdam, of Jacob Cats, and of his wife Aegje +Hasselaer (1618-64). Her hair and lace collar are wonderfully set +forth. Must we stop before Mabuse, or before the cattle piece of the +Dutch school, seventeenth century? A Monticelli seems out of key here, +and the subject is an unusual one for him, Christ With the Little +Children. The Little Princess, by P. Moreelse, has the honour, after +Rembrandt, of being the most frequently copied picture in the Rijks. +The theme is the magnet. A little girl, elaborately dressed, is +seated. She strokes the head of a spaniel whose jewelled collar gives +the impression of a dog with four eyes. In Vermeer's Young Woman +Reading a Letter is a like confused passage of painting, for the +uninstructed spectator. She wears her hair over her ear, an ornament +clasping the hair. At first view this is not clear, principally +because this fashion of wearing the hair is unusual in the eyes of a +stranger. + +Jan van Scorel was born at Schoorl, near Alkmaar, 1495. He studied +under Jacob Cornelis at Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at +Utrecht. He died at Utrecht, 1562. When travelling in Germany he +visited Dürer at Nuremberg; resided for a time in Italy. The Italian +influence is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen, which formerly +hung in the town-hall of Haarlem. A replica is in the residence of the +head-master of Eton College, England. Mary is shown seated, richly +attired. She holds in her right hand a box of perfume, her left hand, +beautifully painted, rests on her knee. Behind is a mountainous +landscape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree. The head is north +Lombardian in character and colouring, the glance of the eyes +enigmatic. A curiously winning composition, not without _morbidezza_. +Scorel has five other works in the Rijks. The Bathsheba is not a +masterpiece. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is conventional, but the +Harpsichord Player was sold at Paris as late as 1823 as a Bronzino. +Perhaps it is only attributed to Scorel. It is unlike his brush-work. +The Painting of a Vault, divided into nine sections, five of which +represent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity. The portrait of Emperor +Charles V. as Pharaoh is pointed out by the gallery attendant, who +then retires and diplomatically coughs in the middle distance. + +The Mancini (pupil of Morelli and W.H. Mesdag) is entitled Poor Thing. +A little girl stands in a miserable room; mice run over the floor. The +colouring is rich. There are admirable Jakob Marises; but we wish to +follow in the track of the old fellows. Adrian van Ostade's Baker is +so popular that it is used for advertising purposes in Holland. The +baker leans out of his door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn. +Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture many times. An interior +with figures, seated and standing; same faces, poses, accessories. +Same valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure. A Merry Party is +the usual title. At The Hague in the Mauritshuis there is another such +subject; also in Antwerp and Brussels. But a jolly painter. Steen and +Teniers we may sidestep. Also the artificial though graceful +Tischbein. There is a Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionable +portrait painter (he painted the Empress Eugénie), and let us leave +the Titians to the experts. When you are in Holland look at the Dutch +pictures. A De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto, and there +is Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of violence. Fancy Vollon flowers +in the midst of these old Dutchmen. The Frenchman had an extraordinary +feeling for still-life, though more in the decorative Venetian manner +than in Chardin's serene palette, or the literalism of Kalf. +Whistler's Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager Baroness R. van +Lynden in 1900, is not one of that master's most successful efforts. +It is a whole-length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feeling +sentimental, un-Whistlerian, and, as we before remarked, wraith-like +and lacking in substance when compared to Hals. + +There is actually a Wouverman in which no white horse is to be +discovered. On Van der Werff and the romantic landscapist Wynants we +need not dwell. The miniatures, pastels, and framed drawings are of +goodly array. Of the former, Samuel Cooper (portrait of Charles II.), +John Hoskins, Peter Oliver, Isaac Oliver, Laurence Crosse, and others. +English, Dutch, and French may be found. The Liotard and Tischbein +pastels are charming. In the supplements of the catalogue we find +underscored a Descent from the Cross, an anonymous work of the Flemish +school (fifteenth century, second half). The dead Christ is being +lowered into the arms of his mother. It is evidently a copy from a +lost original in the style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are such +copies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another composition is labelled as an +anonymous work of undetermined school. The Christ hangs on the cross, +on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy women and St. John; on His +left jeering soldiers and scribes. On either side of the composition +is the figure of a saint much larger in size than the other figures; +St. Cosmus on the left, St. Damian on the right. The background is a +hilly landscape. An authority ascribes the work to the Catalonian +school, date about 1440. There were giants in those days. Antonello da +Messina has the portrait of a young man. It is an attribution, yet not +without some claim to authenticity. The Jan Provosts are mostly of +close study, especially The Virgin Enthroned. A certain Pieter +Dubordieu, who was living in Amsterdam in 1676 (born in Touraine), +painted the portraits of a man and a woman, dated 1638. Vivid +portraits. We must pass over the striking head of Hanneman, the Lucas +Cranach (the elder), and the thousand other attractive pictures in +this gallery. The Rijks Museum could be lived with for years and still +remain an inexhaustible source of joy. + + + + +ART IN ANTWERP + + + +After passing Dordrecht on the way down to Antwerp the canals and +windmills begin to disappear. The country is as flat as Holland, but +has lost its characteristic charm. It has become less symmetrical; +there is disorder in the sky-line, more trees, the architecture is +different. Dutch precision has vanished. The railway carriages are not +clean, punctuality is avoided, the people seem less prosperous, few +speak English, and as you near Antwerp the villas and roads tell you +that you are in the dominion of the King of Belgium. But Antwerp is so +distinctly Flemish that you forget that bustling modern Brussels is +only thirty-six minutes away by the express--a fast train for once in +this land of snail expresses. No doubt the best manner of approaching +Antwerp is by the Scheldt on one of the big steamers that dock so +comfortably along the river. However, a trip to the vast _promenoir_ +that overlooks the river gives an excellent idea of this thriving +port. The city--very much modernised during the past ten years--may +easily be seen in a few days, setting aside the museums and churches. +The quay promenade brings you to the old Steen Castle, and the Town +Hall with its _salle des marriages_, its mural paintings by the +industrious Baron Leys--frigid in style and execution--will repay you +for the trouble. The vestibules and galleries are noteworthy. We +enjoyed the façades of the ancient guild houses on the market-place +and watching the light play upon the old-time scarred front of the +cathedral that stands in the Place Verte. Then there are the +Zoological Garden, the Plantin Museum, the Théâtre Flamand, the +various monuments, and the spectacle of the busy, lively city for +those who do not go to Antwerp for its art. You may even go to +Hoboken, a little town in the suburbs not at all like the well-known +Sunday resort in Jersey. + +The Royal Museum is displayed in a large square. It is a handsome +structure and the arrangement of the various galleries is simple. The +Rubenses, thirty-odd in all, are the _pièce de résistance_, and the +Flemish and Dutch Primitives of rare beauty. Bruges is better for +Memling, Brussels for Van der Weyden, Ghent for the Van Eycks, yet +Antwerp can boast a goodly number of them all. She exceeds Brussels in +her Rubenses for the larger altar pieces are here, just as at +Amsterdam the Rembrandts, while not numerous, take precedence because +of The Syndics and The Night Watch. The tumultuous, overwhelming Peter +Paul is in his glory at Antwerp. You think of some cataclysm when +facing these turbulent, thrilling canvases. If Raphael woos, Rubens +stuns. In the company of Michel Angelo and Balzac or Richard Wagner he +would be their equal for torrential energy and vibrating humanity. Not +so profound as Buonarroti, not so versatile as Balzac, he is their +peer in sheer savagery of execution. Setting aside the miles of +pictures signed by him though painted by his pupils, he must have +covered multitudes of canvas. Like men of his sort of genius, he ends +by making your head buzz and your eyes burn; and then, the sameness of +his style, the repetition of his wives and children's portraits, the +apotheosis of the Rubens family! He portrayed Helena Fourment and +Isabella Brandt in all stages of disarray and gowns. He put them +together on the same canvas. He did not hesitate to show them to the +world in all their opulent nudity. Their white skins, large eyes with +wide gaze, their lovely children appear in religious and mythologic +pictures at every turn you make in this museum. You become too +familiar with them. You learn to know that one wife was slenderer than +the other; you also realise that other days had other ways. Titian +painted the portrait of a noble dame quite naked and placed her +husband, soberly attired, near by. No one criticised the taste of this +performance. Manet, who was no Titian, did the same trick and was +voted wicked. He actually dared to show us Nana dressing in the +presence of a gentleman who sat in the same room with his hat on. + +The heavy-flanked Percheron horses are of the same order as the Rubens +women. The Flemings are mighty feeders, mighty breeders, +good-tempered, pleasure-loving folk. They don't work as hard as the +Dutch, and they indulge in more feasting and holidays. The North seems +austere and Protestant when compared with this Roman Catholic land. +Its sons of genius, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, painted pictures that +do not reveal the deeper faith of the Primitives. No Christ or Mary of +either Van Dyck or Rubens sounds the poignant note of the +Netherlandish unknown mystic masters. + +But what a banquet of beauty Rubens spreads for the eye! With him +painting reached its apogee, and in him were the seeds of its +decadence. He shattered the Florentine line; he, a tremendous +space-composer when he so wished, wielded his brush at times like a +scene-painter on a debauch. The most shocking, the loveliest things +happen on his canvases. Set the beautiful Education of the Virgin, in +this gallery, beside such a work as Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, and +you will see the scale in which he sported. Or the Virgin and Parrot, +with a child Christ who might have posed as a youthful Adonis, and the +Venus Frigida--both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all his +religion. We prefer the Christ Crucified between Two Thieves or the +Christ on the Cross, the single figure, to the more famous Descent at +the Cathedral. But what can be said that is new about Rubens or Van +Dyck? In the latter may be noted the beginnings of deliquescence. He +is a softened Rubens, a Rubens aristocratic. The portraits here are +prime, those of the Bishop of Antwerp, Jean Malderus, and of the young +girl with the two dogs. His various Christs are more piteous to behold +than those of his master, Rubens. The feminine note is present, and +without any of the realism which so shocks in the conceptions of the +Primitives. Nevertheless we turn to his portraits or to the little boy +standing at a table. There is the true key of Van Dyck. He met Rubens +as a portraitist and took no odds of him. + +Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve is a variation of the picture in the +Brussels gallery. A Gossaert portrait catches the eye, the head and +bust of a man; then you find yourself staring in wonderment at the +Peter Breughels and Jerome Bosches with their malodorous fantastic +versions of temptations of innumerable St. Anthonys. The air is thick +with monsters, fish-headed and splay of foot. St. Anthony must have +had the stomach of an ostrich and the nerves of a politician to endure +such sights and sounds and witches. Such females! But Peter and his +two sons are both painters of interest. There are better Teniers in +Brussels, though Le Chanteur is admirable. Ostade's Smoker is a +masterpiece. Only four Rembrandts, the portrait of a woman, according +to Vosmaer and W. Burger that of his wife Saskia; a fisherman's boy, +the Burgomaster, and the Old Jew. Dr. Bode thinks that the last two +are by Nikolas Maes. The portrait of Eleazer Swalmius--the so-called +Burgomaster Six--is finely painted as to head and beard. The Antwerp +Museum paid two hundred thousand francs for the work. We must not +forget mention of a David Teniers, a loan of Dr. Bredius, a +still-life, a white dead goose superb in tone. + +Of the two Frans Halses, the portrait of a Dutch gentleman is the +better; the other was formerly known as the Strandlooper van Haarlem +and shows the vigorous brush-work of the master. It is the head of a +saucy fisher-boy, the colour scheme unusual for Hals. The Quentin +Matsys pictures are strong; among others the portrait of Peter Gillis +with his shrewd, strongly marked physiognomy. This is a Matsys town. +Every one looks at his old iron well beside the Cathedral and recalls +the legend of the blacksmith, as every boy remembers here Hendrik +Conscience and the Lion of Flanders. Van Reymerswael's The Tax +Gatherers, sometimes called The Bankers or The Misers, hangs in the +museum; that realistic picture with the so highly individualised +heads, a favourite of the engravers, holds its own. Both the Boutses, +Albrecht and Dirck, are shown in their Holy Families, and both are +painters of ineffable grace and devotion. + +Four Memlings of seductive beauty light the walls. One is a portrait +of Nicolò Spinelli. Christ and His Angels, the angels playing in +praise of the Eternal and other angels playing various instruments. +The two Van Eycks, Huibrecht (Hubert) and Jan, are well represented. +The St. Barbara, by Jan, is repeated in the Bruges Museum The Donateur +or Donor is a repetition of the original at Bruges. The Adoration of +the Lamb is a copy of the original at Ghent. There is tender beauty in +Jan's St. Barbara, and infinite motherly love expressed in his Holy +Virgin. Hugo van der Goes's portrait of Thomas Portunari is a marvel +of characterisation. Terburg has a mandolin player and Hobbema a mill +scene. The Van Orleys are interesting, and also the Van Veens. Gerard +David, a painter of exquisite touch and feeling, shows a Repose in +Egypt. Lucas Cranach's L'Amour is one of his Virgins transposed to the +mythological key. We have barely indicated the richness of this +collection, in which, of course, Rubens plays first fiddle--rather the +full orchestra. And with what sonority and luminosity! + +At the Cathedral his three masterpieces draw their accustomed +audiences with the usual guide lecturing in three languages, pointing +out the whiteness of the cloth in the Descent and the anatomy in the +Ascent. This latter work is always slighted by sightseers because +Baedeker, or some one else, had pronounced its composition "inferior" +to the Descent, but there are many more difficult problems involved in +the Ascent. Its pattern is not so pleasing as the Descent, the subject +is less appealing, and more sternly treated. There are more virile +accents in the Ascent, though it would be idle to deny that in paint +quality there is a falling off. Both pictures show the tooth of time +and the ravages of the restorers. At St. Jacques, with its wonderfully +carved pulpit, the St. George of Rubens hangs in a chapel. It has +darkened much during the last twenty years. Also there is another +Rubens family group with wives and other relatives. They thought well +of themselves, the Rubens family, and little wonder. + +The modern pictures at the museum are of varying interest--Braekeleer, +Stobbaerts, Verlat, Scheffer, Cabanel, David (J.L.), Wiertz, Wauters, +Wappers, some elegant Alfred Stevenses, De Bock the landscapist, +Clays, Van Beers, Meunier, Breton, Bouguereau, and a lot of +nondescript lumber. In the spacious approach there is one of +Constantin Meunier's famous figures. You rejoice that he followed +Rodin's advice and gave up the brush for the chisel. As a painter he +was not more than mediocre. + +The four Van der Weydens in the gallery of Primitives are not all of +equal merit. The Annunciation is the most striking. The early master +of Memling is distinguished by a sweetness in composition and softness +in colouring. Mention must be made of the De Vos pictures by the +Cornelis, Martin, and Simon. A portrait of Abraham Grapheus by the +first-named is one of the most striking in the museum, and the +self-portrait of the latter, smiling, is brilliant. Rombouts is a sort +of Adrian Brouwer; his Cavaliers Playing at Cards recalls Caravaggio. +Daniel Mytens's portrait of a lady is Rubenesque. + +And all that choir of elevated souls unknown to us by name, merely +called after the city they inhabited, such as the Master of Bray, or +by some odd device or monogram--what cannot be written of this small +army which praised the Lord, His mother and the saints in form and +colour, on missals, illuminated manuscripts, or on panels! The Antwerp +Museum has its share of Anonymous, that master of whom it has been +said that "he" was probably the master of the masters. Antwerp is a +city of many charms, with its St. Jacques, St. Andres (and its carved +pulpit), St. Paul and the Cathedral, and its preservation of the +Flemish spirit and Flemish customs; but for us its museum was all in +all. + + + + +MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS + + + +Considering its size and significance, Brussels has more than its +share of museums. At the beginning of the Rue de la Régence, near the +Place Royale, stands the imposing Royal Museum of old paintings and +sculpture. The Museum of Modern Art is around the corner and adjoins +the National Library, which is said to harbour over six hundred +thousand volumes. In the gallery of old art the effect of the +sculptors' hall, which is in the centre and utilises the entire height +of the building, is noble. The best sculpture therein is by Rodin and +Meunier; the remainder is generally academic or simply bad. Rodin's +Thinker, in bronze, is a repetition of the original. After the +wreathed prettiness of the conventional school--neither Greek nor +Gothic--and the writhing diablerie of Rodin imitators the simplicity +and directness of Constantin Meunier is refreshing. He was a man whose +imagination became inflamed at the sight of suffering and injustice. +He is closer to Millet than to his friend Rodin, but he lacks the +sweetness and strength of Millet. Selecting the Belgian workman--the +miner, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, the proletarian, in a +word--for his theme, Meunier observed closely and reproduced his +vision in terms of rugged beauty. The sentiment is evidently +socialistic. Like Prince Kropotkin and the brothers Réclus, the +Belgian sculptor revolts against the cruelty of man to man. He shows +us the miner crouched in a pitiful manner finding a pocket of coal; +men naked to the waist, their torsos bulging with muscles, their small +heads on bull necks, are puddlers; other groups patiently haul heavy +carts--labour not in its heroic aspect, but as it is in reality, is +the core of Meunier's art. That he is "literary" at times may not be +denied, but power he has. + +The early Flemish school of the fifteenth century is strongly +represented in several of the galleries up-stairs. And Rogier de la +Pasture, otherwise known as Rogier van der Weyden, is shown in five +pictures, and at his best. The Chevalier with the Arrow, a bust +portrait, will be familiar to those who have visited the Rijks Museum, +where a copy hangs. The robe is black, the hat, conical, is brown, the +background blue-green. The silhouette is vigorously modelled, the +expression one of dignity, the glance penetrating, severe. What +characterisation! The Christ is a small panel surpassingly rich in +colour and charged with profound pity. The body lies in the arms of +the Mother, Magdalen and John on either side. The sun is setting. The +subject was a favourite of Weyden; there is a triptych in Berlin and a +panel at The Hague. This Brussels picture has evidently been shorn of +its wings. There are replicas of the Virgin and Child (No. 650 in the +catalogue) at Berlin, Cassel, and Frankfort, also in the recently +dispersed collection of Rudolph Kann. Another striking tableau is the +head of a woman who weeps. The minutest tear is not missing. + +Hubert and Jan Van Eyck's Adam and Eve are the wings (volets) from the +grand composition in the Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent. They are +gigantic figures, nude, neither graceful nor attractive, but +magnificently painted. These portraits (they don't look as if they had +been finished in paradise) of our first parents rather favour the +evolutionary theory of development. Eve is unlovely, her limbs lanky, +her bust mediæval, her flanks Flemish. In her right hand she holds the +fatal apple. Adam's head is full of character; it is Christ-like; his +torso ugly, his legs wooden. Yet how superior to the copies which are +now attached to the original picture at Ghent. There the figures are +clothed, clumsy, and meaningless. + +Dierick Bouts's Justice of Emperor Otho III is a striking picture. The +subject has that touch of repulsive cruelty which was a sign of the +times. Hans Memling's Martyrdom of St. Sebastian is another treasure; +with his portraits of a man, of Guillaume Morel and of Barbara de +Vlandenberg making an immortal quartet. The head of the man is the +favourite in reproduction. Morel is portrayed as in prayer, his hands +clasped, his expression rapt. A landscape is seen at the back. The +Virgin Surrounded by Virgins, by an unknown master of the fifteenth +century (school of Bruges), is one of the most amazing pictures in the +collection. It has a nuance of the Byzantine and of the hieratic, but +the portraits are enchanting in their crystalline quality. Quentin +Matsys' Legend of St. Anne is much admired, though for sincerity we +prefer The Passion of the Master of Oultremont. Gerard David's +Adoration of the Magi is no longer attributed to him. It was always in +doubt: now the name has been removed, though the picture has much of +his mellowness. Dr. Scheuring, the old man with the shaved upper lip, +beard, and hair over his forehead, by Lucas Cranach, and Jean +Gossaert's Chevalier of the Golden Fleece, are masterly portraits. Van +Cleve, Van Orlay, Key--perhaps a portrait of the bloody Duke of +Alva--also one of himself, Coello's Maria of Austria, are among the +sterling specimens in this gallery. + +We need not expect to find duplicated here the Rubens of Antwerp. The +most imposing example is the Adoration of the Magi, while his +portraits of the Archduke Albert and his Archduchess, Isabella, are +perhaps the best extant. The Calvary is a splendid canvas, full of +movement and containing several members of the well-known Rubens +family. Such devotion is touching. You find yourself looking for +Isabella Brandt and Helena Fourment among the angels that hover in the +sky above the martyred St. Lieven. The four negro heads, the Woman +Taken in Adultery, a Susanna (less concerned about her predicament +than any we have encountered), a curious and powerful portrait of +Theophrastus Paracelsus (Browning's hero), with a dozen others, make a +goodly showing for the Antwerp master. Otho Vænius (Octave Van Veen), +one of the teachers of Rubens, is hung here. There are nearly a dozen +Van Dycks, of prime quality all. The Crucifixion, the portrait of an +unknown gentleman wearing a huge ruff and the winning portrait of a +Flemish sculptor, Francesco Duquesnoy, (on a stand), give you an +excellent notion of his range, though better Van Dycks are in France +and England. + +The portrait of an old man, by Rembrandt, is beginning to fade, but +that of an old woman is a superior Rembrandt. Of Frans Hals there are +two fine specimens; one, a portrait of Willem van Heythusen, is a +small picture, the figure sitting, the legs crossed (booted and +spurred) and the figure leaning lazily back. On his head a black felt +hat with a broad upturned brim. The expression of the bearded man is +serious. The only Jan Vermeer is one of the best portraits by that +singularly gifted painter we recall. It is called The Man with the +Hat. Dr. Bredius in 1905 considered the picture by Jean Victor, but it +has been pronounced Vermeer by equal authorities. It was once a part +of the collection of Humphry Ward. The man sits, his hand holding a +glove resting negligently over the back of a chair. He faces the +spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His +collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are +rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost +morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the +Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a +masterpiece of paint and character. + +The Old Lady Dreaming, by N. Maes, and the Jan Steen (The Operator) +are good though not remarkable examples. Jacob Jordaenses flood the +various galleries; Rubens run to seed as far as quality, yet +exhibiting enormous muscularity, is the trait of this gross painter. +The King Drinks--his kings are always drinking or blind drunk--his +nudes, which look like the contents of the butcher shops in Brussels, +attract throngs, for the anecdote is writ large across the wall, and +you don't have to run to read. Panoramas would be a better title for +these robust compositions. David Teniers's La Kermesse is the most +important work he ever finished. It is in good preservation. Amsterdam +has not its superior. There is an ordinary El Greco, a poor Goya, and +a Ribera downstairs. The French art is not enlivening. + +Philip Champaigne's self-portrait is familiar: it has been reproduced +frequently. Jean Baptiste Huysmans, a landscape with animals; he is +said to be an ancestor of the late Joris Karel Huysmans. The Mors +(Antonio Moro) is of value. But the lodestone of the collection is the +Primitives. + +The pictures in the modern gallery are largely Belgian, some French, +and a few Dutch and English. It is not a collection of artistic +significance. In the black-and-white room may be seen a few original +drawings of Rops. + +The Musée Wiertz is worth visiting only as a chamber of horrors. When +Wiertz is not morbid and repulsive he is of the vasty inane, a man of +genius gone daft, obsessed by the mighty shades of Rubens and Michael +Angelo. Wiertz was born in 1806 and died in 1865. The Belgian +Government, in order to make some sort of reparation for its neglect +of the painter during his troubled and unhappy lifetime, acquired his +country residence and made it a repository of his art. The pictures +are of a scale truly heroic. The painter pitted himself against Rubens +and Michael Angelo. He said: "I, too, am a great painter!" And there +is no denying his power. His tones recall the _pâte_ of Rubens without +its warmth and splendour. When Wiertz was content to keep within +bounds his portraits and feminine nudes are not without beauty. He was +fanciful rather than poetic, and the picture of Napoleon in hell +enduring the reproaches of his victims (why should they be there?) is +startling. Startling, too, are the tricks played on your nerves by the +peepholes. You see a woman crazed by hunger about to cook one of her +murdered children; beheaded men, men crushed by superior power, the +harnessed body of Patroclus, Polyphemus devouring the companions of +Ulysses, and other monstrous conceptions, are all painted with +reference to the ills of the poor. Anton Joseph was a socialist in +sentiment. If his executive ability had been on a par with his ideas, +and if those ideas had been less extravagant, the world would have had +one more great painter; but his nervous system was flawed and he died +a melancholic, a victim to misplaced ideals. He wished to revive the +heroic age at a time of easel pictures. He, the half genius, saw +himself outwitted by the sleek paint of Alfred Stevens. Born out of +his due time, a dreamer of dreams, Wiertz is a sad example of the +futility of looking backward in art. + + + + +BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL + + + +On the way up from Brussels to Bruges it is well to alight at Ghent +for a few hours. There are attractions enough to keep one for several +days, but as our objective was St. Bavon (St. Bavo, or Sint Baafs) we +did not stay more than the allotted time. And an adventurous time it +was. The Ostend express landed its passengers at the St. Pierre +station and that meant the loss of half an hour. The Cathedral is +reached by the tramway, and there we found that as an office was about +to be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after its +completion. It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already the +choristers in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a moment to be +spared! The sacristan was a practical man. He hustled us into a side +chapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the great +picture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt in +prayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting obscure. We were +hemmed in, but by angels and ministers of grace. The chanting began. +Atmosphere was not needed in this large and gloomy edifice, only more +light. Gradually the picture began to burn through the artificial +dusk, gradually its glories became more perceptible. Begun by Hubert +in 1420 and finished by Jan in 1432, its pristine splendour has +vanished; and the loss of the wings--the Adam and Eve are in Brussels, +the remaining volets in the Berlin Museum--is irreparable despite the +copies. But this Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with its jewelled +figures of the Christ, of St. John the Baptist, St. Cecilia, and the +central panel with its mystical symbolism, painted in sumptuous tones, +the lamb on the altar, the prophets and ecclesiastics in worship, the +singing angels, is truly an angelic composition. + +The rain had ceased. A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glass +windows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which +glowed supernally. In the chancel the Psalms had died away and the +only sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors. The man +turned the lock. It was a return to the world as if one had +participated in a sacred ceremony. + +Bruges is invariably called Bruges-la-Morte, but it is far from being +dead, or even desperately melancholy. Delft, in Holland, after nine +o'clock at night, is quieter than Bruges. Bruges the Dead? No, Bruges +the Beautiful is nearer the truth. After reading Rodenbach's morbid +romance of Bruges-la-Morte we felt sure that a stay in Bruges would be +like a holiday in a cemetery. Our experience dispelled this unpleasant +illusion. Bruges is in daylight a bustling and in certain spots a +noisy place. Its inhabitants are not lugubrious of visage, but +wideawake, practical people, close at a bargain, curious like all +Belgians, and on fête days given to much feasting. Bruges is +infinitely more interesting than Brussels. It is real, while modern +Brussels is only mock-turtle. And Bruges is more picturesque, the food +is as well flavoured, there are several resorts where ripe old +Burgundy may be had at not an extravagant price, and the townsfolk are +less grasping, more hearty than in Brussels. + +The city is nicknamed a Northern Venice, but of Venice there is +naught, except the scum on the canal waters. The secular odour of +Bruges was not unpleasant in October; in August it may have been. We +know that the glory of the city hath departed, but there remain the +Memlings, the Gerard Davids, at least one Van Eyck, not to mention +several magnificent old churches. + +Let us stroll to the Béguinage. Reproductions of Memling and Van Eyck +are in almost every window. The cafés on the square, where stands the +Belfry of Longfellow's poem, are overflowing with people at table. It +is Friday, and to-morrow will be market day; with perhaps a fair or a +procession thrown in. You reach the Cathedral of St. Sauveur (Sint +Salvator), erected in the tenth century, though the foundations date +back to the seventh. The narrow lane-like street winds around the rear +of the church. Presently another church is discerned with a tower that +must be nearly four hundred feet high, built, you learn, some time +between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Notre Dame contains the +tombs of Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy, a lovely white marble +statue of the Virgin and Child ascribed with justice to Michael +Angelo, and a fine bow-window. We pass the Hospital of St. Jean, turn +up an alley full of cobblestones and children, and finally see the +canal that passes the houses of the Béguinage. The view is of +exceeding charm. The spire of Notre Dame and the apsis may be seen up +(or is it down?) stream. A bridge cuts the river precisely where it +should; weeping willows to the left lend an elegiac note to the +ensemble, and there is a gabled house to the right which seems to have +entered the scene so as to give an artist the exact balance for his +composition. Nature and the handicraft of man paint pictures all over +Bruges. + +We enter the enclosure with the little houses of the béguines, or lay +sisterhood. There is nothing particular to see, except a man under a +tree admiring his daubed canvas, near by a dog sleeps. The sense of +peace is profound. Even Antwerp seems a creation of yesterday compared +with the brooding calm of Bruges, while Brussels is as noisy as a +boiler shop. The Minnewater (Lac d'Amour) is another pretty stretch, +and so we spent the entire day through shy alleys, down crooked +streets, twisting every few feet and forming deceptive vistas +innumerable, leading tired legs into churches, out of museums, up +tower steps. + +That first hard stroll told us how little we could know of Bruges in a +day, a week or a month. Bag and baggage we moved up from Brussels and +wished that the clock and the calendar could be set back several +centuries. At twilight the unusual happened: the Sandman appeared with +his hour-glass and beckoned to bed. There is no night in Bruges for +the visitor within the gates; there is only slumber. Perhaps that is +why the cockneys call it Bruges the Dead. The old horse that drags the +hotel bus was stamping its hoofs in the court-yard; the wall of St. +Jacques, eaten away by the years, faced us. The sun, somewhere, was +trying to rub its sleepy eyes, the odour of omelet was in the air, and +all was well. This is the home-like side of its life. It may still +harbour artists who lead a mystic, ecstatic existence, but we met none +of them. Poetic images are aroused at dusk along the banks of canals, +bathed in spectral light. Here Georges Rodenbach, that poet of +delicate images, placed his hero, a man who had lost a beloved wife. +He saw her wraith-like form in the mist and at the end went mad. + +The Memlings hang in a chamber at the Hospital St. Jean; the Châsse of +St. Ursula is a reliquary, Gothic in design. They consist of a dozen +tiny panels painted in exquisite fashion, with all the bright clarity +and precision of a miniaturist, coupled with a solidity of form and +lyric elegance of expression. They represent the side of Memling's art +which might be compared to the illuminators of manuscripts or to the +artificers in gold and precious stones. There is a jewelled quality in +this illustration of the pious life and martyrdom of St. Ursula at +Cologne. But it is not the greatest Memling, to our thinking. A +portrait of Martin van Nieuwenhoven, the donator of the diptych, La +Vierge aux Pommes, is as superb a Memling as one could wish for. The +little hairs are a sign of clever, minute brush. It is the modelling, +the rich manipulation of tones (yes, values were known in those +barbarous times), the graceful fall of the hair treated quite as much +en masse as with microscopic finish; the almost miraculous painting of +the folded hands, and the general expression of pious reverie, that +count most. The ductile, glowing colours make this a portrait to be +compared to any of the master's we have studied at London, Berlin, +Dresden, Lübeck, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels. But Bruges is the +natural frame for his exalted genius. + +If the Van Eycks were really the first to use oil-colour--a fable, it +is said--Memling, who followed them, taught many great Italian +painters the quality and expressiveness of beautiful paint. There is +the portrait of Sybilla Sambetha, the serious girl with the lace veil. +Did any of the later Dutch conjurers in paint attain such +transparency? The Mystic Marriage of St. Catharine, a triptych with +its wings representing the beheading of St. John the Baptist--the +Salome is quite melancholy--and St. John at Patmos, is one of the +world pictures. The Adoration of the Magi, with its wings, The +Nativity, and Presentation in the Temple, is equally touching. For me +Memling's Descent from the Cross sounds deeper music than +Rubens--which is operatic in comparison. The Virgin type of Van Eyck +is less insipid than the Italian; there is no pagan dissonance, as in +the conception of Botticelli. Faith blazed more fiercely in the +breasts of these Primitive artists. They felt Christ's Passion and the +sorrow of the Holy Mother more poignantly than did the Italians of the +golden renaissance. We have always held a brief for the Art for Art +theory. The artist must think first of his material and its technical +manipulation; but after that, if his pulse beat to spiritual rhythms +then his work may attain the heights. It is not painting that is the +lost art, but faith. Men like the Van Eycks, Rogier van der Weyden, +Memling, and Gerard David were princes of their craft and saw their +religion with eyes undimmed by doubt. + +James Weak has destroyed the legend that Hans Memling painted his St. +Ursula for the benefit of St. Jean's Hospital as a recompense for +treatment while sick there. He was a burgher living comfortably at +Bruges. The museum is a short distance from the hospital. Its Van Eyck +(Jan), La Vierge et l'Enfant--known as the Donator because of the +portrait of George van der Paele--is its chief treasure, though there +is the portrait of Jan's wife; Gerard David's Judgment of King +Cambyses, and the savage execution companion picture; Memling's +triptych, St. Christopher bearing the Christ Child, and David's +masterpiece, The Baptism of Christ. Holbein never painted a head with +greater verisimilitude than Van Eyck's rendering of the Donator. What +an eye! What handling, missing not a wrinkle, a fold of the aged skin, +the veins in the senile temples, or the thin soft hair above the ears! +What synthesis! There are no niggling details, breadth is not lost in +this multitude of closely observed and recorded facts. The large eyes +gaze devoutly at the vision of the Child, and if neither Virgin nor +Son is comely there is character delineated. The accessories must fill +the latter-day painter avid of surface loveliness with consuming envy. + +But it is time for sleep. The Brugeois cocks have crowed, the sun is +setting, and eyelids are lowering. Lucky you are if your dreams evoke +the brilliant colours, the magical shapes of the Primitives of Bruges +the Beautiful. + + + + +THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + + +Out of the beaten track of sight-seers, and not noticed with +particular favour by the guide-books, the museum founded by Gustave +Moreau at 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld in Paris, is known only to a +comparatively few artists and amateurs. You seldom hear Americans +speak of this rare collection, it is never written about in the +magazines. In September, 1897, Moreau made a will leaving his house +and its contents to the State. He died in 1898 (not in 1902, as +Bryan's dictionary has it), and in 1902 President Loubet authorised +the Minister of Public Instruction to accept this rich legacy in the +name of the republic. The artist was not known to stranger countries; +indeed he was little known to his fellow-countrymen. Huysmans had +cried him up in a revolutionary article; but to be praised by Huysmans +was not always a certificate of fame. That critic was more successful +in attracting public attention to Degas and Rops; and Moreau, a born +eclectic, though without any intention of carrying water on both +shoulders, was regarded suspiciously by his associates at the +Beaux-Arts, while the new men he praised, Courbet, Manet, Whistler, +Monet, would hold no commerce with him. To this day opinion is divided +as to his merits, he being called a _pasticheur_ or else a great +painter-poet. Huysmans saw straight into the heart of the +enigma--Gustave Moreau is poet and painter, a highly endowed man who +had the pictorial vision in an unusual degree; whose brush responded +to the ardent brain that directed it, the skilled hand that +manipulated it; always responded, we say, except in the creation of +life. His paintings are, strictly speaking, magnificent still-life. No +vital current animates their airless, gorgeous, and sometimes +cadaverous surfaces. + +Like his friend Gustave Flaubert, with whom he had so much in common +(at least on the Salammbô side of that writer), Moreau was born to +affluence. His father was a government architect; he went early to the +Êcole des Beaux-Arts, and also studied under Picot. In 1852 he had a +Pietà in the Salon (he was born April 6,1826), and followed it the +next season with a Darius and a large canvas depicting an episode from +the Song of Songs. The latter was purchased for the Dijon Museum. At +the Universal Exhibition of 1855 he showed a monster work, The +Athenians and the Minotaur. He withdrew from the public until 1864, +when his Oedipus and the Sphinx set Paris talking. He exhibited until +1880 various canvases illustrative of his studies in classic +literatures and received sundry medals. He was elected a member of the +Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1888, replacing Boulanger. He was decorated +in 1875 with the Legion of Honour and made _officier_ in 1883. When a +member of the Institute he had few friends, and as professor at the +Beaux-Arts he disturbed the authorities by his warm praise of the +Primitives. Altogether a career meagre in exciting incident, though +singularly rich and significant on the intimate side. + +A first visit to the museum proved startling. We had seen and admired +the fifteen water-colours at the Luxembourg, among them the famous +Apparition, but for the enormous number of pictures, oil, +water-colour, pastels, drawings, cartons, studies, we were unprepared. +The bulky catalogue registers 1,132 pieces, and remember that while +there are some unfinished canvases the amount of work executed--it is +true during half a century--is nevertheless a testimony to Moreau's +muscular and nervous energy, poetic conception, and intensity of +concentration. Even his unfinished pictures are carried to a state of +elaboration that would madden many modern improvisers in colour. Apart +from sheer execution, there is a multitude of visions that must have +been struggled for as Jacob wrestled with the Angel, for Moreau's was +not a facile mind. He brooded over his dreams, he saw them before he +gave them shape. He was familiar with all the Asiatic mythologies, and +for him the pantheon of Christian saints must have been bone of his +bone. The Oriental fantasy, the Buddhistic ideas, the fluent knowledge +of Persian, Indian, and Byzantine histories, customs, and costumes +sets us to wondering if this artist wasn't too cultured ever to be +spontaneous. He recalls Prester John and his composite faiths. + +There was besides the profound artistic erudition another +stumbling-block to simplicity of style and unity of conception. Moreau +began by imitating both Delacroix and Ingres. Now, such a precedure is +manifestly dangerous. Huysmans speaks with contempt of promiscuity in +the admiration of art. You can't admire Manet and Bastien-Lepage--"le +Grévin de cabaret, le Siraudin de banlieue," he names the gentle +Bastien; nor ought you to admire Manet and Moreau, we may add. And +Huysmans did precisely what he preached against. Moreau was a man of +wide intellectual interests. Devoid of the creative energy that can +eject an individual style at one jet, as a volcano casts forth a rock, +he attempted to aid nature by the process of an exquisite selection. +His taste was trained, his range wide--too wide, one is tempted to +add; and thus by a conscious act of the will he originated an art that +recalls an antique chryselephantine statue, a being rigid with +precious gems, pasted with strange colours, something with mineral +eyes without the breath of life--contemporary life--yet charged with +its author's magnetism, bearing a charmed existence, that might come +from a cold, black magic; monstrous, withal possessing a strange +feverish beauty, as Flaubert's Salammbô is beautiful, in a remote, +exotic way. + +However, it is not fair to deny Moreau human sympathies. There are +many of his paintings and drawings, notably the latter, that show him +as possessing heart. His handling of his medium though heavy is never +timid, and at times is masterly. Delacroix inspired many of his +landscape backgrounds, as Ingres gave him the proportions of his +female figures. You continually encounter variations of Ingres, the +sweet, serene line, the tapering feet and hands. Some critics have +discerned the toe forms of Perugino; but such mechanical measurements +strain our notion of eclecticism. Certainly Moreau studied Bellini, +Mantegna, and Da Vinci without ever attaining the freedom and +distinction of any of them. His colour, too, is often hard and cold, +though not in the sumptuous surfaces of his fabrics; there Venetian +splendour is apparent. He can be fiery and insipid, metallic and +morbid; his Orientalism is at times transposed from the work of his +old friend the painter Chasseriau into the key of a brilliant, if +pompous rhetoric. + + + + +THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + + +This herculean attempt at reassembling many styles in a unique style +that would best express a certain frozen symbolism was the amiable +mania his life long of Moreau. He compelled the spirits to come to his +bidding. The moment you cross the threshold of his house the spell +begins to work. It is dissipated by the daylight of Paris, but while +you are under the roof of the museum you can't escape it. Nor is it as +with Rossetti, a mystic opiate, or with Wiertz, a madman's delirious +fancy. Moreau was a philosophic poet, and though he disclaimed being a +"literary" painter, it is literature that is the mainspring of his +elevated and decorative art. Open at random the catalogue full of +quotations from the painter's pen and you encounter such titles as +Leda and the Swan, treated with poetic restraint; Jupiter and Semele, +Tyrtæus Singing During the Combat, St. Elizabeth and the Miracle of +the Roses, Lucretia and Tarquin, Pasiphae, the Triumph of Alexander, +Salome, Dante and Virgil, Bathsheba, Jason and the Golden Fleece. All +literatures were ransacked for themes. This painter suffered from the +nostalgia of the ideal. When a subject coincided with his technical +expression the result approximates perfection. Consider the Salome, so +marvellously paraphrased in prose by Huysmans. The aquarelle in the +Luxembourg is more plastic, more jewelled than the oil; Moreau often +failed in the working-out of his ideas. Yet, never in art has a +hallucination been thus set before us with such uncompromising +reality. The sombre, luxurious _décor_, the voluptuous silhouette of +the dancing girl, the hieratic pose of the Tetrarch, even the aureoled +head of John, are forgotten in the contemplation of Salome, who is +become cataleptic at sight of the apparition. Arrested her attitude +her flesh crisps with fear. Her face is contracted into a mask of +death. The lascivious dance seems suspended in midair. To have painted +so impossible a picture bears witness to the extraordinary quality of +Moreau's complex art. Nor is the Salome his masterpiece. In the realm +of the decorator he must be placed high. His genius is Byzantine. +Jupiter and Semele, with its colossal and acrian architectures, its +gigantic figure of the god, from whose august head emanate spokes of +light, is Byzantine of a wild luxuriousness in pattern and fancy. +Moreau excels in representing cataracts of nude women, ivory-toned of +flesh, exquisite in proportion, set off by radiant jewels and +wonder-breeding brocades. His skies are in violent ignition, or else +as soft as Lydian airs. What could be more grandiose than the Triumph +of Alexander (No. 70 in the catalogue)? Not John Martin or Piranesi +excelled the Frenchman in bizarre architectural backgrounds. And the +Chimeras, what a Baudelairian imagination! Baudelaire of the bitter +heart! All luxury, all sin, all that is the shame and the glory of +mankind is here, as in a tapestry dulled by the smoke of dreams; but +as in his most sanguinary combats not a sound, not a motion comes from +this canvas. When the slaves, lovely females, are thrown to the fish +to fatten them for some Roman patrician's banquet, we admire the +beauty of colour, the clear static style, the solidity of the +architecture, but we are unmoved. If there is such a thing as +disinterested art it is the claustral art of Moreau--which can be both +perverse and majestic. + +His versatility amazes. He did not always paint the same picture. The +Christ Between Two Thieves is academic, yet attracts because the +expression of the converted thief is remarkable. The Three Magi and +Moses Within Sight of the Promised Land do not give one the fullest +sense of satisfaction, as do The Daughters of Thespus or The Rape of +Europa; yet they suggest what might be termed a tragic sort of +decoration. Moreau is a painter who could have illustrated Marlowe's +fatuous line, "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia," and superbly; or, +"See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament." He is an exotic +blossom on the stem of French art. He saw ivory, apes, and peacocks, +purple, gold, and the heavens aflame with a mystic message. He never +translated that message, for his was an art of silence; but the +painter of The Maiden with the Head of Orpheus, of Salome, of Jason +and Medea, of Jupiter and Semele, will never fail to win the +admiration and homage of those art lovers who yearn for dreams of +vanished ages, who long to escape the commonplaces of the present. +Gustave Moreau will be their poet-painter by predilection. + +Once in the streets of prosaic Paris he is as unreal as Rossetti or +the Pre-Raphaelites (though their superior as one who could make +palpable his visions). In the Louvre--where the _Salon Carré_ is +little changed--Manet's Olympe, with her every-day seductiveness, +resolves the phantasies of Moreau into thin air. Here is reality for +you, familiar as it may be. It is wonderful how long it took French +critics to discover that Manet was _un peintre de race_. He is very +French in the French gallery where he now hangs. He shows the lineage +of David, one of whose declamatory portraits with beady eyes hangs +near by. He is simpler than David in his methods--Mr. C.S. Ricketts +critically described David as possessing the mind of a policeman--and +as a painter more greatly endowed. But Goya also peeps out from the +Olympe. After seeing the Maja desnuda at the Prado you realise that +Manet's trip to Madrid was not without important results. Between the +noble lady who was the Duchess of Alba and the ignoble girl called +Olympe there is only the difference between the respective handlings +of Goya and Manet. + + + + +PICTURES IN MADRID + + + +I + +The noblest castle in Spain is the museum on the Prado. Now every +great capital of Europe boasts its picture or sculpture gallery; no +need to enumerate the treasures of art to be found in London, Paris, +Vienna--the latter too little known by the average +globe-trotter--Berlin, Dresden, Cassel, Frankfort, Brussels, Bruges, +Antwerp, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, Naples, St. Petersburg, or Venice. +They all boast special excellences, but the Prado collection contains +pictures by certain masters, Titian, Rubens, Correggio, and others, +that cannot be seen elsewhere. Setting aside Velasquez and the Spanish +school, not in Venice, Florence, or London are there Titians of such +quality and in such quantity as in Madrid. And the Rubenses are of a +peculiar lovely order, not to be found in Antwerp, Brussels or Paris. +Even without Velasquez the trying trip to the Spanish capital is a +necessary and exciting experience for the painter and amateur of art. + +The Prado is largely reinforced by foreign pictures and is sadly +lacking in historical continuity whether foreign or domestic schools. +It is about ninety years old, having been opened in part (three rooms) +to the public in November, 1819. At that time there were three hundred +and eleven canvases. Other galleries were respectively added in 1821, +1828, 1830, and 1839. In 1890 the Queen-mother had the Sala de la +Reina Isabel rearranged and better lighted. It contained then the +masterpieces, but in 1899, the tercentenary of Velasquez's birth, a +gallery was built to hold his works, with a special room for that +masterpiece among masterpieces Las Meninas. Many notable pictures that +had hung for years in the Academia de Nobles Artes de San Fernando, at +the Escorial Palace, and and the collection of the Duke of Osuna are +now housed within the walls of the Prado. At the entrance you +encounter a monumental figure of Goya, sitting, in bronze, the work of +the sculptor J. Llaneses. + +The Prado has been called a gallery for connoisseurs, and it is the +happiest title that could be given it, for it is not a great museum in +which all schools are represented. You look in vain for the chain +historic that holds together disparate styles; there are omissions, +ominous gaps, and the very nation that ought to put its best foot +foremost, the Spanish, does not, with the exception of Velasquez. Of +him there are over sixty authentic works; of Titian over thirty. Bryan +only allows him twenty-three; this is an error. There are fifteen +Titians in Florence, divided between the Uffizi and the Pitti; in +Paris, thirteen, but one is the Man with the Glove. Quality counts +heaviest, therefore the surprise is not that Madrid boasts numbers but +the wonderful quality of so many of them. To lend additional lustre to +the specimens of the Venetian school, the collection starts off with a +superb Giorgione; Giorgione, the painter who taught Titian his magic +colour secrets; the painter whose works are, with a few exceptions, +ascribed to other men--more is the pity! (In this we are at one with +Herbert Cook, who still clings to the belief that the Concert of the +Pitti Palace is Giorgione and not Titian. At least the Concert +Champêtre of the Louvre has not been taken from "Big George.") The +Madrid masterpiece is The Virgin and Child Jesus with St. Anthony and +St. Roch. + +It is easy to begin with the Titians, one of which is the famous +Bacchanal. Then there are The Madonna with St. Bridget and St. Hulfus, +The Garden of the Loves, Emperor Charles V. at Mühlberg, an equestrian +portrait; another portrait of the same with figure standing, King +Philip, Isabella of Portugal, La Gloria, The Entombment of Christ, +Venus and Adonis, Danaë and the Golden Shower, a variation of this +picture is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, the other in the National +Museum, Naples; Venus Listening to Music, two versions, the stately +nude evidently a memory of the Venus reposing in the Uffizi: Adam and +Eve (also a copy of this by Rubens); Prometheus, Sisyphus--long +supposed to be copies by Coello; Christ Bearing the Cross, St. +Margaret, a portrait of the Duke of Este, Salom, Ecce Homo, La +Dolorosa, the once admired Allocution; Flight Into Egypt, St. +Catalina, a self-portrait, St. Jerome, Diana and Actæon, The Sermon on +the Mount--the list is much longer. + +There are many Goyas; the museum is the home of this remarkable but +uneven painter. We confess to a disappointment in his colour, though +his paint was not new to us; but time has lent no pleasing _patina_ to +his canvases, the majority of which are rusty-looking, cracked, +discoloured, dingy or dark. There are several exceptions. The nude and +dressed full-lengths of the Duchess of Alba are in excellent +preservation, and brilliant audacious painting it is. A lovely +creature, better-looking when reclining than standing, as a glance at +her full-length portrait in the New York Hispanic Museum proves. One +of Goya's best portraits hangs in the Prado, the seated figure of his +brother-in-law, the painter Bayeu. The Family of Charles IV, his +patron and patroness, with the sheep-like head of the favourite De la +Paz, is here in all its bitter humour; it might be called a satiric +pendant to that other Familia, not many yards away, Las Meninas. There +are the designs for tapestries in the basement; Blind Man's Buff and +other themes illustrating national traits. The equestrian portraits of +Charles IV and his sweet, sinister spouse, Queen Maria Luisa, reveal a +Goya not known to the world. He could assume the grand manner when he +so willed. He could play the dignified master with the same +versatility that he played at bull-fighting. But his colour is often +hot and muddy, and perhaps he will go down to that doubtful quantity, +posterity, as an etcher and designer of genius. After leaving the +Prado you remember only the Caprices, the Bull-fights, and the +Disaster of War plates; perhaps the Duchess of Alba, undressed, and in +her dainty toreador costume. The historic pictures are a tissue of +horrors, patriotic as they are meant to be; they suggest the +slaughter-house. Goya has painted a portrait of Villanueva, the +architect of the museum; and there is a solidly constructed portrait +of Goya by V. Lopez. + +The Raphaels have been reduced to two at the Prado: The Holy Family +with the Lamb, painted a year after the Ansedei Madonna, and that +wonderful head of young Cardinal Bibbiena, keen-eyed and ascetic of +features. Alas! for the scholarship that attributed to the Divine +Youth La Perla; the Madonna of the Fish; Lo Spasimo, Christ Bearing +the Cross, and several other masterpieces. Giulio Romana, Penni, and +perhaps another, turned out these once celebrated and overpraised +pictures--overpraised even if they had come from the brush of Raphael +himself. The Cardinal's portrait is worth the entire batch of them. + +There is a Murillo gallery, full of representative work, the most +important being St. Elizabeth of Hungary Tending the Sick, formerly in +the Escorial. The various Conceptions and saints' heads are not +missing, painted in his familiar colour key with his familiar false +sentiment and always an eye to the appeal popular. A mighty magnet for +the public is Murillo. The peasants flock to him on Sundays as to a +sanctuary. There the girls see themselves on a high footing, a +heavenly saraband among woolly clouds, their prettiness idealised, +their costume of exceeding grace. After a while you tire of the +saccharine Murillo and his studio beggar boys, and turn to his +drawings with relief. His landscapes are more sincere than his +religious canvases, which are almost as sensuous and earthly as +Correggio without the magisterial brush-work and commanding conception +of the Parma painter. To be quite fair, it may be admitted that +Murillo could make a good portrait. Both in Madrid and Seville you may +verify this. + +A beautiful Fra Angelico, a beautiful Mantegna open your eyes, for the +Italian Primitives are conspicuous by their absence. Correggio is +magnificent. The well-known Magdalen and Christ Risen, Noli Me +Tangere! His Virgin with Jesus and St. John is in his accustomed +melting _pâte_. One Del Sarto is of prime quality, The Virgin, Jesus +and St. John, called Asunto Mistico at the Prado. Truly a moving +picture, by a painter who owes much of his fame to Robert Browning. +His Lucrezia is a pretty portrait of his faithless wife. There are +Lotto, Parmigianino, Baroccio, Tintoretto, Bassano, Veronese, Domenico +Tiepolo, and his celebrated father the fantastic Giambattista +Tiepolo--not startling specimens any of them. + +In the Spanish section Ribera comes at you the strongest. He was a +personality as well as a powerful painter. Consider his Martyrdom of +St. Bartholomew. Zurbaran follows next in interest, though morbid at +times; but of Berragueta, Borgona, Morales, Juanes, Navarette, +Coello--an excellent portraitist, imitator of Moro--La Cruz, Alfonso +Cano, Luis de Tristan, Espinosa, Bias del Prado, Orrente, Esteban de +March--two realistic heads of an old man and an old woman must be set +down to his credit--Ribalta, influenced by Caravaggio, in turn +influencing Ribera--Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), Del +Mazo--son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible for dozens of false +attributions--Carreño de Miranda, José Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte, +the two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the younger a +nonentity, and others of the Spanish school may be dismissed in a +word--mediocrities. + + + + +II + +The secret of Titian's colour, the "Venetian secret," was produced, +some experts believe, by first painting a solid monochrome in tempera +on which the picture was finished in oil. Unquestionably Titian +corrected and amended his work as much as did Velasquez. It is a +pleasing if somewhat theatric belief that Titian and Velasquez, +duelled with their canvases, their rapier a brush. After inspecting +many of the Hals portraits the evidences of direct painting, swift +though calculated, are not to be denied. This may account, with the +temperamental equation, for the less profound psychological interest +of his portraiture when compared with the Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, +and Rembrandt heads. Yet, what superiority in brush-work had Hals over +Raphael and Rembrandt. The Raphael surfaces are as a rule hard, dry, +and lustreless, while Rembrandt's heavy, troubled paint is no mate for +the airy touch of the Mercutio of Haarlem. But Titian's impasto is +lyric. It sings on the least of his canvases. No doubt his pictures in +the Prado have been "skinned" of their delicate glaze by the +iconoclastic restorer; yet they bloom and chant and ever bloom. The +Bacchanal, which bears a faint family resemblance to the Bacchus and +Ariadne of the London National Gallery, fairly exults in its joy of +life, in its frank paganism. What rich reverberating tones, what +powers of evocation! The Garden of the Loves is a vision of childhood +at its sweetest; the surface of the canvas seems alive with festooned +babies. The more voluptuous Venus or Danaë do not so stir your pulse +as this immortal choir of cupids. The two portraits of Charles V--one +equestrian--are charged with the noble, ardent gravity and splendour +of phrasing we expect from the greatest Venetian of them all. We +doubt, however, if the Prado Entombment is as finely wrought as the +same subject by Titian in Paris; but it sounds a poignant note of +sorrow. Rembrandt is more dramatic when dealing with a similar theme. +The St. Margaret with its subtle green gown is a figure that is +touching and almost tragic. The Madonna and Child, with St. Bridget +and St. Hulfus, has been called Giorgionesque. St. Bridget is of the +sumptuous Venetian type; the modelling of her head is lovely, her +colouring rich. + +Rubens in the Prado is singularly attractive. There are over fifty, +not all of the best quality, but numbering such works as the Three +Graces, the Rondo, the Garden of Love, and the masterly unfinished +portrait of Marie de Medicis. The Brazen Serpent is a Van Dyck, though +the catalogue of 1907 credits it to Rubens. Then there are the +Andromeda and Perseus, the Holy Family and Diana and Calista. The +portrait of Marie de Médicis, stout, smiling, amiability personified, +has been called one of the finest feminine portraits extant--which is +a slight exaggeration. It is both mellow and magnificent, and unless +history or Rubens lied the lady must have been as mild as mother's +milk. The Three Graces, executed during the latter years of the +Flemish master, is Rubens at his pagan best. These stalwart and +handsome females, without a hint of sleek Italian delicacy, include +Rubens's second wife, Helena Fourment, the ox-eyed beauty. What blond +flesh tones, what solidity of human architecture, what positive beauty +of surfaces and nobility of contours! The Rondo is a mad, whirling +dance, the Diana and Calista suggestive of a Turkish bath outdoors, +but a picture that might have impelled Walt Whitman to write a sequel +to his Children of Adam. Such women were born not alone to bear +children but to rule the destinies of mankind; genuine matriarchs. + +Rembrandt fares ill. His Artemisia about to drink her husband's ashes +from a costly cup reveals a ponderous hand. It is but indifferent +Rembrandt, despite several jewelled passages. Van Dyck shows at least +one great picture, the Betrayal of Christ. The Brazen Serpent only +ranks second to it; both are masterpieces, and Antwerp must envy the +Prado. The Crown of Thorns, and the portraits, particularly that of +the Countess of Wexford, are arresting. His Musician, being the +portrait of Lanière the lute-player, and his own portrait on the same +canvas with Count Bristol, are cherished treasures. The lutist is +especially fascinating. That somewhat mysterious Dutch master, Moro, +or Mor (Antonis; born in Utrecht, 1512; died at Antwerp, 1576 or +1578), is represented by more than a dozen portraits. To know what a +master of physiognomy he was we need only study his Mary Queen of +England, the Buffoon of the Beneventas, the Philip II, and the various +heads of royal and noble born dames. The subdued fire and subtlety of +this series, the piercing vision and superior handicraft of the +painter have placed him high in the artistic hierarchy; but not high +enough. At his best he is not far behind Holbein. That great German's +art is shown in a solitary masterpiece, the portrait of an unknown +man, with shrewd cold eyes, an enormous nose, the hands full of +meaning, the fabrics scrupulous as to detail. Next to this Holbein, +whose glance follows you around the gallery, are the two Dürers, the +portrait of Hans Imhof, a world-renowned picture, and his own portrait +(1498), a magical rendering of a Christ-like head, the ringlets curly, +the beard youthful, the hands folded as if in prayer. A marvellous +composition. It formerly hung too high, above the Hans Imhof; it now +hangs next to it. A similar head in the Uffizi is a copy, Sir Walter +Armstrong to the contrary notwithstanding. + +The Flemish schools are to be seen in the basement, not altogether a +favourable place, though in the afternoon there is an agreeable light. +Like Rubens, Jan van Eyck visited Spain and left the impress of his +style. But the Van Eycks at the Prado are now all queried, though +several are noteworthy. The Marriage of the Virgin is discredited. The +Virgin, Christ and St. John under the golden canopy, called a Hubert +van Eyck, is probably by Gossaert de Mabuse, and a clever +transposition of the altar piece in St. Bavon's at Ghent. The Fountain +of Life, also in the catalogue as a Jan van Eyck, has been pronounced +a sixteenth-century copy of a lost picture by his brother Hubert. We +may add that not one of these so-called Van Eycks recalls in all their +native delicacy and richness the real Van Eycks of Bruges, Ghent, and +Brussels; though the Virgin Reading, given as Jan's handiwork, is of a +charm. The Depositions, attributed to Rogier van der Weyden (De la +Pasture), are acknowledged to be old sixteenth-century copies of the +Deposition in the Escorial. The altar piece is excellent. But there is +a fine Memling, glowing in pigment and of beautiful design, The +Adoration of the Kings, a triptych, like the one at Bruges. In the +centre panel we see the kings adoring, one a black man; the two wings, +or doors, respectively depict the birth of Christ (right) and the +presentation in the temple (left). There is a retablo (reredos) in +four compartments, by Petrus Cristus, and two Jerome Patinirs, one, a +Temptation of St. Anthony, being enjoyable. The painter-persecuted +saint sits in the foreground of a freshly painted landscape, harassed +by the attentions of witches, several of them comely and clothed. To +be precise, the composition suggests a much-married man listening to +the reproaches of his spouses. Hanging in a doorway we found a Herri +Met de Bles that is not marked doubtful. It is a triptych, an +Adoration, in which the three kings, the Queen of Sheba before +Solomon, and Herod participate. A brilliantly tinted work this, which +once hung in the Escorial, and, _mirabile dictu_, attributed to Lucas +van Leyden. No need to speak of the later Dutch and Flemish school, +Teniers, Ostade, Dou, Pourbus, and the minor masters. There are +Breughels and Bosches aplenty, and none too good. But there are +several Jordaens of quality, a family group, and three heads of street +musicians. We forgot to mention an attribution to Jan van Eyck, The +Triumph of Religion, which is a curious affair no matter whose brain +conceived it. The attendant always points out its religious features +with ill-concealed glee. A group of ecclesiastics have confounded a +group of rabbis at a fountain which is the foundation of an altar; the +old fervour burns in the eyes of the gallery servitor as he shows you +the discomfited Hebrew doctors of the law. We may dismiss as harmless +the Pinturicchio and other Italian attributions in these basement +galleries. There is the usual crew of Anonimos, and a lot of those +fantastic painters who are nicknamed by critics without a sense of +humour as "The Master of the Fiery Hencoop," "The Master of the +Eccentric Omelet," or some such idiotic title. + +Up-stairs familiar names such as Domenichino, Bassano, Cortona, +Crespi, Bellino, Pietra della Vecchia, Allori, Veronese, Maratta, +Guido Reni, Romano need not detain us. The catalogue numbers of the +Italian school go as high as 628. The Titians, however, are the glory +of the Prado. The Spanish school begins at 629, ends at 1,029. The +German, Flemish, and Holland schools begin at 1,146, running to 1,852. +There are supplements to all of the foregoing. The French school runs +from 1,969 to 2,111. But the examples in this section are not +inspiring, the Watteaus excepted. There is the usual Champagne, +Coypel, Claude of Lorraine (10), Largillière, Lebrun, Van Loo, Mignard +(5); one of Le Nain--by both brothers. Nattier (4), Nicolas Poussin +(20), Rigaud, and two delicious Watteaus; a rustic betrothal and a +view of the garden of St. Cloud, the two exhaling melancholy grace and +displaying subdued richness of tone. Tiepolo has been called the last +link in the chain of Venetian colourists, which began with the +Bellini, followed by Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Palma Vecchio, +Bonifazio, Veronese--and to this list might be added the name of the +Frenchman Watteau. Chardin was also a colourist, and how many of the +Poussins at this gallery might be spared to make room for one of his +cool, charming paintings! + +The Prado about exhausts the art treasures of Madrid. In the Escorial, +that most monstrous and gloomiest of the tombs of kings, are pictures +that should be seen--some Grecos among the rest--even if the palace +does not win your sympathy. In Madrid what was once called the +Academia de San Fernando is now the Real Academia de Bellas Artes. It +is at 11 Calle de Alcalá and contains a Murillo of quality, the Dream +of the Roman Knight, Zurbaran's Carthusians, an Ecce Homo by Ribera, +of power; the Death of Dido by Fragonard; a Rubens, St. Francis, the +work of his pupils; Alonzo Cano, two Murillos, Domenichino, Tristan, +Mengs, Giovanni Bellini; Goya's bull-fights, mad-house scenes, and +several portraits--one of the Due de la Paz; a Pereda, a Da Vinci (?), +Madrazo, Zurbaran, and Goya's equestrian portrait of Charles IV. A +minor gathering, the débris of a former superb collection, and not +even catalogued. + +There are museums devoted to artillery, armour, natural sciences, and +archæology. In the imposing National Library, full of precious +manuscripts, is the museum of modern art--also without a catalogue. It +does not make much of an impression after the Prado. The Fortuny is +not characteristic, though a rarity; a sketch for his Battle of +Tetuan, the original an unfinished painting, is at Barcelona. There +are special galleries such as the Sala Haes with its seventy pictures, +which are depressing. The modern Spaniards Zuloaga, Sorolla, +Angla-Camarosa are either not represented or else are not at their +best. There is a Diaz, who was of Spanish origin; but the Madrazos, +Villegas, Montenas, and the others are academic echoes or else feeble +and mannered. There are some adroit water-colours by modern Frenchmen, +and there is a seeming attempt to make the collection contemporary in +spirit, but it is all as dead as the allegorical dormouse, while over +at the Prado there is a vitality manifested by the old fellows that +bids fair to outlast the drums, tramplings, and conquests of many +generations. We have not more than alluded to the sculpture at the +Prado; it is not particularly distinguished. The best sculpture we saw +in Spain was displayed in wood-carvings. The pride of the Prado is +centred upon its Titians, Raphaels, Rubenses, Murillos, El Grecos, +and, above all, upon Don Diego de Silva, better known as Velasquez. + + + + +EL GRECO AT TOLEDO + + + +Toledo is less than three hours from Madrid; it might be three years +away for all the resemblance it bears to the capital. Both situated in +New Castille, Madrid seems sharply modern, as modern as the early +nineteenth century, when compared to the mediæval cluster of buildings +on the horseshoe-shaped granite heights almost entirely hemmed in by +the river Tagus. It is not only one of the most original cities in +Spain, but in all Europe. No other boasts its incomparable profile, +few the extraordinary vicissitudes of its history. Not romantic in the +operatic moonlit Grenada fashion, without the sparkle and colour of +Seville or the mundane savour of Madrid, Toledo incarnates in its +cold, detached, proud, pious way all that we feel as Spain the +aristocratic, Spain the theocratic. To this city on a crag there once +came, by way of Venice, a wanderer from Crete. Toledo was the final +frame of the strange genius of El Greco; he made it the consecrate +ground of his new art. It is difficult to imagine him developing in +luxuriant Italy as he did in Spain. His nature needed a sombre and +magnificent background; this city gave it to him; for no artist can +entirely isolate himself from life, can work in _vacuo_. And El +Greco's shivering, spiritual art could have been born on no other soil +than Toledo. He is as original as the city. + +The place shows traces of its masters--Romans, Goths, Saracens, and +Christians. It is, indeed, as much Moorish as Christian--the narrow +streets, high, narrow houses often windowless, the inner court +replacing the open squares that are to be found in Seville. Miscalled +the "Spanish Rome," Gautier's description still holds good: Toledo has +the character of a convent, a prison, a fortress with something of a +seraglio. The enormous cathedral, which dates back to Visigothic +Christianity, is, next to Seville's, the most beautiful in Spain. Such +a façade, such stained glass, such ceilings! Blanco Ibañez has written +pages about this structure. The synagogues, the Moorish mosque, the +Alcázar are picturesque. And then there are the Puente de Alcántara, +the Casa de Cervantes, the Puerta del Sol, the Prison of the +Inquisition, the Church of Santo Tomé--which holds the most precious +example of Greco's art--the Sinagogo del Transito, the Church of San +Vicente--with Grecos--Santo Domingo (more Grecos); the Convent, near +the Church of San Juan de los Reyes, contains the Museo Provincial in +which were formerly a number of Grecos; many of these have been +transferred to the new Museo El Greco, founded by the Marquis de la +Vega-Inclan, an admirer of the painter. This museum was once the home +of Greco, and has been restored, so that if the artist returned he +might find himself in familiar quarters. Pictures, furniture, carvings +of his are there, while the adjoining house is rebuilt in a harmonious +style of old material. Remain various antique patios or court-like +interiors, the sword manufactory, and the general view from the top of +the town. El Greco's romantic portrayment of his adopted city is as +true now as the day it was painted--one catches a glimpse of the scene +when the contrasts of light and shadow are strong. During a +thunderstorm illuminated by blazing shafts of Peninsular lightning +Toledo resembles a page torn from the Apocalypse. + +The cathedral is the usual objective; instead, we first went to the +church of Santo Tomé. It is a small Gothic structure, rebuilt from a +mosque by Count Orgáz. In commemoration of this gift a large canvas, +entitled El Entierro, depicting the funeral of Orgáz, by El Greco, has +made Santo Tomé more celebrated than the cathedral. It is an amazing, +a thrilling work, nevertheless, on a scale that prevents it from +giving completely the quintessence of El Greco. No doubt he was a +pupil of Titian; Gautier but repeated current gossip when he said that +the Greek went mad in his attempt to emulate his master. But +Tintoretto's influence counts heavier in this picture than Titian's, a +picture assigned by Cossió midway between Greco's first and second +period. Decorative as is the general scheme, the emotional intensity +aroused by the row of portraits in the second _plan_, the touching +expression of the two saints, Augustine and Stephen, as they gently +bear the corpse of the Count, the murky light of the torches in the +background, while overhead the saintly hierarchy terminating in a +white radiance, Christ the Comforter, His mother at His right hand, +quiring hosts at His left--all these figures make an ensemble that at +first glance benumbs the critical faculty. You recall the solemn and +spasmodic music of Michael Angelo (of whom El Greco is reported to +have irreverently declared that he couldn't paint); then as your +perspective slowly shapes itself you note that Tintoretto, plus a +certain personal accent of morbid magnificence, is the artistic +progenitor of this art, an art which otherwise furiously boils over +with Spanish characteristics. + +Nothing could be more vivid and various than the twenty-odd heads near +the bottom of the picture. Expression, character, race are not pushed +beyond normal limits. The Spaniard, truly noble here, is seen at a +half-dozen periods of life. El Greco himself is said to be in the +group; the portrait certainly tallies with a reputed one of his. The +sumptuousness of the ecclesiastical vestments, court costumes, ruffs, +and eloquent hands, the grays, whites, golds, blues, blacks, chord +rolling upon chord of subtle tonalities, the supreme illumination of +the scene, with its suggestion of a moment swiftly trapped forever in +eternity, hook this masterpiece firmly to your memory. It is not one +of the greatest pictures in the pantheon of art, not Rembrandt, +Velasquez, Hals, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, or Rubens; yet it +stands close to them all because of its massed effect of light, life, +and emotional situation. We confess to liking it better than the +Gloria at the Escorial Palace. This glorification of a dream of Philip +II does not pluck electrically at your heart-strings as does the +Burial of Count Orgáz, though the two canvases are similar in +architectonic. + +The Expolio is in the cathedral; it belongs to the first period, +before El Greco had shaken off Italian influences. The colouring is +rather cold. The St. Maurice in the chapter hall of the Escorial is a +long step toward a new method of expression. (A replica is in +Bucharest.) The Ascension altar piece, formerly in Santo Domingo, now +hangs in the Art Institute, Chicago. At Toledo there are about eighty +pieces of the master, not including his sculpture, retablos; like +Tintoretto, he was accustomed to make little models in clay or wax for +the figures in his pictures. His last manner is best exemplified in +the Divine Love and Profane Love, belonging to Señor Zuloaga, in The +Adoration of the Shepherds, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the +Assumption at the Church of St. Vicente, Toledo. His chalky whites, +poisonous greens, violet shadows, discordant passages of lighting are, +as Arthur Symons puts it: Sharp and dim, gray and green, the colour of +Toledo. Greco composed his palette with white vermilion, lake, yellow +ochre, ivory black. Señor Beruete says that "he generally laid on an +impasto for his flesh, put on in little touches, and then added a few +definite strokes with the brush which, though accentuated, are very +delicate... The gradations of the values is in itself instructive." + +His human forms became more elongated as he aged; this applies only to +his males; his women are of sweetness compounded and graceful in +contour. Some a mere arabesque, or living flames; some sinister and +fantastic; from the sublime to the silly is with Greco not a wide +stride. But in all his surging, writhing sea of wraiths, saints, +kings, damned souls and blest, a cerebral grip is manifest. He knew a +hawk from a handsaw despite his temperament of a mystic. "He who +carries his own most intimate emotions to their highest point becomes +the first in a file of a long series of men"; but, adds Mr. Ellis: "To +be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men." El Greco, like +Charles Baudelaire, cultivated his hysteria. He developed his +individuality to the border line across which looms madness. The +transmogrification of his temperament after living in Toledo was +profound. Born Greek, in art a Venetian, the atmosphere of the +Castilian plain changed the colour of his soul. In him there was +material enough for both a Savonarola or a Torquemada--his piety was +at once iconoclastic and fanatical. And his restlessness, his +ceaseless experiments, his absolute discoveries of new tonalities, his +sense of mystic grandeur--why here you have, if you will, a Berlioz of +paint, a man of cold ardours, hot ecstasies, visions apocalyptic, with +a brain like a gloomy cathedral in which the _Tuba Mirum_ is +sonorously chanted. But Greco is on the side of the angels; Berlioz, +like Goya, too often joined in the infernal antiphonies of Satan +_Mekatrig_. And Greco is as dramatic as either. + +Beruete admits that his idol, Velasquez, was affected by the study of +El Greco's colouring. Canaille Saint-Saëns, when Liszt and Rubinstein +were compared, exclaimed: "Two great artists who have nothing in +common except their superiority." It is bootless to bracket Velasquez +with his elder. And Gautier was off the track when he spoke of Greco's +resemblance to the bizarre romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Greco +was, but not trivial nor a charlatan. As to his decadent tendencies we +side with the opinion of Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.: "Certain +pedants have written as if the world would be better without its +disorderly geniuses. There could, I think, be no sorer error. We need +the unbalanced talents, the _poètes damnés_ of every craft. They strew +the passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own. They fight +valiantly, a little at the expense of their fame, against the only +unpardonable sins, stupidity and indifference. Greco should always be +an honoured name in this ill-destined company." + +In the Prado Museum there is a goodly collection. The Annunciation, +The Holy Family, Jesus Christ Dead, The Baptism of Christ, The +Resurrection, The Crucifixion--a tremendous conception; and The Coming +of the Holy Ghost; this latter, with its tongues of fire, its +flickering torches, its ecstatic apostles and Mary, her face flooded +by a supernal illumination, mightily stirs the æsthetic pulse. The +Prado has two dozen specimens, though two of them at least--a poor +replica of the Orgáz burial, and another--are known to be by El +Greco's son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli; of the numerous portraits and +other pictures dispersed by time and chance to the four quarters of +the globe, we have written earlier in this volume, when dealing with +the definitive work on this Greek by Señor Manuel B. Cossio. El Greco, +through sheer intensity of temperament and fierce sincerity, could +pluck out from men who had become, because of their apathy and +grotesque pride, mere vegetable growths, their very souls afire; or if +stained by crimes, these souls, he shot them up to God like green +meteors. To be sure they have eyes drunk with dreams, the pointed +skull of the mystic, and betray a plentiful lack of chin and often an +atrabilious nature. When old his saints resemble him, when young he +must have looked like his saints, Sebastian and Martin. With his +ardent faith he could have confuted the Gnostic or the Manichean +heresies in colourful allegory, but instead he sang fervid hosannahs +on his canvases to the greater glory of Christ and His saints. Perhaps +if he had lived in our times he might have painted heads of +fashionable courtesans or equivocal statesmen. But whether primitive +or modern, realist or symbolist, he would always have been a painter +of dramatic genius. He is the unicorn among artists. + + + + +VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO + + + +Fearful that your eye has lost its innocence after hearing so much of +the picture, you enter the tiny room at the museum on the Prado in +which is hung Las Meninas--The Maids of Honour, painted by Velasquez +in 1656. My experience was a typical one. I went hastily through the +larger Velasquez gallery in not only a challenging but an irritable +mood. The holy of holies I was enraged to find, seemingly, crowded. +There was the picture, but a big easel stood in the foreground +blotting out the left side; some selfish artist copying, some fellow +thrusting himself between us and the floating illusion of art. In +despair I looked into the mirror that reflects the picture. I +suspected trickery. Surely that little princess with her wilful, +_distrait_ expression, surely the kneeling maid, the dwarfs, the +sprawling dog, the painter Velasquez--with his wig--the heads of the +king and queen in the oblong mirror, the figure of Señor Nieto in the +doorway, the light framing his silhouette--surely they are all real. +Here are the eternal simplicities. You realise that no one is in the +room but these painted effigies of the court and family of Philip IV; +that the canvas whose bare ribs deceived is in the picture, not on the +floor; that Velasquez and the others are _eidolons_, arrested in space +by the white magic of his art. For the moment all other artists and +their works are as forgotten as the secrets in the lost and sacred +books of the Magi. There is but one painter and his name is Velasquez. + +This mood of ecstatic absorption is never outlived; the miracle +operates whenever a visit is made to the shrine. But you soon note +that the canvas has been deprived of its delicate glaze. There are +patches ominously eloquent of the years that have passed since the +birth of this magisterial composition. The tonal key is said to be +higher because of restorations; yet to the worshipper these +shortcomings are of minor importance. Even Giordano's exclamation: +"Sire, this is the theology of painting," falls flat. Essence of +painting, would have been a truer statement. There is no +other-worldliness here, but something more normal, a suggestion of +solid reality, a vision of life. The various figures breathe; so +potent is their vitality that my prime impression in entering the room +was a sense of the presence of others. Perhaps this is not as +consummate art as the voluptuous colour-symphonies of Titian, the +golden exuberance of Rubens, the abstract spacing of Raphael, the +mystic opium of Rembrandt; but it is an art more akin to nature, an +art that is a lens through which you may spy upon life. You recall +Ibsen and his "fourth wall." Velasquez has let us into the secret of +human existence. Not, however, in the realistic order of inanimate +objects copied so faithfully as to fool the eye. Presentation, not +representation, is the heart of this coloured imagery, and so moving, +so redolent of life is it that if the world were shattered and Las +Meninas shot to the coast of Mars, its inhabitants would be able to +reconstruct an idea of the creatures that once inhabited old Mother +Earth; men, women, children, their shapes, attitudes, gestures, and +attributes. The mystery of sentient beings lurks in this canvas, the +illusion of atmosphere has never been so contrived. In the upper part +of the picture space is indicated in a manner that recalls both +Rembrandt and Raphael. Velasquez, too, was a space-composer. +Velasquez, too, plucked at the heart of darkness. But his air is +luminous, the logic of his proportion faultless, his synthesis +absolute. Where other painters juxtapose he composes. Despite the +countless nuances of his thin, slippery brush strokes, the picture is +always a finely spun whole. + +When Fragonard was starting for Rome, Boucher said to him: "If you +take those people over there seriously you are done for." Luckily +Frago did not, and, despite his two Italian journeys, Velasquez was +not seduced into taking "those people" seriously. His recorded opinion +of Raphael is corroborative of his attitude toward Italian art. Titian +was his sole god. For nearly a year he was in daily intercourse with +Rubens, but of Rubens's influence upon him there is little trace. Las +Meninas is the perfect flowering of the genius of the Spaniard. It has +been called impressionistic; Velasquez has been claimed as the father +of impressionism as Stendhal was hailed by Zola as the literary +progenitor of naturalism. But Velasquez is too universal to be +labelled in the interests of any school. His themes are of this earth, +his religious paintings are the least credible of his efforts. They +are Italianate as if the artist dared not desert the familiar +religious stencil. His art is not correlated to the other arts. One +does not dream of music or poetry or sculpture or drama in front of +his pictures. One thinks of life and then of the beauty of the paint. +Velasquez is never rhetorical, nor does he paint for the sake of +making beautiful surfaces as often does Titian. His practice is not +art for art as much as art for life. As a portraitist, Titian's is the +only name to be coupled with that of Velasquez. He neither flattered +his sitters, as did Van Dyck, nor mocked them like Goya. And consider +the mediocrities, the dull, ugly, royal persons he was forced to +paint! He has wrung the neck of banal eloquence, and his prose, sober, +rich, noble, sonorous, rhythmic, is to my taste preferable to the +exalted, versatile volubility and lofty poetic tumblings in the azure +of any school of painting. His palette is ever cool and fastidiously +restricted. It has been said that he lacks imagination, as if creation +or evocation of character is not the loftiest attribute of +imagination, even though it deals not with the stuff of which +mythologies are made. + +We admire the enthusiasm of Mr. Ricketts for Velasquez, and his +analysis is second to none save R.A.M. Stevenson's. Yet we do protest +the painter was not the bundle of negations Mr. Ricketts has made of +him in his evident anxiety that some homage may be diverted from +Titian. Titian is incomparable. Velasquez is unique. But to describe +him as an artist who cautiously studied the work of other men, and +then avoided by a series of masterly omissions and evasions their +faults as well as their excellences, is a statement that robs +Velasquez of his originality. He is not an eclectic. He is a man of +affirmations, Velasquez. A student to his death, he worked slowly, +revised painfully, above all, made heroic sacrifices. Each new canvas +was a discovery. The things he left out of his pictures would fill a +second Prado Museum. And the things he painted in are the glories of +the world. Because of his simplicity, absence of fussiness, avoidance +of the mock-heroic, of the inflated "grand manner," critics have +pressed too heavily upon this same simplicity. There is nothing as +subtle as his simplicity, for it is a simplicity that conceals +subtlety. No matter the time of day or season of the year you visit +Velasquez, you never find him off his guard. Aristocratic in his ease, +he disarms you first. You may change your love, your politics, your +religion, but once a Velasquez worshipper, always one. + +Mr. Ricketts, over-anxious at precisely placing him, writes of his +"distinction." He is the most "distinguished" painter in history. But +we contend that this phrase eludes precise definition. "Distinguished" +in what? we ask. Style, character, paint quality, vision of the +beautiful? Why not come out plumply with the truth: Velasquez is the +supreme harmonist in art. No one ever approached him in his handling +save Hals, and Hals hardly boasts the artistic inches of Velasquez. +Both possessed a daylight vision of the world. Reality came to them in +the sharpest guise; but the vision of Velasquez came in a more +beautiful envelope. And his psychology is profounder. He painted the +sparkle of the eyes and also the look in them, the challenging glance +that asks: "Are we, too, not humans?" Titian saw colour as a poet, +Velasquez as a charmer and a reflective temperament. Hals doesn't +think at all. He slashes out a figure for you and then he is done. The +graver, deeper Spaniard is not satisfied until he has kept his pact +with nature. So his vision of her is more rounded, concrete, and +truthful than the vision of other painters. The balance in his work of +the most disparate and complex relations of form, space, colour, and +rhythm has the unpremeditated quality of life; yet the massive +harmonic grandeurs of Las Meninas have been placed by certain critics +in the category of glorified genre. + +Some prefer Las Hilanderas in the outer gallery. After the stately +equestrian series, the Philip, the Olivares, the Baltasar Carlos; +after the bust portraits of Philip in the Prado and in the National +Gallery, the hunting series; after the Crucifixion and its sombre +background, you return to The Spinners and wonder anew. Its subtitle +might be: Variations on the Theme of Sunshine. In it the painter +pursues the coloured adventures of a ray of light. Rhythmically more +involved and contrapuntal than The Maids, this canvas, with its +brilliant broken lights, its air that circulates, its tender yet +potent conducting of the eye from the rounded arm of the seductive +girl at the loom to the arched area with its leaning, old-time +bass-viol, its human figures melting dream-like into the tapestried +background, arouses within the spectator much more complicated _états +d'âme_ than does Las Meninas. The silvery sorceries of that picture +soothe the spirit and pose no riddles; The Spinners is a cathedral +crammed with implications. Is it not the last word of the art of +Velasquez--though it preceded The Maids? Will the eye ever tire of its +glorious gloom, its core of tonal richness, its virile exaltation of +everyday existence? Is it only a trick of the wrist, a deft blending +of colours by this artist, who has been called, wrongfully--the +"Shakespeare of the brush"? Is all this nothing more than +"distinguished"? + +Mr. Ricketts justly calls Las Lanzas the unique historic picture. +Painted at the very flush of his genius, painted with sympathy for the +conquered and the conqueror--Velasquez accompanied the Marquis of +Spinola to Italy--this Surrender of Breda has received the homage of +many generations. Sir Joshua Reynolds asserted that the greatest +picture at Rome was the Velasquez head of Pope Innocent X in the Doria +Palace (a variant is in the Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg). What +would he have said in the presence of this captivating evocation of a +historic event? The battle pieces of Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, and +Titian are destroyed; Las Lanzas remains a testimony to the powers of +imaginative reconstruction and architectonic of Velasquez. It is the +most complete, the most natural picture in the world. The rhythms of +the bristling lances are syncopated by a simple device; they are +transposed to another plane of perspective, there in company with a +lowered battle standard. The acute rhythms of these spears has given +to the picture its title of The Lances, and never was title more +appropriate. The picture is at once a decorative arabesque, an +ensemble of tones, and a slice of history. Spinola receives from the +conquered Justin of Nassau the keys of the beleagured Breda. Velasquez +creates two armies out of eight figures, a horse and fourteen +heads--here is the recipe of Degas for making a multitude carried to +the height of the incredible. His own portrait, that of a grave, +handsome man, may be seen to the right of the big horse. + +The first period of his art found Velasquez a realist heavy in colour +and brush-work, and without much hint of the transcendental realism to +be noted in his later style. The dwarfs, buffoons, the Æsop and the +Menippus are the result of an effortless art. In the last manner the +secret of the earth mingles with the mystery of the stars, as +Dostoïevsky would put it. The Topers, The Forge of Vulcan, are +pictures that enthrall because of their robust simplicity and vast +technical sweep though they do not possess the creative invention of +the Mercury and Argus or The Anchorites. This latter is an amazing +performance. Two hermits--St. Antony the Abbot visiting St. Paul the +Hermit--are shown. A flying raven, bread in beak, nears them. You +could swear that the wafer of flour is pasted on the canvas. This +picture breathes peace and sweetness. The Christ of the Spaniard is a +man, not a god, crucified. His Madonnas, masterly as they are, do not +reach out hands across the frame as do his flower-like royal children +and delicate monsters. + +The crinolined princess, Margarita, with her spangles and furbelows, +is a companion to the Margarita at the Louvre and the one in Vienna. +She is the exquisite and lyric Velasquez. On his key-board of +imbricated tones there are grays that felicitously sing across alien +strawberry tints, thence modulate into fretworks of dim golden fire. +As a landscapist Velasquez is at his best in the Prado. The various +backgrounds and those two views painted at Rome in the garden of the +Villa Medici--a liquid comminglement of Corot and Constable, as has +been pointed out--prove this man of protean gifts to have anticipated +modern discoveries in vibrating atmospheric effects and colour-values. +But, then, Velasquez will always be "modern." And when time has +obliterated his work he may become the legendary Parrhasius of a +vanished epoch. To see him in the Prado is to stand eye to eye with +the most enchanting realities of art. + + + + +_CODA_ + + + +When a man begins to chatter of his promenades among the masterpieces +it may be assumed that he has crossed the sill of middle-age. Remy de +Gourmont, gentle ironist, calls such a period _l'heure insidieuse_. +Yet, is it not something--a vain virtue, perhaps--to possess the +courage of one's windmills! From the Paris of the days when I haunted +the ateliers of Gérôme, Bonnat, Meissonier, Couture, and spent my +enthusiasms over the colour-schemes of Decamps and Fortuny, to the +Paris of the revolutionists, Manet, Degas, Monet, now seems a life +long. But time fugues precipitately through the land of art. In +reality both periods overlap; the dichotomy is spiritual, not +temporal. + +The foregoing memoranda are frankly in the key of impressionism. They +are a record of some personal preferences, not attempts at critical +revaluations. Appearing first in the New York _Sun_, the project of +their publication in book form met with the approbation of its +proprietor, William Mackay Laffan, whose death in 1909 was an +international loss to the Fine Arts. If these opinions read like a +medley of hastily crystallised judgments jotted down after the manner +of a traveller pressed for time, they are none the less sincere. My +garden is only a straggling weedy plot, but I have traversed it with +delight; in it I have promenaded my dearest prejudices, my most absurd +illusions. And central in this garden may be found the image of the +supreme illusionist of art, Velasquez. + +Since writing the preceding articles on El Greco and Velasquez the +museum of the Hispanic Society, New York, has been enabled, through +the munificent generosity of Mr. Archer M. Huntington, to exhibit his +newly acquired El Grecos and a Velasquez. The former comprise a +brilliantly coloured Holy Family, which exhales an atmosphere of +serenity; the St. Joseph is said to be a portrait of El Greco; and +there also is a large canvas showing Christ with several of his +disciples. Notable examples both. The Velasquez comes from the +collection of the late Edouard Kann and is a life-size bust portrait +of a sweetly grave little girl. Señor Beruete believes her to +represent the daughter of the painter Mazo and his wife, Francisca +Velasquez, therefore a granddaughter of Velasquez. The tonalities of +this picture are subtly beautiful, the modelling mysterious, the +expression vital and singularly child-like. It is a fitting companion +to a portrait hanging on the same wall, that of the aristocratic young +Cardinal Pamphili, a nephew of Pope Innocent X, also by the great +Spaniard. + + * * * * * + + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC + +BRAHMS, TSCHAÏKOWSKY, CHOPIN, RICHARD STRAUSS, LISZT AND WAGNER + +12mo. $1.50 + +"Mr. Huneker is, in the best sense, a critic; he listens to the music +and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few words as +possible; or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping +strokes with a magnificent disregard for unimportant details. And as +Mr. Huneker is, as I have said, a powerful personality, a man of quick +brain and an energetic imagination, a man of moods and temperament--a +string that vibrates and sings in response to music--we get in these +essays of his a distinctly original and very valuable contribution to +the world's tiny musical literature."--J. F. Runciman, in London +Saturday Review. + +MELOMANIACS + +12mo. 31.50 + +Contents: The Lord's Prayer in B--A Son of Liszt--A Chopin of the +Gutter--The Piper of Dreams--An Emotional Acrobat--Isolde's +Mother--The Rim of Finer Issues--An Ibsen Girl--Tannhäuser's +Choice--The Red-Headed Piano Player--Brynhüd's Immolation--The Quest +of the Elusive--An Involuntary Insurgent--Hunding's Wife--The Corridor +of Time--Avatar--The Wegstaffes give a Musicale--The Iron Virgin--Dusk +of the Gods--Siegfried's Death--Intermezzo--A Spinner of Silence--The +Disenchanted Symphony--Music the Conqueror. + +"It would be difficult to sum up 'Melomaniacs' in a phrase. Never did +a book, in my opinion at any rate, exhibit greater contrasts, not, +perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of clearness and obscurity. It +is inexplicably uneven, as if the writer were perpetually playing on +the boundary line that divides sanity of thought from intellectual +chaos. There is method in the madness, but it is a method of +intangible ideas. Nevertheless, there is genius written over a large +portion of it, and to a musician the wealth of musical imagination is +a living spring of thought"--Harold E. Gorst, in _London Saturday +Review_ (Dec. 8, 1906). + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +ICONOCLASTS: + +A Book of Dramatists + +12mo. $1.50 net + +CONTENTS: Henrik Ibsen--August Strindberg--Henry Becque--Gerhart +Hauptmann--Paul Hervieu--The Quintessence of Shaw--Maxim Gorky's +Nachtasyl--Hermann Sudennann--Princess Mathilde's Play--Duse and +D'Annunzio--Villiers de l'lsle Adam--Maurice Maeterlinck. + +"His style is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in +which we are led to expect some significance, if not wit, in every +sentence."--G.K. Chesterton, _in London Daily News._ + +"No other book in English has surveyed the whole field so +comprehensively."--The Outlook. + +"A capital book, lively, informing, suggestive."--London Times +Saturday Review. + +"Eye-opening and mind-clarifying is Mr. Huneker's criticism; ... no +one having read that opening essay in this volume will lay it down +until the final judgment upon Maurice Maeterlinck is reached."--Boston +Transcript. + +OVERTONES: + +A Book of Temperaments + +_WITH FRONTISPIECE PORTRAIT OF RICHARD STRAUSS_ + +12mo. $1.25 net + +CONTENTS: Richard Strauss--Parsifal: A Mystical Melodrama--Literary +Men who loved Music (Balzac, Turgenieff, Daudet, etc.)--The Eternal +Feminine--The Beethoven of French Prose--Nietzsche the +Rhapsodist--Anarchs of Art--After Wagner, What?--Verdi and Boito. + +"The whole book is highly refreshing with its breadth of knowledge, +its catholicity of taste, and its inexhaustible energy."--_Saturday +Review, London._ + +"In some respects Mr. Huneker must be reckoned the most brilliant of +all living writers on matters musical."--_Academy, London._ + +"No modern musical critic has shown greater ingenuity in the +attempt to correlate the literary and musical tendencies of the +nineteenth century."--_Spectator, London._ + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +EGOISTS + +_A BOOK OF SUPERMEN_ + +Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, +Hello, Blake, Nietzsche, Ibsen and Max Stirner. + +With portrait of Stendhal, unpublished letter of Flaubert, and +original proof page of "Madame Bovary." + +12mo. $1.50 net + +"The best thing in the book happily comes first, the essay on +Stendhal. Closely and yet lightly written, full of facts yet as +amusing as a bit of discursive talk, penetrating, candid and very +shrewd, this study would be hard to beat in English, or, for that +matter, in French. It is, too, the best of the essays as regards +discrimination. There are no shades of Stendhal's genius, whether +making for good or for ill, that are missed by this analyst, and, +moreover, both the lights and shadows are justly distributed... He +seeks to show you the color of a man's mind, and it is evidence of his +validity as an essayist that straightway he interests you in the color +of his own. He is an impressionist in criticism... Such an essayist is +Mr. Huneker, a foe to dulness who is also a man of brains."--Royal +Cortissoz in _New York Tribune._ + +"JAMES HUNEKER: INDIVIDUALIST" + +"As a critic, whether of music, the plastic arts, of poetry or fiction +or philosophy, he is of those who never attain finality; but he is +always stimulating, provocative of thought, and by virtue of this +quality, not invariably possessed by critics, he is entitled to a +distinctive place in American letters." + +Edward Clark Marsh in _The Forum._ + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +VISIONARIES + +12mo. $1.50 net + +Contents: A Master of Cobwebs--The Eighth Deadly Sin--The Purse of +Aholibah--Rebels of the Moon--The Spiral Road--A Mock +Sun--Antichrist--The Eternal Duel--The Enchanted Yodler--The Third +Kingdom--The Haunted Harpsichord--The Tragic Wall--A Sentimental +Rebellion--Hall of the Missing Footsteps--The Cursory Light--An Iron +Fan--The Woman Who Loved Chopin--The Tune of Time--Nada--Pan. + +"The author's style is sometimes grotesque in its desire both to +startle and to find true expression. He has not followed those great +novelists who write French a child may read and understand. He calls +the moon 'a spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truth +beats at the bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-colored +cymbal'; a man moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant.' But +even these oddities are significant and to be placed high above the +slipshod sequences of words that have done duty till they are as +meaningless as the imprint on a worn-out coin. + +"Besides, in nearly every story the reader is arrested by the idea, +and only a little troubled now and then by an over-elaborate style. If +most of us are sane, the ideas cherished by these visionaries are +insane; but the imagination of the author so illuminates them that we +follow wondering and spellbound. In 'The Spiral Road' and in some of +the other stories both fantasy and narrative may be compared with +Hawthorne in his most unearthly moods. The younger man has read his +Nietzsche and has cast off his heritage of simple morals. Hawthorne's +Puritanism finds no echo in these modern souls, all sceptical, +wavering and unblessed. But Hawthorne's splendor of vision and his +power of sympathy with a tormented mind do live again in the best of +Mr. Huneker's stories."--London Academy (Feb. 3, 1906). + + * * * * * + +CHOPIN: + +The Man and His Music + +WITH ETCHED PORTRAIT +12mo. $2.00 + +"No pianist, amateur or professional, can rise from the perusal of his +pages without a deeper appreciation of the new forms of beauty which +Chopin has added, like so many species of orchids, to the musical +flora of the nineteenth century."--The Nation. + +"I think it not too much to predict that Mr. Huneker's estimate of +Chopin and his works is destined to be the permanent one. He gives the +reader the cream of the cream of all noteworthy previous commentators, +besides much that is wholly his own. He speaks at once with modesty +and authority, always with personal charm."--Boston Transcript. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Promenades of an Impressionist, by James Huneker + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13296 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Promenades of an Impressionist + +Author: James Huneker + +Release Date: August 26, 2004 [EBook #13296] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Proofreaders Team + + + + + +PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST + + +By JAMES HUNEKER + + +1910 + + + + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + + Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + Promenades of an Impressionist. 12mo, (_Postage_ 15 cents_), + _net_, $1.50. + + Egoists: A Book of Supermen. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Overtones: A Book of Temperaments. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Mezzotints in Modern Music. 12mo, $1.50. + + Chopin: The Man and His Music. With Portrait. l2mo, $2.00. + + Visionaries. 12mo, $1.50. + + Melomaniacs. 12mo, $1.50 + + + + + +TO: FREDERICK JAMES GREGG + + -"Let us promenade our prejudices."--Stendhal(?) + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. PAUL CZANNE + + II. ROPS THE ETCHER + + III. MONTICELLI + + IV. RODIN + + V. EUGNE CARRIRE + + VI. DEGAS + + VII. BOTTICELLI + +VIII. SIX SPANIARDS: + + "EL GRECO" + + "VELASQUEZ" + + GOYA + + FORTUNY + + SOROLLA + + ZULOAGA + + IX. CHARDIN + + X. BLACK AND WHITE: + + PIRANESI + + MERYON + + JOHN MARTIN + + ZORN + + BRANGWYN + + DAUMIER + + LALANNE + + LEGRAND + + GUYS + + XI. IMPRESSIONISM: + + MONET + + RENOIR + + MANET + + XII. A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU + +XIII. GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + XIV. LITERATURE AND ART + + XV. MUSEUM PROMENADES: + + PICTURES AT THE HAGUE + + THE MESDAG MUSEUM + + HALS OF HAARLEM + + PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM + + ART IN ANTWERP + + MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS + + BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL + + THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + PICTURES IN MADRID + + EL GRECO AT TOLEDO + + VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO + +CODA + + + + +PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST + + + + +I. PAUL CZANNE + + + +After prolonged study of the art shown at the Paris Autumn Salon you +ask yourself: This whirlpool of jostling ambitions, crazy colours, +still crazier drawing and composition--whither does it tend? Is there +any strain of tendency, any central current to be detected? Is it +young genius in the raw, awaiting the sunshine of success to ripen its +somewhat terrifying gifts? Or is the exhibition a huge, mystifying +_blague_? What, you ask, as you apply wet compresses to your weary +eyeballs, blistered by dangerous proximity to so many blazing +canvases, does the Autumn Salon mean to French art? + +There are many canvases the subjects of which are more pathologic than +artistic, subjects only fit for the confessional or the privacy of the +clinic. But, apart from these disagreeable episodes, the main note of +the Salon is a riotous energy, the noisy ebullition of a gang of +students let loose in the halls of art. They seem to rush by you, +yelling from sheer delight in their lung power, and if you are rudely +jostled to the wall, your toes trod upon and your hat clapped down on +your ears, you console yourself with the timid phrase: Youth must have +its fling. + + + + +PROMENADES + + + +And what a fling! Largely a flinging of paint pots in the sacred +features of tradition. It needs little effort of the imagination to +see hovering about the galleries the faces of--no, not Grme, Bonnat, +Jules Lefvre, Cabanel, or any of the reverend _seigneurs_ of the old +Salon--but the reproachful countenances of Courbet, Manet, Degas, and +Monet; for this motley-wearing crew of youngsters are as violently +radical, as violently secessionistic, as were their immediate +forebears. Each chap has started a little revolution of his own, and +takes no heed of the very men from whom he steals his thunder, now +sadly hollow in the transposition. The pretty classic notion of the +torch of artistic tradition gently burning as it is passed on from +generation to generation receives a shock when confronted by the +methods of the hopeful young anarchs of the Grand Palais. Defiance of +all critical canons at any cost is their shibboleth. Compared to their +fulgurant colour schemes the work of Manet, Monet, and Degas pales and +retreats into the Pantheon of the past. They are become classic. +Another king has usurped their throne--his name is Paul Czanne. + +No need now to recapitulate the story of the New Salon and the +defection from it of these Independents. It is a fashion to revolt in +Paris, and no doubt some day there will arise a new group that will +start the August Salon or the January Salon. + +"Independent of the Independents" is a magnificent motto with which to +assault any intrenched organisation. + + + + +PAUL CZANNE + + + +If riotous energy is, as I have said, the chief note of many of these +hot, hasty, and often clever pictures, it must be sadly stated that of +genuine originality there are few traces. To the very masters they +pretend to revile they owe everything. In vain one looks for a +tradition older than Courbet; a few have attempted to stammer in the +suave speech of Corot and the men of Fontainebleau; but 1863, the year +of the _Salon des Refuss_, is really the year of their artistic +ancestor's birth. The classicism of Lebrun, David, Ingres, Prudhon; +the romanticism of Gricault, Delacroix, Decamps; the tender poetry of +those true _Waldmenschen_, Millet, Dupr, Diaz, Daubigny, or of that +wild heir of Giorgione and Tiepolo, the marvellous colour virtuoso who +"painted music," Monticelli--all these men might never have been born +except for their possible impact upon the so-called "Batignolles" +school. Alas! such ingratitude must rankle. To see the major portion +of this band of young painters, with talent in plenty, occupying +itself in a frantic burlesque of second-hand Czannes, with here and +there a shallow Monet, a faded Renoir, an affected Degas, or an +impertinent Gauguin, must be mortifying to the older men. + +And now we reach the holy precincts. If ardent youths sneered at the +lyric ecstasy of Renoir, at the severe restraint of Chavannes, at the +poetic mystery of Carrire, their lips were hushed as they tiptoed +into the Salle Czanne. Sacred ground, indeed, we trod as we gazed and +wondered before these crude, violent, sincere, ugly, and bizarre +canvases. Here was the very hub of the Independents' universe. Here +the results of a hard-labouring painter, without taste, without the +faculty of selection, without vision, culture--one is tempted to add, +intellect--who with dogged persistency has painted in the face of +mockery, painted portraits, landscapes, flowers, houses, figures, +painted everything, painted himself. And what paint! Stubborn, with an +instinctive hatred of academic poses, of the atmosphere of the studio, +of the hired model, of "literary," or of mere digital cleverness, +Czanne has dropped out of his scheme harmony, melody, +beauty--classic, romantic, symbolic, what you will!--and doggedly +represented the ugliness of things. But there is a brutal strength, a +tang of the soil that is bitter, and also strangely invigorating, +after the false, perfumed boudoir art of so many of his +contemporaries. + +Think of Bouguereau and you have his antithesis in Czanne--Czanne +whose stark figures of bathers, male and female, evoke a shuddering +sense of the bestial. Not that there is offence intended in his badly +huddled nudes; he only delineates in simple, naked fashion the horrors +of some undressed humans. His landscapes are primitive though suffused +by perceptible atmosphere; while the rough architecture, shambling +figures, harsh colouring do not quite destroy the impression of +general vitality. You could not say with Walt Whitman that his stunted +trees were "uttering joyous leaves of dark green." They utter, if +anything, raucous oaths, as seemingly do the +self-portraits--exceedingly well modelled, however. Czanne's +still-life attracts by its whole-souled absorption; these fruits and +vegetables really savour of the earth. Chardin interprets still-life +with realistic beauty; if he had ever painted an onion it would have +revealed a certain grace. When Paul Czanne paints an onion you smell +it. Nevertheless, he has captured the affections of the rebels and is +their god. And next season it may be some one else. + +It may interest readers of Zola's L'Oeuvre to learn about one of the +characters, who perforce sat for his portrait in that clever novel (a +direct imitation of Goncourt's Manette Salomon). Paul Czanne bitterly +resented the liberty taken by his old school friend Zola. They both +hailed from Aix, in Provence. Zola went up to Paris; Czanne remained +in his birthplace but finally persuaded his father to let him study +art at the capital. His father was both rich and wise, for he settled +a small allowance on Paul, who, poor chap, as he said, would never +earn a franc from his paintings. This prediction was nearly verified. +Czanne was almost laughed off the artistic map of Paris. Manet they +could stand, even Claude Monet; but Czanne--communard and anarchist +he must be (so said the wise ones in official circles), for he was +such a villainous painter! Czanne died, but not before his apotheosis +by the new crowd of the Autumn Salon. We are told by admirers of Zola +how much he did for his neglected and struggling fellow-townsman; how +the novelist opened his arms to Czanne. Czanne says quite the +contrary. In the first place he had more money than Zola when they +started, and Zola, after he had become a celebrity, was a great man +and very haughty. + +"A mediocre intelligence and a detestable friend" is the way the +prototype of Claude Lantier puts the case. "A bad book and a +completely false one," he added, when speaking to the painter Emile +Bernard on the disagreeable theme. Naturally Zola did not pose his old +friend for the entire figure of the crazy impressionist, his hero, +Claude. It was a study composed of Czanne, Bazille, and one other, a +poor, wretched lad who had been employed to clean Manet's studio, +entertained artistic ambitions, but hanged himself. The conversations +Czanne had with Zola, his extreme theories of light, are all in the +novel--by the way, one of Zola's most finished efforts. Czanne, an +honest, hard-working man, bourgeois in habits if not by temperament, +was grievously wounded by the treachery of Zola; and he did not fail +to denounce this treachery to Bernard. + +Paul Czanne was born January 19, 1839. His father was a rich +bourgeois, and while he was disappointed when his son refused to +prosecute further his law studies, he, being a sensible parent and +justly estimating Paul's steadiness of character, allowed him to go to +Paris in 1862, giving him an income of a hundred and fifty francs a +month, which was shortly after doubled. With sixty dollars a month an +art student of twenty-three could, in those days, live comfortably, +study at leisure, and see the world. Czanne from the start was in +earnest. Instinctively he realised that for him was not the rapid +ascent of the rocky path that leads to Parnassus. He mistrusted his +own talent, though not his powers of application. At first he +frequented the Acadmie Suisse, where he encountered as fellow-workers +Pissarro and Guillaumin. He soon transferred his easel to the +Beaux-Arts and became an admirer of Delacroix and Courbet. It seems +strange in the presence of a Czanne picture to realise that he, too, +suffered his little term of lyric madness and wrestled with huge +mythologic themes--giant men carrying off monstrous women. +Connoisseurs at the sale of Zola's art treasures were astonished by +the sight of a canvas signed Czanne, the subject of which was +L'Enlvement, a romantic subject, not lacking in the spirit of +Delacroix. The Courbet influence persisted, despite the development of +the younger painter in other schools. Czanne can claim Courbet and +the Dutchmen as artistic ancestors. + +When Czanne arrived in Paris the first comrade to greet him was Zola. +The pair became inseparable; they fought for naturalism, and it was to +Czanne that Zola dedicated his _Salons_ which are now to be found in +a volume of essays on art and literature bearing the soothing title of +Mes Haines. Zola, pitching overboard many friends, wrote his famous +eulogy of Manet in the _Evenement_, and the row he raised was so +fierce that he was forced to resign as art critic from that journal. +The fight then began in earnest. The story is a thrice-told one. It +may be read in Thodore Duret's study of Manet and, as regards +Czanne, in the same critic's volume on Impressionism. Czanne +exhibited in 1874 with Manet and the rest at the impressionists' +salon, held at the studio of Nadar the photographer. He had earlier +submitted at once to Manet's magic method of painting, but in 1873, at +Auvers-sur-Oise, he began painting in the _plein air_ style and with +certain modifications adhered to that manner until the time of his +death. The amazing part of it all is that he produced for more than +thirty years and seldom sold a canvas, seldom exhibited. His solitary +appearance at an official salon was in 1882, and he would not have +succeeded then if it had not been for his friend Guillaumin, a member +of the selecting jury, who claimed his rights and passed in, amid +execrations, both mock and real, a portrait by Czanne. + +Called a _communard_ in 1874, Czanne was saluted with the title of +anarchist in 1904, when his vogue had begun; these titles being a +species of official nomenclature for all rebels. Thiers, once +President of the French Republic, made a _bon mot_ when he exclaimed: +"A Romantic--that is to say, Communist!" During his entire career this +mild, reserved gentleman from Aix came under the ban of the critics +and the authorities, for he had shouldered his musket in 1871, as did +Manet, as did Bazille,--who, like Henri Regnault, was killed in a +skirmish. + +His most virulent enemies were forced to admit that Edouard Manet had +a certain facility with the brush; his quality and beauty of sheer +paint could not be winked away even by Albert Wolff. But to Czanne +there was no quarter shown. He was called the "Ape of Manet"; he was +hissed, cursed, abused; his canvases were spat upon, and as late as +1902, when M. Roujon, the Director of the Beaux-Arts, was asked by +Octave Mirbeau to decorate Czanne, he nearly fainted from +astonishment. Czanne! That barbarian! The amiable director suggested +instead the name of Claude Monet. Time had enjoyed its little +whirligig with that great painter of vibrating light and water, but +Monet blandly refused the long-protracted honour. Another anecdote is +related by M. Duret. William II of Germany in 1899 wished to examine +with his own eyes, trained by the black, muddy painting of Germany, +the canvases of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Czanne, and Manet, acquired +by Director Tschudi for the Berlin National Gallery. He saw them all +except the Czanne. Herr Tschudi feared that the Parisian fat would be +in the imperial fire if the Czanne picture appeared. So he hid it. As +it was his Majesty nodded in emphatic disapproval of the imported +purchases. If he had viewed the Czanne! + +At first blush, for those whose schooling has been academic, the +Czanne productions are shocking. Yet his is a personal vision, though +a heavy one. He has not a facile brush; he is not a great painter; he +lacks imagination, invention, fantasy; but his palette is his own. He +is a master of gray tones, and his scale is, as Duret justly observes, +a very intense one. He avoids the anecdote, historic or domestic. He +detests design, prearranged composition. His studio is an open field, +light the chief actor of his palette. He is never conventionally +decorative unless you can call his own particular scheme decorative. +He paints what he sees without flattery, without flinching from any +ugliness. Compared with him Courbet is as sensuous as Correggio. He +does not seek for the correspondences of light with surrounding +objects or the atmosphere in which Eugne Carrire bathes his +portraits, Rodin his marbles. The Czanne picture does not modulate, +does not flow; is too often hard, though always veracious--Czannes +veracity, be it understood. But it is an inescapable veracity. There +is, too, great vitality and a peculiar reserved passion, like that of +a Delacroix _ ribbers_, and in his still-life he is as great even as +Manet. + +His landscapes are real, though without the subtle poetry of Corot or +the blazing lyricism of Monet. He hails directly from the Dutch: Van +der Near, in his night pieces. Yet no Dutchman ever painted so +uncompromisingly, so close to the border line that divides the rigid +definitions of old-fashioned photography--the "new" photography hugs +closely the mellow mezzotint--and the vision of the painter. An +eye--nothing more, is Czanne. He refuses to see in nature either a +symbol or a sermon. Withal his landscapes are poignant in their +reality. They are like the grill age one notes in ancient French +country houses--little caseate cut in the windows through which you +may see in vivid outline a little section of the landscape. Czanne +marvellously renders certain surfaces, china, fruit, tapestry. + +Slowly grew his fame as a sober, sincere, unaffected workman of art. +Disciples rallied around him. He accepted changing fortunes with his +accustomed equanimity. Maurice Denis painted for the Champ de Mars +Salon of 1901 a picture entitled Homage Czanne, after the +well-known _hommages_ of Fantin-Latour. This _homage_ had its uses. +The disciples became a swelling, noisy chorus, and in 1904 the Czanne +room was thronged by overheated enthusiasts who would have offered +violence to the first critical dissident. The older men, the followers +of Monet, Manet, Degas, and Whistler, talked as if the end of the +world had arrived. Art is a serious affair in Paris. However, after +Czanne appeared the paintings of that half-crazy, unlucky genius, +Vincent van Gogh, and of the gifted, brutal Gauguin. And in the face +of such offerings Czanne may yet, by reason of his moderation, +achieve the unhappy fate of becoming a classic. He is certainly as far +removed from Van Gogh and Gauguin on the one side as he is from Manet +and Courbet on the other. Huysmans does not hesitate to assert that +Czanne contributed more to accelerate the impressionist movement than +Manet. Paul Czanne died in Aix, in Provence, October 23, 1906. + +Emile Bernard, an admirer, a quasi-pupil of Czanne's and a painter of +established reputation, discoursed at length in the _Mercure de +France_ upon the methods and the man. His anecdotes are interesting. +Without the genius of Flaubert, Czanne had something of the great +novelist's abhorrence of life--fear would be a better word. He +voluntarily left Paris to immure himself in his native town of Aix, +there to work out in peace long-planned projects, which would, he +believed, revolutionise the technique of painting. Whether for good or +evil, his influence on the younger men in Paris has been powerful, +though it is now on the wane. How far they have gone astray in +imitating him is the most significant thing related by Emile Bernard, +a friend of Paul Gauguin and a member of his Pont-Aven school. + +In February, 1904, Bernard landed in Marseilles after a trip to the +Orient. A chance word told him that there had been installed an +electric tramway between Marseilles and Aix. Instantly the name of +Czanne came to his memory; he had known for some years that the old +painter was in Aix. He resolved to visit him, and fearing a doubtful +reception he carried with him a pamphlet he had written in 1889, an +eulogium of the painter. On the way he asked his fellow-travellers for +Czanne's address, but in vain; the name was unknown. In Aix he met +with little success. Evidently the fame of the recluse had not reached +his birthplace. At last Bernard was advised to go to the Mayor's +office, where he would find an electoral list. Among the voters he +discovered a Paul Czanne, who was born January 19, 1839, who lived at +25 Rue Boulegon. Bernard lost no time and reached a simple dwelling +house with the name of the painter on the door. He rang. The door +opened. He entered and mounted a staircase. Ahead of him, slowly +toiling upward, was an old man in a cloak and carrying a portfolio. It +was Czanne. After he had explained the reason for his visit, the old +painter cried: "You are Emile Bernard! You are a maker of biographies! +Signac"--an impressionist--"told me of you. You are also a painter?" +Bernard, who had been painting for years, and was a friend of Signac, +was nonplussed at his sudden literary reputation, but he explained the +matter to Czanne, who, however, was in doubt until he saw later the +work of his admirer. + +He had another atelier a short distance from the town; he called it +"The Motive." There, facing Mount Sainte-Victoire, he painted every +afternoon in the open; the majority of his later landscapes were +inspired by the views in that charming valley. Bernard was so glad to +meet Czanne that he moved to Aix. + +In Czanne's studio at Aix Bernard encountered some extraordinary +studies in flower painting and three death heads; also monstrous +nudes, giant-like women whose flesh appeared parboiled. On the streets +Czanne was always annoyed by boys or beggars; the former were +attracted by his bohemian exterior and to express their admiration +shouted at him or else threw stones; the beggars knew their man to be +easy and were rewarded by small coin. Although Czanne lived like a +bachelor, his surviving sister saw that his household was comfortable. +His wife and son lived in Paris and often visited him. He was rich; +his father, a successful banker at Aix, had left him plenty of money; +but a fanatic on the subject of art, ceaselessly searching for new +tonal combinations, he preferred a hermit's existence. In Aix he was +considered eccentric though harmless. His pride was doubled by a +morbid shyness. Strangers he avoided. So sensitive was he that once +when he stumbled over a rock Bernard attempted to help him by seizing +his arm. A terrible scene ensued. The painter, livid with fright, +cursed the unhappy young Parisian and finally ran away. An explanation +came when the housekeeper told Bernard that her master was a little +peculiar. Early in life he had been kicked by some rascal and ever +afterward was nervous. He was very irritable and not in good health. + +In Bernard's presence he threw a bust made of him by Solari to the +ground, smashing it. It didn't please him. In argument he lost his +temper, though he recovered it rapidly. Zola's name was anathema. He +said that Daumier drank too much; hence his failure to attain +veritable greatness. Czanne worked from six to ten or eleven in the +morning at his atelier; then he breakfasted, repaired to the "Motive," +there to remain until five in the evening. Returning to Aix, he dined +and retired immediately. And he had kept up this life of toil and +abnegation for years. He compared himself to Balzac's Frenhofer (in +The Unknown Masterpiece), who painted out each day the work of the +previous day. Czanne adored the Venetians--which is curious--and +admitted that he lacked the power to realise his inward vision; hence +the continual experimenting. He most admired Veronese, and was +ambitious of being received at what he called the "Salon de +Bouguereau." The truth is, despite Czanne's long residence in Paris, +he remained provincial to the end; his father before becoming a banker +had been a hairdresser, and his son was proud of the fact. He never +concealed it. He loved his father's memory and had wet eyes when he +spoke of him. + +Bernard thinks that the vision of his master was defective; hence the +sometime shocking deformations he indulged in. "His _optique_ was more +in his brain than in his eye." He lacked imagination absolutely, and +worked slowly, laboriously, his method one of excessive complication. +He began with a shadow, then a touch, superimposing tone upon tone, +modelling his paint somewhat like Monticelli, but without a hint of +that artist's lyricism. Sober, without rhetoric, a realist, yet with a +singularly rich and often harmonious palette, Czanne reported +faithfully what his eyes told him. + +It angered him to see himself imitated and he was wrathful when he +heard that his still-life pictures were praised in Paris. "That stuff +they like up there, do they? Their taste must be low," he would +repeat, his eyes sparkling with malice. He disliked the work of Paul +Gauguin and repudiated the claim of being his artistic ancestor. "He +did not understand me," grumbled Czanne. He praised Thomas Couture, +who was, he asserted, a true master, one who had formed such excellent +pupils as Courbet, Manet, and Puvis. This rather staggered Bernard, as +well it might; the paintings of Couture and Czanne are poles apart. + +He had, he said, wasted much time in his youth--particularly in +literature. A lettered man, he read to Bernard a poem in imitation of +Baudelaire, one would say very Baudelairian. He had begun too late, +had submitted himself to other men's influence, and wished for half a +century that he might "realise"--his favourite expression--his +theories. When he saw Bernard painting he told him that his palette +was too restricted; he needed at least twenty colours. Bernard gives +the list of yellows, reds, greens, and blues, with variations. "Don't +make Chinese images like Gauguin," he said another time. "All nature +must be modelled after the sphere, cone, and cylinder; as for colour, +the more the colours harmonise the more the design becomes precise." +Never a devotee of form--he did not draw from the model--his +philosophy can be summed up thus: Look out for the contrasts and +correspondence of tones, and the design will take care of itself. He +hated "literary" painting and art criticism. He strongly advised +Bernard to stick to his paint and let the pen alone. The moment an +artist begins to explain his work he is done for; painting is +concrete, literature deals with the abstract. He loved music, +especially Wagner's, which he did not understand, but the sound of +Wagner's name was sympathetic, and that had at first attracted him! +Pissarro he admired for his indefatigable labours. Suffering from +diabetes, which killed him, his nervous tension is excusable. He was +in reality an amiable, kind-hearted, religious man. Above all, simple. +He sought for the simple motive in nature. He would not paint a Christ +head because he did not believe himself a worthy enough Christian. +Chardin he studied and had a theory that the big spectacles and visor +which the Little Master (the Velasquez of vegetables) wore had helped +his vision. Certainly the still-life of Czanne's is the only modern +still-life that may be compared to Chardin's; not Manet, Vollon, Chase +has excelled this humble painter of Aix. He called the coles des +Beaux-Arts the "Bozards," and reviled as farceurs the German +secessionists who imitated him. He considered Ingres, notwithstanding +his science, a small painter in comparison with the Venetians and +Spaniards. + +A painter by compulsion, a contemplative rather than a creative +temperament, a fumbler and seeker, nevertheless Paul Czanne has +formed a school, has left a considerable body of work. His optic nerve +was abnormal, he saw his planes leap or sink on his canvas; he often +complained, but his patience and sincerity were undoubted. Like his +friend Zola his genius--if genius there is in either man--was largely +a matter of protracted labour, and has it not been said that genius is +a long labour? + +From the sympathetic pen of Emile Bernard we learn of a character +living in the real bohemia of Paris painters who might have figured in +any of the novels referred to, or, better still, might have been +interpreted by Victor Hugo or Ivan Turgenieff. But the Frenchman would +have made of Pre Tanguy a species of poor Myriel; the Russian would +have painted him as he was, a saint in humility, springing from the +soil, the friend of poor painters, a socialist in theory, but a +Christian in practice. After following the humble itinerary of his +life you realise the uselessness of "literary" invention. Here was +character for a novelist to be had for the asking. The Crainquebille +of Anatole France occurs to the lover of that writer after reading +Emile Bernard's little study of Father Tanguy. + +His name was Julien Tanguy. He was born in 1825 at Pldran, in the +north of France. He was a plasterer when he married. The young couple, +accustomed to hardships of all kinds, left Saint-Brieuc for Paris. +This was in 1860. After various vicissitudes the man became a colour +grinder in the house of Edouard, Rue Clauzel. The position was meagre. +The Tanguys moved up in the social scale by accepting the job of +concierge somewhere on the Butte Montmartre. This gave Pre Tanguy +liberty, his wife looking after the house. He went into business on +his own account, vending colours in the quarter and the suburbs. He +traversed the country from Argenteuil to Barbizon, from Ecouen to +Sarcelle. He met Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Czanne, all youthful and +confident and boiling over with admiration for Corot, Courbet, and +Millet. They patronised the honest, pleasant pedlar of colours and +brushes, and when they didn't have the money he trusted them. It was +his prime quality that he trusted people. He cared not enough for +money, as his too often suffering wife averred, and his heart, always +on his sleeve, he was an easy mark for the designing. This supreme +simplicity led him into joining the Communists in 1871, and then he +had a nasty adventure. One day, while dreaming on sentry duty, a band +from Versailles suddenly descended upon the outposts. Pre Tanguy lost +his head. He could not fire on a fellow-being, and he threw away his +musket. For this act of "treachery" he was sentenced to serve two +years in the galleys at Brest. Released by friendly intervention he +had still to remain without Paris for two years more. Finally, +entering his beloved quarter he resumed his tranquil occupation, and +hearing that the Maison Edouard had been moved from the Rue Clauzel he +rented a little shop, where he sold material to artists, bought +pictures, and entertained in his humble manner any friend or luckless +devil who happened that way. Czanne and Vignon were his best +customers. Guillemin, Pissarro, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Oller, +Messurer, Augustin, Signac, De Lautrec, symbolists of the Pont-Aven +school, neo-impressionists, and the young _fumistes_ of schools as yet +unborn, revolutionaries with one shirt to their back, swearing at the +official _Salon_ and also swearing by the brotherhood of man (with a +capital), assembled in this dingy old shop. Tanguy was a rallying +point. He was full of the milk of human kindness, and robbed himself +to give a worthless fellow with a hard-luck story some of the sous +that should have gone to his wife. Fortunately she was a philosopher +as well as an admirable housekeeper. If the rent was paid and there +was some soup-meat for dinner she was content. More she could not +expect from a man who gave away with both hands. But--and here is the +curious part of this narrative of M. Bernard's--Tanguy was the only +person in Paris who bought and owned pictures by Czanne. He had +dozens of his canvases stacked away in the rear of his +establishment--Czanne often parted with a canvas for a few francs. +When Tanguy was hard up he would go to some discerning amateur and +sell for two hundred francs pictures that to-day bring twenty thousand +francs. Tanguy hated to sell, especially his Czannes. Artists came to +see them. His shop was the scene of many a wordy critical battle. +Gauguin uttered the paradox, "Nothing so resembles a daub as a +masterpiece," and the novelist Elmir Bourges cried, "This is the +painting of a vintager!" Alfred Stevens roared in the presence of the +Czannes, Anquetin admired; but, as Bernard adds, Jacques Blanche +bought. So did Durand-Ruel, who has informed me that a fine Czanne +to-day is a difficult fish to hook. The great public won't have him, +and the amateurs who adore him jealously hold on to their prizes. + +The socialism of Pre Tanguy was of a mild order. He pitied with a +Tolstoyan pity the sufferings of the poor. He did not hate the rich, +nor did he stand at street corners preaching the beauties of torch and +bomb. A simple soul, uneducated, not critical, yet with an instinctive +_flair_ for the coming triumphs of his young men, he espoused the +cause of his clients because they were poverty-stricken, unknown, and +revolutionists--an sthetic revolution was his wildest dream. He said +of Czanne that "Papa Czanne always quits a picture before he +finishes it. If he moves he lets his canvases lie in the vacated +studio." He no doubt benefited by this carelessness of the painter. +Czanne worked slowly, but he never stopped working; he left nothing +to hazard, and, astonishing fact, he spent every morning at the +Louvre. There he practised his daily scales, optically speaking, +before taking up the brush for the day's work. Many of Vincent von +Gogh's pictures Tanguy owned. This was about 1886. The eccentric, +gifted Dutchman attracted the poor merchant by his ferocious +socialism. He was, indeed, a ferocious temperament, working like a +madman, painting with his colour tubes when he had no brushes, and +literally living in the _boutique_ of Tanguy. The latter always read +_Le Cri du Peuple_ and _L'Intransigeant_, and believed all he read. He +did not care much for Van Gogh's compositions, no doubt agreeing with +Czanne, who, viewing them for the first time, calmly remarked to the +youth, "Sincerely, you paint like a crazy man." A prophetic note! Van +Gogh frequented a tavern kept by an old model, an Italian woman. It +bore the romantic title of The Tambourine. When he couldn't pay his +bills he would cover the walls with furious frescoes, flowers of +tropical exuberance, landscapes that must have been seen in a +nightmare. He was painting at this time three pictures a day. He would +part with a canvas at the extortionate price of a franc. + +Tanguy was the possessor of a large portrait by Czanne, done in his +earliest manner. This he had to sell on account of pressing need. Dark +days followed. He moved across the street into smaller quarters. The +old crowd began to drift away; some died, some had become famous, and +one, Van Gogh, shot himself in an access of mania. This was a shock to +his friend. A second followed when Van Gogh's devoted brother went +mad. Good Father Tanguy, as he was affectionately called, sickened. He +entered a hospital. He suffered from a cancerous trouble of the +stomach. One day he said to his wife, who was visiting him: "I am +bored here... I won't die here... I mean to die in my own home." He +went home and died shortly afterward. In 1894 Octave Mirbeau wrote a +moving article for the _Journal_ about the man who had never spoken +ill of any one, who had never turned from his door a hungry person. +The result was a sale organised at the Htel Drouot, to which +prominent artists and literary folk contributed works. Cazin, +Guillemet, Gyp, Maufra, Monet, Luce, Pissarro, Rochegrosse, Sisley, +Vauthier, Carrier-Belleuse, Berthe Morisot, Renoir, Jongkind, +Raffaelli, *Helleu, Rodin, and many others participated in this noble +charity, which brought the widow ten thousand francs. She soon died. + +Van Gogh painted a portrait of Tanguy about 1886. It is said to belong +to Rodin. It represents the nave man with his irregular features and +placid expression of a stoic; not a distinguished face, but +unmistakably that of a gentle soul, who had loved his neighbour better +than himself (therefore he died in misery). He it was who may be +remembered by those who knew him--and also a few future historians of +the futility of things in general--as the man who first made known to +Paris the pictures of the timid, obstinate Paul Czanne. An odd fish, +indeed, was this same Julien Tanguy, little father to painters. + + + + +II. ROPS THE ETCHER + + + +I + +That personality in art counts, next to actual genius, heavier than +all other qualities, is such a truism that it is often forgotten. In +the enormous mass of mediocre work which is turned out annually by +artists of technical talent seldom is there encountered a strong, +well-defined personality. Imitation has been called the bane of +originality; suppress it as a factor, and nine-tenths of living +painters, sculptors, etchers would have to shut up shop. The stencil +is the support of many men who otherwise might have become useful +citizens, shoemakers, tailors, policemen, or vice-presidents. For this +reason the phrase "academic" should be more elastic in its meanings. +There are academic painters influenced by Corot or Monticelli, as well +as by David, Gros, or Meissonier. The "academic" Rodin has appeared in +contemporary sculpture; the great Frenchman found for himself his +formula, and the lesser men have appropriated it to their own uses. +This is considered legitimate, though not a high order of art; +however, the second-rate rules in the market-place, let the genius +rage as he will. He must be tamed. He must be softened; his divine +fire shaded by the friendly screens of more prudent, more conventional +talent. Even among men of genius up on the heights it is the +personality of each that enters largely into the equation of their +work. No one can confuse Whistler the etcher with the etcher +Rembrandt; the profounder is the Dutchman. Yet what individuality +there is in the plates of the American! What personality! Now, +Flicien Rops, the Belgian etcher, lithographer, engraver, designer, +and painter, occupies about the same relative position to Honor +Daumier as Whistler does to Rembrandt. How seldom you hear of Rops. +Why? He was a man of genius, one of the greatest etchers and +lithographers of his century, an artist with an intense personal line, +a colossal workman and versatile inventor--why has he been passed over +and inferior men praised? + +His pornographic plates cannot be the only reason, because his +representative work is free from licence or suggestion. Giulio +Romano's illustrations to Aretino's sonnets are not held up as the +representative art of this pupil of Raphael, nor are the vulgarities +of Rowlandson, Hogarth, George Morland set against their better +attempts. Collectors treasure the engravings of the eighteenth-century +_ditions des fermiers-gnraux_ for their capital workmanship, not +for their licentious themes. But Rops is always the Rops of the +Pornocrates! After discussing him with some amateurs you are forced to +realise that it is his plates in which he gives rein to an +unparalleled flow of animal spirits and _gauloiserie_ that are the +more esteemed. Rops the artist, with the big and subtle style, the +etcher of the Sataniques, of Le Pendu, of La Buveuse d'Absinthe and +half a hundred other masterpieces, is set aside for the witty +illustrator, with the humour of a Rabelais and the cynicism of +Chamfort. And even on this side of his genius he has never been +excelled, the Japanese alone being his equals in daring of invention, +while he tops them in the expression of broad humour. + +In the Luxembourg galleries there is a picture of an interesting man, +in an etcher's atelier. It is the portrait of Rops by Mathey, and +shows him examining at a window, through which the light pours in, a +freshly pulled proof. It depicts with skill the intense expression +upon his handsome face, the expression of an artist absolutely +absorbed in his work. That is the real Rops. His master quality was +intensity. It traversed like a fine keen flame his entire production +from seemingly insignificant tail-pieces to his agonised designs, in +which luxury and pain are inextricably commingled. + +He was born at Namur, Belgium, July 10, 1833, and died at Essonnes, +near Paris, August 23,1898. He was the son of wealthy parents, and on +one side stemmed directly from Hungary. His grandfather was Rops +Lajos, of the province called Alfod. The Maygar predominated. He was +as proud and fierce as Goya. A fighter from the beginning, still in +warrior's harness at the close, when, "cardiac and impenitent," as he +put it, he died of heart trouble. He received at the hands of the +Jesuits a classical education. A Latinist, he was erudite as were few +of his artistic contemporaries. The mystic strain in him did not +betray itself until his third period. He was an accomplished humourist +and could generally cap Latin verses with D'Aurevilly or Huysmans. +Tertullian's De Cultu Feminarum he must have read, for many of his +plates are illustrations of the learned Bishop of Carthage's attitude +toward womankind. The hot crossings of blood, Belgian and Hungarian, +may be responsible for a peculiarly forceful, rebellious, sensual, and +boisterous temperament. + +Doubtless the three stadia of an artist's career are the arbitrary +classification of critics; nevertheless they are well marked in many +cases. Balzac was a romantic, a realist, a mystic; Flaubert was +alternately romantic and realist. Tolstoi was never a romantic, but a +realist he was, and he is a mystic. Dostoevski, from whom he absorbed +so much, taught him the formulas of his mysticism--though Tolstoi has +never felt the life of the soul so profoundly as this predecessor. +Ibsen passed through the three stages. Huysmans, never romantic, began +as a realistic pessimist and ended as a pessimistic mystic. Flicien +Rops could never have been a romantic, though the _macabre_ +romanticism of 1830 may be found in his designs. A realist, brutal, +bitter, he was in his youth; he saw the grosser facts of life, so +often lamentable and tender, in the spirit of a Voltaire doubled by a +Rabelais. There is honest and also shocking laughter in these early +illustrations. A _fantaisiste_, graceful, delicate--and +indelicate--emerged after the lad went up to Paris, as if he had +stepped out of the eighteenth century. Rops summed up in his book +plates, title-pages, and wood-cuts, illustrations done in a furious +speed, all the elegance, the courtly corruption, and Boucher-like +luxuriousness that may be detected in the moral _marquetrie_ of the +Goncourts. He had not yet said, "Evil, be thou my Good," nor had the +mystic delirium of the last period set in. All his afternoons must +have been those of a faun--a faun who with impeccable solicitude put +on paper what he saw in the heart of the bosk or down by the banks of +secret rivers. The sad turpitudes, the casuistry of concupiscence, the +ironic discolourations and feverish delving into subterranean moral +stratifications were as yet afar. He was young, handsome, with a +lithe, vigorous body and the head of an aristocratic Mephistopheles, a +head all profile, like the heads of Hungary--Hungary itself, which is +all profile. Need we add that after the death of his father he soon +wasted a fortune? But the reckless bohemian in him was subjugated by +necessity. He set to work to earn his bread. Some conception of his +labours for thirty-five years may be gleaned from the catalogue of his +work by Erastne Ramiro (whose real name is Eugne Rodrigues). Nearly +three thousand plates he etched, lithographed, or engraved, not +including his paintings or his experiments in various mediums, such as +_vernis mou_ and wood-engraving. + +The coarse legends of old Flanders found in Rops their pictorial +interpreter. Less cerebral in his abounding youth he made Paris laugh +with his comical travesties of political persons, persons in high +finance, and also by his shrewd eye for the homely traits in the life +of the people. His street scenes are miracles of detail, satire, and +fun. The one entitled Spring is the most noted. That legacy of hate, +inherited from the 1830 poets, of the bourgeois, was a merry play for +Rops. He is the third of the trinity of caricature artists, Daumier +and Gavarni being the other two. The liberal pinch of Gallic salt in +the earlier plates need not annoy one. Deliberately vulgar he never +is, though he sports with things hallowed, and always goes out of his +way to insult the religion he first professed. There is in this +Satanist a religious _fond_; the very fierceness of his attacks, of +his blasphemies, betrays the Catholic at heart. If he did not believe, +why should he have displayed such continual scorn? No, Rops was not as +sincere as his friends would have us believe. He made his Pegasus plod +in too deep mud, and often in his most winged flights he darkened the +blue with his satyr-like brutalities. But in the gay middle period his +pages overflow with decorative Cupids and tiny devils, joyful girls, +dainty amourettes, and Parisian _putti_--they blithely kick their legs +over the edges of eternity, and smile as if life were a snowball jest +or a game at forfeits. They are adorable. His women are usually +strong-backed, robust Amazons, drawn with a swirling line and a +Rubens-like fulness. They are conquerors. Before these majestic idols +men prostrate themselves. + +In his turbulent later visions there is no suspicion of the opium that +gave its inspiration to Coleridge, Poe, De Quincey, James Thomson, or +Baudelaire. The city of dreadful night shown us by Rops is the city +through whose streets he has passed his life long. Not the dream +cities of James Ensor or De Groux, the Paris of Rops is at once an +abode of disillusionment, of mordant joys, of sheer ecstasy and morbid +hallucinations. The opium of Rops is his imagination, aided by a +manual dexterity that is extraordinary. He is a master of linear +design. He is cold, deadly cold, but correct ever. Fabulous and +absurd, delicious and abominable as he may be, his spirit sits +critically aloft, never smiling. Impersonal as a toxicologist, he +handles his poisonous acids with the gravity of a philosopher and the +indifference of a destroying angel. There is a diabolic spleen more +strongly developed in Rops than in any of his contemporaries, with the +sole exception of Baudelaire, who inspired and spurred him on to +astounding atrocities of the needle and acid. This diabolism, this +worship of Satan and his works, are sincere in the etcher. A relic of +rotten Romanticism, it glows like phosphorescent fire during his last +period. The Church has in its wisdom employed a phrase for frigid +depravity of the Rops kind, naming it "morose delectation." Morose +Rops became as he developed. His private life he hid. We know little +or nothing of it save that he was not unhappy in his companionships or +choice of friends. He loathed the promiscuous methods by which some +men achieve admiration. But secret spleen there must have been--a +twist of a painter's wrist may expose his soul. He became a solitary +and ate the bitter root of sin, for, cerebral as he is, his discovery +of the human soul shows it as ill at ease before its maker. Flaubert +has said that "the ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope." But no +man may sun himself on this slope by the flames of hell without his +soul shrivelling away. Rodin, who admires Rops and has been greatly +influenced by him; Rodin, as an artist superior to the Belgian, has +revealed less preoccupation with the ignoble; at least, despite his +excursions into questionable territory, he has never been carried +completely away. He always returns to the sane, to the normal life; +but over the volcanic landscapes of Rops are strewn many moral +abysses. + + +II + +He had no illusions as to the intelligence and sincerity of those men +who, denying free-will, yet call themselves free-thinkers. Rops +frankly made of Satan his chief religion. He is the psychologist of +the exotic. Cruel, fantastic, nonchalant, and shivering atrociously, +his female Satan worshippers go to their greedy master in *fatidical +and shuddering attitudes; they submit to his glacial embrace. The +acrid perfume of Rops's maleficent genius makes itself manifest in his +Sataniques. No longer are his women the embodiment of Corbire's +"ternel fminin de l'ternel jocrisse." Ninnies, simperers, and +simpletons have vanished. The poor, suffering human frame becomes a +horrible musical instrument from which the artist extorts exquisite +and sinister music. We turn our heads away, but the tune of cracking +souls haunts our ear. As much to Rops as to Baudelaire, Victor Hugo +could have said that he had evoked a new shudder. And singularly +enough Rops is in these plates the voice of the medival preacher +crying out that Satan is alive, a tangible being, going about the +earth devouring us; that Woman is a vase of iniquity, a tower of +wrath, a menace, not a salvation. His readings of the early fathers +and his pessimistic temperamental bent contributed to this truly +morose judgment of his mother's sex. He drives cowering to her corner, +after her earlier triumphs, his unhappy victim of love, absinthe, and +diabolism. Not for an instant does he participate personally in the +strained voluptuousness or terrific chastisements of his designs. He +has all the old monachal contempt of woman. He is cerebrally chaste. +Huysmans, in his admirable essay on Rops, wrote, "Car il n'y a de +rellement obscnes que les gens chastes"; which is a neat bit of +special pleading and quite sophistical. Rops did not lead the life of +a saint, though his devotion to his art was Balzacian. It would be a +more subtle sophistry to quote Paul Bourget's aphorism. "There is," he +writes, "from the metaphysical observer's point of view, neither +disease nor health of the soul; there are only psychological states." +The _tats d'mes_ of Flicien Rops, then, may or may not have been +morbid. But he has contrived that his wit in its effect upon his +spectators is too often profoundly depressing and morbid and +disquieting. + +The triumphant chorus of Rops's admirers comprises the most critical +names in France and Italy: Barbey d'Aurevilly, J.K. Huysmans, +Pradelle, Josphin Pladan--once the _Sr_ of Babylonian fame--Eugne +Demolder, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian poet; Camille Lemonnier, +Champsaur, Arsne Alexandre, Fromentin, Vittorio Pica, De Hrdia, +Mallarm, Octave Uzanne, Octave Mirbeau, the biographer Ramiro and +Charles Baudelaire. The last first recognised him, though he never +finished the projected study of him as man and artist. In the newly +published letters (1841-66) of Baudelaire there is one addressed to +Rops, who saw much of the unhappy poet during his disastrous sojourn +in Brussels. It was the author of Les Fleurs du Mal who made the +clever little verse about "Ce tant bizarre Monsieur Rops... Qui n'est +pas un grand prix de Rome, mais dont le talent est haut, comme la +pyramide de Chops." + +A French critic has called Rops "a false genius," probably alluding to +the malign characters of the majority of his engraved works rather +than to his marvellous and fecund powers of invention. Perverse +idealist as he was, he never relaxed his pursuit of the perfection of +form. He tells us that in 1862 he went to Paris, after much +preliminary skirmishing in Belgian reviews and magazines, to "learn +his art" with Bracquemond and Jacquemart, both of whom he never ceased +praising. He was associated with Daubigny, painter and etcher, and +with Courbet, Flameng, and Thrond. + +He admired Calmatta and his school--Bal, Franck, Biot, Meunier, +Flameng. He belonged to the International Society of Aquafortistes. He +worked in aquatint and successfully revived the old process, _vernis +mou_. A sober workman, he spent at least fourteen hours a day at his +desk. Being musical, he designed some genre pieces, notably that of +the truthfully observed Bassoonist. And though not originating he +certainly carried to the pitch of the artistically ludicrous those +progressive pictures of goats dissolving into pianists; of Liszt +tearing passion and grand pianos into tatters. He has contributed to +the gaiety of nations with his celebrated design: Ma fille! Monsieur +Cabanel, which shows a harpy-like mother presenting her nude daughter +as a model for that painter. The malicious ingenuity of Rops never +failed him. He produced for years numerous anecdotes in black and +white. The elasticity of his line, its variety and richness, the +harmonies, elliptical and condensed, of his designs; the agile, fiery +movement, his handling of his velvety blacks, his tonal gradations, +his caressing touch by which the metal reproduced muscular crispations +of his dry-point and the fat silhouettes of beautiful human forms, +above all, his virile grasp which is revealed in his balanced +ensembles--these prove him to be one of the masters of modern etching. +And from his cynical yet truthful motto: "J'appelle un chat un chat," +he never swerved. + +A student and follower of Jean Francois Millet, several landscapes and +pastorals of Rops recall the French painter's style. In his Belgian +out-of-doors scenes and interiors the Belgian heredity of Rops +projects itself unmistakably. Such a picture as Scandal, for example, +might have been signed by Israels. Le Bout de Sillon is Millet, and +beautifully drawn. The scheme is trite. Two peasants, a young woman +and a young man holding a rope, exchange love vows. It is very simple, +very expressive. His portraits of women, Walloons, and of Antwerp are +solidly built, replete with character and quaint charm. Charming, too, +is the portrait of his great-aunt. Scandal is an ambitious design. A +group of women strongly differentiated as to types and ages are +enjoying over a table their tea and a choice morsel of scandal. The +situation is seized; it is a picture that appeals. Ghastly is his +portrait of a wretched young woman ravaged by absinthe. Her lips are +blistered by the wormwood, and in her fevered glance there is despair. +Another delineation of disease, a grinning, skull-like head with a +scythe back of it, is a tribute to the artist's power of rendering the +repulsive. His Messalina, Lassatta, La Femme au Cochon, and La Femme +au Pantin should be studied. He has painted scissors grinders, flower +girls, "old guards," incantations, fishing parties, the rabble in the +streets, broom-riding witches, apes, ivory and peacocks, and a notable +figure piece, An Interment in the Walloon Country, which would have +pleased Courbet. + +It is in his incarnations of Satan that Rops is unapproachable. Satan +Sowing the Tares of Evil is a sublime conception, truly Miltonic. The +bony-legged demon strides across Paris. One foot is posed on Notre +Dame. He quite touches the sky. Upon his head is a broad-brimmed +peasant's hat, Quaker in shape. Hair streams over his skeleton +shoulders. His eyes are gleaming with infernal malice--it is the most +diabolic face ever drawn of his majesty; not even Franz Stuck's Satan +has eyes so full of liquid damnation. Scattering miniature female +figures, like dolls, to the winds, this monster passes over Paris, a +baleful typhoon. The moral is not far to seek; indeed, there is +generally a moral, sometimes an inverted one, in the Rops etchings. +Order Reigns at Warsaw is a grim commentary on Russian politics quite +opportune to-day. La Peine de Mort has been used by Socialists as a +protest against capital punishment. Les Diables Froids personifies the +impassible artist. It is a page torn from the book of hell. Rops had +read Dante; he knew the meaning of the lines: "As the rill that runs +from Bulicame to be portioned out amid the sinful women"; and more +than once he explored the frozen circles of Gehenna. Victor Hugo was +much stirred by the design, Le Pendu, which depicts a man's corpse +swinging under a huge bell in some vast and immemorial, raven-haunted, +decaying tower, whose bizarre and gloomy outlines might have been +created by the brain of a Piranesi. An apocalyptic imagination had +Flicien Rops. + + + + +III. MONTICELLI + + + +I + +Poor "Fada"! The "innocent," the inoffensive fool--as they christened +that unfortunate man of genius, Adolphe Monticelli, in the dialect of +the South, the slang of Marseilles--where he spent the last sixteen +years of his life. The richest colourist of the nineteenth century, +obsessed by colour, little is known of this Monticelli, even in these +days when an artist's life is subjected to inquisitorial methods. Few +had written of him in English before W.E. Henley and W.C. Brownell. In +France eulogised by Thophile Gautier, in favour at the court, admired +by Diaz, Daubigny, Troyon, and Delacroix, his hopes were cracked by +the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian war. He escaped to Marseilles, +there to die poor, neglected, half mad. Perhaps he was to blame for +his failures; perhaps his temperament was his fate. Yet to-day his +pictures are sought for as were those of Diaz two decades ago, though +there was a tacit conspiracy among dealers and amateurs not to drag +his merits too soon before the foot-lights. In 1900 at the Paris +Exposition a collection of his works, four being representative, +opened the eyes of critics and public alike. It was realised that +Monticelli had not received his proper ranking in the +nineteenth-century theatre of painting; that while he owed much to +Watteau, to Turner, to Rousseau, he was a master who could stand or +fall on his own merits. Since then the Monticelli pictures have been +steadily growing in favour. + +There is a Monticelli cult. America can boast of many of his most +distinguished specimens, while the Louvre and the Luxembourg are +without a single one. The Muse de Lille at Marseilles has several +examples; the private collections of M. Delpiano at Cannes and a few +collections in Paris make up a meagre list. The Comparative Exhibition +in New York, 1904, revealed to many accustomed to overpraising Diaz +and Fromentin the fact that Monticelli was their superior as a +colourist, and a decorator of singularly fascinating characteristics, +one who was not always a mere contriver of bacchanalian riots of +fancy, but who could exhibit when at his best a _justesse_ of vision +and a controlled imagination. + +The dictionaries offer small help to the student as to the doings of +this erratic painter. He was born October 24, 1824. He died June 29, +1886. He was of mixed blood, Italian and French. His father was a +gauger, though Adolphe declared that he was an authentic descendant of +the Crusader, Godefroy Monticelli, who married in 1100 Aurea Castelli, +daughter of the Duca of Spoleto. Without doubt his Italian blood +counted heavily in his work, but whether of noble issue matters +little. Barbey d'Aurevilly and Villiers de l'Isle Adam, two men of +letters, indulged in similar boasts, and no doubt in their poverty and +tribulations the oriflamme of aristocracy which they bravely bore into +the caf life of Paris was a source of consolation to them. But it is +with brains, not blood, that painters mix their pigments, and the +legend of high birth can go with the other fictions reported by Henley +that Monticelli was an illegitimate offshoot of the Gonzagas; that he +was the natural son of Diaz; that Diaz kept him a prisoner for years, +to "steal the secret of his colours." + +Like many another of his temperament, he had himself to thank for his +woes, though it was a streak of ill-luck for him when the Prussians +bore down on Paris. He was beginning to be known. A pupil of Raymond +Aubert (1781-1857), he was at first a "fanatic of Raphael and Ingres." +Delacroix and his violently harmonised colour masses settled the +future colourist. He met Diaz and they got on very well together. A +Southerner, handsome, passionate, persuasive, dashing, with the +eloquence of the meridional, Monticelli and his musical name made +friends at court and among powerful artists. In 1870 he started on his +walk of thirty-six days from Paris to Marseilles. He literally painted +his way. In every inn he shed masterpieces. Precious gold dripped from +his palette, and throughout the Rhone valley there are, it is +whispered--by white-haired old men the memory of whose significant +phrases awakes one in the middle of the night longing for the valley +of Durance--that if a resolute, keen-eyed adventurer would traverse +unostentatiously the route taken by Monticelli during his Odyssey the +rewards might be great. It is an idea that grips one's imagination, +but unfortunately it is an idea that gripped the imagination of others +thirty years ago. Not an _auberge_, hotel, or hamlet has been left +unexplored. The fine-tooth comb of familiar parlance has been +sedulously used by interested persons. If there are any Monticellis +unsold nowadays they are for sale at the dealers'. + +In him was incarnate all that we can conceive as bohemian, with a +training that gave him the high-bred manner of a seigneur. He was a +romantic, like his friend Flix Ziem--Ziem, Marcellin, Deboutin, and +Monticelli represented a caste that no longer exists; bohemians, yes, +but gentlemen, refined and fastidious. Yet, after his return to his +beloved Marseilles, Monticelli led the life of an August vagabond. In +his velvet coat, a big-rimmed hat slouched over his eyes, he patrolled +the quays, singing, joking, an artless creature, so good-hearted and +irresponsible that he was called "Fada," more in affection than +contempt. He painted rapidly, a picture daily, sold it on the +_terrasses_ of the cafs for a hundred francs, and when he couldn't +get a hundred he would take sixty. Now one must pay thousands for a +canvas. His most loving critic, Camille Mauclair, who, above any one, +has battled valiantly for his art, tells us that Monticelli once took +eighteen francs for a small canvas because the purchaser had no more +in his pocket! In this manner he disposed of a gallery. He smoked +happy pipes and sipped his absinthe--in his case as desperate an enemy +as it had proved to De Musset. He would always doff his hat at the +mention of Watteau or Rubens. They were his gods. + +When Monticelli arrived in Marseilles after his tramp down from Paris +he was literally in rags. M. Chave, a good Samaritan, took him to a +shop and togged him out in royal raiment. They left for a promenade, +and then the painter begged his friend to let him walk alone so as not +to attenuate the effect he was bound to produce on the passersby, such +a childish, harmless vanity had he. His delight was to gather a few +chosen ones over a bottle of old vintage, and thus with spasmodic +attempts at work his days rolled by. He was feeble, semi-paralysed. +With the advent of bad health vanished the cunning of his hand. His +paint coarsened, his colours became crazier. His pictures at this +period were caricatures of his former art. Many of the early ones were +sold as the productions of Diaz, just as to-day some Diazs are palmed +off as Monticellis. After four years of decadence he died, repeating +for months before his taking off: "Je viens de la lune." He was one +whose brain a lunar ray had penetrated; but this ray was transposed to +a spectrum of gorgeous hues. Capable of depicting the rainbow, he died +of the opalescence that clouded his glass of absinthe. _Pauvre Fada!_ + + + + +II + +It is only a coincidence, yet a curious one, that two such dissimilar +spirits as Stendhal and Monticelli should have predicted their future +popularity. Stendhal said: "About 1880 I shall be understood." +Monticelli said in 1870: "I paint for thirty years hence." Both +prophecies have been realised. After the exhibition at Edinburgh and +Glasgow in 1890 Monticelli was placed by a few discerning critics +above Diaz in quality of paint. In 1892 Mr. Brownell said of +Monticelli in his French Art--a book that every student and amateur of +painting should possess--that the touch of Diaz, patrician as it was, +lacked the exquisiteness of Monticelli's; though he admits the +"exaggeration of the decorative impulse" in that master. For Henley +Monticelli's art was purely sensuous; "his fairy meadows and enchanted +gardens are that sweet word 'Mesopotamia' in two dimensions." Henley +speaks of his "clangours of bronze and gold and scarlet" and admits +that "there are moments when his work is as infallibly decorative as a +Persian crock or a Japanese brocade." D.S. MacColl, in his study of +Nineteenth-Century Painting, gives discriminating praise: +"Monticelli's own exquisite sense of grace in women and invention in +grouping add the positive new part without which his art would be the +mannerising of Rousseau," while Arthur Symons in his Studies in Seven +Arts declares all Monticelli's art "tends toward the effect of +music... his colour is mood ... his mood is colour." + +It remained, however, for Camille Mauclair, a Parisian critic in +sympathy with the arts of design, literature, and music, to place +Monticelli in his proper niche. This Mauclair has done with critical +tact. In his Great French Painters, the bias of which is evidently +strained in favour of the impressionistic school, in his +L'Impressionisme, and in his monograph on Watteau this critic declares +that Monticelli's art "recalls Claude Lorraine a little and Watteau +even more by its sentiment, and Turner and Bonington by its colour... +His work has the same subtlety of gradations, the same division into +fragments of tones (as in Watteau's 'Embarkment for Cythera'), the +same variety of execution, which has sometimes the opaqueness of china +and enamel and sometimes the translucence of precious stones or the +brilliancy of glass, metal, or oxides and seems to be the result of +some mysterious chemistry... Monticelli had an absolutely unique +perception of tonalities, and his glance took in certain shades which +had not been observed before, which the optic and chromatic science of +the day has placed either by proof or hypothesis between the principal +tones of the solar spectrum thirty years after Monticelli had fixed +them. There is magic and high lyric poetry in his art." I wrote of the +Monticellis exhibited at the Comparative Exhibition in New York: "At +the opposite end of the room there is A Summer Day's Idyll, upon which +Monticelli had squeezed all his flaming tubes. It seems orchestrated +in crushed pomegranate, the light suffusing the reclining figures like +a jewelled benediction. Marvellous, too, are the colour-bathed +creatures in this No Man's Land of drugged dreams... Do not the walls +fairly vibrate with this wealth of fairy tints and fantasy?" But it +must not be forgotten that he struck other chords besides blazing +sun-worshipping. We often encounter landscapes of vaporous melancholy, +twilights of reverie. +8888 +Monticelli once told an admiring young amateur that in his canvases +"the objects are the decorations, the touches are the scales, and the +light is the tenor," thereby acknowledging himself that he felt colour +as music. There was hypersthesia in his case; his eyes were +protuberant and, like the ears of violinists, capable of +distinguishing quarter tones, even sixteenths. There are affiliations +with Watteau; the same gem-like style of laying on the thick pte, the +same delight in fairy-like patches of paint to represent figures. In +1860 he literally resuscitated Watteau's manner, adding a personal +note and a richness hitherto unknown to French paint. Mauclair thinks +that to Watteau can be traced back the beginnings of modern +Impressionism; the division of tones, the juxtaposition of tonalities. +Monticelli was the connecting link between Watteau and Monet. The same +critic does not hesitate to name Monticelli as one of the great +quartet of harmonists, Claude, Turner, Monet being the other three. +Taine it was who voiced the philosophy of Impressionism when he +announced in his Philosophie de l'Art that the principal personage in +a picture is the light in which all things are plunged. Eugne +Carrire also asserted that a "picture is the logical development of +light." Monticelli before him had said: "In a painting one must sound +the _C_. Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, all the great ones have sounded +the C." His C, his key-note, was the magic touch of luminosity that +dominated his picture. Like Berlioz, he adored colour for colour's +sake. He had a touch all Venetian in his relation of tones; at times +he went in search of chromatic adventures, returning with the most +marvellous trophies. No man before or since, not even those +practitioners of dissonance and martyrs to the enharmonic scale, +Czanne, Gauguin, or Van Gogh, ever matched and modulated such widely +disparate tints; no man before could extract such magnificent +harmonies from such apparently irreconcilable tones. Monticelli +thought in colour and was a master of orchestration, one who went +further than Liszt. + +The simple-minded Monticelli had no psychology to speak of--he was a +reversion, a "throw back" to the Venetians, the decorative Venetians, +and if he had possessed the money or the leisure--he hadn't enough +money to buy any but small canvases--he might have become a French +Tiepolo, and perhaps the greatest decorative artist of France. Even +his most delicate pictures are largely felt and sonorously executed; +not "finished" in the studio sense, but complete--two different +things. + +Fate was against him, and the position he might have had was won by +the gentle Puvis de Chavannes, who exhibited a genius for decorating +monumental spaces. With his fiery vision, his brio of execution, his +palette charged with jewelled radiance, Monticelli would have been the +man to have changed the official interiors of Paris. His energy at one +period was enormous, consuming, though short-lived--1865-75. His lack +of self-control and at times his Italian superficiality, never backed +by a commanding intellect, produced the Monticelli we know. In truth +his soul was not complicated. He could never have attacked the +psychology of Zarathustra, Hamlet, or Peer Gynt. A Salome from him +would have been a delightfully decorative minx, set blithely dancing +in some many-hued and enchanted garden of Armida. She would never have +worn the air of hieratic lasciviousness with which Gustave Moreau +inevitably dowered her. There was too much joy of the south in +Monticelli's bones to concern himself with the cruel imaginings of the +Orient or the grisly visions of the north. He was Oriental _au fond_; +but it was the Orientalism of the Thousand and One Nights. He painted +scenes from the Decameron, and his _ftes galantes_ may be matched +with Watteau's in tone. His first period was his most graceful; +ivory-toned languorous dames, garbed in Second Empire style, languidly +stroll in charming parks escorted by fluttering Cupids or stately +cavaliers. The "decorative impulse" is here at its topmost. In his +second period we get the Decameron series, the episodes from Faust, +the Don Quixote--recall, if you can, that glorious tableau with its +Spanish group and the long, grave don and merry, rotund squire +entering on the scene, a fantastic sky behind them. + +Painted music! The ruins, fountains, statues, and mellow herbage +abound in this middle period. The third is less known. Extravagance +began to rule; scarlet fanfares are sounded; amethysts and emeralds +sparkle; yet there is more thematic variety. Voluptuous, perfumed, and +semi-tragic notes were uttered by this dainty poet of the carnival of +life. The canvas glowed with more reverberating and infernal lights, +but lyric ever. Technique, fabulous and feverish, expended itself on +flowers that were explosions of colours, on seductive marines, on +landscapes of a rhythmic, haunting beauty--the Italian temperament had +become unleashed. Fire, gold, and purple flickered and echoed in +Monticelli's canvases. Irony, like an insinuating serpent, began to +creep into this paradise of melting hues. The masterful gradations of +tone became bewildered. Poison was eating the man's nerves. He +discarded the brush, and standing before his canvas he squeezed his +tubes upon it, literally modelling his paint with his thumb until it +almost assumed the relief of sculpture. What a touch he had! What a +subtle prevision of modulations to be effected by the careless scratch +of his nail or the whip of a knife's edge! Remember, too, that +originally he had been an adept in the art of design; he could draw as +well as his peers. But he sacrificed form and observation and +psychology to sheer colour. He, a veritable discoverer of tones--aided +thereto by an abnormal vision--became the hasty improviser, who at the +last daubed his canvases with a pasty mixture, as hot and crazy as his +ruined soul. The end did not come too soon. A chromatic genius went +under, leaving but a tithe of the gleams that illuminated his brain. +Alas, poor Fada! + + + + +IV. RODIN + + + +I + +Rodin, the French sculptor, deserves well of our new century; the old +one did so incontinently batter him. The anguish of his own Hell's +Portal he endured before he moulded its clay between his thick +clairvoyant fingers. Misunderstood, therefore misrepresented, he with +his pride and obstinacy aroused--the one buttressing the other--was +not to be budged from his formulas and practice of sculpture. Then the +world of art swung unwillingly and unamiably toward him, perhaps more +from curiosity than conviction. Rodin became famous. And he is more +misunderstood than ever. His very name, with its memory of Eugne +Sue's romantic rancour--you recall that impossible and diabolic Jesuit +Rodin in The Mysteries of Paris?--has been thrown in his teeth. He has +been called _rus_, even a fraud; while the wholesale denunciation of +his work as erotic is unluckily still green in our memory. The +sculptor, who in 1877 was accused of "faking" his life-like Age of +Brass--now at the Luxembourg--by taking a mould from the living model, +also experienced the discomfiture of being assured some years later +that, not knowing the art of modelling, his statue of Balzac was only +an evasion of difficulties. And this to the man who had in the interim +wrought so many masterpieces. + +To give him his due he stands prosperity not quite as well as he did +poverty. In every great artist there is a large area of self-esteem; +it is the reservoir which he must, during years of drought and defeat, +draw upon to keep his soul fresh. Without the consoling fluid of +egoism, genius must perish in the dust of despair. But fill this +source to the brim, accelerate the speed of its current, and artistic +deterioration may ensue. Rodin has been called, fatuously, the second +Michael Angelo--as if there could ever be a replica of any human. He +has been hailed as a modern Praxiteles. And he is often damned as a +myopic decadent whose insensibility to pure line and deficiency in +constructional power have been elevated by his admirers into sorry +virtues. Yet is Rodin justly appraised? Do his friends not overdo +their glorification, his critics their censure? Nothing so stales a +demigod's image as the perfumes burned before it by his worshippers; +the denser the smoke the sooner crumble the feet of their idol. + +However, in the case of Rodin the fates have so contrived their +malicious game that at no point of his career has he been without the +company of envy, chagrin, and slander. Often, when he had attained a +summit, he would find himself thrust down into a deeper valley. He has +mounted to triumphs and fallen to humiliations, but his spirit has +never been quelled, and if each acclivity he scales is steeper, the +air atop has grown purer, more stimulating, and the landscape spreads +wider before him. He can say with Dante: "La montagna che drizza voi +che il mondo fece torti." Rodin's mountain has always straightened in +him what the world made crooked. The name of his mountain is Art. A +born non-conformist, Rodin makes the fourth of that group of +nineteenth-century artists--Richard Wagner, Henrik Ibsen, and Edouard +Manet--who taught a deaf and blind world to hear and see and think and +feel. + +Is it not dangerous to say of a genius that his work alone should +count, that his life is negligible? Though Rodin has followed +Flaubert's advice to artists to lead ascetic lives that their art +might be the more violent, nevertheless his career, colourless as it +may seem to those who better love stage players and the watery +comedies of society--this laborious life of a poor sculptor--is not to +be passed over if we are to make any estimate of his art. He, it is +related, always becomes enraged at the word "inspiration," enraged at +the common notion that fire descends from heaven upon the head of the +favoured neophyte of art. Rodin believes in but one +inspiration--nature. He swears he does not invent, but copies nature. +He despises improvisation, has contemptuous words for "fatal +facility," and, being a slow-moving, slow-thinking man, he admits to +his councils those who have conquered art, not by assault, but by +stealth and after years of hard work. He sympathises with Flaubert's +patient toiling days, he praises Holland because after Paris it seemed +slow. "Slowness is a beauty," he declared. In a word, Rodin has +evolved a theory and practice of his art that is the outcome--like all +theories, all techniques--of his own temperament. And that temperament +is giant-like, massive, ironic, grave, strangely perverse at times; +and it is the temperament of a magician doubled by that of a +mathematician. + +Books are written about him. De Maupassant describes him in Notre +Coeur with picturesque precision. He is tempting as a psychologic +study. He appeals to the literary, though he is not "literary." His +modelling arouses tempests, either of dispraise or idolatry. To see +him steadily, critically, after a visit to his studios in Paris or +Meudon, is difficult. If the master be there then you feel the impact +of a personality that is as cloudy as the clouds about the base of a +mountain and as impressive as the mountain. Yet a pleasant, +unassuming, sane man, interested in his clay--absolutely--that is, +unless you discover him to be more interested in humanity. If you +watch him well you may find yourself well watched; those peering eyes +possess a vision that plunges into your soul. And the soul this master +of marbles sees as nude as he sees the human body. It is the union of +artist and psychologist that places Rodin apart. These two arts he +practises in a medium that has hitherto not betrayed potentialities +for such almost miraculous performances. Walter Pater is quite right +in maintaining that each art has its separate subject-matter; +nevertheless, in the debatable province of Rodin's sculpture we find +strange emotional power, hints of the art of painting and a rare +musical suggestiveness. But this is not playing the game according to +the rules of Lessing and his Laocon. + +Let us drop this old sthetic rule of thumb and confess that during +the last century a new race of artists sprang up from some strange +element and, like flying-fish, revealed to a wondering world their +composite structures. Thus we find Berlioz painting with his +instrumentation; Franz Liszt, Tschaikowsky, and Richard Strauss +filling their symphonic poems with drama and poetry, and Richard +Wagner inventing an art which he believed to embrace the seven arts. +And there is Ibsen, who used the dramatic form as a vehicle for his +anarchistic ideas; and Nietzsche, who was such a poet that he was able +to sing a mad philosophy into life; and Rossetti, who painted poems +and made poetry that is pictorial. Sculpture was the only art that had +resisted this universal disintegration, this imbroglio of the arts. No +sculptor before Rodin had dared to break the line, dared to shiver the +syntax of stone. For sculpture is a static, not a dynamic art--is it +not? Let us observe the rules, though we preserve the chill spirit of +the cemetery. What Mallarm attempted to do with French poetry Rodin +accomplished in clay. His marbles do not represent but present +emotion, are the evocation of emotion itself; as in music, form and +substance coalesce. If he does not, as did Mallarm, arouse "the +silent thunder afloat in the leaves," he can summon from the vasty +deep the spirits of love, hate, pain, despair, sin, beauty, ecstasy; +above all, ecstasy. Now the primal gift of ecstasy is bestowed upon +few. In our age Keats had it, and Shelley; Byron, despite his passion, +missed it, and so did Wordsworth. We find it in Swinburne, he had it +from the first; but few French poets have it. Like the "cold devils" +of Flicien Rops, coiled in frozen ecstasy, the blasts of hell about +them, Charles Baudelaire can boast the dangerous attribute. Poe and +Heine knew ecstasy, and Liszt also; Wagner was the master adept of his +century. Tschaikowsky followed him close; and in the tiny piano scores +of Chopin ecstasy is pinioned in a few bars, the soul often rapt to +heaven in a phrase. Richard Strauss has shown a rare variation on the +theme of ecstasy; voluptuousness troubled by pain, the soul tormented +by stranger nuances. + +Rodin is of this tormented choir; he is master of its psychology. It +may be the decadence, as any art is in decadence which stakes the +parts against the whole. The same was said of Beethoven by the +followers of Haydn, and the successors of Richard Strauss will be +surely abused quite as violently as the Wagnerites abuse Strauss +to-day--employing against him the same critical artillery employed +against Wagner. That this ecstasy should be aroused by pictures of +love and death, as in the case of Poe and Baudelaire, Wagner and +Strauss, must not be adjudged as a black crime. In the Far East they +hypnotise neophytes with a bit of broken mirror, for in the kingdom of +art, as in the Kingdom of Heaven, there are many mansions. Possibly it +was a relic of his early admiration and study of Baudelaire that set +Wagner to extorting ecstasy from his orchestra by images of death and +love; and no doubt the temperament which seeks such combinations--a +temperament commoner in medival days than ours--was inherent in +Wagner. He makes his Isolde sing mournfully and madly over a corpse +and, throwing herself upon the dead body of Tristan, die shaken by the +sweet cruel pains of love. Richard Strauss closely patterns after +Wagner in his Salome, there is the head of a dead man, and there is +the same dissolving ecstasy. Both men play with similar counters--love +and death, and death and love. And so Rodin. In Pisa we may see +(attributed by Vasari) Orcagna's fresco of the Triumph of Death. The +sting of the flesh and the way of all flesh are inextricably blended +in Rodin's Gate of Hell. His principal reading for forty years has +been Dante and Baudelaire. The Divine Comedy and Les Fleurs du Mal are +the key-notes in this white symphony of Auguste Rodin's. Love and life +and bitterness and death rule the themes of his marbles. Like +Beethoven and Wagner he breaks the academic laws of his art, but then +he is Rodin, and where he achieves magnificently lesser men would +miserably perish. His large tumultuous music is for his chisel alone +to ring out and sing. + + + +II + +The first and still the best study of Rodin as man and thinker is to +be found in a book by Judith Cladel, the daughter of the novelist +(author of Mes Paysans). She named it Auguste Rodin, pris sur la vie, +and her pages are filled with surprisingly vital sketches of the +workaday Rodin. His conversations are recorded; altogether this little +picture has much charm and proves what Rodin asserts--that women +understand him better than men. There is a fluid, feminine, disturbing +side to his art and nature very appealing to emotional women. Mlle. +Cladel's book has also been treasure-trove for the anecdote hunters; +all have visited her pages. Camille Mauclair admits his indebtedness; +so does Frederick Lawton, whose big volume is the most complete life +(probably official) that has thus far appeared, either in French or +English. It is written on the side of Rodin, like Mauclair's more +subtle study, and like the masterly criticism of Roger Marx. Born at +Paris in 1840--the natal year of his friends Claude Monet and +Zola--and in humble circumstances, not enjoying a liberal education, +the young Rodin had to fight from the beginning, fight for bread as +well as an art schooling. He was not even sure of a vocation. An +accident determined it. He became a workman in the atelier of +Carrier-Belleuse, the sculptor, but not until he had failed at the +Beaux-Arts (which was a stroke of luck for his genius) and after he +had enjoyed some tentative instruction under the great animal +sculptor, Barye. He was never a steady pupil of Barye, nor did he long +remain with him. He went to Belgium and "ghosted" for other sculptors; +indeed, it was a privilege, or misfortune, to have been the +"ghost"--anonymous assistant--for half a dozen sculptors. He learned +his technique by the sweat of his brow before he began to make music +upon his own instrument. + +How his first work, The Man With the Broken Nose, was refused by the +Salon jury is history. He designed for the Svres porcelain works; he +made portrait busts, architectural ornaments for sculptors, +caryatides; all styles that are huddled in the yards and studios of +sculptors he had essayed and conquered. No man knew his trade better, +although we are informed that with the chisel of the _practicien_ +Rodin was never proficient--he could not or would not work at the +marble _en bloc_. His works to-day are in the leading museums of the +world and he is admitted to have "talent" by the academic men. Rivals +he has none, nor will he have successors. His production is too +personal. Like Richard Wagner, Rodin has proved a Upas tree for many +lesser men--he has reflected or else absorbed them. His closest +friend, the late Eugne Carrire, warned young sculptors not to study +Rodin too curiously. Carrire was wise, but his own art of portraiture +was influenced by Rodin; swimming in shadow, his enigmatic heads have +a suspicion of the quality of sculpture--Rodin's--not the mortuary art +of so much academic sculpture. + +A profound student of light and of movement, Rodin, by deliberate +amplification of the surfaces of his statues, avoiding dryness and +harshness of outline, secures a zone of radiancy, a luminosity, which +creates the illusion of reality. He handles values in clay as a +painter does his tones. He gets the design of the outline by movement +which continually modifies the anatomy--the secret, he believes, of +the Greeks. He studies his profiles successively in full light, +obtaining volume--or planes--at once and together; successive views of +one movement. The light plays with more freedom upon his amplified +surfaces--intensified in the modelling by enlarging the lines. The +edges of certain parts are amplified, deformed, falsified, and we see +that light-swept effect, that appearance as if of luminous emanations. +This deformation, he declares, was practised by the great sculptors to +snare the undulating appearance of life. Sculpture, he asserts, is the +"art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelled +figures." Finish kills vitality. Yet Rodin can chisel a smooth nymph +for you if he so wills, but her flesh will ripple and run in the +sunlight. His art is one of accents. He works by profile in depth, not +by surfaces. He swears by what he calls "cubic truth"; his pattern is +a mathematical figure; the pivot of art is balance, _i.e._, the +oppositions of volume produced by movement. Unity haunts him. He is a +believer in the correspondences of things, of the continuity in +nature; a mystic as well as a geometrician. Yet such a realist is he +that he quarrels with any artist who does not see "the latent heroic +in every natural movement." + +Therefore he does not force the pose of his model, preferring +attitudes or gestures voluntarily adopted. His sketch-books, as +copious, as vivid as the drawings of Hokusai--he is very studious of +Japanese art--are swift memoranda of the human machine as it dispenses +its normal muscular motions. Rodin, draughtsman, is as surprising and +original as Rodin, sculptor. He will study a human foot for months, +not to copy it, but to possess the secret of its rhythms. His drawings +are the swift notations of a sculptor whose eye is never satisfied, +whose desire to pin on paper the most evanescent movements of the +human machine is almost a mania. The French sculptor avoids studied +poses. The model tumbles down anywhere, in any contortion or +relaxation he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the method +adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiver +of surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a mere +scrawl, a few enveloping lines, a silhouette. But vitality is in it; +and for his purposes a mere memorandum of a motion. A sculptor has +made these extraordinary drawings not a painter. It will be well to +observe the distinction. He is the most rhythmic sculptor of them all. +And rhythm is the codification of beauty. Because he has observed with +a vision quite virginal he insists that he has affiliations with the +Greeks. But if his vision is Greek his models are Parisian, while his +forms are more Gothic than the pseudo-Greek of the academy. As W.C. +Brownell wrote years ago: "Rodin reveals rather than constructs +beauty... no sculptor has carried expression further; and expression +means individual character completely exhibited rather than +conventionally suggested." Mr. Brownell was also the first critic to +point out that Rodin's art was more nearly related to Donatello than +to Michael Angelo. He is in the legitimate line of French sculpture, +the line of Goujon, Puget, Rude, Barye. Dalou did not hesitate to +assert that the Dante portal is "one of the most, if not the most, +original and astonishing pieces of sculpture of the nineteenth +century." + +This Dante Gate, begun more than twenty years ago, not finished yet, +and probably never to be, is an astounding fugue, with death, the +devil, hell, and the passions as a horribly beautiful four-voiced +theme. I saw the composition a few years ago at the Rue de +l'Universit atelier. It is as terrifying a conception as the Last +Judgment; nor does it miss the sonorous and sorrowful grandeur of the +Medici Tombs. Yet how different, how feverish, how tragic! Like all +great men working in the grip of a unifying idea, Rodin modified the +old technique of sculpture so that it would serve him as plastically +as does sound a musical composer. A deep lover of music, his inner ear +may dictate the vibrating rhythms of his forms--his marbles are ever +musical; not "frozen music" as Goethe said of Gothic architecture, but +silent swooning music. This gate is a Frieze of Paris, as deeply +significant of modern aspiration and sorrow as the Parthenon Frieze is +the symbol of the great clear beauty of Hellas. Dante inspired this +monstrous and ennobled masterpiece, but Baudelaire filled many of its +chinks and crannies with writhing ignoble shapes; shapes of dusky fire +that, as they tremulously stand above the gulf of fears, wave +ineffectual desperate hands. Heine in his Deutschland asks: + + Kennst du die Hlle des Dante nicht, + Die schreckliche Terzetten? + Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt + Den kann kein Gott mehr retten. + +And from the "singing flames" of Rodin there is no rescue. + +But he is not all tragedy and hell fire. Of singular delicacy, of +exquisite proportions are his marbles of youth, of springtide, and the +desire of life. In 1900, at his special exhibition, Paris, Europe, and +America awoke to these haunting visions. Not since Keats or Swinburne +has love been sung so sweetly, so romantically, so fiercely. Though he +disclaims understanding the Celtic spirit, one could say that there is +Celtic magic, Celtic mystery in his work. He pierces to the core the +frenzy and joy of love and translates them in beautiful symbols. +Nature is for him the sole theme; his works are but variations on her +promptings. He knows the emerald route and all the semitones of +sensuousness. Fantasy, passion, even paroxysmal madness there are; yet +what elemental power in his Adam as the gigantic first _homo_ +painfully heaves himself up from the earth to that posture which +differentiates him from the beasts. Here, indeed, the two natures are +at strife. And Mother Eve, her expression suggesting the sorrows and +shames that are to be the lot of her seed; her very loins seem crushed +by the ages that are hidden within them. You may walk freely about the +burghers of Calais, as did Rodin when he modelled them; that is one +secret of the group's vital quality. About all his statues you may +walk--he is not a sculptor of one attitude, but a hewer of men and +women. Consider the Balzac. It is not Balzac the writer of novels, but +Balzac the prophet, the seer, the great natural force--like Rodin +himself. That is why these kindred spirits converse across the years, +as do the Alpine peaks in that striking parable of Turgenieff's. No +doubt in bronze the Balzac will arouse less wrath from the +unimaginative; in plaster it produces the effect of some surging +monolith of snow. + +As a portraitist of his contemporaries Rodin is the unique master of +character. His women are gracious, delicious masks; his men cover many +octaves in virility and variety. That he is extremely short-sighted +has not been dealt with in proportion to the significance of this +fact. It accounts for his love of exaggerated surfaces, his formless +extravagance, his indefiniteness in structural design; possibly, too, +for his inability, or let us say lack of sympathy, for the monumental. +He is essentially a sculptor of the intimate emotions; he delineates +passion as a psychologist; and while we think of him as a cyclops +wielding a huge hammer destructively, he is often ardent in his search +of subtle nuance. But there is breadth even when he models an eyelid. +Size is only relative. We are confronted by the paradox of an artist +as torrential, as apocalyptic as Rubens and Wagner, carving with a +style wholly charming a segment of a baby's back so that you exclaim, +"Donatello come to life!" His slow, defective vision, then, may have +been his salvation; he seems to rely as much on his delicate tactile +sense as on his eyes. His fingers are as sensitive as a violinist's. +At times he seems to model tone and colour. A marvellous poet, a +precise sober workman of art, with a peasant strain in him like +Millet, and, like Millet, very near to the soil; a natural man, yet +crossed by nature with a perverse strain; the possessor of a +sensibility exalted, and dolorous; morbid, sick-nerved, and as +introspective as Heine; a visionary and a lover of life, very close to +the periphery of things; an interpreter of Baudelaire; Dante's alter +ego in his vast grasp of the wheel of eternity, in his passionate +fling at nature; withal a sculptor, always profound and tortured, +translating rhythm and motion into the terms of sculpture. Rodin is a +statuary who, while having affinities with both the classic and +romantic schools, is the most startling artistic apparition of his +century. And to the century he has summed up so plastically and +emotionally he has also propounded questions that only the unborn +years may answer. He has a hundred faults to which he opposes one +imperious excellence--a genius, sombre, magical, and overwhelming. + + + + +V. EUGNE CARRIRE + + + +Death has consecrated the genius of three great painters happily +neglected and persecuted during their lifetime--Manet, Monticelli, and +Carrire. Though furiously opposed, Manet was admitted to the +Luxembourg by the conditions of the Caillebotte legacy. There that +ironic masterpiece, Olympe--otherwise known as the Cat and +Cocotte--has hung for the edification of intelligent amateurs, though +it was only a bequest of triumphant hatred in official eyes. And now +the lady with her cat and negress is in the Louvre, in which +sacrosanct region she, with her meagre, subtle figure, competes among +the masterpieces. Yet there were few dissenting voices. Despite its +temperamental oscillations France is at bottom sound in the matter of +art. Genius may starve, but genius once recognised, the apotheosis is +logically bound to follow. No fear of halls of fame with a French Poe +absent. + +Eugne Carrire was more fortunate than his two famous predecessors. +He toiled and suffered hardship, but before his death he was +officially acknowledged though never altogether approved by the Salon +in which he exhibited; approved or understood. He fought under no +banner. He was not an impressionist. He was not a realist. Certainly +he could be claimed by neither the classics nor romantics. A +"solitary" they agreed to call him; but his is not the hermetic art of +such a solitary as Gustave Moreau. Carrire, on the contrary, was a +man of marked social impulses, and when in 1889 he received the Legion +of Honour, he was enabled to mingle with his equals--he had been +almost unknown until then. He was the most progressive spirit among +his brethren. Nowadays he is classed as an Intimist, in which category +and with such men as Simon Bussy, Mnard, Henri le Sidaner, Emile +Wry, Charles Cottet, Lucien Simon, Edouard Vuillard, the Griveaus, +Lomont, Lobre, and others, he is still their master, still the +possessor of a highly individualised style, and in portraiture the +successor to such diverse painters as Prudhon, Ricard, and Whistler. + +Gabriel Seailles has written a study, Eugne Carrire, l'Homme et +l'Artiste, and Charles Morice has published another, Eugne Carrire. +The latter deals with the personality and ideas of one of the most +original thinkers among modern French painters. We have spoken of the +acerbity of Degas, of his wit, so often borrowed by Whistler and +Manet; we have read Eugne Fromentin's delightful, stimulating studies +of the old masters, but we doubt if Fromentin was as profound a +thinker as Carrire. Degas is not, though he deals in a more acid and +dangerous form of aphorism. It is one of the charms of the eulogy of +M. Morice to find embalmed therein so many phrases and speeches of the +dead painter. He was both poet and philosopher, let us call him a +seer, for his work fully bears out this appellation. A grand +visionary, he well deserves Jean Dolent's description of his pictures +as "realities having the magic of a dream." + +Carrire's career was in no wise extraordinary. He fled to no exotic +climes as did Paul Gauguin. His only tragedy was the manner of his +death. For three years previous he suffered the agonies of a cancer. +His bravery was admirable. No one heard him complain. He worked to the +last, worked as he had worked his life long, untiringly. Morice gives +a "succinct biography" at the close of his study. From it we learn +that Eugne Carrire was born January 29, 1849, at Gournay +(Seine-Infrieure); that he made his first steps in art at the +Strasbourg Academy; in 1869 he entered the Beaux-Arts, in Cabanel's +class. Penniless, he earned a precarious existence in designing +industrial objects. In 1870 he was made prisoner by the Prussians, +with the garrison of Neuf-Brisach, and taken to Dresden, where he was +confined in prison. After peace had been declared he resumed his +studies at the Beaux-Arts. In 1877 he married--an important event in +his art; thenceforward Madame Carrire and the children born to them +were his continual models, both by preference and also by force of +circumstances--he was too poor in the beginning to hire professional +models. He spent six months in London, which may or may not account +for his brumous colour; and in 1879, when he was thirty years old, he +exposed in the Salon of that year his Young Mother, the first of a +long series of Maternities. He was violently attacked by the critics, +and as violently defended. During the same year he attempted to win +the "prix de Rome" and gained honours for his sketch. Luckily he did +not attain this prize; and, still more luck, he left the school. + +In 1884 he received an honourable mention for a child's portrait; in +1885 a medal for his Sick Child, bought by the State; in 1886 Le +Premier voile was bought by the State and he was proposed for a medal +of honour and--singular dream of Frenchmen--he was decorated in 1889. +He died March 27, 1906. Not a long, but a full life, a happy one, and +at the last, glory--"_le soleil des morts_," as Balzac said--and a +competence for his dear ones. And it is to the honour of such writers +as Roger Marx, Anatole France, Hamel, Morice, Mauclair, Verhaeren, +Geffroy, that they recognised the genius of Carrire from the +beginning. In 1904 Carrire was made honorary president of the Autumn +Salon and was the chief guest of these young painters, who really +adored Paul Czanne, and not the painter of an illusive psychology. I +wrote at that time: "Carrire, whose delicately clouded portraits, so +intimate in their revelation of the souls of his sitters, was not seen +at his best. He offered a large decorative panel for the Mairie of the +Thirteenth Arrondissement, entitled Les Fiancs, a sad-looking +betrothal party ... the landscape timid, the decorative scheme not +very effective... His tender notations of maternity, and his heads, +painted with the smoky enchantments of his pearly gray and soft +russet, are more credible than this _panneau_." Was Carrire a +decorative painter by nature--setting aside training? We doubt it, +though Morice does not hesitate to name him after Puvis de Chavannes +in this field. The trouble is that he did not make many excursions +into the larger forms. He painted a huge canvas, Les Thtres +Populaires, in which the interest is more intimate than epical. He +also did some decorations for the Hotel de Ville, The Four Ages for a +Mairie, and the Christ at the Luxembourg and a view of Paris. +Nevertheless, it is his portraits that will live. + +Carrire was, first and last, a symbolist. There he is related to the +Dutch Seer, Rembrandt; both men strove to seek for the eternal +correspondence of things material and spiritual; both sought to bring +into harmony the dissonance of flesh and the spirit. Both succeeded, +each in his own way--though we need not couple their efforts on the +technical side. Rembrandt was a prophet. There is more of the +reflective poet in Carrire. He is a mystic. His mothers, his +children, are dreams made real--the magic of which Dolent speaks is +always there. To disengage the personality of his sitter was his first +idea. Slowly he built up those volumes of colour, light, and shadow, +the solidity of which caused Rodin to exclaim: "Carrire is also a +sculptor!" Slowly and from the most unwilling sitter he extorted the +secret of a soul. We speak of John Sargent as the master psychologist +among portraitists, a superiority he himself has never assumed; but +that magnificent virtuoso, an aristocratic Frans Hals, never gives us +the indefinite sense of things mystic beneath the epidermis of poor, +struggling humanity as does Eugne Carrire. Sargent is too +magisterial a painter to dwell upon the infinite little soul-stigmata +of men and women. Who can tell the renunciations made by the Frenchman +in his endeavour to wrest the enigma of personality from its abysmal +depths? + +As Canaille Mauclair says: "Carrire was first influenced by the +Spaniards, then by Ver Meer and Chardin ... formerly he coloured his +canvas with exquisite delicacy and with a distinction of harmonies +that came very near to Whistler's. Now he confines himself to bistre, +black and white, to evoke those dream pictures, true images of souls, +which make him inimitable in our epoch and go back to Rembrandt's +chiaroscuro." Colour went by the board at the last, and the painter +was dominated by expression alone. His gamut of tones became +contracted. "Physical magnetism" is exactly the phrase that +illuminates his later methods. Often cavernous in tone, sooty in his +blacks, he nevertheless contrives a fluid atmosphere, the shadows +floating, the figure floating, that arrests instant attention. He +became almost sculptural, handled his planes with imposing breadth, +his sense of values was strong, his gradations and degradation of +tones masterly; and he escaped the influences of the new men in their +researches after luminosity at all hazards. He considered +impressionism a transition; after purifying muddy palettes of the +academics, the division-of-tones painters must necessarily return to +lofty composition, to a poetic simplicity with nature, to a more +rarefied psychology. + +Carrire, notwithstanding his nocturnal reveries, his sombre +colouring, was not a pessimist. Indeed, the reverse. His philosophy of +life was exalted--an exalted socialism. He was, to employ Nietzsche's +pithy phrase, a "Yes-Sayer"; he said "Yes" to the universe. A man of +vigorous affirmations, he worshipped nature, not for its pictorial +aspects, but for the god which is the leaf and rock and animal, for +the god that beats in our pulses and shines in the clear sunlight. Nor +was it vague, windy pantheism, this; he was a believer--a glance at +his Christ reveals his reverence for the Man of Sorrows--and his +religious love and pity for mankind was only excelled by his hatred of +wrong and oppression. He detested cruelty. His canvases of childhood, +in which he exposes the most evanescent gesture, exposes the +unconscious helplessness of babyhood, are so many tracts--if you +choose to see them after that fashion--in behalf of mercy to all +tender and living things. He is not, however, a sentimentalist. His +family groups prove the absence of theatrical pity. Because of his +subtle technical method, his manner of building up his heads in a +misty medium and then abstracting their physical non-essentials, his +portraits have a metaphysical meaning--they are a _Becoming_, not a +_Being_, tangible though they be. Their fluid rhythms lend to them +almost the quality of a perpetual rejuvenescence. This may be an +illusion, but it tells us of the primary intensity of the painter's +vision. Withal, there is no scene of the merely spectral, no optical +trickery. The waves of light are magnetic. The picture floats in +space, seemingly compelled by its frame into limits. Gustave Geffroy +once wrote that, in common with the great masters, Carrire, on his +canvas, gives a sense of volume and weight. Whatever he sacrificed, it +was not actuality. His draughtsmanship never falters, his touch is +never infirm. + +I have seen his portraits of Verlaine, Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt, +Geffroy, of the artist himself and many others. The Verlaine is a +veritable evocation. It was painted at one _sance_ of several hours, +and the poet, it is said, did not sit still or keep silence for a +moment. He was hardly conscious that he was being painted. What a +head! Not that of the old faun and absinthe-sipping vagabond of the +Latin quarter, but the soul that lurked somewhere in Verlaine; the +dreamer, not the mystifier, the man crucified to the cross of +aspiration by his unhappy temperament. Musician and child, here is the +head of one of those pious, irresponsible mendicants who walked dusty +roads in the Middle Ages. It needed an unusual painter to interpret an +unusual poet. + +The Daudet face is not alone full of surface character, but explains +the racial affinities of the romancer. Here he is David, not Daudet. +The head of De Goncourt gives in a few touches--Carrire is ever +master of the essential--the irritable pontiff of literary +impressionism. Carrire was fond of repeating: "For the artist the +forms evoke ideas, sensations, and sentiments; for the poet, +sensations, ideas, sentiments evoke forms." Never expansively lyrical +as was Monticelli, Carrire declared that a picture is the logical +development of light. And on the external side his art is a continual +variation with light as a theme. Morice contends that he was a +colourist; that the blond of Rubens and the russet of Carrire are not +monochromes; that polychromy is not the true way of seeing nature +coloured. Certainly Carrire does not sacrifice style, expression, +composition for splashing hues. Yet his illuminating strokes appear to +proceed from within, not from without. He interrogates nature, but her +answer is a sober, not a brilliant one. Let us rather say that his +colouring is adequate--he always asserted that a sense of proportion +was success in art. His tone is peculiarly personal; he paints +expressions, the fleeting shades that cross the face of a man, a +woman, a child. He patiently awaits the master trait of a soul and +never misses it, though never displaying it with the happy cruelty of +Sargent and always judging mercifully. Notwithstanding his humble +attitude in the presence of nature, he is the most self-revealing of +painters. Few before him ever interpreted maternity as he has done. + +Carrire is not a virtuoso. He is an initiator--a man of rare +imagination. Above all, he escapes the rhetoric of the schools. His +apprehension of character is that of sympathetic genius. He divines +the emotions, especially in those souls made melancholy by sorrow; +uneasy, complex, feverish souls; them that hide their griefs, and +souls saturated with the ennuis of existence--to all he is interpreter +and consoler. He has pictured the _Weltschmerz_ of his age; and +without morbid self-enjoyment. A noble soul, an elevating example to +those artists who believe that art and life may be dissociated. +Carrire has left no school, though his spiritual influence has been +great. A self-contained artist, going his own way, meditating deeply +on art, on life, his canvases stand for his singleness and purity of +purpose. On the purely pictorial side he is, to quote M. Mauclair, "an +absolutely surprising painter of hands and glances." + +In the sad and anxious rectitude of his attire the artistic interest +in modern man is concentrated upon his head and hands; and upon these +salient points Carrire focussed his art. Peaceful or disquieted, his +men and women belong to our century. Spiritually Eugne Carrire is +the lineal descendant of the Rembrandt school--but one who has read +Dostoevsky. + + + + +VI. DEGAS + + + +Let us suppose that gay old misogynist Arthur Schopenhauer persuaded +to cross the Styx and revisiting the earth. Apart from his disgust if +forced to listen to the music of his self-elected disciple Richard +Wagner, what painted work would be likely to attract him? Remember he +it was who named Woman the knock-kneed sex--since the new woman is +here it matters little if her figure conforms to old-fashioned, +stupid, masculine standards of beauty. But wouldn't the nudes of Degas +confirm the Frankfort philosopher in his theories regarding the +"long-haired, short-brained, unsthetic sex," and also confirm his +hatred for the exaggerations of poet and painter when describing or +depicting her? We fear that Schopenhauer would smile his malicious +smile and exclaim: "At last the humble truth!" It is the presentation +of the humble truth that early snared the affections of Degas, who has +with a passionate calm pursued the evanescent appearances of things +his entire life. No doubt death will find him pencil in hand. You +think of Hokusai, the old man mad with paint, when the name of Degas +is mentioned. He was born in Paris July 19, 1834--his full name is +Hilaire Germain Edgard (or Edgar)--and there is one phrase that will +best describe his career: He painted. Like Flaubert, he never married, +but lived in companionship with his art. Such a mania could have been +described by Balzac. Yet no saner art ever issued from a Parisian +atelier; sane, clear, and beautiful. + +Degas is a painter's painter. For him the subject is a peg upon which +to hang superb workmanship. In amazement the public asked: How could a +man in the possession of his powers shut himself up in a studio to +paint ballet girls, washerwomen, jockeys, drabs of Montmartre, +shopgirls, and horses? Even Zola, who should have known better, would +not admit that Degas was an artist fit to be compared with such men as +Flaubert and Goncourt; but Zola was never the realist that is Degas. +Now it is difficult to keep asunder the names of Goncourt and Degas. +To us they are too often unwisely bracketed. The style of the painter +has been judged as analogous to the novelist's; yet, apart from a +preference for the same subjects for the "modernity" of Paris, there +is not much in Degas that recalls Goncourt's staccato, febrile, +sparkling, "decomposed", impressionistic prose. Both men are +brilliant, though not in the same way. Pyrotechnics are abhorrent to +Degas. He has the serenity, sobriety, and impersonality of the great +classic painters. He is himself a classic. + +His legend is slender. Possessing a private income, he never was +preoccupied with the anxieties of selling his work. He first entered +the atelier of Lamotte, but his stay was brief. In the studio of +Ingres he was, so George Moore declares, the student who carried out +the lifeless body of the painter when Ingres fell in his fatal fit. +There is something peculiarly interesting about this anecdote for the +tradition of Ingres has been carried on by Degas. The greatest master +of pure line, in his portraits and nudes--we have forgotten his chilly +_pastiches_ of Raphael--of the past century, Ingres has been and still +is for Degas a god on the peaks of Parnassus. Degas is an Ingres who +has studied the Japanese. Only such men as Pollajuolo and Botticelli +rank with Degas in the mastery of rhythmic line. He is not academic, +yet he stems from purest academic traditions. He is not of the +impressionists, at least not in his technical processes, but he +associated with them, exhibited with them (though rarely), and is as a +rule confused with them. He never exhibited in the Salons, he has no +disciples, yet it is doubtful if any painter's fashion of seeing +things has had such an influence on the generation following him. The +name of Degas, the pastels of Degas, the miraculous draughtsmanship of +Degas created an imponderable fluid which still permeates Paris. +Naturally, after the egg trick was discovered we encounter scores of +young Columbuses, who paint ballet girls' legs and the heads of +orchestral musicians and scenes from the racing paddock. + +Degas had three painters who, if any, might truthfully call themselves +his pupils. These are Mary Cassatt, Alexis Rouart, and Forain. The +first has achieved solid fame. The last is a remarkable illustrator, +who "vulgarised" the austere methods of his master for popular +Parisian consumption. That Renoir, Raffaelli, and Toulouse-Lautrec owe +much to Degas is the secret of Polichinello. This patient student of +the Tuscan Primitives, of Holbein, Chardin, Delacroix, Ingres, and +Manet--the precepts of Manet taught him to sweeten the wiriness of his +modelling and modify his tendency to a certain hardness--was willing +to trust to time for the verdict of his rare art. He associated daily +with Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Whistler, Duranty, Fantin-Latour, and the +crowd that first went to the Caf Guerbois in the Batignolles--hence +the derisive nickname, "The Batignolles School"; later to the Nouvelle +Athnes, finally to the Caf de la Rochefoucauld. A hermit he was +during the dozen hours a day he toiled, but he was a sociable man, +nevertheless, a cultured man fond of music, possessing a tongue that +was feared as much as is the Russian knout. Mr. Moore has printed many +specimens of his caustic wit. Whistler actually kept silent in his +presence--possibly expecting a repetition of the _mot_: "My dear +friend, you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent at +all." Manet good-naturedly took a browbeating, but the Academic set +were outraged by the irreverence of Degas. What hard sayings were his! +Poor Bastien-Lepage, too, came in for a scoring. Barricaded in his +studio, it was a brave man who attempted to force an entrance. The +little, round-shouldered artist, generally good-tempered, would pour a +stream of verbal vitriol over the head of the unlucky impertinent. + +In 1860 or thereabout he visited America, and in New Orleans he saw +the subject of his Interior of a Cotton Factory, which was shown as an +historical curiosity at the Paris exposition in 1900. While it is +implacably realistic there is little hint of the future Degas. The +name of the painter was in every French painter's mouth, and the +brilliant article of Huysmans concentrated his fame. Huysmans it was +who first saw that Degas had treated the nude as Rembrandt would if he +had been alive--making allowances for temperamental variations. Degas +knew that to grasp the true meaning of the nude it must be represented +in postures, movements which are natural, not studio attitudes. As +Monet exposed the fallacy of studio lighting, so Degas revealed the +inanity of its poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with the +fourth wall removed; Degas preferred the key-hole through which we +seem to peep upon the privacy of his ugly females bathing or combing +their hair or sleeping, lounging, yawning, quarrelling, and walking. +The simian and frog-like gestures and sprawling attitudes are far from +arousing amiable sensations. These poor, tired women, hard-working +laundresses, shopgirls, are not alluring, though they are not as +hideous as the women of Czanne or Edvard Mnch; but the veracity of +the "human document" (overworked phrase!) is there. Charles Morice has +said that to Czanne a potato was as significant as a human +countenance. The pattern interested him in both. For Degas the beauty +of life lies in the moving line. He captures with ease the swift, +unconscious gesture. His models are never posed. They are nature +caught in the act. There is said to be a difference between the +epidermis of the professional model and the human who undresses only +to go to bed. Degas has recorded this difference. What an arraignment +of the corset are the creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What +lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! _Voil l'animale!_ +he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some +girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! +Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a +douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayadres +and of drawing-room portraiture. + +Pity is deeply rooted in his nature. He is never tender, yet there is +veiled sympathy in the ballet-girl series. Behind the scenes, in the +waiting-rooms, at rehearsal, going home with the hawk-eyed mother, his +girls are all painfully real. No "glamour of the foot-lights," +generally the prosaic side of their life. He has, however, painted the +glorification of the danseuse, of that lady grandiloquently described +as _prima donna assoluta_. What magic he evokes as he pictures her +floating down stage! The pastel in the Luxembourg, L'Etoile, is the +reincarnation of the precise moment when the aerial creature on one +foot lifts graceful arms and is transfigured in the glow of the +lights, while about her beats--you are sure--the noisy, insistent +music. It is in the pinning down of such climaxes of movement that +Degas stirs our admiration. He draws movement. He can paint rhythms. +His canvases are ever in modulation. His sense of tactile values is +profound. His is true atmospheric colour. A feeling of exhilaration +comes while contemplating one of his open-air scenes with jockeys, +race-horses, and the incidental bustle of a neighbouring concourse. +Unexcelled as a painter of horses, as a delineator of witching +horsemanship, of vivid landscapes--true integral decorations--and of +the casual movements and gestures of common folk, Degas is also a +psychologist, an ironical commentator on the pettiness and ugliness of +daily life, of its unheroic aspects, its comical snobberies and +shocking hypocrisies; and all expressed without a melodramatic +elevation of the voice, without the false sentimentalism of Zola or +the morbidities of Toulouse-Lautrec. There is much Baudelaire in +Degas, as there is also in Rodin. All three men despised academic +rhetoric; all three dealt with new material in a new manner. + +It is the fashion to admire Degas, but it is doubtful if he will ever +gain the suffrage of the general. He does not retail anecdotes, though +to the imaginative every line of his nudes relates their history. His +irony is unremitting. It suffuses the ballet-girl series and the nude +sets. Irony is an illuminating mode, but it is seldom pleasant; the +public is always suspicious of an ironist, particularly of the Degas +variety. Careless of reputation, laughing at the vanity of his +contemporaries who were eager to arrive, contemptuous of critics and +criticism, of collectors who buy low to sell high (in the heart of +every picture collector there is a bargain counter), Degas has defied +the artistic world for a half-century. His genius compelled the +Mountain to come to Mahomet. The rhythmic articulations, the volume, +contours, and bounding supple line of Degas are the despair of +artists. Like the Japanese, he indulges in abridgments, deformations, +falsifications. His enormous faculty of attention has counted heavily +in his synthetical canvases. He joys in the representation of +artificial light; his theatres are flooded with it, and he is equally +successful in creating the illusion of cold, cheerless daylight in a +salle where rehearse the little "rats" and the older coryphes on +their wiry, muscular, ugly legs. His vast production is dominated by +his nervous, resilient vital line and by supremacy in the handling of +values. + +The Degas palette is never gorgeous, consisting as it does of cool +grays, discreet blues and greens, Chardin-like whites and +Manet-blacks. His procedure is all his own. His second manner is a +combination of drawing, painting, and pastel. "He has invented a kind +of engraving mixed with wash drawing, pastel crayon crushed with +brushes of special pattern." + + + + +VII. BOTTICELLI + + + +The common identity of the arts was a master theory of Richard Wagner, +which he attempted to put into practice. Walter Pater in his essay on +The School of Giorgione has dwelt upon the same theme, declaring music +the archetype of the arts. In his Essays Speculative John Addington +Symonds said some pertinent things on this subject. Camille Mauclair +in his Ides Vivantes proposes in all seriousness a scheme for the +fusion of the seven arts, though he deplored Wagner's efforts to reach +a solution. Mauclair's theory is that the fusion can only be a +cerebral one, that actually mingling sculpture, architecture, music, +drama, acting, colour, dancing can never evoke the sensation of unity. +Synthesis is not thus to be attained. It must be in the _idea_ of the +arts rather than their material realisation. A pretty chimera! Yet one +that has piqued the world of art in almost every century. It was the +half-crazy E.T.W. Hoffmann, composer, dramatist, painter, poet, stage +manager, and a dozen other professions, including that of genius and +drunkard, who set off a train of ideas which buzzed in the brains of +Poe, Baudelaire, and the symbolists. People who hear painting, see +music, enjoy odorous poems, taste symphonies, and write perfumes are +now classed by the omnipotent psychical police as decadents, though +such notions are as old as literature. Suarez de Mendoza in his +L'Audition Colore has said that the sensation of colour hearing, the +faculty of associating tones and colours, is often a consequence of an +association of ideas established in youth. The coloured vowels of +Arthur Rimbaud, which must be taken as a poet's crazy prank; the +elaborate treatises by Ren Ghil, which are terribly earnest; the +remarks that one often hears, such as "scarlet is like a trumpet +blast"; certain pages of Huysmans, all furnish examples of this +curious muddling of the senses and mixing of genres. Naturally, it has +invaded criticism, which, limited in imagery, sometimes seeks to +transfer the technical terms of one art to another. + +Whistler with his nocturnes, notes, symphonies in rose and silver, his +colour-sonatas, boldly annexed well-worn musical phrases, that in +their new estate took on fresher meanings even if remaining knee-deep +in the kingdom of the nebulous. It must be confessed modern composers +have retaliated. Musical impressionism is having its vogue, while +poets are desperately pictorial. Soul landscapes and etched sonnets +are not unpleasing to the ear. What if they do not mean much? There +was a time when to say a "sweet voice" would arouse a smile. What has +sugar to do with sound? It may be erratic symbolism, this confusing of +terminologies; yet, once in a while, it strikes sparks. There is a +deeply rooted feeling in us that the arts have a common matrix, that +they are emotionally akin. "Her slow smile" in fiction has had marked +success with young people, but a "slow landscape" is still regarded +suspiciously. The bravest critic of art was Huysmans. He pitched +pell-mell into the hell-broth of his criticism any image that +assaulted his fecund brain. He forced one to _see_ his picture--for he +was primarily concerned not with the ear, but the eye. + +And Botticelli? Was Botticelli a "comprehensive"--as those with the +sixth or synthetic sense have been named by Lombroso? Botticelli, +beginning as a goldsmith's apprentice (Botticello, the little bottle), +ended as a painter, the most original in all Italy. His canvases have +a rare, mysterious power of evocation. He was a visionary, this Sandro +Filipepi, pupil of the mercurial Fra Lippo Lippi and the brothers +Pollajuolo, and his inward vision must have been something more than +paint and pattern and subject. A palimpsest may be discerned by the +imaginative--or, let us say, fanciful, since Coleridge long ago set +forth the categories--whose secrets are not to be deciphered easily, +yet are something more than those portrayed by the artist on the flat +surface of his picture. He painted the usual number of Madonnas, like +any artist of his period; yet he did not convince his world, or the +generations succeeding, that this piety was orthodox. Suspected during +his lifetime of strange heresies, this annotator and illustrator of +Dante, this disciple of Savonarola, has in our times been definitely +ranged as a spirit saturated with paganism, and still a mystic. +Doesn't the perverse clash in such a complex temperament give us +exotic dissonances? All Florence was a sounding-board of the arts when +Botticelli walked its narrow ways and lived its splendid coloured +life. His sensitive nature absorbed as a sponge does water the +impulses and motives of his contemporaries. The lurking secrets of the +"new learning"--doctrines that made for damnation, such as the +recrudescence of the medival conception of an angelic neuter host, +neither for Heaven nor Hell, not on the side of Lucifer nor with the +starry hosts--were said to have been mirrored in his pictures. Its +note is in Citt di Vita, in the heresy of the Albigenses, and it goes +as far back as Origen. Those who read his paintings, and there were +clairvoyant theologians abroad in Florence, could make of them what +they would. Painted music is less understandable than painted heresy. +Matteo Palmieri is said to have dragged Botticelli with him into dark +corners of disbelief; there was in the Medicean days a cruel order of +intelligence that delighted to toy with the vital faith and ideals of +the young. It was more savage and cunning when Machiavelli, shrewdest +of men, wrote and lived. A nature like Botticelli's, which surrendered +frankly to ideas if they but wore the mask of subtlety, could not fail +to have been swept away in the eddying cross-currents of Florentine +intellectual movements. Never mere instinct, for he was a sexless sort +of man, moved him from his moral anchorage. Always the vision! He did +not palter with the voluptuousness of his fellow-artists, yet his +canvases are feverishly disquieting; the sting of the flesh is remote; +love is transfigured, not spiritually and not served to us as a barren +parable, but made more intense by the breaking down of the thin +partition between the sexes; a consuming emotion not quite of this +world nor of the next. The barren rebellion which stirred Botticelli's +bosom never quite assumed the concrete. His religious subjects are +Hellenised, not after Mantegna's sterner and more inflexible method, +but like those of a philosophic Athenian who has read and comprehended +Dante. Yet the illustrations show us a different Dante, one who would +not have altogether pleased the gloomy exile. William Blake's +transpositions of the Divine Comedy seem to sound the depths; +Botticelli, notwithstanding the grace of his "baby centaurs" and the +wreathed car of Beatrice, is the profounder man of the two. + +His life, veiled toward the last, was not a happy one, though he was +recognised as a great painter. Watteau concealed some cankering +secret; so Botticelli. Both belong to the band of the Disquieted. +Melancholy was at the base of the Florentine's work. He created as a +young man in joy and freedom, but the wings of Drer's bat were +outstretched over his head: Melencolia! There is more poignant music +in the Primavera, in the weary, indifferent countenances of his lean, +neuropathic Madonnas--Pater calls them "peevish"--in his Venus of the +Uffizi, than in the paintings of any other Renaissance artist. The +veils are there, the consoling veils of an exquisite art missing in +the lacerated realistic holy people of the Flemish Primitives. +Joyfulness cannot be denied Botticelli, but it is not the golden joy +of Giorgione. An emaciated music emanates from the eyes of that sad, +restless Venus, to whom love has become a scourge of the senses. +Music? Yes, here is the "coloured hearing" of Mendoza. These canvases +of Botticelli seem to give forth the opalescent over-tones of an +unearthly composition. Is this Spring, this tender, tremulous virgin +whose right hand, deprecatingly raised, signals as a conductor at the +head of an invisible orchestra its rhythms? Hermes, supremely +impassive, hand on thigh, plucks the fruit as the eternal trio of +maidens with woven paces tread the measures of a dance whose music we +but overhear. Garlanded with blossoms, a glorious girl keeps time with +the pulsing atmospheric moods; her gesture, surely a divine one, shows +her casting flowers upon the richly embroidered floor of the earth. +The light filters through the thick trees; its rifts are as rigid as +candles. The nymph in the brake is threatening. Another epicene +creature flies by her. Love shoots his bolt in midair. Is it from +Paphos or Mitylene! What the fable! Music plucked down from the +vibrating skies and made visible to the senses. A mere masque laden +with the sweet, prim allegories of the day it is not. Vasari, blunt +soul, saw but its surfaces. Politian, the poet, got closer to the +core. Centuries later our perceptions, sharpened by the stations of +pain and experience traversed, lend to this immortal canvas a more +sympathetic, less literal interpretation. + +Music, too, in the Anadyomene of the Uffizi. Still stranger music. +Those sudden little waves that lap an immemorial strand; that +shimmering shell, its fan-spokes converging to the parted feet of the +goddess; her hieratic pose, its modesty symbolic, the hair that +serpentines about her foam-born face, thin shoulders that slope into +delicious arms; the Japanese group, blowing tiny, gem-like buds with +puffed-out cheeks; the rhythmic female on tiptoe offering her mantle +to Venus; and enveloping them all vernal breezes, unseen, yet sensed +on every inch of the canvas--what are these things but the music of an +art original at its birth and never since reborn? The larger rhythms +of the greater men do not sweep us along with them in Botticelli. But +his voice is irresistible. + +Modern as is his spirit, as modern as Watteau, Chopin, or Shelley, he +is no less ethereal than any one of these three; ethereal and also +realistic. We may easily trace his artistic ancestry; what he became +could never have been predicted. Technically, as one critic has +written, "he was the first to understand the charm of silhouettes, the +first to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, the +flexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the elegance +of the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, +and above all the carving of the hand; but even more he understood 'le +prestige insolent des grands yeux.'" + +For Pater his colour was cold, cadaverous, "and yet the more you come +to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is +no mere delightful quality of natural things but a spirit upon them by +which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you like this +peculiar quality of colour." Bernard Berenson goes further. For him +the entire picture, Venus Rising From the Sea, presents us with the +quintessence of all that is pleasurable to our imagination of touch +and movement... The vivid appeal to our tactile sense, the life +communicating movement, is always there. And writing of the Pallas in +the Pitti he most eloquently said: "As to the hair--imagine shapes +having the supreme life of line you may see in the contours of licking +flames and yet possessed of all the plasticity of something which +caresses the hand that models it to its own desire!" + +And after speaking of Botticelli's stimulating line, he continues: +"Imagine an art made up entirely of these quintessences of +movement-values and you will have something that holds the same +relation to representation that music holds to speech--and this art +exists and is called lineal decoration. In this art of arts Sandro +Botticelli may have had rivals in Japan and elsewhere in the East, but +in Europe never!... He is the greatest master of lineal design that +Europe ever had." + +Again music, not the music nor the symbolism of the emotions, but the +abstract music of design. Botticelli's appeal is also an auditive one. +Other painters have spun more intricate, more beautiful scrolls of +line; other painters sounded more sensuous colour music, but the +subtle sarabands of Botticelli they have not composed. There is here a +pleasing problem for the psychiatrist. Manifestations in paint of this +species may be set down to some mental lesion; that is how Maurice +Spronck classifies the sensation in writing about the verbal +sensitivity of the Goncourts and Flaubert. The latter, you may +remember, said that Salammbo was purple to him, and L'Education +Sentimentale gray. Carthage and Paris--a characteristic fancy! But why +is it that these scientific gentlemen who account for genius by +eye-strain do not reprove the poets for their sensibility to the sound +of words, the shape and cadences of the phrase? It appears that only +prose-men are the culpable ones when they hear the harping of +invisible harps from Ibsen steeplejacks, or recognise the colour of +Zarathustra's thoughts. In reality not one but thousands sit listening +in the chill galleries of Florence because of the sweet, sick, nervous +music of Botticelli; this testimony of the years is for the dissenters +to explain. + +_Fantastico, Stravaganie_, as Vasari nicknamed Botticelli, has +literally created an audience that has learned to see as he did, +fantastically and extravagantly. He passed through the three stages +dear to arbitrary criticism. Serene in his youthful years; troubled, +voluptuous, visionary during the Medicean period; sombre, mystic, a +convert to Savonarola at the end. He passed through, not untouched, a +great crisis. Certain political assassinations and the Pazzi +conspiracy hurt him to the quick. He noted the turbulence of Rome and +Florence, saw behind the gay-tinted arras of the Renaissance the +sinister figures of its supermen and criminals. He never married. When +Tommaso Soderini begged him to take a wife, he responded: "The other +night I dreamed I was married. I awoke in such horror and chagrin that +I could not fall asleep again. I arose and wandered about Florence +like one possessed." Evidently not intended by nature as a husband or +father. Like Watteau, like Nietzsche, grand visionaries abiding on the +other side of the dear common joys of life, these men were not tempted +by the usual baits of happiness. The great Calumnia in the Uffizi +might be construed as an image of Botticelli's soul. Truth, naked and +scorned--again we note the matchless silhouette of his +Venus--misunderstood and calumniated, stands in the hall of a great +palace. She points to the heavens; she is an interrogation mark, +Pilate's question. Botticelli was adored. But understood? An enigmatic +malady ravaged his being. He died poor and alone, did this composer of +luminous chants and pagan poems, this moulder of exotic dreams and of +angels who long for other gods than those of Good and Evil. A +grievously wounded, timid soul, an intruder at the portals of +paradise, but without the courage to enter or withdraw. He had visions +that rapt him up into the seventh heaven, and when he reported them in +the speech of his design his harassed, divided spirit chilled the +ardours of his art. And thus it is that many do not worship at his +shrine as at the shrine of Raphael, for they see the adumbration of a +paganism long since dead, but revived by a miracle for a brief +Botticellian hour. Madonna and Venus! The Christ Child and Bacchus! +Under which king? The artist never frankly tells us. The legends of +fauns turned monks, of the gods at servile labour in a world that had +forgotten them, are revived, but with more sublimated ecstasy than by +Heine, when we stand before Botticelli and listen to his pallid, muted +music. + +He was born at Florence in 1446; he died May 27, 1510; in 1515, +according to Vasari. A study of him is by Emile Gebhart, late of the +French Academy. It is erudite, although oddly enough it ignores the +researches of Morelli and Berenson. Gebhart attributes to Alessandro +di Mariano Filipepi about eighty-five pictures, many of which were +long ago in Morelli's taboo list--that terrible Morelli, the learned +iconoclast who brought many sleepless nights to Dr. Wilhelm Bode of +Berlin. Time has vindicated the Bergamese critic. Berenson will allow +only forty-five originals to Botticelli's credit. Furthermore, Gebhart +does not mention in his catalogue the two Botticellis belonging to +Mrs. Gardner of Boston, a lamentable oversight for a volume brought +out in 1907. Need we add that this French author by no means sees +Botticelli in the musical sense? He is chiefly concerned with his +historic environment. Gebhart's authorities are the Memoriale of +Francesco Albertini; Anonyme Gaddiano, the manuscript of the +Magliabecchiana, which precedes the Vasari edition; the Life of +Botticelli, by Vasari, and many later studies, the most complete, he +avers, being that of Hermann Ulmann of Munich, whose Sandro +Botticelli, which appeared in 1893, is rigorously critical. +Nevertheless, it is not as critical as Morelli's Italian Painters. +Details about the typical ears, hands, and noses of the painter may be +found therein. The last word concerning Botticelli will not be uttered +until his last line has vanished. And, even then, his archaic +harmonies may continue to sound in the ears of mankind. + + + + +VIII. SIX SPANIARDS + + + +"EL GRECO" + + + +Large or small, there has been a Greco cult ever since the +Greek-Spanish painter died, April 7, 1614, but during the last decade +it has grown into a species of worship. One hears the names of +Velasquez and El Greco coupled. His profound influence on the greatest +of the realists is blithely assumed, and for these worshippers, +Ribera, Zurbaran, Murillo are hardly to be ranked with the painter of +the Burial of the Count of Orgz. While this undiscriminating +admiration may be deplored, there are reasons enough for the +canonisation of El Greco in the church of art. Violent to exaggeration +in composition, morbidly mystic, there are power and emotional quality +revealed in his work; above all else he anticipated Velasquez in his +use of cool gray tones, and as a pupil or at least a disciple of +Titian he is, as his latest biographer, Seor Manuel B. Cossio, names +him, "the last epigone of the Italian Renaissance." But of the man we +know almost nothing. + +We read his exhaustive study, a big book of over seven hundred pages +fortified by a supplementary volume containing one hundred and +ninety-three illustrations, poor reproductions of El Greco's +accredited works (El Greco, por Manuel B. Cossio). Seor Cossio has so +well accomplished his task that his book may be set down as +definitive. A glance at the bibliography he compiled shows that not +many writers on art have seen fit to pay particular attention to El +Greco. A few Spaniards, Seor Beruete heading them; Max Boehm, Carl +Justi (in his Diego Velasquez); Paul Lafond, William Ritter, Arthur +Symons, William Stirling, Signor Venturi, Louis Viardot, Wyzewa, +Havelock Ellis, and the inimitable Thophile Gautier--whose Travels in +Spain, though published in 1840, is, as Mr. Ellis truthfully remarks, +still a storehouse of original exploration. But the Cossio work, +naturally, tops them all. He is an adorer, though not fanatical, of +his hero, and it is safe to assert that all that is known to-day of El +Greco will be found in these pages. The origins of the painter, his +visit to Italy, his arrival at Toledo, are described with references +to original documents--few as they are. + +Then follows a searching and vivid exposition of the pictures in +Madrid, Toledo, and elsewhere, a technical and psychological analysis +which displays vast research, critical acumen, and the sixth sense of +sympathy. No pictures, sketches, sculptures, or _retablos_ escape +Cossio. He considers El Greco in his relations to Velasquez and modern +art. He has all the authorities at his tongue's tip; he views the man +and artist from every angle. + +"Domenico El Greco died at Toledo two years before his contemporary +Cervantes," says Cossio. Domenicos Theotocopoulos was his original +name, which was softened into Domenico Theotocopuli--which, no doubt +proving too much of a tongue-twister for the Spaniards, was quickly +superseded by a capital nickname, "The Greek." His birthplace was the +island of Crete and his birth-year between 1545 and 1550. Justi was +the first to demonstrate his Cretan ancestry, which was corroborated +in 1893 by Bikelas. In 1570, we learn through a letter written by +Giulio Clovio to Cardinal Farnese, El Greco had astonished Roman +artists by his skill in portraiture. He was said to be a pupil of +Titian, on Clovio's authority. Why he went to Spain has not been +discovered. He had a son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, a sculptor and +architect. Who the mother was history does not say. The painter took +up his abode in Toledo and is not known to have left Spain thereafter. +Pacheco visited him at Toledo and reported him to be as singular as +his paintings and of an extravagant disposition. He was also called a +wit and a philosopher. He wrote on painting, sculpture, and +architecture, it is said. He made money; was, like most of his adopted +countrymen, fond of litigation; lived well, loved music--and at his +meals!--and that is all we may ever record of a busy life; for he +painted many pictures, a careful enumeration of which makes Cossio's +book valuable. + +There are Grecos scattered over Europe and the two Americas. Madrid +and Toledo boast of his best work, but as far as St. Petersburg and +Bucharest he is represented. In the United States there are eleven +examples, soon to be increased by Mr. Archer M. Huntington's recent +acquisition from the Kann collection. In Boston at the Museum there is +the portrait of Fray Paravicino, a brilliant picture. (The worthy monk +wrote four sonnets in glorification of the painter, whom he calls +"Divino Griego." Quoted in one of the Cossio appendices.) There is an +Assumption of the Virgin in Chicago at the Art Institute, and an +Apostle, belonging to Charles Deering. In Philadelphia Mr. "J. Widner" +(read P.A.B. Widener) owns a St. Francis, and at the Metropolitan +Museum, hanging in Gallery 24, there is The Adoration of the +Shepherds, a characteristic specimen of Greco's last manner, and in +excellent condition. The gallery of the late H.O. Havemeyer contains +one of the celebrated portraits of the Cardinal Inquisitor D. Fernando +Nino de Guevara, painted during the second epoch, 1594 to 1604. It +furnishes a frontispiece for the Cossio volume. The same dignitary was +again painted, a variant, which Rudolph Kann owned, and now in the +possession of Mrs. Huntington. The cardinal's head is strong, +intellectual, and his expression proud and cold. Mr. Frick, at a +private club exhibition, showed his Greco, St. Jerome, a subject of +which the painter was almost as fond as of St. Francis (of Assisi). +The National Gallery, London, owns a St. Jerome, Madrid another. Mr. +Frick's example belongs to the epoch of 1584 to 1594. Mr. Erich in New +York possesses three pictures, St. Jerome, a portrait of St. Domingo +de Guzman and a Deposition. El Greco is a painter admired by painters +for his salt individualism. Zuloaga, the Spaniard, has several; Degas, +two; the critic Duret, two; John S. Sargent, one--a St. Martin. +Durand-Ruel once owned the Annunciation, but sold it to Mrs. H.O. +Havemeyer, and the Duveens in London possess a Disrobing of Christ. At +the National Gallery there are two. + +Gautier wrote that El Greco surpassed Monk Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe in +his pell-mell of horrors; "extravagant and bizarre" are the adjectives +he employs (said of most painters whose style is unfamiliar or out of +the beaten track). In the Baptism of Christ he finds a depraved +energy, a maleficent puissance; but the ardent colours, the tonal +vivacity, and the large, free handling excite the Frenchman's +admiration. Justi avers that Greco's "craving for originality +developed incredible mannerisms. In his portraits he has delineated +the peculiar dignity of the Castilian hidalgos and the beauty of +Toledan dames with a success attained by few." R.A. Stevenson devotes +to him a paragraph in his Velasquez. Referring to the influence of El +Greco upon the greater painter, he wrote: "While Greco certainly +adopted a Spanish gravity of colouring, neither that nor his modelling +was ever subtle or thoroughly natural... Velasquez ripened with age +and practice; Greco was rather inclined to get rotten with facility." +Mr. Ricketts says that "his pictures might at times have been painted +by torchlight in a cell of the Inquisition." Richard Ford in his +handbook of Spain does not mince words: "Greco was very unequal... He +was often more lengthy and extravagant than Fuseli, and as leaden as +cholera morbus." Ritter speaks of his "symphonies in blue minor" +(evidently imitating Gautier's poem, Symphony in White-Major). In +Havelock Ellis's suggestive The Soul of Spain there is mention of +Greco--see chapter Art of Spain. Ellis says: "In his more purely +religious and supernatural scenes Greco was sometimes imaginative, but +more often bizarre in design and disconcerting in his colouring with +its insistence on chalky white, his violet shadows on pale faces, his +love of green. [Mr. Ellis finds this 'predilection for green' +significant as anticipating one of the characteristics of the Spanish +palette.] His distorted fever of movement--the lean, twisted bodies, +the frenzied, gesticulating arms, the mannerism of large calves that +taper down to pointed toes--usually fails to convince us. But in the +audacities of his colouring he revealed the possibilities of new +harmonies, of higher, brighter, cooler keys." The Count Orgaz burial +scene at Toledo Mr. Ellis does not rank among the world's great +pictures. + +There is often a depressing morbidity in Greco; Goya is sane and +healthy by comparison. Greco's big church pieces are full of religious +sentiment, but enveloped in the fumes of nightmare. Curious it was +that a stranger from Greece should have absorbed certain not +particularly healthy, even sinister, Spanish traits and developed them +to such a pitch of nervous intensity. As Arthur Symons says, his +portraits "have all the brooding Spanish soul with its proud +self-repression." Seor Cossio sums up in effect by declaring that +Venice educated Greco in his art; Titian taught him technique; +Tintoretto gave him his sense of dramatic form; Angelo his virility. +But of the strong personality which assimilated these various +influences there is no doubt when confronted with one of his canvases, +every inch of which is signed El Greco. + + + + +"VELASQUEZ" + + + +Why so well-known and authoritative a work as Velasquez, by Aureliano +de Beruete, should have been so long in reaching America is a puzzle +when you consider the velocity with which the Atlantic Ocean is +traversed by so many mediocre books on art. The first Spanish edition +of the Beruete monograph appeared about 1897; the same year saw it in +French, and from the latter tongue it was translated into English by +Hugh E. Poynter in 1906. Seor Beruete is considered with reason as +the prime living authority on the great Spanish realist, though his +study is not so voluminous as that of Carl Justi. The Bonn professor, +however, took all Spain for his province. Velasquez and His Times is +the title of his work, the first edition of which came out in 1888, +the second in 1903. Beruete (whose portrait by Sorolla was one of that +master's most characteristic pictures at the recent Hispanic Society +exhibition in New York) is not at odds on many points with Justi; but +more sceptical he is, and to R.A.M. Stevenson's list of Velasquez +pictures, two hundred and thirty-four, Beruete opposes the +comparatively meagre number of eighty-nine. He reduces the number of +sketches and waves away as spurious the Velasquez "originals" in +Italy, several in the Prado, the very stronghold of the collection; +and of the eleven in that famous cabinet of the Vienna Imperial +Museum--to which we went as to a divine service of eye and soul--he +allows only seven as authentic. The portrait of Innocent X in the +Doria palace, Rome, is naturally a masterpiece, as is the bust +portrait of the same subject at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; but the +Boston Museum full-length of Philip IV is discredited as a copy, only +the Prince Don Baltasar Carlos Attended by a Dwarf being admitted in +the company of the true Velasquezes. + +Of the "supposed portrait of Cardinal Pamphili," a real Velasquez, now +hanging in the Hispanic Society, 156th Street, Beruete writes: "In the +winter of 1902 there appeared in Paris a bust portrait of a cardinal +brought from Italy by Messrs. Trotty & Co., which had been alluded to +by Professor A. Venturi of Rome in _L'Art_. It is life size, +representing a person about thirty years of age in the dress of a +cardinal, with smiling face and black hair, moustache and pointed +beard, good carriage and a touch of levity not in keeping with the +dignity and austerity of a prince of the Church. The beretta and cape, +of a fine red colour, the latter painted in a uniform tone and without +a crease, harmonise with the roseate hue of the features, and the +plain gray background. Every detail reveals the hand of Velasquez, and +it can be classed without hesitation among the characteristic works of +his second style. It is on that ground that I make mention of it here. +However, in Rome, at the house in which this picture was found, it was +held to be the portrait of Cardinal Pamphili, nephew of Innocent X, +who according to Palomino was painted in Rome by Velasquez at the same +time as the Pontiff, that is in 1650." + +Beruete believes Palomino was wrong in declaring that Velasquez +painted the young cardinal in Rome; Madrid was the likelier city. The +style proves an earlier date than 1650. The cardinal withdrew from the +cardinalate after three years, 1644-47 > and married. The portrait was +acquired by the American artist the late Francis Lathrop. Stevenson +grants to the Metropolitan Museum a fruit-piece by Velasquez. Not so +Beruete. J. H. McFadden of Philadelphia once owned the Doa Mariana of +Austria, second wife of Philip IV, in a white-and-black dress, gold +chain over her shoulder, hair adorned with red bows and red-and-white +feather, from the Lyne-Stephens collection in the New Gallery, +1895--and is so quoted by Stevenson; but he sold the picture and +Beruete has lost track of it. + +Whereas Stevenson in his invaluable book studies his subject broadly +in chapters devoted to the dignity of the Velasquez technique, his +colour, modelling, brushwork, and his impressionism, Beruete follows a +more detailed yet simpler method. Picture by picture, in each of the +three styles--he adopts Justi's and Stevenson's classification--he +follows the painter, dealing less with the man than his work. Not that +biographical data are missing--on the contrary, there are many pages +of anecdotes as well as the usual facts--but Beruete is principally +concerned with the chronology and attribution of the pictures. He has +dug up some fresh material concerning the miserable pay Velasquez +received, rather fought for, at the court of Philip, where he was on a +par with the dwarfs, barbers, comedians, servants, and other +dependants of the royal household. + +The painter has been criticised for his attachment to the king; but as +he was not of a religious nature and did not paint religious pieces +with the gusto of his contemporaries, the court was his only hope of +existence; either court or church. He made his choice early, and while +we must regret the enormous wasting of the hours consequent upon the +fulfilment of his duties as a functionary, master of the revels, and +what not, we should not forget how extremely precarious would have +been his lot as a painter without royal favour in the Spain of those +days. He had his bed, board, house, and though he died penniless--his +good wife Juana only survived him seven days--he had the satisfaction +of knowing that he owed no man, and that his daughter had married his +pupil Mazo. Velasquez was born at Seville in 1599; died at Madrid, +1660. His real name was Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez. He was a +Silva--for the "de" was acquired from the king after much pettifoggery +on the part of that monarch with the prognathic jaw--and he was of +Portuguese blood. He signed Velasquez--a magic grouping of letters for +the lovers of art--though born as he was in Spain his forefathers came +from Portugal. The mixed blood has led to furious disputes among +hot-headed citizens of the two kingdoms. As if it much mattered. +Velasquez's son-in-law, by the way, Juan Mazo, was the author of a +number of imitations and forgeries. He was a true friend of the +picture-dealers. + +Velasquez belonged to that rare family of sane genius. He was +eminently the painter of daylight and not a nocturnal visionary, as +was Rembrandt. Shakespeare, who had all the strings to his lyre, had +also many daylight moments. Mozart always sang them, and how blithely! +No one, not Beethoven, not Raphael, not Goethe--to name three widely +disparate men of genius--saw life as steadily as the Spaniard. He is a +magnificent refutation of the madhouse doctors who swear to you that +genius is a disease. Remember, too, that the limitations of Velasquez +are clearly defined. Imagination was denied to him, asserts Beruete; +he had neither the turbulent temperament of Rubens nor possessed the +strained, harsh mysticism of El Greco--a painter of imagination and +the only painter allowed by Beruete to have affected the Velasquez +palette. In a word, Velasquez was a puzzling comminglement of the +classic and the realist. He had the repose and the firm, virile line +of the classics, while his vision of actuality has never been +surpassed. The Dutch Terburg, Vermeer, Van der Helst, Frans Hals saw +as vividly the surfaces of things material; the last alone was the +match of Velasquez in brushwork, but not Rembrandt recorded in his +Anatomy Lesson the facts of the case as did Velasquez. + +Seor Beruete wittily remarks that Los Borrachos (The Topers) of +Velasquez is the truer anatomy lesson of the two. A realist, an +impressionist, as Stevenson has it, the Spaniard was; but he was also +something more. He had a magic hand to define, the rendering of the +magical mystery of space and atmosphere. Grant that he was not a +colourist in the sense the Venetians were, or Rubens, yet how much +more subtle, more noble, more intellectual, is his restricted tonal +gamut. Those silver-grays, resonant blacks, browns, blues, and reds +sing in your memory long after you have forgotten the tumultuous +golden waves breaking upon the decorative coasts of Rubens. We are +constrained to question the easy way Beruete and other critics deny +the attributes of imagination and poetry to Velasquez. There is, +perhaps, a more sublimated poetry in his pictures than in the obvious +religious and mythological and allegorical set pieces of Rubens, +Murillo, and how many others. His realism did not run to seed in the +delineation of subject. He was as natural as Cervantes--the one great +man of Spain who may be compared to him--and he saw the larger +patterns of life, while never forgetting that the chief function of a +painter is to paint, not to "think," not to rhapsodise, not to be +"literary" on canvas. His cool, measuring eye did more than record +sordid facts. He had a sort of enraptured vision of the earth as +beautiful, the innocence of the eye we encounter in children only. +Stevenson rages at those who say that Velasquez was not a +colourist--and Beruete is of them, though he quotes with considerable +satisfaction the critical pronouncement of Royal Cortissoz (in +_Harper's Magazine_, May, 1895) that Las Meninas is "the most perfect +study of colour and values which exists." + +The truth is, Stevenson, Cortissoz, and Beruete are all three in the +right. That Velasquez, when in Rome, studied the pictures there; that +he didn't care for Raphael; that he had very much admired the +Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto; that he had admired Rubens, with whom +he associated daily on the occasion of the Flemish master's visit of +nine months to Madrid--these are truths not to be denied. Beruete +claims that the Rubens influence is not to be seen in Velasquez, only +El Greco's. Every object, living or inanimate, that swam through the +eyeballs of the Spaniard--surely the most wonderful pair of eyes in +history--was never forgotten. His powers of assimilation were +unexcelled. He saw and made note of everything, but when he painted +his spectators saw nothing of any other man, living or dead. Was not +the spiritual impulse missing in this man? He couldn't paint angels, +because he only painted what he saw; and as he never saw angels he +only painted mankind. Life, not the "subject," appealed to him. He had +little talent, less taste, for the florid decorative art of Rubens and +the Venetians; but give him a simple, human theme (not pretty or +sentimental) and he recreated it, not merely interpreted the scene; so +that Las Meninas, The Spinners (Las Hilanderas), the hunting pictures, +the various portraits of royalty, buffoons, beggars, outcasts, are the +chronicles of his time, and he its master psychologist. + +Beruete says that Ribera more than Zurbaran affected Velasquez; "El +Greco taught him the use of delicate grays in the colouring of the +flesh." Hot, hard, and dry in his first period (Borrachos), he becomes +more fluid and atmospheric in the Breda composition (The Lances), and +in the third period he has attained absolute mastery of his material. +His salary at the court was two and sixpence a day in 1628. Even Haydn +and Mozart did better as menials. Yet some historians speak of the +liberality of Philip IV. An "immortal employee" indeed, as Beruete +names his idol. Luca Giordano called Las Meninas the "theology of +painting." Wilkie declared that the Velasquez landscapes possessed +"the real sun which lights us, the air which we breathe, and the soul +and spirit of nature." "To see the Prado," exclaims Stevenson, "is to +modify one's opinion of the novelty of recent art." To-day the +impressionists and realists claim Velasquez as their patron saint as +well as artistic progenitor. The profoundest master of harmonies and +the possessor of a vision of the real world not second to Leonardo's, +the place of the Spaniard in history will never be taken from him. + +Velasquez is more modern than all the moderns; more modern than +to-morrow. That sense of the liberation of the spirit which Mr. +Berenson is fond of adducing as the grandest attribute of the Space +Composers, Raphael and the rest, may be discovered in Las Meninas, or +in The Spinners, space overhead, with mystery superadded. The brumous +North was the home of mysticism, of Gothic architecture. The note of +tragic mystery was seldom sounded by the Italians. Faith itself seems +more real in the North. It remained for Rembrandt to give it out in +his chords of _chiaroscuro_. And is there more noble, more virile +music in all art than The Surrender of Breda? + +Mr. Berenson refers only once to Velasquez and then as an "impersonal" +painter. As a counterblast to his theory of impersonality let us quote +a few lines from R.A.M. Stevenson's Velasquez (that most inspiring of +all art monographs): "Is it wonderful," he asks, "that you can apply +Morelli's principles of criticism to the Pre-Raphaelite Italian +schools; that you can point to the thumbs, fingers, poses of the head, +ovals of the face and schemes of colour that the painters learned by +heart, and can even say from whom they learned? The later Venetians +broke away, and when you come to Velasquez the system holds good as +little as it can in our own day." But this charge holds good for many +painters of the Renaissance, painters of patterns. Velasquez, like the +great prose-master of France, Gustave Flaubert, is always in +modulation. No two canvases are rhythmically alike, except in the +matter of masterfulness. He, too, was a master of magnificent prose +painting, painting worth a wilderness of makers of frozen medival +patterns. Mr. Henry B. Fuller, the author of the Chevalier di +Pensieri-Vani, once spoke of the "cosy sublimity" in Raphael's Vision +of Ezekiel; one might paraphrase the epigram by describing the +pictures of Velasquez as boxed-in eternities. Dostoevsky knew such a +sensation when he wrote of "a species of eternity within the space of +a square foot." But there are many connoisseurs who find evidences of +profounder and more nave faith in the angular loveliness of the +Flemish Primitives than in all the religious art of Italy or Spain. + + + + +GOYA + + + +I + +Goya was a Titan among artists. He once boasted that "Nature, +Velasquez, and Rembrandt are my masters." It was an excellent +self-criticism. He not only played the Velasquez gambit in his +portraits, the gambit of Rembrandt in his sombre imaginative pieces, +but he boldly annexed all Spain for his sinister and turbulent art. He +was more truly Spanish in the range and variety of his performances +than any Spanish-born painter since Velasquez. Without the sanity, +solidity, nobility of Velasquez, whose vision and voice he never +possessed; without the luscious sweetness of Murillo, whose sweetness +he lacked, he had something of El Greco's fierceness, and much of the +vigour of Ribera. He added to these influences a temperament that was +exuberant, fantastic, morose, and pessimistic yet humorous, sarcastic, +sometimes melting, and ever masterful. He reminds one of an +overwhelming force. The man dominates the painter. A dozen comparisons +force themselves upon you when the name of Goya is pronounced: comets, +cataracts, whirlwinds, and wild animals. Anarch and courtier, atheist +and decorator of churches, his "whole art seems like a bullfight," +says Richard Muther. One might improve on this by calling him a subtle +bull, a Hercules who had read Byron. "Nature, Velasquez, and +Rembrandt!" cries MacColl in a too brief summary. "How inadequate the +list! Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Legion had a hand in the teaching." + +Goya incarnated the renaissance of old Spain and its art. Spanish art +has always come from without, for its foundations were northern and +Flemish. The Van Eycks and Van der Weyden were studied closely; Jan +Van Eyck visited Madrid. The Venetian influence was strong, and El +Greco his life long, and a pupil of Titian as he was, this gloomy +painter with the awkward name of Theotocopoulo endeavoured to forget +his master and became more Spanish than the Spanish. Ribera, +emotional, dramatic, realistic, religious, could sound the chords of +tenderness without the sentimentalism of Murillo. Goya stems more from +Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa than from any of his predecessors, except +Velasquez. The presence of Tiepolo, the last of the Venetians, in +Spain may have influenced him. Certainly Raphael Mengs, the "Saxon +pedant," did not--Mengs associated with Tiepolo at Madrid. It is in +company with the bravos of the brush, Caravaggio and Rosa, that Goya +is closely affiliated. We must go to Gustave Courbet for a like +violence of temperament; both men painted _con furia_; both were +capable of debauches in work; Goya could have covered the walls of +hell with diabolic frescoes. In music three men are of a like ilk: +Berlioz, Paganini, Liszt. Demoniacal, charged with electric energy, +was this trinity, and Goya could have made it a quartet. + +But if Spain was not a country of original artists--as was Italy, for +example--she developed powerful and astounding individualities. +Character is her _leit motv_ in the symphony of the nations. The rich +virility and majestic seriousness of her men, their aptitudes for war, +statesmanship, and drama, are borne out in her national history. +Perhaps the climate plays its part. Havelock Ellis thinks so. "The +hard and violent effects, the sharp contrasts, the strong colours, the +stained and dusky clouds, looking as if soaked in pigment, may well +have affected the imagination of the artist," he writes. Certainly the +landscapes of Velasquez could not be more Spanish than they are; and, +disagreeing with those who say that he had no feeling for nature, the +bits of countryside and mountain Goya shows are truly peninsular in +their sternness. It may be well to remark here that the softness of +Tuscany is not to be found in the lean and often arid aspects of +Spain. Spain, too, is romantic--but after its own fashion. Goya +revived the best traditions of his country's art; he was the last of +the great masters and the first of the moderns. Something neurotic, +modern, disquieting, threads his work with devilish irregularity. He +had not the massive temper of Velasquez, of those men who could paint +day after day, year after year, until death knocked at their ateliers. +As vigorous as Rubens in his sketches, Goya had not the steady, slow +nerves of that master. He was very unequal. His life was as disorderly +as Hals's or Steen's, but their saving phlegm was missing. In an +eloquent passage--somewhere in his English Literature--Taine speaks of +the sanity of genius as instanced by Shakespeare. Genius narrowly +escapes nowadays being a cerebral disorder, though there was Marlowe +to set off Shakespeare's serene spirit, and even of Michael Angelo's +mental health and morals his prime biographer, Parlagreco, does not +speak in reassuring terms. Goya was badly balanced, impulsive, easily +angered, and not slow to obey the pull of his irritable motor centres +when aroused. A knife was always within reach. He drove the Duke of +Wellington from his presence because the inquisitive soldier asked too +many questions while his portrait was being blocked out. A sword or a +dagger did the business; but Wellington returned to the studio and, as +Mr. Rothenstein tells us, the portrait was finished and is now at +Strathfieldsaye. A sanguine is in the British Museum. His exploits in +Rome may have been exaggerated, though he was quite capable of eloping +with a nun from a convent, as is related, or going around the top of +the Cecilia Metella tomb supported only by his thumbs. The agility and +strength of Goya were notorious, though in a land where physical +prowess is not the exception. He was picador, matador, banderillero by +turns in the bull ring. After a stabbing affray he escaped in the +disguise of a bull-fighter. + +If he was a _dompteur_ of dames and cattle, he was the same before his +canvas. Anything that came to hand served him as a brush, an old brown +stick wrapped up in cloth, a spoon--with the latter he executed that +thrilling Massacre, May 2, 1808, in the Prado. He could have painted +with a sabre or on all fours. Reckless to the degree of insanity, he +never feared king or devil, man or the Inquisition. The latter reached +out for him, but he had disappeared, after suffering a dagger-thrust +in the back. When on the very roof of his prosperity, he often slipped +downstairs to the company of varlets and wenches; this friend of the +Duchess of Alba seemed happier dicing, drinking, dancing in the +suburbs with base-born people and gipsies. A _genre_ painter, Goya +delighted in depicting the volatile, joyous life of a now-vanished +epoch. He was a historian of manner as well as of disordered souls, +and an avowed foe of hypocrisy. + +Not "poignantly genteel," to use a Borrovian phrase, was he. Yet he +could play the silken courtier with success. The Arabs say that "one +who has been stung by a snake shivers at a string," and perhaps the +violence with which the painter attacked the religious may be set down +to the score of his youthful fears and flights when the Inquisition +was after him. He was a sort of Voltaire in black and white. The +corruption of churchmen and court at this epoch seems almost +incredible. Goya noted it with a boldness that meant but one +thing--friends high in power. This was the case. He was admired by the +king, Charles IV, and admired--who knows how much!--by his queen, +Marie Louise of Parma, Goya painted their portraits; also painted the +portraits of the royal favourite and prime minister and Prince de la +Paz, Manuel Godoy--favourite of both king and queen. Him, Goya left in +effigy for the scorn of generations to come. "A grocer's family who +have won the big lottery prize," was the witty description of +Thophile Gautier when he saw the picture of the royal family. + +Curiously enough, this Goya, who from the first plucked success from +its thorny setting, was soon forgotten, and until Gautier in 1840 +recorded his impressions in his brilliant Voyage en Espagne, critical +literature did not much concern itself with the versatile Spaniard. +And Gautier's sketch of a few pages still remains the most +comprehensive estimate. From it all have been forced to borrow; +Richard Muther in his briskly enthusiastic monograph and the section +in his valuable History of Modern Painting; Charles Yriarte, Will +Rothenstein, Lafond, Lefort, Cond de la Vinaza--all have read Gautier +to advantage. Valerian von Loga has devoted a study to the etchings, +and Don Juan de la Rada has made a study of the frescoes in the church +of San Antonio de la Florida; Carl Justi, Stirling Maxwell, C.G. +Hartley should also be consulted. Yriarte is interesting, inasmuch as +he deals with the apparition of Goya in Rome, an outlaw, but a blithe +one, who, notebook in hand, went through the Trastevere district +sketching with ferocious rapidity the attitudes and gestures of the +vivacious population. A man after Stendhal's heart, this Spaniard. And +in view of his private life one is tempted to add--and after the +heart, too, of Casanova. Notwithstanding, he was an unrivalled +interpreter of child-life. Some of his painted children are of a +dazzling sweetness. + + + +GOYA + + + +II + +Francisco Jos de Goya y Lucientes was born March 30 (or 31), 1746, at +Fuentetodos, near Saragossa, Aragon. He died at Bordeaux, France, +where he had gone for his health, April 16, 1828--Calvert, possibly by +a pen slip, makes him expire a month earlier. He saw the beginnings of +French romanticism, as he was himself a witness of the decadence of +Spanish art. But his spirit has lived on in Manet and Zuloaga. +Decadent he was; a romantic before French romanticism, he yet had +borrowed from an earlier France. Some of his gay Ftes Champtres +recall the influence of Watteau--a Watteau without the sweet elegiac +strain. He has been called a Spanish Hogarth--not a happy simile. +Hogarth preaches; Goya never; satirists both, Goya never deepened by a +pen stroke the didactic side. His youth was not extraordinary in +promise; his father and mother were poor peasants. The story of his +discovery by a monk of Saragosela--Father Felix Salvador of the +Carthusian convent of Aula Dei--is not missing. He studied with Jos +Martinez. He ran away in 1766. He remained, say some, in Italy from +1769 to 1774; but in 1771 he appeared in Saragossa again, and the year +1772 saw him competing for the painting about to be undertaken in the +cathedral. He married Josefa Bayeu, the sister of the court painter. +He has told us what he thought of his jealous, intriguing +brother-in-law in a portrait. In 1775 he was at Madrid. From 1776 he +executed forty-six tapestry cartoons. In 1779 he presented to the king +his etchings after Velasquez. His rise was rapid. He painted the +queen, with her false teeth, false hair, and her infernal simper, and +this portrait was acclaimed a masterpiece. + +His religious frescoes, supposed to be _ad majorem Dei gloriam_, were +really for the greater glory of Goya. They are something more than +secular, often little short of blasphemous. That they were tolerated +proves the cynical temper of his times. When the fat old scoundrel of +a Bourbon king ran away with all his court and the pusillanimous +Joseph Bonaparte came upon the scene, Goya swerved and went through +the motions of loyalty, a thing that rather disturbs the admirers of +the supposedly sturdy republican. But he was only marking time. He +left a terrific arraignment of war and its horrors. Nor did he spare +the French. Callot, Hell-Breughel, are outdone in these swift, ghastly +memoranda of misery, barbarity, rapine, and ruin. The hypocrite +Ferdinand VII was no sooner on the throne of his father than Goya, hat +in hand but sneer on lip and twinkle in eye, approached him, and after +some parleying was restored to royal favour. Goya declared that as an +artist he was not personally concerned in the pranks of the whirligig +politic. Nevertheless he was bitterly chagrined at the twist of +events, and, an old man, he retired to his country house, where he +etched and designed upon its walls startling fancies. He died +disillusioned, and though nursed by some noble countrymen, his career +seemed to illustrate that terrifying picture of his invention--a +skeleton lifts its gravestone and grinningly traces with bony finger +in the dust the word _Nada_--Nothing! Overtaxed by the violence of his +life and labours--he left a prodigious amount of work behind +him--soured by satiety, all spleen and rage, he was a broken-down +Lucifer, who had trailed his wings in the mud. But who shall pass +judgment upon this unhappy man? Perhaps, as he saw the "glimmering +square" grow less, the lament of Cardinal Wolsey may have come to a +brain teeming with memories. Goya had always put his king before his +God. But in his heart he loved the old romantic faith--the faith that +hovered in the background of his art. Goya is not the first son of his +mother church who denied her from sheer perversity. What a nation! +Cervantes and Lope da Vega, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada--most glorious +of her sex, saint and genius--and Goya! Spain is the land of great and +diverse personalities. But with Calderon we must now say: "Let us to +our ship, for here all is shadowy and unsettled." + +Goya, as Baudelaire pointed out more than half a century ago, executed +his etchings by combining aquatint and the use of the dry point. A few +years before his death he took up lithography, then a novelty. His +Caprices, Proverbs, and Horrors of War may outlive his paintings. His +colour scheme was not a wide one, blacks, reds, browns, and yellows +often playing solo; but all modern impressionism may be seen on his +canvases--harsh dissonances, dots, dabs, spots, patches, heavy planes, +strong rhythmic effects of lighting, heavy impasto, luminous +atmosphere, air, sunshine, and vibrating movements; also the +strangeness of his material. Manet went to him a beginner. After +studying the Maja desnuda at the Prado Museum he returned to France +and painted the Olympe, once of the Luxembourg, now in the Louvre. The +balcony scenes of Goya, with their manolas--old-fashioned +grisettes--must have stirred Manet; recall the Frenchman's Balcony. +And the bull-fights? Oh! what an iron-souled master was there--Goya +when he slashed a bull in the arena tormented by the human brutes! +None of his successors matches him. The same is the case with that +diverting, devilish, savoury, and obscene series he called Caprices. +It is worth remembering that Delacroix was one of the first artists in +Paris who secured a set of these rare plates. The witch's sabbaths and +the modern version of them, prostitution and its symbolism, filled the +brain of Goya. He always shocks any but robust nerves with his hybrid +creatures red in claw and foaming at mouth as they fight in midair, +hideous and unnamable phantoms of the dark. His owls are theologians. +The females he often shows make us turn aside our head and shudder. +With implacable fidelity he displayed the reverse of war's heroic +shield. It is something more than hell. + +Sattler, Charlet, Raffet, James Ensor, Rethel, De Groux, Rops, Edvard +Mnch (did you ever see his woman wooed by a skeleton?), and the rest +of these delineators of the morbid and macabre acknowledge Goya as +their progenitor. He must have been a devil-worshipper. He pictures +the goat devil, horns and hoofs. Gautier compares him to E.T.W. +Hoffmann--Poe not being known in Paris at that time--but it is a +rather laboured comparison, for there was a profoundly human side to +the Spaniard. His perception of reality was of the solidest. He had +lived and loved and knew before Flaubert that if the god of the +Romantics was an upholsterer the god of eighteenth-century Spain was +an executioner. The professed lover of the Duchess of Alba, he painted +her nude, and then, hearing that the Duke might not like the theme so +handled, he painted her again, and clothed, but more insolently +uncovered than before. At the Spanish museum in New York you may see +another portrait of this bold beauty with the name of Goya scratched +in the earth at her feet. Her attitude is characteristic of the +intrigue, which all Madrid knew and approved. At home sat Mrs. Goya +with her twenty children. + +Goya was a man of striking appearance. Slender in youth, a graceful +dancer, in middle life he had the wide shoulders and bull neck of an +athlete. He was the terror of Madrilean husbands. His voice had +seductive charm. He could twang the guitar and fence like ten devils. +A gamester, too. In a word, a figure out of the Renaissance, when the +deed trod hard on the heels of the word. One of his self-portraits +shows him in a Byronic collar, the brow finely proportioned, marked +mobile features, sombre eyes--the ideal Don Juan Tenorio to win the +foolish heart of an Emma Bovary or a bored noblewoman. Another, with +its savage eye--it is a profile--and big beaver head-covering, recalls +Walt Whitman's "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." A giant +egoist, and as human, all too human, a fellow as Spain ever begot, +Goya is only hinted at in Baudelaire's searching quatrain beginning: +"Goya, cauchemar plein de choses inconnues." _Fleurs du Mal_ would be +a happy title for the work of Francisco Goya if to "The Flowers of +Evil" were added "and Wisdom." Goya is often cruel and lascivious and +vulgar, but he is as great a philosopher as painter. And to offset his +passionate gloom there are his visions of a golden Spain no longer in +existence; happy, gorgeous of costume, the Spain of sudden coquetries, +of fans, masques, bull-fights, and fandangos, of a people dancing on +the rim of a fire-filled mountain, pious, capricious, child-like, +romantic, and patriotic--the Spain of the eighteenth century. Goya is +its spokesman, as is Velasquez the mirror of Philip's more spacious +times. Velasquez--Goya! poles asunder, yet both born to the artistic +purple. And the stately aristocrat who signed himself Velasquez is not +more in tune with the twentieth-century _Zeitgeist_ than that +coarse-fibred democrat of genius, Francisco Goya. + + + + +FORTUNY + + + +Mariano Fortuny: what a magic-breeding name! The motto of this lucky +Spanish painter might have been "Fortuny Fortunatus." Even his sudden +death, at the early age of thirty-six, came after he had executed a +number of masterpieces, an enormous quantity of water-colours, +etchings, ceramics, damascene swords and chased ornaments; it followed +on the heels of sudden glory. His name was in the mouth of artistic +Europe, and the sale of the contents of his studio at Rome in 1875 +brought eight hundred thousand francs. Yet so slippery is fame that +Fortuny's name to-day is seldom without a brace of epithets, such as +"garish," or "empty." His work is neither. He is a virtuoso. So was +Tiepolo. He is a Romantic; so the generation preceding him. The +Orientalist par excellence, he has somehow been confounded with +Meissonier and Grme, has been called glittering like the former, +hard as was the latter. It is true there are no emotional undertones +in his temperament, the brilliant overtones predominating; but it is +also true that when he died his manner was changing. He had said that +he was tired of the "gay rags" of the eighteenth century, and his +Strand of Portici shows a new line of departure. Edouard Manet made +special appeal to Fortuny; Manet, who had derived from Goya, whose +Spanish _fond_ is undeniable. Perhaps the thrice-brilliant Fortuny's +conscience smote him when he saw a Frenchman so successfully absorbing +the traditions of Goya; but it was not to be. He passed away at the +very top of his renown, truly a favourite of the gods. He was admired, +imitated, above all parodied; though, jealously as are his pictures +guarded, he has been put on the shelf like one of the amazing painted +bibelots in his work. + +The injustice of this is patent. Between Fortuny and Meissonier there +lies the gulf that separates the genius and the hard-working man of +talent. Nevertheless Meissonier's statue is in the garden of the +Louvre, Meissonier is extolled as a master, while Fortuny is usually +described in patronising terms as a facile trifler. The reverse is the +truth. No one has painted sunlight with more intensity; he was an +impressionist before the word was coined. He is a colourist almost as +sumptuous as Monticelli, with a precision of vision never attained by +the Marseilles rhapsodist. His figures are as delicious as Watteau's +or Debucourt's--he recalls the latter frequently--and as an +Orientalist he ranks all but a few. Grme, Guillaumet, Fromentin, +Huguet are not to be mentioned in the same breath with Fortuny as to +the manipulation of material; and has Guillaumet done anything +savouring more of the mysterious East than Fortuny's At the Gate of +the Seraglio? The magician of jewelled tones, he knew all the subtler +modulations. His canvases vibrate, they emit sparks of sunlight, his +shadows are velvety and warm. Compared with such a picture as The +Choice of a Model, the most laboriously minute Meissonier is as cold +and dead as a photograph--Meissonier, who was a capital fan painter, a +patient miniaturist without colour talent, a myopic delineator of +costumes, who, as Manet said, pasted paper soldiers on canvas and +called the machine a battle-field. + +The writer recalls the sensations once evoked by a close view of +Fortuny's Choice of a Model at Paris years ago, and at that time in +the possession of Mr. Stewart. Psychology is not missing in this +miracle of virtuosity; the nude posing on the marble table, the +absolute beauty of the drawing, the colouring, the contrast of the +richly variegated marble pillars in the background, the +eighteenth-century costumes of the Academicians so scrupulously yet so +easily set forth, all made a dazzling ensemble. Since Fortuny turned +the trick a host of spurious pictures has come overseas, and we now +say "Vibert" at the same time as "Fortuny," just as some enlightened +persons couple the names of Ingres and Bouguereau. In the kingdom of +the third rate the mediocre is conqueror. + +Listen to this description of La Vicaria (The Spanish Wedding), which +first won for its painter his reputation. Begun in 1868, it was +exhibited at Goupil's, Paris, the spring of 1870 (some say 1869), when +the artist was thirty-two years old. Thophile Gautier--whose genius +and Thodore de Banville's have analogies with Fortuny's in the matter +of surfaces and astounding virtuosity--went up in the air when he saw +the work, and wrote a feuilleton that is still recalled by the old +guard. The following, however, is not by Gautier, but from the pen of +Dr. Richard Muther, the erudite German critic: "A marriage is taking +place in the sacristy of a rococo church in Madrid. The walls are +covered with faded Cordova leather hangings figured in gold and dull +colours, and a magnificent rococo screen separates the sacristy from +the middle aisle. Venetian lustres are suspended from the ceiling, +pictures of martyrs, Venetian glasses in carved oval frames hang on +the wall, richly ornamented wooden benches and a library of missals +and gospels in sparkling silver clasps, and shining marble tables and +glistening braziers form part of the scene in which the marriage +contract is being signed. The costumes are those of the time of Goya. +An old beau is marrying a young and beautiful girl. With affected +grace and a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered hat +under his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature in the +place which the _escribano_ points out with an obsequious bow. He is +arrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing a white silk +dress trimmed with flowered lace and has a wreath of orange blossoms +in her luxuriant black hair. As a girl friend is talking to her she +examines with abstracted attention the pretty little pictures upon her +fan, the finest she ever possessed. A very piquant little head she +has, with her long lashes and black eyes. Then, in the background, +follow the witnesses, and first of all a young lady in a swelling silk +dress of the brightest rose colour. Beside her is one of the +bridegroom's friends in a cabbage-green coat with long flaps and a +shining belt, from which a gleaming sabre hangs. The whole picture is +a marvellous assemblage of colours in which tones of Venetian glow and +strength, the tender pearly gray beloved of the Japanese, and a +melting neutral brown each sets off the other and gives a shimmering +effect to the entire mass." + +Fortuny was a gay master of character and comedy as well as of +bric-a-brac. Still life he painted as no one before or after him; if +Chardin is the Velasquez of vegetables, Fortuny is the Rossini of the +rococo; such lace-like filigrees, _fiorturi_, marbles that are of +stone, men and women that are alive, not of marble (like +Alma-Tadema's). The artificiality of his work is principally in the +choice of a subject, not in the performance. How luminous and silky +are his blacks may be noted at the Metropolitan Museum in his portrait +of a Spanish lady. There is nothing of the _petit-matre_ in the +sensitive and adroit handling of values. The rather triste expression, +the veiled look of the eyes, the _morbidezza_ of the flesh tones, and +the general sense of amplitude and grace give us a Fortuny who knew +how to paint broadly. The more obvious and dashing side of him is +present in the Arabian Fantaisie of the Vanderbilt Gallery. It must be +remembered that he spent some time copying, at Madrid, Velasquez and +Goya, and as Camille Mauclair enthusiastically declares, these copies +are literal "identifications." They are highly prized by the Marquise +Carcano (who owned the Vicaria), Madrazo, and the Baron Davillieu--the +last named the chief critical authority on Fortuny. + +In the history of the arts there are cases such as Fortuny's, of +Mozart, Chopin, Raphael, and some others, whose precocity and +prodigious powers of production astonished their contemporaries. +Fortuny, whose full name was Mariano Jos Maria Bernardo Fortuny y +Carb, was born at Reus, a little town in the province of Tarragona, +near Barcelona. He was very poor, and at the age of twelve an orphan. +His grandfather, a carpenter, went with the lad on foot through the +towns of Catalonia exhibiting a cabinet containing wax figures painted +by Mariano and perhaps modelled by him. He began carving and daubing +at the age of five; a regular little fingersmith, his hands were never +idle. He secured by the promise of talent a pension of forty-two +francs a month and went to Barcelona to study at the Academy. Winning +the prize of Rome in 1857, he went there and copied old masters until +1860, when, the war between Spain and Morocco breaking out, he went to +Morocco on General Prim's staff, and for five or six months his brain +was saturated with the wonders of Eastern sunlight, exotic hues, +beggars, gorgeous rugs, snake-charmers, Arabs afoot or circling on +horseback with the velocity of birds, fakirs, all the huge glistening +febrile life he was later to interpret with such charm and exactitude. + +He returned to Rome. He made a second trip to Africa. He returned to +Spain. Barcelona gave him a pension of a hundred and thirty-two francs +a month, which amount was kept up later by the Duke de Rianzars until +1867. He went to Paris in 1866, was taken up by the Goupils, knew +Meissonier and worked occasionally with Grme. His rococo pictures, +his Oriental work set Paris ablaze. He married the daughter of the +Spanish painter Federigo Madrazo, and visited at Madrid, Granada, +Seville, Rome, and, in 1874, London. He contracted a pernicious fever +at Rome and died there, November 21, 1874, at the age of thirty-six. +His funeral was imposing, many celebrities of the world of art +participating. He was buried in the Campo Varano. + +In 1866 at Rome he began etching, and in fifteen months finished a +series of masterpieces. His line, surprisingly agile and sinuous, has +the finesse of Goya--whom he resembled at certain points. He used +aquatint with full knowledge of effects to be produced, and at times +he recalls Rembrandt in the depth of his shadows. His friend the +painter Henri Regnault despaired in the presence of such versatility, +such speed and ease of workmanship. He wrote: "The time I spent with +Fortuny is haunting me still. What a magnificent fellow he is! He +paints the most marvellous things, and is the master of us all. I wish +I could show you the two or three pictures he has in his hand or his +etchings and water-colours. They inspired me with a real disgust of my +own. Ah, Fortuny, you spoil my sleep!" + +Standing aloof from the ideas and tendencies of his times and not a +sweeper of the chords that stir in human nature the heroic or the +pathetic, it is none the less uncritical to rank this Spaniard as a +brainless technician. Everything is relative, and the scale on which +Fortuny worked was as true a medium for the exhibition of his genius +as a museum panorama. Let us not be misled by the worship of the +elephantine. It is characteristic of his temperament that the big +battle piece he was commissioned by the Barcelona Academy to paint was +never finished. Not every one who goes to Rome does as the Romans do. +Dowered by nature with extraordinary acuity of vision, with a +romantic, passionate nature and a will of steel, Fortuny was bound to +become a great painter. His manual technique bordered on the fabulous; +he had the painter's hand, as his fellow-countryman Pablo de Sarasate +had the born hand of the violinist. That he spent the brief years of +his life in painting the subjects he did is not a problem to be posed, +for, as Henry James has said, it is always dangerous to challenge an +artist's selection of subject. Why did Goya conceive his _Caprichos_? +The love of decorative beauty in Fortuny was not bedimmed by +criticism. He had the lust of eye which not the treasures of Ormuz and +Ind, or ivory, apes, and peacocks, could satisfy. If he loved the +kaleidoscopic East, he also knew his Spain. We have seen at the +Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts a tiny picture, the court-yard of a +Spanish inn through which passes a blinding shaft of sunlight, which +would make envious Seor Sorolla. Fortuny has personal charm, a +quality usually missing nowadays, for painters in their desire to be +truthful are tumbling head over heels into the prosaic. Individuality +is vanishing in the wastes of an over-anxious realism. If Fortuny is a +daring virtuoso on one or two strings, his palette is ever enchanting. +Personally he was a handsome man, with a distinguished head, his body +broad and muscular and capable of enduring fatigues that would have +killed most painters. Allied to this powerful physique was a seductive +sensibility. This peasant-born painter was an aristocrat of art. Old +Mother Nature is an implacable ironist. + + + + +SOROLLA Y BASTIDA + + + +We might say of the Spanish painter Joaqun Sorolla y Bastida that he +was one of those who came into the world with a ray of sunshine in +their brains--altering the phrase of Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Seor +Sorolla is also one of the half-dozen (are there so many?) great +living painters. He belongs to the line of Velasquez and Goya, and he +seldom recalls either. Under the auspices of the Hispanic Society of +America there was an exhibition of his works in 1909, some two hundred +and fifty in all, hung in the museum of the society, West 156th +Street, near Broadway. The liveliest interest was manifested by the +public and professional people in this display. Those who saw +Sorolla's art at the Paris Exposition, 1900, and at the Georges Petit +Gallery, Paris, a few years ago need not be reminded of his virile +quality and masterly brush-work. Some art lovers in this city are +aware of his Sad Inheritance, the property of Mr. John E. Berwind, +which has been hung in the Sunday-school room of the Ascension Church, +Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. It is one of the artist's few pictures +in which he feels the _Weltschmerz_. His is a nature bubbling over +with health and happiness. + +He is a Valencian, was born in 1863 of poor parents, and by reason of +his native genius and stubborn will power he became what he is--the +painter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let there be no mincing +of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet painted so +directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard. He is an +impressionist, but not of the school of Monet. His manner is his own, +cunningly compounded as it is of the proceeds of half a dozen artists. +His trip to Rome resulted in nothing but a large eclectic canvas +without individuality; what had this pagan in common with saints or +sinners! He relates that in Paris Bastien-Lepage and Menzel affected +him profoundly. This statement is not to be contradicted; nevertheless +Sorolla is the master of those two masters in his proper province of +the portrayal of outdoor life. Degas was too cruel when he called +Bastien the "Bouguereau of the modern movement"; Bastien academicised +Manet and other moderns. He said nothing new. As for Menzel, it would +be well here to correct the notion bandied about town that he +discovered impressionism before the French. He did not. He went to +Paris in 1867. Meissonier at first, and later Courbet, influenced him. +His Rolling Mill was painted in 1876. It is very Courbet. The Paris +Exposition, 1867, picture shows the influence of Monet--who was in the +Salon of 1864; and Monet was begat by Boudin, who stemmed from +Jongkind; and Jongkind studied with Isabey; and they came from Turner, +idolater of the Sun. Remember, too, that Corot and Courbet called +Eugne Boudin "roi des ciels." Monet not only studied with him but +openly admitted that he had learned everything from him, while Boudin +humbly remarked that he had but entered the door forced by the +Dutchman Jongkind. Doubtless Sorolla found what he was looking for in +Bastien, though it would be nearer the truth to say that he studied +the Barbizons and impressionists and took what he needed from them +all. + +He is a temperament impressionable to the sun, air, trees, children, +women, men, cattle, landscapes, the ocean. Such swift, vivid notation +of the fluid life about him is rare; it would be photographic were it +not the personal memoranda of a selecting eye; it would be transitory +impressionism were it not for a hand magical in its manipulation of +pigments. Brain and brush collaborate with an instantaneity that does +not perplex because the result is so convincing. We do not intend to +quote that musty flower of rhetoric which was a favourite with our +grandfathers. It was the fashion then to say that +Nature--capitalised--took the brush from the hand of the painter, +meaning some old duffer who saw varnish instead of clear colour, and +painted the picture for him. Sorolla is receptive; he does not attempt +to impose upon nature an arbitrary pattern, but he sees nature with +his own eyes, modified by the thousand subtle experiences in which he +has steeped his brain. He has the tact of omission very well +developed. After years of labour he has achieved a personal vision. It +is so completely his that to copy it would be to perpetrate a +burlesque. He employs ploys the divisional _taches_ of Monet, spots, +cross-hatchings, big sabre-like strokes la John Sargent, indulges in +smooth sinuous silhouettes, or huge splotches, refulgent patches, +explosions, vibrating surfaces; surfaces that are smooth and oily +surfaces, as in his waters, that are exquisitely translucent. You +can't pin him down to a particular formula. His technique in other +hands would be coarse, crashing, brassy, bald, and too fortissimo. It +sometimes is all these discouraging things. It is too often deficient +in the finer modulations. But he makes one forget this by his +_entrain_, sincerity, and sympathy with his subject. As a composer he +is less satisfactory; it is the first impression or nothing in his +art. Apart from his luscious, tropical colour, he is a sober narrator +of facts. Ay, but he is a big chap, this amiable little Valencian with +a big heart and a hand that reaches out and grabs down clouds, skies, +scoops up the sea, and sets running, wriggling, screaming a joyful +band of naked boys and girls over the golden summer sands in a sort of +ecstatic symphony of pantheism. + +How does he secure such intensity of pitch in his painting of +atmosphere, of sunshine? By a convention, just as the falsification of +shadows by rendering them darker than nature made the necessary +contrasts in the old formula. Brightness in clear-coloured shadows is +the key-note of impressionistic open-air effects. W.C. +Brownell--French Art--puts it in this way: "Take a landscape with a +cloudy sky, which means diffused light in the old sense of the term, +and observe the effect upon it of a sudden burst of sunlight. What is +the effect where considerable portions of the scene are suddenly +thrown into marked shadow, as well as others illuminated with intense +light? Is the absolute value of the parts in shadow lowered or raised? +Raised, of course, by reflected light. Formerly, to get the contrast +between sunlight and shadow in proper scale the painter would have +painted the shadows darker than they were before the sun appeared. +Relatively they are darker, since their value, though heightened, is +raised infinitely less than the parts in sunlight. Absolutely, their +value is raised considerably. If, therefore, they are painted lighter +than they were before the sun appeared they in themselves seem truer. +The part of Monet's pictures that is in shadow is measurably true, far +truer than it would have been if painted under the old theory of +correspondence, and had been unnaturally darkened to express the +relation of contrast between shadow and sunlight." + +Like Turner, Monet forced the colour of his shadows, as MacColl points +out, and like Monet, Sorolla forces the colour of his shadows--but +what a compeller of beautiful shadows--forces the key to the very +verge of the luminous abyss. Seor Beruete, the Velasquez expert, +truthfully says of Sorolla's method: "His canvases contain a great +variety of blues and violets, balanced and juxtaposed with reds and +yellows. These, and the skilful use of white, provide him with a +colour scheme of great simplicity, originality, and beauty." There are +no non-transparent shadows, and his handling of blacks reveals a +sensitive feeling for values. Consider that black-gowned portrait of +his wife. His underlying structural sense is never obscured by his +fat, flowing brush. + +It must not be supposed that because of Sorolla's enormous _brio_ his +general way of entrapping nature is brutal. He is masculine and +absolutely free from the neurasthenic _morbidezza_ of his +fellow-countryman Zuloaga. (And far from attaining that painter's +inches as a psychologist.) For the delineation of moods nocturnal, of +poetic melancholy, of the contemplative aspect of life we must not go +to Sorolla. He is not a thinker. He is the painter of bright mornings +and brisk salt breezes. He is half Greek. There is Winckelmann's +_Heiterkeit_, blitheness, in his groups of romping children, in their +unashamed bare skins and nave attitudes. Boys on Valencian beaches +evidently believe in Adamic undress. Nor do the girls seem to care. +Stretched upon his stomach on the beach, a youth, straw-hatted, stares +at the spume of the rollers. His companion is not so unconventionally +disarrayed, and as she has evidently not eaten of the poisonous apple +of wisdom she is free from embarrassment. Balzac's two infants, +innocent of their sex, could not be less carefree than the Sorolla +children. How tenderly, sensitively, he models the hardly nubile forms +of maidens. The movement of their legs as they race the strand, their +dash into the water, or their nervous pausing at the rim of the +wet--here is poetry for you, the poetry of glorious days in +youth-land. Curiously enough his types are for the most part more +international than racial; that is, racial as are Zuloaga's Basque +brigands, _manolas_, and gipsies. + +But only this? Can't he paint anything but massive oxen wading to +their buttocks in the sea; or fisher boats with swelling sails +blotting out the horizon; or a girl after a dip standing, as her +boyish cavalier covers her with a robe--you see the clear, pink flesh +through her garb; or vistas of flower gardens with roguish maidens and +courtly parks; peasants harvesting, working women sorting raisins; +sailors mending nets, boys at rope-making--is all this great art? +Where are the polished surfaces of the cultured studio worker; where +the bric-a-brac which we inseparably connect with pseudo-Spanish art? +You will not find any of them. Sorolla, with good red blood in his +veins, the blood of a great, misunderstood race, paints what he sees +on the top of God's earth. He is not a book but a normal nature-lover. +He is in love with light, and by his treatment of relative values +creates the illusion of sun-flooded landscapes. He does not cry for +the "sun," as did Oswald Alving; it comes to him at the beckoning of +his brush. His many limitations are but the defects of his good +qualities. + +Sorolla is sympathetic. He adores babies and delights in dancing. His +babies are irresistible. He can sound the _Mitleid_ motive without a +suspicion of odious sentimentality. What charm there is in some of his +tiny children as they lean their heads on their mothers! They fear the +ocean, yet are fascinated by it. Near by is a mother and child in bed. +They sleep. The right hand of the mother stretches, instinctively, +toward the infant. It is the sweet, unconscious gesture of millions of +mothers. On one finger of the hand there is just a hint of gold from a +ring. The values of the white counterpane and the contrast of +dark-brown hair on the pillow are truthfully expressed. One mother and +babe, all mothers and babes, are in this picture. Turn to that old +rascal in a brown cloak, who is about to taste a glass of wine. A snag +gleams white in his sly, thirsty mouth. The wine tastes fine, eh! You +recall Goya. As for the boys swimming, the sensations of darting and +weaving through velvety waters are produced as if by wizardry. But you +never think of Sorolla's line, for line, colour, idea, actuality are +merged. The translucence of this sea in which the boys plash and +plunge is another witness to the verisimilitude of Sorolla's vision. +Boecklin's large canvas at the new Pinakothek, Munich, is often cited +as a _tour_ _de force_ of water painting. We allude to the mermaids +and mermen playing in the trough of a greenish sea. It is mere +"property" water when compared to Sorolla's closely observed and +clearly reproduced waves. Rhythm--that is the prime secret of his +vitality. + +His portraiture, when he is interested in his sitters, is excellent. +Beruete is real, so Cossio, the author of the El Greco biography; so +the realistic novelist Blanco Ibaez; but the best, after those of +his, Sorolla's, wife and children, is that of Frantzen, a +photographer, in the act of squeezing the bulb. It is a frank +characterisation. The various royalties and high-born persons whose +counterfeit presentments are accomplished with such genuine effort are +interesting; but the heart is missing. Cleverness there is in the +portraits of Alphonse; and his wife's gorgeous costume should be the +envy of our fashionable portrait manufacturers. It is under the skies +that Sorolla is at ease. Monet, it must not be forgotten, had two +years' military service in Morocco; Sorolla has always lived, +saturated himself in the rays of a hot sun and painted beneath the +hard blue dome of Spanish skies. + +Sorolla is a painting temperament, and the freshening breezes and +sunshine that emanate from his canvases should drive away the odours +of the various chemical cook-shops which are called studios in our +"world of art." + +One cannot speak too much of the large-minded and cultivated spirit of +Archer Milton Huntington, who is the projector and patron of the +exhibitions at the Hispanic Society Museum. Sorolla y Bastida, through +the invitation of Mr. Huntington, made this exhibition. + + + + +IGNACIO ZULOAGA + + + +We are no longer with Sorolla and his vibrating sunshine on Valencian +sands, or under the hard blue dome of San Sebastian; the two-score +canvases on view in 1909 at the Hispanic Museum were painted by a man +of profounder intellect, of equally sensual but more restrained +temperament than Sorolla; above all, by an artist with different +ideals--a realist, not an impressionist, Ignacio Zuloaga. It would not +be the entire truth to say that his masterpieces were seen; several +notable pictures, unhappily, were not; but the exhibition was finely +representative. Zuloaga showed us the height and depth of his powers +in at least one picture, and the longer you know him the more secrets +he yields up. + +In Paris they say of Sorolla that he paints too fast and too much; of +Zuloaga that he is too lazy to paint. Half truths, these. The younger +man is more deliberate in his methods. He composes more elaborately, +executes at a slower gait. He resents the imputation of realism. The +fire and fury of Sorolla are not his, but he selects, weighs, +analyses, reconstructs--in a word, he composes and does not improvise. +He is, nevertheless, a realist--a verist, as he prefers to be called. +He is not cosmopolitan, and Sorolla is: the types of boys and girls +racing along the beaches of watering places which Sorolla paints are +cosmopolitan. Passionate vivacity and the blinding sunshine are not +qualities that appeal to Zuloaga. He portrays darkest--let us rather +say greenest, brownest Spain. The Basque in him is the strongest +strain. He is artistically a lineal descendant of El Greco, Velasquez, +Goya; and the map of his memory has been traversed by Manet. He is +more racial, more truly Spanish, than any painter since Goya. He +possesses the genius of place. + +Havelock Ellis's book, The Soul of Spain, is an excellent corrective +for the operatic Spain, and George Borrow is equally sound despite his +bigotry, while Gautier is invaluable. Arsne Alexandre in writing of +Zuloaga acutely remarks of the Spanish conspiracy in allowing the +chance tourist only to scratch the soil "of this country too well +known but not enough explored." Therefore when face to face with the +pictures of Zuloaga, with romantic notions of a Spain where castles +grow in the clouds and moonshine on every bush, prepare to be shocked, +to be disappointed. He will show you the real Spain--the sun-soaked +soil, the lean, sharp outlines of hills, the arid meadows, and the +swift, dark-green rivers. He has painted cavaliers and dames of +fashion, but his heart is in the common people. He knows the bourgeois +and he knows the gipsy. He has set forth the pride of the vagabond and +the garish fascinations of the gitana. Since Goya, you say, and then +wonder whether it might not be wiser to add: Goya never had so +complicated a psychology. A better craftsman than Goya, a more varied +colourist, a more patient student of Velasquez, of life, though +without Goya's invention, caprice, satanism, and _fougue_. + +Zuloaga was not born poor, but with genius; and genius always spells +discontent. He would not become an engineer and he would paint. His +family, artists and artisans, did not favour his bent. He visited +Italy, almost starved in Paris, and after he knew how to handle his +tools he starved for recognition. It is only a few years since he +exhibited the portrait of his uncle, Daniel Zuloaga, and his cousins. +It now hangs in the Luxembourg; but Madrid would have none of him; a +Spanish jury rejected him at Paris in 1900, and not possessing the +means of Edouard Manet he could not hire a gallery and show the world +the stuff that was in him. He did not sulk; he painted. Barcelona took +him up; Paris, the world, followed suit. To-day he is rich, famous, +and forty. He was born at Eibar, 1870, in the Basque province of +Viscaya. He is a collector of rare taste and has housed his treasures +in a gallery at his birthplace. He paints chiefly at Segovia, in an +old church, though he wanders over Spain, sometimes afoot, sometimes +in his motor car, often accompanied by Rodin in the latter, and +wherever he finds himself he is at home and paints. A bull-fighter in +the ring, as was Goya--perhaps the legend stirred him to imitation--he +is a healthy athlete. His vitality, indeed, is enormous, though it +does not manifest itself in so dazzling a style as Sorolla's. The +demerits of literary comparisons are obvious, yet we dare to think of +Sorolla and Zuloaga as we should of Thophile Gautier and Charles +Baudelaire. In one is the clear day flame of impersonality; the other +is all personality, given to nocturnal moods, to diabolism and +perversities, cruelties and fierce voluptuousness. Sorolla is pagan; +Gothic is Zuloaga, a Goth of modern Spain. He has more variety than +Sorolla, more intellect. The Baudelairian strain grows in his work; it +is unmistakable. The crowds that went to see the "healthy" art of +Sorolla (as if art had anything in common with pulse, temperature, and +respiration) did not like, or indeed understand, many of Zuloaga's +magnificent pictorial ideas. + +He paints in large _coups_, but his broad, slashing planes are not +impressionistic. He swims in the traditional Spanish current with joy. +Green with him is almost an obsession--a national symbol certainly. +His greens, browns, blacks, scarlets are rich, sonorous, and magnetic. +He is a colourist. He also is master of a restrained palette and can +sound the silver grays of Velasquez. His tonalities are massive. The +essential bigness of his conceptions, his structural forms, are the +properties of an eye swift, subtle, and all-embracing. It seems an +image that is at once solidly rooted in mother earth and is as +fluctuating as life. No painter to-day has a greater sense of +character, except Degas. The Frenchman is the superior draughtsman, +but he is no more vital in his interpretation of his ballet girls, +washerwomen, and grisettes than is Zuloaga in his delineations of +peasants, dwarfs, dogs, courtesans, scamps, zealots, pilgrims, +beggars, drunkards, and working girls. What verve, what grip, what +bowels of humanity has this Spaniard! A man, not a professor of +academic methods. He has no school, and he is a school in himself. +That the more serene, poetic aspects and readings of life have escaped +him is merely to say that he is not constituted a contemplative +philosopher. The sinister skein to be seen in some of his canvases +does not argue the existence of a spiritual bias but is the +recognition of evil in life. It is not very pleasant, nor is it +reassuring, but it is part of the artist, rooted deep in his Spanish +soul along with the harsh irony and a cruel spirit of mockery. He +refuses to follow the ideals of other men, and he paints a spade a +spade; at least the orchestration, if brutal, is not lascivious. A +cold, impartial eye observes and registers the corruption of cities +small and great and the infinitely worse immoralities of the open +country. Sometimes Zuloaga's comments are witty, sometimes +pessimistic. If he has studied Goya and Manet, he also knows Flicien +Rops. + +The only picture in the Zuloaga exhibition that grazes the border-land +of the unconventional is Le Vieux Marcheur. It is as moral as Hogarth +and as bitter as Rops. It recalls the Montmartre days of the artist +when he was acquainted with Paul Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Two +women are crossing a bridge. Their actuality is impressed upon the +retina in a marvellous ly definite way. They live, they move. One is +gowned in dotted green, the other in black. There is a little +landscape with water beyond the iron railing. A venerable minotaur is +in pursuit. He wears evening clothes, an overcoat is thrown across his +left arm, under his right he carries waggishly a cane. His white tie +and hat of sober silk are in respectable contrast with his air of +fatuousness--the Marquis of Steyne en route; the doddering hero of +Mansfield in A Parisian Romance, or Baron Hulot. The alert expression +of the girls, who appear to be loitering, tells us more at a glance +than a chapter of Flaubert, Zola, or De Maupassant. Is it necessary to +add that the handling takes your breath away because of its consummate +ease and its realisation of the effects sought? Note the white of the +old party's spats, echoed by the bit of stocking showing a low shoe +worn by one of the girls; note the values of the blacks in the hat, +coat, trousers, shoe tips of the man. The very unpleasantness of the +theme is forgotten in the supreme art of its presentation. + +M. Alexandre, the French critic, may argue valiantly that Zuloaga must +not be compared with Goya, that their methods and themes are +dissimilar. True, but those witches (Les Sorcires de San Millan) are +in the key of Goya, not manner, but subject-matter--a hideous crew. At +once you think of the _Caprichos_ of Goya. The hag with the distaff, +whose head is painted with a fidelity worthy of Holbein; the monkey +profile of the witch crouching near the lantern, that repulsive +creature in spectacles--Goya spectacles; the pattern hasn't varied +since his days--these ladies and their companions, especially that +anonymous one in a hood, coupled with the desperate dreariness of the +background, a country dry and hard as a volcanic cinder, make a +formidable ensemble. Zuloaga relates that the beldames screeched and +fought in his studio when he posed them. You exclaim while looking at +them: "How now, you secret black and midnight hags!" Hell hovers hard +by; each witch of the unholy trio has the evil eye. + +As a painter of dwarfs Zuloaga has not been surpassed by any one but +Velasquez. His Gregorio, the monster with the huge head, the +sickening, livid, globular eye, the comical pose--you exclaim: What a +brush! The picture palpitates with reality, an ugly reality, for the +tall old couple are not prepossessing. The topography of the country +is minutely observed. But this painter does not wreak himself in +ugliness or morbidities; he is singularly happy in catching the +attitudes and gestures of the peasants as they return from the +vintage; of picadors, matadors, chulos, in the ring or lounging, +smoking, awaiting the signal. The large and celebrated family group of +the matador Gallito--which is to remain permanently in the Hispanic +Society's museum--is a superb exemplar of the synthetic and rhythmic +art of the Spaniard. Each character is seized and rendered. The strong +silhouettes melt into a harmonious arabesque; the tonal gamut is +nervous, strong, fiery; the dull gold background is a foil for the +scale of colour notes. It is a striking picture. Very striking, too, +is the portrait of Breval as Carmen, though it is the least Spanish +picture in the collection; Breval is pictured on the stage, the lights +from below playing over her features. The problem is solved, as +Besnard or Degas has solved it, successfully, but in purely personal +manner. It is the picture in the Metropolitan Museum that is bound to +attract attention, as it is a technical triumph; but it is not very +characteristic. + +We saw dark-eyed, graceful manolas on balconies--this truly Spanish +motive in art, as Spanish as is the Madonna Italian--over which are +thrown gorgeous shawls, smiling, flirting; with languorous eyes and +provocative fans, they sit ensconced as they sat in Goya's time and +centuries before Goya, the Eternal Feminine of Spain. Zuloaga is her +latest interpreter. Isn't Candida delicious in green, with black +head-dress of lace--isn't she bewitching? Her stockings are green. The +wall is a most miraculous adumbration of green. Across the room is +another agent of disquiet in Nile green, Mercedes by name. Her +aquiline nose, black eyes, and the flowers she wears at the side of +her head bewilder; the sky, clouds, and landscape are all very lovely. +This is a singularly limpid, loose, flowing picture. It has the paint +quality sometimes missing in the bold, fat massing of the Zuloaga +colour chords. The Montmartre Caf concert singer is a sterling +specimen of Zuloaga's portraiture. He is unconventional in his poses; +he will jam a figure against the right side of the frame (as in the +portrait of Marthe Morineau) or stand a young lady beside an +ornamental iron gate in an open park (not a remarkable portrait, but +one that pleases the ladies because of the textures). The head of the +old actor capitally suggests the Spanish mummer. And the painter's +cousin, Esperanza! What cousins he boasts! We recall The Three +Cousins, with its laughing trio and the rich colour scheme. Our +recollection, too, of The Piquant Retort, and its brown and scarlet +harmonies; of the Promenade After the Bull-fight, which has the +classical balance and spaced charm of Velasquez; and that startling +Street of Love overbalances any picture except one in this exhibition, +and that is The Bull-fighter's Family. The measuring eye of Zuloaga, +his tremendous vitality, his sharp, superb transference to canvas of +the life he has elected to represent and interpret are at first sight +dazzling. The performance is so supreme--remember, not in a niggling, +technical sense--a half-dozen men beat him at mere pyrotechnics and +lace _fioritura_--that his limitations, very marked in his case, are +overlooked. You have drunk a hearty Spanish wine; oil to the throat, +confusion to the senses. You do not at first miss the soul; it is not +included in the categories of Seor Zuloaga. Zuloaga, like his +contemporary farther north, Anders Zorn, is a man as well as a +painter; the conjunction is not too frequent. The grand manner is +surely his. He has the modulatory sense, and Christian Brinton notes +his sonorous acid effects. He paints beggars, dwarfs, work-girls, +noblemen, bandits, dogs, horses, lovely women, gitanas, indolent +Carmens; but real, not the pasteboard and foot-lights variety of +Merime and Bizet. Zuloaga's Spain is not a second-hand Italy, like +that of so many Spanish painters. It is not all bric-a-brac and +moonlight and chivalric tinpot helmets. It is the real Spain of +to-day, the Spain that has at last awakened to the light of the +twentieth century after sleeping so long, after sleeping, +notwithstanding the desperate nudging it was given a century ago by +the realist Goya. Now, Zuloaga is not only stepping on his country's +toes, but he is recording the impressions he makes. He, too, is a +realist, a realist with such magic in his brush that it would make us +forgive him if he painted the odour of garlic. + +Have you seen his Spanish Dancers? Not the dramatic Carmencita of +Sargent, but the creature as she is, with her simian gestures, her +insolence, her vulgarity, her teeth--and the shrill scarlet of the +bare gum above the gleaming white, His street scenes are a transcript +of the actual facts, and inextricably woven with the facts is a sense +of the strange beauty of them all. His wine harvesters, venders of +sacred images, or that fascinating canvas My Three Cousins--before +these, also before the Promenade After the Bull-fight, you realise +that by some miracle of nature the intensity of Goya and his sense of +life, the charm of Velasquez and his sober dignity are recalled by the +painting of a young Spanish artist who a decade ago was unknown. Nor +is Zuloaga an eclectic. His force and individuality are too patent for +us to entertain such a heresy. A glance at Jacques-Emile Blanche's +portrait of the Spanish painter explains other things. There is the +physique of a man who can work many hours a day before an easel; there +are the penetrating eyes of an observer, spying eyes, slightly cruel; +the head is an intellectual one, the general conformation of the face +harmonious and handsome. The body is that of an athlete, but not of +the bull-necked sort we see in Goya. The temperament suggested is +impetuous, controlled by a strong will; it has been fined down by +study and the enforced renunciations of poverty-haunted youth. Above +all, there is race; race in the proud, resolute bearing, race in the +large, firm, supple, and nervous hands. Indeed, the work of Zuloaga is +all race. He is the most Spanish painter since Goya. + + + + +IX. CHARDIN + + + +Zola, as reported by George Moore, said of Degas: "I cannot accept a +man who shuts himself up all his life to draw a ballet girl as ranking +co-equal in dignity and power with Flaubert, Daudet, and Goncourt." +This remark gives us the cue for Zola's critical endowment; despite +his asseverations his naturalism was only skin deep. He, too, was +swayed by his literary notions concerning the importance of the +subject. In painting the theme may count for little and yet a great +picture result; in Zola's field there must be an appreciable subject, +else no fiction. But what cant it is to talk about "dignity." Zola +admits ingrained romanticism. He would not see, for instance, that the +Degas ballet girls are on the same plane as the Ingres odalisques; +that a still-life by Chardin outweighs a big canvas by David; and it +must be admitted that the world is on the side of Zola. The heresy of +the subject will never be stamped out, the painted anecdote will +always win the eye of the easily satisfied majority. + +It may be remembered that the great Spaniard began his apprenticeship +to art by copying still-life, which he did in a superlative manner; +his Bodegones, or kitchen pieces, testify to this. Chardin, who led as +laborious an existence as Degas, shutting himself away from the world, +studied surfaces with an intensity that Zola, the apostle of realism, +would have misunderstood. Later the French painter devoted himself +with equal success to genre and figure subjects; but for him there was +no such category as still-life. Everything of substance, shape, +weight, and colour is alive for the eye that observes, and, except +Velasquez, Vermeer, and a few others, no man was endowed with the eye +of Jean Baptiste Simon Chardin, an eye microscopic in intensity and +that saw the beautiful in the homely. + +Edmond Pilon has published a comprehensive little monograph in the +series Les Matres de L'Art. M. Pilon is as sympathetic as he is just +in his critical estimates of the man and his work. There is not much +to relate of the quotidian life of the artist. His was not a romantic +or a graceful figure among his contemporaries, the pastellist La Tour, +Fragonard, and the rest, nor had his personality a jot of the +mysterious melancholy of Watteau. His artistic ancestry was Dutch; in +the footsteps of De Hooch, the younger Teniers, Vermeer, Terburg, +Kalf, he trod, rather plodded, producing miracles of light, colour, +finish. A long patience his career, he never indulged in brilliancy +for the mere sake of brilliancy; nevertheless he was an amazing +virtuoso of the brush. He was born in the Rue de Seine, Paris, +November 2,1699. His father, Jean Chardin, a joiner, was a man of +artistic instinct whose furniture and marquetrie were admired and in +demand. The lad began his tuition under Cazes, but soon went to the +atelier of Coypel. Later he worked under the eye of Carle Vanloo in +the restoration of the large gallery at Fontainebleau. His painting of +a barber-chirurgeon's sign drew upon him the notice of several artists +of influence and he became a member of the Academy of St. Luc. When he +exhibited for the first time in public, in the Place Dauphine, 1728, +Watteau had been dead seven years; Coypel, Allegrain, Vanloo, Troy, +and the imitators of the pompous art of Le Brun were the vogue. Colour +had become a conventional abstraction; design, of the most artificial +sort, the prime requisite for a sounding reputation. The unobtrusive +art of Chardin, who went to nature not to books for his inspiration, +was not appreciated. He was considered a belated Dutchman, though his +superior knowledge of values ought to have proved him something else. +Diderot, alone among the critics of his epoch, saluted him in company +with the great Buffon as a man whom nature had taken into her +confidence. + +In 1728 he was received at the Academy as painter of fruit and +flowers. He married his first wife, Marguerite Saintan, in 1731, and +his son, J.B. Chardin, was born the same year. In 1735 he lost his +wife and infant daughter, and the double blow drove him into +retirement, but he exposed his pictures from time to time. He was made +counsellor of the Academy in 1743, and in 1744 married the second +time, a widow, Franoise Marguerite Pouget by name. This was a happy +marriage; Madame Chardin, a sensible, good-tempered bourgeoise, +regulated the household accounts, and brought order and peace into the +life of the lonely artist. Hereafter he painted without interruptions. +He received from the king a pension of five hundred francs, his son +obtained the prix de Rome for a meritorious canvas, and if he had had +his father's stable temperament he would have ended an admirable +artist. But he was reckless, and died at Venice in a mysterious +manner, drowned in a canal, whether by murder or suicide no one knew. +Chardin never recovered his spirits after this shock. The king offered +him lodging in the gallery of the Louvre (Logement No. 12). This was +accepted, as much as he disliked leaving his comfortable little house +in the Rue Princesse. As he aged he suffered from various ailments and +his eyes began to give him trouble; then it was he took up pastels. +December 6, 1779, he died, his wife surviving him until 1791. + +He was a man of short stature, broad-shouldered and muscular. Liked by +his friends and colleagues for his frankness, there was a salt savour +in his forthright speech--he never learned to play the courtier. His +manners were not polished, a certain rusticity clung to him always, +but his honesty was appreciated and he held positions of trust. +Affectionate, slow--with the Dutch slowness praised by Rodin--and +tenacious, he set out to conquer a small corner in the kingdom of art, +and to-day he is first among the Little Masters. This too convenient +appellation must not class him with such myopic miniaturists as +Meissonier. There are breadth of style, rich humanity, largeness of +feeling, apart from his remarkable technique, that place him in the +company of famous portrait painters. He does not possess what are +called "general ideas"; he sounds no tragic chords; he has no spoor of +poetry, but he sees the exterior world steadily; he is never obvious, +and he is a sympathetic interpreter in the domestic domain and of +character. His palette is as aristocratic as that of Velasquez: the +music he makes, like that of the string quartet, borders on +perfection. + +At his dbut he so undervalued his work that Vanloo, after reproaching +the youth for his modesty, paid him double for a picture. Another time +he gave a still-life to a friend in exchange for a waistcoat whose +flowery pattern appealed to him. His pictures did not fetch fair +prices during his lifetime; after more than half a century of hard +work he left little for his widow. Nor in the years immediately +subsequent to that of his death did values advance much. The engraver +Wille bought a still-life for thirty-six livres, a picture that to-day +would sell for thousands of dollars. At the beginning of the last +century, in 1810, when David was ruler of the arts in Paris, the two +masterpieces in pastel, now in the Louvre, the portraits of Chardin +aux besicles, and the portrait of Marguerite Pouget, his second +spouse, could have been bought for twenty-four francs. In 1867 at the +Laperlier sale the Pourvoyeuse was sold for four thousand and fifty +francs to the Louvre, and forty years later the Louvre gave three +hundred and fifty thousand francs to Madame Emile Trpard for Le Jeune +Homme au Violon and l'Enfant au Toton. Diderot truly prophesied that +the hour of reparation would come. + +He is a master of discreet tonalities and a draughtsman of the first +order. His lighting, more diffused than Rembrandt's, is the chief +actor in his scene. With it he accomplishes magical effects, with it +he makes beautiful copper caldrons, humble vegetables, leeks, carrots, +potatoes, onions, shining rounds of beef, hares, and fish become +eloquent witnesses to the fact that there is nothing dead or ugly in +nature if the vision that interprets is artistic. It is said that no +one ever saw Chardin at work in his atelier, but his method, his +_facture_ has been ferreted out though never excelled. He employs the +division of tones, his _couches_ are fat and his colour is laid on +lusciously. His colour is never hot; coolness of tone is his chief +allurement. Greuze, passing one of his canvases at an exhibition, a +long time regarded it and went away, heaving a sigh of envy. The +frivolous "Frago," who studied with Chardin for a brief period, even +though he left him for Boucher, admired his former master without +understanding him. Decamps later exclaimed in the Louvre: "The whites +of Chardin! I don't know how to recapture them." He might have added +the silvery grays. M. Pilon remarks that as in the case of Vermeer the +secret of Chardin tones has never been surprised. The French painter +knew the art of modulation, while his transitions are bold; he +enveloped his objects in atmosphere and gave his shadows a due share +of luminosity. He placed his colours so that at times his work +resembles mosaic or tapestry. He knew a century before the modern +impressionists the knack of juxtaposition, of opposition, of tonal +division; his science was profound. He must have studied Watteau and +the Dutchmen closely. Diderot was amazed to find that his surpassing +whites were neither black nor white, but a neuter--but by a subtle +transposition of tones looked white. Chardin worked from an +accumulation of notes, but there are few sketches of his in existence, +a _sanguine_ or two. The paucity of the Velasquez sketches has piqued +criticism. Like Velasquez, Chardin was of a reflective temperament, a +slow workman and a patient corrector. + +The intimate charm of the Chardin interiors is not equalled even in +the Vermeer canvases. At the Louvre, which contains at least thirty of +the masterpieces, consider the sweetness of Le Benedicite, or the +three pastels, and then turn to the fruits, flowers, kitchen utensils, +game, or to La Raie Ouverte, that magnificent portrait of a skatefish, +with its cat slyly stealing over opened oysters, the table-cloth of +such vraisemblance that the knife balanced on the edge seems to lie in +a crease. What bulk, what destiny, what _chatoyant_ tones! Here are +qualities of paint and vision pictorial, vision that has never been +approached; paint without rhetoric, paint sincere, and the expression +in terms of beautiful paint of natural truths. In Chardin's case--by +him the relativity of mundane things was accepted with philosophic +phlegm--an onion was more important than an angel, a copper stew-pan +as thrilling as an epic. And then the humanity of his youth holding a +fiddle and bow, the exquisite textures of skin and hair, and the +glance of the eyes. You believe the story told of his advice to his +confrre: "Paint with sentiment." But he mixed his sentiment with +lovely colours, he is one of the chief glories of France as a +colourist. + + + + +X. BLACK AND WHITE. + + + +I + +Some Frenchman has called the theatre a book reversed. It is a happy +epigram. By a similar analogy the engraving or mezzotint might be +described as a reversed picture. And with still more propriety black +and white reproductions may be compared to the pianoforte in the hands +of a skilful artist. The pianoforte can interpret in cooler tones +orchestral scores. It gives in its all-formal severity the line; the +colour is only suggested. But such is the tendency of modern music +toward painting that the success of a pianoforte virtuoso to-day +depends upon his ability to arouse within his listeners' imagination +the idea of colour--in reality, the emotional element. The engraver +evokes colour by his cunning interplay of line and cross hatching; the +mezzotinter by his disposition of dark masses and white spaces. +Indeed, the mezzotint by reason of its warm, more sympathetic, and +ductile medium has always seemed more colourful in his plates than the +most laboriously executed steel engravings. In this sense the scraper +beats the burin, while the etcher, especially if he be a painter, +attains a more personal vision than either one of these processes. +"The stone was made for the mystics," say the Pennells. The revival of +lithography by contemporary artists of fame is very welcome. + +Above all, the appeal of engraving, mezzotint, and etching is to the +refined. It is an art of a peculiarly intimate character. Just as some +prefer the exquisite tonal purity and finished performances of the +Kneisel String Quartet to the blare and thunder of the Philharmonic +Society; just as some enjoy in silence beautiful prose more than our +crude drama, so the lovers of black and white may feel themselves a +distinctive class. They have at their elbow disposed in portfolios or +spaced on walls the eloquent portraiture, the world's masterpieces, +marine views, and landscapes. There is no better way to study painting +historically than in the cabinet of an engraving collector. +Furthermore, divested of bad or mediocre paint--many famous pictures +by famous names are mere cartoons, the paint peeled or peeling +off--the student and amateur penetrates to the very marrow of the +painter's conception, to the very skeleton of his technical methods. + + + + + +PIRANESI + + + +I + +"Battlements that on their restless fronts bore stars" is a line from +Wordsworth that Thomas de Quincey approvingly quotes in regard to his +opium-induced "architectural dreams," and, aptly enough, immediately +after a page devoted to Piranesi, the etcher, architect, and +visionary. You may find this page in The Confessions of an English +Opium Eater, that book of terror, beauty, mystification, and fudge (De +Quincey deluded himself quite as much as his readers in this +autobiography, which, like the confessions of most distinguished men, +must not be taken too literally): "Many years ago," he wrote, "when I +was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who +was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, +called his Dreams, which record the scenery of his own soul during the +delirium of a fever. Some of them (described only from memory of Mr. +Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of +which stood all sorts of engines and machinery expressive of enormous +power put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of +the walls, you perceived a staircase, and upon it, groping his way +upward, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther and +you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, without any +balustrade, and allowing no step onward to him who had reached the +extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor +Piranesi? You suppose, at least, that his labours must in some way +terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of +stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this +time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eyes, +and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poor +Piranesi on his aspiring labours, and so on, until the unfinished +stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall." + +This plate was evidently one of the Carceri set--sixteen in all--which +the etcher improvised after some severe cerebral malady. What would we +not give to have heard the poet of Kubla Khan describing the fantastic +visions of the Venetian artist to the English opium eater! The +eloquence of the prose passage we have transcribed has in it some +faint echoes of Coleridge's golden rumble. That these two men +appreciated the Italian is something; perhaps they saw chiefly in his +work its fantastic side. There was no saner craftsman than Piranesi +apart from certain of his plates; no more solid construction in a +print can be shown than his various interpretations of the classic +ruins of Rome, the temples at Pstum. He was a great engraver and +etcher whose passion was the antique. He deliberately withdrew from +all commerce with the ideas and art of his own times. He loved +architecture for architecture's sake; not as a decoration, not as a +background for humanity, but as something personal. It was for him +what the human face was for Rembrandt and Velasquez. That he was +called the Rembrandt of Architecture is but another testimony to the +impression he made upon his contemporaries, though the title is an +unhappy one. Piranesi even in his own little fenced-off coign of art +is not comparable to the etcher of the Hundred Guilder print, nor are +there close analogies in their respective handling of darks and +lights. + +It might be nearer the mark to call Piranesi--though all such +comparisons are thorns in the critical flesh--the Salvator Rosa of +architecture, for there is much of Salvator's unbridled violence, +fantasy, and genius for deforming the actual that is to be encountered +in some of Piranesi's works. His was not a classic temperament. The +serene, airy, sun-bathed palaces and temples which Claude introduced +into his foregrounds are seldom encountered in Piranesi. A dark Gothic +imagination his, Gothic and often cruel. In his etching of public +buildings at Rome or elsewhere, while he is not always faultless in +drawing or scrupulous in observation, such was the sincerity and +passion of the man that he has left us the noblest transcriptions of +these stately edifices and monuments. It is in the rhythmic expression +of his personal moods that his sinister romantic imaginings are +revealed, and with a detail and fulness that are positively +overwhelming. + +It should not be forgotten that in the eighteenth and in the early +part of the nineteenth centuries Piranesi achieved widespread +popularity. He was admired outside of Italy, in England, in France, +and Germany. A generation that in England read Vathek and Mrs. +Radcliffe, supped on the horrors of Melmoth and Frankenstein, knew +E.T.W. Hoffmann and the German romantic literature, could be relied on +to take up Piranesi, and for his lesser artistic side. Poe knew his +work and Baudelaire; we see that for De Quincey he was a kindred +spirit. The English mezzotinter John Martin must have studied him +closely, also Gustave Dor. + +The Carceri (1750) of Piranesi are indoor compositions, enclosed +spaces in which wander aimlessly or deliriously the wraiths of damned +men, not a whit less wretched nor awful than Dante's immemorial mob. +Piranesi shows us cavernous abodes where appalling engines of torture +fill the foreground, while above, at vertiginous heights, we barely +discern perilous passageways, haunted windows peering out upon the +high heavens, stone-fretted ceilings that are lost in a magic mist. By +a sort of diabolic modulation the artist conducts our eye from these +dizzy angles and granitic convolutions down tortuous and tumultuous +staircases that seemingly wind about the axis of eternity. To traverse +them would demand an eternity and the nerves of a madman. Lower +barbaric devices reveal this artist's temperament. He is said to have +executed the prison set "during the delirium of fever." This is of the +same calibre as the clotted nonsense about Poe composing when +intoxicated or Liszt playing after champagne. It is a credible +anecdote for Philistines who do not realise that even the maddest +caprice, whether in black and white, marble, music, or verse, must be +executed in silence and cold blood. Piranesi simply gave wing to his +fancy, recalling the more vivid of his nightmares--as did Coleridge, +De Quincey, Poe, Baudelaire, and the rest of the drug-steeped choir. +We recall one plate of Piranesi's in which a miserable devil climbs a +staircase suspended over an abyss; as he mounts each step the lower +one crumbles into the depths below. + +The agony of the man (do you recall The Torture by Hope of Villiers de +l'Isle-Adam?) is shown in his tense, crouching attitude, his hands +clawing the masonry above him. Nature is become a monstrous fever, +existence a shivering dread. You overhear the crash of stone into the +infernal cellarage--where awaits the hunted wretch perhaps a worse +fate than on the pinnacles above. It is a companion piece to Martin's +Sadak searching for the Waters of Oblivion. Another plate depicts with +ingenuity terraces superimposed upon terraces, archways spaced like +massive music, narrow footways across which race ape-like men, half +naked, eagerly preparing some terrible punishments for criminals +handcuffed and guarded. They are to walk a sharp-spiked bridge. +Gigantic chains swing across stony precipices, a lamp depends from a +roof whose outlines are merged in the gray dusk of dreams. There is +cruelty, horror, and a sense of the wickedly magnificent in the +ensemble. What crimes were committed to merit such atrocious +punishment? The boldness and clearness of it all! With perspicacity +George Saintsbury wrote of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony: "It +is the best example of dream literature that I know--most writers who +have tried this style have erred, inasmuch as they have endeavoured to +throw a portion of the mystery with which the waking mind invests +dreams over the dream itself. Any one's experience is sufficient to +show that this is wrong. The events of dreams, as they happen, are +quite plain and matter of fact, and it is only in the intervals that +any suspicion occurs to the dreamer." + +Certainly Piranesi remembered his dreams. He is a realist in his +delineation of details, though the sweep and breadth of an ideal +design are never absent. He portrays ladders that scale bulky joists, +poles of incredible thickness, cyclopean block and tackling. They are +of wood, not metal nor marble, for the art of Piranesi is full of +discriminations. Finally, you weary. The eye gorged by all the mystic +engines, hieroglyphs of pain from some impossible inquisition--though +not once do we see a monkish figure--all these anonymous monkey men +scurrying on what errand Piranesi alone knows; these towering arches, +their foundations resting on the crest of hell (you feel the +tremendous impact of the architectural mass upon the earth--no mean +feat to represent or rather to evoke the sense of weight, of pressure +on a flat surface); the muffled atmosphere in these prisons from which +no living prisoner emerges; of them all you weary, for the normal +brain can only stand a certain dose of the delirious and the +melancholy. This aspect, then, of Piranesi's art, black magic in all +its potency, need no longer detain us. His Temples of Pstum sound a +less morbid key than his Carceri, and as etchings quite outrank them. + + + + +II + +Giambattista Piranesi was born at Venice in 1720. Bryan says that +about 1738 his father sent him to Rome, where he studied under +Valeriani, through whom he acquired the style of Valeriani's master, +Marco Ricci of Belluno. With Vasi, a Sicilian engraver, he learned +that art. Ricci and Pannini were much in vogue, following the example +of Claude in his employment of ruins as a picturesque element in a +composition. But Piranesi excelled both Ricci and Pannini. He was an +architect, too, helping to restore churches, and this accounts for the +proud title, Architect of Venice, which may be seen on some of his +plates. He lived for a time in Venice, but Rome drew him to her with +an imperious call. And, notwithstanding the opposition of his father, +to Rome he went, and for forty years devoted himself to his master +passion, the pictorial record of the beloved city, the ancient +portions of which were fast vanishing owing to time and the greed of +their owners. This was Piranesi's self-imposed mission, begun as an +exalted youth, finished as an irritable old man. Among his +architectural restorations, made at the request of Clement XIII, were +the two churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Il Priorato. Lanciani +says that Il Priorato is "a mass of monstrosities inside and out." It +is his etching, not his labour as an architect, that will make +Piranesi immortal. He seems to have felt this, for he wrote that he +had "executed a work which will descend to posterity and will last so +long as there will be men desirous of knowing all that has survived +the ruins of the most famous city of the universe." + +In the black-and-white portrait of the etcher by F. Polonzani, we see +a full-cheeked man with a well-developed forehead, the features of the +classic Roman order, the general expression not far removed from a +sort of sullen self-satisfaction. But the eyes redeem. They are full, +lustrous, penetrating, and introspective. The portrait etched by the +son of Piranesi, after a statue, discovers him posed in a toga, the +general effect being classic and consular. His life, like that of all +good workmen in art, was hardly an eventful one. He married +precipitately and his wife bore him two sons (Francesco, the etcher, +born at Rome, 1748--Bryan gives the date as 1756--died at Paris, 1810) +and a daughter (Laura, born at Rome, 1750--date of death unknown). +These children were a consolation to him. Both were engravers. +Francesco frequently assisted his father in his work, and Bryan says +that Laura's work resembled her father's. She went to Paris with her +brother and probably died there. She left some views of Rome. +Francesco, with his brother Pietro, attempted to found an academy in +Paris and later a terra cotta manufactory. + +The elder Piranesi was of a quarrelsome disposition. He wrangled with +an English patron, Viscount Charlemont, and, like Beethoven, destroyed +title-pages when he became displeased with the subject of his +dedications. He was decorated with the Order of Christ and was proud +of his membership in the London Society of Antiquaries. It is said +that the original copper plates of his works were captured by a +British man-of-war during the Napoleonic conflict. This probably +accounts for the dissemination of so many revamped and coarsely +executed versions of his compositions. His besetting fault was a +tendency toward an Egyptian blackness in his composition. Fond of +strong contrasts as was John Martin, he is, at times, as great a +sinner in the handling of his blacks. An experimenter of audacity, +Piranesi's mastery of the technique of etching has seldom been +equalled, and even in his inferior work the skilful printing atones +for many defects. The remarkable richness and depth of tone, brought +about by continuous and innumerable bitings, and other secret +processes known only to himself, make his plates warm and brilliant. +Nobility of form, grandeur of mass, a light and shade that is +positively dramatic in its dispersion over wall and tower, are the +characteristic marks of this unique etcher. He could not resist the +temptation of dotting with figures the huge spaces of his ruins. They +dance or recline or indulge in uncouth gestures. His shadows are +luminous--you may gaze into them; his high lights caught on some +projection or salient cornice or silvering the August porticoes of a +vanished past, all these demonstrate his feeling for the dramatic. And +dramatic is the impression evoked as you study the majestic temples +that were Pstum, the bare, ruined arches and pillars that were Rome. +It is Pstum that is the more vivid. It tallies, too, with the +Piranesi plates; while Rome has visibly changed since his day. His +original designs for chimneys, Diverse Maniere d'Adornare i Camini, +are pronounced by several critics as "foolish and vulgar." He left +nearly two thousand etchings, and died at Rome November 9, 1778. His +son erected a mediocre statue by Angolin for his tomb in Il Priorato. +A manuscript life of Piranesi, which was in London about 1830, is now +lost. Bryan's dictionary gives a partial list of his works "as +published both by himself in Rome and by his sons in Paris. The plates +passed from his sons first to Firmin-Didot, and ultimately into the +hands of the Papal Government." + +De Quincey's quotation of Wordsworth is apposite in describing +Piranesi's creations: "Battlements that on their restless fronts bore +stars"; from sheer brutal masonry, gray, aged, and moss-encrusted, he +invented a precise pattern and one both passionate and magical. + + + + +MERYON + + + +Until the recent appearance of the Baudelaire letters (1841-66) all +that we knew of Meryon's personality and art was to be found in the +monograph by Philippe Burty and Braldi's Les Graveurs du XIX Sicle. +Hamerton had written of the French etcher in 1875 (Etching and +Etchers), and various anecdotes about his eccentric behaviour were +public property. Frederick Wedmore, in his Etching in England, did not +hesitate to group Meryon's name with Rembrandt's and Jacquemart's (one +feels like employing the Whistlerian formula and asking: Why drag in +Jacquemart?); and to-day, after years of critical indifference, the +unhappy copper-scratcher has come into his own. You may find him +mentioned in such company as Drer, Rembrandt, and Whistler. The man +who first acclaimed him as worthy of associating with Rembrandt was +the critic Charles Baudelaire; and we are indebted to him for new +material dealing with the troubled life of Charles Meryon. + +On January 8, 1860, Baudelaire wrote to his friend and publisher, +Poulet-Malassis, that what he intends to say is worth the bother of +writing. Meryon had called, first sending a card upon which he +scrawled: "You live in a hotel the name of which doubtless attracted +you because of your tastes." Puzzled by this cryptic introduction, the +poet then noted that the address read: Charles Baudelaire, Htel de +Thbes. He did not stop at a hotel bearing that name, but, fancying +him a Theban, Meryon took the matter for granted. This letter was +forwarded. Meryon appeared. His first question would have startled any +but Baudelaire, who prided himself on startling others. The etcher, +looking as desperate and forlorn as in the Bracquemond etched portrait +(1853), demanded news of a certain Edgar Poe. Baudelaire responded +sadly that he had not known Poe personally. Then he was eagerly asked +if he believed in the reality of this Poe. Charles began to suspect +the sanity of his visitor. "Because," added Meryon, "there is a +society of littrateurs, very clever, very powerful, and knowing all +the ropes." His reasons for suspecting a cabal formed against him +under the guise of Poe's name were these: The Murders in the Rue +Morgue. "I made a design of the Morgue--an orang-outang. I have been +often compared to a monkey. This orang-outang assassinated two women, +a mother and daughter. Et moi aussi, j'ai assassin moralement deux +femmes, la mre et sa fille. I have always taken this story as an +allusion to my misfortunes. You, M. Baudelaire, would do me a great +favour if you could find the date when Edgar Poe, supposing he was not +assisted by any one, wrote his tale. I wish to see if this date +coincides with my adventures." After that Baudelaire knew his man. + +Meryon spoke with admiration of Michelet's Jeanne d'Arc, though he +swore the book was not written by Michelet. (Not such a wild shot, +though not correct in this particular instance, for the world has +since discovered that several books posthumously attributed to +Michelet were written by his widow.) The etcher was interested in the +cabalistic arts. On one of his large plates he drew some eagles, and +when Baudelaire objected that these birds did not frequent Parisian +skies he mysteriously whispered "those folks at the Tuileries" often +launched as a rite the sacred eagles to study the omens and presages. +He was firmly convinced of this. After the termination of the trying +visit Baudelaire, with acrid irony, asks himself why he, with his +nerves usually unstrung, did not go quite mad, and he concludes, +"Seriously I addressed to Heaven the grateful prayers of a pharisee." + +In March the same year he assures the same correspondent that +decidedly Meryon does not know how to conduct himself. He knows +nothing of life, neither does he know how to sell his plates or find +an editor. His work is very easy to sell. Baudelaire was hardly a +practical business man, but, like Poe, he had sense enough to follow +his market. He instantly recognised the commercial value of Meryon's +Paris set, but knew the etcher was a hopeless character. He wrote to +Poulet-Malassis concerning a proposed purchase of Meryon's work by the +publisher. It never came to anything. The etcher was very suspicious +as to paper and printing. He grew violent when the poet asked him to +illustrate some little poems and sonnets. Had he, Meryon, not written +poems himself? Had not the mighty Victor Hugo addressed flattering +words to him? Baudelaire, without losing interest, then thought of +Daumier as an illustrator for a new edition of Les Fleurs du Mal. It +must not be supposed, however, that Meryon was ungrateful. He was +deeply affected by the praise accorded him in Baudelaire's Salon of +1859. He wrote in February, 1860, sending his Views of Paris to the +critic as a feeble acknowledgment of the pleasure he had enjoyed when +reading the brilliant interpretative criticism. He said that he had +created an epoch in etching--which was the literal truth--and he had +saved a rapidly vanishing Paris for the pious curiosity of future +generations. He speaks of his "nave heart" and hoped that Baudelaire +in turn would dream as he did over the plates. This letter was signed +simply "Meryon, 20 Rue Duperr." The acute accent placed over the "e" +in his name by the French poet and by biographers, critics, and +editors since was never used by the etcher. It took years before +Baudelaire could persuade the Parisians that Poe did not spell his +name "Edgard Po." And we remember the fate of Liszt and Whistler, who +were until recently known in Paris as "Litz" and "Whistler." With the +aid of Champfleury and Banville, Baudelaire tried to bring Meryon's +art to the cognisance of the Minister of Beaux-Arts, but to no avail. +Why? + +There was a reason. Bohemian as was the artist during the last decade +of his life, he did not always haunt low cafs and drink absinthe. His +beginnings were as romantic as a page of Balzac. He was born a +gentleman _ la main gauche_. His father was the doctor and private +secretary of Lady Stanhope. Charles Lewis Meryon was an English +physician, who, falling in love with a ballet dancer at the Opra, +Pierre Narcisse Chaspoux, persuaded her that it would be less selfish +on her part if she would not bind him to her legally. November +23,1821, a sickly, nervous, and wizened son was born to the pair and +baptised with his father's name, who, being an alien, generously +conceded that much. There his interest ceased. On the mother fell the +burden of the boy's education. At five he was sent to school at Passy +and later went to the south of France. In 1837 he entered the Brest +naval school, and 1839 saw him going on his maiden voyage. This first +trip was marred by the black sorrow that fell upon him when informed +of his illegitimate birth. "I was mad from the time I was told of my +birth," he wrote, and until madness supervened he suffered from a +"wounded imagination." He was morbid, shy, and irritable, and his +energy--the explosive energy of this frail youth was amazing; because +he had been refused the use of a ship boat he wasted three months +digging out a canoe from a log of wood. Like Paul Gauguin, he saw many +countries, and his eyes were trained to form, though not colour--he +suffered from Daltonism--for when he began to paint he discovered he +was totally colour-blind. The visible world for him existed as a +contrapuntal net-work of lines, silhouettes, contours, or heavy dark +masses. When a sailor he sketched. Meryon tells of the drawing of a +little fungus he found in Akaroa. "Distorted in form and pinched and +puny from its birth, I could not but pity it; it seemed to me so +entirely typical of the inclemency and at the same time of the +whimsicality of an incomplete and sickly creation that I could not +deny it a place in my _souvenirs de voyage_, and so I drew it +carefully." This bit of fungus was to him a symbol of his own gnarled +existence. + +Tiring of ship life, he finally decided to study art. He had seen New +Zealand, Australia, Italy, New Caledonia, and if his splendid +plate--No. 22 in M. Burty's list--is evidence, he must have visited +San Francisco. Baudelaire, in L'Art Romantique, speaks of this +perspective of San Francisco as being Meryon's most masterly design. +In 1846 he quit seafaring. He was in mediocre health, and though from +a cadet he had attained the rank of lieutenant it was doubtful if he +would ever rise higher. His mother had left him four thousand dollars, +so he went over to the Latin Quarter and began to study painting. That +he was unfitted for, and meeting Eugne Blry he became interested in +etching. A Dutch seventeenth-century etcher and draughtsman, Reiner +Zeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too, Ducereau and Nicolle. +"An etching by the latter of a riverside view through the arch of a +bridge is like a link between Meryon and Piranesi," says D.S. MacColl. +Meryon also studied under the tuition of a painter named Phelippes. He +went to Belgium in 1856 on the invitation of the Duc d'Aremberg, and +in 1858 he was sent to Charenton suffering from melancholy and +delusions. He left in a year and returned to Paris and work; but, as +Baudelaire wrote, a cruel demon had touched the brain of the artist. A +mystic delirium set in. He ceased to etch, and evidently suffered from +the persecution madness. In every corner he believed conspiracies were +hatching. He often disappeared, often changed his abode. Sometimes he +would appear dressed gorgeously at a boulevard caf in company with +brilliant birds of prey; then he would be seen slinking through mean +streets in meaner rags. There are episodes in his life that recall the +career of another man of genius, Gerard de Nerval, poet, noctambulist, +suicide. It is known that Meryon destroyed his finest plates, but not +in a mad fit. Baudelaire says that the artist, who was a +perfectionist, did not wish to see his work suffer from rebiting, so +he quite sensibly sawed up the plates into tiny strips. That he was +suspicious of his fellow-etchers is illustrated in the story told by +Sir Seymour Haden, who bought several of his etchings from him at a +fair price. Two miles away from the atelier the Englishman was +overtaken by Meryon. He asked for the proofs he had sold, "as they +were of a nature to compromise him"; besides, from what he knew of +Haden's etchings he was determined that his proofs should not go to +England. Sir Seymour at once returned the etchings. Now, whether +Meryon's words were meant as a compliment or the reverse is doubtful. +He was half crazy, but he may have seen through a hole in the +millstone. + +Frederick Keppel once met in Paris an old printer named Beillet who +did work for Meryon. He could not always pay for the printing of his +celebrated Abside de Notre Dame, a masterpiece, as he hadn't the +necessary ten cents. "I never got my money!" exclaimed the thrifty +printer. Enormous endurance, enormous vanity, diseased pride, outraged +human sentiment, hatred of the Second Empire because of the particular +clause in the old Napoleonic code relating to the research of +paternity; an irregular life, possibly drugs, certainly alcoholism, +repeated rejections by the academic authorities, critics, and dealers +of his work--these and a feeble constitution sent the unfortunate back +to Charenton, where he died February 14, 1868. Baudelaire, his +critical discoverer, had only preceded him to a lunatic's grave six +months earlier. Inasmuch as there is a certain family likeness among +men of genius with disordered minds and instincts, several comparisons +might be made between Meryon and Baudelaire. Both were great artists +and both were born with flawed, neurotic systems. Dissipation and +misery followed as a matter of course. + +Charles Meryon was, nevertheless, a sane and a magnificent etcher. He +executed about a hundred plates, according to Burty. He did not avoid +portraiture, and to live he sometimes manufactured pot-boilers for the +trade. To his supreme vision was joined a miraculous surety of touch. +Baudelaire was right--those plates, the Paris set, so dramatic and +truthful in particulars, could have been sold if Meryon, with his +wolfish visage, his fierce, haggard eyes, his gruff manner, had not +offered them in person. He looked like a vagabond very often and too +often acted like a brigand. The Salon juries were prejudiced against +his work because of his legend. Verlaine over again! The etchings were +classic when they were born. We wonder they did not appeal +immediately. To-day, if you are lucky enough to come across one, you +are asked a staggering price. They sold for a song--when they did +sell--during the lifetime of the artist. Louis Napoleon and Baron +Haussmann destroyed picturesque Paris to the consternation of Meryon, +who to the eye of an archologist united the soul of an artist. He +loved old Paris. We can evoke it to-day, thanks to these etchings, +just as the Paris of 1848 is forever etched in the pages of Flaubert's +L'Education Sentimentale. + +But there is hallucination in these etchings, beginning with Le +Stryge, and its demoniac leer, "insatiable vampire, l'eternelle +luxure." That gallery of Notre Dame, with Wotan's ravens flying +through the slim pillars from a dream city bathed in sinister light, +is not the only striking conception of the poet-etcher. The grip of +reality is shown in such plates as Tourelle, Rue de la Tisseranderie, +and La Pompe, Notre Dame. Here are hallucinations translated into the +actual terms of art, suggesting, nevertheless, a solidity, a sharpness +of definition, withal a sense of fluctuating sky, air, clouds that +make you realise the _justesse_ of Berenson's phrase--tactile values. +With Meryon the tactile perception was a sixth sense. Clairvoyant of +images, he could transcribe the actual with an almost cruel precision. +Telescopic eyes his, as MacColl has it, and an imagination that +perceived the spectre lurking behind the door, the horror of enclosed +spaces, and the mystic fear of shadows--a Poe imagination, romantic, +with madness as an accomplice in the horrible game of his life. One is +tempted to add that the romantic imagination is always slightly mad. +It runs to seed in darkness and despair. The fugitive verse of Meryon +is bitter, ironical, defiant; a whiff from an underground prison, +where seems to sit in tortured solitude some wretch abandoned by +humanity, a stranger even at the gates of hell. + +Sir Seymour Haden has told us that Meryon's method was to make a +number of sketches, two or three inches square, of parts of his +picture, which he put together and arranged into a harmonious whole. +Herkomer says that he "used the burin in finishing his bitten work +with marvellous skill. No better combination can be found of the +harmonious combination of the two." Burty declared that "Meryon +preserves the characteristic detail of architecture... Without +modifying the aspect of the monument he causes it to express its +hidden meaning, and gives it a broader significance by associating it +with his own thought." His employment of a dull green paper at times +showed his intimate feeling for tonalities. He is, more so than +Piranesi, the Rembrandt of architecture. Hamerton admits that the +French etcher was "one of the greatest and most original artists who +have appeared in Europe," and berates the public of the '60s for not +discovering this. Then this writer, copying in an astonishingly +wretched manner several of Meryon's etchings, analysing their defects +as he proceeds, asserts that there is false tonality in Le Stryge. +"The intense black in the street under the tower of St. Jacques +destroys the impression of atmosphere, though at a considerable +distance it is as dark as the nearest raven's wing, which cannot +relieve itself against it. This may have been done in order to obtain +a certain arrangement of black and white patches," etc. This was done +for the sheer purpose of oppositional effects. Did Hamerton see a fine +plate? The shadow is heavy; the street is in demi, not total, +obscurity; the values of the flying ravens and the shadow are clearly +enunciated. The passage is powerful, even sensational, and in the +Romantic, Hugoesque key. Hamerton is wrong. Meryon seldom erred. His +was a temperament of steel and fire. + + + + +JOHN MARTIN, MEZZOTINTER + + + +The sitting-room was long and narrow. A haircloth sofa of +uncompromising rectitude was pushed so close to the wall that the +imprints of at least two generations of heads might be discerned upon +the flowered wall-paper--flowers and grapes of monstrous size from +some country akin to that visited by the Israelitish spies as related +in the Good Book. A mahogany sideboard stood at the upper end of the +room; in one window hung a cage which contained a feeble canary. As +you entered your eyes fell upon an ornamental wax fruit piece under a +conical glass. A stuffed bird, a robin redbreast, perched on a frosted +tree in the midst of these pale tropical offerings, glared at you with +beady eyes. Antimacassars and other things of horror were in the room. +Also a centre table upon which might have been found Cowper's poems, +the Bible, Beecher's sermons, and an illustrated book about the Holy +Land by some hardworking reverend. It was Aunt Jane's living-room; in +it she had rocked and knitted for more than half a century. There were +a few pictures on the wall, a crayon of her brother, a bank president +with a shaved upper lip, a high, pious forehead, and in his eyes a +stern expression of percentage. Over the dull white marble mantelpiece +hung a huge mezzotint, of violent contrast in black and white, a +picture whose subject had without doubt given it the place of honour +in this old-fashioned, tasteless, homely, comfortable room. It bore +for a title The Fall of Nineveh, and it was designed and mezzotinted +by John Martin. + +Let us look at this picture. It depicts the downfall of the great city +upon which the wrath of God is visited. There are ghastly gleams of +lightning above the doomed vicinity. A fierce tempest is in progress +as the invading hosts break down the great waterways and enter +dry-shod into the vast and immemorial temples and palaces. The +tragedy, the human quality of the design, is summed up by the agitated +groups in the foreground; the king, surrounded by his harem, makes a +gesture of despair; the women, with loose-flowing draperies, surround +him like frightened swans. A high priest raises his hand to the stormy +heavens, upon which he is evidently invoking as stormy maledictions. A +warrior swings his blade; to his neck clings a fair helpless one, half +nude. There are other groups. Men in armour rush to meet the foe in +futile agitation. On temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, on +the efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms +affrighted humanity. The impression is grandiose and terrific. Exotic +architecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dusty +corridors of legend or history--these and a hundred other details are +enclosed within the frame of this composition. Another picture which +hangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is +colourless in comparison. The Englishman had greater imagination than +the German, though he lacked the latter's anatomical science. To-day +in the Pinakothek, Munich, Kaulbach holds a place of honour. You may +search in vain at the London National Gallery for the paintings of a +man who once was on the crest of popularity in England, whose Biblical +subjects attracted multitudes, whose mezzotints and engravings were +sold wherever the English Bible was read. John Martin, painter, +mezzotinter, man of gorgeous imagination, second to De Quincey or the +author of Vathek, is to-day more forgotten than Beckford himself. + +Heinrich Heine in his essay, The Romantic School, said that "the +history of literature is a great morgue, wherein each seeks the dead +who are near or dear to him." Into what morgue fell John Martin before +his death? How account for the violent changes in popular taste? +Martin suffered from too great early success. The star of Turner was +in the ascendant. John Ruskin denied merit to the mezzotinter, and so +it is to-day that if you go to our print-shops you will seldom find +one of his big or little plates. He has gone out of fashion--fatal +phrase!--and only in the cabinets of old collectors can you get a peep +at his archaic and astounding productions. William Blake is in vogue; +perhaps Martin--? And then those who have garnered his plates will +reap a harvest. + +Facts concerning him or his work are slight. Bryan's dictionary +accords him a few paragraphs. When at the British Museum, a few years +ago, I asked Mr. Sidney Colvin about the Martins in his print-room. +There are not many, not so many as in a certain private collection +here. But Mr. Colvin told me of the article written by Cosmo Monkhouse +in the Dictionary of National Biography, and from it we are enabled to +present a few items about the man's career. He was born at Hayden +Bridge, near Hexham, Northumberland, July 19, 1789. His father, +Fenwick Martin, a fencing-master, held classes at the Chancellor's +Head, Newcastle. His brothers, Jonathan (1782-1838) and William +(1772-1851), have some claim on our notice, for the first was an +insane prophet and incendiary, having set fire to York Minster in +1829; William was a natural philosopher and poet who published many +works to prove the theory of perpetual motion. "After having convinced +himself by means of thirty-six experiments of the impossibility of +demonstrating it scientifically, it was revealed to him in a dream +that God had chosen him to discover the great cause of all things, and +this he made the subject of many works" (Jasnot, Vrits positives, +1854). Verily, as Lombroso hath it, "A hundred fanatics are found for +a theological or metaphysical statement, but not one for a geometric +problem." + +The Martin stock was, without doubt, neurasthenic. John was +apprenticed when fourteen to Wilson, a Newcastle coach painter, but +ran away after a dispute over wages. He met Bonifacio Musso, an +Italian china painter, and in 1806 went with him to London. There he +supported himself painting china and glass while he studied +perspective and architecture. At nineteen he married and in 1812 lived +in High Street, Marylebone, and from there sent to the Academy his +first picture, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (from Tales +of the Genii). The figure of Sadak was so small that the framers +disputed as to the top of the picture. It sold to Mr. Manning for +fifty guineas. Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy, +encouraged Martin, and next year he painted Adam's First Sight of Eve, +which he sold for seventy guineas. In 1814 his Clytis was shown in an +ante-room of the exhibition, and he bitterly complained of his +treatment. Joshua, in 1816, was as indifferently hung, and he never +forgave the Academy the insult, though he did not withdraw from its +annual functions. In 1817 he was appointed historical painter to +Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. He etched about this time +Character of Trees (seven plates) and the Bard at the Academy. In 1818 +he removed to Allsop Terrace, New (Marylebone road). In 1819 came The +Fall of Babylon, Macbeth (1820), Belshazzar's Feast (1821), which, +"excluded" from the Academy, yet won the 200 prize. A poem by T.S. +Hughes started Martin on this picture. It was a national success and +was exhibited in the Strand behind a glass transparency. It went the +round of the provinces and large cities and attracted thousands. +Martin joined the Society of British Artists at its foundation and +exhibited with them from 1824 to 1831, and also in 1837 and 1838, +after which he sent his important pictures to the Royal Academy. + +In 1833 The Fall of Nineveh went to Brussels, where it was bought by +the Government. Martin was elected member of the Belgian Academy and +the Order of Leopold was conferred on him. His old quarrels with the +Academy broke out in 1836, and he testified before a committee as to +favouritism. Then followed The Death of Moses, The Deluge, The Eve of +the Deluge, The Assuaging of the Waters, Pandemonium. He painted +landscapes and water-colours, scenes on the Thames, Brent, Wandle, +Wey, Stillingbourne, and the hills and eminences about London. About +this time he began scheming for a method of supplying London with +water and one that would improve the docks and sewers. He engraved +many of his own works, Belshazzar, Joshua, Nineveh, Fall of Babylon. +The first two named, with The Deluge, were presented by the French +Academy to Louis Philippe, for which courtesy a medal was struck off +in Martin's honour. The Ascent of Elijah, Christ Tempted in the +Wilderness, and Martin's illustrations (with Westall's) to Milton's +Paradise Lost were all completed at this period. For the latter Martin +received 2,000. He removed to Lindsey House, Chelsea, in 1848 or +1849, and was living there in 1852, when he sent to the Academy his +last contribution, Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. November 12, +1853, while engaged upon his last large canvases, The Last Judgment, +The Great Day of Wrath, and The Plains of Heaven, he was paralysed on +his right side. He was removed to the Isle of Man, and obstinately +refusing proper nourishment, died at Douglas February 17, 1854. After +his death three pictures, scenes from the Apocalypse, were exhibited +at the Hall of Commerce. His portrait by Wangemann appeared in the +_Magazine of Fine Arts_. A second son, Leopold Charles, writer, and +godson of Leopold, King of Belgium, was an authority on costumes and +numismatics (1817-89). His wife was a sister of Sir John Tenniel of +_Punch_. + +John Martin was slightly cracked; at least he was so considered by his +contemporaries. He was easily affronted, yet he was a very generous +man. He bought Etty's picture, The Combat, in 1825 for two or three +hundred guineas. There are at the South Kensington Museum three +Martins, watercolours, and one oil; at Newcastle, an oil. At the time +of his decease his principal works were in the collections of Lord de +Tabley, Dukes of Buckingham and Sutherland, Messrs. Hope and +Scarisbruck, Earl Grey and Prince Albert. The Leyland family of +Nantchvyd, North Wales, owns the Joshua and several typical works of +Martin. Wilkie, in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, describes +Belshazzar's Feast as a "phenomenon." Bulwer declared that Martin was +"more original and self-dependent than Raphael or Michael Angelo." In +the Last Essays of Elia there is one by Charles Lamb entitled +Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Production of Modern Art. +The name of Martin is not mentioned, but several of his works are +unmistakably described. "His towered architecture [Lamb is writing of +Belshazzar's Feast] are of the highest order of the material sublime. +Whether they were dreams or transcripts of some elder +workmanship--Assyrian ruins old--restored by this mighty artist, they +satisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions of the glories of +the antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled." +"Literary" art critic as he was, Lamb put his finger on Martin's +weakest spot--his figure painting. The entire essay should be read, +for it contains a study of the Joshua in which this most delicious of +English prose writers speaks of the "wise falsifications" of the great +masters. Before his death the critics, tiring of him sooner than the +public, called Martin tricky, meretricious, mechanical. To be sure, +his drawing is faulty, his colour hot and smoky; nevertheless, he was +not a charlatan. As David Wilkie wrote: "Weak in all these points in +which he can be compared to other artists," he had the compensating +quality of an imposing, if at times operatic, imagination. Monkhouse +justly says that in Martin's illustrations to Milton the smallness of +scale and absence of colour enable us to appreciate the grandeur of +his conceptions with a minimum of his defects. + +In sooth he lacked variety. His pictures are sooty and apocalyptic. We +have seen the Mountain Landscape, at South Kensington, The Destruction +of Herculaneum, at Manchester, another at Newcastle whose subject +escapes us, and we confess that we prefer the mezzotints of Martin, +particularly those engraved by Le Keux--whose fine line and keen sense +of balance corrected the incoherence of Martin's too blackened shadows +and harsh explosions of whites. One looks in vain for the velvety tone +of Earlom, or the vivid freshness of Valentine Green, in Martin. He +was not a colourist; his mastery consisted in transferring to his huge +cartoons a sense of the awful, of the catastrophic. He excelled in the +delineation of massive architecture, and if Piranesi was his superior +in exactitude, he equalled the Italian in majesty and fantasy of +design. No such cataclysmic pictures were ever before painted, nor +since, though Gustave Dor, who without doubt made a study of Martin, +has incorporated in his Biblical illustrations many of Martin's +overwhelming ideas--the Deluge, for example. James Ensor, the Belgian +illustrator, is an artist of fecund fancy who, alone among the new +men, has betrayed a feeling for the strange architecture, dream +architecture, we encounter in Martin. Coleridge in Kubla Khan, De +Quincey in opium reveries, Poe and Baudelaire are among the writers +who seem nearest to the English mezzotinter. William Beckford's +Vathek, that most Oriental of tales, first written in French by a +millionaire of genius, should have inspired Martin. Perhaps its mad +fantasy did, for all we know--there is no authentic compilation of his +compositions. Heine has spoken of Martin, as has Thophile Gautier; +and his name, by some kink of destiny, is best known to the present +generation because of Macaulay's mention of it in an essay. + +The Vale of Tempe is one of Martin's larger plates seldom seen in the +collector's catalogue. We have viewed it and other rare prints in the +choice collection referred to already. Satan holding council, after +Milton, is a striking conception. The Prince of Eblis sits on a vast +globe of ebony. About him are tier upon tier of faces, the faces of +devils. Infernal chandeliers depend from remote ceilings. Light gashes +the globe and the face and figure of Satan; both are of supernal +beauty. Could this mezzotint, so small in size, so vast in its shadowy +suggestiveness, have stirred Baudelaire to lines that shine with a +metallic poisonous lustre? + +And there is that tiny mezzotint in which we find ourselves at the +base of a rude little hill. The shock of the quaking earth, the silent +passing of the sheeted dead and the rush of the affrighted multitudes +tell us that a cosmic tragedy is at hand. In a flare of lightning we +see silhouetted against an angry sky three crosses at the top of a sad +little hill. It is a crucifixion infinitely more real, more intense +than Dor's. Another scene--also engraved by Le Keux: On a stony +platform, vast and crowded, the people kneel in sackcloth and ashes; +the heavens thunder over the weeping millions of Nineveh, and the Lord +of Hosts will not be appeased. Stretching to the clouds are black +basaltic battlements, and above rear white-terraced palaces as swans +that strain their throats to the sky. The mighty East is in penitence. +Or, Elijah is rapt to heaven in a fiery whirlwind; or God creates +light. This latter is one of the most extraordinary conceptions of a +great visionary and worthy of William Blake. Or Sadak searching for +the waters of oblivion. Alas, poor humanity! is here the allegory. A +man, a midget amid the terrifying altitudes of barren stone, lifts +himself painfully over a ledge of rock. Above him are vertiginous +heights; below him, deadly precipices. Nothing helps him but +himself--a page torn from Max Stirner is this parable. Light streams +upon the struggling egoist as he toils to the summit of consciousness. +Among the designs of nineteenth-century artists we can recall none so +touching, so powerful, so modern as this picture. Martin was not +equally successful in portraying celestial episodes, though his +paradises are enormous panoramas replete with architectural beauties. +His figures, as exemplified in Miltonic illustrations, are more +conventional than Fuseli's and never naively original as are Blake's. +Indeed, of Blake's mystic poetry and divination Martin betrays no +trace. He is not so much the seer as the inventor of infernal +harmonies. Satan reviewing his army of devils is truly magnificent in +its depiction of the serried host armed for battle; behind glistens +burning Tophet in all its smoky splendour. Satan in shining armour +must be a thousand feet high; he is sadly out of scale. So, too, in +the quarrel of Michael and Satan over the sleeping Adam and Eve. Blake +is here recalled in the rhythms of the monstrous figures. Bathos is in +the design of Lucifer swimming in deepest hell upon waves of fire and +filth; yet the lugubrious arches of the caverns in the perspective +reveal Blake's fantasy, so quick to respond to external stimuli. +Martin saw the earth as in an apocalyptic swoon, its forms distorted, +its meanings inverted; a mad world, the world of an older theogony. +But if there was little human in his visions, he is enormously +impersonal; if he assailed heaven's gates on wings of melting wax, or +dived deep into the pool of iniquity, he none the less caught glimpses +in his breathless flights of strange countries across whose sill no +human being ever passes. There is genuine hallucination. He must have +seen his ghosts so often that in the end they petrified him, as did +the Statue Don Giovanni. Martin was a species of reversed Turner. He +spied the good that was in evil, the beauty in bituminous blacks. He +is the painter of black music, the deifier of Beelzebub, and also one +who caught the surge and thunder of the Old Testament, its majesty and +its savagery. As an illustrator of sacred history, the world may one +day return to John Martin. + + + + +ZORN + + + +Anders Zorn--what's in a name? Possibly the learned and amiable father +of Tristram Shandy or that formidable pedant Professor Slawkenbergius +might find much to arouse his interest in the patronymic of the great +Swedish painter and etcher. What Zorn means in his native tongue we do +not profess to know; but in German it signifies anger, wrath, rage. +Now, the Zorn in life is not an enraged person--unless some lady +sitter asks him to paint her as she is not. He is, as all will testify +who have met him, a man of rare personal charm and sprightly humour. +He, it may be added, calls yellow yellow, and he never paints a +policeman like a poet. In a word, a man of robust, normal vision, a +realist and an artist. False realism with its hectic, Zola-like +romanticism is distasteful to Zorn. He is near Degas among the +Frenchmen and Zuloaga among the new Spaniards; near them in a certain +forthright quality of depicting life, though unlike them in technical +and individual methods. + +Yes, Zorn, that crisp, bold, short name, which begins with a letter +that abruptly cuts both eye and ear, quite fits the painter's +personality, fits his art. He is often ironic. Some fanciful theorist +has said that the letters Z and K are important factors in the career +of the men who possess them in their names. Camille Saint-Sans has +spoken of Franz Liszt and his lucky letter. It is a very pretty idea, +especially when one stakes on zero at Monte Carlo; but no doubt Anders +Zorn would be the first to laugh the idea out of doors. + +We recall an exhibition a few years ago at Venice in the art gallery +of the Giardino Reale. Zorn had a place of honour among the boiling +and bubbling Secessionists; indeed, his work filled a large room. And +what work! Such a giant's revel of energy. Such landscapes, riotous, +sinister, and lovely. Such women! Here we pause for breath. Zorn's +conception of womanhood has given offence to many idealists, who do +not realise that once upon a time our forebears were furry and +indulged in arboreal habits. Zorn can paint a lady; he has signed many +gentle and aristocratic canvases. + +But Zorn is also too sincere not to paint what he sees. Some of his +models are of the earth, earthy; others step toward you with the +candid majesty of a Brunhilda, naked, unashamed, and regal. They are +all vital. We recall, too, the expressions, shocked, amazed, even +dazed, of some American art students who, fresh from their golden +Venetian dreams, faced the uncompromising pictures of a man who had +faced the everyday life of his day. For these belated visionaries, +whose ideal in art is to painfully imitate Giorgione, Titian, or +Tiepolo, this modern, with his rude assault upon the nerves, must seem +a very iconoclast. Yet Zorn only attempts to reproduce the life +encircling him. He is a child of his age. He, too, has a perception of +beauty, but it is the beauty that may be found by the artist with an +ardent, unspoiled gaze, the curious, disquieting beauty of our time. +Whistler saw it in old Venetian doorways as well as down Chelsea way +or at Rotherhithe. Zorn sees it in some corner of a wood, in some +sudden flex of muscle or intimate firelit interior. And he loves to +depict the glistening curves of his big model as she stands in the +sunlight, a solid reproach to physical and moral anmia. A pagan, by +Apollo! + +As an etcher the delicacy of his sheathed lion's paw is the principal +quality that meets the eye, notwithstanding the broad execution. +Etching is essentially an impressionistic art. Zorn is an +impressionist among etchers. He seems to attack his plate not with the +finesse of a meticulous fencing-master but like a Viking, with a broad +Berserker blade. He hews, he hacks, he gashes. There is blood in his +veins, and he does not spare the ink. But examine closely these little +prints--some of them miracles of printing--and you may discern their +delicate sureness, subtlety, and economy of gesture. Fitzroy +Carrington quotes the Parisian critic Henri Marcel, who among other +things wrote of the Zorn etchings: "Let us only say that these +etchings--paradoxical in their coarseness of means and fineness of +effect--manifest the master at his best." + +Coarseness of means and fineness of effect--the phrase is a happy one. +Coarse is sometimes the needle-work of Zorn, but the end justifies the +means. He is often cruel, more cruel than Sargent. His portraits prove +it. He has etched all his friends, some of whom must have felt +honoured and amused--or else offended. The late Paul Verlaine, for +example, would not have been pleased with the story of his life as +etched by the Swede. It is as biting a commentary--one is tempted to +say as acid--as a page from Strindberg. Yes, without a touch of +Strindberg's mad fantasy, Zorn is kin to him in his ironic, witty way +of saying things about his friends and in front of their faces. +Consider that large plate of Renan. Has any one so told the truth +concerning the ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer of +France? The large, loosely modelled head with its fleshy curves, its +super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontifical +expression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania of +certitude"--here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous disdainer of democracies, +and planner of a phalanstery of superior men years before Nietzsche's +superman appeared. Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker; +also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, is it not, +to evoke with needle, acid, paper, and ink the dualism of such a brain +and temperament as was Renan's? + +He is not flattering to himself, Zorn. The Henry G. Marquand, two +impressions, leaves one rather sad. An Irish girl, Annie, is superb in +its suggestion of form and colour. Saint-Gaudens and his model is +excellent; we prefer the portrait. The Evening Girl Bathing is rare in +treatment--simple, restrained, vital. She has turned her back, and we +are grateful, for it is a beautiful back. The landscape is as +evanescent as Whistler, the printing is in a delicate key. The Berlin +Gallery contains a Zorn, a portrait striking in its reality. It +represents Miss Maja von Heyne wearing a collar of skins. She could +represent the Maja of Ibsen's epilogue, When We Dreamers Awake; Maja, +the companion of the bear hunter, Ulfheim. As etched, we miss the +massiveness, the rich, vivid colour, yet it is a plate of distinction. + +Among his portraits are the Hon. Daniel S. Lamont, Senator "Billy" +Mason, the Hon. John Hay, Mr. and Mrs. Atherton Curtis, and several +big-wigs of several nations. An oil-painting is an impressionistic +affair, showing some overblown girls dressing after their bath. The +sun flecks their shoulders, but otherwise seems rather inclined to +retire modestly. Evidently not the midnight sun. + +We have barely indicated the beauties in which the virile spirit of +Anders Zorn comes out at you from the wall--a healthy, large-hearted, +girted Swede is this man with the Z. + + + + +BRANGWYN + + + +The name of Frank Brangwyn may fall upon unresponsive ears; yet he has +a Continental reputation and is easily the foremost English +impressionist. New York has seen but little of his work; if we mistake +not, there was a large piece of his, a Gipsy Tinker in the open air, +hung several seasons ago at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Mr. +Kennedy shows extraordinary etchings of his at the Wunderlich +Galleries. We call them extraordinary not alone because of their size, +but also because Brangwyn is practically the first among latter-day +artists to apply boldly to etching the methods of the impressionists. +Etching in its essential nature is an impressionistic art. We do not +mean to assert that Brangwyn uses the dot or dash or broken dabs in +his plates, for the very good reason that he is working in black and +white; nevertheless a glance at his plates will show you a new way of +conquering old prejudices. Whistler it was who railed at large +etchings. He was not far wrong. In the hands of the majority of +etchers a large plate is an abomination, diffused in interest, coarse +of line; but Brangwyn is not to be considered among this majority. He +is a big fellow in everything. Besides, Whistler was using the +familiar argument, _pro doma sua_. The same may be said of Poe, who +simply would not hear of a long poem (shades of Milton!) or of Chopin, +who lost his way in the sonata form, though coming out in the gorgeous +tropical land, the thither side of sonatas and other tonal animals. + +Because Catullus and Sappho did not write epics that is no reason why +Dante should not. It is the old story of the tailless fox. Brangwyn as +well as Anders Zorn has been called a rough-and-ready artist. For +exquisite tone and pattern we must go to Whistler and his school. +Brangwyn is never exquisite, though he is often poetic, even epical. +Look at that Bridge, Barnard Castle. It is noble in outline, lovely in +atmosphere. Or at the Old Hammersmith--"swell," as the artist slang +goes. The Mine is in feeling and mass Rembrandtish; and as we have +used the name of the great Dutchman we may as well admit that to him, +despite a world of difference, Brangwyn owes much. He has the sense of +mass. What could be more tangibly massive than the plate called +Breaking Up of the Hannibal? Here is a theme which Turner in The +Fighting Tmraire made truly poetic, and Seymour Haden in his +Agamemnon preserved more than a moiety of sentiment, not to mention +the technical prowess displayed; but in the hulk of this ugly old +vessel of Brangwyn's there is no beauty. However, it is hugely +impressive. His landscapes are not too seldom hell-scapes. + +The Inn of the Parrot is quaint with its reversed lettering. The Road +to Montreuil is warm in colour and finely handled. How many have +realised the charm of the rear view of Santa Maria Salute? It is one +of the most interesting of Brangwyn's Venetian etchings. His vision of +Saint Sophia, Constantinople, has the mystic quality we find in the +Dutchman Bauer's plates. A Church at Montreuil attracts the eye; +London Bridge is positively dramatic; the Old Kew Bridge has delicacy; +the Sawyers with their burly figures loom up monstrously; the Building +of the New Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, recalls, as +treated by the impressionistic brush of Brangwyn (for the needle seems +transformed into a paint-loaded spike), one of H.G. Wells's terrific +socialistic structures of the year 2009. Remember that Brangwyn is +primarily a painter, an impressionist. He sees largely. His dream of +the visible world (and like Sorolla, it is never the world invisible +with him) is one of patches and masses, of luminous shadows, of +animated rhythms, of rich arabesques. He is sib to the Scotch. His +father is said to have been a Scottish weaver who settled in Bruges. +Frank saw much of the world before settling in London. He was born at +Bruges, 1867. The Golden Book of Art describes him as a one-time +disciple of William Morris. He has manufactured glass, furniture, +wall-paper, pottery. His curiosity is insatiable. He is a mural +decorator who in a frenzy could cover miles of space if some kind +civic corporation would but provide the walls. As the writer of the +graceful preface to the Wunderlich catalogue has it: "He gets the +character of his theme. His art is itself full of character." +Temperament, overflowing, passionate, and irresistible, is his +key-note. In music he might have been a Fritz Delius, a Richard +Strauss. He is an eclectic. He knows all schools, all methods. He is +Spanish in his fierce relish of the open air, of the sights--and we +almost said sounds--of many lands, but the Belgian strain, the touch +of the mystic and morose, creeps into his work. We have caught it more +in his oils than etchings. It is not singular, then, that his small +etched plates do not hold the eye; they lack magnetic quality. It is +the Titan, rude and raging, dashing ink over an acre of white paper, +that rivets you. The stock attitudes and gestures he does not give +you; and it is doubtful if he will have an audience soon in America, +where the sleek is king and prettiness is exalted over power. + + + + +DAUMIER + + + +Mr. Frank Weitenkampf, the curator of the Lenox Library print +department, shows nineteen portfolios which hold about seven hundred +lithographs by Honor Daumier. This collection is a bequest of the +late Mr. Lawrence, and we doubt if the Bibliothque Nationale at Paris +surpasses it; that is, in the number of detached examples. There the +works of the great artist are imbedded in the various publications for +which he laboured so many years--such at _La Caricature, Les Beaux +Arts, L'Artiste, Les Modes Parisiennes, La Gazette Musicale, Le +Boulevard,_ and _Masques et Visages_. The Lawrence lithographs are +representatives, though not complete; the catalogue compiled by Loys +Delteil comprises 3,958 plates; the paintings and drawings are also +numerous. But an admirable idea of Daumier's versatile genius may be +gleaned at the Lenox Library, as all the celebrated series are there: +Paris Bohemians, the Blue Stockings, the Railways, La Caricature, +Croquis d'Expressions, Emotions Parisiennes, Actualits, Les +Baigneurs, Pastorales, Moeurs Conjugales, the Don Quixote plates, +Silhouettes, Souvenirs d'Artistes, Types Parisiens, the Advocates and +Judges, and a goodly number of the miscellanies. Altogether an +adequate exhibition. + +Honor Daumier, who died February 11, 1879, was almost the last of the +giants of 1830, though he outlived many of them. Not affiliated with +the Barbizon group--though he was a romantic in his hatred of the +bourgeois--several of these painters were intimate friends; indeed, +Corot was his benefactor, making him a present of a cottage at +Valmondois (Seine-et-Oise), where the illustrator died. He was blind +and lonely at the end. Corot died 1875; Daubigny, his companion, 1878; +Millet, 1875, and Rousseau, with whom he corresponded, died 1867. In +1879 Flaubert still lived, working heroically upon that monument of +human inanity, Bouvard et Pcuchet; Maupassant, his disciple, had just +published a volume of verse; Manet was regarded as a dangerous +charlatan, Monet looked on as a madman; while poor Czanne was only a +bad joke. The indurated critical judgment of the academic forces +pronounced Bonnat a greater portraitist than Velasquez, and Grme and +his mock antiques and mock orientalism far superior to Fromentin and +Chasseriau. It was a glorious epoch for mediocrity. And Daumier, in +whom there was something of Michael Angelo and Courbet, was admired +only as a clever caricaturist, the significance of his paintings +escaping all except a few. Corot knew, Daubigny knew, as earlier +Delacroix knew; and Balzac had said: "There is something of the +Michael Angelo in this man!" + +Baudelaire, whose critical _flair_ never failed him, wrote in his +Curiosits Esthtiques: "Daumier's distinguishing note as an artist is +his certainty. His drawing is fluent and easy; it is a continuous +improvisation. His powers of observation are such that in his work we +never find a single head that is out of character with the figure +beneath it. ... Here, in these animalised faces, may be seen and read +clearly all the meannesses of soul, all the absurdities, all the +aberrations of intelligence, all the vices of the heart; yet at the +same time all is broadly drawn and accentuated." Nevertheless one must +not look at too many of these caricatures. At first the Rabelaisian +side of the man appeals; presently his bitterness becomes too acrid. +Humanity is silly, repulsive; it is goat, pig, snake, monkey, and +tiger; but there is something else. Daumier would see several sides. +His pessimism, like Flaubert's, is deadly, but at times reaches the +pitch of the heroic. He could have echoed Flaubert's famous sentence: +"The ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope." Yet what wit, what +humour, what humanity in Daumier! His Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are +worth a wilderness of Dors. And the Good Samaritan or The Drinkers. +The latter is as jovial as Steen or Hals. + +A story went the rounds after his death which neatly illustrates his +lack of worldliness. His modesty was proverbial, and once Daubigny, on +introducing him to an American picture dealer, warned him not to ask +less than five thousand francs for the first picture he sold to the +man. The American went to Daumier's atelier, and seeing a picture on +the easel, asked, "How much?" The artist, remembering Daubigny's +warning, answered, "Five thousand francs." The dealer immediately +bought it, and on demanding to see something else, Daumier put another +canvas on the easel, far superior to the one sold. The Yankee again +asked the price. The poor artist was perplexed. He had received no +instructions from Daubigny regarding a second sale; so when the +question was repeated he hesitated, and his timidity getting the +better of him, he replied: "Five hundred francs." "Don't want it; +wouldn't take it as a gift," said the dealer. "I like the other +better. Besides, I never sell any but expensive pictures," and he went +away satisfied that a man who sold so cheaply was not much of an +artist. This anecdote, which we heard second hand from Daubigny, may +be a fable, yet it never failed to send Daubigny into fits of +laughter. It may be surmised that, despite his herculean labours, +extending over more than half a century, Daumier never knew how to +make or save money. + +He was born at Marseilles in 1808. His father was a third-rate poet +who, suspecting his own gift, doubted the talent of his son, though +this talent was both precocious and prodigious. The usual thing +happened. Daumier would stick at nothing but his drawing; the attempt +to force him into law studies only made him hate the law and lawyers +and that hatred he never ceased to vent in his caricatures. He knocked +about until he learned in 1829 the technics of lithography; then he +soon became self-supporting. His progress was rapid. He illustrated +for the Boulevard journals; he caricatured Louis Philippe and was sent +to jail, Sainte-Plagie, for six months. Many years afterward he +attacked with a like ferocity Napoleon III. + +Look at his frontispiece--rather an advertisement--of Victor Hugo's +Les Chtiments. It is as sinister, as malign as a Rops. The big book, +title displayed, crushes to earth a vulture which is a travesty of the +Napoleonic beak. Daumier was a power in Paris. Albert Wolff, the +critic of _Figaro_, tells how he earned five francs each time he +provided a text for a caricature by Daumier, and Philipon, who founded +several journals, actually claimed a share in Daumier's success +because he wrote some of the silly dialogues to his plates. + +Daumier was the artistic progenitor of the Caran d'Aches, the +Forains--who was it that called Forain "Degas en +caricature"?--Willettes, and Toulouse-de-Lautrecs. He was a political +pamphleteer, a scourger of public scamps, and a pictorial muck-raker +of genius. His mockery of the classic in art was later paralleled by +Offenbach in La Belle Hlne. But there were other sides to his +genius. Tiring of the hurly-burly of journalism, he retired in 1860 to +devote himself to painting. + +His style has been pronounced akin to that of Eugne Carrire; his +sense of values on a par with Goya's and Rembrandt's (that Shop Window +of his in the Durand-Ruel collection is truly Rembrandtesque). This +feeling for values was so remarkable that it enabled him to produce an +impression with three or four tones. The colours he preferred were +grays, browns, and he manipulated his blacks like a master. Mauclair +does not hesitate to put Daumier among the great painters of the past +century on the score of his small canvases. "They contain all his +gifts of bitter and profound observation, all the mastery of his +drawings, to which they add the attractions of rich and intense +colour," declares Mauclair. Doubtless he was affected by the influence +of Henri Monnier, but Daumier really comes from no one. He belongs to +the fierce tribe of synics and men of exuberant powers, like Goya and +Courbet. A born anarch of art, he submitted to no yoke. He would have +said with Anacharsis Cloots: "I belong to the party of indignation." +He was a proud individualist. That he had a tender side, a talent for +friendship, may be noted in the affectionate intercourse he maintained +for years with Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Dupr, Geoffroy, the sculptor +Pascal, and others. He was very impulsive and had a good heart with +all his misanthropy, for he was an idealist reversed. The etching of +him by Loys Delteil is thus described by a sympathetic commentator: +"Daumier was very broad-shouldered, his head rather big, with slightly +sunken eyes, which must, however, have had an extraordinary power of +penetration. Though the nose is a little heavy and inelegant, the +projecting forehead, unusually massive like that of Victor Hugo or of +Beethoven and barred with a determined furrow, reveals the great +thinker, the man of lofty and noble aspirations. The rather long hair, +thrown backward, adds to the expression of the fine head; and finally +the beard worn collarwise, according to the prevailing fashion, gives +to Daumier's face the distinctive mark of his period." This etched +portrait may be seen in several states at the Lenox Library. + + + + +LALANNE'S ETCHINGS + + + +How heavily personality counts in etching may be noted in the etched +work of Maxime Lalanne which is at the Keppel Galleries. This skilful +artist, so deft with his needle, so ingenious in fancy, escapes great +distinction by a hair's breadth. He is without that salt of +individuality that is so attractive in Whistler. Of him Hamerton +wrote: "No one ever etched so gracefully as Maxime Lalanne; ... he is +essentially a true etcher... There have been etchers of greater power, +of more striking originality, but there has never been an etcher equal +to him in a certain delicate elegance." This is very amiable, and +Joseph Pennell is quite as favourable in his judgment. "His ability," +wrote Mr. Pennell in Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen, "to express a +great building, a vast town, or a delicate little landscape has never +been equalled, I think, by anybody but Whistler." Mr. Pennell modestly +omits his own name; but the truth is that Pennell is as excellent if +not more individual a draughtsman as Lalanne, and when it comes to +vision, to invention, and to the manipulation of the metal he is the +superior of the Frenchman. The American etcher rates Lalanne's lines +above Titian's. Whistler and Titian would be big companions indeed for +the clever-mannered and rather pedantic Lalanne. + +Let us admit without balking at Hamerton that his line is graceful. He +belongs to the old-fashioned school which did not dream, much less +approve, of modern tonal effects in their plates. A Lalanne etching is +as clean and vivid as a photograph (not an "art" photograph). It is +also as hard. Atmosphere, in the material as well as the poetic sense, +is missing. His skies are disappointing. Those curly-cue clouds are +meaningless, and the artist succeeds better when he leaves a blank. At +least some can fill it with the imagination. Another grave defect is +the absence of modulation in his treatment of a landscape and its +linear perspective. Everything seems to be on the same plane of +interest, nor does he vary the values of his blacks--in foreground, +middle distance, and the upper planes the inking is often in the same +violent key. Such a capital plate, for example, which depicts a fire +in the port of Bordeaux is actually untrue in its values. Dramatic in +feeling and not without a note here and there of Rembrandt, this +particular composition fails, just fails to hit the bull's-eye. + +After all, we must judge a man in his genre, as Keppel _pre_ puts it. +Maxime Lalanne's style is that of a vanished generation in etching. He +was a contemporary of Meryon, but that unhappy man of genius taught +him nothing. Born at Bordeaux in 1827, Lalanne died in 1886. He was a +pupil of Jean Gigoux (1806-94), a painter whose gossipy souvenirs +(1885) pleased Paris and still please the curious. (Gigoux it was who +remained in Balzac's house when the novelist died; though he was not +visiting the master of the house.) From this painter Lalanne evidently +imbibed certain theories of his art which he set forth in his Treatise +on Etching (1866). + +Strangely enough, illustrator as he was, his transpositions into black +and white of subjects by Troyon, Ruysdael, Crome, Constable, and many +others are not so striking either in actual technique or individual +grasp as his original pieces. Constable, for instance, is thin, +diffuse, and without richness. Mezzotinted by the hands of such a man +as Lucas, we recognise the real medium for translating the English +painter. A master of the limpid line, Lalanne shows you a huddled bit +of Amsterdam or a distant view of Bordeaux, or that delicious prospect +taken on a spot somewhere below the Pont Saint-Michel, with the Pont +Neuf and the Louvre in the background. He had a feeling for those +formal gardens which have captured within their enclosure a moiety of +nature's unstudied ease. The plate called Aux Environs de Paris +reveals this. And what slightly melancholy tenderness there is in Le +Canal Pont Sainte-Maxence. There are several states of the "Villers" +etching, an attractive land and seascape, marred, however, by the +clumsy sameness of the blacks in the foreground. + +Without possessing Meryon's grim power in the presentation of old +Paris streets and tumble-down houses, Lalanne has achieved several +remarkable plates of this order. One is his well-known Rue des +Marmousets. This street is almost as repellent-looking as Rue +Mouffetard at its worst period. Ancient and sinister, its reputation +was not enticing. In it once dwelt a pastry cook who, taking his crony +the barber into his confidence, literally made mince-meat of a +stranger and sold the pies to the neighbours. + +Messire Jacques du Breul, in his Le Thtre des Antiquits de Paris +(1612), remarks, not without critical unction, in his quaint French: +"De la chair d'icelui faisit des pastez qui se trouvoient meilleurs +que les aultres, d'autant que la chair de l'homme est plus dlicate +cause de la nourriture que celle des aultres animaux." Every one to +his taste, as the old politician said when he kissed the donkey. When +you study the Lalanne etching of this gruesome alley you almost expect +to see at the corner Anatole France's famous cook-shop with its +delectable odours and fascinating company. + +The scenes of Thames water-side, Nogent, Houlgate Beach, at Richmond, +or at Cusset are very attractive. His larger plates are not +convincing, the composition does not hang together; the eye vainly +seeks focussing centres of interest. Beraldi was right when he said +that Lalanne has not left one surpassing plate, one of which the world +can say: There is a masterpiece! Yet is Maxime Lalanne among the +Little Masters of characteristic etching. His appeal is popular, he is +easily comprehended of the people. + + + + +LOUIS LEGRAND + + + +The etched work of the brilliant Frenchman Louis Legrand is at last +beginning to be appreciated in this country. French etchings, unless +by painter-etchers, have never been very popular with us. We admire +Meryon and Helleu's drypoints, Bracquemond, Jacquemart; Flix Buhot +has a following; Lalanne and Daubigny too; but in comparison with the +demand for Rembrandt, Whistler, Seymour Haden, or Zorn the Paris men +are not in the lead. There is Rops, for example, whose etchings may be +compared to Meryon's; yet who except a few amateurs seeks Rops? Louis +Legrand is now about forty-five, at the crest of his career, a +versatile, spontaneous artist who is equally happy with pigments or +the needle. His pastels are much sought, but his dry-points have +gained for him celebrity. Though a born colourist, the primary gift of +the man is his draughtsmanship. His designs, swift and supple +notations of the life around him, delight the eye by reason of their +personal touch and because of the intensely human feeling that he +infuses into every plate. Legrand was one of the few pupils of +Flicien Rops, and technically he has learned much of his master; but +his way of viewing men and women and life is different from that of +the Belgian genius. He has irony and wit and humour--the two we seldom +bracket--and he has pity also; he loves the humble and despised. His +portraits of babies, the babies of the people, are captivating. +Imagine a Rops who has some of Millet's boundless sympathy for his +fellow-humans and you have approximately an understanding of Louis +Legrand. + +He is a native of Dijon, the city that gave birth to Bossuet, but +Legrand is not that kind of Burgundian. Several critics pretend to see +in his work the characteristics of his native Cte d'Or; that, +however, may be simply a desire to frame the picture appropriately. +Legrand might have hailed from the south, from Daudet's country; he is +exuberant as he is astute. The chief thing is that he has abundant +brains and in sheer craftsmanship fears few equals. Like Whistler, his +principal preoccupation is to suppress all appearance of technical +procedures. His method of work is said to be simplicity itself; +obsessed by his very definite visions, he transfers them to the +scratched plate with admirable celerity. Dry-point etching is his +principal medium. With his needle he has etched Montmartre, its +cabarets, its angels--in very earthly disguise--its orators, poets, +and castaways, and its visiting tourists--"God's silly sheep." He has +illustrated a volume of Edgar Poe's tales that displays a _macabre_ +imagination. His dancers are only second to those of Edgar Degas, and +seen from an opposite side. His peasants, mothers, and children, above +all, babies, reveal an eye that observes and a brain that can +co-ordinate the results of this piercing vision. Withal, he is a poet +who extracts his symbols from everyday life. + +This is what Camille Mauclair said of him at the time of his dbut: + +"An admirably skilful etcher, a draughtsman of keen vision, and a +painter of curious character, who has in many ways forestalled the +artists of to-day. Louis Legrand also shows to what extent Manet and +Degas have revolutionised the art of illustration, in freeing the +painters from obsolete laws and guiding them toward truth and frank +psychological study. Legrand is full of them without resembling them. +We must not forget that besides the technical innovation [division of +tones, study of complementary colours] impressionism has brought us +novelty of composition, realism of character, and great liberty in the +choice of subjects. From this point of view Rops himself, in spite of +his symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group if +it were not that any kind of classification in art is useless and +inaccurate. However that may be, Louis Legrand has signed some volumes +with the most seductive qualities." + +Gustave Kahn, the symbolist poet who was introduced to the English +reading world in one of the most eloquent pages of George Moore, +thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist. We side with Mauclair in +not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He is +anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also +shockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le +paing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the fist, +and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinched +fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. He is +well dressed. His silk hat is shiny, his mustache curled in the true +Adolphe fashion. His face is vile. The woman cries aloud and protects +herself with her hands. In Marthe Baraquin, by Rosny senior, you will +find the material for this picture, though Legrand found it years ago +in the streets. Unpleasant, truly, yet a more potent sermon on man's +cruelty to woman than may be found in a dozen preachments, fictions, +or the excited outpourings at a feminist congress. Legrand presents +the facts of the case without comment, except the irony--such dismal +irony!--of the title. In this he is the true pupil of Rops. + +However, he does not revel long among such dreary slices of life. The +Poe illustrations are grotesque and shuddering, but after all make +believe. The plate of The Black Cat piles horror on horror's head +(literally, for the demon cat perches on the head of the corpse) and +is, all said, pictorial melodrama. The Berenice illustration is, we +confess, a little too much for the nerves, simply because in a +masterly manner Legrand has exposed the most dreadful moment of the +story (untold by Poe, who could be an artist in his tact of omission). +The dental smile of the cataleptic Berenice as her necrophilic cousin +bends over the coffin is a testimony to a needle that in this instance +matches Goya's and Rops's in its evocation of the horrific. We turn +with relief to the ballet-girl series. The impression gained from this +album is that Legrand sympathises with, nay loves, his subject. Degas, +the greater and more objective artist, nevertheless allows to sift +through his lines an inextinguishable hatred of these girls who labour +so long for so little; and Degas did hate them, as he hated all that +was ugly in daily life, though he set forth this ugliness, this +mediocrity, this hatred in terms of beautiful art. Legrand sees the +ugliness, but he also sees the humanity of the _ballateuse_. She is a +woman who is brought up to her profession with malice aforethought by +her parents. These parents are usually noted for their cupidity. We +need not read the witty history of the Cardinal family to discover +this repellent fact. Legrand sketches the dancer from the moment when +her mother brings her, a child, to undergo the ordeal of the first +lesson. + +The tender tot stands hesitating in the doorway; one hand while +holding the door open seems to grasp it as the last barrier of defence +that stands between her and the strange new world. She is attired in +the classical figurante's costume. Behind, evidently pushing her +forward, is the grim guardian, a bony, forbidding female. Although you +do not see them, it is an easy feat to imagine the roomful of girls +and dancing master all staring at the new-comer. The expression on the +child's face betrays it; instinctively, like the generality of +embarrassed little girls, her hand clasps her head. In less than a +minute she will weep. + +Another plate, L'ami des Danseuses, is charged with humanity. The +violinist who plays for the ballet rehearsals sits resting, and facing +him are two young dancers, also sitting, but stooping to relieve their +strained spines and the tendons of their muscular legs. The old fellow +is giving advice from the fulness of a life that has been not too +easy. The girls are all attention. It is a genre bit of distinction. +Upon the technical virtuosity in which this etcher excels we shall not +dwell. Some of his single figures are marvels. The economy of line, +the massing of lights and darks, the vitality he infuses into a woman +who walks, a man who works in the fields, a child at its mother's +breast, are not easily dealt with in a brief study. We prefer to note +his more general qualities. His humour, whether in delineating a +stupid soldier about to be exploited by camp followers, or in his +Animales, is unforced. It can be Rabelaisian and it can be a record of +simple animal life, as in the example with the above title. A cow +stands on a grassy shore; near by a stolid peasant girl sits slicing +bread and eating it. Cow and girl, grass and sky and water are woven +into one natural pattern. The humour inheres in several sly touches. +It is a comical Millet. Very Millet-like too is the large picture, +Beau Soir, in which a field labourer bends over to kiss his wife, who +has a child at her breast. A cow nuzzles her apron, the fourth member +of this happy group. The Son of the Carpenter is another peasant +study, but the transposition of the Holy Family to our century. A +slight nimbus about the mother's head is the only indication that this +is not a humble household somewhere in France. Maternal Joy, Mater +Inviolata are specimens of a sane, lovely art which celebrate the +joys, dolors, and exaltations of motherhood. We prefer this side of +the art of Legrand to his studies of sinister jail-birds, _hetairai_, +noctambules, high kickers, and private bars, the horrors of Parisian +night life. Whatever he touches he vivifies. His leaping, audacious +line is like the narrative prose of a Maupassant or a Joseph Conrad. +Every stroke tells. + +His symbolical pictures please us least. They doubtless signify no end +of profound things, yet to us they seem both exotic and puerile. We go +back to the tiny dancers, tired to sleepiness, who sit on a sofa +waiting to be called. Poor babies! Or to the plate entitled Douleur. +Or to the portraits of sweet English misses--as did Constantin Guys, +Legrand has caught the precise English note--or any of the children +pieces. If he knows the psychology of passion, knows the most intimate +detail of the daily life of _les filles_, Legrand is master too of the +psychology of child life. This will endear him to English and American +lovers of art, though it is only one of his many endowments. His wit +keeps him from extremes, though some of his plates are not for +puritans; his vivid sympathies prevent him from falling into the +sterile eccentricities of so many of his contemporaries; if he is +cynical he is by the same taken soft-hearted. His superb handling of +his material, with a synthetic vision superadded, sets apart Louis +Legrand in a profession which to-day is filled with farceurs and +fakers and with too few artists by the grace of God. + + + + +GUYS, THE ILLUSTRATOR + + + +Practitioners of the noble art of illustration are, as we know, modest +men, but no matter the degree of their modesty they are all distanced +by the record in shyness still maintained by Constantin Guys. This +artist was once a living protest against Goethe's assertion that only +fools are modest, and the monument recently erected to his memory in +Paris is provocation enough to bring him ferrying across the Styx to +enter a disclaimer in the very teeth of his admirers. So set in his +anonymity was he that Charles Baudelaire, his critical discoverer, was +forced to write a long essay about his work and only refer to the +artist as C.G. The poet relates that once when Thackeray spoke to Guys +in a London newspaper office and congratulated him on his bold +sketches in the _Illustrated London News_, the fiery little man +resented the praise as an outrage. Nor was this humility a pose. His +life long he was morbidly nervous, as was Meryon, as was Czanne; but +he was neither half mad, like the great etcher, nor a cenobite, as was +the painter of Aix. Few have lived in the thick of life as did Guys. +To employ the phrase of Turgenieff, life, like grass, grew over his +head. In the Crimean camps, on the Parisian boulevards, in London +parks, Guys strolled, crayon in hand, a true reporter of things seen +and an ardent lover of horses, soldiers, pretty women, and the mob. +Baudelaire called him the soldier-artist. He resembled in his restless +wanderings Poe's man of the multitude, and at the end of a long life +he still drew, as did Hokusai. + +Who was he? Where did he receive his artistic training? Baudelaire did +not tell, nor Thophile Gautier. He went through the Crimean campaign; +he lived in the East, in London and Paris. Not so long ago the art +critic Roger Marx, while stopping at Flushing, Holland, discovered his +baptismal certificate, which reads thus: "Ernestus Adolphus Hyacinthus +Constantinus Guys, born at Flushing December 3, 1805, of Elizabeth +Btin and Franois Lazare Guys, Commissary of the French Marine." The +baptism occurred January 26, 1806, and revealed the fact that he had +for godfather an uncle who held a diplomatic position. Guys told his +friends that his full family name was Guys de Sainte-Hlne--which may +have been an amiable weakness of the same order as that of Barbey +d'Aurevilly and of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, both of whom boasted noble +parentage. However, Guys was little given to talk of any sort. He was +loquacious only with his pencil, and from being absolutely forgotten +after the downfall of the Second Empire to-day every scrap of his work +is being collected, even fought for, by French and German collectors. +Yet when the Nadar collection was dispersed, June, 1909, in Paris, his +aquarelles went for a few francs. Flix Fnon and several others now +own complete sets. In New York there are a few specimens in the +possession of private collectors, though the Lenox Library, as a rule +rich in such prints, has only reproductions to show. + +The essay of Charles Baudelaire, entitled Le Peintre de la Vie +Moderne, to be found in Volume III of his collected works (L'Art +Romantique), remains thus far the standard reference study concerning +Guys, though deficient in biographical details. Other critical studies +are by Camille Mauclair, Roger Marx, Richard Muther, and George +Grappe; and recently Elizabeth Luther Cary in a too short but +admirably succinct article characterised the Guys method in this +fashion: "He defined his forms sharply and delicately, and used within +his bounding line the subtlest variation of light and shade. His +workmanship everywhere is of the most elusive character, and he is a +master of the art of reticence." Miss Cary further speaks of his +"gentle gusto of line in motion, which lately has captivated us in the +paintings of the Spaniard Sorolla, and long ago gave Botticelli and +Carlo Crivelli the particular distinction they had in common." +Mauclair mentions "the most animated water-colour drawings of Guys, +his curious vision of nervous elegance and expressive skill," and +names it the impressionism of 1845, while Dr. Muther christened him +the Verlaine of the crayon because, like Verlaine, he spent his life +between the almshouse and a hospital, so said the German critic. +Furthermore, Muther believes it was no mere chance that made of +Baudelaire his admirer; in both the decadent predominated--which is +getting the cart before the horse. Rops, too, is recalled by Guys, who +depicted the gay grisette of the faubourgs as well as the nocturnal +pierreuse of the fortifications. "Guys exercised on Gavarni an +influence which brought into being his Invalides du sentiment, his +Lorettes vielles, and his Fourberies de femmes." + +It is not quite fair to compare Guys with Rops, or indeed with either +Gavarni or Daumier. These were the giants of French illustration at +that epoch. Guys was more the skirmisher, the sharpshooter, the +reporter of the moment, than a creative master of his art. The street +or the battle-field was his atelier; speed and grace and fidelity his +chief claims to fame. He never practised his art within the walls of +academies; the material he so vividly dealt with was the stuff of +life. The very absence of school in his illustrations is their chief +charm; a man of genius this, self-taught, and a dangerous precedent +for fumblers or those of less executive ability. From the huge mass of +his work being unearthed from year to year he may be said to have +lived crayon in hand. He is the first of a long line of newspaper +illustrators. His profession was soldiering, and legend has it that he +accompanied Byron to Missolonghi. The official career of his father +enabled the youth to see much of the world--Greece, the Balkans, +Turkey, Persia, and perhaps India. On returning to France he became an +officer of dragoons and for some time led the life of a dandy and man +about town. With his memory, of which extraordinary tales are told, he +must have stored up countless films of impressions, all of which were +utilised years later. + +In 1845 we find him installed at Paris, though no longer in the army. +Then it was he began to design. He became contributor to many +periodicals, among the rest the _Illustrated London News_ and _Punch_. +For the former journal he went to the Crimean war as accredited art +correspondent. The portfolio containing the Crimean set is now most +sought for by his admirers. He is said to have originated the +expression "taken on the spot," in the title of one of his +instantaneous sketches. Few draughtsmen could boast his sure eye and +manual dexterity. The Balaklava illustration is as striking in its way +as Tennyson's lines, though containing less of poetic heroism and more +ugly realism. Like the trained reporter that he was, Guys followed a +battle, recording the salient incidents of the engagement, not +overemphasising the ghastliness of the carnage, as did Callot or Goya +or Raffet, but telling the truth as he saw it, with a phlegm more +British and German than French. Though he had no Dutch blood in his +veins, he was, like Huysmans, more the man of Amsterdam than the man +of Paris. He noted the changing and shocking scenes of hospital life, +and sympathy without sentimentality drops from his pen. He is drily +humorous as he shows us some plumaged General peacocking on foot, or +swelling with Napoleonic pride as he caracoles by on his horse. And +such horses! Without a hint of the photographic realism of a Muybridge +and his successors, Guys evokes vital horses and riders, those seen by +the normal vision. The witching movement of beautiful Arabian steeds +has not had many such sympathetic interpreters. + +In Turkey he depicted episodes of daily life, of the courts of the +Sublime Porte itself, of the fte of Baram, which closes the fast of +Ramadan. His Turkish women are not all houris, but they bear the stamp +of close study. They are pretty, indolent, brainless creatures. In his +most hurried crayons, pen-and-ink sketches, and aquarelles Guys is +ever interesting. He has a magnetic touch that arrests attention and +atones for technical shortcomings. Abbreviation is his watchword; his +drawings are a species of shorthand notations made at red-hot tempo, +yet catching the soul of a situation. He repeats himself continually, +but, as M. Grappe says, is never monotonous. In love with movement, +with picturesque massing, and broad simple colour schemes, he +naturally gravitated to battle-fields. In Europe society out of doors +became his mania. Rotten Row, in the Bois, at Brighton or at +Baden-Baden, the sinuous fugues of his pencil reveal to succeeding +generations how the great world once enjoyed itself or bored itself to +death. No wonder Thackeray admired Guys. They were kindred spirits; +both recognised and portrayed the snob mundane. + +As he grew older Guys became an apparition in the life of Paris. The +smash-up of the Empire destroyed the beloved world he knew so well. +Poor, his principal pleasure was in memory; if he couldn't actually +enjoy the luxury of the rich he could reproduce its images on his +drawing-pad. The whilom dandy and friend of Baudelaire went about +dressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a nodding +acquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's +reign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness to +all comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feast +this watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys did +not waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five he began to go +down-hill. His habits had never been those of a prudent citizen, and +as his earning powers grew less some imp of the perverse entered his +all too solitary life. With this change of habits came a change of +theme. Henceforth he drew _filles_, the outcasts, the scamps and +convicts and the poor wretches of the night. He is now a forerunner of +Toulouse-Lautrec and an entire school. This side of his career +probably caused Dr. Muther to compare him with Paul Verlaine. +Absinthe, the green fairy of so many poets and artists, was no +stranger to Guys. + +In 1885, after dining with Nadar, his most faithful friend, Guys was +run over in the Rue du Havre and had his legs crushed. He was taken to +the Maison Dubois, where he lived eight years longer, dying at the +venerable age of eighty-seven, though far from being a venerable +person. Astonishing vitality! He did not begin to draw, that is, for a +living, until past forty. His method of work was simplicity itself, +declare those who watched him at work. He seemingly improvised his +aquarelles; his colour, sober, delicate, was broadly washed in; his +line, graceful and modulated, does not suggest the swiftness of his +execution. He could be rank and vulgar, and he was gentle as a refined +child that sees the spectacle of life for the first time. The +bitterness of Baudelaire's flowers of evil he escaped until he was in +senile decadence. In the press of active life he registered the shock +of conflicting arms, the shallow pride of existence and the mere joy +of living, all in a sane manner that will ever endear him to lovers of +art. + +George Moore tells the following anecdote of Degas: Somebody was +saying he did not like Daumier, and Degas preserved silence for a long +while. "If you were to show Raphael," he said at last, "a Daumier, he +would admire it; he would take off his hat; but if you were to show +him a Cabanel, he would say with a sigh, 'That is my fault.'" + +If you could show Raphael a croquis by Constantin Guys he would +probably look the other way, but Degas would certainly admire and buy +the drawing. + + + + +XI. IMPRESSIONISM + + + +I - MONET + + + +The impressionists claim as their common ancestors Claude Lorraine, +Watteau, Turner, Monticelli. Watteau, Latour, Largillire, Fragonard, +Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen are their sponsors in the matters of +design, subject, realism, study of life, new conceptions of beauty and +portraiture. Mythology, allegory, historic themes, the neo-Greek and +the academic are under the ban--above all, the so-called "grand +style." Impressionism has actually elevated genre painting to the +position occupied by those vast, empty, pompous, frigid, smoky, +classic pieces of the early nineteenth century. However, it must not +be forgotten that modern impressionism is only a new technique, a new +method of execution--we say new, though that is not exactly the case. +The home of impressionism is in the East; it may be found in the vivid +patterns woven in Persia or in old Japan. In its latest avatar it is +the expression of contemporaneous reality. Therein lies its true +power. The artist who turns his face only to the past--his work will +never be anything but an echo. To depict the faces and things and pen +the manners of the present is the task of great painters and +novelists. Actualists alone count in the future. The mills of the +antique grind swiftly--like the rich, they will be always with us--but +they only grind out imitations; and from pseudo-classic marbles and +pseudo-"beautiful" pictures may Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies, deliver +us. + +That able and sympathetic writer D.S. MacColl has tersely summed up in +his Vision of the Century the difference between the old and new +manner of seeing things. "The old vision had beaten out three separate +acts--the determination of the edges and limits of things, the +shadings and the modellings of the spaces in between with black and +white, and the tintings of those spaces with their local colour. The +new vision that had been growing up among the landscape painters +simplifies as well as complicates the old. For purposes of analysis it +sees the world as a mosaic of patches of colour, such and such a hue, +such and such a tone, such and such a shape... The new analysis looked +first for colour and for a different colour in each patch of shade or +light. The old painting followed the old vision by its three processes +of drawing the contours, modelling the chiaroscura in dead colour, and +finally in colouring this black-and-white preparation. The new +analysis left the contours to be determined by the junction, more or +less fused, of the colour patches, instead of rigidly defining them as +they are known to be defined when seen near at hand or felt... 'Local +colour' in light or shade becomes different not only in tone but in +hue." + +To the layman who asked, "What is impressionism?" Mauclair has given +the most succinct answer in his book L'Impressionisme: "In nature," he +declares, "no colour exists by itself. The colouring of the object is +pure illusion; the only creative source of colour is the sunlight, +which envelops all things and reveals them, according to the hours, +with infinite modifications... The idea of distance, of perspective, +of volume is given us by darker or lighter colours; this is the sense +of values; a value is the degree of light or dark intensity which +permits our eyes to comprehend that one object is further or nearer +than another. And as painting is not and cannot be the imitation of +nature, but merely her artificial interpretation, since it has only at +its disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the only +means that remain for expressing depth on a flat surface. Colour is +therefore the procreatrix of design... Colours vary with the intensity +of light... Local colour is an error; a leaf is not green, a tree +trunk is not brown... According to the time of day, _i. e._, according +to the greater or smaller inclination of the rays (scientifically +called the angle of incidence), the green of the leaf and the brown of +the tree are modified... The composition of the atmosphere... is the +real subject of the picture... Shadow is not absence of light, but +light of a different quality and of a different value. Shadow is not +part of the landscape where light ceases, but where it is subordinated +to a light which appears to us more intense. In the shadow the rays of +the spectrum vibrate with a different speed. Painting should therefore +try to discover here, as in the light parts, the play of the atoms of +solar light, instead of representing shadows with ready-made tones +composed of bitumen and black... In a picture representing an interior +the source of light [windows] may not be indicated; the light +circulating, circling around the picture, will then be composed of the +_reflections_ of rays whose source is invisible, and all the objects, +acting as mirrors for these reflections, will consequently influence +each other. Their colours will affect each other even if the surfaces +be dull. A red vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a very +subtle but mathematically exact exchange between this blue and this +red; and this exchange of luminous waves will create between the two +colours a tone of reflections composed of both. These composite +reflections will form a scale of tones complementary of the two +principal colours. + +"The painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the +solar spectrum and discard all the others;... he will, furthermore, +instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon his canvas +touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed [Claude Monet has +added black and white] and leave the individual rays of each of these +colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight +upon the eye of the beholder." This is called _dissociation_ of tones; +and here is a new convention; why banish all save the spectrum? We +paint nature, not the solar spectrum. + +Claude Monet has been thus far the most successful practitioner of +impressionism; this by reason of his extraordinary analytical power of +vision and native genius rather than the researches of Helmholtz, +Chevreul, and Rood. They gave him his scientific formulas after he had +worked out the problems. He studied Turner in London, 1870; then his +manner changed. He had been a devoted pupil of Eugne Boudin and could +paint the discreet, pearly gray seascapes of his master. But Turner +and Watteau and Monticelli modified his style, changed his way of +envisaging the landscape. Not Edouard Manet but Claude Monet was the +initiator of the impressionistic movement in France, and after +witnessing the rout and confusion that followed in its wake one is +tempted to misquote Nietzsche (who said that the first and only +Christian died on the cross) and boldly assert that there has been but +one impressionist; his name, Monet. "He has arrived at painting by +means of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour +spots which dissociate the tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of +objects through the arabesque of their vibrations." How his landscapes +shimmer with the heat of a summer day! Truly, you can say of these +pictures that "the dawn comes up like thunder." How his fogs, wet and +clinging, seem to be the first real fogs that ever made misty a +canvas! What hot July nights, with few large stars, has Monet not +painted! His series of hayricks, cathedrals, the Thames are precious +notations of contemporary life; they state facts in terms of exquisite +artistic value; they resume an epoch. It is therefore no surprise to +learn that in 1874 Monet gave the name (so variously abused) to the +entire movement when he exhibited a water piece on the Boulevard des +Capucines entitled Impression: Soleil Levant. That title became a +catchword usually employed in a derisive manner. Monet earlier had +resented the intrusion of a man with a name so like his, but succumbed +to the influence of Monet. One thing can no longer be +controverted--Claude Monet is the greatest landscape and marine +painter of the second half of the last century. Perhaps time may alter +this limit clause. + +What Turgenieff most condemned in his great contemporary, +Dostoevsky--if the gentle Russian giant ever condemned any one--was +Feodor Mikhailovitch's taste for "psychological mole runs"; an +inveterate burrowing into the dark places of humanity's soul. Now, if +there is a dark spot in a highly lighted subject it is the question, +Who was the first impressionist? According to Charles de Kay, Whistler +once told him that he, James the Butterfly, began the movement; which +is a capital and characteristic anecdote, especially if one recalls +Whistler's boast made to a young etcher as to the initiative of Corot. +Whistler practically said: "Before Corot was, I am!" And he adduced +certain canvases painted with the misty-edged trees long before--but +why continue? Whistler didn't start Corot--apart from the +chronological difficulties in the way--any more than Courbet and Manet +started Whistler; yet both these painters played important rles in +the American master's art. So let us accept Mauclair's dictum as to +Claude Monet's priority in the field of impressionism. Certainly he +attained his marked style before he met Manet. Later he modified his +own paint to show his sympathy with the new school. Monet went to +Watteau, Constable, Monticelli for his ideas, and in London, about +1870, he studied Turner with an interest that finally bordered on +worship. And why not? In Turner, at the National Gallery, you may find +the principles of impressionism carried to extravagant lengths, and +years before Monet. Consider Rain, Steam and Speed--the Great Western +Railway, that vision of a locomotive dashing across a bridge in +chromatic chaos. Or the Sea Piece in the James Orrock collection--a +welter of crosshatchings in variegated hues wherein any school of +impressionism from Watteau's Embarkment to Monet's latest manner or +the _pointillisme_ of Signac and Seurat may be recognised. And there +is a water-colour of Turner's in the National Gallery called Honfleur, +which has anticipated many traits of Boudin and the Manet we know when +he had not forgotten Eugne Boudin's influence. + +Let us enjoy our Monet without too many "mole runs." As De Kay pointed +out, it was not necessary for Monet to go to London to see Constables. +In the Louvre he could gaze upon them at leisure, also upon Bonington; +not to mention the Venetians and such a Dutchman as Vermeer. It is +therefore doubly interesting to study the Monets at Durand-Ruel's. +There are twenty-seven, and they range as far back as 1872, Promenade + Trouville, and come down to the Charing Cross Bridge, 1904, and the +two Waterloo Bridge effects, 1903. It is a wide range in sentiment and +technique. The Mills in Holland of 1874 is as cool and composed as +Boudin. Sincerity and beauty are in the picture--for we do not agree +with those who see in Monet only an unemotional recorder of variations +in light and tone. He can compose a background as well as any of his +contemporaries, and an important fact is overlooked when Monet is +jumbled indiscriminately with a lot of inferior men. Monet knew how to +_draw_ before he handled pigment. Some lansdcape painters do not; many +impressionists trust to God and their palette-knife; so the big men +are sufferers. Monet, it may be noted, essayed many keys; his +compositions are not nearly so monotonous as has been asserted. What +does often exhaust the optic nerve is the violent impinging thereon of +his lights. He has an eagle eye, we have not. Wagner had the faculty +of attention developed to such an extraordinary pitch that with our +more normal and weaker nerves he soon exhausts us in his flights. Too +much Monet is like too much Wagner or too much sunshine. + +The breezy effect with the poplars painted flat is an example very +unlike Monet. The church of Varengeville at Dieppe (1880) is a classic +specimen; so is the Pourville beach (1882). What delicate greens in +the Spring (1885)! What fine distance, an ocean view, in the Pourville +picture! Or, if you care for subdued harmonies, there is the ice floe +at Vtheuil (1881). + +The London pictures tell of the older artist--not so vigorous, a vein +of tenderness beginning to show instead of his youthful blazing +optimism. Claude Monet must have had a happy life--he is still a +robust man painting daily in the fields, leading the glorious life of +a landscapist, one of the few romantic professions in this prosaic +age. Not so vain, so irritable as either Manet or Whistler, Monet's +nerves have never prompted him to extravagances. Backbiters declare +that Monet is suffering from an optical degeneration--poor, overworked +word! Monet sees better, sees more keenly than his fellow-men. What a +misfortune! Ibsen and Wagner suffered, too, from superior brains. If +Monet ever suffered seriously from a danger to his art it +was--success. He was abused in the beginning, but not as severely as +Manet. But success perched on Monet's palette. His pictures never seem +to suggest any time but high noon, in spirit, at least. And he is +never sad. Yet, is there anything sadder under the sun than a soul +incapable of sadness? + +In his very valuable contribution to the history of the cause, +Thodore Duret, the biographer and friend of Whistler and Manet has in +his Les Peintres Impressionistes held the scales very much in favour +of Manet's priority in the field over Monet. It is true that in 1863 +Manet had drawn upon his head the thunderous wrath of Paris by +exhibiting his Djeuner sur l'Herbe and Olympe--by no means a +representative effort of the painter's genius, despite its diabolic +cleverness. (It reveals a profound study of Titian, Cranach, and +Goya.) But his vision was in reality synthetic, not analytic; he was a +primitive; he belongs to the family of Velasquez, Ribera, Goya. He +studied Hals--and with what glorious results in Le Bon Bock! He +manipulated paint like an "old master" and did astounding things with +the higher tones of the colour scale. He was not an impressionist +until he met Monet. Then in audacity he outstripped his associates. +Discouraged by critical attacks, his courage had been revived by +Charles Baudelaire, who fought for Richard Wagner as well as for Poe +and Manet. To the painter the poet scornfully wrote: "You complain +about attacks? But are you the first to endure them? Have you more +genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud, I must tell you that +they are models, each in his own way, and in a very rich world, while +you are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." Sinister and +disquieting that last phrase, and for those who see in impressionism +the decadence of painting (because of the predominance given to the +parts over the whole) it is a phrase prophetic. + +Manet is a classic. His genuine power--technically speaking--lies in +the broad, sabre-like strokes of his brush and not in the niggling +_taches_ of the impressionists--of which the _reuctio ad absurdum_ is +pointillisme. He lays on his pigments in sweeping slashes and his +divisions are large. His significance for us does not alone reside in +his consummate mastery of form and colour, but in his forthright +expression of the life that hummed about him. He is as actual as Hals. +Study that Boy With the Sword at the Metropolitan Museum--is there +anything superficial about it? It is Spanish, the Spain of Velasquez, +in its beautiful thin, clear, flat painting, its sober handling of +values. The truth is that Manet dearly loved a fight, and being _chef +d'cole_, he naturally drifted to the impressionists' camp. And it is +significant that Duret did not give this virile spirit a place in his +new volume, confining the estimate of his genius to the preface. +Mauclair, on the contrary, includes Manet's name in his more +comprehensive and more scientific study, as he also includes the name +of Edgar Degas--Degas, who is a latter-day Ingres, plus colour and a +new psychology. + +The title of impressionism has been a misleading one. If Degas is an +impressionist, pray what then is Monet? Pissarro, Sisley, Czanne are +impressionists, and in America there is no impropriety in attaching +this handle to the works of Twachtmann, J. Alden Weir, W.L. Metcalf, +Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Robert Reid, Ernest Lawson, Paul +Cornoyer, Colin Campbell Cooper, Prendergast, Luks, and Glackens. But +Manet, Degas! It would have been a happier invention to have called +the 1877 group independents; independent they were, each man pursuing +his own rainbow. We may note an identical confusion in the mind of the +public regarding the Barbizon school. Never was a group composed of +such dissimilar spirits. Yet people talk about Millet _and_ Breton, +Corot _and_ Daubigny, Rousseau _and_ Dupr. They still say Goethe +_and_ Schiller, Beethoven _and_ Mozart, Byron _and_ Shelley. It is the +result of mental inertia, this coupling of such widely disparate +temperaments. + +Nevertheless, divided tones and "screaming" palette do not always a +picture make; mediocrity loves to mask itself behind artistic +innovations. For the world at large impressionism spells +improvisation--an easy-going, slatternly, down-at-the-heel process, +facile as well as factitious. Albert Wolff must have thought these +things when he sat for his portrait to Manet. His surprise was great +when the artist demanded as many sittings as would have done the +painstaking Bonnat. Whistler shocked Ruskin when he confessed to +having painted a nocturne in two days, but with a lifetime experience +in each stroke of the brush. Whistler was a swift worker, and while he +claimed the honour of being the originator of impressionism--didn't he +"originate" Velasquez?--he really belongs to the preceding generation. +He was impressionistic, if you will, yet not an impressionist. He was +Japanese and Spanish, never Watteau, Monticelli, Turner, or Monet. + +MacColl has pointed out the weakness of the scientific side of +impressionism. Its values are strictly sthetic; attempts to paint on +a purely scientific basis have proved both monotonous and ludicrous. +The experiments of the neo-impressionists (the 1885 group), of Signac, +Seurat, were not very convincing. Van Rhysselberge, one of the few +painters to-day who practise _pointillisme_, or the system of dots, is +a gifted artist; so is Anquetin. The feminine group is headed by the +name of Berthe Morisot (the wife of Eugne Manet, a brother of Edouard +and the great granddaughter of Fragonard), a pupil of Manet, the most +individual woman painter that ever lived; and Mary Cassatt, a pupil of +Degas, though more closely allied to the open-air school in her +methods. Miss Cassatt possesses a distinguished talent. As a school +impressionism has run down to a thin rill in a waste of sand. It is +more technical than personal, and while it was lucky to have such an +exponent as Claude Monet, there is every reason to believe that +Monet's impressionism is largely the result of a peculiar penetrating +vision. He has been imitated, and Maufra and Moret are carrying on his +tradition--yet there is but one Monet. + +We know that the spectral palette is a mild delusion and sometimes a +dangerous snare, that impressionism is in the remotest analysis but a +new convention supplanting an old. Painters will never go back to the +muddy palette of the past. The trick has been turned. The egg of +Columbus has been once more stood on end. Claude Monet has taught us +the "innocence of the eye," has shown us how to paint air that +circulates, water that sparkles. The sun was the centre of the +impressionistic attack, the "splendid, silent sun." A higher pitch in +key colour has been attained, shadows have been endowed with vital +hues. (And Leonardo da Vinci, wonderful landscapist, centuries ago +wrote learnedly of coloured shadows; every new discovery is only a +rediscovery.) The "dim, religious light" of the studio has been +banished; the average palette is lighter, is more brilliant. And +Rembrandt is still worshipped; Raphael is still on his pedestal, and +the millionaire on the street continues to buy Bouguereau. The amateur +who honestly wishes to purge his vision of encrusted painted +prejudices we warn not to go too close to an impressionistic +canvas--any more than he would go near a red-hot stove or a keg of +gunpowder. And let him forget those toothsome critical terms, +decomposition, recomposition. His eyes, if permitted, will act for +themselves; there is no denying that the principles of impressionism +soundly applied, especially to landscape, catch the fleeting, +many-hued charm of nature. It is a system of coloured stenography--in +the hands of a master. Woe betide the fumbler! + + + + +II - RENOIR + + + +The secret of success is never to be satisfied; that is, never to be +satisfied with your work or your success. And this idea seems to have +animated Auguste Renoir during his long, honourable career of painter. +In common with several members of the impressionistic group to which +he belonged, he suffered from hunger, neglect, obloquy; but when +prosperity did at last appear he did not succumb to the most dangerous +enemy that besets the artist. He fought success as he conquered +failure, and his continual dissatisfaction with himself, the true +critical spirit, has led him to many fields--he has been portraitist, +genre painter, landscapist, delineator of nudes, a marine painter and +a master of still-life. This versatility, amazing and +incontrovertible, has perhaps clouded the real worth of Renoir for the +public. Even after acknowledging his indubitable gifts, the usual +critical doubting Thomas grudgingly remarks that if Renoir could not +draw like Degas, paint land and water like Monet or figures like +Manet, he was a naturally endowed colourist. How great a colourist he +was may be seen at the Metropolitan Museum, where his big canvas, La +Famille Charpentier, is now hung. + +Charpentier was the publisher of Zola, Goncourt, Flaubert, and of the +newer realists. He was a man of taste, who cultivated friendships with +distinguished artists and writers. Some disappointment was experienced +at the recent public sale of his collection in Paris. The _clou_ of +the sale was undoubtedly the portrait of his wife and two children. It +was sold for the surprising sum of 84,000 francs to M. Durand-Ruel, +who acted in behalf of the Metropolitan Museum. Another canvas by +Renoir fetched 14,050 francs. A _sanguine_ of Puvis de Chavannes +brought 2,050 francs, and 4,700 francs was paid for a Czanne picture. + +The Charpentier Family, originally entitled Portrait de Madame +Charpentier et Ses Filles, was painted in 1878, first exhibited at the +Salon of 1879, and there we saw and admired it. The passage of the +years has tempered the glistening brilliancies and audacious chromatic +modulations to a suave harmony that is absolutely fascinating. The +background is Japanese. Mme. Charpentier is seated on a canopy +surrounded by furniture, flowers; under foot a carpet with arabesque +designs. She throws one arm carelessly over some rich stuff; the hand +is painted with masterly precision. The other arm has dropped in her +lap. She is an interesting woman of that fine maternal type so often +encountered in real France--though not in French fiction, alas! Her +gaze is upon her children, two adorable little girls. A superb dog, a +St. Bernard, with head resting on paws, looks at you with watchful +eyes. One of the girls sits upon his shaggy hide. The mother is in +black, a mellow reception robe, tulle and lace. White and blue are the +contrasting tones of the girls--the blue is tender. A chair is at the +side of a lacquer table, upon which are flowers. Renoir flowers, dewy, +blushing. You exclaim: "How charming!" It is normal French painting, +not the painting of the schools with their false ideal of pseudo-Greek +beauty, but the intimate, clear, refined, and logical style of a man +who does not possess the genius of Manet, Degas, or Monet, but is +nevertheless an artist of copiousness, charm, and originality. Charm; +yes, that is the word. There is a voluptuous magnetism in his colour +that draws you to him whether you approve of his capricious designs or +not. The museum paid $18,480 for the Charpentier portrait, and in +1877, after an exposition in the rue Le Peletier, sixteen of his +paintings, many of them masterpieces, netted the mortifying sum of +2,005 francs. + +Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges, February 25, 1840. His +father was a poor tailor with five children who went to Paris hoping +to better his condition. At the age of twelve the boy was painting on +porcelain--his father had picked up some rudiments of the art at +Limoges. Auguste did so well, displayed such energy and taste, that he +soon fell to decorating blinds, and saved, in the course of four +years, enough money to enable him to enter the atelier of Gleyre. +There he met Sisley, Bazille--afterward shot in the Franco-Prussian +war--and Claude Monet. They became friends and later allies in the +conflict with the Parisian picture public. Renoir made his first +offering to the Salon in 1863. It was refused. It was a romantic +bit--a nude lady reclining on a bed listening to the plucked music of +a guitar. It seems that the guitarist, and not the lady, was the cause +of offence. It is a convention that a thousand living beings may look +at an undressed female in a picture, but no painted man may be allowed +to occupy with her the same apartment. In 1864 Renoir tried +again--after all, the Salon, like our own academy, is a +market-place--and was admitted. He sent in an Esmeralda dancing. Both +these canvases were destroyed by the painter when he began to use his +eyes. In 1868 his Lise betrayed direct observation of nature, +influenced by Courbet. Until 1873 he sent pictures to the Salon; that +year he was shut out with considerable unanimity, for his offering +happened to be an Algerian subject, a Parisian woman dressed in +Oriental costume, and--horrors!--the shadows were coloured. He was +become an impressionist. He had listened, or rather looked at the +baleful pyrotechnics of Monet, and so he joined the secessionists, +though not disdaining to contribute annually to the Salon. In 1874 his +L'allee Cavalire au Bois de Boulogne was rejected, an act that was +evidently inspired by a desire to sacrifice Renoir because of the +artistic "crimes" of Edouard Manet. Otherwise how explain why this +easily comprehended composition, with its attractive figures, daring +hues, and brilliant technique, came to have the door of the Salon +closed upon it? + +The historic exposition at Nadar's photographic studio, on the +Boulevard des Capucines, of the impressionists, saw Renoir in company +with Monet, Sisley, and the others. His La Danseuse and La Loge were +received with laughter by the discerning critics. Wasn't this the +exhibition of which Albert Wolff wrote that some lunatics were showing +their wares, which they called pictures, etc.? (No, it was in 1875.) +From 1868 to 1877 Renoir closely studied nature and his landscapes +took on those violet tones which gave him the nickname of Monsieur +Violette. Previously he had employed the usual clear green with the +yellow touches in the shadows of conventional _paysagistes_. But +Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, and Renoir had discovered each for himself +that the light and shade in the open air vary according to the hours, +the seasons, the atmospheric conditions. Monet and Pissarro in +painting snow and frost effects under the sun did not hesitate to put +blue tones in the shadows. Sisley was fond of rose tones, Renoir saw +violet in the shadows. He enraged his spectators quite as much as did +Monet with his purple turkeys. His striking Avant le bain was sold for +one hundred and forty francs in 1875. Any one who has been lucky +enough to see it at Durand-Ruel's will cry out at the stupidity which +did not recognise a masterly bit of painting with its glowing, +nacreous flesh tints, its admirable modelling, its pervading air of +vitality. Renoir was never a difficult painter; that is, in the sense +of Monet or Manet or Gauguin. He offended the eyes of 1875, no doubt, +but there was in him during his first period much of Boucher; his +female nudes are, as Camille Mauclair writes, of the eighteenth +century; his technique is Boucher-like: "fat and sleek paint of soft +brilliancy laid on with the palette-knife with precise strokes around +the principal values; pink and ivory tints relieved by strong blues +similar to those of enamels; the light distributed everywhere and +almost excluding the opposition of the shadows; vivacious attitudes +and decorative convention." + +Vivacious, happy, lyrical, Renoir's work has thus far shown no hint of +the bitter psychology of Edgar Degas. His nudes are pagan, child women +full of life's joy, animal, sinuous, unreasoning. His _genre_ tableaux +are personal enough, though in the most commonplace themes, such as +Djeuner and The Box--both have been exhibited in New York--the +luminous envelope, the gorgeous riot of opposed tones, the delicious +dissonances literally transfigure the themes. In his second manner his +affinities to Claude Monet and impressionism are more marked. His +landscapes are more atmospheric, division of tones inevitably +practised. Everything swims in aerial tones. His portraits, once his +only means of subsistence, are the personification of frankness. The +touch is broad, flowing. Without doubt, as Theodore Duret asserts, +Renoir is the first of the impressionistic portrait painters; the +first to apply unflinchingly the methods of Manet and Monet to the +human face--for Manet, while painting in clear tones (what magic there +is in his gold!), in portraiture seldom employed the hatchings of +colours, except in his landscapes, and only since 1870, when he had +come under the influence of Monet's theories. Mauclair points out that +fifteen years before _pointillisme_ (the system of dots, like eruptive +small-pox, instead of the touches of Monet) was invented, Renoir in +his portrait of Sisley used the stipplings. He painted Richard Wagner +at Palermo in 1882. In his third manner--an arbitrary +classification--he combines the two earlier techniques, painting with +the palette-knife and in divided tones. Flowers, barbaric designs for +rugs, the fantastic, vibrating waters, these appear among that long +and varied series of canvases in which we see Paris enjoying itself at +Bougival, dancing on the heights of Montmartre, strolling among the +trees at Armenonville; Paris quivering with holiday joys, Paris in +outdoor humour--and not a discordant or vicious note in all this +psychology of love and sport. The lively man who in shirt sleeves +dances with the jolly, plump salesgirl, the sunlight dripping through +the vivid green of the tree leaves, lending dazzling edges to +profiles, tips of noses, or fingers, is not the sullen _ouvrier_ of +Zola or Toulouse-Lautrec--nor are the girls kin to Huysmans's Soeurs +Vatard or the "human document" of Degas. Renoir's philosophy is not +profound; for him life is not a curse or a kiss, as we used to say in +the old Swinburne days. He is a painter of joyous surfaces and he is +an incorrigible optimist. He is also a poet. The poet of air, +sunshine, and beautiful women--can we ever forget his Jeanne Samary? A +pantheist, withal a poet and a direct descendant in the line of +Watteau, Boucher, Monticelli, with an individual touch of mundane +grace and elegance. + +Mme. Charpentier it was who cleverly engineered the portrait of +herself and children and the portrait of Jeanne Samary into the 1879 +Salon. The authorities did not dare to refuse two such distinguished +women. Renoir's prospects became brighter. He married. He made money. +Patrons began to appear, and in 1904, at the autumn Salon, he was +given a special _salle_, and homage was done him by the young men. No +sweeter gift can come to a French painter than the unbidden admiration +of the rising artistic generation. Renoir appreciated his honours; he +had worked laboriously, had known poverty and its attendant +bedfellows, and had won the race run in the heat and dust of his +younger years. In 1904, describing the autumn exhibition, I wrote: "In +the Renoir _salle_ a few of the better things of this luscious brush +were to be found, paintings of his middle period, that first won him +favour. For example, Sur la Terrasse, with its audacious crimson, like +the imperious challenge of a trumpet; La Loge and its gorgeous +fabrics; a Baigneuse in a light-green scheme; the quaint head of +Jeanne Samary--a rival portrait to Besnard's faun-like Rjane--and a +lot of Renoir's later experimentings, as fugitive as music; exploding +bouquets of iridescence; swirling panels, depicting scenes from +Tannhuser; a flower garden composed of buds and blossoms in colour +scales that begin at a bass-emerald and ascend to an altitudinous +green where green is no longer green but an opaline reverberation. We +know how exquisitely Renoir moulds his female heads, building up, cell +by cell, the entire mask. The simple gestures of daily life have been +recorded by Renoir for the past forty years with a fidelity and a +vitality that shames the anmic imaginings and puling pessimisms of +his younger contemporaries. What versatility, what undaunted desire to +conquer new problems! He has in turn painted landscapes as full of +distinction as Monet's. The nervous vivacity of his brush, his love of +rendered surfaces, of melting Boucher-like heads, and of a dazzling +Watteau colour synthesis have endeared him to the discriminating." He +may be deficient in spiritual elevation--as were Manet, Monet, and the +other Impressionists; but as they were primarily interested in +problems of lighting, in painting the sun and driving the old mud gods +of academic art from their thrones, it is not strange that the new men +became so enamoured of the coloured appearances of life that they left +out the ghosts of the ideal (that dusty, battered phrase) and +proclaimed themselves rank sun-worshippers. The generation that +succeeded them is endeavouring to restore the balance between +unblushing pantheism and the earlier mysticism. But wherever a Renoir +hangs there will be eyes to feast upon his opulent and sonorous colour +music. + + + + +III - MANET + + + +In the autumn of 1865 Thodore Duret, the Parisian critic, found +himself in the city of Madrid after a tour of Portugal on horseback. A +new hotel on the Puerta del Sol was, he wrote in his life of Manet, a +veritable haven after roughing it in the adjacent kingdom. At the +mid-day breakfast he ate as if he had never encountered good cooking +in his life. Presently his attention was attracted by the behaviour of +a stranger who sat next to him. The unknown was a Frenchman who abused +the food, the service, and the country. He was so irritable when he +noticed Duret enjoying the very _plats_ he had passed that he turned +on him and demanded if insult was meant. The horrible cuisine, he +explained, made him sick, and he could not understand the appetite of +Duret. Good-naturedly Duret explained he had just arrived from +Portugal and that the breakfast was a veritable feast. "And I have +just arrived from Paris," he answered, and gave his name, Edouard +Manet. He added that he had been so persecuted that he suspected his +neighbour of some evil pleasantry. The pair became friends, and went +to look at the pictures of Velasquez at the Prado. Fresh from Paris, +Manet was still smarting from the attacks made on him after the +hanging of his Olympia in the Salon of 1865. Little wonder his nerves +were on edge. A dozen days later, after he had studied Velasquez, +Goya, and El Greco, Manet, in company with Duret, returned to Paris. +It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. + +About eight years ago Duret's definitive biography of Manet appeared, +Histoire de Edouard Manet et de Son Oeuvre. No one was better +qualified to write of the dead painter than Thodore Duret. A critic +of perspicacity, his enthusiasm was kindled during the birth throes of +impressionism and has never been quenched. Only a few years ago, after +a tribute to Whistler, he wrote of Manet in the introduction to his +volume on Impressionism, and while no one may deny his estimate, yet +through zeal for the name of his dead friend he attributed to him the +discoveries of the impressionists. Manet was their leader; he would +have been a leader of men in any art epoch; but he did not invent the +fulminating palette of Monet, and, in reality, he joined the +insurgents after they had waged their earlier battles. His +"impressionistic" painting, so called, did not date until later; +before that he had fought for his own independence, and his method was +different from that of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Czanne and the rest. +Nevertheless, because of his notoriety--fame is hardly the word--he +may be fairly called the leader of the school. + +As a rule he was not an irascible man, if the unpleasant nature of the +attacks upon him is taken into consideration. With the exception of +Richard Wagner and Ibsen, I know of no artist who was vilified during +his lifetime as was Manet. A gentleman, he was the reverse of the +bohemian. Duret writes of him that he was shocked at the attempt to +make of him a monster. He did not desire to become _chef d'cole_, nor +did he set up as an eccentric. When he gave his special exhibition his +catalogue contained a modest declaration of the right of the artist to +his personal vision. He did not pretend to have created a new school, +and he asked the public to judge his work as that of a sincere +painter; but even that mild pronunciamento was received with jeers. +The press, with a few exceptions, was against him, and so were nearly +all the artists of influence. Zola's aggressive articles only made the +situation worse. Who was this Zola but a writer of doubtful taste and +sensational style! The whole crowd of realists, naturalists, and +impressionists--the Batignolles school was the mocking title given the +latter--were dumped into the common vat of infamy and critical vitriol +poured over them. + +The main facts of Manet's career may be soon disposed of. His mother +was Eugnie Dsire Fournier; she was the goddaughter of Charles +Bernadotte, King of Sweden. Her father, a prefect at Pau, had rendered +services to Bernadotte which the latter did not forget. When she +married, in 1831, Auguste Manet, a distinguished judge of the Seine +tribunal, Bernadotte made her many valuable presents and a dowry. Her +three sons were Edouard, Eugne, and Gustave. They inherited from +their rich grandfather, Fournier. Edouard was born at Paris, Rue +Bonaparte, January 23, 1832. His brother Eugne became a doctor of +medicine and later married one of the most gifted of women painters, +Berthe Morisot, who died in 1895, after winning the praise of the most +critical pens in all Europe. Edouard was intended for the bar, but he +threw up his studies and swore he would become a painter. Then he was +sent abroad. He visited South America and other countries, and kept +his eyes wide open, as his sea-pieces proved. After his mother became +a widow he married, in 1863, Susanne Leenhoff, of Delft, Holland. She +was one of the early admirers of Schumann in Paris and played the A +minor piano concerto with orchestra there, and, it is said, with +success. She was an admirer of her husband's genius, and during all +the turmoil of his existence she was a friend and counsellor. + +The young couple lived with the elder Mme. Manet in the Rue de +Saint-Ptersbourg, and their weekly reception became a rallying centre +for not only _les Jeunes_, but also for such men as Gambetta, Emile +Ollivier, Clemenceau, Antonin Proust, De Banville, Baudelaire, +Duranty--with whom Manet fought a duel over a trifle--Zola, Mallarm, +Abb Hurel, Monet, and the impressionistic group. Edouard entertained +great devotion for his mother. She saw two of her sons die, Edouard in +1883 (April 30) and Gustave in 1884. (He was an advocate and took +Clemenceau's place as municipal councillor when the latter was elected +Deputy.) Mme. Manet died in 1885. The painter was stricken with +locomotor ataxia, brought on by protracted toil, in 1881. For nearly +three years he suffered, and after the amputation of a leg he +succumbed. His obsequies were almost of national significance. His +widow lived until 1906. + +_Manet et manebit_ was the motto of the artist. He lived to paint and +he painted much after his paralytic seizure. He was a brilliant +raconteur, and, as Degas said, was at one time as well known in Paris +as Garibaldi, red shirt and all. The truth is, Manet, after being +forced with his back to the wall, became the active combatant in the +duel with press and public. He was unhappy if people on the boulevard +did not turn to look at him. "The most notorious painter in Paris" was +a description which he finally grew to enjoy. It may not be denied +that he painted several pictures as a direct challenge to the world, +but a painter of offensive pictures he never was. The execrated +Picnic, proscribed by the jury of the Salon in 1861, was shown in the +Salon des Refuss (in company with works by Bracquemond, Cazin, +Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J.P. Laurens, Legros, Pissarro, +Vollon, Whistler--the mildest-mannered crew of pirates that ever +attempted to scuttle the bark of art), and a howl arose. What was this +shocking canvas like? A group of people at a picnic, several nudes +among them. In vain it was pointed out to the modest Parisians (who at +the time revelled in the Odalisque of Ingres, in Cabanel, Grme, +Bouguereau, and other delineators of the chaste) that in the Louvre +the Concert of Giorgione depicted just such a scene; but the mixture +of dressed and undressed was appalling, and Manet became a man marked +for vengeance. Perhaps the exceeding brilliancy of his paint and his +unconventional manner of putting it on his canvas had as much to do +with the obloquy as his theme. And then he would paint the life around +him instead of producing _pastiches_ of old masters or sickly +evocations of an unreal past. + +He finished Olympia the year of his marriage, and refused to exhibit +it; Baudelaire insisted to the contrary. It was shown at the Salon of +1865 (where Monet exhibited for the first time) and became the scandal +of the day. Again the painter was bombarded with invectives. This +awful nude, to be sure, was no more unclothed than is Cabanel's Venus, +but the latter is pretty and painted with soap-suds and +sentimentality. The Venus of Titian is not a whit more exposed than +the slim, bony, young woman who has just awakened in time to receive a +bouquet at the hands of her negress, while a black cat looks on this +matutinal proceeding as a matter of course. The silhouette has the +firmness of Holbein; the meagre girl recalls a Cranach. It is not the +greatest of Manet; one could say, despite the bravura of the +performances, that the painter was indulging in an ironic joke. It was +a paint pot flung in the face of Paris. Olympia figured at the 1887 +exhibition in the Pavilion Manet. An American (the late William M. +Laffan) tried to buy her. John Sargent intervened, and a number of the +painter's friends, headed by Claude Monet, subscribed a purse of +twenty thousand francs. In 1890 Monet and Camille Pelletan presented +to M. Fallires, then Minister of Instruction, the picture for the +Luxembourg, and in 1907 (January 6), thanks to the prompt action of +Clemenceau, one of Manet's earliest admirers, the hated Olympia was +hung in the Louvre. The admission was a shock, even at that late day +when the din of the battle had passed. When in 1884 there was held at +the cole des Beaux-Arts a memorial exposition of Manet's works, +Edmond About wrote that the place ought to be fumigated, and Grme +"brandished his little cane" with indignation. Why all the excitement +in official circles? Only this: Manet was a great painter, the +greatest painter in France during the latter half of the nineteenth +century. Beautiful paint always provokes hatred. Manet won. Nothing +succeeds like the success which follows death. (Our only fear nowadays +is that his imitators won't die. Second-rate Manet is as bad as +second-rate Bouguereau.) If he began by patterning after Hals, +Velasquez, and Goya, he ended quite Edouard Manet; above all, he gave +his generation a new vision. There will be always the battle of +methods. As Mr. MacColl says: "Painting is continually swaying between +the _chiaroscuro_ reading of the world which gives it depth and the +colour reading which reduces it to flatness. Manet takes all that the +modern inquisition of shadows will give to strike his compromise near +the singing colours of the Japanese mosaic." + +What a wit this Parisian painter possessed! Duret tells of a passage +at arms between Manet and Alfred Stevens at the period when the +former's Le Bon Bock met for a wonder with a favourable reception at +the Salon of 1873. This portrait of the engraver Belot smoking a pipe, +his fingers encircling a glass, caused Stevens to remark that the man +in the picture "drank the beer of Haarlem." The _mot_ nettled Manet, +whose admiration for Frans Hals is unmistakably visible in this +magnificent portrait. He waited his chance for revenge, and it came +when Stevens exhibited a picture in the Rue Lafitte portraying a young +woman of fashion in street dress standing before a portire which she +seems about to push aside in order to enter another room. Manet +studied the composition for a while, and noting a feather duster +elaborately painted which lies on the floor beside the lady, +exclaimed: "Tiens! elle a done un rendezvous avec le valet de +chambre?" + + + + +XII. A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU + + + +New biographical details concerning Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) +may never be forthcoming, though theories of his enigmatic personality +and fascinating art will always find exponents. Our knowledge of +Watteau is confined to a few authorities: the notes in D'Argenville's +Abrg de la Vie des Plus Fameux Peintres; Catalogue Raisonn, by +Gersaint; Julienne's introduction to the Life of Watteau by Count de +Caylus--discovered by the Goncourts and published in their brilliant +study of eighteenth-century art. Since then have appeared monographs, +tudes, and articles by Cellier, Mollet, Hanover, Dohme, Mntz, +Sailles, Claude Phillips, Charles Blanc, Virgile Joez, F. Staley, +Todor de Wyzewa, and Camille Mauclair. Mauclair is the latest and one +of the most interesting commentators, his principal contribution being +De Watteau Whistler, a chapter of which has been afterward expanded +into a compact little study entitled Watteau and translated from the +French text by Mme. Simon Bussy, the wife of that intimate painter of +twilight and poetic reverie, Simon Bussy, to whom the book is +dedicated. + +It is the thesis put forth and cleverly maintained by Mauclair that +interests us more than his succinct notation of the painter's life. It +is not so novel as it is just and moderate in its application. The +pathologic theory of genius has been overworked. In literature +nowadays "psychiatrists" rush in where critics fear to tread. Mahomet +was an epilept; so was Napoleon. Flaubert died of epilepsy, said his +friends; nevertheless, Ren Dumesnil has proved that his sudden +decease was caused not by apoplexy but by hystero-neurasthenia. Eye +strain played hob with the happiness of Carlyle, and an apostle of +sweetness and light declared that Ibsen was a "degenerate"--Ibsen, who +led the humdrum exterior life of a healthy _bourgeois_. Lombroso has +demonstrated--to his own satisfaction--that Dante's mystic +illumination was due to some brand of mental disorder. In fact, this +self-styled psychologist mapped anew the topography of the human +spirit. Few have escaped his fine-tooth-comb criticism except +mediocrity. Painters, poets, patriots, musicians, scientists, +philosophers, novelists, statesmen, dramatists, all who ever +participated in the Seven Arts, were damned as lunatics, decadents, +criminals, and fools. It was a convenient inferno in which to dump the +men who succeeded in the field wherein you were a failure. The height +of the paradox was achieved when a silly nomenclature was devised to +meet every vacillation of the human temperament. If you feared to +cross the street you suffered from agoraphobia; if you didn't fear to +cross the street, that too was a very bad sign. If you painted like +Monet, paralysis of the optical centre had set in--but why continue? + +It is a pity that this theory of genius has been so thoroughly +discredited, for it is a field which promises many harvestings; there +is mad genius as there are stupid folk. Besides, normality doesn't +mean the commonplace. A normal man is a superior man. The degenerate +man is the fellow of low instincts, rickety health, and a drunkard, +criminal, or idiot. The comical part of the craze--which was +short-lived, yet finds adherents among the half-baked in culture and +the ignorant--is that it deliberately twisted the truth, making men of +fine brain and high-strung temperament seem crazy or depraved, when +the reverse is usually the case. Since the advent of Lombroso +"brainstorms" are the possession of the privileged. Naturally your +grocer, tailor, or politician may display many of the above symptoms, +but no one studies them. They are not "geniuses." + +All this to assure you that when Camille Mauclair assumes that the +malady from which Antoine Watteau died was also a determining factor +in his art, the French critic is not aping some modern men of science +who denounce the writings of Dostoevsky because he suffered from +epileptic fits. But there is a happy mean in this effort to correlate +mind and body. If we are what we think or what we eat--and it is not +necessary to subscribe to such a belief--then the sickness of the body +is reflected in the soul, or vice versa. Byron was a healthy man +naturally, when he didn't dissipate, and Byron's poems are full of +magnificent energy, though seldom in the key of optimism. The revolt, +the passion, the scorn, were they all the result of his health? Or of +his liver? Or of his soul? Goethe, the imperial the myriad-minded +Goethe, the apostle of culture, the model European man of the +nineteenth century--what of him? Serenity he is said to have attained, +yet from the summit of eighty years he confessed to four weeks of +happiness in a long lifetime. Nor was he with all his superb manhood +free from neurotic disorders, neurotic and erotic. Shelley? Ah! he is +a pronounced case for the specialists. Any man who could eat dry +bread, drink water, and write such angelic poetry must have been quite +mad. Admitted. Would there were more Shelleys. Browning is a fair +specimen of genius and normality; as his wife illustrated an unstable +nervous temperament allied to genius. George Borrow was a rover, a +difficult man to keep as a friend, happy only when thinking of the +gipsies and quarrelling when with them. Would Baudelaire's magic verse +and prose sound its faint, acrid, sinister music if the French poet +had led a sensible life? Cruel question of the dilettante for whom the +world, all its splendor, all its art, is but a spectacle. It is +needless to continue, the list is too large; too large and too +contradictory. The Variations of Genius would be as profound and as +vast a book as Lord Acton's projected History of Human Thought. The +truth is that genius is the sacrificial goat of humanity; through some +inexplicable transposition genius bears the burdens of mankind; +afflicted by the burden of the flesh intensified many times, burdened +with the affliction of the spirit, raised to a pitch abnormal, the +unhappy man of genius is stoned because he staggers beneath the load +of his sensitive temperament or wavers from the straight and narrow +path usually blocked by bores too thick-headed and too obese to +realise the flower-fringed abysses on either side of the road. And +having sent genius in general among the goats, let us turn to +consumptive genius in particular. + +Watteau was a consumptive; he died of the disease. A consumptive +genius! It is a hard saying. People of average health whose pulse-beat +is normal in _tempo_ luckily never realise the febrile velocity with +which flows the blood in the veins of a sick man of genius. But there +is a paradox in the case of Watteau, as there was in the case of +Chopin, of Keats, of Robert Louis Stevenson. The painter of +Valenciennes gave little sign of his malady on his joyous lyrical +canvases. Keats sang of fary landscapes and Chopin's was a virile +spirit; the most cheerful writer under the sun was Stevenson, who even +in his Pulvis et Umbra conjured up images of hope after a most +pitiless arraignment of the universe and man. And here is the paradox. +This quartet of genius suffered from and were slain by consumption. +(Stevenson died directly of brain congestion; he was, however, a +victim to lung trouble.) That the poets turn their sorrow into song is +an axiom. Yet these men met death, or what is worse, met life, with +defiance or impassible fronts. And the world which loves the lilting +rhythms of Chopin's mazourkas seldom cares to peep behind the screen +of notes for the anguish ambushed there. Watteau has painted the +gayest scenes of pastoral elegance in a land out of time, a No-Man's +Land of blue skies, beautiful women, gallant men, and lovely +landscapes, while his life was haunted by thoughts of death. + +The riddle is solved by Mauclar: These flights into the azure, these +evocations of a country west of the sun and east of the moon, these +graceful creatures of Watteau, the rich brocade of Chopin's harmonies, +the exquisite pictures of Keats, the youthful joy in far-away +countries of Stevenson, all, all are so many stigmata of their +terrible affliction. They sought by the magic of their art to create a +realm of enchantment, a realm wherein their ailing bodies and wounded +spirits might find peace and solace. This is the secret of Watteau, +says Mauclair, which was not yielded up in the eighteenth century, not +even to his followers, Pater, Lancret, Boucher, Fragonard, whose pagan +gaiety and artificial spirit is far removed from the veiled melancholy +of Watteau. As we see Chopin, a slender man, morbid, sickly, strike +the martial chord in an unparalleled manner, Chopin the timid, the +composer of the Heroic Polonaise, so Watteau, morbid, sickly, timid, +slender, composes that masterpiece of delicate and decorative +joyousness, The Embarkment for Cythera, which hangs in the Louvre (a +gorgeous sketch, the final version, is at Potsdam in the collection of +the German Emperor). In these works we find the aura of consumption. + +None of Watteau's contemporaries fathomed the meaning of his art: not +Count de Caylus, not his successors, who all recognised the masterly +draughtsman, the marvellous colourist, the composer of pastoral +ballets, of matchless _ftes galantes_, of conversations, of +miniatures depicting camp life, and fanciful decorations in the true +style of his times. But the melancholy poet that was in the man, his +lyric pessimism, and his unassuaged thirst for the infinite--these +things they did not see. Caylus, who has left the only data of value, +speaks of Watteau's hatred of life, his aversion at times from the +human face, his restlessness that caused him to seek new +abodes--Chopin was always dissatisfied with his lodgings and always +changing them. The painter made friends in plenty, only to break with +them because of some fancied slight. Chopin was of umbrageous nature, +Liszt tells us. Watteau never married, and never, as far as is known, +had a love affair. He is an inspired painter of women. (Perhaps, +because of his celibacy.) He loved to depict them in delicious poses, +under waving trees in romantic parks or in the nude. A gallant artist, +he was not a gallant man. He had the genius of friendship but not the +talent for insuring its continuity. Like Arthur Rimbaud, he suffered +from the nostalgia of the open road. He disappeared frequently. His +whereabouts was a mystery to his friends. He did not care for money or +for honours. He was elected without volition on his part as a member +of the Academy. Yet he did not use this powerful lever to further his +welfare. Silent, a man of continent speech, he never convinced his +friends that his art was chaste; yet he never painted an indelicate +stroke. His personages, all disillusionised, vaguely suffer, make love +without desire--disillusioned souls all. L'Indiffrent, that young man +in the Louvre who treads the earth with such light disdain, with such +an airy expression of sweetness and _ennui_, that picture, Mauclair +remarks, is the soul of Watteau. And, perhaps, spills his secret. + +Mauclair does not like the coupling of Watteau's name with those of +Boucher, Pater, Lancret, De Troy, Coypel, or Vanloo. They imitated him +as to externals; the spirit of him they could not ensnare. If Watteau +stemmed artistically from Rubens, from Ruysdael, from Titian (or +Tiepolo, as Kenyon Cox acutely hints) he is the father of a great +school, the true French school, though his stock is Flemish. Turner +knew him; so did Bonington. Delacroix understood him. So did Chardin, +himself a solitary in his century. Without Watteau's initiative +Monticelli might not be the Monticelli we know, while Claude Monet, +Manet, Renoir are the genuine flowering of his experiments in the +division of tones and the composition of luminous skies. + +Mauclair smiles at Caylus for speaking of Watteau's mannerisms, the +mannerisms that proclaim his originality. Only your academic, +colourless painter lacks personal style and always paints like +somebody he is not. Watteau's art is peculiarly personal. Its +peculiarity--apart from its brilliancy and vivacity--is, as Mauclair +remarks, "the contrast of cheerful colour and morbid expression." +_Morbidezza_ is the precise phrase; _morbidezza_ may be found in +Chopin's art, in the very feverish moments when he seems brimming over +with high spirits. Watteau was not a consumptive of the Pole's type. +He did not alternate between ecstasy and languor. He was cold, +self-contained, suspicious, and inveterately hid the state of his +health. He might have been cured, but he never reached Italy, and that +far-off dream and his longing to realise it may have been the basis of +his last manner--those excursions into a gorgeous dreamland. He +yearned for an impossible region. His visions on canvas are the +shadowy sketches of this secret desire that burned him up. It may have +been consumption--and Mauclair makes out a strong case--and it may +have been the expression of a rare poetic temperament. Watteau was a +poet of excessive sensibility as well as the contriver of dainty +masques and ballets. + +In literature one man at least has understood him, Walter Pater. +Readers of his Imaginary Portraits need not be reminded of A Prince of +Court Painters, that imaginative reconstruction of an almost obscure +personality. "His words as he spoke of them [the paintings of Rubens] +seemed full of a kind of rich sunset with some moving glory within +it." This was the Watteau who is summed by Pater (a distant kinsman, +perhaps, of the Pater Watteau tutored) as a man who had been "a sick +man all his life. He was always a seeker after something in the world, +that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all." Camille +Mauclair eloquently ends his study with the confession that the mere +utterance of Watteau's name "suffices to evoke in men's minds a memory +of the melancholy that was his, arrayed in garments of azure and rose. +Ah! crepuscular Psyche, whose smile is akin to tears!" + + + + +XIII. GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + + +I - GAUGUIN + + + +The key-note to the character of Paul Gauguin, painter and sculptor, +may be found in his declaration that in art there are only +revolutionists or plagiarists. A brave speech. And a proud man who +uttered it; for unless he wished to avoid its implications he must +needs prove his sincerity. In the short, adventurous, crowded life +vouchsafed him, Paul Gauguin proved himself indeed a revolutionary +painter. His maxim was the result of hard-won experiences. He was born +at Paris June 7, 1848--a stormy year for France; he died at Dominique +May 9, 1904. His father was a native of Brittany, while on his +mother's side he was Peruvian. This mixed blood may account for his +wandering proclivities and his love for exotic colouring and manners. +To further accentuate the rebellious instincts of the youth his +maternal grandmother was that Flora Tristan, friend of the anarchistic +thinker Proudhon. She was a socialist later and a prime mover in the +Workman's Union; she allied herself with Pre Enfantin and helped him +to found his religion, "Mapa," of which he was the god, Ma, and she +the goddess, Pa. Enfantin's career and end may be recalled by students +of St. Simon and the socialistic movements of those times. Paul's +father, Clovis Gauguin, wrote in 1848 the political chronicle on the +_National_, but previous to the _coup d'etat_ he left for Lima, there +to found a journal. He died of an aneurism in the Straits of Magellan, +a malady that was to carry off his son. After four years in Lima the +younger Gauguin returned to France. In 1856 a Peruvian grand-uncle +died at the extraordinary age of one hundred and thirteen. His name +was Don Pio de Tristan, and he was reported very rich. But Paul got +none of this wealth, and at fourteen he was a cabin-boy, feeble of +health but extremely curious about life. He saw much of life and +strange lands in the years that followed, and he developed into a +powerfully built young sailor and no doubt stored his brain with +sumptuous images of tropical scenery which reappeared in his canvases. +He traversed the globe several times. He married and took a position +in a bank. On Sundays he painted. His hand had itched for years to +reproduce the landscapes he had seen. He made friends with Degas, +Czanne, Pissarro, Renoir, Monet, Guillaumin, and Manet. He called +himself an amateur and a "Sunday painter," but as he was received on +terms of equality with these famous artists it may be presumed that, +autodidact as he was, his versatile talent--for it literally was +versatile--did not escape their scrutiny. He submitted himself to +various influences; he imitated the Impressionists, became a +Neo-Impressionist of the most extravagant sort; went sketching with +Czanne and Van Gogh, that unfortunate Dutchman, and finally announced +to his friends and family that "henceforward I shall paint every day." +He gave up his bank, and Charles Morice has said that his life became +one of misery, solitude, and herculean labours. + +He painted in Brittany, Provence, at Martinique, in the Marquesas and +Tahiti. He had parted with the Impressionists and sought for a new +_sthetik_ of art; to achieve this he broke away not only from +tradition, even the tradition of the Impressionists, but from Europe +and its civilisation. To this half-savage temperament devoured by the +nostalgia of the tropics the pictures of his contemporaries bore the +fatal stamp of the obvious, of the thrice done and used up. France, +Holland, Spain, Italy--what corner was there left in these countries +that had not been painted thousands of times and by great masters! The +South Seas, Japan, China--anywhere away from the conventional studio +landscape, studio models, poses, grimaces! At Pont-Aven in 1888, +between trips made to Martinique and Provence, Gauguin had attained +mastery of himself; Czanne had taught him simplicity; Degas, his +avowed admirer, had shown him the potency of the line; Renoir's warm +colouring had spurred him to a still richer palette; and Manet had +given him sound advice. A copy of the Olympe, by Gauguin, finished +about this time, is said to be a masterpiece. But with Degas he was +closer than the others. A natural-born writer, his criticisms of the +modern French school are pregnant with wit and just observation. What +was nicknamed the School of Pont-Aven was the outcome of Gauguin's +imperious personality. A decorative impulse, a largeness of style, and +a belief that everything in daily life should be beautiful and +characteristic sent the painters to modelling, to ceramics and +decoration. Armand Seguin, Emile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Filiger, +Serusier, Bonnard, Vuillard, Chamaillard, Verkade, O'Conor, Durio, +Maufra, Ranson, Mayol, Roy, and others are to-day happy to call +themselves associates of Paul Gauguin in this little movement in which +the idolatry of the line and the harmonies of the arabesque were +pursued with joyous fanaticism. + +Gauguin in an eloquent letter tells of his intercourse with Vincent +Van Gogh, who went mad and killed himself, not, however, before +attempting the life of his master. Mauclair has said of Van Gogh that +he "left to the world some violent and strange works, in which +Impressionism appears to have reached the limit of its audacity. Their +value lies in their nave frankness and in the undauntable +determination which tried to fix without trickery the sincerest +feelings. Amid many faulty and clumsy works Van Gogh has also left +some really beautiful canvases." Before Gauguin went to Tahiti his +Breton peasants were almost as monstrous as his later Polynesian +types. His representations of trees also seem monstrous. His endeavour +was to get beyond the other side of good and evil in art and create a +new synthesis, and thus it came to pass that the ugly and the formless +reign oft in his work--the ugly and formless according to the old +order of envisaging the world. + +In 1891 and 1892, at Tahiti, Gauguin painted many +pictures--masterpieces his friends and disciples call them--which were +later shown at an exhibition held in the Durand-Ruel Galleries. Paris +shuddered or went into ecstasy over these blazing transcriptions of +the tropics; over these massive men and women, nude savages who stared +with such sinister magnetism from the frames. The violent +deformations, the intensity of vision, the explosive hues--a novel +gamut of rich tones--and the strangeness of the subject-matter caused +a nine days' gossip; yet the exhibition was not a great success. +Gauguin was too new, too startling, too original for his generation; +he is yet for the majority, though he may be the Paint God of the +twentieth century. Cut to the heart by his failure to make a dazzling +reputation, also make a little money--for he was always a poor man--he +left Paris forever in 1895. He was sick and his life among the +Marquisians did not improve his health. He took the part of the +natives against the whites and was denounced as a moral castaway. In +1904 he wrote Charles Morice: "I am a savage." But a savage of talent. +In reality he was a cultivated man, an attractive man, and a billiard +player and a fencer. Paint was his passion. If you live by the pen you +may perish by the pen. The same is too often the case with the palette +and brush hero. + +Though Paul Gauguin failed in his search for a synthesis of the ugly +and the beautiful, he was nevertheless a bold initiator, one who +shipwrecked himself in his efforts to fully express his art. With all +his realism he was a symbolist, a master of decoration. A not too +sympathetic commentator has written of him: "Paul Gauguin's robust +talent found its first motives in Breton landscapes, in which the +method of colour spots may be found employed with delicacy and placed +at the service of a rather heavy but very interesting harmony. Then +the artist spent a long time in Tahiti, whence he returned with a +completely transformed manner. He brought back from those regions some +landscapes treated in intentionally clumsy and almost wild fashion. +The figures are outlined in firm strokes and painted in broad, flat +tints on canvas that has the texture of tapestry. Many of these works +are made repulsive by their aspect of multicoloured, crude, and +barbarous imagery. Yet one cannot but acknowledge the fundamental +qualities, the lovely values, the ornamental taste, and the impression +of primitive animalism. On the whole, Paul Gauguin has a beautiful, +artistic temperament which, in its aversion to virtuosity, has perhaps +not sufficiently understood that the fear of formulas, if exaggerated, +may lead to other formulas, to a false ignorance which is as dangerous +as false knowledge." + +All of which is true; yet Paul Gauguin was a painter who had something +new to say, and he said it in a very personal fashion. + + + + +II - TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + + +I once attended at Paris an exhibition devoted to the work of the late +Count Toulouse-Lautrec. There the perverse genius of an unhappy man +who owes allegiance to no one but Degas and the Japanese was seen at +its best. His astonishing qualities of invention, draughtsmanship, and +a diabolic ingenuity in sounding the sinister music of decayed souls +have never been before assembled under one roof. Power there is and a +saturnine hatred of his wretched sitters. Toulouse-Lautrec had not the +impersonal vision of Zola nor the repressed and disenchanting irony of +Degas. He loathed the crew of repulsive night birds that he pencilled +and painted in old Montmartre before the foreign invasion destroyed +its native and spontaneous wickedness. Now a resort for easily +bamboozled English and Americans, the earlier Montmartre was a rich +mine for painter-explorers. Raffaelli went there and so did Renoir; +but the former was impartially impressionistic; the latter, ever +ravished by a stray shaft of sunshine flecking the faces of the +dancers, set it all down in charming tints. Not so Toulouse-Lautrec. +Combined with a chronic pessimism, he exhibited a divination of +character that, if he had lived and worked hard, might have placed him +not far below Degas. He is savant. He has a line that proclaims the +master. And unlike Aubrey Beardsley, his affinity to the Japanese +never seduced him into the exercise of the decorative abnormal which +sometimes distinguished the efforts of the Englishman. We see the +Moulin Rouge with its hosts of deadly parasites, La Goulue and her +vile retainers. The brutality here is one of contempt, as a blow +struck full in the face. Vice has never before been so harshly +arraigned. This art makes of Hogarth a pleasing preacher, so drastic +is it, so deliberately searching in its insults. And never the +faintest exaggeration or burlesque. These brigands and cut-throats, +pimps and pickpurses are set before us without bravado, without the +genteel glaze of the timid painter, without an attempt to call a +prostitute a _cocotte_. Indeed, persons are called by their true names +in these hasty sketches of Lautrec's, and so clearly sounded are the +names that sometimes you are compelled to close your ears and eyes. +His models, with their cavernous glance, their emaciated figures, and +vicious expression, are a commentary on atelier life in those days and +regions. Toulouse-Lautrec is like a page from Ecclesiastes. + + + + +XIV. LITERATURE AND ART + + + +I - CONCERNING CRITICS + + + +The annual rotation of the earth brings to us at least once during its +period the threadbare, thriceworn, stale, flat, and academic +discussion of critic and artist. We believe comparisons of creator and +critic are unprofitable, being for the most part a confounding of +intellectual substances. The painter paints, the composer makes music, +the sculptor models, and the poet sings. Like the industrious crow the +critic hops after these sowers of beauty, content to peck up in the +furrows the chance grains dropped by genius. This, at least, is the +popular notion. Balzac, and later Disraeli, asked: "After all, what +are the critics? Men who have failed in literature and art." And +Mascagni, notwithstanding the laurels he wore after his first success, +cried aloud in agony that a critic was _compositore mancato_. These be +pleasing quotations for them whose early opus has failed to score. The +trouble is that every one is a critic, your gallery-god as well as the +most stately practitioner of the art severe. Balzac was an excellent +critic when he saluted Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme as a +masterpiece; as was Emerson when he wrote to Walt Whitman. What the +mid-century critics of the United States, what Sainte-Beuve, master +critic of France, did not see, Balzac and Emerson saw and, better +still, spoke out. In his light-hearted fashion Oscar Wilde asserted +that the critic was also a creator--apart from his literary worth--and +we confess that we know of cases where the critic has created the +artist. But that a serious doubt can be entertained as to the relative +value of creator and critic is hardly worth denying. + +Consider the painters. Time and time again you read or hear the +indignant denunciation of some artist whose canvas has been ripped-up +in print. If the offender happens to be a man who doesn't paint, then +he is called an ignoramus; if he paints or etches, or even sketches in +crayon, he is well within the Balzac definition--poor, miserable +imbecile, he is only jealous of work that he could never have +achieved. As for literary critics, it may be set down once and for all +that they are "suspect." They write; ergo, they must be unjust. The +dilemma has branching horns. Is there no midway spot, no safety ground +for that weary Ishmael the professional critic to escape being gored? +Naturally any expression of personal feeling on his part is set down +to mental arrogance. He is permitted like the wind to move over the +face of the waters, but he must remain unseen. We have always thought +that the enthusiastic Dublin man in the theatre gallery was after a +critic when he cried aloud at the sight of a toppling companion: +"Don't waste him. Kill a fiddler with him!" It seems more in +consonance with the Celtic character; besides, the Irish are +music-lovers. + +If one could draw up the list of critical and creative men in art the +scale would not tip evenly. The number of painters who have written of +their art is not large, though what they have said is always pregnant. +Critics outnumber them--though the battle is really a matter of +quality, not quantity. There is Da Vinci. For his complete writings +some of us would sacrifice miles of gawky pale and florid medival +paintings. What we have of him is wisdom, and like true wisdom is +prophetic. Then there is that immortal gossip Vasari, a very biassed +critic and not too nice to his contemporaries. He need not indulge in +what is called the woad argument; we sha'n't go back to the early +Britons for our authorities. Let us come to Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose +Discourses are invaluable--and also to be taken well salted; he was +encrusted with fine old English prejudices. One of his magnificent +sayings and one appreciated by the entire artistic tribe was his +ejaculation: "Damn paint!" Raphael Mengs wrote. We wish that Velasquez +had. What William Blake said of great artists threw much light on +William Blake. Ingres uttered things, principally in a rage, about his +contemporaries. Delacroix was a thinker. He literally anticipated +Chevreul's discoveries in the law of simultaneous contrasts of colour. +Furthermore, he wrote profoundly of his art. He appreciated Chopin +before many critics and musicians--which would have been an impossible +thing for Ingres, though he played the violin--and he was kind to the +younger men. + +Need we say that Degas is a great wit, though not a writer; a wit and +a critic? Rousseau, the landscapist, made notes, and Corot is often +quoted. If Millet had never written another sentence but "There is no +isolated truth," he would still have been a critic. Constable with his +"A good thing is never done twice"; and Alfred Stevens's definition of +art, "Nature seen through the prism of an emotion," forestalled Zola's +pompous pronouncement in The Experimental Novel. To jump over the +stile to literature, Wordsworth wrote critical prefaces, and Shelley, +too; Poe was a critic; and what of Coleridge, who called painting "a +middle quality between a thought and a thing--the union of that which +is nature with that which is exclusively human"? There are plenty of +examples on the side of the angels. Whistler! What a critic, wielding +a finely chased rapier! Thomas Couture wrote and discoursed much of +his art. Sick man as he was, I heard him talk of art at his country +home, Villiers-le-Bel, on the Northern Railway, near Paris. This was +in 1878. William M. Hunt's talks on art were fruitful. So are John +Lafarge's. The discreet Gigoux of Balzac notoriety has an entertaining +book to his credit; while Rodin is often coaxed into utterances about +his and other men's work. There are many French, English, and American +artists who write and paint with equal facility. In New York, Kenyon +Cox is an instance. But the chiefest among all the painters alive and +dead, one who shines and will continue to shine when his canvases are +faded--and they are fading--is Eugne Fromentin, whose Matres +d'autrefois is a classic of criticism. Since his day two critics, who +are also painters, have essayed both crafts, George Clausen and D.S. +MacColl. + +Professor Clausen is a temperate critic, MacColl a brilliant, +revolutionary one. The critical temper in either man is not dogmatic. +Seurat, the French Neo-Impressionist, has defended his theories; +indeed, the number of talented Frenchmen who paint well and write with +style as well as substance is amazing. Rossetti would no longer be a +rare bird in these days of piping painters, musicians who are poets, +and sculptors who are painters. The unfortunate critic occasionally +writes a play or an opera (particularly in Paris), but as a rule he is +content to echo that old German who desperately exclaimed: "Even if I +am nothing else, I am at least a contemporary." + +Let us now swing around the obverse side of the medal. A good showing. +You may begin with Wincklemann or Goethe--we refer entirely to critics +of paint and painters--or run down the line to Diderot, Blanc, +Gautier, Baudelaire, Zola, Goncourt, who introduced to Europe Japanese +art; Roger Marx, Geoffroy, Huysmans, Camille Mauclair, Charles Morice, +and Octave Mirbeau. Zola was not a painter, but he praised Edouard +Manet. These are a few names hastily selected. In England, Ruskin too +long ruled the critical roast; full of thunder-words like Isaiah, his +vaticinations led a generation astray. He was a prophet, not a critic, +and he was a victim to his own abhorred "pathetic fallacy." Henley was +right in declaring that until R.A.M. Stevenson appeared there was no +great art criticism in England or English. The "Velasquez" is a +marking stone in critical literature. It is the one big book by a big +temperament that may be opposed page by page to Fromentin's critical +masterpiece. Shall we further adduce the names of Morelli, Sturge +Moore, Roger Fry, Perkins, Cortissoz, Lionel Cust, Colvin, Ricci, Van +Dyke, Mather, Berenson, Brownell, and George Moore--who said of Ruskin +that his uncritical blindness regarding Whistler will constitute his +passport to fame, "the lot of critics is to be remembered by what they +have failed to understand." Walter Pater wrote criticism that is +beautiful literature. If Ruskin missed Whistler, he is in good +company, for Sainte-Beuve, the prince of critics, missed Balzac, +Stendhal, Flaubert, and to Victor Hugo was unfair. Yet, consider the +Osrics embalmed in the amber of Sainte-Beuve's style. He, like many +another critic, was superior to his subject. And that is always fatal +to the water-flies. + +George III once asked in wonderment how the apples get inside the +dumplings. How can a critic criticise a creator? The man who looks on +writing things about the man who does things. But he criticises and +artists owe him much. Neither in "ink-horn terms" nor in an "upstart +Asiatic style" need the critic voice his opinions. He must be an +artist in temperament and he must have a _credo_. He need not be a +painter to write of painting, for his primary appeal is to the public. +He is the middle-man, the interpreter, the vulgariser. The +psycho-physiological processes need not concern us. One thing is +certain--a man writing in terms of literature about painting, an art +in two dimensions, cannot interpret fully the meanings of the canvas, +nor can he be sure that his opinion, such as it is, when it reaches +the reader, will truthfully express either painter or critic. Such are +the limitations of one art when it comes to deal with the ideas or +material of another. Criticism is at two removes from its theme. +Therefore criticism is a makeshift. Therefore, let critics be modest +and allow criticism to become an amiable art. + +But where now is the painter critic and the professional critic? +"Stands Ulster where it did?" Yes, the written and reported words of +artists are precious alike to layman and critic. That they prefer +painting to writing is only natural; so would the critic if he had the +pictorial gift. However, as art is art and not nature, criticism is +criticism and not art. It professes to interpret the artist's work, +and at best it mirrors his art mingled with the personal temperament +of the critic. At the worst the critic lacks temperament (artistic +training is, of course, an understood requisite), and when this is the +case, God help the artist! As the greater includes the lesser, the +artist should permit the critic to enter, with all due reverence, his +sacred domain. Without vanity the one, sympathetic the other. Then the +ideal collaboration ensues. Sainte-Beuve says that "criticism by +itself can do nothing. The best of it can act only in concert with +public feeling ... we never find more than half the article in +print--the other half was written only in the reader's mind." And +Professor Walter Raleigh would further limit the "gentle art." +"Criticism, after all, is not to legislate, nor to classify, but to +raise the dead." The relations between the critic and his public open +another vista of the everlasting discussion. Let it be a negligible +one now. That painters can get along without professional criticism we +know from history, but that they will themselves play the critic is +doubtful. And are they any fairer to young talent than official +critics? It is an inquiry fraught with significance. Great and small +artists have sent forth into the world their pupils. Have they +always--as befits honest critics--recognised the pupils of other men, +pupils and men both at the opposite pole of their own theories? Recall +what Velasquez is reported to have said to Salvator Rosa, according to +Boschini and Carl Justi. Salvator had asked the incomparable Spaniard +whether he did not think Raphael the best of all the painters he had +seen in Italy. Velasquez answered: "Raphael, to be plain with you, for +I like to be candid and outspoken, does not please me at all." This +purely temperamental judgment does not make of Velasquez either a good +or a bad critic. It is interesting as showing us that even a master +cannot always render justice to another. Difference engenders hatred, +as Stendhal would say. + +Can the record of criticism made by plastic artists show a generous +Robert Schumann? Schumann discovered many composers from Chopin to +Brahms and made their fortunes by his enthusiastic writing about them. +In Wagner he met his Waterloo, but every critic has his limitations. +There is no Schumann, let the fact be emphasised, among the +painter-critics, though quite as much discrimination, ardour of +discovery, and acumen may be found among the writings of the men whose +names rank high in professional criticism. And this hedge, we humbly +submit, is a rather stiff one to vault for the adherents of criticism +written by artists only. Nevertheless, every day of his humble career +must the critic pen his _apologia pro vita sua_. + + + + +II - ART IN FICTION + + + +Fiction about art and artists is rare--that is, good fiction, not the +stuff ground out daily by the publishing mills for the gallery-gods. +It is to France that we must look for the classic novel dealing with +painters and their painting, Manette Salomon, by Goncourt. Henry James +has written several delightful tales, such as The Liar, The Real +Thing, The Tragic Muse, in which artists appear. But it is the +particular psychological problem involved rather than theories of art +or personalities that steer Mr. James's cunning pen. We all remember +the woman who destroyed a portrait of her husband which seemed to +reveal his moral secret. John S. Sargeant has been credited with being +the psychologist of the brush in this story. There is a nice, fresh +young fellow in The Tragic Muse, who, weak-spined as he is, prefers at +the last his painting to Julia Dallow and a political career. In The +Real Thing we recognise one of those unerring strokes that prove James +to be the master psychologist among English writers. Any discerning +painter realises the value of a model who can take the pose that will +give him the pictorial idea, the suggestiveness of the pose, not an +attempt at crude naturalism. With this thesis the novelist has built +up an amusing, semi-pathetic, and striking fable. + +There are painters scattered through English fiction--can we ever +forget Thackeray! Ouida has not missed weaving her Tyrian purples into +the exalted pattern of her romantic painters. And George Eliot. And +Disraeli. And Bernard Shaw--there is a painting creature in Love Among +the Artists. George Moore, however, has devoted more of his pages to +paint and painters than any other of the latter-day writers. The +reason is this: George Moore went to Paris to study art and he drifted +into the Julian atelier like any other likely young fellow with hazy +notions about art and a well-filled purse. But these early experiences +were not lost. They cropped up in many of his stories and studies. He +became the critical pioneer of the impressionistic movement and first +told London about Manet, Monet, Degas. He even--in an article +remarkable for critical acumen--declared that if Jimmy Whistler had +been a heavier man, a man of beef, brawn, and beer, like Rubens, he +would have been as great a painter as Velasquez. To the weighing +scales, fellow-artists! retorted Whistler; yet the bolt did not miss +the mark. Whistler's remarks about Mr. Moore, especially after the +Eden lawsuit, were, so it is reported, not fit to print. + +In Mr. Moore's first volume of the half-forgotten trilogy, Spring +Days, we see a young painter who, it may be said, thinks more of +petticoats than paint. There is paint talk in Mike Fletcher, Moore's +most virile book. In A Modern Lover the hero is an artist who succeeds +in the fashionable world by painting pretty, artificial portraits and +faded classical allegories, thereby winning the love of women, much +wealth, popular applause, and the stamp of official approbation. This +Lewis Seymour still lives and paints modish London in rose-colour. +Moore's irony would have entered the soul of a hundred "celebrated" +artists if they had had any soul to flesh it in. When he wrote this +novel, one that shocked Mrs. Grundy, Moore was under the influence of +Paris. However, that masterpiece of description and analysis, Mildred +Lawson in Celibates--very Balzacian title, by the way--deals with +hardly anything else but art. Mildred, who is an English girl without +soul, heart, or talent, studies in the Julian atelier and goes to +Fontainebleau during the summer. No one, naturally, will ever describe +Fontainebleau better than Flaubert, in whose L'Education Sentimentale +there are marvellous pictures; also a semi-burlesque painter, +Pellerin, who reads all the works on sthetics before he draws a line, +and not forgetting that imperishable portrait of Jacques Arnoux, art +dealer. Goncourt, too, has excelled in his impression of the forest +and its painters, Millet in particular. Nevertheless, let us say in +passing that you cannot find Mildred Lawson in Flaubert or Goncourt; +no, not even in Balzac, whose work is the matrix of modern fiction. +She is her own perverse, cruel Mooresque self, and she lives in New +York as well as London. + +In both Daudet and Maupassant--Strong as Death is the latter's +contribution to painter-psychology--there are stories clustered about +the guild. Daudet has described a Salon on varnishing day with his +accustomed facile, febrile skill; you feel that it comes from Goncourt +and Zola. It is not within our scope to go back as far as Balzac, +whose Frenhofer in The Unknown Masterpiece has been a model for the +younger man. Poe, Hawthorne, Wilde, and Robert Louis Stevenson have +dealt with the theme pictorial. Zola's The Masterpiece (L'Oeuvre) is +one of the better written books of Zola. It was a favourite of his. +The much-read and belauded fifth chapter is a faithful transcription +of the first Salon of the Rejected Painters (Salon des Refuss) at +Paris, 1863. Napoleon III, after pressure had been brought to bear +upon him, consented to a special salon within the official Salon, at +the Palais de l'Industrie, which would harbour the work of the young +lunatics who wished to paint purple turkeys, green water, red grass, +and black sunsets. (Lie down, ivory hallucinations, and don't wag your +carmilion tail on the chrome-yellow carpet!) It is an enormously +clever book, this, deriving in the main as it does from Manette +Salomon and Balzac's Frenhofer. The fight for artistic veracity by +Claude Lantier is a replica of what occurred in Manet's lifetime. The +Breakfast on the Grass, described by Zola, was actually the title and +the subject of a Manet picture that scandalised Paris about this +epoch. The fantastic idea of a nude female stretched on the grass, +while the other figures were clothed and in their right minds, was too +much for public and critic, and unquestionably Manet did paint the +affair to create notoriety. Like Richard Wagner, he knew the value of +advertising. + +All the then novel theories of _plein air_ impressionism are discussed +in the Zola novel, yet the work seems clumsy after Goncourt's Manette +Salomon, that breviary for painters which so far back as 1867 +anticipated--in print, of course--the discoveries, the experiments, +the practice of the naturalistic-impressionistic groups from Courbet +to Czanne, Monet to Maufra, Manet to Paul Gauguin. There are verbal +pictures of student life, of salons, of atelier and open air. No such +psychologic manual of the painter's art has ever appeared before or +since Manette Salomon. It was the Goncourts who introduced Japanese +art to European literature--they were friends of the late M. Bing, a +pioneer collector in Paris. And they foresaw the future of painting as +well as of fiction. + + + + +XV. MUSEUM PROMENADES + + + +PICTURES AT THE HAGUE + +There are two new Rembrandts in the galleries of the Mauritshuis, lent +by Prof. A. Bredius, director of the Royal Picture Gallery at The +Hague. Neither is an "important" picture in the professional sense of +that word, but they are Rembrandts--at least one is indubitable--and +that suffices. The more credible of the pair is a small canvas +depicting Andromeda manacled to the rocks. Her figure is draped to the +waist; it is a solid Dutch figure, ugly as the one of Potiphar's wife +(in an etching by Rembrandt), and no deliverer is in sight. The flesh +tones are rather cold, a cadaverous white, but it is a Rembrandt +white. The picture as a whole is sketchy and without charm or mystery. +Nevertheless, the lion's paws are there. The other shows us a woman +reading at a table. The colouring is warm and the still-life +accessories are richly and minutely painted. Not a likely Rembrandt, +either in theme or notably so in treatment. We must bow, however, to +the judgment of the learned Bredius who made the ascription. These two +works are not as yet in the catalogue. It is a pity the catalogue to +this gallery is not as complete as those of the Rijks Museum. To +visitors they offer an abridged one, dated 1904. There are since then +many new pictures, notably a sterling Chardin, marvellously painted, +and an excellent landscape by Van Cuyp, both loans of Dr. Bredius. + +Otherwise this little collection is as choice and as entertaining as +ever. The usual tourist makes at once for the overrated Young Bull by +Paul Potter and never looks at the magnificent Weenix across the room, +the Dead Swan, with its velvety tones. The head of a young girl by +Vermeer, with its blue turban and buff coat, its pearl earrings, is +charming. And the View of Delft seems as fresh as the day it was +painted. The long faade of the houses and warehouses and the churches +and towers facing the river are rendered with a vivacity of colour, a +solidity in drawing, and an absence of too marked literalism which +prove that this gifted artist had more than one style. The envelope is +rich; there is air, though it be stagnant. Down-stairs is an +allegorical subject, The New Testament, which is not very convincing +as a composition, but warm in tint. The Diana and Her Companions must +have inspired Diaz and many other painters. But the real Vermeer, the +Vermeer of the enamelled surfaces and soft pervasive lighting, is at +Amsterdam. + +No place is better than The Hague for the study of the earlier +Rembrandt. Dr. Tulp's Anatomical Lecture is, after the Potter bull, +the most gazed-at canvas in the Mauritshuis. It is not in a good +condition. There are evidences of over-varnishing and cobbling; nor is +it a very inspiring canvas. The head of Dr. Tulp is superb in +characterisation, and there is one other head, that of a man with +inquiring eyes, aquiline profile, the head strained forward (his name +is given in the critical works on Rembrandt), which arrests the +attention. An early composition, we are far from the perfection of The +Syndics. The self-portrait of the painter (1629) is a favourite, +though the much-vaunted feather in the head-gear is stiff; perhaps +feathers in Holland were stiff in those days. But the painters flock +to this portrait and never tire of copying its noble silhouette. The +two little studies of the painter's father and mother are +characteristic. One, of the man, is lent by Dr. Bredius. Rembrandt's +brother (study of an old man's head) shows a large old chap with a +nose of richest vintage. The portrait is brown in tone and without +charm. The Susanna Bathing is famous, but it is not as attractive as +Simeon in the Temple, with its masterly lighting, old gold in the +gloom. The Homer never fails to warm the cockles of the imagination. +What bulk! What a wealth of smothered fire in the apparel! The big +Saul listening to the playing of David is still mystifying. Is Saul +smiling or crying behind the uplifted cloak? Is he contemplating in +his neurasthenia an attempt on David's life with a whizzing lance? His +sunken cheeks, vague yet sinister eye, his turban marvellous in its +iridescence, form an ensemble not to be forgotten. David is not so +striking. From afar the large canvas glows. And the chiaroscuro is +miraculous. + +The portrait of Rembrandt's sister, the Flight Into Egypt, the small, +laughing man, the negroes, and the study of an old woman, the latter +wearing a white head-dress, are a mine of joy for the student. The +sister's head is lent by Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot, the art expert. + +There are only thirty-odd Rembrandts in Holland out of the five +hundred and fifty he painted. Of this number eighteen are in the +Mauritshuis. Holland was not very solicitous formerly of her masters. +Nowadays sentiment has changed and there is a gratifying outcry +whenever a stranger secures a genuine old master. As for the copies, +they, like the poor, are always with us. America is flooded every year +with forged pictures, especially of the minor Dutch masters, and +excellent are these imitations, it must be confessed. + +There are only four specimens of Frans Hals here; portraits of Jacob +Pieterez, Aletta Hanemans, his wife; of William Croes, and the head of +a man, a small picture in The Jolly Toper style. The lace collar is +genuine Hals. + +Let us close our catalogue and wander about the galleries. German and +English are the tongues one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally. +The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at by hundreds. As a +picture painted by a very young man it is noteworthy. The head of the +beast is nobly depicted. But what of the remainder of this +insignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaningless +landscape? The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeins +are--two anyhow--of splendid quality. Of the Rubenses it is better to +defer mention until Antwerp is reached. They are of unequal value. The +same may be said of the Van Dycks. Look at that baby girl standing by +a chair. A Govert Flinck. How truthful! The De Heems are excellent +fruit and flower pieces. Excellent, too, the Huysums, Hondecoeters, +and Weenixes. There is a dead baby of the Dutch school (1661) which is +as realistic as a Courbet. We admired the small Memlic, or Memling, +and, naturally, the Metsus, Mierevelts, and Mierises. The Holy Virgin +and Infant Christ, by Murillo, is tender and sleek in colour. It hangs +near the solitary Velasquez of the museum, a portrait of +Charles-Baltasar, son of King Philip IV of Spain. It is not a +remarkable Velasquez. + +The Pieter Lastman, a Resurrection of Lazarus, is of interest because +this painter was a preceptor of Rembrandt. William Kalf's still-life +is admirable, and the Aert Van den Neer moonlight scene (purchased +1903) is a lovely example of this artist. Indeed, all the minor +Dutchmen are well represented. Potter's much-praised Cow in the Water +is faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over at our own +Academy exhibitions. The Van Goyen waterscapes are not all of prime +quality, but there are two that are masterpieces. Amsterdam excels in +both Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels. The Distant View of Haarlem of +the latter proved a disappointment. The colour is vanished quite, the +general effect flat. The Bol portrait of Admiral de Ruyter is a +sterling specimen. The Van de Veldes and Wouvermans are excellent. The +Good Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture, with its tricky light +and dark. The Teniers and Ostades no longer interest us as they did. +Perhaps one tires soon of genre pictures. The inevitable toper, the +perambulating musician, the old woman standing in a doorway, the +gossips, the children, and the dog not house-broken may stand for the +eternal Ostade, while the merry-makings of David Teniers are too much +alike. However, this touch of spleen is the outcome of seeing so many +bituminous canvases. + +Probably in no other painter's name have so many sins been committed +as in Rembrandt's. His _chiaroscuro_ is to blame for thousands of +pictures executed in the tone of tobacco juice. All the muddy browns +of the studio, with the yellow smear that passes for Rembrandtish +light, are but the monkey tricks of lesser men. His pupils often made +a mess of it, and they were renowned. Terburg's Despatch is an +interesting anecdote; so too Metsu's Amateur Musicians. There are the +average number of Dutch Italianate painters, Jan Both and the rest, +men who employed southern backgrounds and improvised bastard Italian +figures. Schalcken's candlelight scenes are not missing, though Dou +leads in this rather artificial genre. And every tourist led by a +guide hears that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse somewhere +in his picture. You leave Holland obsessed by that white animal. + +Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the surface of the artistic +attractions in this Hague gallery. Not the least of them is to look +out on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around the +emerald islet in the middle. The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and +months could not stale its variety. There are important omissions, and +some of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch. +But the Rembrandts are there, and there are the Potters, the Rubenses, +the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens--his Oyster Feast is here--the landscape +and marine painters, not to mention the portraiture, the Murillo, +Palma Vecchio, and the Titian. The single Roger van der Weyden, an +attribution, is a Crucifixion, and hangs near the Memlig. It is an +interesting picture. Of the sculpture there is not much to write. +Houdon, Hendrick de Keyser, Verhulst, Falconet, Blommendael, and +Xavery make up a meagre list. + +At Baron Steengracht's house--admission by personal card--on the +Vyverberg there is a wonderful Rembrandt, Bathsheba After Her Bath, a +golden-toned canvas, not unlike the Susanna over at the Mauritshuis. +It was painted in 1643, about a year after he had finished The Night +Watch, a jewel of a Rembrandt and the clou of this collection. There +are some weak modern pictures and examples by Terburg, Metsu, Flinck, +Jordaens, Cuyp, Potter, Brouwer--the smoker, a fine work; a Hobbema +mill and others. In the Municipal Museum, full of curiosities in +furniture, armour, and costumes, there is a gallery of modern +paintings--Israel, David Bles, Mesdag, Neuhuys, Bisschop, J. Maris, +Weissenbruch, Bosboom, Blommers, and Mauve. There are also Mierevelts, +Jan Ravensteyns, Honthorst, Van Goyen, Van Ceulen, and a lot of +shooting-gallery (Doelen) and guild panoramas; there are miles of them +in Holland, and unless painted by Hals, Van der Heist, Elias, and a +few others are shining things of horror, full of staring eyes, and a +jumble of hands, weapons, and dry colours. But they are viewed with +religious awe by the Dutch, whose master passion is patriotic +sentiment. + +There is the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the Wood), the royal villa, +a little over a mile from The Hague, in which De Wit's grisailles may +be seen. The Japanese and orange rooms are charming; the portraits by +Everdingen, Honthorst, Jordaens, and others are of historic interest. + + + + +THE MESDAG MUSEUM + + + +When we were last at The Hague the Mesdag Museum had just opened +(1903). There was no catalogue, and while the nature of this great +gift to the city was felt it was not until a second visit (in 1909) +that its extraordinary value was realised. The catalogue numbers three +hundred and forty-four pictures by modern artists, and there is also a +valuable collection of objects of art, bronzes, pottery, furniture, +and tapestries. Philip Zilcken (a well-known Dutch etcher) in his +introduction calls attention to the rare quality of the Mesdag Museum +and tells us that Mr. and Mrs. Mesdag van Houten bought for their own +pleasure without any thought of forming a gallery for the Dutch +nation. That came later. W.H. Mesdag is the well-known marine painter +whose paintings may be seen in almost every gallery on the Continent. +A native of Groningen (1831), he studied under Roelofs and while in +Brussels lived with his relative, Alma-Tadema; the latter is a +Frieslander. Mesdag excels in marines, painting great sweep of waters +with breadth and simplicity. His palette is cool and restrained, his +rhythmic sense well developed, and his feeling for outdoors truly +Dutch. He belongs to the line of the classic Dutch marinists, to Van +der Velde, Backhuizen, and Van Goyen. His wife, a woman of charm and +culture, died in the spring of last year. She signed her work S. +Mesdag van Houten. Her gift lies in the delineation of forest views, +interiors, portraits, and still-life. Her colour is deep and rich. + +A cursory walk around the various rooms on the Laan van Meerdervoort +impresses one with this idea: with what envy must any curator of any +museum in the world study this collection. Mesdag began gathering his +treasures at a time when the Barbizon school was hardly known; when a +hundred other painters had not been tempted by the dealers into +overproduction; when, in a word, fancy prices were not dreamed of. The +Alma-Tademas are among his best, little as we admire his vital marbles +and lifeless humans. An early portrait of his wife is here. +Bastien-Lepage has a preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, the +Mesdag Museum is rich in _frottis_, painted-in pictures, by such men +as Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupr. As we admire the +etchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to see half a dozen of +his paintings, chiefly scenes in the Orient. The same misty, fantastic +quality is present; he manipulates his colour, thinly laid on, as if +it were some sort of plastic smoke. Impressionistic as are these +canvases, there is a subdued splendor in them all. Bauer feels the +East. His etchings recall Rembrandt's line; but his paintings are +miles away in sentiment and handling. Bisschop (1828-1904) is +represented by a fine still-life, and among the various Blommers is +one with children playing in the water and on the sands; vividly +seized, this example. + +The late Thophile de Bock was an interpreter of nature and his +brush-work was fat and rich. His work is well known in America and +gains in value every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteen +specimens here of his best period. The Emile Bretons are early and +therefore different from his commercial productions. Of the Corots, +twelve in number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a weak one. +The famous Early Morning and View at Villeneuve-ls-Avignon are hung. +The first depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow stream in +which is reflected a cloudless sky. In the centre two women in white +caps. The second is more elaborate in composition. The middle distance +is occupied by picturesque buildings dating probably from the Middle +Ages. In the foreground four persons are under the shadow of some +trees. An unusual scheme for Corot. His well-known characteristics are +present in the dozen; the tremulous leafage, the bright, pure light, +the Italian softness. And what do you say to a half-dozen Courbets, +all of his strong period, landscapes, still-life, a nude study, a dead +roe, a sunlit path, and a lake scene! Good Courbets are not numerous, +and these are good. The nude is a woman recumbent upon draperies. The +_pte_ is heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the silhouette +firm, yet delicate. The portrait of the artist by himself is massive. +It was probably painted in Ste. Plagie. + +Coutures two, twenty-five Daubignys, and one of his son Karl. Daubigny +the elder is here in all his manners, dark pictures with big +foregrounds, intimate bits of wooded interiors, sand-hills, +streamlets, moonlights, coast scenes, evening effects, sunsets at sea, +twilights, sheep, broken rocks, and a study in crayon. + +Decamps and Delacroix come next in order. There are three of the +former, among the rest his Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one a +portrait of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his colour was most +sonorous and brilliant, are here, with a study of an undraped female +figure. La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau. +Dupr has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The one +Fortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels +are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of the +Binnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously rich +gamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered in +America. He should be better known; while his ideas are not +particularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was +Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and Matthys (the +latter living in London), are to be seen here in unexampled states. +Mauve, too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags, Taco Mesdag, a +brother and his wife are present. Also Ter Meulen, a gifted Dutch +artist. We have seldom seen better George Michels. The Monticelli +up-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a mountain path in the south of +France. The sun is disappearing behind a cluster of trees. Rocks in +the foreground. The scheme of colour is low for Monticelli, the forms +sharply accented. He could see line when he wished. The smaller +example is an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay the +colours on. + +Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture Hagar and Ishmael, +another the wonderful Resting Vintager. Alone these Millets would +cause a sensation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a trifle too +rhetorical for the simple-minded painter. Brown predominates in the +colour scale, the composition is rather conventional, an echo, +perhaps, of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the Vintager is +a masterpiece. Seated among the vines in the blaze of the sun, he is +resting and has removed his heavy sabots. The relaxed attitude after +arduous labour is wonderfully expressed. The atmosphere indicates +stifling sultriness. + +Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau--halt! There are twelve of this +French master, dramatic and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura is +the celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But it is too +bituminous in parts. A greater composition, though only a drawing, is +Les grands chnes du vieux Bas-Brau. Four large trees illumined by +sun-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk and pastel; Storm Van's +Gravesande; seven Troyons, one, Le retour du March, a masterpiece; +Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets; Weissenbruchs; +Zilcken etchings and two De Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery, +designed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and Gothic brass, +Oriental portires and brass, old Delft, Japanese armour, various +weapons and lanterns, Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch and +Scandinavian, and a magnificent assortment of Satsuma pottery, Cmail +cloisonn, Japanese bronzes, Persian pottery, Spanish brasses, +majolica and bronzes and sculptures by Mattos, Constantin, Meunier, +and Van Wijk--the list fills a pamphlet. Next door is the studio of +the aged Mesdag, a hale old Dutchman who paints daily and looks +forward to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octogenarians are not +few. The climate is propitious; above all, the absence of hurry and +worry. To see The Hague without visiting this collection would be a +regrettable omission. + + + + +HALS OF HAARLEM + + + +In writing of Holland more is said of its windmills than its flowers. +It is a land of flowers. Consider the roll-call of its painters who +their life long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces. Both the +De Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose work still lives in the +mezzotints of Earlom--like David de Heem, he was fond of introducing +insects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety peaches and +roses--Seghers, Van Aelst and his talented pupil Rachel Ruysch, Cuyp, +Breughel (Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den Broeck, Margaretha +Rosenboom, Maria Vos, Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf, and many others +who excelled in this pleasing genre. Their canvases are faded, the +colours oxidised, but on the highways and by-ways the miracle is daily +renewed--flowers bloom at every corner, fill the window-boxes of +residences, crowd the hotel balconies, and are bunched in the hands of +the peddlers. A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses, +chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leaves +that are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivy +is used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht _Carsjens_ at +Leyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in a +floating garden. Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of Baron +Steengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone. It is full of +ivy growing low. Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention. +They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenious +surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away to +imitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden little +leafy lanes--what quips and quirks we have come across a few miles +away from the town! To see Haarlem and its environs in June when the +bulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle. In +the fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of the +various farms as the train passes. The many-coloured vegetable carts +remind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here. + +The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a tall +tower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by +Christian Mller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the +world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand +pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful +organist produce adequate musical results. We had the pleasure of +hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a few +Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by the +A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonic +quality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy +squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so +mellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secret +of the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and the +blue of the old Delft china? There are no fancy "barnyard stops," as +John Runciman has named the combinations often to be found in +latter-day instruments. You understood after hearing the Haarlem organ +why Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues. Modern music, with its +orchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be a +sacrilege on this key-board. + +The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us. The Dutch claim +him as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg. +At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you may +ride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal. +But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in the +United States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort at +either town. Regrettable as was the burning of the old church at +Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerous +pictures painted in that picturesque region. Of course it will be, or +has been, rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and did not once +think of 125th Street; the old town is slightly unlike its modern +namesake. What a charm there is in this venerable forest. The Dutch of +Amsterdam, less than half an hour away, come down here on Sunday +afternoons for the tranquillity and the shade. You must know that the +sun-rays can be very disturbing in July. The canals intersecting the +town are pretty. They may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't look +so. Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though the people won't +acknowledge it. It is the case in Venice, which on hot August +afternoons is not at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget it +all in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float by, steered by a blond +youngster of ten and poled by his brothers. From the chimney comes a +light smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old sunlit towpath of +your boyhood; a tightening at your heart warns you of homesickness, or +hay fever. Oh, to be on the Erie Canal, you exclaim, as you sneeze. + +But the Town Hall Museum is hard by. It is the glory of Haarlem as the +Rijks Museum is the glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the bell +and the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and you are free to the +room where are hung ten large paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals. +Here are the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in chronological +order. Drop the catalogue and use your own eyes. The first impression +is profound; not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rembrandt's +profundity, but because of the almost terrifying vitality of these +portraits. Prosaic men and women, great trenchermen, devourers of huge +pasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-tankards, they live with +such vitality on the canvases of Hals that you instinctively lower +your voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly officers, +sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-looking old women regents are not +so disquieting as Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands with +you across the centuries, and finally you wonder why they don't step +out the frame and greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, of +obvious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid paint, but handled +by the greatest master of the brush that ever lived--save Velasquez. +How thin and unsubstantial modern painting is if compared to this +magician, how even his greatest followers, Manet and Sargent, seem +incomplete. Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, his +elliptical handling, never had the smiling confidence of Hals in +facing a problem. The Frenchman is more subtle, also more evasive; and +there is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact that we +encounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist--himself a great painter. Hals +had not the poetic vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a more +dexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according to the rubric of sheer +paint, sheer brush-work, not Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such a +virtuoso. Despite his almost incredible swiftness of execution, Hals +got closer to the surfaces of what is called "actual" life than any of +the masters with the exception of the supreme Spaniard. + +At Haarlem you may follow his development; his first big picture +painted in 1616; his last in 1664. He died at eighty-four. But at +eighty odd he painted two important canvases, the portraits of the +regents and of the lady regents. More summary as regards the +execution, with a manifest tendency toward simplifications, these two +pictures are very noble. The group of ladies, each a portrait of +character, pleases some more than the male group. They are not so +firmly modelled, and into them all has crept a certain weariness as of +old age; but what justness of expression, what adjustment of puzzling +relations! One lady follows you over the gallery with her stern gaze. +It recalls to us the last judgment look which a maiden aunt was wont +to bestow upon us years ago. The men regents will live into eternity +if the canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleasing, yet it +cannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere that circulates about the +vigorously modelled figures at the table. What a colourist! What +nuances he produces on a restrained key-board! The tones modulate, +their juxtaposition causes no harsh discords. The velvet black, +silvery grays, whites that are mellow without pastiness, and the reds +and yellows do not flare out like scarlet trumpets; an aristrocratic +palette. Really you begin to realise that what you formerly considered +grandfather tales are the truth. The great painters have been and are +not with us to-day. It is not a consoling pill to swallow for apostles +of "modernity." Hals is more modern than Sargent. + +These corporation and regent pieces are chronologically arranged. No. +88 is considered the masterpiece. It shows the officers of the +Arquebusiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures. Again each +man is a portrait. This was painted in 1633. The Regents of the +Elizabeth Hospital (1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style; +nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that chamber is alone worth the +journey across the Atlantic. Hals shows us not the magic of life but +the normal life of daylight in which move with dignity men and women +undismayed by the mysteries that hem them about. He has a daylight +soul, a sane if not poetic soul, and few painters before him so +celebrated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of the real. + + + + +PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM + + + + +I + +The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representative home of old Dutch +art. The Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety, +but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night +Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch +has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the +large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only +in temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed. +We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one +gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better +lighted than in its old quarters, The Night Watch now shows more +clearly the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the background, and +the cracks of the canvas are ill-concealed by the heavy coating of +varnish. If all the faults of this magnificent work are more plainly +revealed its excellences are magnified. How there could have been any +dispute as to the lighting is incredible. The new catalogue, the +appendices of which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes the +picture thus: + +"The Night Watch, or the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and of +Lieutenant van Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad daylight, +leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers. At their head, standing in the +foreground about the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenant +conversing. The former wears a dark dress, the latter a yellow costume +with a white sash, causing a brilliant effect of light. Near the +Captain, also standing out in full light, is a little girl, a dead +white cock hanging from her waistband." + +Then follow the names of the other personages in this strange scene. + +A commonplace happening is transfigured by the magic of a seer into a +significant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window looking +out upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman, +Eugne Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this canvas +full of flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled and confused. +The draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired; hands are carelessly +painted, the grouping haphazard, without symmetry, the general rhythm +full of syncopations, cross accents, and perverse pauses--empty +spaces, transitions not accounted for. And yet this painting without +personal charm--it is almost impersonal--grips your soul. It is not +alone the emotional quality of the paint. There are greater colourists +than Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in monochrome, +modelling with light. No, not the paint alone, not the mystery of the +envelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combined +makes an assault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that Captain +Cocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to the +spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strange +attribute by the genius of the painter, this Dutchman becomes the +protagonist in a soundless symphony of light and shadow. The waves +that emanate from the canvas suffuse your senses but do not soothe or +satisfy. The modern nervous intensity, missing absolutely in Hals and +his substantial humans, is present in Rembrandt. We say "modern" as a +sop to our vanity, but we are the "ancients," and there is no mode of +thought, no mood that has not been experienced and expressed by our +ancestors. Rembrandt is unlike any other Dutch painter--Hals, Vermeer, +Teniers, Van der Heist--what have these in common with the miller's +son? But he is as Dutch as any of them. A genius is only attached to +his age through his faults, said a wise man. Rembrandt is as universal +as Beethoven, a Dutchman by descent, as Bach, a Hungarian by descent, +as Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. But we must go to Leonardo da Vinci +if we wish to find a brother soul to Rembrandt's. + +There is a second child back of that iridescent and enigmatic girl +with the dead fowl. And the dog that barks as Jan Van Koort ruffles +his drum, what a spectre dog! No, the mystery of The Night Watch is +insoluble, because it is the dream of a poet. Its light is morning +light, yet it is the mystic light of Rembrandt, never seen on sea or +land. In The Syndics, that group of six linen-drapers, Rembrandt shows +with what supreme ease he can beat Hals at the game of make-believe +actuality. Now, according to the accustomed order of development, The +Night Watch should have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it by +two decades, and the later work contains far better painting and a +sharper presentment of the real. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninth +symphony; but composed before his Fifth, The Syndics. One figure in +this latter picture has always fascinated us. It is of the man, +Volkert Janz, according to Professor J. Six, who stoops over, his hand +poised on a book. Rembrandt has seldom painted with more sensitiveness +eyes, subtle corners of the mouth, and intimate expression. This +syndic is evidently superior to his fellows, solid, sensible Dutch men +of affairs. + +There is a landscape, purchased in 1900, a stone bridge, lighted by +rays darting through heavy storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of the +etchings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though the +Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece in +portraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is +bulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent gleams of the apparel +the chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the +anatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is more +corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on +anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait of +his father, is an ancient copy and a capital one. Old dame Elizabeth +Bas, with her coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handkerchief, is +a picture you return to each day of your stay. + +Hals at Amsterdam is interesting. There is the so-called portrait of +the painter and his wife, two full-length figures; the Jolly Toper, +half-length figure, large black hat, in the left hand a glass; and the +insolent lute-player, a copy, said to be by Dirck Hals, the original +in the possession of Baron Gustave Rothschild at Paris. And a fine +copy it is. + +The three Vermeers are of his later enamelled period. One is a young +woman reading a letter; she is seen in profile, standing near a table, +and is dressed in a white skirt and blue loose jacket. The Letter +shows us in the centre of a paved room a seated lady, lute in hand. +She has been interrupted in her playing by a servant bringing a +letter. To the right a tapestry curtain has been looped up to give a +view of the scene. The new Vermeer--purchased from the Six gallery in +1908--is now called The Cook; it was formerly known as The Milkmaid. A +stoutly built servant is standing behind a table covered with a green +cloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassau +earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from a +can. The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against the +white wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brown +petticoat, a dark-blue apron turned back, and a white cap on the head. +The light falls on the scene through a window to the left, above the +table. + +This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet galleries. It displays more +breadth than the Lady Reading a Letter, and its colouring is +absolutely magical. The De Hoochs are of prime quality. Greater art is +the windmill and moonlit scene of Hobbema, as great a favourite as his +Mill, though both must give the precedence to the Alley of +Middleharnais in the Royal Academy, London. But where to begin, where +to end in this high carnival of over three thousand pictures! The +ticketed favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes lag behind +their reputation. The great Van der Helst--and a prime portraitist he +is, as may be seen over and over again--is The Company of Captain +Bicker, a vast canvas. When you forget Hals and Rembrandt it is not +difficult to conjure up admiration for this work. The N. Maes Spinner +is very characteristic. Cuyp and Van Goyen are here; the latter's view +of Dordrecht is celebrated. So is the Floating Feather of +Hondecoester, a finely depicted pelican. The feather is the least part +of the picture. Asselijn's angry swan is an excellent companion piece. +We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises, +and other sterling Dutch painters. There is the gallery of Dutch and +Flemish primitives about which a volume might be written; their +emaciated music appeals. In expressiveness the later men did not excel +them. The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue +supplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master, +possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories are +Dutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table. Across their +knees are napkins. The white is from a Spanish palette. A youth +attired in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spectators, is +pouring out wine or water. The canvas is large, the execution flowing; +perhaps it portrays the disciples at Emmaus. + +The portraits of Nicholas Hasselaer and his wife Geertruyt van Erp, by +Hals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummate +artistry that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke of which sings +out, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught the +trick of brush-work--at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent could +have produced the collar and cuffs. A Whistler, a full-length, in +another gallery, looks like an unsubstantial wraith by comparison. Two +weeks' daily attendance at this excellently planned collection did no +more than fix the position of the exhibits in the mind. There is a +goodly gathering of such names as Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, and +others at the Rijks, but the display of modern Dutch pictures at the +Municipal Museum is more representative. The greatest Josef Israels we +ever saw in the style is his Jew sitting in the doorway of a house, a +most eloquent testimony to Israels' powers of seizing the "race" and +the individual. Old David Bles is here, and Blommers, De Bock, +Bosboom, Valkenburg, Alma-Tadema, Ary Scheffer--of Dutch +descent--Roelofs, Mesdag, Mauve, Jakob Maris, Jongkind, and some of +the Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupr, and others. The Six gallery is +not so accessible as it was some years ago. No doubt its Rembrandts +and Vermeers will eventually find their way into the Rijks Museum. + + + + +II + +Who was Herri met de Bles? Nearly all the large European galleries +contain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases the +pictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are more +erudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in former +years, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes. +Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint. +Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism for +overpainting. Between varnish and retouching it is difficult to tell +where the old master leaves off and the "restorer" begins. Bles, for +example, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fascinating subject to the +student; but are we really looking at his work? The solitary picture +of his here, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might have been +painted a year ago. (It is an attribution.) Yet this painter is +supposed to have been born at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died at +Lige, 1521. He was nicknamed Herri, for Hendrick, met de Bles, +because he had a tuft of white in his hair (a forerunner of Whistler). +The French called him Henri la Houppe; the Italians +"Civetta"--because of the tiny owl he always introduced into his work. +He was a landscapist, and produced religious and popular scenes. Bles +has had many works saddled upon him by unknown imitators of Metsu, +Joost van Kleef, Lucas, and Drer--who worked at Antwerp between 1520 +and 1550. Thierry Vellert was also an imitator. In the old Pinakothek, +Munich, there is a Henricus Blesius, which is said to be a +counterfeit, and others are in Karlsruhe, Milan, Brussels, and at the +Prado. + +The circular picture in the Rijks shows us in various episodes Adam +and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the Creation until the Fall. Around +the edge are signs of the zodiac. The colour is rich, the figures +delicate. The story is clearly told and is not unlike a "continuous +performance." You see Adam asleep and over him stoops the Almighty; +then Eve is shown. The apple scandal and the angel with the flaming +sword are portrayed with a vivid line that recalls the miniaturist. A +rare painter. + +Roeland Savery is an artist whose name, we confess, was not known to +us until we saw his work in the Rijks. The rich _pte_ and +bouquet-like quality of his colour recall Monticelli. His compositions +are composed, like Monticelli's, but much more spirited than the +latter. A stag hunt, a poet crowned at the feast of animals, Elijah +fed by the ravens, and the fable of the stag among the cows prove the +man's versatility. He was born about 1576 and died at Utrecht, 1639. A +pupil of his father, he first worked in Courtrai. The Bronzino Judith +holding the head of Holophernes is a copy, the original hanging in the +Pitti Palace. At Vienna there is a replica. Among the Bols (Cornelis, +1613-66) the portraits of Roelof Meulenaer and his wife, Maria Rey, +attract because of their vitality and liberalism. Then we come across +the oft-engraved Paternal Advice, by Gerard ter Borch (1617-81). Who +doesn't remember that young lady dressed in white satin and standing +with her back to you? The man in officer's uniform, admonishing her, +is seated next to a woman drinking from a wine-glass. The texture of +the dress and the artfully depicted glass are the delight of amateurs. +As a composition it is not remarkable. The man is much too young to be +the father of the blond-haired lady, and if the other one is her +mother, both parents must have retained their youth. The portrait of +Helena van der Schalcke is that of a quaint Dutch child standing; a +serious little body carrying a basket on her right arm like a good +housewife. It is a capital Ter Borch. Two beautiful Albert Cuyps are +painted on the two sides of a copper panel. On one side two merchants +stand at a wharf; on the other two men sit sampling wine in a cellar. +The colour is singularly luminous. + +Let us pass quickly the Schalckens and Gerard Dous. Dou's +self-portrait is familiar. He leans out of a window and smokes a clay +pipe. The candle-light pictures always attract an audience. Govert +Flinck (1615-60, pupil of Rembrandt) is a painter who, if he lived +to-day, would be a popular portraitist. Wherever you go you see his +handiwork, not in the least inspired, but honest, skilful, and genial. +Look at the head of the tax-collector Johannes Wittenbogaert, covered +with a black cap. So excellent is it that it has been attributed to +Rembrandt. Boland, we believe, engraved it as genuine Rembrandt. +Gerard van Honthorst's Happy Musician is another picture of prime +quality, and a subject dear to Hals. Hoogstratten's Sick Lady is an +anecdote. The young woman does not seem very ill, but the doctor +gravely holds up a bottle of medicine and you feel the dread moment is +at hand. How to persuade the patient to swallow the dose? She is +stubborn-looking. The Pieter de Hoochs are now in the same gallery +with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride. These interiors, painted with a minute, +hard finish, lack the charm and the colour quality of Vermeer. With +sunlight Hooch is successful, but his figures do not move freely in an +atmospheric envelope, as is the case with Vermeer's. The Small Country +House is the favourite. In front of a house a well-dressed man and +woman are seated at a table. She is squeezing lemon juice into a +glass. Behind her a servant is carrying a glass of beer, and farther +away a girl cleans pots and pans. The composition is the apotheosis of +domestic comfort, conjugal peace, and gluttony. We like much more The +Pantry, wherein a woman hands a jug to her little girl. The adjoining +room, flooded with light, is real. + +There is one Van der Helst we could not pass. It looks like the +portrait of a corpulent woman, but is that of Gerard Bicker, bailiff +of Muiden. A half-length figure turned to the left, the bailiff a +well-fed pig, holds a pair of gloves in his right hand which he +presses against his Gargantuan chest. His hair is long and curly. The +fabrics are finely wrought. Holbein the younger is represented by the +portrait of a young man. It is excellent, but doubtless a copy or an +imitation. To view five Lucas van Leydens in one gallery is not an +everyday event. His engravings are rare enough--that is, in good +states; "ghosts" are aplenty--and his paintings rarer. Here they are +chiefly portraits. Rachel Ruysch, the flower painter, has a superior +in Judith Lyster, a pupil of Frans Hals. She was born at Haarlem, or +Zaandam, about 1600, and died 1660. She married the painter Jan +Molener. Her Jolly Toper faces the Hals of the same theme, in a +cabinet, and reveals its artistic ancestry. Judith had the gift of +reproducing surfaces. We need not return to the various Maeses; +indeed, this is only a haphazard ramble among the less well-known +pictures. Consider the heads of Van Mierevelt; those of Henrick Hooft, +burgomaster of Amsterdam, of Jacob Cats, and of his wife Aegje +Hasselaer (1618-64). Her hair and lace collar are wonderfully set +forth. Must we stop before Mabuse, or before the cattle piece of the +Dutch school, seventeenth century? A Monticelli seems out of key here, +and the subject is an unusual one for him, Christ With the Little +Children. The Little Princess, by P. Moreelse, has the honour, after +Rembrandt, of being the most frequently copied picture in the Rijks. +The theme is the magnet. A little girl, elaborately dressed, is +seated. She strokes the head of a spaniel whose jewelled collar gives +the impression of a dog with four eyes. In Vermeer's Young Woman +Reading a Letter is a like confused passage of painting, for the +uninstructed spectator. She wears her hair over her ear, an ornament +clasping the hair. At first view this is not clear, principally +because this fashion of wearing the hair is unusual in the eyes of a +stranger. + +Jan van Scorel was born at Schoorl, near Alkmaar, 1495. He studied +under Jacob Cornelis at Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at +Utrecht. He died at Utrecht, 1562. When travelling in Germany he +visited Drer at Nuremberg; resided for a time in Italy. The Italian +influence is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen, which formerly +hung in the town-hall of Haarlem. A replica is in the residence of the +head-master of Eton College, England. Mary is shown seated, richly +attired. She holds in her right hand a box of perfume, her left hand, +beautifully painted, rests on her knee. Behind is a mountainous +landscape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree. The head is north +Lombardian in character and colouring, the glance of the eyes +enigmatic. A curiously winning composition, not without _morbidezza_. +Scorel has five other works in the Rijks. The Bathsheba is not a +masterpiece. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is conventional, but the +Harpsichord Player was sold at Paris as late as 1823 as a Bronzino. +Perhaps it is only attributed to Scorel. It is unlike his brush-work. +The Painting of a Vault, divided into nine sections, five of which +represent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity. The portrait of Emperor +Charles V. as Pharaoh is pointed out by the gallery attendant, who +then retires and diplomatically coughs in the middle distance. + +The Mancini (pupil of Morelli and W.H. Mesdag) is entitled Poor Thing. +A little girl stands in a miserable room; mice run over the floor. The +colouring is rich. There are admirable Jakob Marises; but we wish to +follow in the track of the old fellows. Adrian van Ostade's Baker is +so popular that it is used for advertising purposes in Holland. The +baker leans out of his door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn. +Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture many times. An interior +with figures, seated and standing; same faces, poses, accessories. +Same valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure. A Merry Party is +the usual title. At The Hague in the Mauritshuis there is another such +subject; also in Antwerp and Brussels. But a jolly painter. Steen and +Teniers we may sidestep. Also the artificial though graceful +Tischbein. There is a Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionable +portrait painter (he painted the Empress Eugnie), and let us leave +the Titians to the experts. When you are in Holland look at the Dutch +pictures. A De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto, and there +is Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of violence. Fancy Vollon flowers +in the midst of these old Dutchmen. The Frenchman had an extraordinary +feeling for still-life, though more in the decorative Venetian manner +than in Chardin's serene palette, or the literalism of Kalf. +Whistler's Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager Baroness R. van +Lynden in 1900, is not one of that master's most successful efforts. +It is a whole-length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feeling +sentimental, un-Whistlerian, and, as we before remarked, wraith-like +and lacking in substance when compared to Hals. + +There is actually a Wouverman in which no white horse is to be +discovered. On Van der Werff and the romantic landscapist Wynants we +need not dwell. The miniatures, pastels, and framed drawings are of +goodly array. Of the former, Samuel Cooper (portrait of Charles II.), +John Hoskins, Peter Oliver, Isaac Oliver, Laurence Crosse, and others. +English, Dutch, and French may be found. The Liotard and Tischbein +pastels are charming. In the supplements of the catalogue we find +underscored a Descent from the Cross, an anonymous work of the Flemish +school (fifteenth century, second half). The dead Christ is being +lowered into the arms of his mother. It is evidently a copy from a +lost original in the style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are such +copies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another composition is labelled as an +anonymous work of undetermined school. The Christ hangs on the cross, +on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy women and St. John; on His +left jeering soldiers and scribes. On either side of the composition +is the figure of a saint much larger in size than the other figures; +St. Cosmus on the left, St. Damian on the right. The background is a +hilly landscape. An authority ascribes the work to the Catalonian +school, date about 1440. There were giants in those days. Antonello da +Messina has the portrait of a young man. It is an attribution, yet not +without some claim to authenticity. The Jan Provosts are mostly of +close study, especially The Virgin Enthroned. A certain Pieter +Dubordieu, who was living in Amsterdam in 1676 (born in Touraine), +painted the portraits of a man and a woman, dated 1638. Vivid +portraits. We must pass over the striking head of Hanneman, the Lucas +Cranach (the elder), and the thousand other attractive pictures in +this gallery. The Rijks Museum could be lived with for years and still +remain an inexhaustible source of joy. + + + + +ART IN ANTWERP + + + +After passing Dordrecht on the way down to Antwerp the canals and +windmills begin to disappear. The country is as flat as Holland, but +has lost its characteristic charm. It has become less symmetrical; +there is disorder in the sky-line, more trees, the architecture is +different. Dutch precision has vanished. The railway carriages are not +clean, punctuality is avoided, the people seem less prosperous, few +speak English, and as you near Antwerp the villas and roads tell you +that you are in the dominion of the King of Belgium. But Antwerp is so +distinctly Flemish that you forget that bustling modern Brussels is +only thirty-six minutes away by the express--a fast train for once in +this land of snail expresses. No doubt the best manner of approaching +Antwerp is by the Scheldt on one of the big steamers that dock so +comfortably along the river. However, a trip to the vast _promenoir_ +that overlooks the river gives an excellent idea of this thriving +port. The city--very much modernised during the past ten years--may +easily be seen in a few days, setting aside the museums and churches. +The quay promenade brings you to the old Steen Castle, and the Town +Hall with its _salle des marriages_, its mural paintings by the +industrious Baron Leys--frigid in style and execution--will repay you +for the trouble. The vestibules and galleries are noteworthy. We +enjoyed the faades of the ancient guild houses on the market-place +and watching the light play upon the old-time scarred front of the +cathedral that stands in the Place Verte. Then there are the +Zoological Garden, the Plantin Museum, the Thtre Flamand, the +various monuments, and the spectacle of the busy, lively city for +those who do not go to Antwerp for its art. You may even go to +Hoboken, a little town in the suburbs not at all like the well-known +Sunday resort in Jersey. + +The Royal Museum is displayed in a large square. It is a handsome +structure and the arrangement of the various galleries is simple. The +Rubenses, thirty-odd in all, are the _pice de rsistance_, and the +Flemish and Dutch Primitives of rare beauty. Bruges is better for +Memling, Brussels for Van der Weyden, Ghent for the Van Eycks, yet +Antwerp can boast a goodly number of them all. She exceeds Brussels in +her Rubenses for the larger altar pieces are here, just as at +Amsterdam the Rembrandts, while not numerous, take precedence because +of The Syndics and The Night Watch. The tumultuous, overwhelming Peter +Paul is in his glory at Antwerp. You think of some cataclysm when +facing these turbulent, thrilling canvases. If Raphael woos, Rubens +stuns. In the company of Michel Angelo and Balzac or Richard Wagner he +would be their equal for torrential energy and vibrating humanity. Not +so profound as Buonarroti, not so versatile as Balzac, he is their +peer in sheer savagery of execution. Setting aside the miles of +pictures signed by him though painted by his pupils, he must have +covered multitudes of canvas. Like men of his sort of genius, he ends +by making your head buzz and your eyes burn; and then, the sameness of +his style, the repetition of his wives and children's portraits, the +apotheosis of the Rubens family! He portrayed Helena Fourment and +Isabella Brandt in all stages of disarray and gowns. He put them +together on the same canvas. He did not hesitate to show them to the +world in all their opulent nudity. Their white skins, large eyes with +wide gaze, their lovely children appear in religious and mythologic +pictures at every turn you make in this museum. You become too +familiar with them. You learn to know that one wife was slenderer than +the other; you also realise that other days had other ways. Titian +painted the portrait of a noble dame quite naked and placed her +husband, soberly attired, near by. No one criticised the taste of this +performance. Manet, who was no Titian, did the same trick and was +voted wicked. He actually dared to show us Nana dressing in the +presence of a gentleman who sat in the same room with his hat on. + +The heavy-flanked Percheron horses are of the same order as the Rubens +women. The Flemings are mighty feeders, mighty breeders, +good-tempered, pleasure-loving folk. They don't work as hard as the +Dutch, and they indulge in more feasting and holidays. The North seems +austere and Protestant when compared with this Roman Catholic land. +Its sons of genius, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, painted pictures that +do not reveal the deeper faith of the Primitives. No Christ or Mary of +either Van Dyck or Rubens sounds the poignant note of the +Netherlandish unknown mystic masters. + +But what a banquet of beauty Rubens spreads for the eye! With him +painting reached its apogee, and in him were the seeds of its +decadence. He shattered the Florentine line; he, a tremendous +space-composer when he so wished, wielded his brush at times like a +scene-painter on a debauch. The most shocking, the loveliest things +happen on his canvases. Set the beautiful Education of the Virgin, in +this gallery, beside such a work as Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, and +you will see the scale in which he sported. Or the Virgin and Parrot, +with a child Christ who might have posed as a youthful Adonis, and the +Venus Frigida--both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all his +religion. We prefer the Christ Crucified between Two Thieves or the +Christ on the Cross, the single figure, to the more famous Descent at +the Cathedral. But what can be said that is new about Rubens or Van +Dyck? In the latter may be noted the beginnings of deliquescence. He +is a softened Rubens, a Rubens aristocratic. The portraits here are +prime, those of the Bishop of Antwerp, Jean Malderus, and of the young +girl with the two dogs. His various Christs are more piteous to behold +than those of his master, Rubens. The feminine note is present, and +without any of the realism which so shocks in the conceptions of the +Primitives. Nevertheless we turn to his portraits or to the little boy +standing at a table. There is the true key of Van Dyck. He met Rubens +as a portraitist and took no odds of him. + +Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve is a variation of the picture in the +Brussels gallery. A Gossaert portrait catches the eye, the head and +bust of a man; then you find yourself staring in wonderment at the +Peter Breughels and Jerome Bosches with their malodorous fantastic +versions of temptations of innumerable St. Anthonys. The air is thick +with monsters, fish-headed and splay of foot. St. Anthony must have +had the stomach of an ostrich and the nerves of a politician to endure +such sights and sounds and witches. Such females! But Peter and his +two sons are both painters of interest. There are better Teniers in +Brussels, though Le Chanteur is admirable. Ostade's Smoker is a +masterpiece. Only four Rembrandts, the portrait of a woman, according +to Vosmaer and W. Burger that of his wife Saskia; a fisherman's boy, +the Burgomaster, and the Old Jew. Dr. Bode thinks that the last two +are by Nikolas Maes. The portrait of Eleazer Swalmius--the so-called +Burgomaster Six--is finely painted as to head and beard. The Antwerp +Museum paid two hundred thousand francs for the work. We must not +forget mention of a David Teniers, a loan of Dr. Bredius, a +still-life, a white dead goose superb in tone. + +Of the two Frans Halses, the portrait of a Dutch gentleman is the +better; the other was formerly known as the Strandlooper van Haarlem +and shows the vigorous brush-work of the master. It is the head of a +saucy fisher-boy, the colour scheme unusual for Hals. The Quentin +Matsys pictures are strong; among others the portrait of Peter Gillis +with his shrewd, strongly marked physiognomy. This is a Matsys town. +Every one looks at his old iron well beside the Cathedral and recalls +the legend of the blacksmith, as every boy remembers here Hendrik +Conscience and the Lion of Flanders. Van Reymerswael's The Tax +Gatherers, sometimes called The Bankers or The Misers, hangs in the +museum; that realistic picture with the so highly individualised +heads, a favourite of the engravers, holds its own. Both the Boutses, +Albrecht and Dirck, are shown in their Holy Families, and both are +painters of ineffable grace and devotion. + +Four Memlings of seductive beauty light the walls. One is a portrait +of Nicol Spinelli. Christ and His Angels, the angels playing in +praise of the Eternal and other angels playing various instruments. +The two Van Eycks, Huibrecht (Hubert) and Jan, are well represented. +The St. Barbara, by Jan, is repeated in the Bruges Museum The Donateur +or Donor is a repetition of the original at Bruges. The Adoration of +the Lamb is a copy of the original at Ghent. There is tender beauty in +Jan's St. Barbara, and infinite motherly love expressed in his Holy +Virgin. Hugo van der Goes's portrait of Thomas Portunari is a marvel +of characterisation. Terburg has a mandolin player and Hobbema a mill +scene. The Van Orleys are interesting, and also the Van Veens. Gerard +David, a painter of exquisite touch and feeling, shows a Repose in +Egypt. Lucas Cranach's L'Amour is one of his Virgins transposed to the +mythological key. We have barely indicated the richness of this +collection, in which, of course, Rubens plays first fiddle--rather the +full orchestra. And with what sonority and luminosity! + +At the Cathedral his three masterpieces draw their accustomed +audiences with the usual guide lecturing in three languages, pointing +out the whiteness of the cloth in the Descent and the anatomy in the +Ascent. This latter work is always slighted by sightseers because +Baedeker, or some one else, had pronounced its composition "inferior" +to the Descent, but there are many more difficult problems involved in +the Ascent. Its pattern is not so pleasing as the Descent, the subject +is less appealing, and more sternly treated. There are more virile +accents in the Ascent, though it would be idle to deny that in paint +quality there is a falling off. Both pictures show the tooth of time +and the ravages of the restorers. At St. Jacques, with its wonderfully +carved pulpit, the St. George of Rubens hangs in a chapel. It has +darkened much during the last twenty years. Also there is another +Rubens family group with wives and other relatives. They thought well +of themselves, the Rubens family, and little wonder. + +The modern pictures at the museum are of varying interest--Braekeleer, +Stobbaerts, Verlat, Scheffer, Cabanel, David (J.L.), Wiertz, Wauters, +Wappers, some elegant Alfred Stevenses, De Bock the landscapist, +Clays, Van Beers, Meunier, Breton, Bouguereau, and a lot of +nondescript lumber. In the spacious approach there is one of +Constantin Meunier's famous figures. You rejoice that he followed +Rodin's advice and gave up the brush for the chisel. As a painter he +was not more than mediocre. + +The four Van der Weydens in the gallery of Primitives are not all of +equal merit. The Annunciation is the most striking. The early master +of Memling is distinguished by a sweetness in composition and softness +in colouring. Mention must be made of the De Vos pictures by the +Cornelis, Martin, and Simon. A portrait of Abraham Grapheus by the +first-named is one of the most striking in the museum, and the +self-portrait of the latter, smiling, is brilliant. Rombouts is a sort +of Adrian Brouwer; his Cavaliers Playing at Cards recalls Caravaggio. +Daniel Mytens's portrait of a lady is Rubenesque. + +And all that choir of elevated souls unknown to us by name, merely +called after the city they inhabited, such as the Master of Bray, or +by some odd device or monogram--what cannot be written of this small +army which praised the Lord, His mother and the saints in form and +colour, on missals, illuminated manuscripts, or on panels! The Antwerp +Museum has its share of Anonymous, that master of whom it has been +said that "he" was probably the master of the masters. Antwerp is a +city of many charms, with its St. Jacques, St. Andres (and its carved +pulpit), St. Paul and the Cathedral, and its preservation of the +Flemish spirit and Flemish customs; but for us its museum was all in +all. + + + + +MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS + + + +Considering its size and significance, Brussels has more than its +share of museums. At the beginning of the Rue de la Rgence, near the +Place Royale, stands the imposing Royal Museum of old paintings and +sculpture. The Museum of Modern Art is around the corner and adjoins +the National Library, which is said to harbour over six hundred +thousand volumes. In the gallery of old art the effect of the +sculptors' hall, which is in the centre and utilises the entire height +of the building, is noble. The best sculpture therein is by Rodin and +Meunier; the remainder is generally academic or simply bad. Rodin's +Thinker, in bronze, is a repetition of the original. After the +wreathed prettiness of the conventional school--neither Greek nor +Gothic--and the writhing diablerie of Rodin imitators the simplicity +and directness of Constantin Meunier is refreshing. He was a man whose +imagination became inflamed at the sight of suffering and injustice. +He is closer to Millet than to his friend Rodin, but he lacks the +sweetness and strength of Millet. Selecting the Belgian workman--the +miner, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, the proletarian, in a +word--for his theme, Meunier observed closely and reproduced his +vision in terms of rugged beauty. The sentiment is evidently +socialistic. Like Prince Kropotkin and the brothers Rclus, the +Belgian sculptor revolts against the cruelty of man to man. He shows +us the miner crouched in a pitiful manner finding a pocket of coal; +men naked to the waist, their torsos bulging with muscles, their small +heads on bull necks, are puddlers; other groups patiently haul heavy +carts--labour not in its heroic aspect, but as it is in reality, is +the core of Meunier's art. That he is "literary" at times may not be +denied, but power he has. + +The early Flemish school of the fifteenth century is strongly +represented in several of the galleries up-stairs. And Rogier de la +Pasture, otherwise known as Rogier van der Weyden, is shown in five +pictures, and at his best. The Chevalier with the Arrow, a bust +portrait, will be familiar to those who have visited the Rijks Museum, +where a copy hangs. The robe is black, the hat, conical, is brown, the +background blue-green. The silhouette is vigorously modelled, the +expression one of dignity, the glance penetrating, severe. What +characterisation! The Christ is a small panel surpassingly rich in +colour and charged with profound pity. The body lies in the arms of +the Mother, Magdalen and John on either side. The sun is setting. The +subject was a favourite of Weyden; there is a triptych in Berlin and a +panel at The Hague. This Brussels picture has evidently been shorn of +its wings. There are replicas of the Virgin and Child (No. 650 in the +catalogue) at Berlin, Cassel, and Frankfort, also in the recently +dispersed collection of Rudolph Kann. Another striking tableau is the +head of a woman who weeps. The minutest tear is not missing. + +Hubert and Jan Van Eyck's Adam and Eve are the wings (volets) from the +grand composition in the Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent. They are +gigantic figures, nude, neither graceful nor attractive, but +magnificently painted. These portraits (they don't look as if they had +been finished in paradise) of our first parents rather favour the +evolutionary theory of development. Eve is unlovely, her limbs lanky, +her bust medival, her flanks Flemish. In her right hand she holds the +fatal apple. Adam's head is full of character; it is Christ-like; his +torso ugly, his legs wooden. Yet how superior to the copies which are +now attached to the original picture at Ghent. There the figures are +clothed, clumsy, and meaningless. + +Dierick Bouts's Justice of Emperor Otho III is a striking picture. The +subject has that touch of repulsive cruelty which was a sign of the +times. Hans Memling's Martyrdom of St. Sebastian is another treasure; +with his portraits of a man, of Guillaume Morel and of Barbara de +Vlandenberg making an immortal quartet. The head of the man is the +favourite in reproduction. Morel is portrayed as in prayer, his hands +clasped, his expression rapt. A landscape is seen at the back. The +Virgin Surrounded by Virgins, by an unknown master of the fifteenth +century (school of Bruges), is one of the most amazing pictures in the +collection. It has a nuance of the Byzantine and of the hieratic, but +the portraits are enchanting in their crystalline quality. Quentin +Matsys' Legend of St. Anne is much admired, though for sincerity we +prefer The Passion of the Master of Oultremont. Gerard David's +Adoration of the Magi is no longer attributed to him. It was always in +doubt: now the name has been removed, though the picture has much of +his mellowness. Dr. Scheuring, the old man with the shaved upper lip, +beard, and hair over his forehead, by Lucas Cranach, and Jean +Gossaert's Chevalier of the Golden Fleece, are masterly portraits. Van +Cleve, Van Orlay, Key--perhaps a portrait of the bloody Duke of +Alva--also one of himself, Coello's Maria of Austria, are among the +sterling specimens in this gallery. + +We need not expect to find duplicated here the Rubens of Antwerp. The +most imposing example is the Adoration of the Magi, while his +portraits of the Archduke Albert and his Archduchess, Isabella, are +perhaps the best extant. The Calvary is a splendid canvas, full of +movement and containing several members of the well-known Rubens +family. Such devotion is touching. You find yourself looking for +Isabella Brandt and Helena Fourment among the angels that hover in the +sky above the martyred St. Lieven. The four negro heads, the Woman +Taken in Adultery, a Susanna (less concerned about her predicament +than any we have encountered), a curious and powerful portrait of +Theophrastus Paracelsus (Browning's hero), with a dozen others, make a +goodly showing for the Antwerp master. Otho Vnius (Octave Van Veen), +one of the teachers of Rubens, is hung here. There are nearly a dozen +Van Dycks, of prime quality all. The Crucifixion, the portrait of an +unknown gentleman wearing a huge ruff and the winning portrait of a +Flemish sculptor, Francesco Duquesnoy, (on a stand), give you an +excellent notion of his range, though better Van Dycks are in France +and England. + +The portrait of an old man, by Rembrandt, is beginning to fade, but +that of an old woman is a superior Rembrandt. Of Frans Hals there are +two fine specimens; one, a portrait of Willem van Heythusen, is a +small picture, the figure sitting, the legs crossed (booted and +spurred) and the figure leaning lazily back. On his head a black felt +hat with a broad upturned brim. The expression of the bearded man is +serious. The only Jan Vermeer is one of the best portraits by that +singularly gifted painter we recall. It is called The Man with the +Hat. Dr. Bredius in 1905 considered the picture by Jean Victor, but it +has been pronounced Vermeer by equal authorities. It was once a part +of the collection of Humphry Ward. The man sits, his hand holding a +glove resting negligently over the back of a chair. He faces the +spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His +collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are +rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost +morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the +Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a +masterpiece of paint and character. + +The Old Lady Dreaming, by N. Maes, and the Jan Steen (The Operator) +are good though not remarkable examples. Jacob Jordaenses flood the +various galleries; Rubens run to seed as far as quality, yet +exhibiting enormous muscularity, is the trait of this gross painter. +The King Drinks--his kings are always drinking or blind drunk--his +nudes, which look like the contents of the butcher shops in Brussels, +attract throngs, for the anecdote is writ large across the wall, and +you don't have to run to read. Panoramas would be a better title for +these robust compositions. David Teniers's La Kermesse is the most +important work he ever finished. It is in good preservation. Amsterdam +has not its superior. There is an ordinary El Greco, a poor Goya, and +a Ribera downstairs. The French art is not enlivening. + +Philip Champaigne's self-portrait is familiar: it has been reproduced +frequently. Jean Baptiste Huysmans, a landscape with animals; he is +said to be an ancestor of the late Joris Karel Huysmans. The Mors +(Antonio Moro) is of value. But the lodestone of the collection is the +Primitives. + +The pictures in the modern gallery are largely Belgian, some French, +and a few Dutch and English. It is not a collection of artistic +significance. In the black-and-white room may be seen a few original +drawings of Rops. + +The Muse Wiertz is worth visiting only as a chamber of horrors. When +Wiertz is not morbid and repulsive he is of the vasty inane, a man of +genius gone daft, obsessed by the mighty shades of Rubens and Michael +Angelo. Wiertz was born in 1806 and died in 1865. The Belgian +Government, in order to make some sort of reparation for its neglect +of the painter during his troubled and unhappy lifetime, acquired his +country residence and made it a repository of his art. The pictures +are of a scale truly heroic. The painter pitted himself against Rubens +and Michael Angelo. He said: "I, too, am a great painter!" And there +is no denying his power. His tones recall the _pte_ of Rubens without +its warmth and splendour. When Wiertz was content to keep within +bounds his portraits and feminine nudes are not without beauty. He was +fanciful rather than poetic, and the picture of Napoleon in hell +enduring the reproaches of his victims (why should they be there?) is +startling. Startling, too, are the tricks played on your nerves by the +peepholes. You see a woman crazed by hunger about to cook one of her +murdered children; beheaded men, men crushed by superior power, the +harnessed body of Patroclus, Polyphemus devouring the companions of +Ulysses, and other monstrous conceptions, are all painted with +reference to the ills of the poor. Anton Joseph was a socialist in +sentiment. If his executive ability had been on a par with his ideas, +and if those ideas had been less extravagant, the world would have had +one more great painter; but his nervous system was flawed and he died +a melancholic, a victim to misplaced ideals. He wished to revive the +heroic age at a time of easel pictures. He, the half genius, saw +himself outwitted by the sleek paint of Alfred Stevens. Born out of +his due time, a dreamer of dreams, Wiertz is a sad example of the +futility of looking backward in art. + + + + +BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL + + + +On the way up from Brussels to Bruges it is well to alight at Ghent +for a few hours. There are attractions enough to keep one for several +days, but as our objective was St. Bavon (St. Bavo, or Sint Baafs) we +did not stay more than the allotted time. And an adventurous time it +was. The Ostend express landed its passengers at the St. Pierre +station and that meant the loss of half an hour. The Cathedral is +reached by the tramway, and there we found that as an office was about +to be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after its +completion. It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already the +choristers in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a moment to be +spared! The sacristan was a practical man. He hustled us into a side +chapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the great +picture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt in +prayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting obscure. We were +hemmed in, but by angels and ministers of grace. The chanting began. +Atmosphere was not needed in this large and gloomy edifice, only more +light. Gradually the picture began to burn through the artificial +dusk, gradually its glories became more perceptible. Begun by Hubert +in 1420 and finished by Jan in 1432, its pristine splendour has +vanished; and the loss of the wings--the Adam and Eve are in Brussels, +the remaining volets in the Berlin Museum--is irreparable despite the +copies. But this Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with its jewelled +figures of the Christ, of St. John the Baptist, St. Cecilia, and the +central panel with its mystical symbolism, painted in sumptuous tones, +the lamb on the altar, the prophets and ecclesiastics in worship, the +singing angels, is truly an angelic composition. + +The rain had ceased. A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glass +windows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which +glowed supernally. In the chancel the Psalms had died away and the +only sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors. The man +turned the lock. It was a return to the world as if one had +participated in a sacred ceremony. + +Bruges is invariably called Bruges-la-Morte, but it is far from being +dead, or even desperately melancholy. Delft, in Holland, after nine +o'clock at night, is quieter than Bruges. Bruges the Dead? No, Bruges +the Beautiful is nearer the truth. After reading Rodenbach's morbid +romance of Bruges-la-Morte we felt sure that a stay in Bruges would be +like a holiday in a cemetery. Our experience dispelled this unpleasant +illusion. Bruges is in daylight a bustling and in certain spots a +noisy place. Its inhabitants are not lugubrious of visage, but +wideawake, practical people, close at a bargain, curious like all +Belgians, and on fte days given to much feasting. Bruges is +infinitely more interesting than Brussels. It is real, while modern +Brussels is only mock-turtle. And Bruges is more picturesque, the food +is as well flavoured, there are several resorts where ripe old +Burgundy may be had at not an extravagant price, and the townsfolk are +less grasping, more hearty than in Brussels. + +The city is nicknamed a Northern Venice, but of Venice there is +naught, except the scum on the canal waters. The secular odour of +Bruges was not unpleasant in October; in August it may have been. We +know that the glory of the city hath departed, but there remain the +Memlings, the Gerard Davids, at least one Van Eyck, not to mention +several magnificent old churches. + +Let us stroll to the Bguinage. Reproductions of Memling and Van Eyck +are in almost every window. The cafs on the square, where stands the +Belfry of Longfellow's poem, are overflowing with people at table. It +is Friday, and to-morrow will be market day; with perhaps a fair or a +procession thrown in. You reach the Cathedral of St. Sauveur (Sint +Salvator), erected in the tenth century, though the foundations date +back to the seventh. The narrow lane-like street winds around the rear +of the church. Presently another church is discerned with a tower that +must be nearly four hundred feet high, built, you learn, some time +between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Notre Dame contains the +tombs of Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy, a lovely white marble +statue of the Virgin and Child ascribed with justice to Michael +Angelo, and a fine bow-window. We pass the Hospital of St. Jean, turn +up an alley full of cobblestones and children, and finally see the +canal that passes the houses of the Bguinage. The view is of +exceeding charm. The spire of Notre Dame and the apsis may be seen up +(or is it down?) stream. A bridge cuts the river precisely where it +should; weeping willows to the left lend an elegiac note to the +ensemble, and there is a gabled house to the right which seems to have +entered the scene so as to give an artist the exact balance for his +composition. Nature and the handicraft of man paint pictures all over +Bruges. + +We enter the enclosure with the little houses of the bguines, or lay +sisterhood. There is nothing particular to see, except a man under a +tree admiring his daubed canvas, near by a dog sleeps. The sense of +peace is profound. Even Antwerp seems a creation of yesterday compared +with the brooding calm of Bruges, while Brussels is as noisy as a +boiler shop. The Minnewater (Lac d'Amour) is another pretty stretch, +and so we spent the entire day through shy alleys, down crooked +streets, twisting every few feet and forming deceptive vistas +innumerable, leading tired legs into churches, out of museums, up +tower steps. + +That first hard stroll told us how little we could know of Bruges in a +day, a week or a month. Bag and baggage we moved up from Brussels and +wished that the clock and the calendar could be set back several +centuries. At twilight the unusual happened: the Sandman appeared with +his hour-glass and beckoned to bed. There is no night in Bruges for +the visitor within the gates; there is only slumber. Perhaps that is +why the cockneys call it Bruges the Dead. The old horse that drags the +hotel bus was stamping its hoofs in the court-yard; the wall of St. +Jacques, eaten away by the years, faced us. The sun, somewhere, was +trying to rub its sleepy eyes, the odour of omelet was in the air, and +all was well. This is the home-like side of its life. It may still +harbour artists who lead a mystic, ecstatic existence, but we met none +of them. Poetic images are aroused at dusk along the banks of canals, +bathed in spectral light. Here Georges Rodenbach, that poet of +delicate images, placed his hero, a man who had lost a beloved wife. +He saw her wraith-like form in the mist and at the end went mad. + +The Memlings hang in a chamber at the Hospital St. Jean; the Chsse of +St. Ursula is a reliquary, Gothic in design. They consist of a dozen +tiny panels painted in exquisite fashion, with all the bright clarity +and precision of a miniaturist, coupled with a solidity of form and +lyric elegance of expression. They represent the side of Memling's art +which might be compared to the illuminators of manuscripts or to the +artificers in gold and precious stones. There is a jewelled quality in +this illustration of the pious life and martyrdom of St. Ursula at +Cologne. But it is not the greatest Memling, to our thinking. A +portrait of Martin van Nieuwenhoven, the donator of the diptych, La +Vierge aux Pommes, is as superb a Memling as one could wish for. The +little hairs are a sign of clever, minute brush. It is the modelling, +the rich manipulation of tones (yes, values were known in those +barbarous times), the graceful fall of the hair treated quite as much +en masse as with microscopic finish; the almost miraculous painting of +the folded hands, and the general expression of pious reverie, that +count most. The ductile, glowing colours make this a portrait to be +compared to any of the master's we have studied at London, Berlin, +Dresden, Lbeck, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels. But Bruges is the +natural frame for his exalted genius. + +If the Van Eycks were really the first to use oil-colour--a fable, it +is said--Memling, who followed them, taught many great Italian +painters the quality and expressiveness of beautiful paint. There is +the portrait of Sybilla Sambetha, the serious girl with the lace veil. +Did any of the later Dutch conjurers in paint attain such +transparency? The Mystic Marriage of St. Catharine, a triptych with +its wings representing the beheading of St. John the Baptist--the +Salome is quite melancholy--and St. John at Patmos, is one of the +world pictures. The Adoration of the Magi, with its wings, The +Nativity, and Presentation in the Temple, is equally touching. For me +Memling's Descent from the Cross sounds deeper music than +Rubens--which is operatic in comparison. The Virgin type of Van Eyck +is less insipid than the Italian; there is no pagan dissonance, as in +the conception of Botticelli. Faith blazed more fiercely in the +breasts of these Primitive artists. They felt Christ's Passion and the +sorrow of the Holy Mother more poignantly than did the Italians of the +golden renaissance. We have always held a brief for the Art for Art +theory. The artist must think first of his material and its technical +manipulation; but after that, if his pulse beat to spiritual rhythms +then his work may attain the heights. It is not painting that is the +lost art, but faith. Men like the Van Eycks, Rogier van der Weyden, +Memling, and Gerard David were princes of their craft and saw their +religion with eyes undimmed by doubt. + +James Weak has destroyed the legend that Hans Memling painted his St. +Ursula for the benefit of St. Jean's Hospital as a recompense for +treatment while sick there. He was a burgher living comfortably at +Bruges. The museum is a short distance from the hospital. Its Van Eyck +(Jan), La Vierge et l'Enfant--known as the Donator because of the +portrait of George van der Paele--is its chief treasure, though there +is the portrait of Jan's wife; Gerard David's Judgment of King +Cambyses, and the savage execution companion picture; Memling's +triptych, St. Christopher bearing the Christ Child, and David's +masterpiece, The Baptism of Christ. Holbein never painted a head with +greater verisimilitude than Van Eyck's rendering of the Donator. What +an eye! What handling, missing not a wrinkle, a fold of the aged skin, +the veins in the senile temples, or the thin soft hair above the ears! +What synthesis! There are no niggling details, breadth is not lost in +this multitude of closely observed and recorded facts. The large eyes +gaze devoutly at the vision of the Child, and if neither Virgin nor +Son is comely there is character delineated. The accessories must fill +the latter-day painter avid of surface loveliness with consuming envy. + +But it is time for sleep. The Brugeois cocks have crowed, the sun is +setting, and eyelids are lowering. Lucky you are if your dreams evoke +the brilliant colours, the magical shapes of the Primitives of Bruges +the Beautiful. + + + + +THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + + +Out of the beaten track of sight-seers, and not noticed with +particular favour by the guide-books, the museum founded by Gustave +Moreau at 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld in Paris, is known only to a +comparatively few artists and amateurs. You seldom hear Americans +speak of this rare collection, it is never written about in the +magazines. In September, 1897, Moreau made a will leaving his house +and its contents to the State. He died in 1898 (not in 1902, as +Bryan's dictionary has it), and in 1902 President Loubet authorised +the Minister of Public Instruction to accept this rich legacy in the +name of the republic. The artist was not known to stranger countries; +indeed he was little known to his fellow-countrymen. Huysmans had +cried him up in a revolutionary article; but to be praised by Huysmans +was not always a certificate of fame. That critic was more successful +in attracting public attention to Degas and Rops; and Moreau, a born +eclectic, though without any intention of carrying water on both +shoulders, was regarded suspiciously by his associates at the +Beaux-Arts, while the new men he praised, Courbet, Manet, Whistler, +Monet, would hold no commerce with him. To this day opinion is divided +as to his merits, he being called a _pasticheur_ or else a great +painter-poet. Huysmans saw straight into the heart of the +enigma--Gustave Moreau is poet and painter, a highly endowed man who +had the pictorial vision in an unusual degree; whose brush responded +to the ardent brain that directed it, the skilled hand that +manipulated it; always responded, we say, except in the creation of +life. His paintings are, strictly speaking, magnificent still-life. No +vital current animates their airless, gorgeous, and sometimes +cadaverous surfaces. + +Like his friend Gustave Flaubert, with whom he had so much in common +(at least on the Salammb side of that writer), Moreau was born to +affluence. His father was a government architect; he went early to the +cole des Beaux-Arts, and also studied under Picot. In 1852 he had a +Piet in the Salon (he was born April 6,1826), and followed it the +next season with a Darius and a large canvas depicting an episode from +the Song of Songs. The latter was purchased for the Dijon Museum. At +the Universal Exhibition of 1855 he showed a monster work, The +Athenians and the Minotaur. He withdrew from the public until 1864, +when his Oedipus and the Sphinx set Paris talking. He exhibited until +1880 various canvases illustrative of his studies in classic +literatures and received sundry medals. He was elected a member of the +Acadmie des Beaux-Arts in 1888, replacing Boulanger. He was decorated +in 1875 with the Legion of Honour and made _officier_ in 1883. When a +member of the Institute he had few friends, and as professor at the +Beaux-Arts he disturbed the authorities by his warm praise of the +Primitives. Altogether a career meagre in exciting incident, though +singularly rich and significant on the intimate side. + +A first visit to the museum proved startling. We had seen and admired +the fifteen water-colours at the Luxembourg, among them the famous +Apparition, but for the enormous number of pictures, oil, +water-colour, pastels, drawings, cartons, studies, we were unprepared. +The bulky catalogue registers 1,132 pieces, and remember that while +there are some unfinished canvases the amount of work executed--it is +true during half a century--is nevertheless a testimony to Moreau's +muscular and nervous energy, poetic conception, and intensity of +concentration. Even his unfinished pictures are carried to a state of +elaboration that would madden many modern improvisers in colour. Apart +from sheer execution, there is a multitude of visions that must have +been struggled for as Jacob wrestled with the Angel, for Moreau's was +not a facile mind. He brooded over his dreams, he saw them before he +gave them shape. He was familiar with all the Asiatic mythologies, and +for him the pantheon of Christian saints must have been bone of his +bone. The Oriental fantasy, the Buddhistic ideas, the fluent knowledge +of Persian, Indian, and Byzantine histories, customs, and costumes +sets us to wondering if this artist wasn't too cultured ever to be +spontaneous. He recalls Prester John and his composite faiths. + +There was besides the profound artistic erudition another +stumbling-block to simplicity of style and unity of conception. Moreau +began by imitating both Delacroix and Ingres. Now, such a precedure is +manifestly dangerous. Huysmans speaks with contempt of promiscuity in +the admiration of art. You can't admire Manet and Bastien-Lepage--"le +Grvin de cabaret, le Siraudin de banlieue," he names the gentle +Bastien; nor ought you to admire Manet and Moreau, we may add. And +Huysmans did precisely what he preached against. Moreau was a man of +wide intellectual interests. Devoid of the creative energy that can +eject an individual style at one jet, as a volcano casts forth a rock, +he attempted to aid nature by the process of an exquisite selection. +His taste was trained, his range wide--too wide, one is tempted to +add; and thus by a conscious act of the will he originated an art that +recalls an antique chryselephantine statue, a being rigid with +precious gems, pasted with strange colours, something with mineral +eyes without the breath of life--contemporary life--yet charged with +its author's magnetism, bearing a charmed existence, that might come +from a cold, black magic; monstrous, withal possessing a strange +feverish beauty, as Flaubert's Salammb is beautiful, in a remote, +exotic way. + +However, it is not fair to deny Moreau human sympathies. There are +many of his paintings and drawings, notably the latter, that show him +as possessing heart. His handling of his medium though heavy is never +timid, and at times is masterly. Delacroix inspired many of his +landscape backgrounds, as Ingres gave him the proportions of his +female figures. You continually encounter variations of Ingres, the +sweet, serene line, the tapering feet and hands. Some critics have +discerned the toe forms of Perugino; but such mechanical measurements +strain our notion of eclecticism. Certainly Moreau studied Bellini, +Mantegna, and Da Vinci without ever attaining the freedom and +distinction of any of them. His colour, too, is often hard and cold, +though not in the sumptuous surfaces of his fabrics; there Venetian +splendour is apparent. He can be fiery and insipid, metallic and +morbid; his Orientalism is at times transposed from the work of his +old friend the painter Chasseriau into the key of a brilliant, if +pompous rhetoric. + + + + +THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + + +This herculean attempt at reassembling many styles in a unique style +that would best express a certain frozen symbolism was the amiable +mania his life long of Moreau. He compelled the spirits to come to his +bidding. The moment you cross the threshold of his house the spell +begins to work. It is dissipated by the daylight of Paris, but while +you are under the roof of the museum you can't escape it. Nor is it as +with Rossetti, a mystic opiate, or with Wiertz, a madman's delirious +fancy. Moreau was a philosophic poet, and though he disclaimed being a +"literary" painter, it is literature that is the mainspring of his +elevated and decorative art. Open at random the catalogue full of +quotations from the painter's pen and you encounter such titles as +Leda and the Swan, treated with poetic restraint; Jupiter and Semele, +Tyrtus Singing During the Combat, St. Elizabeth and the Miracle of +the Roses, Lucretia and Tarquin, Pasiphae, the Triumph of Alexander, +Salome, Dante and Virgil, Bathsheba, Jason and the Golden Fleece. All +literatures were ransacked for themes. This painter suffered from the +nostalgia of the ideal. When a subject coincided with his technical +expression the result approximates perfection. Consider the Salome, so +marvellously paraphrased in prose by Huysmans. The aquarelle in the +Luxembourg is more plastic, more jewelled than the oil; Moreau often +failed in the working-out of his ideas. Yet, never in art has a +hallucination been thus set before us with such uncompromising +reality. The sombre, luxurious _dcor_, the voluptuous silhouette of +the dancing girl, the hieratic pose of the Tetrarch, even the aureoled +head of John, are forgotten in the contemplation of Salome, who is +become cataleptic at sight of the apparition. Arrested her attitude +her flesh crisps with fear. Her face is contracted into a mask of +death. The lascivious dance seems suspended in midair. To have painted +so impossible a picture bears witness to the extraordinary quality of +Moreau's complex art. Nor is the Salome his masterpiece. In the realm +of the decorator he must be placed high. His genius is Byzantine. +Jupiter and Semele, with its colossal and acrian architectures, its +gigantic figure of the god, from whose august head emanate spokes of +light, is Byzantine of a wild luxuriousness in pattern and fancy. +Moreau excels in representing cataracts of nude women, ivory-toned of +flesh, exquisite in proportion, set off by radiant jewels and +wonder-breeding brocades. His skies are in violent ignition, or else +as soft as Lydian airs. What could be more grandiose than the Triumph +of Alexander (No. 70 in the catalogue)? Not John Martin or Piranesi +excelled the Frenchman in bizarre architectural backgrounds. And the +Chimeras, what a Baudelairian imagination! Baudelaire of the bitter +heart! All luxury, all sin, all that is the shame and the glory of +mankind is here, as in a tapestry dulled by the smoke of dreams; but +as in his most sanguinary combats not a sound, not a motion comes from +this canvas. When the slaves, lovely females, are thrown to the fish +to fatten them for some Roman patrician's banquet, we admire the +beauty of colour, the clear static style, the solidity of the +architecture, but we are unmoved. If there is such a thing as +disinterested art it is the claustral art of Moreau--which can be both +perverse and majestic. + +His versatility amazes. He did not always paint the same picture. The +Christ Between Two Thieves is academic, yet attracts because the +expression of the converted thief is remarkable. The Three Magi and +Moses Within Sight of the Promised Land do not give one the fullest +sense of satisfaction, as do The Daughters of Thespus or The Rape of +Europa; yet they suggest what might be termed a tragic sort of +decoration. Moreau is a painter who could have illustrated Marlowe's +fatuous line, "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia," and superbly; or, +"See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament." He is an exotic +blossom on the stem of French art. He saw ivory, apes, and peacocks, +purple, gold, and the heavens aflame with a mystic message. He never +translated that message, for his was an art of silence; but the +painter of The Maiden with the Head of Orpheus, of Salome, of Jason +and Medea, of Jupiter and Semele, will never fail to win the +admiration and homage of those art lovers who yearn for dreams of +vanished ages, who long to escape the commonplaces of the present. +Gustave Moreau will be their poet-painter by predilection. + +Once in the streets of prosaic Paris he is as unreal as Rossetti or +the Pre-Raphaelites (though their superior as one who could make +palpable his visions). In the Louvre--where the _Salon Carr_ is +little changed--Manet's Olympe, with her every-day seductiveness, +resolves the phantasies of Moreau into thin air. Here is reality for +you, familiar as it may be. It is wonderful how long it took French +critics to discover that Manet was _un peintre de race_. He is very +French in the French gallery where he now hangs. He shows the lineage +of David, one of whose declamatory portraits with beady eyes hangs +near by. He is simpler than David in his methods--Mr. C.S. Ricketts +critically described David as possessing the mind of a policeman--and +as a painter more greatly endowed. But Goya also peeps out from the +Olympe. After seeing the Maja desnuda at the Prado you realise that +Manet's trip to Madrid was not without important results. Between the +noble lady who was the Duchess of Alba and the ignoble girl called +Olympe there is only the difference between the respective handlings +of Goya and Manet. + + + + +PICTURES IN MADRID + + + +I + +The noblest castle in Spain is the museum on the Prado. Now every +great capital of Europe boasts its picture or sculpture gallery; no +need to enumerate the treasures of art to be found in London, Paris, +Vienna--the latter too little known by the average +globe-trotter--Berlin, Dresden, Cassel, Frankfort, Brussels, Bruges, +Antwerp, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, Naples, St. Petersburg, or Venice. +They all boast special excellences, but the Prado collection contains +pictures by certain masters, Titian, Rubens, Correggio, and others, +that cannot be seen elsewhere. Setting aside Velasquez and the Spanish +school, not in Venice, Florence, or London are there Titians of such +quality and in such quantity as in Madrid. And the Rubenses are of a +peculiar lovely order, not to be found in Antwerp, Brussels or Paris. +Even without Velasquez the trying trip to the Spanish capital is a +necessary and exciting experience for the painter and amateur of art. + +The Prado is largely reinforced by foreign pictures and is sadly +lacking in historical continuity whether foreign or domestic schools. +It is about ninety years old, having been opened in part (three rooms) +to the public in November, 1819. At that time there were three hundred +and eleven canvases. Other galleries were respectively added in 1821, +1828, 1830, and 1839. In 1890 the Queen-mother had the Sala de la +Reina Isabel rearranged and better lighted. It contained then the +masterpieces, but in 1899, the tercentenary of Velasquez's birth, a +gallery was built to hold his works, with a special room for that +masterpiece among masterpieces Las Meninas. Many notable pictures that +had hung for years in the Academia de Nobles Artes de San Fernando, at +the Escorial Palace, and and the collection of the Duke of Osuna are +now housed within the walls of the Prado. At the entrance you +encounter a monumental figure of Goya, sitting, in bronze, the work of +the sculptor J. Llaneses. + +The Prado has been called a gallery for connoisseurs, and it is the +happiest title that could be given it, for it is not a great museum in +which all schools are represented. You look in vain for the chain +historic that holds together disparate styles; there are omissions, +ominous gaps, and the very nation that ought to put its best foot +foremost, the Spanish, does not, with the exception of Velasquez. Of +him there are over sixty authentic works; of Titian over thirty. Bryan +only allows him twenty-three; this is an error. There are fifteen +Titians in Florence, divided between the Uffizi and the Pitti; in +Paris, thirteen, but one is the Man with the Glove. Quality counts +heaviest, therefore the surprise is not that Madrid boasts numbers but +the wonderful quality of so many of them. To lend additional lustre to +the specimens of the Venetian school, the collection starts off with a +superb Giorgione; Giorgione, the painter who taught Titian his magic +colour secrets; the painter whose works are, with a few exceptions, +ascribed to other men--more is the pity! (In this we are at one with +Herbert Cook, who still clings to the belief that the Concert of the +Pitti Palace is Giorgione and not Titian. At least the Concert +Champtre of the Louvre has not been taken from "Big George.") The +Madrid masterpiece is The Virgin and Child Jesus with St. Anthony and +St. Roch. + +It is easy to begin with the Titians, one of which is the famous +Bacchanal. Then there are The Madonna with St. Bridget and St. Hulfus, +The Garden of the Loves, Emperor Charles V. at Mhlberg, an equestrian +portrait; another portrait of the same with figure standing, King +Philip, Isabella of Portugal, La Gloria, The Entombment of Christ, +Venus and Adonis, Dana and the Golden Shower, a variation of this +picture is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, the other in the National +Museum, Naples; Venus Listening to Music, two versions, the stately +nude evidently a memory of the Venus reposing in the Uffizi: Adam and +Eve (also a copy of this by Rubens); Prometheus, Sisyphus--long +supposed to be copies by Coello; Christ Bearing the Cross, St. +Margaret, a portrait of the Duke of Este, Salom, Ecce Homo, La +Dolorosa, the once admired Allocution; Flight Into Egypt, St. +Catalina, a self-portrait, St. Jerome, Diana and Acton, The Sermon on +the Mount--the list is much longer. + +There are many Goyas; the museum is the home of this remarkable but +uneven painter. We confess to a disappointment in his colour, though +his paint was not new to us; but time has lent no pleasing _patina_ to +his canvases, the majority of which are rusty-looking, cracked, +discoloured, dingy or dark. There are several exceptions. The nude and +dressed full-lengths of the Duchess of Alba are in excellent +preservation, and brilliant audacious painting it is. A lovely +creature, better-looking when reclining than standing, as a glance at +her full-length portrait in the New York Hispanic Museum proves. One +of Goya's best portraits hangs in the Prado, the seated figure of his +brother-in-law, the painter Bayeu. The Family of Charles IV, his +patron and patroness, with the sheep-like head of the favourite De la +Paz, is here in all its bitter humour; it might be called a satiric +pendant to that other Familia, not many yards away, Las Meninas. There +are the designs for tapestries in the basement; Blind Man's Buff and +other themes illustrating national traits. The equestrian portraits of +Charles IV and his sweet, sinister spouse, Queen Maria Luisa, reveal a +Goya not known to the world. He could assume the grand manner when he +so willed. He could play the dignified master with the same +versatility that he played at bull-fighting. But his colour is often +hot and muddy, and perhaps he will go down to that doubtful quantity, +posterity, as an etcher and designer of genius. After leaving the +Prado you remember only the Caprices, the Bull-fights, and the +Disaster of War plates; perhaps the Duchess of Alba, undressed, and in +her dainty toreador costume. The historic pictures are a tissue of +horrors, patriotic as they are meant to be; they suggest the +slaughter-house. Goya has painted a portrait of Villanueva, the +architect of the museum; and there is a solidly constructed portrait +of Goya by V. Lopez. + +The Raphaels have been reduced to two at the Prado: The Holy Family +with the Lamb, painted a year after the Ansedei Madonna, and that +wonderful head of young Cardinal Bibbiena, keen-eyed and ascetic of +features. Alas! for the scholarship that attributed to the Divine +Youth La Perla; the Madonna of the Fish; Lo Spasimo, Christ Bearing +the Cross, and several other masterpieces. Giulio Romana, Penni, and +perhaps another, turned out these once celebrated and overpraised +pictures--overpraised even if they had come from the brush of Raphael +himself. The Cardinal's portrait is worth the entire batch of them. + +There is a Murillo gallery, full of representative work, the most +important being St. Elizabeth of Hungary Tending the Sick, formerly in +the Escorial. The various Conceptions and saints' heads are not +missing, painted in his familiar colour key with his familiar false +sentiment and always an eye to the appeal popular. A mighty magnet for +the public is Murillo. The peasants flock to him on Sundays as to a +sanctuary. There the girls see themselves on a high footing, a +heavenly saraband among woolly clouds, their prettiness idealised, +their costume of exceeding grace. After a while you tire of the +saccharine Murillo and his studio beggar boys, and turn to his +drawings with relief. His landscapes are more sincere than his +religious canvases, which are almost as sensuous and earthly as +Correggio without the magisterial brush-work and commanding conception +of the Parma painter. To be quite fair, it may be admitted that +Murillo could make a good portrait. Both in Madrid and Seville you may +verify this. + +A beautiful Fra Angelico, a beautiful Mantegna open your eyes, for the +Italian Primitives are conspicuous by their absence. Correggio is +magnificent. The well-known Magdalen and Christ Risen, Noli Me +Tangere! His Virgin with Jesus and St. John is in his accustomed +melting _pte_. One Del Sarto is of prime quality, The Virgin, Jesus +and St. John, called Asunto Mistico at the Prado. Truly a moving +picture, by a painter who owes much of his fame to Robert Browning. +His Lucrezia is a pretty portrait of his faithless wife. There are +Lotto, Parmigianino, Baroccio, Tintoretto, Bassano, Veronese, Domenico +Tiepolo, and his celebrated father the fantastic Giambattista +Tiepolo--not startling specimens any of them. + +In the Spanish section Ribera comes at you the strongest. He was a +personality as well as a powerful painter. Consider his Martyrdom of +St. Bartholomew. Zurbaran follows next in interest, though morbid at +times; but of Berragueta, Borgona, Morales, Juanes, Navarette, +Coello--an excellent portraitist, imitator of Moro--La Cruz, Alfonso +Cano, Luis de Tristan, Espinosa, Bias del Prado, Orrente, Esteban de +March--two realistic heads of an old man and an old woman must be set +down to his credit--Ribalta, influenced by Caravaggio, in turn +influencing Ribera--Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), Del +Mazo--son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible for dozens of false +attributions--Carreo de Miranda, Jos Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte, +the two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the younger a +nonentity, and others of the Spanish school may be dismissed in a +word--mediocrities. + + + + +II + +The secret of Titian's colour, the "Venetian secret," was produced, +some experts believe, by first painting a solid monochrome in tempera +on which the picture was finished in oil. Unquestionably Titian +corrected and amended his work as much as did Velasquez. It is a +pleasing if somewhat theatric belief that Titian and Velasquez, +duelled with their canvases, their rapier a brush. After inspecting +many of the Hals portraits the evidences of direct painting, swift +though calculated, are not to be denied. This may account, with the +temperamental equation, for the less profound psychological interest +of his portraiture when compared with the Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, +and Rembrandt heads. Yet, what superiority in brush-work had Hals over +Raphael and Rembrandt. The Raphael surfaces are as a rule hard, dry, +and lustreless, while Rembrandt's heavy, troubled paint is no mate for +the airy touch of the Mercutio of Haarlem. But Titian's impasto is +lyric. It sings on the least of his canvases. No doubt his pictures in +the Prado have been "skinned" of their delicate glaze by the +iconoclastic restorer; yet they bloom and chant and ever bloom. The +Bacchanal, which bears a faint family resemblance to the Bacchus and +Ariadne of the London National Gallery, fairly exults in its joy of +life, in its frank paganism. What rich reverberating tones, what +powers of evocation! The Garden of the Loves is a vision of childhood +at its sweetest; the surface of the canvas seems alive with festooned +babies. The more voluptuous Venus or Dana do not so stir your pulse +as this immortal choir of cupids. The two portraits of Charles V--one +equestrian--are charged with the noble, ardent gravity and splendour +of phrasing we expect from the greatest Venetian of them all. We +doubt, however, if the Prado Entombment is as finely wrought as the +same subject by Titian in Paris; but it sounds a poignant note of +sorrow. Rembrandt is more dramatic when dealing with a similar theme. +The St. Margaret with its subtle green gown is a figure that is +touching and almost tragic. The Madonna and Child, with St. Bridget +and St. Hulfus, has been called Giorgionesque. St. Bridget is of the +sumptuous Venetian type; the modelling of her head is lovely, her +colouring rich. + +Rubens in the Prado is singularly attractive. There are over fifty, +not all of the best quality, but numbering such works as the Three +Graces, the Rondo, the Garden of Love, and the masterly unfinished +portrait of Marie de Medicis. The Brazen Serpent is a Van Dyck, though +the catalogue of 1907 credits it to Rubens. Then there are the +Andromeda and Perseus, the Holy Family and Diana and Calista. The +portrait of Marie de Mdicis, stout, smiling, amiability personified, +has been called one of the finest feminine portraits extant--which is +a slight exaggeration. It is both mellow and magnificent, and unless +history or Rubens lied the lady must have been as mild as mother's +milk. The Three Graces, executed during the latter years of the +Flemish master, is Rubens at his pagan best. These stalwart and +handsome females, without a hint of sleek Italian delicacy, include +Rubens's second wife, Helena Fourment, the ox-eyed beauty. What blond +flesh tones, what solidity of human architecture, what positive beauty +of surfaces and nobility of contours! The Rondo is a mad, whirling +dance, the Diana and Calista suggestive of a Turkish bath outdoors, +but a picture that might have impelled Walt Whitman to write a sequel +to his Children of Adam. Such women were born not alone to bear +children but to rule the destinies of mankind; genuine matriarchs. + +Rembrandt fares ill. His Artemisia about to drink her husband's ashes +from a costly cup reveals a ponderous hand. It is but indifferent +Rembrandt, despite several jewelled passages. Van Dyck shows at least +one great picture, the Betrayal of Christ. The Brazen Serpent only +ranks second to it; both are masterpieces, and Antwerp must envy the +Prado. The Crown of Thorns, and the portraits, particularly that of +the Countess of Wexford, are arresting. His Musician, being the +portrait of Lanire the lute-player, and his own portrait on the same +canvas with Count Bristol, are cherished treasures. The lutist is +especially fascinating. That somewhat mysterious Dutch master, Moro, +or Mor (Antonis; born in Utrecht, 1512; died at Antwerp, 1576 or +1578), is represented by more than a dozen portraits. To know what a +master of physiognomy he was we need only study his Mary Queen of +England, the Buffoon of the Beneventas, the Philip II, and the various +heads of royal and noble born dames. The subdued fire and subtlety of +this series, the piercing vision and superior handicraft of the +painter have placed him high in the artistic hierarchy; but not high +enough. At his best he is not far behind Holbein. That great German's +art is shown in a solitary masterpiece, the portrait of an unknown +man, with shrewd cold eyes, an enormous nose, the hands full of +meaning, the fabrics scrupulous as to detail. Next to this Holbein, +whose glance follows you around the gallery, are the two Drers, the +portrait of Hans Imhof, a world-renowned picture, and his own portrait +(1498), a magical rendering of a Christ-like head, the ringlets curly, +the beard youthful, the hands folded as if in prayer. A marvellous +composition. It formerly hung too high, above the Hans Imhof; it now +hangs next to it. A similar head in the Uffizi is a copy, Sir Walter +Armstrong to the contrary notwithstanding. + +The Flemish schools are to be seen in the basement, not altogether a +favourable place, though in the afternoon there is an agreeable light. +Like Rubens, Jan van Eyck visited Spain and left the impress of his +style. But the Van Eycks at the Prado are now all queried, though +several are noteworthy. The Marriage of the Virgin is discredited. The +Virgin, Christ and St. John under the golden canopy, called a Hubert +van Eyck, is probably by Gossaert de Mabuse, and a clever +transposition of the altar piece in St. Bavon's at Ghent. The Fountain +of Life, also in the catalogue as a Jan van Eyck, has been pronounced +a sixteenth-century copy of a lost picture by his brother Hubert. We +may add that not one of these so-called Van Eycks recalls in all their +native delicacy and richness the real Van Eycks of Bruges, Ghent, and +Brussels; though the Virgin Reading, given as Jan's handiwork, is of a +charm. The Depositions, attributed to Rogier van der Weyden (De la +Pasture), are acknowledged to be old sixteenth-century copies of the +Deposition in the Escorial. The altar piece is excellent. But there is +a fine Memling, glowing in pigment and of beautiful design, The +Adoration of the Kings, a triptych, like the one at Bruges. In the +centre panel we see the kings adoring, one a black man; the two wings, +or doors, respectively depict the birth of Christ (right) and the +presentation in the temple (left). There is a retablo (reredos) in +four compartments, by Petrus Cristus, and two Jerome Patinirs, one, a +Temptation of St. Anthony, being enjoyable. The painter-persecuted +saint sits in the foreground of a freshly painted landscape, harassed +by the attentions of witches, several of them comely and clothed. To +be precise, the composition suggests a much-married man listening to +the reproaches of his spouses. Hanging in a doorway we found a Herri +Met de Bles that is not marked doubtful. It is a triptych, an +Adoration, in which the three kings, the Queen of Sheba before +Solomon, and Herod participate. A brilliantly tinted work this, which +once hung in the Escorial, and, _mirabile dictu_, attributed to Lucas +van Leyden. No need to speak of the later Dutch and Flemish school, +Teniers, Ostade, Dou, Pourbus, and the minor masters. There are +Breughels and Bosches aplenty, and none too good. But there are +several Jordaens of quality, a family group, and three heads of street +musicians. We forgot to mention an attribution to Jan van Eyck, The +Triumph of Religion, which is a curious affair no matter whose brain +conceived it. The attendant always points out its religious features +with ill-concealed glee. A group of ecclesiastics have confounded a +group of rabbis at a fountain which is the foundation of an altar; the +old fervour burns in the eyes of the gallery servitor as he shows you +the discomfited Hebrew doctors of the law. We may dismiss as harmless +the Pinturicchio and other Italian attributions in these basement +galleries. There is the usual crew of Anonimos, and a lot of those +fantastic painters who are nicknamed by critics without a sense of +humour as "The Master of the Fiery Hencoop," "The Master of the +Eccentric Omelet," or some such idiotic title. + +Up-stairs familiar names such as Domenichino, Bassano, Cortona, +Crespi, Bellino, Pietra della Vecchia, Allori, Veronese, Maratta, +Guido Reni, Romano need not detain us. The catalogue numbers of the +Italian school go as high as 628. The Titians, however, are the glory +of the Prado. The Spanish school begins at 629, ends at 1,029. The +German, Flemish, and Holland schools begin at 1,146, running to 1,852. +There are supplements to all of the foregoing. The French school runs +from 1,969 to 2,111. But the examples in this section are not +inspiring, the Watteaus excepted. There is the usual Champagne, +Coypel, Claude of Lorraine (10), Largillire, Lebrun, Van Loo, Mignard +(5); one of Le Nain--by both brothers. Nattier (4), Nicolas Poussin +(20), Rigaud, and two delicious Watteaus; a rustic betrothal and a +view of the garden of St. Cloud, the two exhaling melancholy grace and +displaying subdued richness of tone. Tiepolo has been called the last +link in the chain of Venetian colourists, which began with the +Bellini, followed by Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Palma Vecchio, +Bonifazio, Veronese--and to this list might be added the name of the +Frenchman Watteau. Chardin was also a colourist, and how many of the +Poussins at this gallery might be spared to make room for one of his +cool, charming paintings! + +The Prado about exhausts the art treasures of Madrid. In the Escorial, +that most monstrous and gloomiest of the tombs of kings, are pictures +that should be seen--some Grecos among the rest--even if the palace +does not win your sympathy. In Madrid what was once called the +Academia de San Fernando is now the Real Academia de Bellas Artes. It +is at 11 Calle de Alcal and contains a Murillo of quality, the Dream +of the Roman Knight, Zurbaran's Carthusians, an Ecce Homo by Ribera, +of power; the Death of Dido by Fragonard; a Rubens, St. Francis, the +work of his pupils; Alonzo Cano, two Murillos, Domenichino, Tristan, +Mengs, Giovanni Bellini; Goya's bull-fights, mad-house scenes, and +several portraits--one of the Due de la Paz; a Pereda, a Da Vinci (?), +Madrazo, Zurbaran, and Goya's equestrian portrait of Charles IV. A +minor gathering, the dbris of a former superb collection, and not +even catalogued. + +There are museums devoted to artillery, armour, natural sciences, and +archology. In the imposing National Library, full of precious +manuscripts, is the museum of modern art--also without a catalogue. It +does not make much of an impression after the Prado. The Fortuny is +not characteristic, though a rarity; a sketch for his Battle of +Tetuan, the original an unfinished painting, is at Barcelona. There +are special galleries such as the Sala Haes with its seventy pictures, +which are depressing. The modern Spaniards Zuloaga, Sorolla, +Angla-Camarosa are either not represented or else are not at their +best. There is a Diaz, who was of Spanish origin; but the Madrazos, +Villegas, Montenas, and the others are academic echoes or else feeble +and mannered. There are some adroit water-colours by modern Frenchmen, +and there is a seeming attempt to make the collection contemporary in +spirit, but it is all as dead as the allegorical dormouse, while over +at the Prado there is a vitality manifested by the old fellows that +bids fair to outlast the drums, tramplings, and conquests of many +generations. We have not more than alluded to the sculpture at the +Prado; it is not particularly distinguished. The best sculpture we saw +in Spain was displayed in wood-carvings. The pride of the Prado is +centred upon its Titians, Raphaels, Rubenses, Murillos, El Grecos, +and, above all, upon Don Diego de Silva, better known as Velasquez. + + + + +EL GRECO AT TOLEDO + + + +Toledo is less than three hours from Madrid; it might be three years +away for all the resemblance it bears to the capital. Both situated in +New Castille, Madrid seems sharply modern, as modern as the early +nineteenth century, when compared to the medival cluster of buildings +on the horseshoe-shaped granite heights almost entirely hemmed in by +the river Tagus. It is not only one of the most original cities in +Spain, but in all Europe. No other boasts its incomparable profile, +few the extraordinary vicissitudes of its history. Not romantic in the +operatic moonlit Grenada fashion, without the sparkle and colour of +Seville or the mundane savour of Madrid, Toledo incarnates in its +cold, detached, proud, pious way all that we feel as Spain the +aristocratic, Spain the theocratic. To this city on a crag there once +came, by way of Venice, a wanderer from Crete. Toledo was the final +frame of the strange genius of El Greco; he made it the consecrate +ground of his new art. It is difficult to imagine him developing in +luxuriant Italy as he did in Spain. His nature needed a sombre and +magnificent background; this city gave it to him; for no artist can +entirely isolate himself from life, can work in _vacuo_. And El +Greco's shivering, spiritual art could have been born on no other soil +than Toledo. He is as original as the city. + +The place shows traces of its masters--Romans, Goths, Saracens, and +Christians. It is, indeed, as much Moorish as Christian--the narrow +streets, high, narrow houses often windowless, the inner court +replacing the open squares that are to be found in Seville. Miscalled +the "Spanish Rome," Gautier's description still holds good: Toledo has +the character of a convent, a prison, a fortress with something of a +seraglio. The enormous cathedral, which dates back to Visigothic +Christianity, is, next to Seville's, the most beautiful in Spain. Such +a faade, such stained glass, such ceilings! Blanco Ibaez has written +pages about this structure. The synagogues, the Moorish mosque, the +Alczar are picturesque. And then there are the Puente de Alcntara, +the Casa de Cervantes, the Puerta del Sol, the Prison of the +Inquisition, the Church of Santo Tom--which holds the most precious +example of Greco's art--the Sinagogo del Transito, the Church of San +Vicente--with Grecos--Santo Domingo (more Grecos); the Convent, near +the Church of San Juan de los Reyes, contains the Museo Provincial in +which were formerly a number of Grecos; many of these have been +transferred to the new Museo El Greco, founded by the Marquis de la +Vega-Inclan, an admirer of the painter. This museum was once the home +of Greco, and has been restored, so that if the artist returned he +might find himself in familiar quarters. Pictures, furniture, carvings +of his are there, while the adjoining house is rebuilt in a harmonious +style of old material. Remain various antique patios or court-like +interiors, the sword manufactory, and the general view from the top of +the town. El Greco's romantic portrayment of his adopted city is as +true now as the day it was painted--one catches a glimpse of the scene +when the contrasts of light and shadow are strong. During a +thunderstorm illuminated by blazing shafts of Peninsular lightning +Toledo resembles a page torn from the Apocalypse. + +The cathedral is the usual objective; instead, we first went to the +church of Santo Tom. It is a small Gothic structure, rebuilt from a +mosque by Count Orgz. In commemoration of this gift a large canvas, +entitled El Entierro, depicting the funeral of Orgz, by El Greco, has +made Santo Tom more celebrated than the cathedral. It is an amazing, +a thrilling work, nevertheless, on a scale that prevents it from +giving completely the quintessence of El Greco. No doubt he was a +pupil of Titian; Gautier but repeated current gossip when he said that +the Greek went mad in his attempt to emulate his master. But +Tintoretto's influence counts heavier in this picture than Titian's, a +picture assigned by Cossi midway between Greco's first and second +period. Decorative as is the general scheme, the emotional intensity +aroused by the row of portraits in the second _plan_, the touching +expression of the two saints, Augustine and Stephen, as they gently +bear the corpse of the Count, the murky light of the torches in the +background, while overhead the saintly hierarchy terminating in a +white radiance, Christ the Comforter, His mother at His right hand, +quiring hosts at His left--all these figures make an ensemble that at +first glance benumbs the critical faculty. You recall the solemn and +spasmodic music of Michael Angelo (of whom El Greco is reported to +have irreverently declared that he couldn't paint); then as your +perspective slowly shapes itself you note that Tintoretto, plus a +certain personal accent of morbid magnificence, is the artistic +progenitor of this art, an art which otherwise furiously boils over +with Spanish characteristics. + +Nothing could be more vivid and various than the twenty-odd heads near +the bottom of the picture. Expression, character, race are not pushed +beyond normal limits. The Spaniard, truly noble here, is seen at a +half-dozen periods of life. El Greco himself is said to be in the +group; the portrait certainly tallies with a reputed one of his. The +sumptuousness of the ecclesiastical vestments, court costumes, ruffs, +and eloquent hands, the grays, whites, golds, blues, blacks, chord +rolling upon chord of subtle tonalities, the supreme illumination of +the scene, with its suggestion of a moment swiftly trapped forever in +eternity, hook this masterpiece firmly to your memory. It is not one +of the greatest pictures in the pantheon of art, not Rembrandt, +Velasquez, Hals, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, or Rubens; yet it +stands close to them all because of its massed effect of light, life, +and emotional situation. We confess to liking it better than the +Gloria at the Escorial Palace. This glorification of a dream of Philip +II does not pluck electrically at your heart-strings as does the +Burial of Count Orgz, though the two canvases are similar in +architectonic. + +The Expolio is in the cathedral; it belongs to the first period, +before El Greco had shaken off Italian influences. The colouring is +rather cold. The St. Maurice in the chapter hall of the Escorial is a +long step toward a new method of expression. (A replica is in +Bucharest.) The Ascension altar piece, formerly in Santo Domingo, now +hangs in the Art Institute, Chicago. At Toledo there are about eighty +pieces of the master, not including his sculpture, retablos; like +Tintoretto, he was accustomed to make little models in clay or wax for +the figures in his pictures. His last manner is best exemplified in +the Divine Love and Profane Love, belonging to Seor Zuloaga, in The +Adoration of the Shepherds, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the +Assumption at the Church of St. Vicente, Toledo. His chalky whites, +poisonous greens, violet shadows, discordant passages of lighting are, +as Arthur Symons puts it: Sharp and dim, gray and green, the colour of +Toledo. Greco composed his palette with white vermilion, lake, yellow +ochre, ivory black. Seor Beruete says that "he generally laid on an +impasto for his flesh, put on in little touches, and then added a few +definite strokes with the brush which, though accentuated, are very +delicate... The gradations of the values is in itself instructive." + +His human forms became more elongated as he aged; this applies only to +his males; his women are of sweetness compounded and graceful in +contour. Some a mere arabesque, or living flames; some sinister and +fantastic; from the sublime to the silly is with Greco not a wide +stride. But in all his surging, writhing sea of wraiths, saints, +kings, damned souls and blest, a cerebral grip is manifest. He knew a +hawk from a handsaw despite his temperament of a mystic. "He who +carries his own most intimate emotions to their highest point becomes +the first in a file of a long series of men"; but, adds Mr. Ellis: "To +be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men." El Greco, like +Charles Baudelaire, cultivated his hysteria. He developed his +individuality to the border line across which looms madness. The +transmogrification of his temperament after living in Toledo was +profound. Born Greek, in art a Venetian, the atmosphere of the +Castilian plain changed the colour of his soul. In him there was +material enough for both a Savonarola or a Torquemada--his piety was +at once iconoclastic and fanatical. And his restlessness, his +ceaseless experiments, his absolute discoveries of new tonalities, his +sense of mystic grandeur--why here you have, if you will, a Berlioz of +paint, a man of cold ardours, hot ecstasies, visions apocalyptic, with +a brain like a gloomy cathedral in which the _Tuba Mirum_ is +sonorously chanted. But Greco is on the side of the angels; Berlioz, +like Goya, too often joined in the infernal antiphonies of Satan +_Mekatrig_. And Greco is as dramatic as either. + +Beruete admits that his idol, Velasquez, was affected by the study of +El Greco's colouring. Canaille Saint-Sans, when Liszt and Rubinstein +were compared, exclaimed: "Two great artists who have nothing in +common except their superiority." It is bootless to bracket Velasquez +with his elder. And Gautier was off the track when he spoke of Greco's +resemblance to the bizarre romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Greco +was, but not trivial nor a charlatan. As to his decadent tendencies we +side with the opinion of Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.: "Certain +pedants have written as if the world would be better without its +disorderly geniuses. There could, I think, be no sorer error. We need +the unbalanced talents, the _potes damns_ of every craft. They strew +the passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own. They fight +valiantly, a little at the expense of their fame, against the only +unpardonable sins, stupidity and indifference. Greco should always be +an honoured name in this ill-destined company." + +In the Prado Museum there is a goodly collection. The Annunciation, +The Holy Family, Jesus Christ Dead, The Baptism of Christ, The +Resurrection, The Crucifixion--a tremendous conception; and The Coming +of the Holy Ghost; this latter, with its tongues of fire, its +flickering torches, its ecstatic apostles and Mary, her face flooded +by a supernal illumination, mightily stirs the sthetic pulse. The +Prado has two dozen specimens, though two of them at least--a poor +replica of the Orgz burial, and another--are known to be by El +Greco's son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli; of the numerous portraits and +other pictures dispersed by time and chance to the four quarters of +the globe, we have written earlier in this volume, when dealing with +the definitive work on this Greek by Seor Manuel B. Cossio. El Greco, +through sheer intensity of temperament and fierce sincerity, could +pluck out from men who had become, because of their apathy and +grotesque pride, mere vegetable growths, their very souls afire; or if +stained by crimes, these souls, he shot them up to God like green +meteors. To be sure they have eyes drunk with dreams, the pointed +skull of the mystic, and betray a plentiful lack of chin and often an +atrabilious nature. When old his saints resemble him, when young he +must have looked like his saints, Sebastian and Martin. With his +ardent faith he could have confuted the Gnostic or the Manichean +heresies in colourful allegory, but instead he sang fervid hosannahs +on his canvases to the greater glory of Christ and His saints. Perhaps +if he had lived in our times he might have painted heads of +fashionable courtesans or equivocal statesmen. But whether primitive +or modern, realist or symbolist, he would always have been a painter +of dramatic genius. He is the unicorn among artists. + + + + +VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO + + + +Fearful that your eye has lost its innocence after hearing so much of +the picture, you enter the tiny room at the museum on the Prado in +which is hung Las Meninas--The Maids of Honour, painted by Velasquez +in 1656. My experience was a typical one. I went hastily through the +larger Velasquez gallery in not only a challenging but an irritable +mood. The holy of holies I was enraged to find, seemingly, crowded. +There was the picture, but a big easel stood in the foreground +blotting out the left side; some selfish artist copying, some fellow +thrusting himself between us and the floating illusion of art. In +despair I looked into the mirror that reflects the picture. I +suspected trickery. Surely that little princess with her wilful, +_distrait_ expression, surely the kneeling maid, the dwarfs, the +sprawling dog, the painter Velasquez--with his wig--the heads of the +king and queen in the oblong mirror, the figure of Seor Nieto in the +doorway, the light framing his silhouette--surely they are all real. +Here are the eternal simplicities. You realise that no one is in the +room but these painted effigies of the court and family of Philip IV; +that the canvas whose bare ribs deceived is in the picture, not on the +floor; that Velasquez and the others are _eidolons_, arrested in space +by the white magic of his art. For the moment all other artists and +their works are as forgotten as the secrets in the lost and sacred +books of the Magi. There is but one painter and his name is Velasquez. + +This mood of ecstatic absorption is never outlived; the miracle +operates whenever a visit is made to the shrine. But you soon note +that the canvas has been deprived of its delicate glaze. There are +patches ominously eloquent of the years that have passed since the +birth of this magisterial composition. The tonal key is said to be +higher because of restorations; yet to the worshipper these +shortcomings are of minor importance. Even Giordano's exclamation: +"Sire, this is the theology of painting," falls flat. Essence of +painting, would have been a truer statement. There is no +other-worldliness here, but something more normal, a suggestion of +solid reality, a vision of life. The various figures breathe; so +potent is their vitality that my prime impression in entering the room +was a sense of the presence of others. Perhaps this is not as +consummate art as the voluptuous colour-symphonies of Titian, the +golden exuberance of Rubens, the abstract spacing of Raphael, the +mystic opium of Rembrandt; but it is an art more akin to nature, an +art that is a lens through which you may spy upon life. You recall +Ibsen and his "fourth wall." Velasquez has let us into the secret of +human existence. Not, however, in the realistic order of inanimate +objects copied so faithfully as to fool the eye. Presentation, not +representation, is the heart of this coloured imagery, and so moving, +so redolent of life is it that if the world were shattered and Las +Meninas shot to the coast of Mars, its inhabitants would be able to +reconstruct an idea of the creatures that once inhabited old Mother +Earth; men, women, children, their shapes, attitudes, gestures, and +attributes. The mystery of sentient beings lurks in this canvas, the +illusion of atmosphere has never been so contrived. In the upper part +of the picture space is indicated in a manner that recalls both +Rembrandt and Raphael. Velasquez, too, was a space-composer. +Velasquez, too, plucked at the heart of darkness. But his air is +luminous, the logic of his proportion faultless, his synthesis +absolute. Where other painters juxtapose he composes. Despite the +countless nuances of his thin, slippery brush strokes, the picture is +always a finely spun whole. + +When Fragonard was starting for Rome, Boucher said to him: "If you +take those people over there seriously you are done for." Luckily +Frago did not, and, despite his two Italian journeys, Velasquez was +not seduced into taking "those people" seriously. His recorded opinion +of Raphael is corroborative of his attitude toward Italian art. Titian +was his sole god. For nearly a year he was in daily intercourse with +Rubens, but of Rubens's influence upon him there is little trace. Las +Meninas is the perfect flowering of the genius of the Spaniard. It has +been called impressionistic; Velasquez has been claimed as the father +of impressionism as Stendhal was hailed by Zola as the literary +progenitor of naturalism. But Velasquez is too universal to be +labelled in the interests of any school. His themes are of this earth, +his religious paintings are the least credible of his efforts. They +are Italianate as if the artist dared not desert the familiar +religious stencil. His art is not correlated to the other arts. One +does not dream of music or poetry or sculpture or drama in front of +his pictures. One thinks of life and then of the beauty of the paint. +Velasquez is never rhetorical, nor does he paint for the sake of +making beautiful surfaces as often does Titian. His practice is not +art for art as much as art for life. As a portraitist, Titian's is the +only name to be coupled with that of Velasquez. He neither flattered +his sitters, as did Van Dyck, nor mocked them like Goya. And consider +the mediocrities, the dull, ugly, royal persons he was forced to +paint! He has wrung the neck of banal eloquence, and his prose, sober, +rich, noble, sonorous, rhythmic, is to my taste preferable to the +exalted, versatile volubility and lofty poetic tumblings in the azure +of any school of painting. His palette is ever cool and fastidiously +restricted. It has been said that he lacks imagination, as if creation +or evocation of character is not the loftiest attribute of +imagination, even though it deals not with the stuff of which +mythologies are made. + +We admire the enthusiasm of Mr. Ricketts for Velasquez, and his +analysis is second to none save R.A.M. Stevenson's. Yet we do protest +the painter was not the bundle of negations Mr. Ricketts has made of +him in his evident anxiety that some homage may be diverted from +Titian. Titian is incomparable. Velasquez is unique. But to describe +him as an artist who cautiously studied the work of other men, and +then avoided by a series of masterly omissions and evasions their +faults as well as their excellences, is a statement that robs +Velasquez of his originality. He is not an eclectic. He is a man of +affirmations, Velasquez. A student to his death, he worked slowly, +revised painfully, above all, made heroic sacrifices. Each new canvas +was a discovery. The things he left out of his pictures would fill a +second Prado Museum. And the things he painted in are the glories of +the world. Because of his simplicity, absence of fussiness, avoidance +of the mock-heroic, of the inflated "grand manner," critics have +pressed too heavily upon this same simplicity. There is nothing as +subtle as his simplicity, for it is a simplicity that conceals +subtlety. No matter the time of day or season of the year you visit +Velasquez, you never find him off his guard. Aristocratic in his ease, +he disarms you first. You may change your love, your politics, your +religion, but once a Velasquez worshipper, always one. + +Mr. Ricketts, over-anxious at precisely placing him, writes of his +"distinction." He is the most "distinguished" painter in history. But +we contend that this phrase eludes precise definition. "Distinguished" +in what? we ask. Style, character, paint quality, vision of the +beautiful? Why not come out plumply with the truth: Velasquez is the +supreme harmonist in art. No one ever approached him in his handling +save Hals, and Hals hardly boasts the artistic inches of Velasquez. +Both possessed a daylight vision of the world. Reality came to them in +the sharpest guise; but the vision of Velasquez came in a more +beautiful envelope. And his psychology is profounder. He painted the +sparkle of the eyes and also the look in them, the challenging glance +that asks: "Are we, too, not humans?" Titian saw colour as a poet, +Velasquez as a charmer and a reflective temperament. Hals doesn't +think at all. He slashes out a figure for you and then he is done. The +graver, deeper Spaniard is not satisfied until he has kept his pact +with nature. So his vision of her is more rounded, concrete, and +truthful than the vision of other painters. The balance in his work of +the most disparate and complex relations of form, space, colour, and +rhythm has the unpremeditated quality of life; yet the massive +harmonic grandeurs of Las Meninas have been placed by certain critics +in the category of glorified genre. + +Some prefer Las Hilanderas in the outer gallery. After the stately +equestrian series, the Philip, the Olivares, the Baltasar Carlos; +after the bust portraits of Philip in the Prado and in the National +Gallery, the hunting series; after the Crucifixion and its sombre +background, you return to The Spinners and wonder anew. Its subtitle +might be: Variations on the Theme of Sunshine. In it the painter +pursues the coloured adventures of a ray of light. Rhythmically more +involved and contrapuntal than The Maids, this canvas, with its +brilliant broken lights, its air that circulates, its tender yet +potent conducting of the eye from the rounded arm of the seductive +girl at the loom to the arched area with its leaning, old-time +bass-viol, its human figures melting dream-like into the tapestried +background, arouses within the spectator much more complicated _tats +d'me_ than does Las Meninas. The silvery sorceries of that picture +soothe the spirit and pose no riddles; The Spinners is a cathedral +crammed with implications. Is it not the last word of the art of +Velasquez--though it preceded The Maids? Will the eye ever tire of its +glorious gloom, its core of tonal richness, its virile exaltation of +everyday existence? Is it only a trick of the wrist, a deft blending +of colours by this artist, who has been called, wrongfully--the +"Shakespeare of the brush"? Is all this nothing more than +"distinguished"? + +Mr. Ricketts justly calls Las Lanzas the unique historic picture. +Painted at the very flush of his genius, painted with sympathy for the +conquered and the conqueror--Velasquez accompanied the Marquis of +Spinola to Italy--this Surrender of Breda has received the homage of +many generations. Sir Joshua Reynolds asserted that the greatest +picture at Rome was the Velasquez head of Pope Innocent X in the Doria +Palace (a variant is in the Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg). What +would he have said in the presence of this captivating evocation of a +historic event? The battle pieces of Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, and +Titian are destroyed; Las Lanzas remains a testimony to the powers of +imaginative reconstruction and architectonic of Velasquez. It is the +most complete, the most natural picture in the world. The rhythms of +the bristling lances are syncopated by a simple device; they are +transposed to another plane of perspective, there in company with a +lowered battle standard. The acute rhythms of these spears has given +to the picture its title of The Lances, and never was title more +appropriate. The picture is at once a decorative arabesque, an +ensemble of tones, and a slice of history. Spinola receives from the +conquered Justin of Nassau the keys of the beleagured Breda. Velasquez +creates two armies out of eight figures, a horse and fourteen +heads--here is the recipe of Degas for making a multitude carried to +the height of the incredible. His own portrait, that of a grave, +handsome man, may be seen to the right of the big horse. + +The first period of his art found Velasquez a realist heavy in colour +and brush-work, and without much hint of the transcendental realism to +be noted in his later style. The dwarfs, buffoons, the sop and the +Menippus are the result of an effortless art. In the last manner the +secret of the earth mingles with the mystery of the stars, as +Dostoevsky would put it. The Topers, The Forge of Vulcan, are +pictures that enthrall because of their robust simplicity and vast +technical sweep though they do not possess the creative invention of +the Mercury and Argus or The Anchorites. This latter is an amazing +performance. Two hermits--St. Antony the Abbot visiting St. Paul the +Hermit--are shown. A flying raven, bread in beak, nears them. You +could swear that the wafer of flour is pasted on the canvas. This +picture breathes peace and sweetness. The Christ of the Spaniard is a +man, not a god, crucified. His Madonnas, masterly as they are, do not +reach out hands across the frame as do his flower-like royal children +and delicate monsters. + +The crinolined princess, Margarita, with her spangles and furbelows, +is a companion to the Margarita at the Louvre and the one in Vienna. +She is the exquisite and lyric Velasquez. On his key-board of +imbricated tones there are grays that felicitously sing across alien +strawberry tints, thence modulate into fretworks of dim golden fire. +As a landscapist Velasquez is at his best in the Prado. The various +backgrounds and those two views painted at Rome in the garden of the +Villa Medici--a liquid comminglement of Corot and Constable, as has +been pointed out--prove this man of protean gifts to have anticipated +modern discoveries in vibrating atmospheric effects and colour-values. +But, then, Velasquez will always be "modern." And when time has +obliterated his work he may become the legendary Parrhasius of a +vanished epoch. To see him in the Prado is to stand eye to eye with +the most enchanting realities of art. + + + + +_CODA_ + + + +When a man begins to chatter of his promenades among the masterpieces +it may be assumed that he has crossed the sill of middle-age. Remy de +Gourmont, gentle ironist, calls such a period _l'heure insidieuse_. +Yet, is it not something--a vain virtue, perhaps--to possess the +courage of one's windmills! From the Paris of the days when I haunted +the ateliers of Grme, Bonnat, Meissonier, Couture, and spent my +enthusiasms over the colour-schemes of Decamps and Fortuny, to the +Paris of the revolutionists, Manet, Degas, Monet, now seems a life +long. But time fugues precipitately through the land of art. In +reality both periods overlap; the dichotomy is spiritual, not +temporal. + +The foregoing memoranda are frankly in the key of impressionism. They +are a record of some personal preferences, not attempts at critical +revaluations. Appearing first in the New York _Sun_, the project of +their publication in book form met with the approbation of its +proprietor, William Mackay Laffan, whose death in 1909 was an +international loss to the Fine Arts. If these opinions read like a +medley of hastily crystallised judgments jotted down after the manner +of a traveller pressed for time, they are none the less sincere. My +garden is only a straggling weedy plot, but I have traversed it with +delight; in it I have promenaded my dearest prejudices, my most absurd +illusions. And central in this garden may be found the image of the +supreme illusionist of art, Velasquez. + +Since writing the preceding articles on El Greco and Velasquez the +museum of the Hispanic Society, New York, has been enabled, through +the munificent generosity of Mr. Archer M. Huntington, to exhibit his +newly acquired El Grecos and a Velasquez. The former comprise a +brilliantly coloured Holy Family, which exhales an atmosphere of +serenity; the St. Joseph is said to be a portrait of El Greco; and +there also is a large canvas showing Christ with several of his +disciples. Notable examples both. The Velasquez comes from the +collection of the late Edouard Kann and is a life-size bust portrait +of a sweetly grave little girl. Seor Beruete believes her to +represent the daughter of the painter Mazo and his wife, Francisca +Velasquez, therefore a granddaughter of Velasquez. The tonalities of +this picture are subtly beautiful, the modelling mysterious, the +expression vital and singularly child-like. It is a fitting companion +to a portrait hanging on the same wall, that of the aristocratic young +Cardinal Pamphili, a nephew of Pope Innocent X, also by the great +Spaniard. + + * * * * * + + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC + +BRAHMS, TSCHAKOWSKY, CHOPIN, RICHARD STRAUSS, LISZT AND WAGNER + +12mo. $1.50 + +"Mr. Huneker is, in the best sense, a critic; he listens to the music +and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few words as +possible; or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping +strokes with a magnificent disregard for unimportant details. And as +Mr. Huneker is, as I have said, a powerful personality, a man of quick +brain and an energetic imagination, a man of moods and temperament--a +string that vibrates and sings in response to music--we get in these +essays of his a distinctly original and very valuable contribution to +the world's tiny musical literature."--J. F. Runciman, in London +Saturday Review. + +MELOMANIACS + +12mo. 31.50 + +Contents: The Lord's Prayer in B--A Son of Liszt--A Chopin of the +Gutter--The Piper of Dreams--An Emotional Acrobat--Isolde's +Mother--The Rim of Finer Issues--An Ibsen Girl--Tannhuser's +Choice--The Red-Headed Piano Player--Brynhd's Immolation--The Quest +of the Elusive--An Involuntary Insurgent--Hunding's Wife--The Corridor +of Time--Avatar--The Wegstaffes give a Musicale--The Iron Virgin--Dusk +of the Gods--Siegfried's Death--Intermezzo--A Spinner of Silence--The +Disenchanted Symphony--Music the Conqueror. + +"It would be difficult to sum up 'Melomaniacs' in a phrase. Never did +a book, in my opinion at any rate, exhibit greater contrasts, not, +perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of clearness and obscurity. It +is inexplicably uneven, as if the writer were perpetually playing on +the boundary line that divides sanity of thought from intellectual +chaos. There is method in the madness, but it is a method of +intangible ideas. Nevertheless, there is genius written over a large +portion of it, and to a musician the wealth of musical imagination is +a living spring of thought"--Harold E. Gorst, in _London Saturday +Review_ (Dec. 8, 1906). + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +ICONOCLASTS: + +A Book of Dramatists + +12mo. $1.50 net + +CONTENTS: Henrik Ibsen--August Strindberg--Henry Becque--Gerhart +Hauptmann--Paul Hervieu--The Quintessence of Shaw--Maxim Gorky's +Nachtasyl--Hermann Sudennann--Princess Mathilde's Play--Duse and +D'Annunzio--Villiers de l'lsle Adam--Maurice Maeterlinck. + +"His style is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in +which we are led to expect some significance, if not wit, in every +sentence."--G.K. Chesterton, _in London Daily News._ + +"No other book in English has surveyed the whole field so +comprehensively."--The Outlook. + +"A capital book, lively, informing, suggestive."--London Times +Saturday Review. + +"Eye-opening and mind-clarifying is Mr. Huneker's criticism; ... no +one having read that opening essay in this volume will lay it down +until the final judgment upon Maurice Maeterlinck is reached."--Boston +Transcript. + +OVERTONES: + +A Book of Temperaments + +_WITH FRONTISPIECE PORTRAIT OF RICHARD STRAUSS_ + +12mo. $1.25 net + +CONTENTS: Richard Strauss--Parsifal: A Mystical Melodrama--Literary +Men who loved Music (Balzac, Turgenieff, Daudet, etc.)--The Eternal +Feminine--The Beethoven of French Prose--Nietzsche the +Rhapsodist--Anarchs of Art--After Wagner, What?--Verdi and Boito. + +"The whole book is highly refreshing with its breadth of knowledge, +its catholicity of taste, and its inexhaustible energy."--_Saturday +Review, London._ + +"In some respects Mr. Huneker must be reckoned the most brilliant of +all living writers on matters musical."--_Academy, London._ + +"No modern musical critic has shown greater ingenuity in the +attempt to correlate the literary and musical tendencies of the +nineteenth century."--_Spectator, London._ + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +EGOISTS + +_A BOOK OF SUPERMEN_ + +Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrs, +Hello, Blake, Nietzsche, Ibsen and Max Stirner. + +With portrait of Stendhal, unpublished letter of Flaubert, and +original proof page of "Madame Bovary." + +12mo. $1.50 net + +"The best thing in the book happily comes first, the essay on +Stendhal. Closely and yet lightly written, full of facts yet as +amusing as a bit of discursive talk, penetrating, candid and very +shrewd, this study would be hard to beat in English, or, for that +matter, in French. It is, too, the best of the essays as regards +discrimination. There are no shades of Stendhal's genius, whether +making for good or for ill, that are missed by this analyst, and, +moreover, both the lights and shadows are justly distributed... He +seeks to show you the color of a man's mind, and it is evidence of his +validity as an essayist that straightway he interests you in the color +of his own. He is an impressionist in criticism... Such an essayist is +Mr. Huneker, a foe to dulness who is also a man of brains."--Royal +Cortissoz in _New York Tribune._ + +"JAMES HUNEKER: INDIVIDUALIST" + +"As a critic, whether of music, the plastic arts, of poetry or fiction +or philosophy, he is of those who never attain finality; but he is +always stimulating, provocative of thought, and by virtue of this +quality, not invariably possessed by critics, he is entitled to a +distinctive place in American letters." + +Edward Clark Marsh in _The Forum._ + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +VISIONARIES + +12mo. $1.50 net + +Contents: A Master of Cobwebs--The Eighth Deadly Sin--The Purse of +Aholibah--Rebels of the Moon--The Spiral Road--A Mock +Sun--Antichrist--The Eternal Duel--The Enchanted Yodler--The Third +Kingdom--The Haunted Harpsichord--The Tragic Wall--A Sentimental +Rebellion--Hall of the Missing Footsteps--The Cursory Light--An Iron +Fan--The Woman Who Loved Chopin--The Tune of Time--Nada--Pan. + +"The author's style is sometimes grotesque in its desire both to +startle and to find true expression. He has not followed those great +novelists who write French a child may read and understand. He calls +the moon 'a spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truth +beats at the bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-colored +cymbal'; a man moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant.' But +even these oddities are significant and to be placed high above the +slipshod sequences of words that have done duty till they are as +meaningless as the imprint on a worn-out coin. + +"Besides, in nearly every story the reader is arrested by the idea, +and only a little troubled now and then by an over-elaborate style. If +most of us are sane, the ideas cherished by these visionaries are +insane; but the imagination of the author so illuminates them that we +follow wondering and spellbound. In 'The Spiral Road' and in some of +the other stories both fantasy and narrative may be compared with +Hawthorne in his most unearthly moods. The younger man has read his +Nietzsche and has cast off his heritage of simple morals. Hawthorne's +Puritanism finds no echo in these modern souls, all sceptical, +wavering and unblessed. But Hawthorne's splendor of vision and his +power of sympathy with a tormented mind do live again in the best of +Mr. Huneker's stories."--London Academy (Feb. 3, 1906). + + * * * * * + +CHOPIN: + +The Man and His Music + +WITH ETCHED PORTRAIT +12mo. $2.00 + +"No pianist, amateur or professional, can rise from the perusal of his +pages without a deeper appreciation of the new forms of beauty which +Chopin has added, like so many species of orchids, to the musical +flora of the nineteenth century."--The Nation. + +"I think it not too much to predict that Mr. Huneker's estimate of +Chopin and his works is destined to be the permanent one. He gives the +reader the cream of the cream of all noteworthy previous commentators, +besides much that is wholly his own. He speaks at once with modesty +and authority, always with personal charm."--Boston Transcript. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Promenades of an Impressionist, by James Huneker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST *** + +***** This file should be named 13296-8.txt or 13296-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/2/9/13296/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Proofreaders Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/13296-8.zip b/old/13296-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e41225d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13296-8.zip diff --git a/old/13296.txt b/old/13296.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f057ec6 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13296.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10112 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Promenades of an Impressionist, by James Huneker + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Promenades of an Impressionist + +Author: James Huneker + +Release Date: August 26, 2004 [EBook #13296] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Proofreaders Team + + + + + +PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST + + +By JAMES HUNEKER + + +1910 + + + + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + + Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + Promenades of an Impressionist. 12mo, (_Postage_ 15 cents_), + _net_, $1.50. + + Egoists: A Book of Supermen. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Overtones: A Book of Temperaments. 12mo, _net_, $1.50. + + Mezzotints in Modern Music. 12mo, $1.50. + + Chopin: The Man and His Music. With Portrait. l2mo, $2.00. + + Visionaries. 12mo, $1.50. + + Melomaniacs. 12mo, $1.50 + + + + + +TO: FREDERICK JAMES GREGG + + -"Let us promenade our prejudices."--Stendhal(?) + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. PAUL CEZANNE + + II. ROPS THE ETCHER + + III. MONTICELLI + + IV. RODIN + + V. EUGENE CARRIERE + + VI. DEGAS + + VII. BOTTICELLI + +VIII. SIX SPANIARDS: + + "EL GRECO" + + "VELASQUEZ" + + GOYA + + FORTUNY + + SOROLLA + + ZULOAGA + + IX. CHARDIN + + X. BLACK AND WHITE: + + PIRANESI + + MERYON + + JOHN MARTIN + + ZORN + + BRANGWYN + + DAUMIER + + LALANNE + + LEGRAND + + GUYS + + XI. IMPRESSIONISM: + + MONET + + RENOIR + + MANET + + XII. A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU + +XIII. GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + XIV. LITERATURE AND ART + + XV. MUSEUM PROMENADES: + + PICTURES AT THE HAGUE + + THE MESDAG MUSEUM + + HALS OF HAARLEM + + PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM + + ART IN ANTWERP + + MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS + + BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL + + THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + PICTURES IN MADRID + + EL GRECO AT TOLEDO + + VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO + +CODA + + + + +PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST + + + + +I. PAUL CEZANNE + + + +After prolonged study of the art shown at the Paris Autumn Salon you +ask yourself: This whirlpool of jostling ambitions, crazy colours, +still crazier drawing and composition--whither does it tend? Is there +any strain of tendency, any central current to be detected? Is it +young genius in the raw, awaiting the sunshine of success to ripen its +somewhat terrifying gifts? Or is the exhibition a huge, mystifying +_blague_? What, you ask, as you apply wet compresses to your weary +eyeballs, blistered by dangerous proximity to so many blazing +canvases, does the Autumn Salon mean to French art? + +There are many canvases the subjects of which are more pathologic than +artistic, subjects only fit for the confessional or the privacy of the +clinic. But, apart from these disagreeable episodes, the main note of +the Salon is a riotous energy, the noisy ebullition of a gang of +students let loose in the halls of art. They seem to rush by you, +yelling from sheer delight in their lung power, and if you are rudely +jostled to the wall, your toes trod upon and your hat clapped down on +your ears, you console yourself with the timid phrase: Youth must have +its fling. + + + + +PROMENADES + + + +And what a fling! Largely a flinging of paint pots in the sacred +features of tradition. It needs little effort of the imagination to +see hovering about the galleries the faces of--no, not Gerome, Bonnat, +Jules Lefevre, Cabanel, or any of the reverend _seigneurs_ of the old +Salon--but the reproachful countenances of Courbet, Manet, Degas, and +Monet; for this motley-wearing crew of youngsters are as violently +radical, as violently secessionistic, as were their immediate +forebears. Each chap has started a little revolution of his own, and +takes no heed of the very men from whom he steals his thunder, now +sadly hollow in the transposition. The pretty classic notion of the +torch of artistic tradition gently burning as it is passed on from +generation to generation receives a shock when confronted by the +methods of the hopeful young anarchs of the Grand Palais. Defiance of +all critical canons at any cost is their shibboleth. Compared to their +fulgurant colour schemes the work of Manet, Monet, and Degas pales and +retreats into the Pantheon of the past. They are become classic. +Another king has usurped their throne--his name is Paul Cezanne. + +No need now to recapitulate the story of the New Salon and the +defection from it of these Independents. It is a fashion to revolt in +Paris, and no doubt some day there will arise a new group that will +start the August Salon or the January Salon. + +"Independent of the Independents" is a magnificent motto with which to +assault any intrenched organisation. + + + + +PAUL CEZANNE + + + +If riotous energy is, as I have said, the chief note of many of these +hot, hasty, and often clever pictures, it must be sadly stated that of +genuine originality there are few traces. To the very masters they +pretend to revile they owe everything. In vain one looks for a +tradition older than Courbet; a few have attempted to stammer in the +suave speech of Corot and the men of Fontainebleau; but 1863, the year +of the _Salon des Refuses_, is really the year of their artistic +ancestor's birth. The classicism of Lebrun, David, Ingres, Prudhon; +the romanticism of Gericault, Delacroix, Decamps; the tender poetry of +those true _Waldmenschen_, Millet, Dupre, Diaz, Daubigny, or of that +wild heir of Giorgione and Tiepolo, the marvellous colour virtuoso who +"painted music," Monticelli--all these men might never have been born +except for their possible impact upon the so-called "Batignolles" +school. Alas! such ingratitude must rankle. To see the major portion +of this band of young painters, with talent in plenty, occupying +itself in a frantic burlesque of second-hand Cezannes, with here and +there a shallow Monet, a faded Renoir, an affected Degas, or an +impertinent Gauguin, must be mortifying to the older men. + +And now we reach the holy precincts. If ardent youths sneered at the +lyric ecstasy of Renoir, at the severe restraint of Chavannes, at the +poetic mystery of Carriere, their lips were hushed as they tiptoed +into the Salle Cezanne. Sacred ground, indeed, we trod as we gazed and +wondered before these crude, violent, sincere, ugly, and bizarre +canvases. Here was the very hub of the Independents' universe. Here +the results of a hard-labouring painter, without taste, without the +faculty of selection, without vision, culture--one is tempted to add, +intellect--who with dogged persistency has painted in the face of +mockery, painted portraits, landscapes, flowers, houses, figures, +painted everything, painted himself. And what paint! Stubborn, with an +instinctive hatred of academic poses, of the atmosphere of the studio, +of the hired model, of "literary," or of mere digital cleverness, +Cezanne has dropped out of his scheme harmony, melody, +beauty--classic, romantic, symbolic, what you will!--and doggedly +represented the ugliness of things. But there is a brutal strength, a +tang of the soil that is bitter, and also strangely invigorating, +after the false, perfumed boudoir art of so many of his +contemporaries. + +Think of Bouguereau and you have his antithesis in Cezanne--Cezanne +whose stark figures of bathers, male and female, evoke a shuddering +sense of the bestial. Not that there is offence intended in his badly +huddled nudes; he only delineates in simple, naked fashion the horrors +of some undressed humans. His landscapes are primitive though suffused +by perceptible atmosphere; while the rough architecture, shambling +figures, harsh colouring do not quite destroy the impression of +general vitality. You could not say with Walt Whitman that his stunted +trees were "uttering joyous leaves of dark green." They utter, if +anything, raucous oaths, as seemingly do the +self-portraits--exceedingly well modelled, however. Cezanne's +still-life attracts by its whole-souled absorption; these fruits and +vegetables really savour of the earth. Chardin interprets still-life +with realistic beauty; if he had ever painted an onion it would have +revealed a certain grace. When Paul Cezanne paints an onion you smell +it. Nevertheless, he has captured the affections of the rebels and is +their god. And next season it may be some one else. + +It may interest readers of Zola's L'Oeuvre to learn about one of the +characters, who perforce sat for his portrait in that clever novel (a +direct imitation of Goncourt's Manette Salomon). Paul Cezanne bitterly +resented the liberty taken by his old school friend Zola. They both +hailed from Aix, in Provence. Zola went up to Paris; Cezanne remained +in his birthplace but finally persuaded his father to let him study +art at the capital. His father was both rich and wise, for he settled +a small allowance on Paul, who, poor chap, as he said, would never +earn a franc from his paintings. This prediction was nearly verified. +Cezanne was almost laughed off the artistic map of Paris. Manet they +could stand, even Claude Monet; but Cezanne--communard and anarchist +he must be (so said the wise ones in official circles), for he was +such a villainous painter! Cezanne died, but not before his apotheosis +by the new crowd of the Autumn Salon. We are told by admirers of Zola +how much he did for his neglected and struggling fellow-townsman; how +the novelist opened his arms to Cezanne. Cezanne says quite the +contrary. In the first place he had more money than Zola when they +started, and Zola, after he had become a celebrity, was a great man +and very haughty. + +"A mediocre intelligence and a detestable friend" is the way the +prototype of Claude Lantier puts the case. "A bad book and a +completely false one," he added, when speaking to the painter Emile +Bernard on the disagreeable theme. Naturally Zola did not pose his old +friend for the entire figure of the crazy impressionist, his hero, +Claude. It was a study composed of Cezanne, Bazille, and one other, a +poor, wretched lad who had been employed to clean Manet's studio, +entertained artistic ambitions, but hanged himself. The conversations +Cezanne had with Zola, his extreme theories of light, are all in the +novel--by the way, one of Zola's most finished efforts. Cezanne, an +honest, hard-working man, bourgeois in habits if not by temperament, +was grievously wounded by the treachery of Zola; and he did not fail +to denounce this treachery to Bernard. + +Paul Cezanne was born January 19, 1839. His father was a rich +bourgeois, and while he was disappointed when his son refused to +prosecute further his law studies, he, being a sensible parent and +justly estimating Paul's steadiness of character, allowed him to go to +Paris in 1862, giving him an income of a hundred and fifty francs a +month, which was shortly after doubled. With sixty dollars a month an +art student of twenty-three could, in those days, live comfortably, +study at leisure, and see the world. Cezanne from the start was in +earnest. Instinctively he realised that for him was not the rapid +ascent of the rocky path that leads to Parnassus. He mistrusted his +own talent, though not his powers of application. At first he +frequented the Academie Suisse, where he encountered as fellow-workers +Pissarro and Guillaumin. He soon transferred his easel to the +Beaux-Arts and became an admirer of Delacroix and Courbet. It seems +strange in the presence of a Cezanne picture to realise that he, too, +suffered his little term of lyric madness and wrestled with huge +mythologic themes--giant men carrying off monstrous women. +Connoisseurs at the sale of Zola's art treasures were astonished by +the sight of a canvas signed Cezanne, the subject of which was +L'Enlevement, a romantic subject, not lacking in the spirit of +Delacroix. The Courbet influence persisted, despite the development of +the younger painter in other schools. Cezanne can claim Courbet and +the Dutchmen as artistic ancestors. + +When Cezanne arrived in Paris the first comrade to greet him was Zola. +The pair became inseparable; they fought for naturalism, and it was to +Cezanne that Zola dedicated his _Salons_ which are now to be found in +a volume of essays on art and literature bearing the soothing title of +Mes Haines. Zola, pitching overboard many friends, wrote his famous +eulogy of Manet in the _Evenement_, and the row he raised was so +fierce that he was forced to resign as art critic from that journal. +The fight then began in earnest. The story is a thrice-told one. It +may be read in Theodore Duret's study of Manet and, as regards +Cezanne, in the same critic's volume on Impressionism. Cezanne +exhibited in 1874 with Manet and the rest at the impressionists' +salon, held at the studio of Nadar the photographer. He had earlier +submitted at once to Manet's magic method of painting, but in 1873, at +Auvers-sur-Oise, he began painting in the _plein air_ style and with +certain modifications adhered to that manner until the time of his +death. The amazing part of it all is that he produced for more than +thirty years and seldom sold a canvas, seldom exhibited. His solitary +appearance at an official salon was in 1882, and he would not have +succeeded then if it had not been for his friend Guillaumin, a member +of the selecting jury, who claimed his rights and passed in, amid +execrations, both mock and real, a portrait by Cezanne. + +Called a _communard_ in 1874, Cezanne was saluted with the title of +anarchist in 1904, when his vogue had begun; these titles being a +species of official nomenclature for all rebels. Thiers, once +President of the French Republic, made a _bon mot_ when he exclaimed: +"A Romantic--that is to say, Communist!" During his entire career this +mild, reserved gentleman from Aix came under the ban of the critics +and the authorities, for he had shouldered his musket in 1871, as did +Manet, as did Bazille,--who, like Henri Regnault, was killed in a +skirmish. + +His most virulent enemies were forced to admit that Edouard Manet had +a certain facility with the brush; his quality and beauty of sheer +paint could not be winked away even by Albert Wolff. But to Cezanne +there was no quarter shown. He was called the "Ape of Manet"; he was +hissed, cursed, abused; his canvases were spat upon, and as late as +1902, when M. Roujon, the Director of the Beaux-Arts, was asked by +Octave Mirbeau to decorate Cezanne, he nearly fainted from +astonishment. Cezanne! That barbarian! The amiable director suggested +instead the name of Claude Monet. Time had enjoyed its little +whirligig with that great painter of vibrating light and water, but +Monet blandly refused the long-protracted honour. Another anecdote is +related by M. Duret. William II of Germany in 1899 wished to examine +with his own eyes, trained by the black, muddy painting of Germany, +the canvases of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne, and Manet, acquired +by Director Tschudi for the Berlin National Gallery. He saw them all +except the Cezanne. Herr Tschudi feared that the Parisian fat would be +in the imperial fire if the Cezanne picture appeared. So he hid it. As +it was his Majesty nodded in emphatic disapproval of the imported +purchases. If he had viewed the Cezanne! + +At first blush, for those whose schooling has been academic, the +Cezanne productions are shocking. Yet his is a personal vision, though +a heavy one. He has not a facile brush; he is not a great painter; he +lacks imagination, invention, fantasy; but his palette is his own. He +is a master of gray tones, and his scale is, as Duret justly observes, +a very intense one. He avoids the anecdote, historic or domestic. He +detests design, prearranged composition. His studio is an open field, +light the chief actor of his palette. He is never conventionally +decorative unless you can call his own particular scheme decorative. +He paints what he sees without flattery, without flinching from any +ugliness. Compared with him Courbet is as sensuous as Correggio. He +does not seek for the correspondences of light with surrounding +objects or the atmosphere in which Eugene Carriere bathes his +portraits, Rodin his marbles. The Cezanne picture does not modulate, +does not flow; is too often hard, though always veracious--Cezannes +veracity, be it understood. But it is an inescapable veracity. There +is, too, great vitality and a peculiar reserved passion, like that of +a Delacroix _a ribbers_, and in his still-life he is as great even as +Manet. + +His landscapes are real, though without the subtle poetry of Corot or +the blazing lyricism of Monet. He hails directly from the Dutch: Van +der Near, in his night pieces. Yet no Dutchman ever painted so +uncompromisingly, so close to the border line that divides the rigid +definitions of old-fashioned photography--the "new" photography hugs +closely the mellow mezzotint--and the vision of the painter. An +eye--nothing more, is Cezanne. He refuses to see in nature either a +symbol or a sermon. Withal his landscapes are poignant in their +reality. They are like the grill age one notes in ancient French +country houses--little caseate cut in the windows through which you +may see in vivid outline a little section of the landscape. Cezanne +marvellously renders certain surfaces, china, fruit, tapestry. + +Slowly grew his fame as a sober, sincere, unaffected workman of art. +Disciples rallied around him. He accepted changing fortunes with his +accustomed equanimity. Maurice Denis painted for the Champ de Mars +Salon of 1901 a picture entitled Homage a Cezanne, after the +well-known _hommages_ of Fantin-Latour. This _homage_ had its uses. +The disciples became a swelling, noisy chorus, and in 1904 the Cezanne +room was thronged by overheated enthusiasts who would have offered +violence to the first critical dissident. The older men, the followers +of Monet, Manet, Degas, and Whistler, talked as if the end of the +world had arrived. Art is a serious affair in Paris. However, after +Cezanne appeared the paintings of that half-crazy, unlucky genius, +Vincent van Gogh, and of the gifted, brutal Gauguin. And in the face +of such offerings Cezanne may yet, by reason of his moderation, +achieve the unhappy fate of becoming a classic. He is certainly as far +removed from Van Gogh and Gauguin on the one side as he is from Manet +and Courbet on the other. Huysmans does not hesitate to assert that +Cezanne contributed more to accelerate the impressionist movement than +Manet. Paul Cezanne died in Aix, in Provence, October 23, 1906. + +Emile Bernard, an admirer, a quasi-pupil of Cezanne's and a painter of +established reputation, discoursed at length in the _Mercure de +France_ upon the methods and the man. His anecdotes are interesting. +Without the genius of Flaubert, Cezanne had something of the great +novelist's abhorrence of life--fear would be a better word. He +voluntarily left Paris to immure himself in his native town of Aix, +there to work out in peace long-planned projects, which would, he +believed, revolutionise the technique of painting. Whether for good or +evil, his influence on the younger men in Paris has been powerful, +though it is now on the wane. How far they have gone astray in +imitating him is the most significant thing related by Emile Bernard, +a friend of Paul Gauguin and a member of his Pont-Aven school. + +In February, 1904, Bernard landed in Marseilles after a trip to the +Orient. A chance word told him that there had been installed an +electric tramway between Marseilles and Aix. Instantly the name of +Cezanne came to his memory; he had known for some years that the old +painter was in Aix. He resolved to visit him, and fearing a doubtful +reception he carried with him a pamphlet he had written in 1889, an +eulogium of the painter. On the way he asked his fellow-travellers for +Cezanne's address, but in vain; the name was unknown. In Aix he met +with little success. Evidently the fame of the recluse had not reached +his birthplace. At last Bernard was advised to go to the Mayor's +office, where he would find an electoral list. Among the voters he +discovered a Paul Cezanne, who was born January 19, 1839, who lived at +25 Rue Boulegon. Bernard lost no time and reached a simple dwelling +house with the name of the painter on the door. He rang. The door +opened. He entered and mounted a staircase. Ahead of him, slowly +toiling upward, was an old man in a cloak and carrying a portfolio. It +was Cezanne. After he had explained the reason for his visit, the old +painter cried: "You are Emile Bernard! You are a maker of biographies! +Signac"--an impressionist--"told me of you. You are also a painter?" +Bernard, who had been painting for years, and was a friend of Signac, +was nonplussed at his sudden literary reputation, but he explained the +matter to Cezanne, who, however, was in doubt until he saw later the +work of his admirer. + +He had another atelier a short distance from the town; he called it +"The Motive." There, facing Mount Sainte-Victoire, he painted every +afternoon in the open; the majority of his later landscapes were +inspired by the views in that charming valley. Bernard was so glad to +meet Cezanne that he moved to Aix. + +In Cezanne's studio at Aix Bernard encountered some extraordinary +studies in flower painting and three death heads; also monstrous +nudes, giant-like women whose flesh appeared parboiled. On the streets +Cezanne was always annoyed by boys or beggars; the former were +attracted by his bohemian exterior and to express their admiration +shouted at him or else threw stones; the beggars knew their man to be +easy and were rewarded by small coin. Although Cezanne lived like a +bachelor, his surviving sister saw that his household was comfortable. +His wife and son lived in Paris and often visited him. He was rich; +his father, a successful banker at Aix, had left him plenty of money; +but a fanatic on the subject of art, ceaselessly searching for new +tonal combinations, he preferred a hermit's existence. In Aix he was +considered eccentric though harmless. His pride was doubled by a +morbid shyness. Strangers he avoided. So sensitive was he that once +when he stumbled over a rock Bernard attempted to help him by seizing +his arm. A terrible scene ensued. The painter, livid with fright, +cursed the unhappy young Parisian and finally ran away. An explanation +came when the housekeeper told Bernard that her master was a little +peculiar. Early in life he had been kicked by some rascal and ever +afterward was nervous. He was very irritable and not in good health. + +In Bernard's presence he threw a bust made of him by Solari to the +ground, smashing it. It didn't please him. In argument he lost his +temper, though he recovered it rapidly. Zola's name was anathema. He +said that Daumier drank too much; hence his failure to attain +veritable greatness. Cezanne worked from six to ten or eleven in the +morning at his atelier; then he breakfasted, repaired to the "Motive," +there to remain until five in the evening. Returning to Aix, he dined +and retired immediately. And he had kept up this life of toil and +abnegation for years. He compared himself to Balzac's Frenhofer (in +The Unknown Masterpiece), who painted out each day the work of the +previous day. Cezanne adored the Venetians--which is curious--and +admitted that he lacked the power to realise his inward vision; hence +the continual experimenting. He most admired Veronese, and was +ambitious of being received at what he called the "Salon de +Bouguereau." The truth is, despite Cezanne's long residence in Paris, +he remained provincial to the end; his father before becoming a banker +had been a hairdresser, and his son was proud of the fact. He never +concealed it. He loved his father's memory and had wet eyes when he +spoke of him. + +Bernard thinks that the vision of his master was defective; hence the +sometime shocking deformations he indulged in. "His _optique_ was more +in his brain than in his eye." He lacked imagination absolutely, and +worked slowly, laboriously, his method one of excessive complication. +He began with a shadow, then a touch, superimposing tone upon tone, +modelling his paint somewhat like Monticelli, but without a hint of +that artist's lyricism. Sober, without rhetoric, a realist, yet with a +singularly rich and often harmonious palette, Cezanne reported +faithfully what his eyes told him. + +It angered him to see himself imitated and he was wrathful when he +heard that his still-life pictures were praised in Paris. "That stuff +they like up there, do they? Their taste must be low," he would +repeat, his eyes sparkling with malice. He disliked the work of Paul +Gauguin and repudiated the claim of being his artistic ancestor. "He +did not understand me," grumbled Cezanne. He praised Thomas Couture, +who was, he asserted, a true master, one who had formed such excellent +pupils as Courbet, Manet, and Puvis. This rather staggered Bernard, as +well it might; the paintings of Couture and Cezanne are poles apart. + +He had, he said, wasted much time in his youth--particularly in +literature. A lettered man, he read to Bernard a poem in imitation of +Baudelaire, one would say very Baudelairian. He had begun too late, +had submitted himself to other men's influence, and wished for half a +century that he might "realise"--his favourite expression--his +theories. When he saw Bernard painting he told him that his palette +was too restricted; he needed at least twenty colours. Bernard gives +the list of yellows, reds, greens, and blues, with variations. "Don't +make Chinese images like Gauguin," he said another time. "All nature +must be modelled after the sphere, cone, and cylinder; as for colour, +the more the colours harmonise the more the design becomes precise." +Never a devotee of form--he did not draw from the model--his +philosophy can be summed up thus: Look out for the contrasts and +correspondence of tones, and the design will take care of itself. He +hated "literary" painting and art criticism. He strongly advised +Bernard to stick to his paint and let the pen alone. The moment an +artist begins to explain his work he is done for; painting is +concrete, literature deals with the abstract. He loved music, +especially Wagner's, which he did not understand, but the sound of +Wagner's name was sympathetic, and that had at first attracted him! +Pissarro he admired for his indefatigable labours. Suffering from +diabetes, which killed him, his nervous tension is excusable. He was +in reality an amiable, kind-hearted, religious man. Above all, simple. +He sought for the simple motive in nature. He would not paint a Christ +head because he did not believe himself a worthy enough Christian. +Chardin he studied and had a theory that the big spectacles and visor +which the Little Master (the Velasquez of vegetables) wore had helped +his vision. Certainly the still-life of Cezanne's is the only modern +still-life that may be compared to Chardin's; not Manet, Vollon, Chase +has excelled this humble painter of Aix. He called the Ecoles des +Beaux-Arts the "Bozards," and reviled as farceurs the German +secessionists who imitated him. He considered Ingres, notwithstanding +his science, a small painter in comparison with the Venetians and +Spaniards. + +A painter by compulsion, a contemplative rather than a creative +temperament, a fumbler and seeker, nevertheless Paul Cezanne has +formed a school, has left a considerable body of work. His optic nerve +was abnormal, he saw his planes leap or sink on his canvas; he often +complained, but his patience and sincerity were undoubted. Like his +friend Zola his genius--if genius there is in either man--was largely +a matter of protracted labour, and has it not been said that genius is +a long labour? + +From the sympathetic pen of Emile Bernard we learn of a character +living in the real bohemia of Paris painters who might have figured in +any of the novels referred to, or, better still, might have been +interpreted by Victor Hugo or Ivan Turgenieff. But the Frenchman would +have made of Pere Tanguy a species of poor Myriel; the Russian would +have painted him as he was, a saint in humility, springing from the +soil, the friend of poor painters, a socialist in theory, but a +Christian in practice. After following the humble itinerary of his +life you realise the uselessness of "literary" invention. Here was +character for a novelist to be had for the asking. The Crainquebille +of Anatole France occurs to the lover of that writer after reading +Emile Bernard's little study of Father Tanguy. + +His name was Julien Tanguy. He was born in 1825 at Pledran, in the +north of France. He was a plasterer when he married. The young couple, +accustomed to hardships of all kinds, left Saint-Brieuc for Paris. +This was in 1860. After various vicissitudes the man became a colour +grinder in the house of Edouard, Rue Clauzel. The position was meagre. +The Tanguys moved up in the social scale by accepting the job of +concierge somewhere on the Butte Montmartre. This gave Pere Tanguy +liberty, his wife looking after the house. He went into business on +his own account, vending colours in the quarter and the suburbs. He +traversed the country from Argenteuil to Barbizon, from Ecouen to +Sarcelle. He met Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, all youthful and +confident and boiling over with admiration for Corot, Courbet, and +Millet. They patronised the honest, pleasant pedlar of colours and +brushes, and when they didn't have the money he trusted them. It was +his prime quality that he trusted people. He cared not enough for +money, as his too often suffering wife averred, and his heart, always +on his sleeve, he was an easy mark for the designing. This supreme +simplicity led him into joining the Communists in 1871, and then he +had a nasty adventure. One day, while dreaming on sentry duty, a band +from Versailles suddenly descended upon the outposts. Pere Tanguy lost +his head. He could not fire on a fellow-being, and he threw away his +musket. For this act of "treachery" he was sentenced to serve two +years in the galleys at Brest. Released by friendly intervention he +had still to remain without Paris for two years more. Finally, +entering his beloved quarter he resumed his tranquil occupation, and +hearing that the Maison Edouard had been moved from the Rue Clauzel he +rented a little shop, where he sold material to artists, bought +pictures, and entertained in his humble manner any friend or luckless +devil who happened that way. Cezanne and Vignon were his best +customers. Guillemin, Pissarro, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Oller, +Messurer, Augustin, Signac, De Lautrec, symbolists of the Pont-Aven +school, neo-impressionists, and the young _fumistes_ of schools as yet +unborn, revolutionaries with one shirt to their back, swearing at the +official _Salon_ and also swearing by the brotherhood of man (with a +capital), assembled in this dingy old shop. Tanguy was a rallying +point. He was full of the milk of human kindness, and robbed himself +to give a worthless fellow with a hard-luck story some of the sous +that should have gone to his wife. Fortunately she was a philosopher +as well as an admirable housekeeper. If the rent was paid and there +was some soup-meat for dinner she was content. More she could not +expect from a man who gave away with both hands. But--and here is the +curious part of this narrative of M. Bernard's--Tanguy was the only +person in Paris who bought and owned pictures by Cezanne. He had +dozens of his canvases stacked away in the rear of his +establishment--Cezanne often parted with a canvas for a few francs. +When Tanguy was hard up he would go to some discerning amateur and +sell for two hundred francs pictures that to-day bring twenty thousand +francs. Tanguy hated to sell, especially his Cezannes. Artists came to +see them. His shop was the scene of many a wordy critical battle. +Gauguin uttered the paradox, "Nothing so resembles a daub as a +masterpiece," and the novelist Elemir Bourges cried, "This is the +painting of a vintager!" Alfred Stevens roared in the presence of the +Cezannes, Anquetin admired; but, as Bernard adds, Jacques Blanche +bought. So did Durand-Ruel, who has informed me that a fine Cezanne +to-day is a difficult fish to hook. The great public won't have him, +and the amateurs who adore him jealously hold on to their prizes. + +The socialism of Pere Tanguy was of a mild order. He pitied with a +Tolstoyan pity the sufferings of the poor. He did not hate the rich, +nor did he stand at street corners preaching the beauties of torch and +bomb. A simple soul, uneducated, not critical, yet with an instinctive +_flair_ for the coming triumphs of his young men, he espoused the +cause of his clients because they were poverty-stricken, unknown, and +revolutionists--an aesthetic revolution was his wildest dream. He said +of Cezanne that "Papa Cezanne always quits a picture before he +finishes it. If he moves he lets his canvases lie in the vacated +studio." He no doubt benefited by this carelessness of the painter. +Cezanne worked slowly, but he never stopped working; he left nothing +to hazard, and, astonishing fact, he spent every morning at the +Louvre. There he practised his daily scales, optically speaking, +before taking up the brush for the day's work. Many of Vincent von +Gogh's pictures Tanguy owned. This was about 1886. The eccentric, +gifted Dutchman attracted the poor merchant by his ferocious +socialism. He was, indeed, a ferocious temperament, working like a +madman, painting with his colour tubes when he had no brushes, and +literally living in the _boutique_ of Tanguy. The latter always read +_Le Cri du Peuple_ and _L'Intransigeant_, and believed all he read. He +did not care much for Van Gogh's compositions, no doubt agreeing with +Cezanne, who, viewing them for the first time, calmly remarked to the +youth, "Sincerely, you paint like a crazy man." A prophetic note! Van +Gogh frequented a tavern kept by an old model, an Italian woman. It +bore the romantic title of The Tambourine. When he couldn't pay his +bills he would cover the walls with furious frescoes, flowers of +tropical exuberance, landscapes that must have been seen in a +nightmare. He was painting at this time three pictures a day. He would +part with a canvas at the extortionate price of a franc. + +Tanguy was the possessor of a large portrait by Cezanne, done in his +earliest manner. This he had to sell on account of pressing need. Dark +days followed. He moved across the street into smaller quarters. The +old crowd began to drift away; some died, some had become famous, and +one, Van Gogh, shot himself in an access of mania. This was a shock to +his friend. A second followed when Van Gogh's devoted brother went +mad. Good Father Tanguy, as he was affectionately called, sickened. He +entered a hospital. He suffered from a cancerous trouble of the +stomach. One day he said to his wife, who was visiting him: "I am +bored here... I won't die here... I mean to die in my own home." He +went home and died shortly afterward. In 1894 Octave Mirbeau wrote a +moving article for the _Journal_ about the man who had never spoken +ill of any one, who had never turned from his door a hungry person. +The result was a sale organised at the Hotel Drouot, to which +prominent artists and literary folk contributed works. Cazin, +Guillemet, Gyp, Maufra, Monet, Luce, Pissarro, Rochegrosse, Sisley, +Vauthier, Carrier-Belleuse, Berthe Morisot, Renoir, Jongkind, +Raffaelli, *Helleu, Rodin, and many others participated in this noble +charity, which brought the widow ten thousand francs. She soon died. + +Van Gogh painted a portrait of Tanguy about 1886. It is said to belong +to Rodin. It represents the naive man with his irregular features and +placid expression of a stoic; not a distinguished face, but +unmistakably that of a gentle soul, who had loved his neighbour better +than himself (therefore he died in misery). He it was who may be +remembered by those who knew him--and also a few future historians of +the futility of things in general--as the man who first made known to +Paris the pictures of the timid, obstinate Paul Cezanne. An odd fish, +indeed, was this same Julien Tanguy, little father to painters. + + + + +II. ROPS THE ETCHER + + + +I + +That personality in art counts, next to actual genius, heavier than +all other qualities, is such a truism that it is often forgotten. In +the enormous mass of mediocre work which is turned out annually by +artists of technical talent seldom is there encountered a strong, +well-defined personality. Imitation has been called the bane of +originality; suppress it as a factor, and nine-tenths of living +painters, sculptors, etchers would have to shut up shop. The stencil +is the support of many men who otherwise might have become useful +citizens, shoemakers, tailors, policemen, or vice-presidents. For this +reason the phrase "academic" should be more elastic in its meanings. +There are academic painters influenced by Corot or Monticelli, as well +as by David, Gros, or Meissonier. The "academic" Rodin has appeared in +contemporary sculpture; the great Frenchman found for himself his +formula, and the lesser men have appropriated it to their own uses. +This is considered legitimate, though not a high order of art; +however, the second-rate rules in the market-place, let the genius +rage as he will. He must be tamed. He must be softened; his divine +fire shaded by the friendly screens of more prudent, more conventional +talent. Even among men of genius up on the heights it is the +personality of each that enters largely into the equation of their +work. No one can confuse Whistler the etcher with the etcher +Rembrandt; the profounder is the Dutchman. Yet what individuality +there is in the plates of the American! What personality! Now, +Felicien Rops, the Belgian etcher, lithographer, engraver, designer, +and painter, occupies about the same relative position to Honore +Daumier as Whistler does to Rembrandt. How seldom you hear of Rops. +Why? He was a man of genius, one of the greatest etchers and +lithographers of his century, an artist with an intense personal line, +a colossal workman and versatile inventor--why has he been passed over +and inferior men praised? + +His pornographic plates cannot be the only reason, because his +representative work is free from licence or suggestion. Giulio +Romano's illustrations to Aretino's sonnets are not held up as the +representative art of this pupil of Raphael, nor are the vulgarities +of Rowlandson, Hogarth, George Morland set against their better +attempts. Collectors treasure the engravings of the eighteenth-century +_editions des fermiers-generaux_ for their capital workmanship, not +for their licentious themes. But Rops is always the Rops of the +Pornocrates! After discussing him with some amateurs you are forced to +realise that it is his plates in which he gives rein to an +unparalleled flow of animal spirits and _gauloiserie_ that are the +more esteemed. Rops the artist, with the big and subtle style, the +etcher of the Sataniques, of Le Pendu, of La Buveuse d'Absinthe and +half a hundred other masterpieces, is set aside for the witty +illustrator, with the humour of a Rabelais and the cynicism of +Chamfort. And even on this side of his genius he has never been +excelled, the Japanese alone being his equals in daring of invention, +while he tops them in the expression of broad humour. + +In the Luxembourg galleries there is a picture of an interesting man, +in an etcher's atelier. It is the portrait of Rops by Mathey, and +shows him examining at a window, through which the light pours in, a +freshly pulled proof. It depicts with skill the intense expression +upon his handsome face, the expression of an artist absolutely +absorbed in his work. That is the real Rops. His master quality was +intensity. It traversed like a fine keen flame his entire production +from seemingly insignificant tail-pieces to his agonised designs, in +which luxury and pain are inextricably commingled. + +He was born at Namur, Belgium, July 10, 1833, and died at Essonnes, +near Paris, August 23,1898. He was the son of wealthy parents, and on +one side stemmed directly from Hungary. His grandfather was Rops +Lajos, of the province called Alfod. The Maygar predominated. He was +as proud and fierce as Goya. A fighter from the beginning, still in +warrior's harness at the close, when, "cardiac and impenitent," as he +put it, he died of heart trouble. He received at the hands of the +Jesuits a classical education. A Latinist, he was erudite as were few +of his artistic contemporaries. The mystic strain in him did not +betray itself until his third period. He was an accomplished humourist +and could generally cap Latin verses with D'Aurevilly or Huysmans. +Tertullian's De Cultu Feminarum he must have read, for many of his +plates are illustrations of the learned Bishop of Carthage's attitude +toward womankind. The hot crossings of blood, Belgian and Hungarian, +may be responsible for a peculiarly forceful, rebellious, sensual, and +boisterous temperament. + +Doubtless the three stadia of an artist's career are the arbitrary +classification of critics; nevertheless they are well marked in many +cases. Balzac was a romantic, a realist, a mystic; Flaubert was +alternately romantic and realist. Tolstoi was never a romantic, but a +realist he was, and he is a mystic. Dostoievski, from whom he absorbed +so much, taught him the formulas of his mysticism--though Tolstoi has +never felt the life of the soul so profoundly as this predecessor. +Ibsen passed through the three stages. Huysmans, never romantic, began +as a realistic pessimist and ended as a pessimistic mystic. Felicien +Rops could never have been a romantic, though the _macabre_ +romanticism of 1830 may be found in his designs. A realist, brutal, +bitter, he was in his youth; he saw the grosser facts of life, so +often lamentable and tender, in the spirit of a Voltaire doubled by a +Rabelais. There is honest and also shocking laughter in these early +illustrations. A _fantaisiste_, graceful, delicate--and +indelicate--emerged after the lad went up to Paris, as if he had +stepped out of the eighteenth century. Rops summed up in his book +plates, title-pages, and wood-cuts, illustrations done in a furious +speed, all the elegance, the courtly corruption, and Boucher-like +luxuriousness that may be detected in the moral _marquetrie_ of the +Goncourts. He had not yet said, "Evil, be thou my Good," nor had the +mystic delirium of the last period set in. All his afternoons must +have been those of a faun--a faun who with impeccable solicitude put +on paper what he saw in the heart of the bosk or down by the banks of +secret rivers. The sad turpitudes, the casuistry of concupiscence, the +ironic discolourations and feverish delving into subterranean moral +stratifications were as yet afar. He was young, handsome, with a +lithe, vigorous body and the head of an aristocratic Mephistopheles, a +head all profile, like the heads of Hungary--Hungary itself, which is +all profile. Need we add that after the death of his father he soon +wasted a fortune? But the reckless bohemian in him was subjugated by +necessity. He set to work to earn his bread. Some conception of his +labours for thirty-five years may be gleaned from the catalogue of his +work by Erastene Ramiro (whose real name is Eugene Rodrigues). Nearly +three thousand plates he etched, lithographed, or engraved, not +including his paintings or his experiments in various mediums, such as +_vernis mou_ and wood-engraving. + +The coarse legends of old Flanders found in Rops their pictorial +interpreter. Less cerebral in his abounding youth he made Paris laugh +with his comical travesties of political persons, persons in high +finance, and also by his shrewd eye for the homely traits in the life +of the people. His street scenes are miracles of detail, satire, and +fun. The one entitled Spring is the most noted. That legacy of hate, +inherited from the 1830 poets, of the bourgeois, was a merry play for +Rops. He is the third of the trinity of caricature artists, Daumier +and Gavarni being the other two. The liberal pinch of Gallic salt in +the earlier plates need not annoy one. Deliberately vulgar he never +is, though he sports with things hallowed, and always goes out of his +way to insult the religion he first professed. There is in this +Satanist a religious _fond_; the very fierceness of his attacks, of +his blasphemies, betrays the Catholic at heart. If he did not believe, +why should he have displayed such continual scorn? No, Rops was not as +sincere as his friends would have us believe. He made his Pegasus plod +in too deep mud, and often in his most winged flights he darkened the +blue with his satyr-like brutalities. But in the gay middle period his +pages overflow with decorative Cupids and tiny devils, joyful girls, +dainty amourettes, and Parisian _putti_--they blithely kick their legs +over the edges of eternity, and smile as if life were a snowball jest +or a game at forfeits. They are adorable. His women are usually +strong-backed, robust Amazons, drawn with a swirling line and a +Rubens-like fulness. They are conquerors. Before these majestic idols +men prostrate themselves. + +In his turbulent later visions there is no suspicion of the opium that +gave its inspiration to Coleridge, Poe, De Quincey, James Thomson, or +Baudelaire. The city of dreadful night shown us by Rops is the city +through whose streets he has passed his life long. Not the dream +cities of James Ensor or De Groux, the Paris of Rops is at once an +abode of disillusionment, of mordant joys, of sheer ecstasy and morbid +hallucinations. The opium of Rops is his imagination, aided by a +manual dexterity that is extraordinary. He is a master of linear +design. He is cold, deadly cold, but correct ever. Fabulous and +absurd, delicious and abominable as he may be, his spirit sits +critically aloft, never smiling. Impersonal as a toxicologist, he +handles his poisonous acids with the gravity of a philosopher and the +indifference of a destroying angel. There is a diabolic spleen more +strongly developed in Rops than in any of his contemporaries, with the +sole exception of Baudelaire, who inspired and spurred him on to +astounding atrocities of the needle and acid. This diabolism, this +worship of Satan and his works, are sincere in the etcher. A relic of +rotten Romanticism, it glows like phosphorescent fire during his last +period. The Church has in its wisdom employed a phrase for frigid +depravity of the Rops kind, naming it "morose delectation." Morose +Rops became as he developed. His private life he hid. We know little +or nothing of it save that he was not unhappy in his companionships or +choice of friends. He loathed the promiscuous methods by which some +men achieve admiration. But secret spleen there must have been--a +twist of a painter's wrist may expose his soul. He became a solitary +and ate the bitter root of sin, for, cerebral as he is, his discovery +of the human soul shows it as ill at ease before its maker. Flaubert +has said that "the ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope." But no +man may sun himself on this slope by the flames of hell without his +soul shrivelling away. Rodin, who admires Rops and has been greatly +influenced by him; Rodin, as an artist superior to the Belgian, has +revealed less preoccupation with the ignoble; at least, despite his +excursions into questionable territory, he has never been carried +completely away. He always returns to the sane, to the normal life; +but over the volcanic landscapes of Rops are strewn many moral +abysses. + + +II + +He had no illusions as to the intelligence and sincerity of those men +who, denying free-will, yet call themselves free-thinkers. Rops +frankly made of Satan his chief religion. He is the psychologist of +the exotic. Cruel, fantastic, nonchalant, and shivering atrociously, +his female Satan worshippers go to their greedy master in *fatidical +and shuddering attitudes; they submit to his glacial embrace. The +acrid perfume of Rops's maleficent genius makes itself manifest in his +Sataniques. No longer are his women the embodiment of Corbiere's +"Eternel feminin de l'eternel jocrisse." Ninnies, simperers, and +simpletons have vanished. The poor, suffering human frame becomes a +horrible musical instrument from which the artist extorts exquisite +and sinister music. We turn our heads away, but the tune of cracking +souls haunts our ear. As much to Rops as to Baudelaire, Victor Hugo +could have said that he had evoked a new shudder. And singularly +enough Rops is in these plates the voice of the mediaeval preacher +crying out that Satan is alive, a tangible being, going about the +earth devouring us; that Woman is a vase of iniquity, a tower of +wrath, a menace, not a salvation. His readings of the early fathers +and his pessimistic temperamental bent contributed to this truly +morose judgment of his mother's sex. He drives cowering to her corner, +after her earlier triumphs, his unhappy victim of love, absinthe, and +diabolism. Not for an instant does he participate personally in the +strained voluptuousness or terrific chastisements of his designs. He +has all the old monachal contempt of woman. He is cerebrally chaste. +Huysmans, in his admirable essay on Rops, wrote, "Car il n'y a de +reellement obscenes que les gens chastes"; which is a neat bit of +special pleading and quite sophistical. Rops did not lead the life of +a saint, though his devotion to his art was Balzacian. It would be a +more subtle sophistry to quote Paul Bourget's aphorism. "There is," he +writes, "from the metaphysical observer's point of view, neither +disease nor health of the soul; there are only psychological states." +The _etats d'ames_ of Felicien Rops, then, may or may not have been +morbid. But he has contrived that his wit in its effect upon his +spectators is too often profoundly depressing and morbid and +disquieting. + +The triumphant chorus of Rops's admirers comprises the most critical +names in France and Italy: Barbey d'Aurevilly, J.K. Huysmans, +Pradelle, Josephin Peladan--once the _Sar_ of Babylonian fame--Eugene +Demolder, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian poet; Camille Lemonnier, +Champsaur, Arsene Alexandre, Fromentin, Vittorio Pica, De Heredia, +Mallarme, Octave Uzanne, Octave Mirbeau, the biographer Ramiro and +Charles Baudelaire. The last first recognised him, though he never +finished the projected study of him as man and artist. In the newly +published letters (1841-66) of Baudelaire there is one addressed to +Rops, who saw much of the unhappy poet during his disastrous sojourn +in Brussels. It was the author of Les Fleurs du Mal who made the +clever little verse about "Ce tant bizarre Monsieur Rops... Qui n'est +pas un grand prix de Rome, mais dont le talent est haut, comme la +pyramide de Cheops." + +A French critic has called Rops "a false genius," probably alluding to +the malign characters of the majority of his engraved works rather +than to his marvellous and fecund powers of invention. Perverse +idealist as he was, he never relaxed his pursuit of the perfection of +form. He tells us that in 1862 he went to Paris, after much +preliminary skirmishing in Belgian reviews and magazines, to "learn +his art" with Bracquemond and Jacquemart, both of whom he never ceased +praising. He was associated with Daubigny, painter and etcher, and +with Courbet, Flameng, and Therond. + +He admired Calmatta and his school--Bal, Franck, Biot, Meunier, +Flameng. He belonged to the International Society of Aquafortistes. He +worked in aquatint and successfully revived the old process, _vernis +mou_. A sober workman, he spent at least fourteen hours a day at his +desk. Being musical, he designed some genre pieces, notably that of +the truthfully observed Bassoonist. And though not originating he +certainly carried to the pitch of the artistically ludicrous those +progressive pictures of goats dissolving into pianists; of Liszt +tearing passion and grand pianos into tatters. He has contributed to +the gaiety of nations with his celebrated design: Ma fille! Monsieur +Cabanel, which shows a harpy-like mother presenting her nude daughter +as a model for that painter. The malicious ingenuity of Rops never +failed him. He produced for years numerous anecdotes in black and +white. The elasticity of his line, its variety and richness, the +harmonies, elliptical and condensed, of his designs; the agile, fiery +movement, his handling of his velvety blacks, his tonal gradations, +his caressing touch by which the metal reproduced muscular crispations +of his dry-point and the fat silhouettes of beautiful human forms, +above all, his virile grasp which is revealed in his balanced +ensembles--these prove him to be one of the masters of modern etching. +And from his cynical yet truthful motto: "J'appelle un chat un chat," +he never swerved. + +A student and follower of Jean Francois Millet, several landscapes and +pastorals of Rops recall the French painter's style. In his Belgian +out-of-doors scenes and interiors the Belgian heredity of Rops +projects itself unmistakably. Such a picture as Scandal, for example, +might have been signed by Israels. Le Bout de Sillon is Millet, and +beautifully drawn. The scheme is trite. Two peasants, a young woman +and a young man holding a rope, exchange love vows. It is very simple, +very expressive. His portraits of women, Walloons, and of Antwerp are +solidly built, replete with character and quaint charm. Charming, too, +is the portrait of his great-aunt. Scandal is an ambitious design. A +group of women strongly differentiated as to types and ages are +enjoying over a table their tea and a choice morsel of scandal. The +situation is seized; it is a picture that appeals. Ghastly is his +portrait of a wretched young woman ravaged by absinthe. Her lips are +blistered by the wormwood, and in her fevered glance there is despair. +Another delineation of disease, a grinning, skull-like head with a +scythe back of it, is a tribute to the artist's power of rendering the +repulsive. His Messalina, Lassatta, La Femme au Cochon, and La Femme +au Pantin should be studied. He has painted scissors grinders, flower +girls, "old guards," incantations, fishing parties, the rabble in the +streets, broom-riding witches, apes, ivory and peacocks, and a notable +figure piece, An Interment in the Walloon Country, which would have +pleased Courbet. + +It is in his incarnations of Satan that Rops is unapproachable. Satan +Sowing the Tares of Evil is a sublime conception, truly Miltonic. The +bony-legged demon strides across Paris. One foot is posed on Notre +Dame. He quite touches the sky. Upon his head is a broad-brimmed +peasant's hat, Quaker in shape. Hair streams over his skeleton +shoulders. His eyes are gleaming with infernal malice--it is the most +diabolic face ever drawn of his majesty; not even Franz Stuck's Satan +has eyes so full of liquid damnation. Scattering miniature female +figures, like dolls, to the winds, this monster passes over Paris, a +baleful typhoon. The moral is not far to seek; indeed, there is +generally a moral, sometimes an inverted one, in the Rops etchings. +Order Reigns at Warsaw is a grim commentary on Russian politics quite +opportune to-day. La Peine de Mort has been used by Socialists as a +protest against capital punishment. Les Diables Froids personifies the +impassible artist. It is a page torn from the book of hell. Rops had +read Dante; he knew the meaning of the lines: "As the rill that runs +from Bulicame to be portioned out amid the sinful women"; and more +than once he explored the frozen circles of Gehenna. Victor Hugo was +much stirred by the design, Le Pendu, which depicts a man's corpse +swinging under a huge bell in some vast and immemorial, raven-haunted, +decaying tower, whose bizarre and gloomy outlines might have been +created by the brain of a Piranesi. An apocalyptic imagination had +Felicien Rops. + + + + +III. MONTICELLI + + + +I + +Poor "Fada"! The "innocent," the inoffensive fool--as they christened +that unfortunate man of genius, Adolphe Monticelli, in the dialect of +the South, the slang of Marseilles--where he spent the last sixteen +years of his life. The richest colourist of the nineteenth century, +obsessed by colour, little is known of this Monticelli, even in these +days when an artist's life is subjected to inquisitorial methods. Few +had written of him in English before W.E. Henley and W.C. Brownell. In +France eulogised by Theophile Gautier, in favour at the court, admired +by Diaz, Daubigny, Troyon, and Delacroix, his hopes were cracked by +the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian war. He escaped to Marseilles, +there to die poor, neglected, half mad. Perhaps he was to blame for +his failures; perhaps his temperament was his fate. Yet to-day his +pictures are sought for as were those of Diaz two decades ago, though +there was a tacit conspiracy among dealers and amateurs not to drag +his merits too soon before the foot-lights. In 1900 at the Paris +Exposition a collection of his works, four being representative, +opened the eyes of critics and public alike. It was realised that +Monticelli had not received his proper ranking in the +nineteenth-century theatre of painting; that while he owed much to +Watteau, to Turner, to Rousseau, he was a master who could stand or +fall on his own merits. Since then the Monticelli pictures have been +steadily growing in favour. + +There is a Monticelli cult. America can boast of many of his most +distinguished specimens, while the Louvre and the Luxembourg are +without a single one. The Musee de Lille at Marseilles has several +examples; the private collections of M. Delpiano at Cannes and a few +collections in Paris make up a meagre list. The Comparative Exhibition +in New York, 1904, revealed to many accustomed to overpraising Diaz +and Fromentin the fact that Monticelli was their superior as a +colourist, and a decorator of singularly fascinating characteristics, +one who was not always a mere contriver of bacchanalian riots of +fancy, but who could exhibit when at his best a _justesse_ of vision +and a controlled imagination. + +The dictionaries offer small help to the student as to the doings of +this erratic painter. He was born October 24, 1824. He died June 29, +1886. He was of mixed blood, Italian and French. His father was a +gauger, though Adolphe declared that he was an authentic descendant of +the Crusader, Godefroy Monticelli, who married in 1100 Aurea Castelli, +daughter of the Duca of Spoleto. Without doubt his Italian blood +counted heavily in his work, but whether of noble issue matters +little. Barbey d'Aurevilly and Villiers de l'Isle Adam, two men of +letters, indulged in similar boasts, and no doubt in their poverty and +tribulations the oriflamme of aristocracy which they bravely bore into +the cafe life of Paris was a source of consolation to them. But it is +with brains, not blood, that painters mix their pigments, and the +legend of high birth can go with the other fictions reported by Henley +that Monticelli was an illegitimate offshoot of the Gonzagas; that he +was the natural son of Diaz; that Diaz kept him a prisoner for years, +to "steal the secret of his colours." + +Like many another of his temperament, he had himself to thank for his +woes, though it was a streak of ill-luck for him when the Prussians +bore down on Paris. He was beginning to be known. A pupil of Raymond +Aubert (1781-1857), he was at first a "fanatic of Raphael and Ingres." +Delacroix and his violently harmonised colour masses settled the +future colourist. He met Diaz and they got on very well together. A +Southerner, handsome, passionate, persuasive, dashing, with the +eloquence of the meridional, Monticelli and his musical name made +friends at court and among powerful artists. In 1870 he started on his +walk of thirty-six days from Paris to Marseilles. He literally painted +his way. In every inn he shed masterpieces. Precious gold dripped from +his palette, and throughout the Rhone valley there are, it is +whispered--by white-haired old men the memory of whose significant +phrases awakes one in the middle of the night longing for the valley +of Durance--that if a resolute, keen-eyed adventurer would traverse +unostentatiously the route taken by Monticelli during his Odyssey the +rewards might be great. It is an idea that grips one's imagination, +but unfortunately it is an idea that gripped the imagination of others +thirty years ago. Not an _auberge_, hotel, or hamlet has been left +unexplored. The fine-tooth comb of familiar parlance has been +sedulously used by interested persons. If there are any Monticellis +unsold nowadays they are for sale at the dealers'. + +In him was incarnate all that we can conceive as bohemian, with a +training that gave him the high-bred manner of a seigneur. He was a +romantic, like his friend Felix Ziem--Ziem, Marcellin, Deboutin, and +Monticelli represented a caste that no longer exists; bohemians, yes, +but gentlemen, refined and fastidious. Yet, after his return to his +beloved Marseilles, Monticelli led the life of an August vagabond. In +his velvet coat, a big-rimmed hat slouched over his eyes, he patrolled +the quays, singing, joking, an artless creature, so good-hearted and +irresponsible that he was called "Fada," more in affection than +contempt. He painted rapidly, a picture daily, sold it on the +_terrasses_ of the cafes for a hundred francs, and when he couldn't +get a hundred he would take sixty. Now one must pay thousands for a +canvas. His most loving critic, Camille Mauclair, who, above any one, +has battled valiantly for his art, tells us that Monticelli once took +eighteen francs for a small canvas because the purchaser had no more +in his pocket! In this manner he disposed of a gallery. He smoked +happy pipes and sipped his absinthe--in his case as desperate an enemy +as it had proved to De Musset. He would always doff his hat at the +mention of Watteau or Rubens. They were his gods. + +When Monticelli arrived in Marseilles after his tramp down from Paris +he was literally in rags. M. Chave, a good Samaritan, took him to a +shop and togged him out in royal raiment. They left for a promenade, +and then the painter begged his friend to let him walk alone so as not +to attenuate the effect he was bound to produce on the passersby, such +a childish, harmless vanity had he. His delight was to gather a few +chosen ones over a bottle of old vintage, and thus with spasmodic +attempts at work his days rolled by. He was feeble, semi-paralysed. +With the advent of bad health vanished the cunning of his hand. His +paint coarsened, his colours became crazier. His pictures at this +period were caricatures of his former art. Many of the early ones were +sold as the productions of Diaz, just as to-day some Diazs are palmed +off as Monticellis. After four years of decadence he died, repeating +for months before his taking off: "Je viens de la lune." He was one +whose brain a lunar ray had penetrated; but this ray was transposed to +a spectrum of gorgeous hues. Capable of depicting the rainbow, he died +of the opalescence that clouded his glass of absinthe. _Pauvre Fada!_ + + + + +II + +It is only a coincidence, yet a curious one, that two such dissimilar +spirits as Stendhal and Monticelli should have predicted their future +popularity. Stendhal said: "About 1880 I shall be understood." +Monticelli said in 1870: "I paint for thirty years hence." Both +prophecies have been realised. After the exhibition at Edinburgh and +Glasgow in 1890 Monticelli was placed by a few discerning critics +above Diaz in quality of paint. In 1892 Mr. Brownell said of +Monticelli in his French Art--a book that every student and amateur of +painting should possess--that the touch of Diaz, patrician as it was, +lacked the exquisiteness of Monticelli's; though he admits the +"exaggeration of the decorative impulse" in that master. For Henley +Monticelli's art was purely sensuous; "his fairy meadows and enchanted +gardens are that sweet word 'Mesopotamia' in two dimensions." Henley +speaks of his "clangours of bronze and gold and scarlet" and admits +that "there are moments when his work is as infallibly decorative as a +Persian crock or a Japanese brocade." D.S. MacColl, in his study of +Nineteenth-Century Painting, gives discriminating praise: +"Monticelli's own exquisite sense of grace in women and invention in +grouping add the positive new part without which his art would be the +mannerising of Rousseau," while Arthur Symons in his Studies in Seven +Arts declares all Monticelli's art "tends toward the effect of +music... his colour is mood ... his mood is colour." + +It remained, however, for Camille Mauclair, a Parisian critic in +sympathy with the arts of design, literature, and music, to place +Monticelli in his proper niche. This Mauclair has done with critical +tact. In his Great French Painters, the bias of which is evidently +strained in favour of the impressionistic school, in his +L'Impressionisme, and in his monograph on Watteau this critic declares +that Monticelli's art "recalls Claude Lorraine a little and Watteau +even more by its sentiment, and Turner and Bonington by its colour... +His work has the same subtlety of gradations, the same division into +fragments of tones (as in Watteau's 'Embarkment for Cythera'), the +same variety of execution, which has sometimes the opaqueness of china +and enamel and sometimes the translucence of precious stones or the +brilliancy of glass, metal, or oxides and seems to be the result of +some mysterious chemistry... Monticelli had an absolutely unique +perception of tonalities, and his glance took in certain shades which +had not been observed before, which the optic and chromatic science of +the day has placed either by proof or hypothesis between the principal +tones of the solar spectrum thirty years after Monticelli had fixed +them. There is magic and high lyric poetry in his art." I wrote of the +Monticellis exhibited at the Comparative Exhibition in New York: "At +the opposite end of the room there is A Summer Day's Idyll, upon which +Monticelli had squeezed all his flaming tubes. It seems orchestrated +in crushed pomegranate, the light suffusing the reclining figures like +a jewelled benediction. Marvellous, too, are the colour-bathed +creatures in this No Man's Land of drugged dreams... Do not the walls +fairly vibrate with this wealth of fairy tints and fantasy?" But it +must not be forgotten that he struck other chords besides blazing +sun-worshipping. We often encounter landscapes of vaporous melancholy, +twilights of reverie. +8888 +Monticelli once told an admiring young amateur that in his canvases +"the objects are the decorations, the touches are the scales, and the +light is the tenor," thereby acknowledging himself that he felt colour +as music. There was hyperaesthesia in his case; his eyes were +protuberant and, like the ears of violinists, capable of +distinguishing quarter tones, even sixteenths. There are affiliations +with Watteau; the same gem-like style of laying on the thick pate, the +same delight in fairy-like patches of paint to represent figures. In +1860 he literally resuscitated Watteau's manner, adding a personal +note and a richness hitherto unknown to French paint. Mauclair thinks +that to Watteau can be traced back the beginnings of modern +Impressionism; the division of tones, the juxtaposition of tonalities. +Monticelli was the connecting link between Watteau and Monet. The same +critic does not hesitate to name Monticelli as one of the great +quartet of harmonists, Claude, Turner, Monet being the other three. +Taine it was who voiced the philosophy of Impressionism when he +announced in his Philosophie de l'Art that the principal personage in +a picture is the light in which all things are plunged. Eugene +Carriere also asserted that a "picture is the logical development of +light." Monticelli before him had said: "In a painting one must sound +the _C_. Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, all the great ones have sounded +the C." His C, his key-note, was the magic touch of luminosity that +dominated his picture. Like Berlioz, he adored colour for colour's +sake. He had a touch all Venetian in his relation of tones; at times +he went in search of chromatic adventures, returning with the most +marvellous trophies. No man before or since, not even those +practitioners of dissonance and martyrs to the enharmonic scale, +Cezanne, Gauguin, or Van Gogh, ever matched and modulated such widely +disparate tints; no man before could extract such magnificent +harmonies from such apparently irreconcilable tones. Monticelli +thought in colour and was a master of orchestration, one who went +further than Liszt. + +The simple-minded Monticelli had no psychology to speak of--he was a +reversion, a "throw back" to the Venetians, the decorative Venetians, +and if he had possessed the money or the leisure--he hadn't enough +money to buy any but small canvases--he might have become a French +Tiepolo, and perhaps the greatest decorative artist of France. Even +his most delicate pictures are largely felt and sonorously executed; +not "finished" in the studio sense, but complete--two different +things. + +Fate was against him, and the position he might have had was won by +the gentle Puvis de Chavannes, who exhibited a genius for decorating +monumental spaces. With his fiery vision, his brio of execution, his +palette charged with jewelled radiance, Monticelli would have been the +man to have changed the official interiors of Paris. His energy at one +period was enormous, consuming, though short-lived--1865-75. His lack +of self-control and at times his Italian superficiality, never backed +by a commanding intellect, produced the Monticelli we know. In truth +his soul was not complicated. He could never have attacked the +psychology of Zarathustra, Hamlet, or Peer Gynt. A Salome from him +would have been a delightfully decorative minx, set blithely dancing +in some many-hued and enchanted garden of Armida. She would never have +worn the air of hieratic lasciviousness with which Gustave Moreau +inevitably dowered her. There was too much joy of the south in +Monticelli's bones to concern himself with the cruel imaginings of the +Orient or the grisly visions of the north. He was Oriental _au fond_; +but it was the Orientalism of the Thousand and One Nights. He painted +scenes from the Decameron, and his _fetes galantes_ may be matched +with Watteau's in tone. His first period was his most graceful; +ivory-toned languorous dames, garbed in Second Empire style, languidly +stroll in charming parks escorted by fluttering Cupids or stately +cavaliers. The "decorative impulse" is here at its topmost. In his +second period we get the Decameron series, the episodes from Faust, +the Don Quixote--recall, if you can, that glorious tableau with its +Spanish group and the long, grave don and merry, rotund squire +entering on the scene, a fantastic sky behind them. + +Painted music! The ruins, fountains, statues, and mellow herbage +abound in this middle period. The third is less known. Extravagance +began to rule; scarlet fanfares are sounded; amethysts and emeralds +sparkle; yet there is more thematic variety. Voluptuous, perfumed, and +semi-tragic notes were uttered by this dainty poet of the carnival of +life. The canvas glowed with more reverberating and infernal lights, +but lyric ever. Technique, fabulous and feverish, expended itself on +flowers that were explosions of colours, on seductive marines, on +landscapes of a rhythmic, haunting beauty--the Italian temperament had +become unleashed. Fire, gold, and purple flickered and echoed in +Monticelli's canvases. Irony, like an insinuating serpent, began to +creep into this paradise of melting hues. The masterful gradations of +tone became bewildered. Poison was eating the man's nerves. He +discarded the brush, and standing before his canvas he squeezed his +tubes upon it, literally modelling his paint with his thumb until it +almost assumed the relief of sculpture. What a touch he had! What a +subtle prevision of modulations to be effected by the careless scratch +of his nail or the whip of a knife's edge! Remember, too, that +originally he had been an adept in the art of design; he could draw as +well as his peers. But he sacrificed form and observation and +psychology to sheer colour. He, a veritable discoverer of tones--aided +thereto by an abnormal vision--became the hasty improviser, who at the +last daubed his canvases with a pasty mixture, as hot and crazy as his +ruined soul. The end did not come too soon. A chromatic genius went +under, leaving but a tithe of the gleams that illuminated his brain. +Alas, poor Fada! + + + + +IV. RODIN + + + +I + +Rodin, the French sculptor, deserves well of our new century; the old +one did so incontinently batter him. The anguish of his own Hell's +Portal he endured before he moulded its clay between his thick +clairvoyant fingers. Misunderstood, therefore misrepresented, he with +his pride and obstinacy aroused--the one buttressing the other--was +not to be budged from his formulas and practice of sculpture. Then the +world of art swung unwillingly and unamiably toward him, perhaps more +from curiosity than conviction. Rodin became famous. And he is more +misunderstood than ever. His very name, with its memory of Eugene +Sue's romantic rancour--you recall that impossible and diabolic Jesuit +Rodin in The Mysteries of Paris?--has been thrown in his teeth. He has +been called _ruse_, even a fraud; while the wholesale denunciation of +his work as erotic is unluckily still green in our memory. The +sculptor, who in 1877 was accused of "faking" his life-like Age of +Brass--now at the Luxembourg--by taking a mould from the living model, +also experienced the discomfiture of being assured some years later +that, not knowing the art of modelling, his statue of Balzac was only +an evasion of difficulties. And this to the man who had in the interim +wrought so many masterpieces. + +To give him his due he stands prosperity not quite as well as he did +poverty. In every great artist there is a large area of self-esteem; +it is the reservoir which he must, during years of drought and defeat, +draw upon to keep his soul fresh. Without the consoling fluid of +egoism, genius must perish in the dust of despair. But fill this +source to the brim, accelerate the speed of its current, and artistic +deterioration may ensue. Rodin has been called, fatuously, the second +Michael Angelo--as if there could ever be a replica of any human. He +has been hailed as a modern Praxiteles. And he is often damned as a +myopic decadent whose insensibility to pure line and deficiency in +constructional power have been elevated by his admirers into sorry +virtues. Yet is Rodin justly appraised? Do his friends not overdo +their glorification, his critics their censure? Nothing so stales a +demigod's image as the perfumes burned before it by his worshippers; +the denser the smoke the sooner crumble the feet of their idol. + +However, in the case of Rodin the fates have so contrived their +malicious game that at no point of his career has he been without the +company of envy, chagrin, and slander. Often, when he had attained a +summit, he would find himself thrust down into a deeper valley. He has +mounted to triumphs and fallen to humiliations, but his spirit has +never been quelled, and if each acclivity he scales is steeper, the +air atop has grown purer, more stimulating, and the landscape spreads +wider before him. He can say with Dante: "La montagna che drizza voi +che il mondo fece torti." Rodin's mountain has always straightened in +him what the world made crooked. The name of his mountain is Art. A +born non-conformist, Rodin makes the fourth of that group of +nineteenth-century artists--Richard Wagner, Henrik Ibsen, and Edouard +Manet--who taught a deaf and blind world to hear and see and think and +feel. + +Is it not dangerous to say of a genius that his work alone should +count, that his life is negligible? Though Rodin has followed +Flaubert's advice to artists to lead ascetic lives that their art +might be the more violent, nevertheless his career, colourless as it +may seem to those who better love stage players and the watery +comedies of society--this laborious life of a poor sculptor--is not to +be passed over if we are to make any estimate of his art. He, it is +related, always becomes enraged at the word "inspiration," enraged at +the common notion that fire descends from heaven upon the head of the +favoured neophyte of art. Rodin believes in but one +inspiration--nature. He swears he does not invent, but copies nature. +He despises improvisation, has contemptuous words for "fatal +facility," and, being a slow-moving, slow-thinking man, he admits to +his councils those who have conquered art, not by assault, but by +stealth and after years of hard work. He sympathises with Flaubert's +patient toiling days, he praises Holland because after Paris it seemed +slow. "Slowness is a beauty," he declared. In a word, Rodin has +evolved a theory and practice of his art that is the outcome--like all +theories, all techniques--of his own temperament. And that temperament +is giant-like, massive, ironic, grave, strangely perverse at times; +and it is the temperament of a magician doubled by that of a +mathematician. + +Books are written about him. De Maupassant describes him in Notre +Coeur with picturesque precision. He is tempting as a psychologic +study. He appeals to the literary, though he is not "literary." His +modelling arouses tempests, either of dispraise or idolatry. To see +him steadily, critically, after a visit to his studios in Paris or +Meudon, is difficult. If the master be there then you feel the impact +of a personality that is as cloudy as the clouds about the base of a +mountain and as impressive as the mountain. Yet a pleasant, +unassuming, sane man, interested in his clay--absolutely--that is, +unless you discover him to be more interested in humanity. If you +watch him well you may find yourself well watched; those peering eyes +possess a vision that plunges into your soul. And the soul this master +of marbles sees as nude as he sees the human body. It is the union of +artist and psychologist that places Rodin apart. These two arts he +practises in a medium that has hitherto not betrayed potentialities +for such almost miraculous performances. Walter Pater is quite right +in maintaining that each art has its separate subject-matter; +nevertheless, in the debatable province of Rodin's sculpture we find +strange emotional power, hints of the art of painting and a rare +musical suggestiveness. But this is not playing the game according to +the rules of Lessing and his Laocooen. + +Let us drop this old aesthetic rule of thumb and confess that during +the last century a new race of artists sprang up from some strange +element and, like flying-fish, revealed to a wondering world their +composite structures. Thus we find Berlioz painting with his +instrumentation; Franz Liszt, Tschaikowsky, and Richard Strauss +filling their symphonic poems with drama and poetry, and Richard +Wagner inventing an art which he believed to embrace the seven arts. +And there is Ibsen, who used the dramatic form as a vehicle for his +anarchistic ideas; and Nietzsche, who was such a poet that he was able +to sing a mad philosophy into life; and Rossetti, who painted poems +and made poetry that is pictorial. Sculpture was the only art that had +resisted this universal disintegration, this imbroglio of the arts. No +sculptor before Rodin had dared to break the line, dared to shiver the +syntax of stone. For sculpture is a static, not a dynamic art--is it +not? Let us observe the rules, though we preserve the chill spirit of +the cemetery. What Mallarme attempted to do with French poetry Rodin +accomplished in clay. His marbles do not represent but present +emotion, are the evocation of emotion itself; as in music, form and +substance coalesce. If he does not, as did Mallarme, arouse "the +silent thunder afloat in the leaves," he can summon from the vasty +deep the spirits of love, hate, pain, despair, sin, beauty, ecstasy; +above all, ecstasy. Now the primal gift of ecstasy is bestowed upon +few. In our age Keats had it, and Shelley; Byron, despite his passion, +missed it, and so did Wordsworth. We find it in Swinburne, he had it +from the first; but few French poets have it. Like the "cold devils" +of Felicien Rops, coiled in frozen ecstasy, the blasts of hell about +them, Charles Baudelaire can boast the dangerous attribute. Poe and +Heine knew ecstasy, and Liszt also; Wagner was the master adept of his +century. Tschaikowsky followed him close; and in the tiny piano scores +of Chopin ecstasy is pinioned in a few bars, the soul often rapt to +heaven in a phrase. Richard Strauss has shown a rare variation on the +theme of ecstasy; voluptuousness troubled by pain, the soul tormented +by stranger nuances. + +Rodin is of this tormented choir; he is master of its psychology. It +may be the decadence, as any art is in decadence which stakes the +parts against the whole. The same was said of Beethoven by the +followers of Haydn, and the successors of Richard Strauss will be +surely abused quite as violently as the Wagnerites abuse Strauss +to-day--employing against him the same critical artillery employed +against Wagner. That this ecstasy should be aroused by pictures of +love and death, as in the case of Poe and Baudelaire, Wagner and +Strauss, must not be adjudged as a black crime. In the Far East they +hypnotise neophytes with a bit of broken mirror, for in the kingdom of +art, as in the Kingdom of Heaven, there are many mansions. Possibly it +was a relic of his early admiration and study of Baudelaire that set +Wagner to extorting ecstasy from his orchestra by images of death and +love; and no doubt the temperament which seeks such combinations--a +temperament commoner in mediaeval days than ours--was inherent in +Wagner. He makes his Isolde sing mournfully and madly over a corpse +and, throwing herself upon the dead body of Tristan, die shaken by the +sweet cruel pains of love. Richard Strauss closely patterns after +Wagner in his Salome, there is the head of a dead man, and there is +the same dissolving ecstasy. Both men play with similar counters--love +and death, and death and love. And so Rodin. In Pisa we may see +(attributed by Vasari) Orcagna's fresco of the Triumph of Death. The +sting of the flesh and the way of all flesh are inextricably blended +in Rodin's Gate of Hell. His principal reading for forty years has +been Dante and Baudelaire. The Divine Comedy and Les Fleurs du Mal are +the key-notes in this white symphony of Auguste Rodin's. Love and life +and bitterness and death rule the themes of his marbles. Like +Beethoven and Wagner he breaks the academic laws of his art, but then +he is Rodin, and where he achieves magnificently lesser men would +miserably perish. His large tumultuous music is for his chisel alone +to ring out and sing. + + + +II + +The first and still the best study of Rodin as man and thinker is to +be found in a book by Judith Cladel, the daughter of the novelist +(author of Mes Paysans). She named it Auguste Rodin, pris sur la vie, +and her pages are filled with surprisingly vital sketches of the +workaday Rodin. His conversations are recorded; altogether this little +picture has much charm and proves what Rodin asserts--that women +understand him better than men. There is a fluid, feminine, disturbing +side to his art and nature very appealing to emotional women. Mlle. +Cladel's book has also been treasure-trove for the anecdote hunters; +all have visited her pages. Camille Mauclair admits his indebtedness; +so does Frederick Lawton, whose big volume is the most complete life +(probably official) that has thus far appeared, either in French or +English. It is written on the side of Rodin, like Mauclair's more +subtle study, and like the masterly criticism of Roger Marx. Born at +Paris in 1840--the natal year of his friends Claude Monet and +Zola--and in humble circumstances, not enjoying a liberal education, +the young Rodin had to fight from the beginning, fight for bread as +well as an art schooling. He was not even sure of a vocation. An +accident determined it. He became a workman in the atelier of +Carrier-Belleuse, the sculptor, but not until he had failed at the +Beaux-Arts (which was a stroke of luck for his genius) and after he +had enjoyed some tentative instruction under the great animal +sculptor, Barye. He was never a steady pupil of Barye, nor did he long +remain with him. He went to Belgium and "ghosted" for other sculptors; +indeed, it was a privilege, or misfortune, to have been the +"ghost"--anonymous assistant--for half a dozen sculptors. He learned +his technique by the sweat of his brow before he began to make music +upon his own instrument. + +How his first work, The Man With the Broken Nose, was refused by the +Salon jury is history. He designed for the Sevres porcelain works; he +made portrait busts, architectural ornaments for sculptors, +caryatides; all styles that are huddled in the yards and studios of +sculptors he had essayed and conquered. No man knew his trade better, +although we are informed that with the chisel of the _practicien_ +Rodin was never proficient--he could not or would not work at the +marble _en bloc_. His works to-day are in the leading museums of the +world and he is admitted to have "talent" by the academic men. Rivals +he has none, nor will he have successors. His production is too +personal. Like Richard Wagner, Rodin has proved a Upas tree for many +lesser men--he has reflected or else absorbed them. His closest +friend, the late Eugene Carriere, warned young sculptors not to study +Rodin too curiously. Carriere was wise, but his own art of portraiture +was influenced by Rodin; swimming in shadow, his enigmatic heads have +a suspicion of the quality of sculpture--Rodin's--not the mortuary art +of so much academic sculpture. + +A profound student of light and of movement, Rodin, by deliberate +amplification of the surfaces of his statues, avoiding dryness and +harshness of outline, secures a zone of radiancy, a luminosity, which +creates the illusion of reality. He handles values in clay as a +painter does his tones. He gets the design of the outline by movement +which continually modifies the anatomy--the secret, he believes, of +the Greeks. He studies his profiles successively in full light, +obtaining volume--or planes--at once and together; successive views of +one movement. The light plays with more freedom upon his amplified +surfaces--intensified in the modelling by enlarging the lines. The +edges of certain parts are amplified, deformed, falsified, and we see +that light-swept effect, that appearance as if of luminous emanations. +This deformation, he declares, was practised by the great sculptors to +snare the undulating appearance of life. Sculpture, he asserts, is the +"art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelled +figures." Finish kills vitality. Yet Rodin can chisel a smooth nymph +for you if he so wills, but her flesh will ripple and run in the +sunlight. His art is one of accents. He works by profile in depth, not +by surfaces. He swears by what he calls "cubic truth"; his pattern is +a mathematical figure; the pivot of art is balance, _i.e._, the +oppositions of volume produced by movement. Unity haunts him. He is a +believer in the correspondences of things, of the continuity in +nature; a mystic as well as a geometrician. Yet such a realist is he +that he quarrels with any artist who does not see "the latent heroic +in every natural movement." + +Therefore he does not force the pose of his model, preferring +attitudes or gestures voluntarily adopted. His sketch-books, as +copious, as vivid as the drawings of Hokusai--he is very studious of +Japanese art--are swift memoranda of the human machine as it dispenses +its normal muscular motions. Rodin, draughtsman, is as surprising and +original as Rodin, sculptor. He will study a human foot for months, +not to copy it, but to possess the secret of its rhythms. His drawings +are the swift notations of a sculptor whose eye is never satisfied, +whose desire to pin on paper the most evanescent movements of the +human machine is almost a mania. The French sculptor avoids studied +poses. The model tumbles down anywhere, in any contortion or +relaxation he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the method +adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiver +of surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a mere +scrawl, a few enveloping lines, a silhouette. But vitality is in it; +and for his purposes a mere memorandum of a motion. A sculptor has +made these extraordinary drawings not a painter. It will be well to +observe the distinction. He is the most rhythmic sculptor of them all. +And rhythm is the codification of beauty. Because he has observed with +a vision quite virginal he insists that he has affiliations with the +Greeks. But if his vision is Greek his models are Parisian, while his +forms are more Gothic than the pseudo-Greek of the academy. As W.C. +Brownell wrote years ago: "Rodin reveals rather than constructs +beauty... no sculptor has carried expression further; and expression +means individual character completely exhibited rather than +conventionally suggested." Mr. Brownell was also the first critic to +point out that Rodin's art was more nearly related to Donatello than +to Michael Angelo. He is in the legitimate line of French sculpture, +the line of Goujon, Puget, Rude, Barye. Dalou did not hesitate to +assert that the Dante portal is "one of the most, if not the most, +original and astonishing pieces of sculpture of the nineteenth +century." + +This Dante Gate, begun more than twenty years ago, not finished yet, +and probably never to be, is an astounding fugue, with death, the +devil, hell, and the passions as a horribly beautiful four-voiced +theme. I saw the composition a few years ago at the Rue de +l'Universite atelier. It is as terrifying a conception as the Last +Judgment; nor does it miss the sonorous and sorrowful grandeur of the +Medici Tombs. Yet how different, how feverish, how tragic! Like all +great men working in the grip of a unifying idea, Rodin modified the +old technique of sculpture so that it would serve him as plastically +as does sound a musical composer. A deep lover of music, his inner ear +may dictate the vibrating rhythms of his forms--his marbles are ever +musical; not "frozen music" as Goethe said of Gothic architecture, but +silent swooning music. This gate is a Frieze of Paris, as deeply +significant of modern aspiration and sorrow as the Parthenon Frieze is +the symbol of the great clear beauty of Hellas. Dante inspired this +monstrous and ennobled masterpiece, but Baudelaire filled many of its +chinks and crannies with writhing ignoble shapes; shapes of dusky fire +that, as they tremulously stand above the gulf of fears, wave +ineffectual desperate hands. Heine in his Deutschland asks: + + Kennst du die Hoelle des Dante nicht, + Die schreckliche Terzetten? + Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt + Den kann kein Gott mehr retten. + +And from the "singing flames" of Rodin there is no rescue. + +But he is not all tragedy and hell fire. Of singular delicacy, of +exquisite proportions are his marbles of youth, of springtide, and the +desire of life. In 1900, at his special exhibition, Paris, Europe, and +America awoke to these haunting visions. Not since Keats or Swinburne +has love been sung so sweetly, so romantically, so fiercely. Though he +disclaims understanding the Celtic spirit, one could say that there is +Celtic magic, Celtic mystery in his work. He pierces to the core the +frenzy and joy of love and translates them in beautiful symbols. +Nature is for him the sole theme; his works are but variations on her +promptings. He knows the emerald route and all the semitones of +sensuousness. Fantasy, passion, even paroxysmal madness there are; yet +what elemental power in his Adam as the gigantic first _homo_ +painfully heaves himself up from the earth to that posture which +differentiates him from the beasts. Here, indeed, the two natures are +at strife. And Mother Eve, her expression suggesting the sorrows and +shames that are to be the lot of her seed; her very loins seem crushed +by the ages that are hidden within them. You may walk freely about the +burghers of Calais, as did Rodin when he modelled them; that is one +secret of the group's vital quality. About all his statues you may +walk--he is not a sculptor of one attitude, but a hewer of men and +women. Consider the Balzac. It is not Balzac the writer of novels, but +Balzac the prophet, the seer, the great natural force--like Rodin +himself. That is why these kindred spirits converse across the years, +as do the Alpine peaks in that striking parable of Turgenieff's. No +doubt in bronze the Balzac will arouse less wrath from the +unimaginative; in plaster it produces the effect of some surging +monolith of snow. + +As a portraitist of his contemporaries Rodin is the unique master of +character. His women are gracious, delicious masks; his men cover many +octaves in virility and variety. That he is extremely short-sighted +has not been dealt with in proportion to the significance of this +fact. It accounts for his love of exaggerated surfaces, his formless +extravagance, his indefiniteness in structural design; possibly, too, +for his inability, or let us say lack of sympathy, for the monumental. +He is essentially a sculptor of the intimate emotions; he delineates +passion as a psychologist; and while we think of him as a cyclops +wielding a huge hammer destructively, he is often ardent in his search +of subtle nuance. But there is breadth even when he models an eyelid. +Size is only relative. We are confronted by the paradox of an artist +as torrential, as apocalyptic as Rubens and Wagner, carving with a +style wholly charming a segment of a baby's back so that you exclaim, +"Donatello come to life!" His slow, defective vision, then, may have +been his salvation; he seems to rely as much on his delicate tactile +sense as on his eyes. His fingers are as sensitive as a violinist's. +At times he seems to model tone and colour. A marvellous poet, a +precise sober workman of art, with a peasant strain in him like +Millet, and, like Millet, very near to the soil; a natural man, yet +crossed by nature with a perverse strain; the possessor of a +sensibility exalted, and dolorous; morbid, sick-nerved, and as +introspective as Heine; a visionary and a lover of life, very close to +the periphery of things; an interpreter of Baudelaire; Dante's alter +ego in his vast grasp of the wheel of eternity, in his passionate +fling at nature; withal a sculptor, always profound and tortured, +translating rhythm and motion into the terms of sculpture. Rodin is a +statuary who, while having affinities with both the classic and +romantic schools, is the most startling artistic apparition of his +century. And to the century he has summed up so plastically and +emotionally he has also propounded questions that only the unborn +years may answer. He has a hundred faults to which he opposes one +imperious excellence--a genius, sombre, magical, and overwhelming. + + + + +V. EUGENE CARRIERE + + + +Death has consecrated the genius of three great painters happily +neglected and persecuted during their lifetime--Manet, Monticelli, and +Carriere. Though furiously opposed, Manet was admitted to the +Luxembourg by the conditions of the Caillebotte legacy. There that +ironic masterpiece, Olympe--otherwise known as the Cat and +Cocotte--has hung for the edification of intelligent amateurs, though +it was only a bequest of triumphant hatred in official eyes. And now +the lady with her cat and negress is in the Louvre, in which +sacrosanct region she, with her meagre, subtle figure, competes among +the masterpieces. Yet there were few dissenting voices. Despite its +temperamental oscillations France is at bottom sound in the matter of +art. Genius may starve, but genius once recognised, the apotheosis is +logically bound to follow. No fear of halls of fame with a French Poe +absent. + +Eugene Carriere was more fortunate than his two famous predecessors. +He toiled and suffered hardship, but before his death he was +officially acknowledged though never altogether approved by the Salon +in which he exhibited; approved or understood. He fought under no +banner. He was not an impressionist. He was not a realist. Certainly +he could be claimed by neither the classics nor romantics. A +"solitary" they agreed to call him; but his is not the hermetic art of +such a solitary as Gustave Moreau. Carriere, on the contrary, was a +man of marked social impulses, and when in 1889 he received the Legion +of Honour, he was enabled to mingle with his equals--he had been +almost unknown until then. He was the most progressive spirit among +his brethren. Nowadays he is classed as an Intimist, in which category +and with such men as Simon Bussy, Menard, Henri le Sidaner, Emile +Wery, Charles Cottet, Lucien Simon, Edouard Vuillard, the Griveaus, +Lomont, Lobre, and others, he is still their master, still the +possessor of a highly individualised style, and in portraiture the +successor to such diverse painters as Prudhon, Ricard, and Whistler. + +Gabriel Seailles has written a study, Eugene Carriere, l'Homme et +l'Artiste, and Charles Morice has published another, Eugene Carriere. +The latter deals with the personality and ideas of one of the most +original thinkers among modern French painters. We have spoken of the +acerbity of Degas, of his wit, so often borrowed by Whistler and +Manet; we have read Eugene Fromentin's delightful, stimulating studies +of the old masters, but we doubt if Fromentin was as profound a +thinker as Carriere. Degas is not, though he deals in a more acid and +dangerous form of aphorism. It is one of the charms of the eulogy of +M. Morice to find embalmed therein so many phrases and speeches of the +dead painter. He was both poet and philosopher, let us call him a +seer, for his work fully bears out this appellation. A grand +visionary, he well deserves Jean Dolent's description of his pictures +as "realities having the magic of a dream." + +Carriere's career was in no wise extraordinary. He fled to no exotic +climes as did Paul Gauguin. His only tragedy was the manner of his +death. For three years previous he suffered the agonies of a cancer. +His bravery was admirable. No one heard him complain. He worked to the +last, worked as he had worked his life long, untiringly. Morice gives +a "succinct biography" at the close of his study. From it we learn +that Eugene Carriere was born January 29, 1849, at Gournay +(Seine-Inferieure); that he made his first steps in art at the +Strasbourg Academy; in 1869 he entered the Beaux-Arts, in Cabanel's +class. Penniless, he earned a precarious existence in designing +industrial objects. In 1870 he was made prisoner by the Prussians, +with the garrison of Neuf-Brisach, and taken to Dresden, where he was +confined in prison. After peace had been declared he resumed his +studies at the Beaux-Arts. In 1877 he married--an important event in +his art; thenceforward Madame Carriere and the children born to them +were his continual models, both by preference and also by force of +circumstances--he was too poor in the beginning to hire professional +models. He spent six months in London, which may or may not account +for his brumous colour; and in 1879, when he was thirty years old, he +exposed in the Salon of that year his Young Mother, the first of a +long series of Maternities. He was violently attacked by the critics, +and as violently defended. During the same year he attempted to win +the "prix de Rome" and gained honours for his sketch. Luckily he did +not attain this prize; and, still more luck, he left the school. + +In 1884 he received an honourable mention for a child's portrait; in +1885 a medal for his Sick Child, bought by the State; in 1886 Le +Premier voile was bought by the State and he was proposed for a medal +of honour and--singular dream of Frenchmen--he was decorated in 1889. +He died March 27, 1906. Not a long, but a full life, a happy one, and +at the last, glory--"_le soleil des morts_," as Balzac said--and a +competence for his dear ones. And it is to the honour of such writers +as Roger Marx, Anatole France, Hamel, Morice, Mauclair, Verhaeren, +Geffroy, that they recognised the genius of Carriere from the +beginning. In 1904 Carriere was made honorary president of the Autumn +Salon and was the chief guest of these young painters, who really +adored Paul Cezanne, and not the painter of an illusive psychology. I +wrote at that time: "Carriere, whose delicately clouded portraits, so +intimate in their revelation of the souls of his sitters, was not seen +at his best. He offered a large decorative panel for the Mairie of the +Thirteenth Arrondissement, entitled Les Fiances, a sad-looking +betrothal party ... the landscape timid, the decorative scheme not +very effective... His tender notations of maternity, and his heads, +painted with the smoky enchantments of his pearly gray and soft +russet, are more credible than this _panneau_." Was Carriere a +decorative painter by nature--setting aside training? We doubt it, +though Morice does not hesitate to name him after Puvis de Chavannes +in this field. The trouble is that he did not make many excursions +into the larger forms. He painted a huge canvas, Les Theatres +Populaires, in which the interest is more intimate than epical. He +also did some decorations for the Hotel de Ville, The Four Ages for a +Mairie, and the Christ at the Luxembourg and a view of Paris. +Nevertheless, it is his portraits that will live. + +Carriere was, first and last, a symbolist. There he is related to the +Dutch Seer, Rembrandt; both men strove to seek for the eternal +correspondence of things material and spiritual; both sought to bring +into harmony the dissonance of flesh and the spirit. Both succeeded, +each in his own way--though we need not couple their efforts on the +technical side. Rembrandt was a prophet. There is more of the +reflective poet in Carriere. He is a mystic. His mothers, his +children, are dreams made real--the magic of which Dolent speaks is +always there. To disengage the personality of his sitter was his first +idea. Slowly he built up those volumes of colour, light, and shadow, +the solidity of which caused Rodin to exclaim: "Carriere is also a +sculptor!" Slowly and from the most unwilling sitter he extorted the +secret of a soul. We speak of John Sargent as the master psychologist +among portraitists, a superiority he himself has never assumed; but +that magnificent virtuoso, an aristocratic Frans Hals, never gives us +the indefinite sense of things mystic beneath the epidermis of poor, +struggling humanity as does Eugene Carriere. Sargent is too +magisterial a painter to dwell upon the infinite little soul-stigmata +of men and women. Who can tell the renunciations made by the Frenchman +in his endeavour to wrest the enigma of personality from its abysmal +depths? + +As Canaille Mauclair says: "Carriere was first influenced by the +Spaniards, then by Ver Meer and Chardin ... formerly he coloured his +canvas with exquisite delicacy and with a distinction of harmonies +that came very near to Whistler's. Now he confines himself to bistre, +black and white, to evoke those dream pictures, true images of souls, +which make him inimitable in our epoch and go back to Rembrandt's +chiaroscuro." Colour went by the board at the last, and the painter +was dominated by expression alone. His gamut of tones became +contracted. "Physical magnetism" is exactly the phrase that +illuminates his later methods. Often cavernous in tone, sooty in his +blacks, he nevertheless contrives a fluid atmosphere, the shadows +floating, the figure floating, that arrests instant attention. He +became almost sculptural, handled his planes with imposing breadth, +his sense of values was strong, his gradations and degradation of +tones masterly; and he escaped the influences of the new men in their +researches after luminosity at all hazards. He considered +impressionism a transition; after purifying muddy palettes of the +academics, the division-of-tones painters must necessarily return to +lofty composition, to a poetic simplicity with nature, to a more +rarefied psychology. + +Carriere, notwithstanding his nocturnal reveries, his sombre +colouring, was not a pessimist. Indeed, the reverse. His philosophy of +life was exalted--an exalted socialism. He was, to employ Nietzsche's +pithy phrase, a "Yes-Sayer"; he said "Yes" to the universe. A man of +vigorous affirmations, he worshipped nature, not for its pictorial +aspects, but for the god which is the leaf and rock and animal, for +the god that beats in our pulses and shines in the clear sunlight. Nor +was it vague, windy pantheism, this; he was a believer--a glance at +his Christ reveals his reverence for the Man of Sorrows--and his +religious love and pity for mankind was only excelled by his hatred of +wrong and oppression. He detested cruelty. His canvases of childhood, +in which he exposes the most evanescent gesture, exposes the +unconscious helplessness of babyhood, are so many tracts--if you +choose to see them after that fashion--in behalf of mercy to all +tender and living things. He is not, however, a sentimentalist. His +family groups prove the absence of theatrical pity. Because of his +subtle technical method, his manner of building up his heads in a +misty medium and then abstracting their physical non-essentials, his +portraits have a metaphysical meaning--they are a _Becoming_, not a +_Being_, tangible though they be. Their fluid rhythms lend to them +almost the quality of a perpetual rejuvenescence. This may be an +illusion, but it tells us of the primary intensity of the painter's +vision. Withal, there is no scene of the merely spectral, no optical +trickery. The waves of light are magnetic. The picture floats in +space, seemingly compelled by its frame into limits. Gustave Geffroy +once wrote that, in common with the great masters, Carriere, on his +canvas, gives a sense of volume and weight. Whatever he sacrificed, it +was not actuality. His draughtsmanship never falters, his touch is +never infirm. + +I have seen his portraits of Verlaine, Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt, +Geffroy, of the artist himself and many others. The Verlaine is a +veritable evocation. It was painted at one _seance_ of several hours, +and the poet, it is said, did not sit still or keep silence for a +moment. He was hardly conscious that he was being painted. What a +head! Not that of the old faun and absinthe-sipping vagabond of the +Latin quarter, but the soul that lurked somewhere in Verlaine; the +dreamer, not the mystifier, the man crucified to the cross of +aspiration by his unhappy temperament. Musician and child, here is the +head of one of those pious, irresponsible mendicants who walked dusty +roads in the Middle Ages. It needed an unusual painter to interpret an +unusual poet. + +The Daudet face is not alone full of surface character, but explains +the racial affinities of the romancer. Here he is David, not Daudet. +The head of De Goncourt gives in a few touches--Carriere is ever +master of the essential--the irritable pontiff of literary +impressionism. Carriere was fond of repeating: "For the artist the +forms evoke ideas, sensations, and sentiments; for the poet, +sensations, ideas, sentiments evoke forms." Never expansively lyrical +as was Monticelli, Carriere declared that a picture is the logical +development of light. And on the external side his art is a continual +variation with light as a theme. Morice contends that he was a +colourist; that the blond of Rubens and the russet of Carriere are not +monochromes; that polychromy is not the true way of seeing nature +coloured. Certainly Carriere does not sacrifice style, expression, +composition for splashing hues. Yet his illuminating strokes appear to +proceed from within, not from without. He interrogates nature, but her +answer is a sober, not a brilliant one. Let us rather say that his +colouring is adequate--he always asserted that a sense of proportion +was success in art. His tone is peculiarly personal; he paints +expressions, the fleeting shades that cross the face of a man, a +woman, a child. He patiently awaits the master trait of a soul and +never misses it, though never displaying it with the happy cruelty of +Sargent and always judging mercifully. Notwithstanding his humble +attitude in the presence of nature, he is the most self-revealing of +painters. Few before him ever interpreted maternity as he has done. + +Carriere is not a virtuoso. He is an initiator--a man of rare +imagination. Above all, he escapes the rhetoric of the schools. His +apprehension of character is that of sympathetic genius. He divines +the emotions, especially in those souls made melancholy by sorrow; +uneasy, complex, feverish souls; them that hide their griefs, and +souls saturated with the ennuis of existence--to all he is interpreter +and consoler. He has pictured the _Weltschmerz_ of his age; and +without morbid self-enjoyment. A noble soul, an elevating example to +those artists who believe that art and life may be dissociated. +Carriere has left no school, though his spiritual influence has been +great. A self-contained artist, going his own way, meditating deeply +on art, on life, his canvases stand for his singleness and purity of +purpose. On the purely pictorial side he is, to quote M. Mauclair, "an +absolutely surprising painter of hands and glances." + +In the sad and anxious rectitude of his attire the artistic interest +in modern man is concentrated upon his head and hands; and upon these +salient points Carriere focussed his art. Peaceful or disquieted, his +men and women belong to our century. Spiritually Eugene Carriere is +the lineal descendant of the Rembrandt school--but one who has read +Dostoievsky. + + + + +VI. DEGAS + + + +Let us suppose that gay old misogynist Arthur Schopenhauer persuaded +to cross the Styx and revisiting the earth. Apart from his disgust if +forced to listen to the music of his self-elected disciple Richard +Wagner, what painted work would be likely to attract him? Remember he +it was who named Woman the knock-kneed sex--since the new woman is +here it matters little if her figure conforms to old-fashioned, +stupid, masculine standards of beauty. But wouldn't the nudes of Degas +confirm the Frankfort philosopher in his theories regarding the +"long-haired, short-brained, unaesthetic sex," and also confirm his +hatred for the exaggerations of poet and painter when describing or +depicting her? We fear that Schopenhauer would smile his malicious +smile and exclaim: "At last the humble truth!" It is the presentation +of the humble truth that early snared the affections of Degas, who has +with a passionate calm pursued the evanescent appearances of things +his entire life. No doubt death will find him pencil in hand. You +think of Hokusai, the old man mad with paint, when the name of Degas +is mentioned. He was born in Paris July 19, 1834--his full name is +Hilaire Germain Edgard (or Edgar)--and there is one phrase that will +best describe his career: He painted. Like Flaubert, he never married, +but lived in companionship with his art. Such a mania could have been +described by Balzac. Yet no saner art ever issued from a Parisian +atelier; sane, clear, and beautiful. + +Degas is a painter's painter. For him the subject is a peg upon which +to hang superb workmanship. In amazement the public asked: How could a +man in the possession of his powers shut himself up in a studio to +paint ballet girls, washerwomen, jockeys, drabs of Montmartre, +shopgirls, and horses? Even Zola, who should have known better, would +not admit that Degas was an artist fit to be compared with such men as +Flaubert and Goncourt; but Zola was never the realist that is Degas. +Now it is difficult to keep asunder the names of Goncourt and Degas. +To us they are too often unwisely bracketed. The style of the painter +has been judged as analogous to the novelist's; yet, apart from a +preference for the same subjects for the "modernity" of Paris, there +is not much in Degas that recalls Goncourt's staccato, febrile, +sparkling, "decomposed", impressionistic prose. Both men are +brilliant, though not in the same way. Pyrotechnics are abhorrent to +Degas. He has the serenity, sobriety, and impersonality of the great +classic painters. He is himself a classic. + +His legend is slender. Possessing a private income, he never was +preoccupied with the anxieties of selling his work. He first entered +the atelier of Lamotte, but his stay was brief. In the studio of +Ingres he was, so George Moore declares, the student who carried out +the lifeless body of the painter when Ingres fell in his fatal fit. +There is something peculiarly interesting about this anecdote for the +tradition of Ingres has been carried on by Degas. The greatest master +of pure line, in his portraits and nudes--we have forgotten his chilly +_pastiches_ of Raphael--of the past century, Ingres has been and still +is for Degas a god on the peaks of Parnassus. Degas is an Ingres who +has studied the Japanese. Only such men as Pollajuolo and Botticelli +rank with Degas in the mastery of rhythmic line. He is not academic, +yet he stems from purest academic traditions. He is not of the +impressionists, at least not in his technical processes, but he +associated with them, exhibited with them (though rarely), and is as a +rule confused with them. He never exhibited in the Salons, he has no +disciples, yet it is doubtful if any painter's fashion of seeing +things has had such an influence on the generation following him. The +name of Degas, the pastels of Degas, the miraculous draughtsmanship of +Degas created an imponderable fluid which still permeates Paris. +Naturally, after the egg trick was discovered we encounter scores of +young Columbuses, who paint ballet girls' legs and the heads of +orchestral musicians and scenes from the racing paddock. + +Degas had three painters who, if any, might truthfully call themselves +his pupils. These are Mary Cassatt, Alexis Rouart, and Forain. The +first has achieved solid fame. The last is a remarkable illustrator, +who "vulgarised" the austere methods of his master for popular +Parisian consumption. That Renoir, Raffaelli, and Toulouse-Lautrec owe +much to Degas is the secret of Polichinello. This patient student of +the Tuscan Primitives, of Holbein, Chardin, Delacroix, Ingres, and +Manet--the precepts of Manet taught him to sweeten the wiriness of his +modelling and modify his tendency to a certain hardness--was willing +to trust to time for the verdict of his rare art. He associated daily +with Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Whistler, Duranty, Fantin-Latour, and the +crowd that first went to the Cafe Guerbois in the Batignolles--hence +the derisive nickname, "The Batignolles School"; later to the Nouvelle +Athenes, finally to the Cafe de la Rochefoucauld. A hermit he was +during the dozen hours a day he toiled, but he was a sociable man, +nevertheless, a cultured man fond of music, possessing a tongue that +was feared as much as is the Russian knout. Mr. Moore has printed many +specimens of his caustic wit. Whistler actually kept silent in his +presence--possibly expecting a repetition of the _mot_: "My dear +friend, you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent at +all." Manet good-naturedly took a browbeating, but the Academic set +were outraged by the irreverence of Degas. What hard sayings were his! +Poor Bastien-Lepage, too, came in for a scoring. Barricaded in his +studio, it was a brave man who attempted to force an entrance. The +little, round-shouldered artist, generally good-tempered, would pour a +stream of verbal vitriol over the head of the unlucky impertinent. + +In 1860 or thereabout he visited America, and in New Orleans he saw +the subject of his Interior of a Cotton Factory, which was shown as an +historical curiosity at the Paris exposition in 1900. While it is +implacably realistic there is little hint of the future Degas. The +name of the painter was in every French painter's mouth, and the +brilliant article of Huysmans concentrated his fame. Huysmans it was +who first saw that Degas had treated the nude as Rembrandt would if he +had been alive--making allowances for temperamental variations. Degas +knew that to grasp the true meaning of the nude it must be represented +in postures, movements which are natural, not studio attitudes. As +Monet exposed the fallacy of studio lighting, so Degas revealed the +inanity of its poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with the +fourth wall removed; Degas preferred the key-hole through which we +seem to peep upon the privacy of his ugly females bathing or combing +their hair or sleeping, lounging, yawning, quarrelling, and walking. +The simian and frog-like gestures and sprawling attitudes are far from +arousing amiable sensations. These poor, tired women, hard-working +laundresses, shopgirls, are not alluring, though they are not as +hideous as the women of Cezanne or Edvard Muench; but the veracity of +the "human document" (overworked phrase!) is there. Charles Morice has +said that to Cezanne a potato was as significant as a human +countenance. The pattern interested him in both. For Degas the beauty +of life lies in the moving line. He captures with ease the swift, +unconscious gesture. His models are never posed. They are nature +caught in the act. There is said to be a difference between the +epidermis of the professional model and the human who undresses only +to go to bed. Degas has recorded this difference. What an arraignment +of the corset are the creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What +lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! _Voila l'animale!_ +he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some +girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! +Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a +douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes +and of drawing-room portraiture. + +Pity is deeply rooted in his nature. He is never tender, yet there is +veiled sympathy in the ballet-girl series. Behind the scenes, in the +waiting-rooms, at rehearsal, going home with the hawk-eyed mother, his +girls are all painfully real. No "glamour of the foot-lights," +generally the prosaic side of their life. He has, however, painted the +glorification of the danseuse, of that lady grandiloquently described +as _prima donna assoluta_. What magic he evokes as he pictures her +floating down stage! The pastel in the Luxembourg, L'Etoile, is the +reincarnation of the precise moment when the aerial creature on one +foot lifts graceful arms and is transfigured in the glow of the +lights, while about her beats--you are sure--the noisy, insistent +music. It is in the pinning down of such climaxes of movement that +Degas stirs our admiration. He draws movement. He can paint rhythms. +His canvases are ever in modulation. His sense of tactile values is +profound. His is true atmospheric colour. A feeling of exhilaration +comes while contemplating one of his open-air scenes with jockeys, +race-horses, and the incidental bustle of a neighbouring concourse. +Unexcelled as a painter of horses, as a delineator of witching +horsemanship, of vivid landscapes--true integral decorations--and of +the casual movements and gestures of common folk, Degas is also a +psychologist, an ironical commentator on the pettiness and ugliness of +daily life, of its unheroic aspects, its comical snobberies and +shocking hypocrisies; and all expressed without a melodramatic +elevation of the voice, without the false sentimentalism of Zola or +the morbidities of Toulouse-Lautrec. There is much Baudelaire in +Degas, as there is also in Rodin. All three men despised academic +rhetoric; all three dealt with new material in a new manner. + +It is the fashion to admire Degas, but it is doubtful if he will ever +gain the suffrage of the general. He does not retail anecdotes, though +to the imaginative every line of his nudes relates their history. His +irony is unremitting. It suffuses the ballet-girl series and the nude +sets. Irony is an illuminating mode, but it is seldom pleasant; the +public is always suspicious of an ironist, particularly of the Degas +variety. Careless of reputation, laughing at the vanity of his +contemporaries who were eager to arrive, contemptuous of critics and +criticism, of collectors who buy low to sell high (in the heart of +every picture collector there is a bargain counter), Degas has defied +the artistic world for a half-century. His genius compelled the +Mountain to come to Mahomet. The rhythmic articulations, the volume, +contours, and bounding supple line of Degas are the despair of +artists. Like the Japanese, he indulges in abridgments, deformations, +falsifications. His enormous faculty of attention has counted heavily +in his synthetical canvases. He joys in the representation of +artificial light; his theatres are flooded with it, and he is equally +successful in creating the illusion of cold, cheerless daylight in a +salle where rehearse the little "rats" and the older coryphees on +their wiry, muscular, ugly legs. His vast production is dominated by +his nervous, resilient vital line and by supremacy in the handling of +values. + +The Degas palette is never gorgeous, consisting as it does of cool +grays, discreet blues and greens, Chardin-like whites and +Manet-blacks. His procedure is all his own. His second manner is a +combination of drawing, painting, and pastel. "He has invented a kind +of engraving mixed with wash drawing, pastel crayon crushed with +brushes of special pattern." + + + + +VII. BOTTICELLI + + + +The common identity of the arts was a master theory of Richard Wagner, +which he attempted to put into practice. Walter Pater in his essay on +The School of Giorgione has dwelt upon the same theme, declaring music +the archetype of the arts. In his Essays Speculative John Addington +Symonds said some pertinent things on this subject. Camille Mauclair +in his Idees Vivantes proposes in all seriousness a scheme for the +fusion of the seven arts, though he deplored Wagner's efforts to reach +a solution. Mauclair's theory is that the fusion can only be a +cerebral one, that actually mingling sculpture, architecture, music, +drama, acting, colour, dancing can never evoke the sensation of unity. +Synthesis is not thus to be attained. It must be in the _idea_ of the +arts rather than their material realisation. A pretty chimera! Yet one +that has piqued the world of art in almost every century. It was the +half-crazy E.T.W. Hoffmann, composer, dramatist, painter, poet, stage +manager, and a dozen other professions, including that of genius and +drunkard, who set off a train of ideas which buzzed in the brains of +Poe, Baudelaire, and the symbolists. People who hear painting, see +music, enjoy odorous poems, taste symphonies, and write perfumes are +now classed by the omnipotent psychical police as decadents, though +such notions are as old as literature. Suarez de Mendoza in his +L'Audition Coloree has said that the sensation of colour hearing, the +faculty of associating tones and colours, is often a consequence of an +association of ideas established in youth. The coloured vowels of +Arthur Rimbaud, which must be taken as a poet's crazy prank; the +elaborate treatises by Rene Ghil, which are terribly earnest; the +remarks that one often hears, such as "scarlet is like a trumpet +blast"; certain pages of Huysmans, all furnish examples of this +curious muddling of the senses and mixing of genres. Naturally, it has +invaded criticism, which, limited in imagery, sometimes seeks to +transfer the technical terms of one art to another. + +Whistler with his nocturnes, notes, symphonies in rose and silver, his +colour-sonatas, boldly annexed well-worn musical phrases, that in +their new estate took on fresher meanings even if remaining knee-deep +in the kingdom of the nebulous. It must be confessed modern composers +have retaliated. Musical impressionism is having its vogue, while +poets are desperately pictorial. Soul landscapes and etched sonnets +are not unpleasing to the ear. What if they do not mean much? There +was a time when to say a "sweet voice" would arouse a smile. What has +sugar to do with sound? It may be erratic symbolism, this confusing of +terminologies; yet, once in a while, it strikes sparks. There is a +deeply rooted feeling in us that the arts have a common matrix, that +they are emotionally akin. "Her slow smile" in fiction has had marked +success with young people, but a "slow landscape" is still regarded +suspiciously. The bravest critic of art was Huysmans. He pitched +pell-mell into the hell-broth of his criticism any image that +assaulted his fecund brain. He forced one to _see_ his picture--for he +was primarily concerned not with the ear, but the eye. + +And Botticelli? Was Botticelli a "comprehensive"--as those with the +sixth or synthetic sense have been named by Lombroso? Botticelli, +beginning as a goldsmith's apprentice (Botticello, the little bottle), +ended as a painter, the most original in all Italy. His canvases have +a rare, mysterious power of evocation. He was a visionary, this Sandro +Filipepi, pupil of the mercurial Fra Lippo Lippi and the brothers +Pollajuolo, and his inward vision must have been something more than +paint and pattern and subject. A palimpsest may be discerned by the +imaginative--or, let us say, fanciful, since Coleridge long ago set +forth the categories--whose secrets are not to be deciphered easily, +yet are something more than those portrayed by the artist on the flat +surface of his picture. He painted the usual number of Madonnas, like +any artist of his period; yet he did not convince his world, or the +generations succeeding, that this piety was orthodox. Suspected during +his lifetime of strange heresies, this annotator and illustrator of +Dante, this disciple of Savonarola, has in our times been definitely +ranged as a spirit saturated with paganism, and still a mystic. +Doesn't the perverse clash in such a complex temperament give us +exotic dissonances? All Florence was a sounding-board of the arts when +Botticelli walked its narrow ways and lived its splendid coloured +life. His sensitive nature absorbed as a sponge does water the +impulses and motives of his contemporaries. The lurking secrets of the +"new learning"--doctrines that made for damnation, such as the +recrudescence of the mediaeval conception of an angelic neuter host, +neither for Heaven nor Hell, not on the side of Lucifer nor with the +starry hosts--were said to have been mirrored in his pictures. Its +note is in Citta di Vita, in the heresy of the Albigenses, and it goes +as far back as Origen. Those who read his paintings, and there were +clairvoyant theologians abroad in Florence, could make of them what +they would. Painted music is less understandable than painted heresy. +Matteo Palmieri is said to have dragged Botticelli with him into dark +corners of disbelief; there was in the Medicean days a cruel order of +intelligence that delighted to toy with the vital faith and ideals of +the young. It was more savage and cunning when Machiavelli, shrewdest +of men, wrote and lived. A nature like Botticelli's, which surrendered +frankly to ideas if they but wore the mask of subtlety, could not fail +to have been swept away in the eddying cross-currents of Florentine +intellectual movements. Never mere instinct, for he was a sexless sort +of man, moved him from his moral anchorage. Always the vision! He did +not palter with the voluptuousness of his fellow-artists, yet his +canvases are feverishly disquieting; the sting of the flesh is remote; +love is transfigured, not spiritually and not served to us as a barren +parable, but made more intense by the breaking down of the thin +partition between the sexes; a consuming emotion not quite of this +world nor of the next. The barren rebellion which stirred Botticelli's +bosom never quite assumed the concrete. His religious subjects are +Hellenised, not after Mantegna's sterner and more inflexible method, +but like those of a philosophic Athenian who has read and comprehended +Dante. Yet the illustrations show us a different Dante, one who would +not have altogether pleased the gloomy exile. William Blake's +transpositions of the Divine Comedy seem to sound the depths; +Botticelli, notwithstanding the grace of his "baby centaurs" and the +wreathed car of Beatrice, is the profounder man of the two. + +His life, veiled toward the last, was not a happy one, though he was +recognised as a great painter. Watteau concealed some cankering +secret; so Botticelli. Both belong to the band of the Disquieted. +Melancholy was at the base of the Florentine's work. He created as a +young man in joy and freedom, but the wings of Duerer's bat were +outstretched over his head: Melencolia! There is more poignant music +in the Primavera, in the weary, indifferent countenances of his lean, +neuropathic Madonnas--Pater calls them "peevish"--in his Venus of the +Uffizi, than in the paintings of any other Renaissance artist. The +veils are there, the consoling veils of an exquisite art missing in +the lacerated realistic holy people of the Flemish Primitives. +Joyfulness cannot be denied Botticelli, but it is not the golden joy +of Giorgione. An emaciated music emanates from the eyes of that sad, +restless Venus, to whom love has become a scourge of the senses. +Music? Yes, here is the "coloured hearing" of Mendoza. These canvases +of Botticelli seem to give forth the opalescent over-tones of an +unearthly composition. Is this Spring, this tender, tremulous virgin +whose right hand, deprecatingly raised, signals as a conductor at the +head of an invisible orchestra its rhythms? Hermes, supremely +impassive, hand on thigh, plucks the fruit as the eternal trio of +maidens with woven paces tread the measures of a dance whose music we +but overhear. Garlanded with blossoms, a glorious girl keeps time with +the pulsing atmospheric moods; her gesture, surely a divine one, shows +her casting flowers upon the richly embroidered floor of the earth. +The light filters through the thick trees; its rifts are as rigid as +candles. The nymph in the brake is threatening. Another epicene +creature flies by her. Love shoots his bolt in midair. Is it from +Paphos or Mitylene! What the fable! Music plucked down from the +vibrating skies and made visible to the senses. A mere masque laden +with the sweet, prim allegories of the day it is not. Vasari, blunt +soul, saw but its surfaces. Politian, the poet, got closer to the +core. Centuries later our perceptions, sharpened by the stations of +pain and experience traversed, lend to this immortal canvas a more +sympathetic, less literal interpretation. + +Music, too, in the Anadyomene of the Uffizi. Still stranger music. +Those sudden little waves that lap an immemorial strand; that +shimmering shell, its fan-spokes converging to the parted feet of the +goddess; her hieratic pose, its modesty symbolic, the hair that +serpentines about her foam-born face, thin shoulders that slope into +delicious arms; the Japanese group, blowing tiny, gem-like buds with +puffed-out cheeks; the rhythmic female on tiptoe offering her mantle +to Venus; and enveloping them all vernal breezes, unseen, yet sensed +on every inch of the canvas--what are these things but the music of an +art original at its birth and never since reborn? The larger rhythms +of the greater men do not sweep us along with them in Botticelli. But +his voice is irresistible. + +Modern as is his spirit, as modern as Watteau, Chopin, or Shelley, he +is no less ethereal than any one of these three; ethereal and also +realistic. We may easily trace his artistic ancestry; what he became +could never have been predicted. Technically, as one critic has +written, "he was the first to understand the charm of silhouettes, the +first to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, the +flexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the elegance +of the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, +and above all the carving of the hand; but even more he understood 'le +prestige insolent des grands yeux.'" + +For Pater his colour was cold, cadaverous, "and yet the more you come +to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is +no mere delightful quality of natural things but a spirit upon them by +which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you like this +peculiar quality of colour." Bernard Berenson goes further. For him +the entire picture, Venus Rising From the Sea, presents us with the +quintessence of all that is pleasurable to our imagination of touch +and movement... The vivid appeal to our tactile sense, the life +communicating movement, is always there. And writing of the Pallas in +the Pitti he most eloquently said: "As to the hair--imagine shapes +having the supreme life of line you may see in the contours of licking +flames and yet possessed of all the plasticity of something which +caresses the hand that models it to its own desire!" + +And after speaking of Botticelli's stimulating line, he continues: +"Imagine an art made up entirely of these quintessences of +movement-values and you will have something that holds the same +relation to representation that music holds to speech--and this art +exists and is called lineal decoration. In this art of arts Sandro +Botticelli may have had rivals in Japan and elsewhere in the East, but +in Europe never!... He is the greatest master of lineal design that +Europe ever had." + +Again music, not the music nor the symbolism of the emotions, but the +abstract music of design. Botticelli's appeal is also an auditive one. +Other painters have spun more intricate, more beautiful scrolls of +line; other painters sounded more sensuous colour music, but the +subtle sarabands of Botticelli they have not composed. There is here a +pleasing problem for the psychiatrist. Manifestations in paint of this +species may be set down to some mental lesion; that is how Maurice +Spronck classifies the sensation in writing about the verbal +sensitivity of the Goncourts and Flaubert. The latter, you may +remember, said that Salammbo was purple to him, and L'Education +Sentimentale gray. Carthage and Paris--a characteristic fancy! But why +is it that these scientific gentlemen who account for genius by +eye-strain do not reprove the poets for their sensibility to the sound +of words, the shape and cadences of the phrase? It appears that only +prose-men are the culpable ones when they hear the harping of +invisible harps from Ibsen steeplejacks, or recognise the colour of +Zarathustra's thoughts. In reality not one but thousands sit listening +in the chill galleries of Florence because of the sweet, sick, nervous +music of Botticelli; this testimony of the years is for the dissenters +to explain. + +_Fantastico, Stravaganie_, as Vasari nicknamed Botticelli, has +literally created an audience that has learned to see as he did, +fantastically and extravagantly. He passed through the three stages +dear to arbitrary criticism. Serene in his youthful years; troubled, +voluptuous, visionary during the Medicean period; sombre, mystic, a +convert to Savonarola at the end. He passed through, not untouched, a +great crisis. Certain political assassinations and the Pazzi +conspiracy hurt him to the quick. He noted the turbulence of Rome and +Florence, saw behind the gay-tinted arras of the Renaissance the +sinister figures of its supermen and criminals. He never married. When +Tommaso Soderini begged him to take a wife, he responded: "The other +night I dreamed I was married. I awoke in such horror and chagrin that +I could not fall asleep again. I arose and wandered about Florence +like one possessed." Evidently not intended by nature as a husband or +father. Like Watteau, like Nietzsche, grand visionaries abiding on the +other side of the dear common joys of life, these men were not tempted +by the usual baits of happiness. The great Calumnia in the Uffizi +might be construed as an image of Botticelli's soul. Truth, naked and +scorned--again we note the matchless silhouette of his +Venus--misunderstood and calumniated, stands in the hall of a great +palace. She points to the heavens; she is an interrogation mark, +Pilate's question. Botticelli was adored. But understood? An enigmatic +malady ravaged his being. He died poor and alone, did this composer of +luminous chants and pagan poems, this moulder of exotic dreams and of +angels who long for other gods than those of Good and Evil. A +grievously wounded, timid soul, an intruder at the portals of +paradise, but without the courage to enter or withdraw. He had visions +that rapt him up into the seventh heaven, and when he reported them in +the speech of his design his harassed, divided spirit chilled the +ardours of his art. And thus it is that many do not worship at his +shrine as at the shrine of Raphael, for they see the adumbration of a +paganism long since dead, but revived by a miracle for a brief +Botticellian hour. Madonna and Venus! The Christ Child and Bacchus! +Under which king? The artist never frankly tells us. The legends of +fauns turned monks, of the gods at servile labour in a world that had +forgotten them, are revived, but with more sublimated ecstasy than by +Heine, when we stand before Botticelli and listen to his pallid, muted +music. + +He was born at Florence in 1446; he died May 27, 1510; in 1515, +according to Vasari. A study of him is by Emile Gebhart, late of the +French Academy. It is erudite, although oddly enough it ignores the +researches of Morelli and Berenson. Gebhart attributes to Alessandro +di Mariano Filipepi about eighty-five pictures, many of which were +long ago in Morelli's taboo list--that terrible Morelli, the learned +iconoclast who brought many sleepless nights to Dr. Wilhelm Bode of +Berlin. Time has vindicated the Bergamese critic. Berenson will allow +only forty-five originals to Botticelli's credit. Furthermore, Gebhart +does not mention in his catalogue the two Botticellis belonging to +Mrs. Gardner of Boston, a lamentable oversight for a volume brought +out in 1907. Need we add that this French author by no means sees +Botticelli in the musical sense? He is chiefly concerned with his +historic environment. Gebhart's authorities are the Memoriale of +Francesco Albertini; Anonyme Gaddiano, the manuscript of the +Magliabecchiana, which precedes the Vasari edition; the Life of +Botticelli, by Vasari, and many later studies, the most complete, he +avers, being that of Hermann Ulmann of Munich, whose Sandro +Botticelli, which appeared in 1893, is rigorously critical. +Nevertheless, it is not as critical as Morelli's Italian Painters. +Details about the typical ears, hands, and noses of the painter may be +found therein. The last word concerning Botticelli will not be uttered +until his last line has vanished. And, even then, his archaic +harmonies may continue to sound in the ears of mankind. + + + + +VIII. SIX SPANIARDS + + + +"EL GRECO" + + + +Large or small, there has been a Greco cult ever since the +Greek-Spanish painter died, April 7, 1614, but during the last decade +it has grown into a species of worship. One hears the names of +Velasquez and El Greco coupled. His profound influence on the greatest +of the realists is blithely assumed, and for these worshippers, +Ribera, Zurbaran, Murillo are hardly to be ranked with the painter of +the Burial of the Count of Orgaz. While this undiscriminating +admiration may be deplored, there are reasons enough for the +canonisation of El Greco in the church of art. Violent to exaggeration +in composition, morbidly mystic, there are power and emotional quality +revealed in his work; above all else he anticipated Velasquez in his +use of cool gray tones, and as a pupil or at least a disciple of +Titian he is, as his latest biographer, Senor Manuel B. Cossio, names +him, "the last epigone of the Italian Renaissance." But of the man we +know almost nothing. + +We read his exhaustive study, a big book of over seven hundred pages +fortified by a supplementary volume containing one hundred and +ninety-three illustrations, poor reproductions of El Greco's +accredited works (El Greco, por Manuel B. Cossio). Senor Cossio has so +well accomplished his task that his book may be set down as +definitive. A glance at the bibliography he compiled shows that not +many writers on art have seen fit to pay particular attention to El +Greco. A few Spaniards, Senor Beruete heading them; Max Boehm, Carl +Justi (in his Diego Velasquez); Paul Lafond, William Ritter, Arthur +Symons, William Stirling, Signor Venturi, Louis Viardot, Wyzewa, +Havelock Ellis, and the inimitable Theophile Gautier--whose Travels in +Spain, though published in 1840, is, as Mr. Ellis truthfully remarks, +still a storehouse of original exploration. But the Cossio work, +naturally, tops them all. He is an adorer, though not fanatical, of +his hero, and it is safe to assert that all that is known to-day of El +Greco will be found in these pages. The origins of the painter, his +visit to Italy, his arrival at Toledo, are described with references +to original documents--few as they are. + +Then follows a searching and vivid exposition of the pictures in +Madrid, Toledo, and elsewhere, a technical and psychological analysis +which displays vast research, critical acumen, and the sixth sense of +sympathy. No pictures, sketches, sculptures, or _retablos_ escape +Cossio. He considers El Greco in his relations to Velasquez and modern +art. He has all the authorities at his tongue's tip; he views the man +and artist from every angle. + +"Domenico El Greco died at Toledo two years before his contemporary +Cervantes," says Cossio. Domenicos Theotocopoulos was his original +name, which was softened into Domenico Theotocopuli--which, no doubt +proving too much of a tongue-twister for the Spaniards, was quickly +superseded by a capital nickname, "The Greek." His birthplace was the +island of Crete and his birth-year between 1545 and 1550. Justi was +the first to demonstrate his Cretan ancestry, which was corroborated +in 1893 by Bikelas. In 1570, we learn through a letter written by +Giulio Clovio to Cardinal Farnese, El Greco had astonished Roman +artists by his skill in portraiture. He was said to be a pupil of +Titian, on Clovio's authority. Why he went to Spain has not been +discovered. He had a son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, a sculptor and +architect. Who the mother was history does not say. The painter took +up his abode in Toledo and is not known to have left Spain thereafter. +Pacheco visited him at Toledo and reported him to be as singular as +his paintings and of an extravagant disposition. He was also called a +wit and a philosopher. He wrote on painting, sculpture, and +architecture, it is said. He made money; was, like most of his adopted +countrymen, fond of litigation; lived well, loved music--and at his +meals!--and that is all we may ever record of a busy life; for he +painted many pictures, a careful enumeration of which makes Cossio's +book valuable. + +There are Grecos scattered over Europe and the two Americas. Madrid +and Toledo boast of his best work, but as far as St. Petersburg and +Bucharest he is represented. In the United States there are eleven +examples, soon to be increased by Mr. Archer M. Huntington's recent +acquisition from the Kann collection. In Boston at the Museum there is +the portrait of Fray Paravicino, a brilliant picture. (The worthy monk +wrote four sonnets in glorification of the painter, whom he calls +"Divino Griego." Quoted in one of the Cossio appendices.) There is an +Assumption of the Virgin in Chicago at the Art Institute, and an +Apostle, belonging to Charles Deering. In Philadelphia Mr. "J. Widner" +(read P.A.B. Widener) owns a St. Francis, and at the Metropolitan +Museum, hanging in Gallery 24, there is The Adoration of the +Shepherds, a characteristic specimen of Greco's last manner, and in +excellent condition. The gallery of the late H.O. Havemeyer contains +one of the celebrated portraits of the Cardinal Inquisitor D. Fernando +Nino de Guevara, painted during the second epoch, 1594 to 1604. It +furnishes a frontispiece for the Cossio volume. The same dignitary was +again painted, a variant, which Rudolph Kann owned, and now in the +possession of Mrs. Huntington. The cardinal's head is strong, +intellectual, and his expression proud and cold. Mr. Frick, at a +private club exhibition, showed his Greco, St. Jerome, a subject of +which the painter was almost as fond as of St. Francis (of Assisi). +The National Gallery, London, owns a St. Jerome, Madrid another. Mr. +Frick's example belongs to the epoch of 1584 to 1594. Mr. Erich in New +York possesses three pictures, St. Jerome, a portrait of St. Domingo +de Guzman and a Deposition. El Greco is a painter admired by painters +for his salt individualism. Zuloaga, the Spaniard, has several; Degas, +two; the critic Duret, two; John S. Sargent, one--a St. Martin. +Durand-Ruel once owned the Annunciation, but sold it to Mrs. H.O. +Havemeyer, and the Duveens in London possess a Disrobing of Christ. At +the National Gallery there are two. + +Gautier wrote that El Greco surpassed Monk Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe in +his pell-mell of horrors; "extravagant and bizarre" are the adjectives +he employs (said of most painters whose style is unfamiliar or out of +the beaten track). In the Baptism of Christ he finds a depraved +energy, a maleficent puissance; but the ardent colours, the tonal +vivacity, and the large, free handling excite the Frenchman's +admiration. Justi avers that Greco's "craving for originality +developed incredible mannerisms. In his portraits he has delineated +the peculiar dignity of the Castilian hidalgos and the beauty of +Toledan dames with a success attained by few." R.A. Stevenson devotes +to him a paragraph in his Velasquez. Referring to the influence of El +Greco upon the greater painter, he wrote: "While Greco certainly +adopted a Spanish gravity of colouring, neither that nor his modelling +was ever subtle or thoroughly natural... Velasquez ripened with age +and practice; Greco was rather inclined to get rotten with facility." +Mr. Ricketts says that "his pictures might at times have been painted +by torchlight in a cell of the Inquisition." Richard Ford in his +handbook of Spain does not mince words: "Greco was very unequal... He +was often more lengthy and extravagant than Fuseli, and as leaden as +cholera morbus." Ritter speaks of his "symphonies in blue minor" +(evidently imitating Gautier's poem, Symphony in White-Major). In +Havelock Ellis's suggestive The Soul of Spain there is mention of +Greco--see chapter Art of Spain. Ellis says: "In his more purely +religious and supernatural scenes Greco was sometimes imaginative, but +more often bizarre in design and disconcerting in his colouring with +its insistence on chalky white, his violet shadows on pale faces, his +love of green. [Mr. Ellis finds this 'predilection for green' +significant as anticipating one of the characteristics of the Spanish +palette.] His distorted fever of movement--the lean, twisted bodies, +the frenzied, gesticulating arms, the mannerism of large calves that +taper down to pointed toes--usually fails to convince us. But in the +audacities of his colouring he revealed the possibilities of new +harmonies, of higher, brighter, cooler keys." The Count Orgaz burial +scene at Toledo Mr. Ellis does not rank among the world's great +pictures. + +There is often a depressing morbidity in Greco; Goya is sane and +healthy by comparison. Greco's big church pieces are full of religious +sentiment, but enveloped in the fumes of nightmare. Curious it was +that a stranger from Greece should have absorbed certain not +particularly healthy, even sinister, Spanish traits and developed them +to such a pitch of nervous intensity. As Arthur Symons says, his +portraits "have all the brooding Spanish soul with its proud +self-repression." Senor Cossio sums up in effect by declaring that +Venice educated Greco in his art; Titian taught him technique; +Tintoretto gave him his sense of dramatic form; Angelo his virility. +But of the strong personality which assimilated these various +influences there is no doubt when confronted with one of his canvases, +every inch of which is signed El Greco. + + + + +"VELASQUEZ" + + + +Why so well-known and authoritative a work as Velasquez, by Aureliano +de Beruete, should have been so long in reaching America is a puzzle +when you consider the velocity with which the Atlantic Ocean is +traversed by so many mediocre books on art. The first Spanish edition +of the Beruete monograph appeared about 1897; the same year saw it in +French, and from the latter tongue it was translated into English by +Hugh E. Poynter in 1906. Senor Beruete is considered with reason as +the prime living authority on the great Spanish realist, though his +study is not so voluminous as that of Carl Justi. The Bonn professor, +however, took all Spain for his province. Velasquez and His Times is +the title of his work, the first edition of which came out in 1888, +the second in 1903. Beruete (whose portrait by Sorolla was one of that +master's most characteristic pictures at the recent Hispanic Society +exhibition in New York) is not at odds on many points with Justi; but +more sceptical he is, and to R.A.M. Stevenson's list of Velasquez +pictures, two hundred and thirty-four, Beruete opposes the +comparatively meagre number of eighty-nine. He reduces the number of +sketches and waves away as spurious the Velasquez "originals" in +Italy, several in the Prado, the very stronghold of the collection; +and of the eleven in that famous cabinet of the Vienna Imperial +Museum--to which we went as to a divine service of eye and soul--he +allows only seven as authentic. The portrait of Innocent X in the +Doria palace, Rome, is naturally a masterpiece, as is the bust +portrait of the same subject at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; but the +Boston Museum full-length of Philip IV is discredited as a copy, only +the Prince Don Baltasar Carlos Attended by a Dwarf being admitted in +the company of the true Velasquezes. + +Of the "supposed portrait of Cardinal Pamphili," a real Velasquez, now +hanging in the Hispanic Society, 156th Street, Beruete writes: "In the +winter of 1902 there appeared in Paris a bust portrait of a cardinal +brought from Italy by Messrs. Trotty & Co., which had been alluded to +by Professor A. Venturi of Rome in _L'Art_. It is life size, +representing a person about thirty years of age in the dress of a +cardinal, with smiling face and black hair, moustache and pointed +beard, good carriage and a touch of levity not in keeping with the +dignity and austerity of a prince of the Church. The beretta and cape, +of a fine red colour, the latter painted in a uniform tone and without +a crease, harmonise with the roseate hue of the features, and the +plain gray background. Every detail reveals the hand of Velasquez, and +it can be classed without hesitation among the characteristic works of +his second style. It is on that ground that I make mention of it here. +However, in Rome, at the house in which this picture was found, it was +held to be the portrait of Cardinal Pamphili, nephew of Innocent X, +who according to Palomino was painted in Rome by Velasquez at the same +time as the Pontiff, that is in 1650." + +Beruete believes Palomino was wrong in declaring that Velasquez +painted the young cardinal in Rome; Madrid was the likelier city. The +style proves an earlier date than 1650. The cardinal withdrew from the +cardinalate after three years, 1644-47 > and married. The portrait was +acquired by the American artist the late Francis Lathrop. Stevenson +grants to the Metropolitan Museum a fruit-piece by Velasquez. Not so +Beruete. J. H. McFadden of Philadelphia once owned the Dona Mariana of +Austria, second wife of Philip IV, in a white-and-black dress, gold +chain over her shoulder, hair adorned with red bows and red-and-white +feather, from the Lyne-Stephens collection in the New Gallery, +1895--and is so quoted by Stevenson; but he sold the picture and +Beruete has lost track of it. + +Whereas Stevenson in his invaluable book studies his subject broadly +in chapters devoted to the dignity of the Velasquez technique, his +colour, modelling, brushwork, and his impressionism, Beruete follows a +more detailed yet simpler method. Picture by picture, in each of the +three styles--he adopts Justi's and Stevenson's classification--he +follows the painter, dealing less with the man than his work. Not that +biographical data are missing--on the contrary, there are many pages +of anecdotes as well as the usual facts--but Beruete is principally +concerned with the chronology and attribution of the pictures. He has +dug up some fresh material concerning the miserable pay Velasquez +received, rather fought for, at the court of Philip, where he was on a +par with the dwarfs, barbers, comedians, servants, and other +dependants of the royal household. + +The painter has been criticised for his attachment to the king; but as +he was not of a religious nature and did not paint religious pieces +with the gusto of his contemporaries, the court was his only hope of +existence; either court or church. He made his choice early, and while +we must regret the enormous wasting of the hours consequent upon the +fulfilment of his duties as a functionary, master of the revels, and +what not, we should not forget how extremely precarious would have +been his lot as a painter without royal favour in the Spain of those +days. He had his bed, board, house, and though he died penniless--his +good wife Juana only survived him seven days--he had the satisfaction +of knowing that he owed no man, and that his daughter had married his +pupil Mazo. Velasquez was born at Seville in 1599; died at Madrid, +1660. His real name was Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez. He was a +Silva--for the "de" was acquired from the king after much pettifoggery +on the part of that monarch with the prognathic jaw--and he was of +Portuguese blood. He signed Velasquez--a magic grouping of letters for +the lovers of art--though born as he was in Spain his forefathers came +from Portugal. The mixed blood has led to furious disputes among +hot-headed citizens of the two kingdoms. As if it much mattered. +Velasquez's son-in-law, by the way, Juan Mazo, was the author of a +number of imitations and forgeries. He was a true friend of the +picture-dealers. + +Velasquez belonged to that rare family of sane genius. He was +eminently the painter of daylight and not a nocturnal visionary, as +was Rembrandt. Shakespeare, who had all the strings to his lyre, had +also many daylight moments. Mozart always sang them, and how blithely! +No one, not Beethoven, not Raphael, not Goethe--to name three widely +disparate men of genius--saw life as steadily as the Spaniard. He is a +magnificent refutation of the madhouse doctors who swear to you that +genius is a disease. Remember, too, that the limitations of Velasquez +are clearly defined. Imagination was denied to him, asserts Beruete; +he had neither the turbulent temperament of Rubens nor possessed the +strained, harsh mysticism of El Greco--a painter of imagination and +the only painter allowed by Beruete to have affected the Velasquez +palette. In a word, Velasquez was a puzzling comminglement of the +classic and the realist. He had the repose and the firm, virile line +of the classics, while his vision of actuality has never been +surpassed. The Dutch Terburg, Vermeer, Van der Helst, Frans Hals saw +as vividly the surfaces of things material; the last alone was the +match of Velasquez in brushwork, but not Rembrandt recorded in his +Anatomy Lesson the facts of the case as did Velasquez. + +Senor Beruete wittily remarks that Los Borrachos (The Topers) of +Velasquez is the truer anatomy lesson of the two. A realist, an +impressionist, as Stevenson has it, the Spaniard was; but he was also +something more. He had a magic hand to define, the rendering of the +magical mystery of space and atmosphere. Grant that he was not a +colourist in the sense the Venetians were, or Rubens, yet how much +more subtle, more noble, more intellectual, is his restricted tonal +gamut. Those silver-grays, resonant blacks, browns, blues, and reds +sing in your memory long after you have forgotten the tumultuous +golden waves breaking upon the decorative coasts of Rubens. We are +constrained to question the easy way Beruete and other critics deny +the attributes of imagination and poetry to Velasquez. There is, +perhaps, a more sublimated poetry in his pictures than in the obvious +religious and mythological and allegorical set pieces of Rubens, +Murillo, and how many others. His realism did not run to seed in the +delineation of subject. He was as natural as Cervantes--the one great +man of Spain who may be compared to him--and he saw the larger +patterns of life, while never forgetting that the chief function of a +painter is to paint, not to "think," not to rhapsodise, not to be +"literary" on canvas. His cool, measuring eye did more than record +sordid facts. He had a sort of enraptured vision of the earth as +beautiful, the innocence of the eye we encounter in children only. +Stevenson rages at those who say that Velasquez was not a +colourist--and Beruete is of them, though he quotes with considerable +satisfaction the critical pronouncement of Royal Cortissoz (in +_Harper's Magazine_, May, 1895) that Las Meninas is "the most perfect +study of colour and values which exists." + +The truth is, Stevenson, Cortissoz, and Beruete are all three in the +right. That Velasquez, when in Rome, studied the pictures there; that +he didn't care for Raphael; that he had very much admired the +Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto; that he had admired Rubens, with whom +he associated daily on the occasion of the Flemish master's visit of +nine months to Madrid--these are truths not to be denied. Beruete +claims that the Rubens influence is not to be seen in Velasquez, only +El Greco's. Every object, living or inanimate, that swam through the +eyeballs of the Spaniard--surely the most wonderful pair of eyes in +history--was never forgotten. His powers of assimilation were +unexcelled. He saw and made note of everything, but when he painted +his spectators saw nothing of any other man, living or dead. Was not +the spiritual impulse missing in this man? He couldn't paint angels, +because he only painted what he saw; and as he never saw angels he +only painted mankind. Life, not the "subject," appealed to him. He had +little talent, less taste, for the florid decorative art of Rubens and +the Venetians; but give him a simple, human theme (not pretty or +sentimental) and he recreated it, not merely interpreted the scene; so +that Las Meninas, The Spinners (Las Hilanderas), the hunting pictures, +the various portraits of royalty, buffoons, beggars, outcasts, are the +chronicles of his time, and he its master psychologist. + +Beruete says that Ribera more than Zurbaran affected Velasquez; "El +Greco taught him the use of delicate grays in the colouring of the +flesh." Hot, hard, and dry in his first period (Borrachos), he becomes +more fluid and atmospheric in the Breda composition (The Lances), and +in the third period he has attained absolute mastery of his material. +His salary at the court was two and sixpence a day in 1628. Even Haydn +and Mozart did better as menials. Yet some historians speak of the +liberality of Philip IV. An "immortal employee" indeed, as Beruete +names his idol. Luca Giordano called Las Meninas the "theology of +painting." Wilkie declared that the Velasquez landscapes possessed +"the real sun which lights us, the air which we breathe, and the soul +and spirit of nature." "To see the Prado," exclaims Stevenson, "is to +modify one's opinion of the novelty of recent art." To-day the +impressionists and realists claim Velasquez as their patron saint as +well as artistic progenitor. The profoundest master of harmonies and +the possessor of a vision of the real world not second to Leonardo's, +the place of the Spaniard in history will never be taken from him. + +Velasquez is more modern than all the moderns; more modern than +to-morrow. That sense of the liberation of the spirit which Mr. +Berenson is fond of adducing as the grandest attribute of the Space +Composers, Raphael and the rest, may be discovered in Las Meninas, or +in The Spinners, space overhead, with mystery superadded. The brumous +North was the home of mysticism, of Gothic architecture. The note of +tragic mystery was seldom sounded by the Italians. Faith itself seems +more real in the North. It remained for Rembrandt to give it out in +his chords of _chiaroscuro_. And is there more noble, more virile +music in all art than The Surrender of Breda? + +Mr. Berenson refers only once to Velasquez and then as an "impersonal" +painter. As a counterblast to his theory of impersonality let us quote +a few lines from R.A.M. Stevenson's Velasquez (that most inspiring of +all art monographs): "Is it wonderful," he asks, "that you can apply +Morelli's principles of criticism to the Pre-Raphaelite Italian +schools; that you can point to the thumbs, fingers, poses of the head, +ovals of the face and schemes of colour that the painters learned by +heart, and can even say from whom they learned? The later Venetians +broke away, and when you come to Velasquez the system holds good as +little as it can in our own day." But this charge holds good for many +painters of the Renaissance, painters of patterns. Velasquez, like the +great prose-master of France, Gustave Flaubert, is always in +modulation. No two canvases are rhythmically alike, except in the +matter of masterfulness. He, too, was a master of magnificent prose +painting, painting worth a wilderness of makers of frozen mediaeval +patterns. Mr. Henry B. Fuller, the author of the Chevalier di +Pensieri-Vani, once spoke of the "cosy sublimity" in Raphael's Vision +of Ezekiel; one might paraphrase the epigram by describing the +pictures of Velasquez as boxed-in eternities. Dostoievsky knew such a +sensation when he wrote of "a species of eternity within the space of +a square foot." But there are many connoisseurs who find evidences of +profounder and more naive faith in the angular loveliness of the +Flemish Primitives than in all the religious art of Italy or Spain. + + + + +GOYA + + + +I + +Goya was a Titan among artists. He once boasted that "Nature, +Velasquez, and Rembrandt are my masters." It was an excellent +self-criticism. He not only played the Velasquez gambit in his +portraits, the gambit of Rembrandt in his sombre imaginative pieces, +but he boldly annexed all Spain for his sinister and turbulent art. He +was more truly Spanish in the range and variety of his performances +than any Spanish-born painter since Velasquez. Without the sanity, +solidity, nobility of Velasquez, whose vision and voice he never +possessed; without the luscious sweetness of Murillo, whose sweetness +he lacked, he had something of El Greco's fierceness, and much of the +vigour of Ribera. He added to these influences a temperament that was +exuberant, fantastic, morose, and pessimistic yet humorous, sarcastic, +sometimes melting, and ever masterful. He reminds one of an +overwhelming force. The man dominates the painter. A dozen comparisons +force themselves upon you when the name of Goya is pronounced: comets, +cataracts, whirlwinds, and wild animals. Anarch and courtier, atheist +and decorator of churches, his "whole art seems like a bullfight," +says Richard Muther. One might improve on this by calling him a subtle +bull, a Hercules who had read Byron. "Nature, Velasquez, and +Rembrandt!" cries MacColl in a too brief summary. "How inadequate the +list! Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Legion had a hand in the teaching." + +Goya incarnated the renaissance of old Spain and its art. Spanish art +has always come from without, for its foundations were northern and +Flemish. The Van Eycks and Van der Weyden were studied closely; Jan +Van Eyck visited Madrid. The Venetian influence was strong, and El +Greco his life long, and a pupil of Titian as he was, this gloomy +painter with the awkward name of Theotocopoulo endeavoured to forget +his master and became more Spanish than the Spanish. Ribera, +emotional, dramatic, realistic, religious, could sound the chords of +tenderness without the sentimentalism of Murillo. Goya stems more from +Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa than from any of his predecessors, except +Velasquez. The presence of Tiepolo, the last of the Venetians, in +Spain may have influenced him. Certainly Raphael Mengs, the "Saxon +pedant," did not--Mengs associated with Tiepolo at Madrid. It is in +company with the bravos of the brush, Caravaggio and Rosa, that Goya +is closely affiliated. We must go to Gustave Courbet for a like +violence of temperament; both men painted _con furia_; both were +capable of debauches in work; Goya could have covered the walls of +hell with diabolic frescoes. In music three men are of a like ilk: +Berlioz, Paganini, Liszt. Demoniacal, charged with electric energy, +was this trinity, and Goya could have made it a quartet. + +But if Spain was not a country of original artists--as was Italy, for +example--she developed powerful and astounding individualities. +Character is her _leit motiv_ in the symphony of the nations. The rich +virility and majestic seriousness of her men, their aptitudes for war, +statesmanship, and drama, are borne out in her national history. +Perhaps the climate plays its part. Havelock Ellis thinks so. "The +hard and violent effects, the sharp contrasts, the strong colours, the +stained and dusky clouds, looking as if soaked in pigment, may well +have affected the imagination of the artist," he writes. Certainly the +landscapes of Velasquez could not be more Spanish than they are; and, +disagreeing with those who say that he had no feeling for nature, the +bits of countryside and mountain Goya shows are truly peninsular in +their sternness. It may be well to remark here that the softness of +Tuscany is not to be found in the lean and often arid aspects of +Spain. Spain, too, is romantic--but after its own fashion. Goya +revived the best traditions of his country's art; he was the last of +the great masters and the first of the moderns. Something neurotic, +modern, disquieting, threads his work with devilish irregularity. He +had not the massive temper of Velasquez, of those men who could paint +day after day, year after year, until death knocked at their ateliers. +As vigorous as Rubens in his sketches, Goya had not the steady, slow +nerves of that master. He was very unequal. His life was as disorderly +as Hals's or Steen's, but their saving phlegm was missing. In an +eloquent passage--somewhere in his English Literature--Taine speaks of +the sanity of genius as instanced by Shakespeare. Genius narrowly +escapes nowadays being a cerebral disorder, though there was Marlowe +to set off Shakespeare's serene spirit, and even of Michael Angelo's +mental health and morals his prime biographer, Parlagreco, does not +speak in reassuring terms. Goya was badly balanced, impulsive, easily +angered, and not slow to obey the pull of his irritable motor centres +when aroused. A knife was always within reach. He drove the Duke of +Wellington from his presence because the inquisitive soldier asked too +many questions while his portrait was being blocked out. A sword or a +dagger did the business; but Wellington returned to the studio and, as +Mr. Rothenstein tells us, the portrait was finished and is now at +Strathfieldsaye. A sanguine is in the British Museum. His exploits in +Rome may have been exaggerated, though he was quite capable of eloping +with a nun from a convent, as is related, or going around the top of +the Cecilia Metella tomb supported only by his thumbs. The agility and +strength of Goya were notorious, though in a land where physical +prowess is not the exception. He was picador, matador, banderillero by +turns in the bull ring. After a stabbing affray he escaped in the +disguise of a bull-fighter. + +If he was a _dompteur_ of dames and cattle, he was the same before his +canvas. Anything that came to hand served him as a brush, an old brown +stick wrapped up in cloth, a spoon--with the latter he executed that +thrilling Massacre, May 2, 1808, in the Prado. He could have painted +with a sabre or on all fours. Reckless to the degree of insanity, he +never feared king or devil, man or the Inquisition. The latter reached +out for him, but he had disappeared, after suffering a dagger-thrust +in the back. When on the very roof of his prosperity, he often slipped +downstairs to the company of varlets and wenches; this friend of the +Duchess of Alba seemed happier dicing, drinking, dancing in the +suburbs with base-born people and gipsies. A _genre_ painter, Goya +delighted in depicting the volatile, joyous life of a now-vanished +epoch. He was a historian of manner as well as of disordered souls, +and an avowed foe of hypocrisy. + +Not "poignantly genteel," to use a Borrovian phrase, was he. Yet he +could play the silken courtier with success. The Arabs say that "one +who has been stung by a snake shivers at a string," and perhaps the +violence with which the painter attacked the religious may be set down +to the score of his youthful fears and flights when the Inquisition +was after him. He was a sort of Voltaire in black and white. The +corruption of churchmen and court at this epoch seems almost +incredible. Goya noted it with a boldness that meant but one +thing--friends high in power. This was the case. He was admired by the +king, Charles IV, and admired--who knows how much!--by his queen, +Marie Louise of Parma, Goya painted their portraits; also painted the +portraits of the royal favourite and prime minister and Prince de la +Paz, Manuel Godoy--favourite of both king and queen. Him, Goya left in +effigy for the scorn of generations to come. "A grocer's family who +have won the big lottery prize," was the witty description of +Theophile Gautier when he saw the picture of the royal family. + +Curiously enough, this Goya, who from the first plucked success from +its thorny setting, was soon forgotten, and until Gautier in 1840 +recorded his impressions in his brilliant Voyage en Espagne, critical +literature did not much concern itself with the versatile Spaniard. +And Gautier's sketch of a few pages still remains the most +comprehensive estimate. From it all have been forced to borrow; +Richard Muther in his briskly enthusiastic monograph and the section +in his valuable History of Modern Painting; Charles Yriarte, Will +Rothenstein, Lafond, Lefort, Conde de la Vinaza--all have read Gautier +to advantage. Valerian von Loga has devoted a study to the etchings, +and Don Juan de la Rada has made a study of the frescoes in the church +of San Antonio de la Florida; Carl Justi, Stirling Maxwell, C.G. +Hartley should also be consulted. Yriarte is interesting, inasmuch as +he deals with the apparition of Goya in Rome, an outlaw, but a blithe +one, who, notebook in hand, went through the Trastevere district +sketching with ferocious rapidity the attitudes and gestures of the +vivacious population. A man after Stendhal's heart, this Spaniard. And +in view of his private life one is tempted to add--and after the +heart, too, of Casanova. Notwithstanding, he was an unrivalled +interpreter of child-life. Some of his painted children are of a +dazzling sweetness. + + + +GOYA + + + +II + +Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was born March 30 (or 31), 1746, at +Fuentetodos, near Saragossa, Aragon. He died at Bordeaux, France, +where he had gone for his health, April 16, 1828--Calvert, possibly by +a pen slip, makes him expire a month earlier. He saw the beginnings of +French romanticism, as he was himself a witness of the decadence of +Spanish art. But his spirit has lived on in Manet and Zuloaga. +Decadent he was; a romantic before French romanticism, he yet had +borrowed from an earlier France. Some of his gay Fetes Champetres +recall the influence of Watteau--a Watteau without the sweet elegiac +strain. He has been called a Spanish Hogarth--not a happy simile. +Hogarth preaches; Goya never; satirists both, Goya never deepened by a +pen stroke the didactic side. His youth was not extraordinary in +promise; his father and mother were poor peasants. The story of his +discovery by a monk of Saragosela--Father Felix Salvador of the +Carthusian convent of Aula Dei--is not missing. He studied with Jose +Martinez. He ran away in 1766. He remained, say some, in Italy from +1769 to 1774; but in 1771 he appeared in Saragossa again, and the year +1772 saw him competing for the painting about to be undertaken in the +cathedral. He married Josefa Bayeu, the sister of the court painter. +He has told us what he thought of his jealous, intriguing +brother-in-law in a portrait. In 1775 he was at Madrid. From 1776 he +executed forty-six tapestry cartoons. In 1779 he presented to the king +his etchings after Velasquez. His rise was rapid. He painted the +queen, with her false teeth, false hair, and her infernal simper, and +this portrait was acclaimed a masterpiece. + +His religious frescoes, supposed to be _ad majorem Dei gloriam_, were +really for the greater glory of Goya. They are something more than +secular, often little short of blasphemous. That they were tolerated +proves the cynical temper of his times. When the fat old scoundrel of +a Bourbon king ran away with all his court and the pusillanimous +Joseph Bonaparte came upon the scene, Goya swerved and went through +the motions of loyalty, a thing that rather disturbs the admirers of +the supposedly sturdy republican. But he was only marking time. He +left a terrific arraignment of war and its horrors. Nor did he spare +the French. Callot, Hell-Breughel, are outdone in these swift, ghastly +memoranda of misery, barbarity, rapine, and ruin. The hypocrite +Ferdinand VII was no sooner on the throne of his father than Goya, hat +in hand but sneer on lip and twinkle in eye, approached him, and after +some parleying was restored to royal favour. Goya declared that as an +artist he was not personally concerned in the pranks of the whirligig +politic. Nevertheless he was bitterly chagrined at the twist of +events, and, an old man, he retired to his country house, where he +etched and designed upon its walls startling fancies. He died +disillusioned, and though nursed by some noble countrymen, his career +seemed to illustrate that terrifying picture of his invention--a +skeleton lifts its gravestone and grinningly traces with bony finger +in the dust the word _Nada_--Nothing! Overtaxed by the violence of his +life and labours--he left a prodigious amount of work behind +him--soured by satiety, all spleen and rage, he was a broken-down +Lucifer, who had trailed his wings in the mud. But who shall pass +judgment upon this unhappy man? Perhaps, as he saw the "glimmering +square" grow less, the lament of Cardinal Wolsey may have come to a +brain teeming with memories. Goya had always put his king before his +God. But in his heart he loved the old romantic faith--the faith that +hovered in the background of his art. Goya is not the first son of his +mother church who denied her from sheer perversity. What a nation! +Cervantes and Lope da Vega, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada--most glorious +of her sex, saint and genius--and Goya! Spain is the land of great and +diverse personalities. But with Calderon we must now say: "Let us to +our ship, for here all is shadowy and unsettled." + +Goya, as Baudelaire pointed out more than half a century ago, executed +his etchings by combining aquatint and the use of the dry point. A few +years before his death he took up lithography, then a novelty. His +Caprices, Proverbs, and Horrors of War may outlive his paintings. His +colour scheme was not a wide one, blacks, reds, browns, and yellows +often playing solo; but all modern impressionism may be seen on his +canvases--harsh dissonances, dots, dabs, spots, patches, heavy planes, +strong rhythmic effects of lighting, heavy impasto, luminous +atmosphere, air, sunshine, and vibrating movements; also the +strangeness of his material. Manet went to him a beginner. After +studying the Maja desnuda at the Prado Museum he returned to France +and painted the Olympe, once of the Luxembourg, now in the Louvre. The +balcony scenes of Goya, with their manolas--old-fashioned +grisettes--must have stirred Manet; recall the Frenchman's Balcony. +And the bull-fights? Oh! what an iron-souled master was there--Goya +when he slashed a bull in the arena tormented by the human brutes! +None of his successors matches him. The same is the case with that +diverting, devilish, savoury, and obscene series he called Caprices. +It is worth remembering that Delacroix was one of the first artists in +Paris who secured a set of these rare plates. The witch's sabbaths and +the modern version of them, prostitution and its symbolism, filled the +brain of Goya. He always shocks any but robust nerves with his hybrid +creatures red in claw and foaming at mouth as they fight in midair, +hideous and unnamable phantoms of the dark. His owls are theologians. +The females he often shows make us turn aside our head and shudder. +With implacable fidelity he displayed the reverse of war's heroic +shield. It is something more than hell. + +Sattler, Charlet, Raffet, James Ensor, Rethel, De Groux, Rops, Edvard +Muench (did you ever see his woman wooed by a skeleton?), and the rest +of these delineators of the morbid and macabre acknowledge Goya as +their progenitor. He must have been a devil-worshipper. He pictures +the goat devil, horns and hoofs. Gautier compares him to E.T.W. +Hoffmann--Poe not being known in Paris at that time--but it is a +rather laboured comparison, for there was a profoundly human side to +the Spaniard. His perception of reality was of the solidest. He had +lived and loved and knew before Flaubert that if the god of the +Romantics was an upholsterer the god of eighteenth-century Spain was +an executioner. The professed lover of the Duchess of Alba, he painted +her nude, and then, hearing that the Duke might not like the theme so +handled, he painted her again, and clothed, but more insolently +uncovered than before. At the Spanish museum in New York you may see +another portrait of this bold beauty with the name of Goya scratched +in the earth at her feet. Her attitude is characteristic of the +intrigue, which all Madrid knew and approved. At home sat Mrs. Goya +with her twenty children. + +Goya was a man of striking appearance. Slender in youth, a graceful +dancer, in middle life he had the wide shoulders and bull neck of an +athlete. He was the terror of Madrilenan husbands. His voice had +seductive charm. He could twang the guitar and fence like ten devils. +A gamester, too. In a word, a figure out of the Renaissance, when the +deed trod hard on the heels of the word. One of his self-portraits +shows him in a Byronic collar, the brow finely proportioned, marked +mobile features, sombre eyes--the ideal Don Juan Tenorio to win the +foolish heart of an Emma Bovary or a bored noblewoman. Another, with +its savage eye--it is a profile--and big beaver head-covering, recalls +Walt Whitman's "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." A giant +egoist, and as human, all too human, a fellow as Spain ever begot, +Goya is only hinted at in Baudelaire's searching quatrain beginning: +"Goya, cauchemar plein de choses inconnues." _Fleurs du Mal_ would be +a happy title for the work of Francisco Goya if to "The Flowers of +Evil" were added "and Wisdom." Goya is often cruel and lascivious and +vulgar, but he is as great a philosopher as painter. And to offset his +passionate gloom there are his visions of a golden Spain no longer in +existence; happy, gorgeous of costume, the Spain of sudden coquetries, +of fans, masques, bull-fights, and fandangos, of a people dancing on +the rim of a fire-filled mountain, pious, capricious, child-like, +romantic, and patriotic--the Spain of the eighteenth century. Goya is +its spokesman, as is Velasquez the mirror of Philip's more spacious +times. Velasquez--Goya! poles asunder, yet both born to the artistic +purple. And the stately aristocrat who signed himself Velasquez is not +more in tune with the twentieth-century _Zeitgeist_ than that +coarse-fibred democrat of genius, Francisco Goya. + + + + +FORTUNY + + + +Mariano Fortuny: what a magic-breeding name! The motto of this lucky +Spanish painter might have been "Fortuny Fortunatus." Even his sudden +death, at the early age of thirty-six, came after he had executed a +number of masterpieces, an enormous quantity of water-colours, +etchings, ceramics, damascene swords and chased ornaments; it followed +on the heels of sudden glory. His name was in the mouth of artistic +Europe, and the sale of the contents of his studio at Rome in 1875 +brought eight hundred thousand francs. Yet so slippery is fame that +Fortuny's name to-day is seldom without a brace of epithets, such as +"garish," or "empty." His work is neither. He is a virtuoso. So was +Tiepolo. He is a Romantic; so the generation preceding him. The +Orientalist par excellence, he has somehow been confounded with +Meissonier and Gerome, has been called glittering like the former, +hard as was the latter. It is true there are no emotional undertones +in his temperament, the brilliant overtones predominating; but it is +also true that when he died his manner was changing. He had said that +he was tired of the "gay rags" of the eighteenth century, and his +Strand of Portici shows a new line of departure. Edouard Manet made +special appeal to Fortuny; Manet, who had derived from Goya, whose +Spanish _fond_ is undeniable. Perhaps the thrice-brilliant Fortuny's +conscience smote him when he saw a Frenchman so successfully absorbing +the traditions of Goya; but it was not to be. He passed away at the +very top of his renown, truly a favourite of the gods. He was admired, +imitated, above all parodied; though, jealously as are his pictures +guarded, he has been put on the shelf like one of the amazing painted +bibelots in his work. + +The injustice of this is patent. Between Fortuny and Meissonier there +lies the gulf that separates the genius and the hard-working man of +talent. Nevertheless Meissonier's statue is in the garden of the +Louvre, Meissonier is extolled as a master, while Fortuny is usually +described in patronising terms as a facile trifler. The reverse is the +truth. No one has painted sunlight with more intensity; he was an +impressionist before the word was coined. He is a colourist almost as +sumptuous as Monticelli, with a precision of vision never attained by +the Marseilles rhapsodist. His figures are as delicious as Watteau's +or Debucourt's--he recalls the latter frequently--and as an +Orientalist he ranks all but a few. Gerome, Guillaumet, Fromentin, +Huguet are not to be mentioned in the same breath with Fortuny as to +the manipulation of material; and has Guillaumet done anything +savouring more of the mysterious East than Fortuny's At the Gate of +the Seraglio? The magician of jewelled tones, he knew all the subtler +modulations. His canvases vibrate, they emit sparks of sunlight, his +shadows are velvety and warm. Compared with such a picture as The +Choice of a Model, the most laboriously minute Meissonier is as cold +and dead as a photograph--Meissonier, who was a capital fan painter, a +patient miniaturist without colour talent, a myopic delineator of +costumes, who, as Manet said, pasted paper soldiers on canvas and +called the machine a battle-field. + +The writer recalls the sensations once evoked by a close view of +Fortuny's Choice of a Model at Paris years ago, and at that time in +the possession of Mr. Stewart. Psychology is not missing in this +miracle of virtuosity; the nude posing on the marble table, the +absolute beauty of the drawing, the colouring, the contrast of the +richly variegated marble pillars in the background, the +eighteenth-century costumes of the Academicians so scrupulously yet so +easily set forth, all made a dazzling ensemble. Since Fortuny turned +the trick a host of spurious pictures has come overseas, and we now +say "Vibert" at the same time as "Fortuny," just as some enlightened +persons couple the names of Ingres and Bouguereau. In the kingdom of +the third rate the mediocre is conqueror. + +Listen to this description of La Vicaria (The Spanish Wedding), which +first won for its painter his reputation. Begun in 1868, it was +exhibited at Goupil's, Paris, the spring of 1870 (some say 1869), when +the artist was thirty-two years old. Theophile Gautier--whose genius +and Theodore de Banville's have analogies with Fortuny's in the matter +of surfaces and astounding virtuosity--went up in the air when he saw +the work, and wrote a feuilleton that is still recalled by the old +guard. The following, however, is not by Gautier, but from the pen of +Dr. Richard Muther, the erudite German critic: "A marriage is taking +place in the sacristy of a rococo church in Madrid. The walls are +covered with faded Cordova leather hangings figured in gold and dull +colours, and a magnificent rococo screen separates the sacristy from +the middle aisle. Venetian lustres are suspended from the ceiling, +pictures of martyrs, Venetian glasses in carved oval frames hang on +the wall, richly ornamented wooden benches and a library of missals +and gospels in sparkling silver clasps, and shining marble tables and +glistening braziers form part of the scene in which the marriage +contract is being signed. The costumes are those of the time of Goya. +An old beau is marrying a young and beautiful girl. With affected +grace and a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered hat +under his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature in the +place which the _escribano_ points out with an obsequious bow. He is +arrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing a white silk +dress trimmed with flowered lace and has a wreath of orange blossoms +in her luxuriant black hair. As a girl friend is talking to her she +examines with abstracted attention the pretty little pictures upon her +fan, the finest she ever possessed. A very piquant little head she +has, with her long lashes and black eyes. Then, in the background, +follow the witnesses, and first of all a young lady in a swelling silk +dress of the brightest rose colour. Beside her is one of the +bridegroom's friends in a cabbage-green coat with long flaps and a +shining belt, from which a gleaming sabre hangs. The whole picture is +a marvellous assemblage of colours in which tones of Venetian glow and +strength, the tender pearly gray beloved of the Japanese, and a +melting neutral brown each sets off the other and gives a shimmering +effect to the entire mass." + +Fortuny was a gay master of character and comedy as well as of +bric-a-brac. Still life he painted as no one before or after him; if +Chardin is the Velasquez of vegetables, Fortuny is the Rossini of the +rococo; such lace-like filigrees, _fiorturi_, marbles that are of +stone, men and women that are alive, not of marble (like +Alma-Tadema's). The artificiality of his work is principally in the +choice of a subject, not in the performance. How luminous and silky +are his blacks may be noted at the Metropolitan Museum in his portrait +of a Spanish lady. There is nothing of the _petit-maitre_ in the +sensitive and adroit handling of values. The rather triste expression, +the veiled look of the eyes, the _morbidezza_ of the flesh tones, and +the general sense of amplitude and grace give us a Fortuny who knew +how to paint broadly. The more obvious and dashing side of him is +present in the Arabian Fantaisie of the Vanderbilt Gallery. It must be +remembered that he spent some time copying, at Madrid, Velasquez and +Goya, and as Camille Mauclair enthusiastically declares, these copies +are literal "identifications." They are highly prized by the Marquise +Carcano (who owned the Vicaria), Madrazo, and the Baron Davillieu--the +last named the chief critical authority on Fortuny. + +In the history of the arts there are cases such as Fortuny's, of +Mozart, Chopin, Raphael, and some others, whose precocity and +prodigious powers of production astonished their contemporaries. +Fortuny, whose full name was Mariano Jose Maria Bernardo Fortuny y +Carbo, was born at Reus, a little town in the province of Tarragona, +near Barcelona. He was very poor, and at the age of twelve an orphan. +His grandfather, a carpenter, went with the lad on foot through the +towns of Catalonia exhibiting a cabinet containing wax figures painted +by Mariano and perhaps modelled by him. He began carving and daubing +at the age of five; a regular little fingersmith, his hands were never +idle. He secured by the promise of talent a pension of forty-two +francs a month and went to Barcelona to study at the Academy. Winning +the prize of Rome in 1857, he went there and copied old masters until +1860, when, the war between Spain and Morocco breaking out, he went to +Morocco on General Prim's staff, and for five or six months his brain +was saturated with the wonders of Eastern sunlight, exotic hues, +beggars, gorgeous rugs, snake-charmers, Arabs afoot or circling on +horseback with the velocity of birds, fakirs, all the huge glistening +febrile life he was later to interpret with such charm and exactitude. + +He returned to Rome. He made a second trip to Africa. He returned to +Spain. Barcelona gave him a pension of a hundred and thirty-two francs +a month, which amount was kept up later by the Duke de Rianzares until +1867. He went to Paris in 1866, was taken up by the Goupils, knew +Meissonier and worked occasionally with Gerome. His rococo pictures, +his Oriental work set Paris ablaze. He married the daughter of the +Spanish painter Federigo Madrazo, and visited at Madrid, Granada, +Seville, Rome, and, in 1874, London. He contracted a pernicious fever +at Rome and died there, November 21, 1874, at the age of thirty-six. +His funeral was imposing, many celebrities of the world of art +participating. He was buried in the Campo Varano. + +In 1866 at Rome he began etching, and in fifteen months finished a +series of masterpieces. His line, surprisingly agile and sinuous, has +the finesse of Goya--whom he resembled at certain points. He used +aquatint with full knowledge of effects to be produced, and at times +he recalls Rembrandt in the depth of his shadows. His friend the +painter Henri Regnault despaired in the presence of such versatility, +such speed and ease of workmanship. He wrote: "The time I spent with +Fortuny is haunting me still. What a magnificent fellow he is! He +paints the most marvellous things, and is the master of us all. I wish +I could show you the two or three pictures he has in his hand or his +etchings and water-colours. They inspired me with a real disgust of my +own. Ah, Fortuny, you spoil my sleep!" + +Standing aloof from the ideas and tendencies of his times and not a +sweeper of the chords that stir in human nature the heroic or the +pathetic, it is none the less uncritical to rank this Spaniard as a +brainless technician. Everything is relative, and the scale on which +Fortuny worked was as true a medium for the exhibition of his genius +as a museum panorama. Let us not be misled by the worship of the +elephantine. It is characteristic of his temperament that the big +battle piece he was commissioned by the Barcelona Academy to paint was +never finished. Not every one who goes to Rome does as the Romans do. +Dowered by nature with extraordinary acuity of vision, with a +romantic, passionate nature and a will of steel, Fortuny was bound to +become a great painter. His manual technique bordered on the fabulous; +he had the painter's hand, as his fellow-countryman Pablo de Sarasate +had the born hand of the violinist. That he spent the brief years of +his life in painting the subjects he did is not a problem to be posed, +for, as Henry James has said, it is always dangerous to challenge an +artist's selection of subject. Why did Goya conceive his _Caprichos_? +The love of decorative beauty in Fortuny was not bedimmed by +criticism. He had the lust of eye which not the treasures of Ormuz and +Ind, or ivory, apes, and peacocks, could satisfy. If he loved the +kaleidoscopic East, he also knew his Spain. We have seen at the +Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts a tiny picture, the court-yard of a +Spanish inn through which passes a blinding shaft of sunlight, which +would make envious Senor Sorolla. Fortuny has personal charm, a +quality usually missing nowadays, for painters in their desire to be +truthful are tumbling head over heels into the prosaic. Individuality +is vanishing in the wastes of an over-anxious realism. If Fortuny is a +daring virtuoso on one or two strings, his palette is ever enchanting. +Personally he was a handsome man, with a distinguished head, his body +broad and muscular and capable of enduring fatigues that would have +killed most painters. Allied to this powerful physique was a seductive +sensibility. This peasant-born painter was an aristocrat of art. Old +Mother Nature is an implacable ironist. + + + + +SOROLLA Y BASTIDA + + + +We might say of the Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida that he +was one of those who came into the world with a ray of sunshine in +their brains--altering the phrase of Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Senor +Sorolla is also one of the half-dozen (are there so many?) great +living painters. He belongs to the line of Velasquez and Goya, and he +seldom recalls either. Under the auspices of the Hispanic Society of +America there was an exhibition of his works in 1909, some two hundred +and fifty in all, hung in the museum of the society, West 156th +Street, near Broadway. The liveliest interest was manifested by the +public and professional people in this display. Those who saw +Sorolla's art at the Paris Exposition, 1900, and at the Georges Petit +Gallery, Paris, a few years ago need not be reminded of his virile +quality and masterly brush-work. Some art lovers in this city are +aware of his Sad Inheritance, the property of Mr. John E. Berwind, +which has been hung in the Sunday-school room of the Ascension Church, +Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. It is one of the artist's few pictures +in which he feels the _Weltschmerz_. His is a nature bubbling over +with health and happiness. + +He is a Valencian, was born in 1863 of poor parents, and by reason of +his native genius and stubborn will power he became what he is--the +painter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let there be no mincing +of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet painted so +directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard. He is an +impressionist, but not of the school of Monet. His manner is his own, +cunningly compounded as it is of the proceeds of half a dozen artists. +His trip to Rome resulted in nothing but a large eclectic canvas +without individuality; what had this pagan in common with saints or +sinners! He relates that in Paris Bastien-Lepage and Menzel affected +him profoundly. This statement is not to be contradicted; nevertheless +Sorolla is the master of those two masters in his proper province of +the portrayal of outdoor life. Degas was too cruel when he called +Bastien the "Bouguereau of the modern movement"; Bastien academicised +Manet and other moderns. He said nothing new. As for Menzel, it would +be well here to correct the notion bandied about town that he +discovered impressionism before the French. He did not. He went to +Paris in 1867. Meissonier at first, and later Courbet, influenced him. +His Rolling Mill was painted in 1876. It is very Courbet. The Paris +Exposition, 1867, picture shows the influence of Monet--who was in the +Salon of 1864; and Monet was begat by Boudin, who stemmed from +Jongkind; and Jongkind studied with Isabey; and they came from Turner, +idolater of the Sun. Remember, too, that Corot and Courbet called +Eugene Boudin "roi des ciels." Monet not only studied with him but +openly admitted that he had learned everything from him, while Boudin +humbly remarked that he had but entered the door forced by the +Dutchman Jongkind. Doubtless Sorolla found what he was looking for in +Bastien, though it would be nearer the truth to say that he studied +the Barbizons and impressionists and took what he needed from them +all. + +He is a temperament impressionable to the sun, air, trees, children, +women, men, cattle, landscapes, the ocean. Such swift, vivid notation +of the fluid life about him is rare; it would be photographic were it +not the personal memoranda of a selecting eye; it would be transitory +impressionism were it not for a hand magical in its manipulation of +pigments. Brain and brush collaborate with an instantaneity that does +not perplex because the result is so convincing. We do not intend to +quote that musty flower of rhetoric which was a favourite with our +grandfathers. It was the fashion then to say that +Nature--capitalised--took the brush from the hand of the painter, +meaning some old duffer who saw varnish instead of clear colour, and +painted the picture for him. Sorolla is receptive; he does not attempt +to impose upon nature an arbitrary pattern, but he sees nature with +his own eyes, modified by the thousand subtle experiences in which he +has steeped his brain. He has the tact of omission very well +developed. After years of labour he has achieved a personal vision. It +is so completely his that to copy it would be to perpetrate a +burlesque. He employs ploys the divisional _taches_ of Monet, spots, +cross-hatchings, big sabre-like strokes a la John Sargent, indulges in +smooth sinuous silhouettes, or huge splotches, refulgent patches, +explosions, vibrating surfaces; surfaces that are smooth and oily +surfaces, as in his waters, that are exquisitely translucent. You +can't pin him down to a particular formula. His technique in other +hands would be coarse, crashing, brassy, bald, and too fortissimo. It +sometimes is all these discouraging things. It is too often deficient +in the finer modulations. But he makes one forget this by his +_entrain_, sincerity, and sympathy with his subject. As a composer he +is less satisfactory; it is the first impression or nothing in his +art. Apart from his luscious, tropical colour, he is a sober narrator +of facts. Ay, but he is a big chap, this amiable little Valencian with +a big heart and a hand that reaches out and grabs down clouds, skies, +scoops up the sea, and sets running, wriggling, screaming a joyful +band of naked boys and girls over the golden summer sands in a sort of +ecstatic symphony of pantheism. + +How does he secure such intensity of pitch in his painting of +atmosphere, of sunshine? By a convention, just as the falsification of +shadows by rendering them darker than nature made the necessary +contrasts in the old formula. Brightness in clear-coloured shadows is +the key-note of impressionistic open-air effects. W.C. +Brownell--French Art--puts it in this way: "Take a landscape with a +cloudy sky, which means diffused light in the old sense of the term, +and observe the effect upon it of a sudden burst of sunlight. What is +the effect where considerable portions of the scene are suddenly +thrown into marked shadow, as well as others illuminated with intense +light? Is the absolute value of the parts in shadow lowered or raised? +Raised, of course, by reflected light. Formerly, to get the contrast +between sunlight and shadow in proper scale the painter would have +painted the shadows darker than they were before the sun appeared. +Relatively they are darker, since their value, though heightened, is +raised infinitely less than the parts in sunlight. Absolutely, their +value is raised considerably. If, therefore, they are painted lighter +than they were before the sun appeared they in themselves seem truer. +The part of Monet's pictures that is in shadow is measurably true, far +truer than it would have been if painted under the old theory of +correspondence, and had been unnaturally darkened to express the +relation of contrast between shadow and sunlight." + +Like Turner, Monet forced the colour of his shadows, as MacColl points +out, and like Monet, Sorolla forces the colour of his shadows--but +what a compeller of beautiful shadows--forces the key to the very +verge of the luminous abyss. Senor Beruete, the Velasquez expert, +truthfully says of Sorolla's method: "His canvases contain a great +variety of blues and violets, balanced and juxtaposed with reds and +yellows. These, and the skilful use of white, provide him with a +colour scheme of great simplicity, originality, and beauty." There are +no non-transparent shadows, and his handling of blacks reveals a +sensitive feeling for values. Consider that black-gowned portrait of +his wife. His underlying structural sense is never obscured by his +fat, flowing brush. + +It must not be supposed that because of Sorolla's enormous _brio_ his +general way of entrapping nature is brutal. He is masculine and +absolutely free from the neurasthenic _morbidezza_ of his +fellow-countryman Zuloaga. (And far from attaining that painter's +inches as a psychologist.) For the delineation of moods nocturnal, of +poetic melancholy, of the contemplative aspect of life we must not go +to Sorolla. He is not a thinker. He is the painter of bright mornings +and brisk salt breezes. He is half Greek. There is Winckelmann's +_Heiterkeit_, blitheness, in his groups of romping children, in their +unashamed bare skins and naive attitudes. Boys on Valencian beaches +evidently believe in Adamic undress. Nor do the girls seem to care. +Stretched upon his stomach on the beach, a youth, straw-hatted, stares +at the spume of the rollers. His companion is not so unconventionally +disarrayed, and as she has evidently not eaten of the poisonous apple +of wisdom she is free from embarrassment. Balzac's two infants, +innocent of their sex, could not be less carefree than the Sorolla +children. How tenderly, sensitively, he models the hardly nubile forms +of maidens. The movement of their legs as they race the strand, their +dash into the water, or their nervous pausing at the rim of the +wet--here is poetry for you, the poetry of glorious days in +youth-land. Curiously enough his types are for the most part more +international than racial; that is, racial as are Zuloaga's Basque +brigands, _manolas_, and gipsies. + +But only this? Can't he paint anything but massive oxen wading to +their buttocks in the sea; or fisher boats with swelling sails +blotting out the horizon; or a girl after a dip standing, as her +boyish cavalier covers her with a robe--you see the clear, pink flesh +through her garb; or vistas of flower gardens with roguish maidens and +courtly parks; peasants harvesting, working women sorting raisins; +sailors mending nets, boys at rope-making--is all this great art? +Where are the polished surfaces of the cultured studio worker; where +the bric-a-brac which we inseparably connect with pseudo-Spanish art? +You will not find any of them. Sorolla, with good red blood in his +veins, the blood of a great, misunderstood race, paints what he sees +on the top of God's earth. He is not a book but a normal nature-lover. +He is in love with light, and by his treatment of relative values +creates the illusion of sun-flooded landscapes. He does not cry for +the "sun," as did Oswald Alving; it comes to him at the beckoning of +his brush. His many limitations are but the defects of his good +qualities. + +Sorolla is sympathetic. He adores babies and delights in dancing. His +babies are irresistible. He can sound the _Mitleid_ motive without a +suspicion of odious sentimentality. What charm there is in some of his +tiny children as they lean their heads on their mothers! They fear the +ocean, yet are fascinated by it. Near by is a mother and child in bed. +They sleep. The right hand of the mother stretches, instinctively, +toward the infant. It is the sweet, unconscious gesture of millions of +mothers. On one finger of the hand there is just a hint of gold from a +ring. The values of the white counterpane and the contrast of +dark-brown hair on the pillow are truthfully expressed. One mother and +babe, all mothers and babes, are in this picture. Turn to that old +rascal in a brown cloak, who is about to taste a glass of wine. A snag +gleams white in his sly, thirsty mouth. The wine tastes fine, eh! You +recall Goya. As for the boys swimming, the sensations of darting and +weaving through velvety waters are produced as if by wizardry. But you +never think of Sorolla's line, for line, colour, idea, actuality are +merged. The translucence of this sea in which the boys plash and +plunge is another witness to the verisimilitude of Sorolla's vision. +Boecklin's large canvas at the new Pinakothek, Munich, is often cited +as a _tour_ _de force_ of water painting. We allude to the mermaids +and mermen playing in the trough of a greenish sea. It is mere +"property" water when compared to Sorolla's closely observed and +clearly reproduced waves. Rhythm--that is the prime secret of his +vitality. + +His portraiture, when he is interested in his sitters, is excellent. +Beruete is real, so Cossio, the author of the El Greco biography; so +the realistic novelist Blanco Ibanez; but the best, after those of +his, Sorolla's, wife and children, is that of Frantzen, a +photographer, in the act of squeezing the bulb. It is a frank +characterisation. The various royalties and high-born persons whose +counterfeit presentments are accomplished with such genuine effort are +interesting; but the heart is missing. Cleverness there is in the +portraits of Alphonse; and his wife's gorgeous costume should be the +envy of our fashionable portrait manufacturers. It is under the skies +that Sorolla is at ease. Monet, it must not be forgotten, had two +years' military service in Morocco; Sorolla has always lived, +saturated himself in the rays of a hot sun and painted beneath the +hard blue dome of Spanish skies. + +Sorolla is a painting temperament, and the freshening breezes and +sunshine that emanate from his canvases should drive away the odours +of the various chemical cook-shops which are called studios in our +"world of art." + +One cannot speak too much of the large-minded and cultivated spirit of +Archer Milton Huntington, who is the projector and patron of the +exhibitions at the Hispanic Society Museum. Sorolla y Bastida, through +the invitation of Mr. Huntington, made this exhibition. + + + + +IGNACIO ZULOAGA + + + +We are no longer with Sorolla and his vibrating sunshine on Valencian +sands, or under the hard blue dome of San Sebastian; the two-score +canvases on view in 1909 at the Hispanic Museum were painted by a man +of profounder intellect, of equally sensual but more restrained +temperament than Sorolla; above all, by an artist with different +ideals--a realist, not an impressionist, Ignacio Zuloaga. It would not +be the entire truth to say that his masterpieces were seen; several +notable pictures, unhappily, were not; but the exhibition was finely +representative. Zuloaga showed us the height and depth of his powers +in at least one picture, and the longer you know him the more secrets +he yields up. + +In Paris they say of Sorolla that he paints too fast and too much; of +Zuloaga that he is too lazy to paint. Half truths, these. The younger +man is more deliberate in his methods. He composes more elaborately, +executes at a slower gait. He resents the imputation of realism. The +fire and fury of Sorolla are not his, but he selects, weighs, +analyses, reconstructs--in a word, he composes and does not improvise. +He is, nevertheless, a realist--a verist, as he prefers to be called. +He is not cosmopolitan, and Sorolla is: the types of boys and girls +racing along the beaches of watering places which Sorolla paints are +cosmopolitan. Passionate vivacity and the blinding sunshine are not +qualities that appeal to Zuloaga. He portrays darkest--let us rather +say greenest, brownest Spain. The Basque in him is the strongest +strain. He is artistically a lineal descendant of El Greco, Velasquez, +Goya; and the map of his memory has been traversed by Manet. He is +more racial, more truly Spanish, than any painter since Goya. He +possesses the genius of place. + +Havelock Ellis's book, The Soul of Spain, is an excellent corrective +for the operatic Spain, and George Borrow is equally sound despite his +bigotry, while Gautier is invaluable. Arsene Alexandre in writing of +Zuloaga acutely remarks of the Spanish conspiracy in allowing the +chance tourist only to scratch the soil "of this country too well +known but not enough explored." Therefore when face to face with the +pictures of Zuloaga, with romantic notions of a Spain where castles +grow in the clouds and moonshine on every bush, prepare to be shocked, +to be disappointed. He will show you the real Spain--the sun-soaked +soil, the lean, sharp outlines of hills, the arid meadows, and the +swift, dark-green rivers. He has painted cavaliers and dames of +fashion, but his heart is in the common people. He knows the bourgeois +and he knows the gipsy. He has set forth the pride of the vagabond and +the garish fascinations of the gitana. Since Goya, you say, and then +wonder whether it might not be wiser to add: Goya never had so +complicated a psychology. A better craftsman than Goya, a more varied +colourist, a more patient student of Velasquez, of life, though +without Goya's invention, caprice, satanism, and _fougue_. + +Zuloaga was not born poor, but with genius; and genius always spells +discontent. He would not become an engineer and he would paint. His +family, artists and artisans, did not favour his bent. He visited +Italy, almost starved in Paris, and after he knew how to handle his +tools he starved for recognition. It is only a few years since he +exhibited the portrait of his uncle, Daniel Zuloaga, and his cousins. +It now hangs in the Luxembourg; but Madrid would have none of him; a +Spanish jury rejected him at Paris in 1900, and not possessing the +means of Edouard Manet he could not hire a gallery and show the world +the stuff that was in him. He did not sulk; he painted. Barcelona took +him up; Paris, the world, followed suit. To-day he is rich, famous, +and forty. He was born at Eibar, 1870, in the Basque province of +Viscaya. He is a collector of rare taste and has housed his treasures +in a gallery at his birthplace. He paints chiefly at Segovia, in an +old church, though he wanders over Spain, sometimes afoot, sometimes +in his motor car, often accompanied by Rodin in the latter, and +wherever he finds himself he is at home and paints. A bull-fighter in +the ring, as was Goya--perhaps the legend stirred him to imitation--he +is a healthy athlete. His vitality, indeed, is enormous, though it +does not manifest itself in so dazzling a style as Sorolla's. The +demerits of literary comparisons are obvious, yet we dare to think of +Sorolla and Zuloaga as we should of Theophile Gautier and Charles +Baudelaire. In one is the clear day flame of impersonality; the other +is all personality, given to nocturnal moods, to diabolism and +perversities, cruelties and fierce voluptuousness. Sorolla is pagan; +Gothic is Zuloaga, a Goth of modern Spain. He has more variety than +Sorolla, more intellect. The Baudelairian strain grows in his work; it +is unmistakable. The crowds that went to see the "healthy" art of +Sorolla (as if art had anything in common with pulse, temperature, and +respiration) did not like, or indeed understand, many of Zuloaga's +magnificent pictorial ideas. + +He paints in large _coups_, but his broad, slashing planes are not +impressionistic. He swims in the traditional Spanish current with joy. +Green with him is almost an obsession--a national symbol certainly. +His greens, browns, blacks, scarlets are rich, sonorous, and magnetic. +He is a colourist. He also is master of a restrained palette and can +sound the silver grays of Velasquez. His tonalities are massive. The +essential bigness of his conceptions, his structural forms, are the +properties of an eye swift, subtle, and all-embracing. It seems an +image that is at once solidly rooted in mother earth and is as +fluctuating as life. No painter to-day has a greater sense of +character, except Degas. The Frenchman is the superior draughtsman, +but he is no more vital in his interpretation of his ballet girls, +washerwomen, and grisettes than is Zuloaga in his delineations of +peasants, dwarfs, dogs, courtesans, scamps, zealots, pilgrims, +beggars, drunkards, and working girls. What verve, what grip, what +bowels of humanity has this Spaniard! A man, not a professor of +academic methods. He has no school, and he is a school in himself. +That the more serene, poetic aspects and readings of life have escaped +him is merely to say that he is not constituted a contemplative +philosopher. The sinister skein to be seen in some of his canvases +does not argue the existence of a spiritual bias but is the +recognition of evil in life. It is not very pleasant, nor is it +reassuring, but it is part of the artist, rooted deep in his Spanish +soul along with the harsh irony and a cruel spirit of mockery. He +refuses to follow the ideals of other men, and he paints a spade a +spade; at least the orchestration, if brutal, is not lascivious. A +cold, impartial eye observes and registers the corruption of cities +small and great and the infinitely worse immoralities of the open +country. Sometimes Zuloaga's comments are witty, sometimes +pessimistic. If he has studied Goya and Manet, he also knows Felicien +Rops. + +The only picture in the Zuloaga exhibition that grazes the border-land +of the unconventional is Le Vieux Marcheur. It is as moral as Hogarth +and as bitter as Rops. It recalls the Montmartre days of the artist +when he was acquainted with Paul Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Two +women are crossing a bridge. Their actuality is impressed upon the +retina in a marvellous ly definite way. They live, they move. One is +gowned in dotted green, the other in black. There is a little +landscape with water beyond the iron railing. A venerable minotaur is +in pursuit. He wears evening clothes, an overcoat is thrown across his +left arm, under his right he carries waggishly a cane. His white tie +and hat of sober silk are in respectable contrast with his air of +fatuousness--the Marquis of Steyne en route; the doddering hero of +Mansfield in A Parisian Romance, or Baron Hulot. The alert expression +of the girls, who appear to be loitering, tells us more at a glance +than a chapter of Flaubert, Zola, or De Maupassant. Is it necessary to +add that the handling takes your breath away because of its consummate +ease and its realisation of the effects sought? Note the white of the +old party's spats, echoed by the bit of stocking showing a low shoe +worn by one of the girls; note the values of the blacks in the hat, +coat, trousers, shoe tips of the man. The very unpleasantness of the +theme is forgotten in the supreme art of its presentation. + +M. Alexandre, the French critic, may argue valiantly that Zuloaga must +not be compared with Goya, that their methods and themes are +dissimilar. True, but those witches (Les Sorcieres de San Millan) are +in the key of Goya, not manner, but subject-matter--a hideous crew. At +once you think of the _Caprichos_ of Goya. The hag with the distaff, +whose head is painted with a fidelity worthy of Holbein; the monkey +profile of the witch crouching near the lantern, that repulsive +creature in spectacles--Goya spectacles; the pattern hasn't varied +since his days--these ladies and their companions, especially that +anonymous one in a hood, coupled with the desperate dreariness of the +background, a country dry and hard as a volcanic cinder, make a +formidable ensemble. Zuloaga relates that the beldames screeched and +fought in his studio when he posed them. You exclaim while looking at +them: "How now, you secret black and midnight hags!" Hell hovers hard +by; each witch of the unholy trio has the evil eye. + +As a painter of dwarfs Zuloaga has not been surpassed by any one but +Velasquez. His Gregorio, the monster with the huge head, the +sickening, livid, globular eye, the comical pose--you exclaim: What a +brush! The picture palpitates with reality, an ugly reality, for the +tall old couple are not prepossessing. The topography of the country +is minutely observed. But this painter does not wreak himself in +ugliness or morbidities; he is singularly happy in catching the +attitudes and gestures of the peasants as they return from the +vintage; of picadors, matadors, chulos, in the ring or lounging, +smoking, awaiting the signal. The large and celebrated family group of +the matador Gallito--which is to remain permanently in the Hispanic +Society's museum--is a superb exemplar of the synthetic and rhythmic +art of the Spaniard. Each character is seized and rendered. The strong +silhouettes melt into a harmonious arabesque; the tonal gamut is +nervous, strong, fiery; the dull gold background is a foil for the +scale of colour notes. It is a striking picture. Very striking, too, +is the portrait of Breval as Carmen, though it is the least Spanish +picture in the collection; Breval is pictured on the stage, the lights +from below playing over her features. The problem is solved, as +Besnard or Degas has solved it, successfully, but in purely personal +manner. It is the picture in the Metropolitan Museum that is bound to +attract attention, as it is a technical triumph; but it is not very +characteristic. + +We saw dark-eyed, graceful manolas on balconies--this truly Spanish +motive in art, as Spanish as is the Madonna Italian--over which are +thrown gorgeous shawls, smiling, flirting; with languorous eyes and +provocative fans, they sit ensconced as they sat in Goya's time and +centuries before Goya, the Eternal Feminine of Spain. Zuloaga is her +latest interpreter. Isn't Candida delicious in green, with black +head-dress of lace--isn't she bewitching? Her stockings are green. The +wall is a most miraculous adumbration of green. Across the room is +another agent of disquiet in Nile green, Mercedes by name. Her +aquiline nose, black eyes, and the flowers she wears at the side of +her head bewilder; the sky, clouds, and landscape are all very lovely. +This is a singularly limpid, loose, flowing picture. It has the paint +quality sometimes missing in the bold, fat massing of the Zuloaga +colour chords. The Montmartre Cafe concert singer is a sterling +specimen of Zuloaga's portraiture. He is unconventional in his poses; +he will jam a figure against the right side of the frame (as in the +portrait of Marthe Morineau) or stand a young lady beside an +ornamental iron gate in an open park (not a remarkable portrait, but +one that pleases the ladies because of the textures). The head of the +old actor capitally suggests the Spanish mummer. And the painter's +cousin, Esperanza! What cousins he boasts! We recall The Three +Cousins, with its laughing trio and the rich colour scheme. Our +recollection, too, of The Piquant Retort, and its brown and scarlet +harmonies; of the Promenade After the Bull-fight, which has the +classical balance and spaced charm of Velasquez; and that startling +Street of Love overbalances any picture except one in this exhibition, +and that is The Bull-fighter's Family. The measuring eye of Zuloaga, +his tremendous vitality, his sharp, superb transference to canvas of +the life he has elected to represent and interpret are at first sight +dazzling. The performance is so supreme--remember, not in a niggling, +technical sense--a half-dozen men beat him at mere pyrotechnics and +lace _fioritura_--that his limitations, very marked in his case, are +overlooked. You have drunk a hearty Spanish wine; oil to the throat, +confusion to the senses. You do not at first miss the soul; it is not +included in the categories of Senor Zuloaga. Zuloaga, like his +contemporary farther north, Anders Zorn, is a man as well as a +painter; the conjunction is not too frequent. The grand manner is +surely his. He has the modulatory sense, and Christian Brinton notes +his sonorous acid effects. He paints beggars, dwarfs, work-girls, +noblemen, bandits, dogs, horses, lovely women, gitanas, indolent +Carmens; but real, not the pasteboard and foot-lights variety of +Merimee and Bizet. Zuloaga's Spain is not a second-hand Italy, like +that of so many Spanish painters. It is not all bric-a-brac and +moonlight and chivalric tinpot helmets. It is the real Spain of +to-day, the Spain that has at last awakened to the light of the +twentieth century after sleeping so long, after sleeping, +notwithstanding the desperate nudging it was given a century ago by +the realist Goya. Now, Zuloaga is not only stepping on his country's +toes, but he is recording the impressions he makes. He, too, is a +realist, a realist with such magic in his brush that it would make us +forgive him if he painted the odour of garlic. + +Have you seen his Spanish Dancers? Not the dramatic Carmencita of +Sargent, but the creature as she is, with her simian gestures, her +insolence, her vulgarity, her teeth--and the shrill scarlet of the +bare gum above the gleaming white, His street scenes are a transcript +of the actual facts, and inextricably woven with the facts is a sense +of the strange beauty of them all. His wine harvesters, venders of +sacred images, or that fascinating canvas My Three Cousins--before +these, also before the Promenade After the Bull-fight, you realise +that by some miracle of nature the intensity of Goya and his sense of +life, the charm of Velasquez and his sober dignity are recalled by the +painting of a young Spanish artist who a decade ago was unknown. Nor +is Zuloaga an eclectic. His force and individuality are too patent for +us to entertain such a heresy. A glance at Jacques-Emile Blanche's +portrait of the Spanish painter explains other things. There is the +physique of a man who can work many hours a day before an easel; there +are the penetrating eyes of an observer, spying eyes, slightly cruel; +the head is an intellectual one, the general conformation of the face +harmonious and handsome. The body is that of an athlete, but not of +the bull-necked sort we see in Goya. The temperament suggested is +impetuous, controlled by a strong will; it has been fined down by +study and the enforced renunciations of poverty-haunted youth. Above +all, there is race; race in the proud, resolute bearing, race in the +large, firm, supple, and nervous hands. Indeed, the work of Zuloaga is +all race. He is the most Spanish painter since Goya. + + + + +IX. CHARDIN + + + +Zola, as reported by George Moore, said of Degas: "I cannot accept a +man who shuts himself up all his life to draw a ballet girl as ranking +co-equal in dignity and power with Flaubert, Daudet, and Goncourt." +This remark gives us the cue for Zola's critical endowment; despite +his asseverations his naturalism was only skin deep. He, too, was +swayed by his literary notions concerning the importance of the +subject. In painting the theme may count for little and yet a great +picture result; in Zola's field there must be an appreciable subject, +else no fiction. But what cant it is to talk about "dignity." Zola +admits ingrained romanticism. He would not see, for instance, that the +Degas ballet girls are on the same plane as the Ingres odalisques; +that a still-life by Chardin outweighs a big canvas by David; and it +must be admitted that the world is on the side of Zola. The heresy of +the subject will never be stamped out, the painted anecdote will +always win the eye of the easily satisfied majority. + +It may be remembered that the great Spaniard began his apprenticeship +to art by copying still-life, which he did in a superlative manner; +his Bodegones, or kitchen pieces, testify to this. Chardin, who led as +laborious an existence as Degas, shutting himself away from the world, +studied surfaces with an intensity that Zola, the apostle of realism, +would have misunderstood. Later the French painter devoted himself +with equal success to genre and figure subjects; but for him there was +no such category as still-life. Everything of substance, shape, +weight, and colour is alive for the eye that observes, and, except +Velasquez, Vermeer, and a few others, no man was endowed with the eye +of Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, an eye microscopic in intensity and +that saw the beautiful in the homely. + +Edmond Pilon has published a comprehensive little monograph in the +series Les Maitres de L'Art. M. Pilon is as sympathetic as he is just +in his critical estimates of the man and his work. There is not much +to relate of the quotidian life of the artist. His was not a romantic +or a graceful figure among his contemporaries, the pastellist La Tour, +Fragonard, and the rest, nor had his personality a jot of the +mysterious melancholy of Watteau. His artistic ancestry was Dutch; in +the footsteps of De Hooch, the younger Teniers, Vermeer, Terburg, +Kalf, he trod, rather plodded, producing miracles of light, colour, +finish. A long patience his career, he never indulged in brilliancy +for the mere sake of brilliancy; nevertheless he was an amazing +virtuoso of the brush. He was born in the Rue de Seine, Paris, +November 2,1699. His father, Jean Chardin, a joiner, was a man of +artistic instinct whose furniture and marquetrie were admired and in +demand. The lad began his tuition under Cazes, but soon went to the +atelier of Coypel. Later he worked under the eye of Carle Vanloo in +the restoration of the large gallery at Fontainebleau. His painting of +a barber-chirurgeon's sign drew upon him the notice of several artists +of influence and he became a member of the Academy of St. Luc. When he +exhibited for the first time in public, in the Place Dauphine, 1728, +Watteau had been dead seven years; Coypel, Allegrain, Vanloo, Troy, +and the imitators of the pompous art of Le Brun were the vogue. Colour +had become a conventional abstraction; design, of the most artificial +sort, the prime requisite for a sounding reputation. The unobtrusive +art of Chardin, who went to nature not to books for his inspiration, +was not appreciated. He was considered a belated Dutchman, though his +superior knowledge of values ought to have proved him something else. +Diderot, alone among the critics of his epoch, saluted him in company +with the great Buffon as a man whom nature had taken into her +confidence. + +In 1728 he was received at the Academy as painter of fruit and +flowers. He married his first wife, Marguerite Saintan, in 1731, and +his son, J.B. Chardin, was born the same year. In 1735 he lost his +wife and infant daughter, and the double blow drove him into +retirement, but he exposed his pictures from time to time. He was made +counsellor of the Academy in 1743, and in 1744 married the second +time, a widow, Francoise Marguerite Pouget by name. This was a happy +marriage; Madame Chardin, a sensible, good-tempered bourgeoise, +regulated the household accounts, and brought order and peace into the +life of the lonely artist. Hereafter he painted without interruptions. +He received from the king a pension of five hundred francs, his son +obtained the prix de Rome for a meritorious canvas, and if he had had +his father's stable temperament he would have ended an admirable +artist. But he was reckless, and died at Venice in a mysterious +manner, drowned in a canal, whether by murder or suicide no one knew. +Chardin never recovered his spirits after this shock. The king offered +him lodging in the gallery of the Louvre (Logement No. 12). This was +accepted, as much as he disliked leaving his comfortable little house +in the Rue Princesse. As he aged he suffered from various ailments and +his eyes began to give him trouble; then it was he took up pastels. +December 6, 1779, he died, his wife surviving him until 1791. + +He was a man of short stature, broad-shouldered and muscular. Liked by +his friends and colleagues for his frankness, there was a salt savour +in his forthright speech--he never learned to play the courtier. His +manners were not polished, a certain rusticity clung to him always, +but his honesty was appreciated and he held positions of trust. +Affectionate, slow--with the Dutch slowness praised by Rodin--and +tenacious, he set out to conquer a small corner in the kingdom of art, +and to-day he is first among the Little Masters. This too convenient +appellation must not class him with such myopic miniaturists as +Meissonier. There are breadth of style, rich humanity, largeness of +feeling, apart from his remarkable technique, that place him in the +company of famous portrait painters. He does not possess what are +called "general ideas"; he sounds no tragic chords; he has no spoor of +poetry, but he sees the exterior world steadily; he is never obvious, +and he is a sympathetic interpreter in the domestic domain and of +character. His palette is as aristocratic as that of Velasquez: the +music he makes, like that of the string quartet, borders on +perfection. + +At his debut he so undervalued his work that Vanloo, after reproaching +the youth for his modesty, paid him double for a picture. Another time +he gave a still-life to a friend in exchange for a waistcoat whose +flowery pattern appealed to him. His pictures did not fetch fair +prices during his lifetime; after more than half a century of hard +work he left little for his widow. Nor in the years immediately +subsequent to that of his death did values advance much. The engraver +Wille bought a still-life for thirty-six livres, a picture that to-day +would sell for thousands of dollars. At the beginning of the last +century, in 1810, when David was ruler of the arts in Paris, the two +masterpieces in pastel, now in the Louvre, the portraits of Chardin +aux besicles, and the portrait of Marguerite Pouget, his second +spouse, could have been bought for twenty-four francs. In 1867 at the +Laperlier sale the Pourvoyeuse was sold for four thousand and fifty +francs to the Louvre, and forty years later the Louvre gave three +hundred and fifty thousand francs to Madame Emile Trepard for Le Jeune +Homme au Violon and l'Enfant au Toton. Diderot truly prophesied that +the hour of reparation would come. + +He is a master of discreet tonalities and a draughtsman of the first +order. His lighting, more diffused than Rembrandt's, is the chief +actor in his scene. With it he accomplishes magical effects, with it +he makes beautiful copper caldrons, humble vegetables, leeks, carrots, +potatoes, onions, shining rounds of beef, hares, and fish become +eloquent witnesses to the fact that there is nothing dead or ugly in +nature if the vision that interprets is artistic. It is said that no +one ever saw Chardin at work in his atelier, but his method, his +_facture_ has been ferreted out though never excelled. He employs the +division of tones, his _couches_ are fat and his colour is laid on +lusciously. His colour is never hot; coolness of tone is his chief +allurement. Greuze, passing one of his canvases at an exhibition, a +long time regarded it and went away, heaving a sigh of envy. The +frivolous "Frago," who studied with Chardin for a brief period, even +though he left him for Boucher, admired his former master without +understanding him. Decamps later exclaimed in the Louvre: "The whites +of Chardin! I don't know how to recapture them." He might have added +the silvery grays. M. Pilon remarks that as in the case of Vermeer the +secret of Chardin tones has never been surprised. The French painter +knew the art of modulation, while his transitions are bold; he +enveloped his objects in atmosphere and gave his shadows a due share +of luminosity. He placed his colours so that at times his work +resembles mosaic or tapestry. He knew a century before the modern +impressionists the knack of juxtaposition, of opposition, of tonal +division; his science was profound. He must have studied Watteau and +the Dutchmen closely. Diderot was amazed to find that his surpassing +whites were neither black nor white, but a neuter--but by a subtle +transposition of tones looked white. Chardin worked from an +accumulation of notes, but there are few sketches of his in existence, +a _sanguine_ or two. The paucity of the Velasquez sketches has piqued +criticism. Like Velasquez, Chardin was of a reflective temperament, a +slow workman and a patient corrector. + +The intimate charm of the Chardin interiors is not equalled even in +the Vermeer canvases. At the Louvre, which contains at least thirty of +the masterpieces, consider the sweetness of Le Benedicite, or the +three pastels, and then turn to the fruits, flowers, kitchen utensils, +game, or to La Raie Ouverte, that magnificent portrait of a skatefish, +with its cat slyly stealing over opened oysters, the table-cloth of +such vraisemblance that the knife balanced on the edge seems to lie in +a crease. What bulk, what destiny, what _chatoyant_ tones! Here are +qualities of paint and vision pictorial, vision that has never been +approached; paint without rhetoric, paint sincere, and the expression +in terms of beautiful paint of natural truths. In Chardin's case--by +him the relativity of mundane things was accepted with philosophic +phlegm--an onion was more important than an angel, a copper stew-pan +as thrilling as an epic. And then the humanity of his youth holding a +fiddle and bow, the exquisite textures of skin and hair, and the +glance of the eyes. You believe the story told of his advice to his +confrere: "Paint with sentiment." But he mixed his sentiment with +lovely colours, he is one of the chief glories of France as a +colourist. + + + + +X. BLACK AND WHITE. + + + +I + +Some Frenchman has called the theatre a book reversed. It is a happy +epigram. By a similar analogy the engraving or mezzotint might be +described as a reversed picture. And with still more propriety black +and white reproductions may be compared to the pianoforte in the hands +of a skilful artist. The pianoforte can interpret in cooler tones +orchestral scores. It gives in its all-formal severity the line; the +colour is only suggested. But such is the tendency of modern music +toward painting that the success of a pianoforte virtuoso to-day +depends upon his ability to arouse within his listeners' imagination +the idea of colour--in reality, the emotional element. The engraver +evokes colour by his cunning interplay of line and cross hatching; the +mezzotinter by his disposition of dark masses and white spaces. +Indeed, the mezzotint by reason of its warm, more sympathetic, and +ductile medium has always seemed more colourful in his plates than the +most laboriously executed steel engravings. In this sense the scraper +beats the burin, while the etcher, especially if he be a painter, +attains a more personal vision than either one of these processes. +"The stone was made for the mystics," say the Pennells. The revival of +lithography by contemporary artists of fame is very welcome. + +Above all, the appeal of engraving, mezzotint, and etching is to the +refined. It is an art of a peculiarly intimate character. Just as some +prefer the exquisite tonal purity and finished performances of the +Kneisel String Quartet to the blare and thunder of the Philharmonic +Society; just as some enjoy in silence beautiful prose more than our +crude drama, so the lovers of black and white may feel themselves a +distinctive class. They have at their elbow disposed in portfolios or +spaced on walls the eloquent portraiture, the world's masterpieces, +marine views, and landscapes. There is no better way to study painting +historically than in the cabinet of an engraving collector. +Furthermore, divested of bad or mediocre paint--many famous pictures +by famous names are mere cartoons, the paint peeled or peeling +off--the student and amateur penetrates to the very marrow of the +painter's conception, to the very skeleton of his technical methods. + + + + + +PIRANESI + + + +I + +"Battlements that on their restless fronts bore stars" is a line from +Wordsworth that Thomas de Quincey approvingly quotes in regard to his +opium-induced "architectural dreams," and, aptly enough, immediately +after a page devoted to Piranesi, the etcher, architect, and +visionary. You may find this page in The Confessions of an English +Opium Eater, that book of terror, beauty, mystification, and fudge (De +Quincey deluded himself quite as much as his readers in this +autobiography, which, like the confessions of most distinguished men, +must not be taken too literally): "Many years ago," he wrote, "when I +was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who +was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, +called his Dreams, which record the scenery of his own soul during the +delirium of a fever. Some of them (described only from memory of Mr. +Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of +which stood all sorts of engines and machinery expressive of enormous +power put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of +the walls, you perceived a staircase, and upon it, groping his way +upward, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther and +you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, without any +balustrade, and allowing no step onward to him who had reached the +extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor +Piranesi? You suppose, at least, that his labours must in some way +terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of +stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this +time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eyes, +and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poor +Piranesi on his aspiring labours, and so on, until the unfinished +stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall." + +This plate was evidently one of the Carceri set--sixteen in all--which +the etcher improvised after some severe cerebral malady. What would we +not give to have heard the poet of Kubla Khan describing the fantastic +visions of the Venetian artist to the English opium eater! The +eloquence of the prose passage we have transcribed has in it some +faint echoes of Coleridge's golden rumble. That these two men +appreciated the Italian is something; perhaps they saw chiefly in his +work its fantastic side. There was no saner craftsman than Piranesi +apart from certain of his plates; no more solid construction in a +print can be shown than his various interpretations of the classic +ruins of Rome, the temples at Paestum. He was a great engraver and +etcher whose passion was the antique. He deliberately withdrew from +all commerce with the ideas and art of his own times. He loved +architecture for architecture's sake; not as a decoration, not as a +background for humanity, but as something personal. It was for him +what the human face was for Rembrandt and Velasquez. That he was +called the Rembrandt of Architecture is but another testimony to the +impression he made upon his contemporaries, though the title is an +unhappy one. Piranesi even in his own little fenced-off coign of art +is not comparable to the etcher of the Hundred Guilder print, nor are +there close analogies in their respective handling of darks and +lights. + +It might be nearer the mark to call Piranesi--though all such +comparisons are thorns in the critical flesh--the Salvator Rosa of +architecture, for there is much of Salvator's unbridled violence, +fantasy, and genius for deforming the actual that is to be encountered +in some of Piranesi's works. His was not a classic temperament. The +serene, airy, sun-bathed palaces and temples which Claude introduced +into his foregrounds are seldom encountered in Piranesi. A dark Gothic +imagination his, Gothic and often cruel. In his etching of public +buildings at Rome or elsewhere, while he is not always faultless in +drawing or scrupulous in observation, such was the sincerity and +passion of the man that he has left us the noblest transcriptions of +these stately edifices and monuments. It is in the rhythmic expression +of his personal moods that his sinister romantic imaginings are +revealed, and with a detail and fulness that are positively +overwhelming. + +It should not be forgotten that in the eighteenth and in the early +part of the nineteenth centuries Piranesi achieved widespread +popularity. He was admired outside of Italy, in England, in France, +and Germany. A generation that in England read Vathek and Mrs. +Radcliffe, supped on the horrors of Melmoth and Frankenstein, knew +E.T.W. Hoffmann and the German romantic literature, could be relied on +to take up Piranesi, and for his lesser artistic side. Poe knew his +work and Baudelaire; we see that for De Quincey he was a kindred +spirit. The English mezzotinter John Martin must have studied him +closely, also Gustave Dore. + +The Carceri (1750) of Piranesi are indoor compositions, enclosed +spaces in which wander aimlessly or deliriously the wraiths of damned +men, not a whit less wretched nor awful than Dante's immemorial mob. +Piranesi shows us cavernous abodes where appalling engines of torture +fill the foreground, while above, at vertiginous heights, we barely +discern perilous passageways, haunted windows peering out upon the +high heavens, stone-fretted ceilings that are lost in a magic mist. By +a sort of diabolic modulation the artist conducts our eye from these +dizzy angles and granitic convolutions down tortuous and tumultuous +staircases that seemingly wind about the axis of eternity. To traverse +them would demand an eternity and the nerves of a madman. Lower +barbaric devices reveal this artist's temperament. He is said to have +executed the prison set "during the delirium of fever." This is of the +same calibre as the clotted nonsense about Poe composing when +intoxicated or Liszt playing after champagne. It is a credible +anecdote for Philistines who do not realise that even the maddest +caprice, whether in black and white, marble, music, or verse, must be +executed in silence and cold blood. Piranesi simply gave wing to his +fancy, recalling the more vivid of his nightmares--as did Coleridge, +De Quincey, Poe, Baudelaire, and the rest of the drug-steeped choir. +We recall one plate of Piranesi's in which a miserable devil climbs a +staircase suspended over an abyss; as he mounts each step the lower +one crumbles into the depths below. + +The agony of the man (do you recall The Torture by Hope of Villiers de +l'Isle-Adam?) is shown in his tense, crouching attitude, his hands +clawing the masonry above him. Nature is become a monstrous fever, +existence a shivering dread. You overhear the crash of stone into the +infernal cellarage--where awaits the hunted wretch perhaps a worse +fate than on the pinnacles above. It is a companion piece to Martin's +Sadak searching for the Waters of Oblivion. Another plate depicts with +ingenuity terraces superimposed upon terraces, archways spaced like +massive music, narrow footways across which race ape-like men, half +naked, eagerly preparing some terrible punishments for criminals +handcuffed and guarded. They are to walk a sharp-spiked bridge. +Gigantic chains swing across stony precipices, a lamp depends from a +roof whose outlines are merged in the gray dusk of dreams. There is +cruelty, horror, and a sense of the wickedly magnificent in the +ensemble. What crimes were committed to merit such atrocious +punishment? The boldness and clearness of it all! With perspicacity +George Saintsbury wrote of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony: "It +is the best example of dream literature that I know--most writers who +have tried this style have erred, inasmuch as they have endeavoured to +throw a portion of the mystery with which the waking mind invests +dreams over the dream itself. Any one's experience is sufficient to +show that this is wrong. The events of dreams, as they happen, are +quite plain and matter of fact, and it is only in the intervals that +any suspicion occurs to the dreamer." + +Certainly Piranesi remembered his dreams. He is a realist in his +delineation of details, though the sweep and breadth of an ideal +design are never absent. He portrays ladders that scale bulky joists, +poles of incredible thickness, cyclopean block and tackling. They are +of wood, not metal nor marble, for the art of Piranesi is full of +discriminations. Finally, you weary. The eye gorged by all the mystic +engines, hieroglyphs of pain from some impossible inquisition--though +not once do we see a monkish figure--all these anonymous monkey men +scurrying on what errand Piranesi alone knows; these towering arches, +their foundations resting on the crest of hell (you feel the +tremendous impact of the architectural mass upon the earth--no mean +feat to represent or rather to evoke the sense of weight, of pressure +on a flat surface); the muffled atmosphere in these prisons from which +no living prisoner emerges; of them all you weary, for the normal +brain can only stand a certain dose of the delirious and the +melancholy. This aspect, then, of Piranesi's art, black magic in all +its potency, need no longer detain us. His Temples of Paestum sound a +less morbid key than his Carceri, and as etchings quite outrank them. + + + + +II + +Giambattista Piranesi was born at Venice in 1720. Bryan says that +about 1738 his father sent him to Rome, where he studied under +Valeriani, through whom he acquired the style of Valeriani's master, +Marco Ricci of Belluno. With Vasi, a Sicilian engraver, he learned +that art. Ricci and Pannini were much in vogue, following the example +of Claude in his employment of ruins as a picturesque element in a +composition. But Piranesi excelled both Ricci and Pannini. He was an +architect, too, helping to restore churches, and this accounts for the +proud title, Architect of Venice, which may be seen on some of his +plates. He lived for a time in Venice, but Rome drew him to her with +an imperious call. And, notwithstanding the opposition of his father, +to Rome he went, and for forty years devoted himself to his master +passion, the pictorial record of the beloved city, the ancient +portions of which were fast vanishing owing to time and the greed of +their owners. This was Piranesi's self-imposed mission, begun as an +exalted youth, finished as an irritable old man. Among his +architectural restorations, made at the request of Clement XIII, were +the two churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Il Priorato. Lanciani +says that Il Priorato is "a mass of monstrosities inside and out." It +is his etching, not his labour as an architect, that will make +Piranesi immortal. He seems to have felt this, for he wrote that he +had "executed a work which will descend to posterity and will last so +long as there will be men desirous of knowing all that has survived +the ruins of the most famous city of the universe." + +In the black-and-white portrait of the etcher by F. Polonzani, we see +a full-cheeked man with a well-developed forehead, the features of the +classic Roman order, the general expression not far removed from a +sort of sullen self-satisfaction. But the eyes redeem. They are full, +lustrous, penetrating, and introspective. The portrait etched by the +son of Piranesi, after a statue, discovers him posed in a toga, the +general effect being classic and consular. His life, like that of all +good workmen in art, was hardly an eventful one. He married +precipitately and his wife bore him two sons (Francesco, the etcher, +born at Rome, 1748--Bryan gives the date as 1756--died at Paris, 1810) +and a daughter (Laura, born at Rome, 1750--date of death unknown). +These children were a consolation to him. Both were engravers. +Francesco frequently assisted his father in his work, and Bryan says +that Laura's work resembled her father's. She went to Paris with her +brother and probably died there. She left some views of Rome. +Francesco, with his brother Pietro, attempted to found an academy in +Paris and later a terra cotta manufactory. + +The elder Piranesi was of a quarrelsome disposition. He wrangled with +an English patron, Viscount Charlemont, and, like Beethoven, destroyed +title-pages when he became displeased with the subject of his +dedications. He was decorated with the Order of Christ and was proud +of his membership in the London Society of Antiquaries. It is said +that the original copper plates of his works were captured by a +British man-of-war during the Napoleonic conflict. This probably +accounts for the dissemination of so many revamped and coarsely +executed versions of his compositions. His besetting fault was a +tendency toward an Egyptian blackness in his composition. Fond of +strong contrasts as was John Martin, he is, at times, as great a +sinner in the handling of his blacks. An experimenter of audacity, +Piranesi's mastery of the technique of etching has seldom been +equalled, and even in his inferior work the skilful printing atones +for many defects. The remarkable richness and depth of tone, brought +about by continuous and innumerable bitings, and other secret +processes known only to himself, make his plates warm and brilliant. +Nobility of form, grandeur of mass, a light and shade that is +positively dramatic in its dispersion over wall and tower, are the +characteristic marks of this unique etcher. He could not resist the +temptation of dotting with figures the huge spaces of his ruins. They +dance or recline or indulge in uncouth gestures. His shadows are +luminous--you may gaze into them; his high lights caught on some +projection or salient cornice or silvering the August porticoes of a +vanished past, all these demonstrate his feeling for the dramatic. And +dramatic is the impression evoked as you study the majestic temples +that were Paestum, the bare, ruined arches and pillars that were Rome. +It is Paestum that is the more vivid. It tallies, too, with the +Piranesi plates; while Rome has visibly changed since his day. His +original designs for chimneys, Diverse Maniere d'Adornare i Camini, +are pronounced by several critics as "foolish and vulgar." He left +nearly two thousand etchings, and died at Rome November 9, 1778. His +son erected a mediocre statue by Angolin for his tomb in Il Priorato. +A manuscript life of Piranesi, which was in London about 1830, is now +lost. Bryan's dictionary gives a partial list of his works "as +published both by himself in Rome and by his sons in Paris. The plates +passed from his sons first to Firmin-Didot, and ultimately into the +hands of the Papal Government." + +De Quincey's quotation of Wordsworth is apposite in describing +Piranesi's creations: "Battlements that on their restless fronts bore +stars"; from sheer brutal masonry, gray, aged, and moss-encrusted, he +invented a precise pattern and one both passionate and magical. + + + + +MERYON + + + +Until the recent appearance of the Baudelaire letters (1841-66) all +that we knew of Meryon's personality and art was to be found in the +monograph by Philippe Burty and Beraldi's Les Graveurs du XIX Siecle. +Hamerton had written of the French etcher in 1875 (Etching and +Etchers), and various anecdotes about his eccentric behaviour were +public property. Frederick Wedmore, in his Etching in England, did not +hesitate to group Meryon's name with Rembrandt's and Jacquemart's (one +feels like employing the Whistlerian formula and asking: Why drag in +Jacquemart?); and to-day, after years of critical indifference, the +unhappy copper-scratcher has come into his own. You may find him +mentioned in such company as Duerer, Rembrandt, and Whistler. The man +who first acclaimed him as worthy of associating with Rembrandt was +the critic Charles Baudelaire; and we are indebted to him for new +material dealing with the troubled life of Charles Meryon. + +On January 8, 1860, Baudelaire wrote to his friend and publisher, +Poulet-Malassis, that what he intends to say is worth the bother of +writing. Meryon had called, first sending a card upon which he +scrawled: "You live in a hotel the name of which doubtless attracted +you because of your tastes." Puzzled by this cryptic introduction, the +poet then noted that the address read: Charles Baudelaire, Hotel de +Thebes. He did not stop at a hotel bearing that name, but, fancying +him a Theban, Meryon took the matter for granted. This letter was +forwarded. Meryon appeared. His first question would have startled any +but Baudelaire, who prided himself on startling others. The etcher, +looking as desperate and forlorn as in the Bracquemond etched portrait +(1853), demanded news of a certain Edgar Poe. Baudelaire responded +sadly that he had not known Poe personally. Then he was eagerly asked +if he believed in the reality of this Poe. Charles began to suspect +the sanity of his visitor. "Because," added Meryon, "there is a +society of litterateurs, very clever, very powerful, and knowing all +the ropes." His reasons for suspecting a cabal formed against him +under the guise of Poe's name were these: The Murders in the Rue +Morgue. "I made a design of the Morgue--an orang-outang. I have been +often compared to a monkey. This orang-outang assassinated two women, +a mother and daughter. Et moi aussi, j'ai assassine moralement deux +femmes, la mere et sa fille. I have always taken this story as an +allusion to my misfortunes. You, M. Baudelaire, would do me a great +favour if you could find the date when Edgar Poe, supposing he was not +assisted by any one, wrote his tale. I wish to see if this date +coincides with my adventures." After that Baudelaire knew his man. + +Meryon spoke with admiration of Michelet's Jeanne d'Arc, though he +swore the book was not written by Michelet. (Not such a wild shot, +though not correct in this particular instance, for the world has +since discovered that several books posthumously attributed to +Michelet were written by his widow.) The etcher was interested in the +cabalistic arts. On one of his large plates he drew some eagles, and +when Baudelaire objected that these birds did not frequent Parisian +skies he mysteriously whispered "those folks at the Tuileries" often +launched as a rite the sacred eagles to study the omens and presages. +He was firmly convinced of this. After the termination of the trying +visit Baudelaire, with acrid irony, asks himself why he, with his +nerves usually unstrung, did not go quite mad, and he concludes, +"Seriously I addressed to Heaven the grateful prayers of a pharisee." + +In March the same year he assures the same correspondent that +decidedly Meryon does not know how to conduct himself. He knows +nothing of life, neither does he know how to sell his plates or find +an editor. His work is very easy to sell. Baudelaire was hardly a +practical business man, but, like Poe, he had sense enough to follow +his market. He instantly recognised the commercial value of Meryon's +Paris set, but knew the etcher was a hopeless character. He wrote to +Poulet-Malassis concerning a proposed purchase of Meryon's work by the +publisher. It never came to anything. The etcher was very suspicious +as to paper and printing. He grew violent when the poet asked him to +illustrate some little poems and sonnets. Had he, Meryon, not written +poems himself? Had not the mighty Victor Hugo addressed flattering +words to him? Baudelaire, without losing interest, then thought of +Daumier as an illustrator for a new edition of Les Fleurs du Mal. It +must not be supposed, however, that Meryon was ungrateful. He was +deeply affected by the praise accorded him in Baudelaire's Salon of +1859. He wrote in February, 1860, sending his Views of Paris to the +critic as a feeble acknowledgment of the pleasure he had enjoyed when +reading the brilliant interpretative criticism. He said that he had +created an epoch in etching--which was the literal truth--and he had +saved a rapidly vanishing Paris for the pious curiosity of future +generations. He speaks of his "naive heart" and hoped that Baudelaire +in turn would dream as he did over the plates. This letter was signed +simply "Meryon, 20 Rue Duperre." The acute accent placed over the "e" +in his name by the French poet and by biographers, critics, and +editors since was never used by the etcher. It took years before +Baudelaire could persuade the Parisians that Poe did not spell his +name "Edgard Poe." And we remember the fate of Liszt and Whistler, who +were until recently known in Paris as "Litz" and "Whistler." With the +aid of Champfleury and Banville, Baudelaire tried to bring Meryon's +art to the cognisance of the Minister of Beaux-Arts, but to no avail. +Why? + +There was a reason. Bohemian as was the artist during the last decade +of his life, he did not always haunt low cafes and drink absinthe. His +beginnings were as romantic as a page of Balzac. He was born a +gentleman _a la main gauche_. His father was the doctor and private +secretary of Lady Stanhope. Charles Lewis Meryon was an English +physician, who, falling in love with a ballet dancer at the Opera, +Pierre Narcisse Chaspoux, persuaded her that it would be less selfish +on her part if she would not bind him to her legally. November +23,1821, a sickly, nervous, and wizened son was born to the pair and +baptised with his father's name, who, being an alien, generously +conceded that much. There his interest ceased. On the mother fell the +burden of the boy's education. At five he was sent to school at Passy +and later went to the south of France. In 1837 he entered the Brest +naval school, and 1839 saw him going on his maiden voyage. This first +trip was marred by the black sorrow that fell upon him when informed +of his illegitimate birth. "I was mad from the time I was told of my +birth," he wrote, and until madness supervened he suffered from a +"wounded imagination." He was morbid, shy, and irritable, and his +energy--the explosive energy of this frail youth was amazing; because +he had been refused the use of a ship boat he wasted three months +digging out a canoe from a log of wood. Like Paul Gauguin, he saw many +countries, and his eyes were trained to form, though not colour--he +suffered from Daltonism--for when he began to paint he discovered he +was totally colour-blind. The visible world for him existed as a +contrapuntal net-work of lines, silhouettes, contours, or heavy dark +masses. When a sailor he sketched. Meryon tells of the drawing of a +little fungus he found in Akaroa. "Distorted in form and pinched and +puny from its birth, I could not but pity it; it seemed to me so +entirely typical of the inclemency and at the same time of the +whimsicality of an incomplete and sickly creation that I could not +deny it a place in my _souvenirs de voyage_, and so I drew it +carefully." This bit of fungus was to him a symbol of his own gnarled +existence. + +Tiring of ship life, he finally decided to study art. He had seen New +Zealand, Australia, Italy, New Caledonia, and if his splendid +plate--No. 22 in M. Burty's list--is evidence, he must have visited +San Francisco. Baudelaire, in L'Art Romantique, speaks of this +perspective of San Francisco as being Meryon's most masterly design. +In 1846 he quit seafaring. He was in mediocre health, and though from +a cadet he had attained the rank of lieutenant it was doubtful if he +would ever rise higher. His mother had left him four thousand dollars, +so he went over to the Latin Quarter and began to study painting. That +he was unfitted for, and meeting Eugene Blery he became interested in +etching. A Dutch seventeenth-century etcher and draughtsman, Reiner +Zeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too, Ducereau and Nicolle. +"An etching by the latter of a riverside view through the arch of a +bridge is like a link between Meryon and Piranesi," says D.S. MacColl. +Meryon also studied under the tuition of a painter named Phelippes. He +went to Belgium in 1856 on the invitation of the Duc d'Aremberg, and +in 1858 he was sent to Charenton suffering from melancholy and +delusions. He left in a year and returned to Paris and work; but, as +Baudelaire wrote, a cruel demon had touched the brain of the artist. A +mystic delirium set in. He ceased to etch, and evidently suffered from +the persecution madness. In every corner he believed conspiracies were +hatching. He often disappeared, often changed his abode. Sometimes he +would appear dressed gorgeously at a boulevard cafe in company with +brilliant birds of prey; then he would be seen slinking through mean +streets in meaner rags. There are episodes in his life that recall the +career of another man of genius, Gerard de Nerval, poet, noctambulist, +suicide. It is known that Meryon destroyed his finest plates, but not +in a mad fit. Baudelaire says that the artist, who was a +perfectionist, did not wish to see his work suffer from rebiting, so +he quite sensibly sawed up the plates into tiny strips. That he was +suspicious of his fellow-etchers is illustrated in the story told by +Sir Seymour Haden, who bought several of his etchings from him at a +fair price. Two miles away from the atelier the Englishman was +overtaken by Meryon. He asked for the proofs he had sold, "as they +were of a nature to compromise him"; besides, from what he knew of +Haden's etchings he was determined that his proofs should not go to +England. Sir Seymour at once returned the etchings. Now, whether +Meryon's words were meant as a compliment or the reverse is doubtful. +He was half crazy, but he may have seen through a hole in the +millstone. + +Frederick Keppel once met in Paris an old printer named Beillet who +did work for Meryon. He could not always pay for the printing of his +celebrated Abside de Notre Dame, a masterpiece, as he hadn't the +necessary ten cents. "I never got my money!" exclaimed the thrifty +printer. Enormous endurance, enormous vanity, diseased pride, outraged +human sentiment, hatred of the Second Empire because of the particular +clause in the old Napoleonic code relating to the research of +paternity; an irregular life, possibly drugs, certainly alcoholism, +repeated rejections by the academic authorities, critics, and dealers +of his work--these and a feeble constitution sent the unfortunate back +to Charenton, where he died February 14, 1868. Baudelaire, his +critical discoverer, had only preceded him to a lunatic's grave six +months earlier. Inasmuch as there is a certain family likeness among +men of genius with disordered minds and instincts, several comparisons +might be made between Meryon and Baudelaire. Both were great artists +and both were born with flawed, neurotic systems. Dissipation and +misery followed as a matter of course. + +Charles Meryon was, nevertheless, a sane and a magnificent etcher. He +executed about a hundred plates, according to Burty. He did not avoid +portraiture, and to live he sometimes manufactured pot-boilers for the +trade. To his supreme vision was joined a miraculous surety of touch. +Baudelaire was right--those plates, the Paris set, so dramatic and +truthful in particulars, could have been sold if Meryon, with his +wolfish visage, his fierce, haggard eyes, his gruff manner, had not +offered them in person. He looked like a vagabond very often and too +often acted like a brigand. The Salon juries were prejudiced against +his work because of his legend. Verlaine over again! The etchings were +classic when they were born. We wonder they did not appeal +immediately. To-day, if you are lucky enough to come across one, you +are asked a staggering price. They sold for a song--when they did +sell--during the lifetime of the artist. Louis Napoleon and Baron +Haussmann destroyed picturesque Paris to the consternation of Meryon, +who to the eye of an archaeologist united the soul of an artist. He +loved old Paris. We can evoke it to-day, thanks to these etchings, +just as the Paris of 1848 is forever etched in the pages of Flaubert's +L'Education Sentimentale. + +But there is hallucination in these etchings, beginning with Le +Stryge, and its demoniac leer, "insatiable vampire, l'eternelle +luxure." That gallery of Notre Dame, with Wotan's ravens flying +through the slim pillars from a dream city bathed in sinister light, +is not the only striking conception of the poet-etcher. The grip of +reality is shown in such plates as Tourelle, Rue de la Tisseranderie, +and La Pompe, Notre Dame. Here are hallucinations translated into the +actual terms of art, suggesting, nevertheless, a solidity, a sharpness +of definition, withal a sense of fluctuating sky, air, clouds that +make you realise the _justesse_ of Berenson's phrase--tactile values. +With Meryon the tactile perception was a sixth sense. Clairvoyant of +images, he could transcribe the actual with an almost cruel precision. +Telescopic eyes his, as MacColl has it, and an imagination that +perceived the spectre lurking behind the door, the horror of enclosed +spaces, and the mystic fear of shadows--a Poe imagination, romantic, +with madness as an accomplice in the horrible game of his life. One is +tempted to add that the romantic imagination is always slightly mad. +It runs to seed in darkness and despair. The fugitive verse of Meryon +is bitter, ironical, defiant; a whiff from an underground prison, +where seems to sit in tortured solitude some wretch abandoned by +humanity, a stranger even at the gates of hell. + +Sir Seymour Haden has told us that Meryon's method was to make a +number of sketches, two or three inches square, of parts of his +picture, which he put together and arranged into a harmonious whole. +Herkomer says that he "used the burin in finishing his bitten work +with marvellous skill. No better combination can be found of the +harmonious combination of the two." Burty declared that "Meryon +preserves the characteristic detail of architecture... Without +modifying the aspect of the monument he causes it to express its +hidden meaning, and gives it a broader significance by associating it +with his own thought." His employment of a dull green paper at times +showed his intimate feeling for tonalities. He is, more so than +Piranesi, the Rembrandt of architecture. Hamerton admits that the +French etcher was "one of the greatest and most original artists who +have appeared in Europe," and berates the public of the '60s for not +discovering this. Then this writer, copying in an astonishingly +wretched manner several of Meryon's etchings, analysing their defects +as he proceeds, asserts that there is false tonality in Le Stryge. +"The intense black in the street under the tower of St. Jacques +destroys the impression of atmosphere, though at a considerable +distance it is as dark as the nearest raven's wing, which cannot +relieve itself against it. This may have been done in order to obtain +a certain arrangement of black and white patches," etc. This was done +for the sheer purpose of oppositional effects. Did Hamerton see a fine +plate? The shadow is heavy; the street is in demi, not total, +obscurity; the values of the flying ravens and the shadow are clearly +enunciated. The passage is powerful, even sensational, and in the +Romantic, Hugoesque key. Hamerton is wrong. Meryon seldom erred. His +was a temperament of steel and fire. + + + + +JOHN MARTIN, MEZZOTINTER + + + +The sitting-room was long and narrow. A haircloth sofa of +uncompromising rectitude was pushed so close to the wall that the +imprints of at least two generations of heads might be discerned upon +the flowered wall-paper--flowers and grapes of monstrous size from +some country akin to that visited by the Israelitish spies as related +in the Good Book. A mahogany sideboard stood at the upper end of the +room; in one window hung a cage which contained a feeble canary. As +you entered your eyes fell upon an ornamental wax fruit piece under a +conical glass. A stuffed bird, a robin redbreast, perched on a frosted +tree in the midst of these pale tropical offerings, glared at you with +beady eyes. Antimacassars and other things of horror were in the room. +Also a centre table upon which might have been found Cowper's poems, +the Bible, Beecher's sermons, and an illustrated book about the Holy +Land by some hardworking reverend. It was Aunt Jane's living-room; in +it she had rocked and knitted for more than half a century. There were +a few pictures on the wall, a crayon of her brother, a bank president +with a shaved upper lip, a high, pious forehead, and in his eyes a +stern expression of percentage. Over the dull white marble mantelpiece +hung a huge mezzotint, of violent contrast in black and white, a +picture whose subject had without doubt given it the place of honour +in this old-fashioned, tasteless, homely, comfortable room. It bore +for a title The Fall of Nineveh, and it was designed and mezzotinted +by John Martin. + +Let us look at this picture. It depicts the downfall of the great city +upon which the wrath of God is visited. There are ghastly gleams of +lightning above the doomed vicinity. A fierce tempest is in progress +as the invading hosts break down the great waterways and enter +dry-shod into the vast and immemorial temples and palaces. The +tragedy, the human quality of the design, is summed up by the agitated +groups in the foreground; the king, surrounded by his harem, makes a +gesture of despair; the women, with loose-flowing draperies, surround +him like frightened swans. A high priest raises his hand to the stormy +heavens, upon which he is evidently invoking as stormy maledictions. A +warrior swings his blade; to his neck clings a fair helpless one, half +nude. There are other groups. Men in armour rush to meet the foe in +futile agitation. On temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, on +the efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms +affrighted humanity. The impression is grandiose and terrific. Exotic +architecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dusty +corridors of legend or history--these and a hundred other details are +enclosed within the frame of this composition. Another picture which +hangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is +colourless in comparison. The Englishman had greater imagination than +the German, though he lacked the latter's anatomical science. To-day +in the Pinakothek, Munich, Kaulbach holds a place of honour. You may +search in vain at the London National Gallery for the paintings of a +man who once was on the crest of popularity in England, whose Biblical +subjects attracted multitudes, whose mezzotints and engravings were +sold wherever the English Bible was read. John Martin, painter, +mezzotinter, man of gorgeous imagination, second to De Quincey or the +author of Vathek, is to-day more forgotten than Beckford himself. + +Heinrich Heine in his essay, The Romantic School, said that "the +history of literature is a great morgue, wherein each seeks the dead +who are near or dear to him." Into what morgue fell John Martin before +his death? How account for the violent changes in popular taste? +Martin suffered from too great early success. The star of Turner was +in the ascendant. John Ruskin denied merit to the mezzotinter, and so +it is to-day that if you go to our print-shops you will seldom find +one of his big or little plates. He has gone out of fashion--fatal +phrase!--and only in the cabinets of old collectors can you get a peep +at his archaic and astounding productions. William Blake is in vogue; +perhaps Martin--? And then those who have garnered his plates will +reap a harvest. + +Facts concerning him or his work are slight. Bryan's dictionary +accords him a few paragraphs. When at the British Museum, a few years +ago, I asked Mr. Sidney Colvin about the Martins in his print-room. +There are not many, not so many as in a certain private collection +here. But Mr. Colvin told me of the article written by Cosmo Monkhouse +in the Dictionary of National Biography, and from it we are enabled to +present a few items about the man's career. He was born at Hayden +Bridge, near Hexham, Northumberland, July 19, 1789. His father, +Fenwick Martin, a fencing-master, held classes at the Chancellor's +Head, Newcastle. His brothers, Jonathan (1782-1838) and William +(1772-1851), have some claim on our notice, for the first was an +insane prophet and incendiary, having set fire to York Minster in +1829; William was a natural philosopher and poet who published many +works to prove the theory of perpetual motion. "After having convinced +himself by means of thirty-six experiments of the impossibility of +demonstrating it scientifically, it was revealed to him in a dream +that God had chosen him to discover the great cause of all things, and +this he made the subject of many works" (Jasnot, Verites positives, +1854). Verily, as Lombroso hath it, "A hundred fanatics are found for +a theological or metaphysical statement, but not one for a geometric +problem." + +The Martin stock was, without doubt, neurasthenic. John was +apprenticed when fourteen to Wilson, a Newcastle coach painter, but +ran away after a dispute over wages. He met Bonifacio Musso, an +Italian china painter, and in 1806 went with him to London. There he +supported himself painting china and glass while he studied +perspective and architecture. At nineteen he married and in 1812 lived +in High Street, Marylebone, and from there sent to the Academy his +first picture, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (from Tales +of the Genii). The figure of Sadak was so small that the framers +disputed as to the top of the picture. It sold to Mr. Manning for +fifty guineas. Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy, +encouraged Martin, and next year he painted Adam's First Sight of Eve, +which he sold for seventy guineas. In 1814 his Clytis was shown in an +ante-room of the exhibition, and he bitterly complained of his +treatment. Joshua, in 1816, was as indifferently hung, and he never +forgave the Academy the insult, though he did not withdraw from its +annual functions. In 1817 he was appointed historical painter to +Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. He etched about this time +Character of Trees (seven plates) and the Bard at the Academy. In 1818 +he removed to Allsop Terrace, New (Marylebone road). In 1819 came The +Fall of Babylon, Macbeth (1820), Belshazzar's Feast (1821), which, +"excluded" from the Academy, yet won the L200 prize. A poem by T.S. +Hughes started Martin on this picture. It was a national success and +was exhibited in the Strand behind a glass transparency. It went the +round of the provinces and large cities and attracted thousands. +Martin joined the Society of British Artists at its foundation and +exhibited with them from 1824 to 1831, and also in 1837 and 1838, +after which he sent his important pictures to the Royal Academy. + +In 1833 The Fall of Nineveh went to Brussels, where it was bought by +the Government. Martin was elected member of the Belgian Academy and +the Order of Leopold was conferred on him. His old quarrels with the +Academy broke out in 1836, and he testified before a committee as to +favouritism. Then followed The Death of Moses, The Deluge, The Eve of +the Deluge, The Assuaging of the Waters, Pandemonium. He painted +landscapes and water-colours, scenes on the Thames, Brent, Wandle, +Wey, Stillingbourne, and the hills and eminences about London. About +this time he began scheming for a method of supplying London with +water and one that would improve the docks and sewers. He engraved +many of his own works, Belshazzar, Joshua, Nineveh, Fall of Babylon. +The first two named, with The Deluge, were presented by the French +Academy to Louis Philippe, for which courtesy a medal was struck off +in Martin's honour. The Ascent of Elijah, Christ Tempted in the +Wilderness, and Martin's illustrations (with Westall's) to Milton's +Paradise Lost were all completed at this period. For the latter Martin +received L2,000. He removed to Lindsey House, Chelsea, in 1848 or +1849, and was living there in 1852, when he sent to the Academy his +last contribution, Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. November 12, +1853, while engaged upon his last large canvases, The Last Judgment, +The Great Day of Wrath, and The Plains of Heaven, he was paralysed on +his right side. He was removed to the Isle of Man, and obstinately +refusing proper nourishment, died at Douglas February 17, 1854. After +his death three pictures, scenes from the Apocalypse, were exhibited +at the Hall of Commerce. His portrait by Wangemann appeared in the +_Magazine of Fine Arts_. A second son, Leopold Charles, writer, and +godson of Leopold, King of Belgium, was an authority on costumes and +numismatics (1817-89). His wife was a sister of Sir John Tenniel of +_Punch_. + +John Martin was slightly cracked; at least he was so considered by his +contemporaries. He was easily affronted, yet he was a very generous +man. He bought Etty's picture, The Combat, in 1825 for two or three +hundred guineas. There are at the South Kensington Museum three +Martins, watercolours, and one oil; at Newcastle, an oil. At the time +of his decease his principal works were in the collections of Lord de +Tabley, Dukes of Buckingham and Sutherland, Messrs. Hope and +Scarisbruck, Earl Grey and Prince Albert. The Leyland family of +Nantchvyd, North Wales, owns the Joshua and several typical works of +Martin. Wilkie, in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, describes +Belshazzar's Feast as a "phenomenon." Bulwer declared that Martin was +"more original and self-dependent than Raphael or Michael Angelo." In +the Last Essays of Elia there is one by Charles Lamb entitled +Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Production of Modern Art. +The name of Martin is not mentioned, but several of his works are +unmistakably described. "His towered architecture [Lamb is writing of +Belshazzar's Feast] are of the highest order of the material sublime. +Whether they were dreams or transcripts of some elder +workmanship--Assyrian ruins old--restored by this mighty artist, they +satisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions of the glories of +the antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled." +"Literary" art critic as he was, Lamb put his finger on Martin's +weakest spot--his figure painting. The entire essay should be read, +for it contains a study of the Joshua in which this most delicious of +English prose writers speaks of the "wise falsifications" of the great +masters. Before his death the critics, tiring of him sooner than the +public, called Martin tricky, meretricious, mechanical. To be sure, +his drawing is faulty, his colour hot and smoky; nevertheless, he was +not a charlatan. As David Wilkie wrote: "Weak in all these points in +which he can be compared to other artists," he had the compensating +quality of an imposing, if at times operatic, imagination. Monkhouse +justly says that in Martin's illustrations to Milton the smallness of +scale and absence of colour enable us to appreciate the grandeur of +his conceptions with a minimum of his defects. + +In sooth he lacked variety. His pictures are sooty and apocalyptic. We +have seen the Mountain Landscape, at South Kensington, The Destruction +of Herculaneum, at Manchester, another at Newcastle whose subject +escapes us, and we confess that we prefer the mezzotints of Martin, +particularly those engraved by Le Keux--whose fine line and keen sense +of balance corrected the incoherence of Martin's too blackened shadows +and harsh explosions of whites. One looks in vain for the velvety tone +of Earlom, or the vivid freshness of Valentine Green, in Martin. He +was not a colourist; his mastery consisted in transferring to his huge +cartoons a sense of the awful, of the catastrophic. He excelled in the +delineation of massive architecture, and if Piranesi was his superior +in exactitude, he equalled the Italian in majesty and fantasy of +design. No such cataclysmic pictures were ever before painted, nor +since, though Gustave Dore, who without doubt made a study of Martin, +has incorporated in his Biblical illustrations many of Martin's +overwhelming ideas--the Deluge, for example. James Ensor, the Belgian +illustrator, is an artist of fecund fancy who, alone among the new +men, has betrayed a feeling for the strange architecture, dream +architecture, we encounter in Martin. Coleridge in Kubla Khan, De +Quincey in opium reveries, Poe and Baudelaire are among the writers +who seem nearest to the English mezzotinter. William Beckford's +Vathek, that most Oriental of tales, first written in French by a +millionaire of genius, should have inspired Martin. Perhaps its mad +fantasy did, for all we know--there is no authentic compilation of his +compositions. Heine has spoken of Martin, as has Theophile Gautier; +and his name, by some kink of destiny, is best known to the present +generation because of Macaulay's mention of it in an essay. + +The Vale of Tempe is one of Martin's larger plates seldom seen in the +collector's catalogue. We have viewed it and other rare prints in the +choice collection referred to already. Satan holding council, after +Milton, is a striking conception. The Prince of Eblis sits on a vast +globe of ebony. About him are tier upon tier of faces, the faces of +devils. Infernal chandeliers depend from remote ceilings. Light gashes +the globe and the face and figure of Satan; both are of supernal +beauty. Could this mezzotint, so small in size, so vast in its shadowy +suggestiveness, have stirred Baudelaire to lines that shine with a +metallic poisonous lustre? + +And there is that tiny mezzotint in which we find ourselves at the +base of a rude little hill. The shock of the quaking earth, the silent +passing of the sheeted dead and the rush of the affrighted multitudes +tell us that a cosmic tragedy is at hand. In a flare of lightning we +see silhouetted against an angry sky three crosses at the top of a sad +little hill. It is a crucifixion infinitely more real, more intense +than Dore's. Another scene--also engraved by Le Keux: On a stony +platform, vast and crowded, the people kneel in sackcloth and ashes; +the heavens thunder over the weeping millions of Nineveh, and the Lord +of Hosts will not be appeased. Stretching to the clouds are black +basaltic battlements, and above rear white-terraced palaces as swans +that strain their throats to the sky. The mighty East is in penitence. +Or, Elijah is rapt to heaven in a fiery whirlwind; or God creates +light. This latter is one of the most extraordinary conceptions of a +great visionary and worthy of William Blake. Or Sadak searching for +the waters of oblivion. Alas, poor humanity! is here the allegory. A +man, a midget amid the terrifying altitudes of barren stone, lifts +himself painfully over a ledge of rock. Above him are vertiginous +heights; below him, deadly precipices. Nothing helps him but +himself--a page torn from Max Stirner is this parable. Light streams +upon the struggling egoist as he toils to the summit of consciousness. +Among the designs of nineteenth-century artists we can recall none so +touching, so powerful, so modern as this picture. Martin was not +equally successful in portraying celestial episodes, though his +paradises are enormous panoramas replete with architectural beauties. +His figures, as exemplified in Miltonic illustrations, are more +conventional than Fuseli's and never naively original as are Blake's. +Indeed, of Blake's mystic poetry and divination Martin betrays no +trace. He is not so much the seer as the inventor of infernal +harmonies. Satan reviewing his army of devils is truly magnificent in +its depiction of the serried host armed for battle; behind glistens +burning Tophet in all its smoky splendour. Satan in shining armour +must be a thousand feet high; he is sadly out of scale. So, too, in +the quarrel of Michael and Satan over the sleeping Adam and Eve. Blake +is here recalled in the rhythms of the monstrous figures. Bathos is in +the design of Lucifer swimming in deepest hell upon waves of fire and +filth; yet the lugubrious arches of the caverns in the perspective +reveal Blake's fantasy, so quick to respond to external stimuli. +Martin saw the earth as in an apocalyptic swoon, its forms distorted, +its meanings inverted; a mad world, the world of an older theogony. +But if there was little human in his visions, he is enormously +impersonal; if he assailed heaven's gates on wings of melting wax, or +dived deep into the pool of iniquity, he none the less caught glimpses +in his breathless flights of strange countries across whose sill no +human being ever passes. There is genuine hallucination. He must have +seen his ghosts so often that in the end they petrified him, as did +the Statue Don Giovanni. Martin was a species of reversed Turner. He +spied the good that was in evil, the beauty in bituminous blacks. He +is the painter of black music, the deifier of Beelzebub, and also one +who caught the surge and thunder of the Old Testament, its majesty and +its savagery. As an illustrator of sacred history, the world may one +day return to John Martin. + + + + +ZORN + + + +Anders Zorn--what's in a name? Possibly the learned and amiable father +of Tristram Shandy or that formidable pedant Professor Slawkenbergius +might find much to arouse his interest in the patronymic of the great +Swedish painter and etcher. What Zorn means in his native tongue we do +not profess to know; but in German it signifies anger, wrath, rage. +Now, the Zorn in life is not an enraged person--unless some lady +sitter asks him to paint her as she is not. He is, as all will testify +who have met him, a man of rare personal charm and sprightly humour. +He, it may be added, calls yellow yellow, and he never paints a +policeman like a poet. In a word, a man of robust, normal vision, a +realist and an artist. False realism with its hectic, Zola-like +romanticism is distasteful to Zorn. He is near Degas among the +Frenchmen and Zuloaga among the new Spaniards; near them in a certain +forthright quality of depicting life, though unlike them in technical +and individual methods. + +Yes, Zorn, that crisp, bold, short name, which begins with a letter +that abruptly cuts both eye and ear, quite fits the painter's +personality, fits his art. He is often ironic. Some fanciful theorist +has said that the letters Z and K are important factors in the career +of the men who possess them in their names. Camille Saint-Saens has +spoken of Franz Liszt and his lucky letter. It is a very pretty idea, +especially when one stakes on zero at Monte Carlo; but no doubt Anders +Zorn would be the first to laugh the idea out of doors. + +We recall an exhibition a few years ago at Venice in the art gallery +of the Giardino Reale. Zorn had a place of honour among the boiling +and bubbling Secessionists; indeed, his work filled a large room. And +what work! Such a giant's revel of energy. Such landscapes, riotous, +sinister, and lovely. Such women! Here we pause for breath. Zorn's +conception of womanhood has given offence to many idealists, who do +not realise that once upon a time our forebears were furry and +indulged in arboreal habits. Zorn can paint a lady; he has signed many +gentle and aristocratic canvases. + +But Zorn is also too sincere not to paint what he sees. Some of his +models are of the earth, earthy; others step toward you with the +candid majesty of a Brunhilda, naked, unashamed, and regal. They are +all vital. We recall, too, the expressions, shocked, amazed, even +dazed, of some American art students who, fresh from their golden +Venetian dreams, faced the uncompromising pictures of a man who had +faced the everyday life of his day. For these belated visionaries, +whose ideal in art is to painfully imitate Giorgione, Titian, or +Tiepolo, this modern, with his rude assault upon the nerves, must seem +a very iconoclast. Yet Zorn only attempts to reproduce the life +encircling him. He is a child of his age. He, too, has a perception of +beauty, but it is the beauty that may be found by the artist with an +ardent, unspoiled gaze, the curious, disquieting beauty of our time. +Whistler saw it in old Venetian doorways as well as down Chelsea way +or at Rotherhithe. Zorn sees it in some corner of a wood, in some +sudden flex of muscle or intimate firelit interior. And he loves to +depict the glistening curves of his big model as she stands in the +sunlight, a solid reproach to physical and moral anaemia. A pagan, by +Apollo! + +As an etcher the delicacy of his sheathed lion's paw is the principal +quality that meets the eye, notwithstanding the broad execution. +Etching is essentially an impressionistic art. Zorn is an +impressionist among etchers. He seems to attack his plate not with the +finesse of a meticulous fencing-master but like a Viking, with a broad +Berserker blade. He hews, he hacks, he gashes. There is blood in his +veins, and he does not spare the ink. But examine closely these little +prints--some of them miracles of printing--and you may discern their +delicate sureness, subtlety, and economy of gesture. Fitzroy +Carrington quotes the Parisian critic Henri Marcel, who among other +things wrote of the Zorn etchings: "Let us only say that these +etchings--paradoxical in their coarseness of means and fineness of +effect--manifest the master at his best." + +Coarseness of means and fineness of effect--the phrase is a happy one. +Coarse is sometimes the needle-work of Zorn, but the end justifies the +means. He is often cruel, more cruel than Sargent. His portraits prove +it. He has etched all his friends, some of whom must have felt +honoured and amused--or else offended. The late Paul Verlaine, for +example, would not have been pleased with the story of his life as +etched by the Swede. It is as biting a commentary--one is tempted to +say as acid--as a page from Strindberg. Yes, without a touch of +Strindberg's mad fantasy, Zorn is kin to him in his ironic, witty way +of saying things about his friends and in front of their faces. +Consider that large plate of Renan. Has any one so told the truth +concerning the ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer of +France? The large, loosely modelled head with its fleshy curves, its +super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontifical +expression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania of +certitude"--here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous disdainer of democracies, +and planner of a phalanstery of superior men years before Nietzsche's +superman appeared. Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker; +also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, is it not, +to evoke with needle, acid, paper, and ink the dualism of such a brain +and temperament as was Renan's? + +He is not flattering to himself, Zorn. The Henry G. Marquand, two +impressions, leaves one rather sad. An Irish girl, Annie, is superb in +its suggestion of form and colour. Saint-Gaudens and his model is +excellent; we prefer the portrait. The Evening Girl Bathing is rare in +treatment--simple, restrained, vital. She has turned her back, and we +are grateful, for it is a beautiful back. The landscape is as +evanescent as Whistler, the printing is in a delicate key. The Berlin +Gallery contains a Zorn, a portrait striking in its reality. It +represents Miss Maja von Heyne wearing a collar of skins. She could +represent the Maja of Ibsen's epilogue, When We Dreamers Awake; Maja, +the companion of the bear hunter, Ulfheim. As etched, we miss the +massiveness, the rich, vivid colour, yet it is a plate of distinction. + +Among his portraits are the Hon. Daniel S. Lamont, Senator "Billy" +Mason, the Hon. John Hay, Mr. and Mrs. Atherton Curtis, and several +big-wigs of several nations. An oil-painting is an impressionistic +affair, showing some overblown girls dressing after their bath. The +sun flecks their shoulders, but otherwise seems rather inclined to +retire modestly. Evidently not the midnight sun. + +We have barely indicated the beauties in which the virile spirit of +Anders Zorn comes out at you from the wall--a healthy, large-hearted, +girted Swede is this man with the Z. + + + + +BRANGWYN + + + +The name of Frank Brangwyn may fall upon unresponsive ears; yet he has +a Continental reputation and is easily the foremost English +impressionist. New York has seen but little of his work; if we mistake +not, there was a large piece of his, a Gipsy Tinker in the open air, +hung several seasons ago at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Mr. +Kennedy shows extraordinary etchings of his at the Wunderlich +Galleries. We call them extraordinary not alone because of their size, +but also because Brangwyn is practically the first among latter-day +artists to apply boldly to etching the methods of the impressionists. +Etching in its essential nature is an impressionistic art. We do not +mean to assert that Brangwyn uses the dot or dash or broken dabs in +his plates, for the very good reason that he is working in black and +white; nevertheless a glance at his plates will show you a new way of +conquering old prejudices. Whistler it was who railed at large +etchings. He was not far wrong. In the hands of the majority of +etchers a large plate is an abomination, diffused in interest, coarse +of line; but Brangwyn is not to be considered among this majority. He +is a big fellow in everything. Besides, Whistler was using the +familiar argument, _pro doma sua_. The same may be said of Poe, who +simply would not hear of a long poem (shades of Milton!) or of Chopin, +who lost his way in the sonata form, though coming out in the gorgeous +tropical land, the thither side of sonatas and other tonal animals. + +Because Catullus and Sappho did not write epics that is no reason why +Dante should not. It is the old story of the tailless fox. Brangwyn as +well as Anders Zorn has been called a rough-and-ready artist. For +exquisite tone and pattern we must go to Whistler and his school. +Brangwyn is never exquisite, though he is often poetic, even epical. +Look at that Bridge, Barnard Castle. It is noble in outline, lovely in +atmosphere. Or at the Old Hammersmith--"swell," as the artist slang +goes. The Mine is in feeling and mass Rembrandtish; and as we have +used the name of the great Dutchman we may as well admit that to him, +despite a world of difference, Brangwyn owes much. He has the sense of +mass. What could be more tangibly massive than the plate called +Breaking Up of the Hannibal? Here is a theme which Turner in The +Fighting Temeraire made truly poetic, and Seymour Haden in his +Agamemnon preserved more than a moiety of sentiment, not to mention +the technical prowess displayed; but in the hulk of this ugly old +vessel of Brangwyn's there is no beauty. However, it is hugely +impressive. His landscapes are not too seldom hell-scapes. + +The Inn of the Parrot is quaint with its reversed lettering. The Road +to Montreuil is warm in colour and finely handled. How many have +realised the charm of the rear view of Santa Maria Salute? It is one +of the most interesting of Brangwyn's Venetian etchings. His vision of +Saint Sophia, Constantinople, has the mystic quality we find in the +Dutchman Bauer's plates. A Church at Montreuil attracts the eye; +London Bridge is positively dramatic; the Old Kew Bridge has delicacy; +the Sawyers with their burly figures loom up monstrously; the Building +of the New Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, recalls, as +treated by the impressionistic brush of Brangwyn (for the needle seems +transformed into a paint-loaded spike), one of H.G. Wells's terrific +socialistic structures of the year 2009. Remember that Brangwyn is +primarily a painter, an impressionist. He sees largely. His dream of +the visible world (and like Sorolla, it is never the world invisible +with him) is one of patches and masses, of luminous shadows, of +animated rhythms, of rich arabesques. He is sib to the Scotch. His +father is said to have been a Scottish weaver who settled in Bruges. +Frank saw much of the world before settling in London. He was born at +Bruges, 1867. The Golden Book of Art describes him as a one-time +disciple of William Morris. He has manufactured glass, furniture, +wall-paper, pottery. His curiosity is insatiable. He is a mural +decorator who in a frenzy could cover miles of space if some kind +civic corporation would but provide the walls. As the writer of the +graceful preface to the Wunderlich catalogue has it: "He gets the +character of his theme. His art is itself full of character." +Temperament, overflowing, passionate, and irresistible, is his +key-note. In music he might have been a Fritz Delius, a Richard +Strauss. He is an eclectic. He knows all schools, all methods. He is +Spanish in his fierce relish of the open air, of the sights--and we +almost said sounds--of many lands, but the Belgian strain, the touch +of the mystic and morose, creeps into his work. We have caught it more +in his oils than etchings. It is not singular, then, that his small +etched plates do not hold the eye; they lack magnetic quality. It is +the Titan, rude and raging, dashing ink over an acre of white paper, +that rivets you. The stock attitudes and gestures he does not give +you; and it is doubtful if he will have an audience soon in America, +where the sleek is king and prettiness is exalted over power. + + + + +DAUMIER + + + +Mr. Frank Weitenkampf, the curator of the Lenox Library print +department, shows nineteen portfolios which hold about seven hundred +lithographs by Honore Daumier. This collection is a bequest of the +late Mr. Lawrence, and we doubt if the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris +surpasses it; that is, in the number of detached examples. There the +works of the great artist are imbedded in the various publications for +which he laboured so many years--such at _La Caricature, Les Beaux +Arts, L'Artiste, Les Modes Parisiennes, La Gazette Musicale, Le +Boulevard,_ and _Masques et Visages_. The Lawrence lithographs are +representatives, though not complete; the catalogue compiled by Loys +Delteil comprises 3,958 plates; the paintings and drawings are also +numerous. But an admirable idea of Daumier's versatile genius may be +gleaned at the Lenox Library, as all the celebrated series are there: +Paris Bohemians, the Blue Stockings, the Railways, La Caricature, +Croquis d'Expressions, Emotions Parisiennes, Actualites, Les +Baigneurs, Pastorales, Moeurs Conjugales, the Don Quixote plates, +Silhouettes, Souvenirs d'Artistes, Types Parisiens, the Advocates and +Judges, and a goodly number of the miscellanies. Altogether an +adequate exhibition. + +Honore Daumier, who died February 11, 1879, was almost the last of the +giants of 1830, though he outlived many of them. Not affiliated with +the Barbizon group--though he was a romantic in his hatred of the +bourgeois--several of these painters were intimate friends; indeed, +Corot was his benefactor, making him a present of a cottage at +Valmondois (Seine-et-Oise), where the illustrator died. He was blind +and lonely at the end. Corot died 1875; Daubigny, his companion, 1878; +Millet, 1875, and Rousseau, with whom he corresponded, died 1867. In +1879 Flaubert still lived, working heroically upon that monument of +human inanity, Bouvard et Pecuchet; Maupassant, his disciple, had just +published a volume of verse; Manet was regarded as a dangerous +charlatan, Monet looked on as a madman; while poor Cezanne was only a +bad joke. The indurated critical judgment of the academic forces +pronounced Bonnat a greater portraitist than Velasquez, and Gerome and +his mock antiques and mock orientalism far superior to Fromentin and +Chasseriau. It was a glorious epoch for mediocrity. And Daumier, in +whom there was something of Michael Angelo and Courbet, was admired +only as a clever caricaturist, the significance of his paintings +escaping all except a few. Corot knew, Daubigny knew, as earlier +Delacroix knew; and Balzac had said: "There is something of the +Michael Angelo in this man!" + +Baudelaire, whose critical _flair_ never failed him, wrote in his +Curiosites Esthetiques: "Daumier's distinguishing note as an artist is +his certainty. His drawing is fluent and easy; it is a continuous +improvisation. His powers of observation are such that in his work we +never find a single head that is out of character with the figure +beneath it. ... Here, in these animalised faces, may be seen and read +clearly all the meannesses of soul, all the absurdities, all the +aberrations of intelligence, all the vices of the heart; yet at the +same time all is broadly drawn and accentuated." Nevertheless one must +not look at too many of these caricatures. At first the Rabelaisian +side of the man appeals; presently his bitterness becomes too acrid. +Humanity is silly, repulsive; it is goat, pig, snake, monkey, and +tiger; but there is something else. Daumier would see several sides. +His pessimism, like Flaubert's, is deadly, but at times reaches the +pitch of the heroic. He could have echoed Flaubert's famous sentence: +"The ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope." Yet what wit, what +humour, what humanity in Daumier! His Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are +worth a wilderness of Dores. And the Good Samaritan or The Drinkers. +The latter is as jovial as Steen or Hals. + +A story went the rounds after his death which neatly illustrates his +lack of worldliness. His modesty was proverbial, and once Daubigny, on +introducing him to an American picture dealer, warned him not to ask +less than five thousand francs for the first picture he sold to the +man. The American went to Daumier's atelier, and seeing a picture on +the easel, asked, "How much?" The artist, remembering Daubigny's +warning, answered, "Five thousand francs." The dealer immediately +bought it, and on demanding to see something else, Daumier put another +canvas on the easel, far superior to the one sold. The Yankee again +asked the price. The poor artist was perplexed. He had received no +instructions from Daubigny regarding a second sale; so when the +question was repeated he hesitated, and his timidity getting the +better of him, he replied: "Five hundred francs." "Don't want it; +wouldn't take it as a gift," said the dealer. "I like the other +better. Besides, I never sell any but expensive pictures," and he went +away satisfied that a man who sold so cheaply was not much of an +artist. This anecdote, which we heard second hand from Daubigny, may +be a fable, yet it never failed to send Daubigny into fits of +laughter. It may be surmised that, despite his herculean labours, +extending over more than half a century, Daumier never knew how to +make or save money. + +He was born at Marseilles in 1808. His father was a third-rate poet +who, suspecting his own gift, doubted the talent of his son, though +this talent was both precocious and prodigious. The usual thing +happened. Daumier would stick at nothing but his drawing; the attempt +to force him into law studies only made him hate the law and lawyers +and that hatred he never ceased to vent in his caricatures. He knocked +about until he learned in 1829 the technics of lithography; then he +soon became self-supporting. His progress was rapid. He illustrated +for the Boulevard journals; he caricatured Louis Philippe and was sent +to jail, Sainte-Pelagie, for six months. Many years afterward he +attacked with a like ferocity Napoleon III. + +Look at his frontispiece--rather an advertisement--of Victor Hugo's +Les Chatiments. It is as sinister, as malign as a Rops. The big book, +title displayed, crushes to earth a vulture which is a travesty of the +Napoleonic beak. Daumier was a power in Paris. Albert Wolff, the +critic of _Figaro_, tells how he earned five francs each time he +provided a text for a caricature by Daumier, and Philipon, who founded +several journals, actually claimed a share in Daumier's success +because he wrote some of the silly dialogues to his plates. + +Daumier was the artistic progenitor of the Caran d'Aches, the +Forains--who was it that called Forain "Degas en +caricature"?--Willettes, and Toulouse-de-Lautrecs. He was a political +pamphleteer, a scourger of public scamps, and a pictorial muck-raker +of genius. His mockery of the classic in art was later paralleled by +Offenbach in La Belle Helene. But there were other sides to his +genius. Tiring of the hurly-burly of journalism, he retired in 1860 to +devote himself to painting. + +His style has been pronounced akin to that of Eugene Carriere; his +sense of values on a par with Goya's and Rembrandt's (that Shop Window +of his in the Durand-Ruel collection is truly Rembrandtesque). This +feeling for values was so remarkable that it enabled him to produce an +impression with three or four tones. The colours he preferred were +grays, browns, and he manipulated his blacks like a master. Mauclair +does not hesitate to put Daumier among the great painters of the past +century on the score of his small canvases. "They contain all his +gifts of bitter and profound observation, all the mastery of his +drawings, to which they add the attractions of rich and intense +colour," declares Mauclair. Doubtless he was affected by the influence +of Henri Monnier, but Daumier really comes from no one. He belongs to +the fierce tribe of synics and men of exuberant powers, like Goya and +Courbet. A born anarch of art, he submitted to no yoke. He would have +said with Anacharsis Cloots: "I belong to the party of indignation." +He was a proud individualist. That he had a tender side, a talent for +friendship, may be noted in the affectionate intercourse he maintained +for years with Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Dupre, Geoffroy, the sculptor +Pascal, and others. He was very impulsive and had a good heart with +all his misanthropy, for he was an idealist reversed. The etching of +him by Loys Delteil is thus described by a sympathetic commentator: +"Daumier was very broad-shouldered, his head rather big, with slightly +sunken eyes, which must, however, have had an extraordinary power of +penetration. Though the nose is a little heavy and inelegant, the +projecting forehead, unusually massive like that of Victor Hugo or of +Beethoven and barred with a determined furrow, reveals the great +thinker, the man of lofty and noble aspirations. The rather long hair, +thrown backward, adds to the expression of the fine head; and finally +the beard worn collarwise, according to the prevailing fashion, gives +to Daumier's face the distinctive mark of his period." This etched +portrait may be seen in several states at the Lenox Library. + + + + +LALANNE'S ETCHINGS + + + +How heavily personality counts in etching may be noted in the etched +work of Maxime Lalanne which is at the Keppel Galleries. This skilful +artist, so deft with his needle, so ingenious in fancy, escapes great +distinction by a hair's breadth. He is without that salt of +individuality that is so attractive in Whistler. Of him Hamerton +wrote: "No one ever etched so gracefully as Maxime Lalanne; ... he is +essentially a true etcher... There have been etchers of greater power, +of more striking originality, but there has never been an etcher equal +to him in a certain delicate elegance." This is very amiable, and +Joseph Pennell is quite as favourable in his judgment. "His ability," +wrote Mr. Pennell in Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen, "to express a +great building, a vast town, or a delicate little landscape has never +been equalled, I think, by anybody but Whistler." Mr. Pennell modestly +omits his own name; but the truth is that Pennell is as excellent if +not more individual a draughtsman as Lalanne, and when it comes to +vision, to invention, and to the manipulation of the metal he is the +superior of the Frenchman. The American etcher rates Lalanne's lines +above Titian's. Whistler and Titian would be big companions indeed for +the clever-mannered and rather pedantic Lalanne. + +Let us admit without balking at Hamerton that his line is graceful. He +belongs to the old-fashioned school which did not dream, much less +approve, of modern tonal effects in their plates. A Lalanne etching is +as clean and vivid as a photograph (not an "art" photograph). It is +also as hard. Atmosphere, in the material as well as the poetic sense, +is missing. His skies are disappointing. Those curly-cue clouds are +meaningless, and the artist succeeds better when he leaves a blank. At +least some can fill it with the imagination. Another grave defect is +the absence of modulation in his treatment of a landscape and its +linear perspective. Everything seems to be on the same plane of +interest, nor does he vary the values of his blacks--in foreground, +middle distance, and the upper planes the inking is often in the same +violent key. Such a capital plate, for example, which depicts a fire +in the port of Bordeaux is actually untrue in its values. Dramatic in +feeling and not without a note here and there of Rembrandt, this +particular composition fails, just fails to hit the bull's-eye. + +After all, we must judge a man in his genre, as Keppel _pere_ puts it. +Maxime Lalanne's style is that of a vanished generation in etching. He +was a contemporary of Meryon, but that unhappy man of genius taught +him nothing. Born at Bordeaux in 1827, Lalanne died in 1886. He was a +pupil of Jean Gigoux (1806-94), a painter whose gossipy souvenirs +(1885) pleased Paris and still please the curious. (Gigoux it was who +remained in Balzac's house when the novelist died; though he was not +visiting the master of the house.) From this painter Lalanne evidently +imbibed certain theories of his art which he set forth in his Treatise +on Etching (1866). + +Strangely enough, illustrator as he was, his transpositions into black +and white of subjects by Troyon, Ruysdael, Crome, Constable, and many +others are not so striking either in actual technique or individual +grasp as his original pieces. Constable, for instance, is thin, +diffuse, and without richness. Mezzotinted by the hands of such a man +as Lucas, we recognise the real medium for translating the English +painter. A master of the limpid line, Lalanne shows you a huddled bit +of Amsterdam or a distant view of Bordeaux, or that delicious prospect +taken on a spot somewhere below the Pont Saint-Michel, with the Pont +Neuf and the Louvre in the background. He had a feeling for those +formal gardens which have captured within their enclosure a moiety of +nature's unstudied ease. The plate called Aux Environs de Paris +reveals this. And what slightly melancholy tenderness there is in Le +Canal a Pont Sainte-Maxence. There are several states of the "Villers" +etching, an attractive land and seascape, marred, however, by the +clumsy sameness of the blacks in the foreground. + +Without possessing Meryon's grim power in the presentation of old +Paris streets and tumble-down houses, Lalanne has achieved several +remarkable plates of this order. One is his well-known Rue des +Marmousets. This street is almost as repellent-looking as Rue +Mouffetard at its worst period. Ancient and sinister, its reputation +was not enticing. In it once dwelt a pastry cook who, taking his crony +the barber into his confidence, literally made mince-meat of a +stranger and sold the pies to the neighbours. + +Messire Jacques du Breul, in his Le Theatre des Antiquites de Paris +(1612), remarks, not without critical unction, in his quaint French: +"De la chair d'icelui faisit des pastez qui se trouvoient meilleurs +que les aultres, d'autant que la chair de l'homme est plus delicate a +cause de la nourriture que celle des aultres animaux." Every one to +his taste, as the old politician said when he kissed the donkey. When +you study the Lalanne etching of this gruesome alley you almost expect +to see at the corner Anatole France's famous cook-shop with its +delectable odours and fascinating company. + +The scenes of Thames water-side, Nogent, Houlgate Beach, at Richmond, +or at Cusset are very attractive. His larger plates are not +convincing, the composition does not hang together; the eye vainly +seeks focussing centres of interest. Beraldi was right when he said +that Lalanne has not left one surpassing plate, one of which the world +can say: There is a masterpiece! Yet is Maxime Lalanne among the +Little Masters of characteristic etching. His appeal is popular, he is +easily comprehended of the people. + + + + +LOUIS LEGRAND + + + +The etched work of the brilliant Frenchman Louis Legrand is at last +beginning to be appreciated in this country. French etchings, unless +by painter-etchers, have never been very popular with us. We admire +Meryon and Helleu's drypoints, Bracquemond, Jacquemart; Felix Buhot +has a following; Lalanne and Daubigny too; but in comparison with the +demand for Rembrandt, Whistler, Seymour Haden, or Zorn the Paris men +are not in the lead. There is Rops, for example, whose etchings may be +compared to Meryon's; yet who except a few amateurs seeks Rops? Louis +Legrand is now about forty-five, at the crest of his career, a +versatile, spontaneous artist who is equally happy with pigments or +the needle. His pastels are much sought, but his dry-points have +gained for him celebrity. Though a born colourist, the primary gift of +the man is his draughtsmanship. His designs, swift and supple +notations of the life around him, delight the eye by reason of their +personal touch and because of the intensely human feeling that he +infuses into every plate. Legrand was one of the few pupils of +Felicien Rops, and technically he has learned much of his master; but +his way of viewing men and women and life is different from that of +the Belgian genius. He has irony and wit and humour--the two we seldom +bracket--and he has pity also; he loves the humble and despised. His +portraits of babies, the babies of the people, are captivating. +Imagine a Rops who has some of Millet's boundless sympathy for his +fellow-humans and you have approximately an understanding of Louis +Legrand. + +He is a native of Dijon, the city that gave birth to Bossuet, but +Legrand is not that kind of Burgundian. Several critics pretend to see +in his work the characteristics of his native Cote d'Or; that, +however, may be simply a desire to frame the picture appropriately. +Legrand might have hailed from the south, from Daudet's country; he is +exuberant as he is astute. The chief thing is that he has abundant +brains and in sheer craftsmanship fears few equals. Like Whistler, his +principal preoccupation is to suppress all appearance of technical +procedures. His method of work is said to be simplicity itself; +obsessed by his very definite visions, he transfers them to the +scratched plate with admirable celerity. Dry-point etching is his +principal medium. With his needle he has etched Montmartre, its +cabarets, its angels--in very earthly disguise--its orators, poets, +and castaways, and its visiting tourists--"God's silly sheep." He has +illustrated a volume of Edgar Poe's tales that displays a _macabre_ +imagination. His dancers are only second to those of Edgar Degas, and +seen from an opposite side. His peasants, mothers, and children, above +all, babies, reveal an eye that observes and a brain that can +co-ordinate the results of this piercing vision. Withal, he is a poet +who extracts his symbols from everyday life. + +This is what Camille Mauclair said of him at the time of his debut: + +"An admirably skilful etcher, a draughtsman of keen vision, and a +painter of curious character, who has in many ways forestalled the +artists of to-day. Louis Legrand also shows to what extent Manet and +Degas have revolutionised the art of illustration, in freeing the +painters from obsolete laws and guiding them toward truth and frank +psychological study. Legrand is full of them without resembling them. +We must not forget that besides the technical innovation [division of +tones, study of complementary colours] impressionism has brought us +novelty of composition, realism of character, and great liberty in the +choice of subjects. From this point of view Rops himself, in spite of +his symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group if +it were not that any kind of classification in art is useless and +inaccurate. However that may be, Louis Legrand has signed some volumes +with the most seductive qualities." + +Gustave Kahn, the symbolist poet who was introduced to the English +reading world in one of the most eloquent pages of George Moore, +thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist. We side with Mauclair in +not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He is +anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also +shockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le +paing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the fist, +and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinched +fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. He is +well dressed. His silk hat is shiny, his mustache curled in the true +Adolphe fashion. His face is vile. The woman cries aloud and protects +herself with her hands. In Marthe Baraquin, by Rosny senior, you will +find the material for this picture, though Legrand found it years ago +in the streets. Unpleasant, truly, yet a more potent sermon on man's +cruelty to woman than may be found in a dozen preachments, fictions, +or the excited outpourings at a feminist congress. Legrand presents +the facts of the case without comment, except the irony--such dismal +irony!--of the title. In this he is the true pupil of Rops. + +However, he does not revel long among such dreary slices of life. The +Poe illustrations are grotesque and shuddering, but after all make +believe. The plate of The Black Cat piles horror on horror's head +(literally, for the demon cat perches on the head of the corpse) and +is, all said, pictorial melodrama. The Berenice illustration is, we +confess, a little too much for the nerves, simply because in a +masterly manner Legrand has exposed the most dreadful moment of the +story (untold by Poe, who could be an artist in his tact of omission). +The dental smile of the cataleptic Berenice as her necrophilic cousin +bends over the coffin is a testimony to a needle that in this instance +matches Goya's and Rops's in its evocation of the horrific. We turn +with relief to the ballet-girl series. The impression gained from this +album is that Legrand sympathises with, nay loves, his subject. Degas, +the greater and more objective artist, nevertheless allows to sift +through his lines an inextinguishable hatred of these girls who labour +so long for so little; and Degas did hate them, as he hated all that +was ugly in daily life, though he set forth this ugliness, this +mediocrity, this hatred in terms of beautiful art. Legrand sees the +ugliness, but he also sees the humanity of the _ballateuse_. She is a +woman who is brought up to her profession with malice aforethought by +her parents. These parents are usually noted for their cupidity. We +need not read the witty history of the Cardinal family to discover +this repellent fact. Legrand sketches the dancer from the moment when +her mother brings her, a child, to undergo the ordeal of the first +lesson. + +The tender tot stands hesitating in the doorway; one hand while +holding the door open seems to grasp it as the last barrier of defence +that stands between her and the strange new world. She is attired in +the classical figurante's costume. Behind, evidently pushing her +forward, is the grim guardian, a bony, forbidding female. Although you +do not see them, it is an easy feat to imagine the roomful of girls +and dancing master all staring at the new-comer. The expression on the +child's face betrays it; instinctively, like the generality of +embarrassed little girls, her hand clasps her head. In less than a +minute she will weep. + +Another plate, L'ami des Danseuses, is charged with humanity. The +violinist who plays for the ballet rehearsals sits resting, and facing +him are two young dancers, also sitting, but stooping to relieve their +strained spines and the tendons of their muscular legs. The old fellow +is giving advice from the fulness of a life that has been not too +easy. The girls are all attention. It is a genre bit of distinction. +Upon the technical virtuosity in which this etcher excels we shall not +dwell. Some of his single figures are marvels. The economy of line, +the massing of lights and darks, the vitality he infuses into a woman +who walks, a man who works in the fields, a child at its mother's +breast, are not easily dealt with in a brief study. We prefer to note +his more general qualities. His humour, whether in delineating a +stupid soldier about to be exploited by camp followers, or in his +Animales, is unforced. It can be Rabelaisian and it can be a record of +simple animal life, as in the example with the above title. A cow +stands on a grassy shore; near by a stolid peasant girl sits slicing +bread and eating it. Cow and girl, grass and sky and water are woven +into one natural pattern. The humour inheres in several sly touches. +It is a comical Millet. Very Millet-like too is the large picture, +Beau Soir, in which a field labourer bends over to kiss his wife, who +has a child at her breast. A cow nuzzles her apron, the fourth member +of this happy group. The Son of the Carpenter is another peasant +study, but the transposition of the Holy Family to our century. A +slight nimbus about the mother's head is the only indication that this +is not a humble household somewhere in France. Maternal Joy, Mater +Inviolata are specimens of a sane, lovely art which celebrate the +joys, dolors, and exaltations of motherhood. We prefer this side of +the art of Legrand to his studies of sinister jail-birds, _hetairai_, +noctambules, high kickers, and private bars, the horrors of Parisian +night life. Whatever he touches he vivifies. His leaping, audacious +line is like the narrative prose of a Maupassant or a Joseph Conrad. +Every stroke tells. + +His symbolical pictures please us least. They doubtless signify no end +of profound things, yet to us they seem both exotic and puerile. We go +back to the tiny dancers, tired to sleepiness, who sit on a sofa +waiting to be called. Poor babies! Or to the plate entitled Douleur. +Or to the portraits of sweet English misses--as did Constantin Guys, +Legrand has caught the precise English note--or any of the children +pieces. If he knows the psychology of passion, knows the most intimate +detail of the daily life of _les filles_, Legrand is master too of the +psychology of child life. This will endear him to English and American +lovers of art, though it is only one of his many endowments. His wit +keeps him from extremes, though some of his plates are not for +puritans; his vivid sympathies prevent him from falling into the +sterile eccentricities of so many of his contemporaries; if he is +cynical he is by the same taken soft-hearted. His superb handling of +his material, with a synthetic vision superadded, sets apart Louis +Legrand in a profession which to-day is filled with farceurs and +fakers and with too few artists by the grace of God. + + + + +GUYS, THE ILLUSTRATOR + + + +Practitioners of the noble art of illustration are, as we know, modest +men, but no matter the degree of their modesty they are all distanced +by the record in shyness still maintained by Constantin Guys. This +artist was once a living protest against Goethe's assertion that only +fools are modest, and the monument recently erected to his memory in +Paris is provocation enough to bring him ferrying across the Styx to +enter a disclaimer in the very teeth of his admirers. So set in his +anonymity was he that Charles Baudelaire, his critical discoverer, was +forced to write a long essay about his work and only refer to the +artist as C.G. The poet relates that once when Thackeray spoke to Guys +in a London newspaper office and congratulated him on his bold +sketches in the _Illustrated London News_, the fiery little man +resented the praise as an outrage. Nor was this humility a pose. His +life long he was morbidly nervous, as was Meryon, as was Cezanne; but +he was neither half mad, like the great etcher, nor a cenobite, as was +the painter of Aix. Few have lived in the thick of life as did Guys. +To employ the phrase of Turgenieff, life, like grass, grew over his +head. In the Crimean camps, on the Parisian boulevards, in London +parks, Guys strolled, crayon in hand, a true reporter of things seen +and an ardent lover of horses, soldiers, pretty women, and the mob. +Baudelaire called him the soldier-artist. He resembled in his restless +wanderings Poe's man of the multitude, and at the end of a long life +he still drew, as did Hokusai. + +Who was he? Where did he receive his artistic training? Baudelaire did +not tell, nor Theophile Gautier. He went through the Crimean campaign; +he lived in the East, in London and Paris. Not so long ago the art +critic Roger Marx, while stopping at Flushing, Holland, discovered his +baptismal certificate, which reads thus: "Ernestus Adolphus Hyacinthus +Constantinus Guys, born at Flushing December 3, 1805, of Elizabeth +Betin and Francois Lazare Guys, Commissary of the French Marine." The +baptism occurred January 26, 1806, and revealed the fact that he had +for godfather an uncle who held a diplomatic position. Guys told his +friends that his full family name was Guys de Sainte-Helene--which may +have been an amiable weakness of the same order as that of Barbey +d'Aurevilly and of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, both of whom boasted noble +parentage. However, Guys was little given to talk of any sort. He was +loquacious only with his pencil, and from being absolutely forgotten +after the downfall of the Second Empire to-day every scrap of his work +is being collected, even fought for, by French and German collectors. +Yet when the Nadar collection was dispersed, June, 1909, in Paris, his +aquarelles went for a few francs. Felix Feneon and several others now +own complete sets. In New York there are a few specimens in the +possession of private collectors, though the Lenox Library, as a rule +rich in such prints, has only reproductions to show. + +The essay of Charles Baudelaire, entitled Le Peintre de la Vie +Moderne, to be found in Volume III of his collected works (L'Art +Romantique), remains thus far the standard reference study concerning +Guys, though deficient in biographical details. Other critical studies +are by Camille Mauclair, Roger Marx, Richard Muther, and George +Grappe; and recently Elizabeth Luther Cary in a too short but +admirably succinct article characterised the Guys method in this +fashion: "He defined his forms sharply and delicately, and used within +his bounding line the subtlest variation of light and shade. His +workmanship everywhere is of the most elusive character, and he is a +master of the art of reticence." Miss Cary further speaks of his +"gentle gusto of line in motion, which lately has captivated us in the +paintings of the Spaniard Sorolla, and long ago gave Botticelli and +Carlo Crivelli the particular distinction they had in common." +Mauclair mentions "the most animated water-colour drawings of Guys, +his curious vision of nervous elegance and expressive skill," and +names it the impressionism of 1845, while Dr. Muther christened him +the Verlaine of the crayon because, like Verlaine, he spent his life +between the almshouse and a hospital, so said the German critic. +Furthermore, Muther believes it was no mere chance that made of +Baudelaire his admirer; in both the decadent predominated--which is +getting the cart before the horse. Rops, too, is recalled by Guys, who +depicted the gay grisette of the faubourgs as well as the nocturnal +pierreuse of the fortifications. "Guys exercised on Gavarni an +influence which brought into being his Invalides du sentiment, his +Lorettes vielles, and his Fourberies de femmes." + +It is not quite fair to compare Guys with Rops, or indeed with either +Gavarni or Daumier. These were the giants of French illustration at +that epoch. Guys was more the skirmisher, the sharpshooter, the +reporter of the moment, than a creative master of his art. The street +or the battle-field was his atelier; speed and grace and fidelity his +chief claims to fame. He never practised his art within the walls of +academies; the material he so vividly dealt with was the stuff of +life. The very absence of school in his illustrations is their chief +charm; a man of genius this, self-taught, and a dangerous precedent +for fumblers or those of less executive ability. From the huge mass of +his work being unearthed from year to year he may be said to have +lived crayon in hand. He is the first of a long line of newspaper +illustrators. His profession was soldiering, and legend has it that he +accompanied Byron to Missolonghi. The official career of his father +enabled the youth to see much of the world--Greece, the Balkans, +Turkey, Persia, and perhaps India. On returning to France he became an +officer of dragoons and for some time led the life of a dandy and man +about town. With his memory, of which extraordinary tales are told, he +must have stored up countless films of impressions, all of which were +utilised years later. + +In 1845 we find him installed at Paris, though no longer in the army. +Then it was he began to design. He became contributor to many +periodicals, among the rest the _Illustrated London News_ and _Punch_. +For the former journal he went to the Crimean war as accredited art +correspondent. The portfolio containing the Crimean set is now most +sought for by his admirers. He is said to have originated the +expression "taken on the spot," in the title of one of his +instantaneous sketches. Few draughtsmen could boast his sure eye and +manual dexterity. The Balaklava illustration is as striking in its way +as Tennyson's lines, though containing less of poetic heroism and more +ugly realism. Like the trained reporter that he was, Guys followed a +battle, recording the salient incidents of the engagement, not +overemphasising the ghastliness of the carnage, as did Callot or Goya +or Raffet, but telling the truth as he saw it, with a phlegm more +British and German than French. Though he had no Dutch blood in his +veins, he was, like Huysmans, more the man of Amsterdam than the man +of Paris. He noted the changing and shocking scenes of hospital life, +and sympathy without sentimentality drops from his pen. He is drily +humorous as he shows us some plumaged General peacocking on foot, or +swelling with Napoleonic pride as he caracoles by on his horse. And +such horses! Without a hint of the photographic realism of a Muybridge +and his successors, Guys evokes vital horses and riders, those seen by +the normal vision. The witching movement of beautiful Arabian steeds +has not had many such sympathetic interpreters. + +In Turkey he depicted episodes of daily life, of the courts of the +Sublime Porte itself, of the fete of Bairam, which closes the fast of +Ramadan. His Turkish women are not all houris, but they bear the stamp +of close study. They are pretty, indolent, brainless creatures. In his +most hurried crayons, pen-and-ink sketches, and aquarelles Guys is +ever interesting. He has a magnetic touch that arrests attention and +atones for technical shortcomings. Abbreviation is his watchword; his +drawings are a species of shorthand notations made at red-hot tempo, +yet catching the soul of a situation. He repeats himself continually, +but, as M. Grappe says, is never monotonous. In love with movement, +with picturesque massing, and broad simple colour schemes, he +naturally gravitated to battle-fields. In Europe society out of doors +became his mania. Rotten Row, in the Bois, at Brighton or at +Baden-Baden, the sinuous fugues of his pencil reveal to succeeding +generations how the great world once enjoyed itself or bored itself to +death. No wonder Thackeray admired Guys. They were kindred spirits; +both recognised and portrayed the snob mundane. + +As he grew older Guys became an apparition in the life of Paris. The +smash-up of the Empire destroyed the beloved world he knew so well. +Poor, his principal pleasure was in memory; if he couldn't actually +enjoy the luxury of the rich he could reproduce its images on his +drawing-pad. The whilom dandy and friend of Baudelaire went about +dressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a nodding +acquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's +reign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness to +all comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feast +this watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys did +not waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five he began to go +down-hill. His habits had never been those of a prudent citizen, and +as his earning powers grew less some imp of the perverse entered his +all too solitary life. With this change of habits came a change of +theme. Henceforth he drew _filles_, the outcasts, the scamps and +convicts and the poor wretches of the night. He is now a forerunner of +Toulouse-Lautrec and an entire school. This side of his career +probably caused Dr. Muther to compare him with Paul Verlaine. +Absinthe, the green fairy of so many poets and artists, was no +stranger to Guys. + +In 1885, after dining with Nadar, his most faithful friend, Guys was +run over in the Rue du Havre and had his legs crushed. He was taken to +the Maison Dubois, where he lived eight years longer, dying at the +venerable age of eighty-seven, though far from being a venerable +person. Astonishing vitality! He did not begin to draw, that is, for a +living, until past forty. His method of work was simplicity itself, +declare those who watched him at work. He seemingly improvised his +aquarelles; his colour, sober, delicate, was broadly washed in; his +line, graceful and modulated, does not suggest the swiftness of his +execution. He could be rank and vulgar, and he was gentle as a refined +child that sees the spectacle of life for the first time. The +bitterness of Baudelaire's flowers of evil he escaped until he was in +senile decadence. In the press of active life he registered the shock +of conflicting arms, the shallow pride of existence and the mere joy +of living, all in a sane manner that will ever endear him to lovers of +art. + +George Moore tells the following anecdote of Degas: Somebody was +saying he did not like Daumier, and Degas preserved silence for a long +while. "If you were to show Raphael," he said at last, "a Daumier, he +would admire it; he would take off his hat; but if you were to show +him a Cabanel, he would say with a sigh, 'That is my fault.'" + +If you could show Raphael a croquis by Constantin Guys he would +probably look the other way, but Degas would certainly admire and buy +the drawing. + + + + +XI. IMPRESSIONISM + + + +I - MONET + + + +The impressionists claim as their common ancestors Claude Lorraine, +Watteau, Turner, Monticelli. Watteau, Latour, Largilliere, Fragonard, +Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen are their sponsors in the matters of +design, subject, realism, study of life, new conceptions of beauty and +portraiture. Mythology, allegory, historic themes, the neo-Greek and +the academic are under the ban--above all, the so-called "grand +style." Impressionism has actually elevated genre painting to the +position occupied by those vast, empty, pompous, frigid, smoky, +classic pieces of the early nineteenth century. However, it must not +be forgotten that modern impressionism is only a new technique, a new +method of execution--we say new, though that is not exactly the case. +The home of impressionism is in the East; it may be found in the vivid +patterns woven in Persia or in old Japan. In its latest avatar it is +the expression of contemporaneous reality. Therein lies its true +power. The artist who turns his face only to the past--his work will +never be anything but an echo. To depict the faces and things and pen +the manners of the present is the task of great painters and +novelists. Actualists alone count in the future. The mills of the +antique grind swiftly--like the rich, they will be always with us--but +they only grind out imitations; and from pseudo-classic marbles and +pseudo-"beautiful" pictures may Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies, deliver +us. + +That able and sympathetic writer D.S. MacColl has tersely summed up in +his Vision of the Century the difference between the old and new +manner of seeing things. "The old vision had beaten out three separate +acts--the determination of the edges and limits of things, the +shadings and the modellings of the spaces in between with black and +white, and the tintings of those spaces with their local colour. The +new vision that had been growing up among the landscape painters +simplifies as well as complicates the old. For purposes of analysis it +sees the world as a mosaic of patches of colour, such and such a hue, +such and such a tone, such and such a shape... The new analysis looked +first for colour and for a different colour in each patch of shade or +light. The old painting followed the old vision by its three processes +of drawing the contours, modelling the chiaroscura in dead colour, and +finally in colouring this black-and-white preparation. The new +analysis left the contours to be determined by the junction, more or +less fused, of the colour patches, instead of rigidly defining them as +they are known to be defined when seen near at hand or felt... 'Local +colour' in light or shade becomes different not only in tone but in +hue." + +To the layman who asked, "What is impressionism?" Mauclair has given +the most succinct answer in his book L'Impressionisme: "In nature," he +declares, "no colour exists by itself. The colouring of the object is +pure illusion; the only creative source of colour is the sunlight, +which envelops all things and reveals them, according to the hours, +with infinite modifications... The idea of distance, of perspective, +of volume is given us by darker or lighter colours; this is the sense +of values; a value is the degree of light or dark intensity which +permits our eyes to comprehend that one object is further or nearer +than another. And as painting is not and cannot be the imitation of +nature, but merely her artificial interpretation, since it has only at +its disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the only +means that remain for expressing depth on a flat surface. Colour is +therefore the procreatrix of design... Colours vary with the intensity +of light... Local colour is an error; a leaf is not green, a tree +trunk is not brown... According to the time of day, _i. e._, according +to the greater or smaller inclination of the rays (scientifically +called the angle of incidence), the green of the leaf and the brown of +the tree are modified... The composition of the atmosphere... is the +real subject of the picture... Shadow is not absence of light, but +light of a different quality and of a different value. Shadow is not +part of the landscape where light ceases, but where it is subordinated +to a light which appears to us more intense. In the shadow the rays of +the spectrum vibrate with a different speed. Painting should therefore +try to discover here, as in the light parts, the play of the atoms of +solar light, instead of representing shadows with ready-made tones +composed of bitumen and black... In a picture representing an interior +the source of light [windows] may not be indicated; the light +circulating, circling around the picture, will then be composed of the +_reflections_ of rays whose source is invisible, and all the objects, +acting as mirrors for these reflections, will consequently influence +each other. Their colours will affect each other even if the surfaces +be dull. A red vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a very +subtle but mathematically exact exchange between this blue and this +red; and this exchange of luminous waves will create between the two +colours a tone of reflections composed of both. These composite +reflections will form a scale of tones complementary of the two +principal colours. + +"The painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the +solar spectrum and discard all the others;... he will, furthermore, +instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon his canvas +touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed [Claude Monet has +added black and white] and leave the individual rays of each of these +colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight +upon the eye of the beholder." This is called _dissociation_ of tones; +and here is a new convention; why banish all save the spectrum? We +paint nature, not the solar spectrum. + +Claude Monet has been thus far the most successful practitioner of +impressionism; this by reason of his extraordinary analytical power of +vision and native genius rather than the researches of Helmholtz, +Chevreul, and Rood. They gave him his scientific formulas after he had +worked out the problems. He studied Turner in London, 1870; then his +manner changed. He had been a devoted pupil of Eugene Boudin and could +paint the discreet, pearly gray seascapes of his master. But Turner +and Watteau and Monticelli modified his style, changed his way of +envisaging the landscape. Not Edouard Manet but Claude Monet was the +initiator of the impressionistic movement in France, and after +witnessing the rout and confusion that followed in its wake one is +tempted to misquote Nietzsche (who said that the first and only +Christian died on the cross) and boldly assert that there has been but +one impressionist; his name, Monet. "He has arrived at painting by +means of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour +spots which dissociate the tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of +objects through the arabesque of their vibrations." How his landscapes +shimmer with the heat of a summer day! Truly, you can say of these +pictures that "the dawn comes up like thunder." How his fogs, wet and +clinging, seem to be the first real fogs that ever made misty a +canvas! What hot July nights, with few large stars, has Monet not +painted! His series of hayricks, cathedrals, the Thames are precious +notations of contemporary life; they state facts in terms of exquisite +artistic value; they resume an epoch. It is therefore no surprise to +learn that in 1874 Monet gave the name (so variously abused) to the +entire movement when he exhibited a water piece on the Boulevard des +Capucines entitled Impression: Soleil Levant. That title became a +catchword usually employed in a derisive manner. Monet earlier had +resented the intrusion of a man with a name so like his, but succumbed +to the influence of Monet. One thing can no longer be +controverted--Claude Monet is the greatest landscape and marine +painter of the second half of the last century. Perhaps time may alter +this limit clause. + +What Turgenieff most condemned in his great contemporary, +Dostoievsky--if the gentle Russian giant ever condemned any one--was +Feodor Mikhailovitch's taste for "psychological mole runs"; an +inveterate burrowing into the dark places of humanity's soul. Now, if +there is a dark spot in a highly lighted subject it is the question, +Who was the first impressionist? According to Charles de Kay, Whistler +once told him that he, James the Butterfly, began the movement; which +is a capital and characteristic anecdote, especially if one recalls +Whistler's boast made to a young etcher as to the initiative of Corot. +Whistler practically said: "Before Corot was, I am!" And he adduced +certain canvases painted with the misty-edged trees long before--but +why continue? Whistler didn't start Corot--apart from the +chronological difficulties in the way--any more than Courbet and Manet +started Whistler; yet both these painters played important roles in +the American master's art. So let us accept Mauclair's dictum as to +Claude Monet's priority in the field of impressionism. Certainly he +attained his marked style before he met Manet. Later he modified his +own paint to show his sympathy with the new school. Monet went to +Watteau, Constable, Monticelli for his ideas, and in London, about +1870, he studied Turner with an interest that finally bordered on +worship. And why not? In Turner, at the National Gallery, you may find +the principles of impressionism carried to extravagant lengths, and +years before Monet. Consider Rain, Steam and Speed--the Great Western +Railway, that vision of a locomotive dashing across a bridge in +chromatic chaos. Or the Sea Piece in the James Orrock collection--a +welter of crosshatchings in variegated hues wherein any school of +impressionism from Watteau's Embarkment to Monet's latest manner or +the _pointillisme_ of Signac and Seurat may be recognised. And there +is a water-colour of Turner's in the National Gallery called Honfleur, +which has anticipated many traits of Boudin and the Manet we know when +he had not forgotten Eugene Boudin's influence. + +Let us enjoy our Monet without too many "mole runs." As De Kay pointed +out, it was not necessary for Monet to go to London to see Constables. +In the Louvre he could gaze upon them at leisure, also upon Bonington; +not to mention the Venetians and such a Dutchman as Vermeer. It is +therefore doubly interesting to study the Monets at Durand-Ruel's. +There are twenty-seven, and they range as far back as 1872, Promenade +a Trouville, and come down to the Charing Cross Bridge, 1904, and the +two Waterloo Bridge effects, 1903. It is a wide range in sentiment and +technique. The Mills in Holland of 1874 is as cool and composed as +Boudin. Sincerity and beauty are in the picture--for we do not agree +with those who see in Monet only an unemotional recorder of variations +in light and tone. He can compose a background as well as any of his +contemporaries, and an important fact is overlooked when Monet is +jumbled indiscriminately with a lot of inferior men. Monet knew how to +_draw_ before he handled pigment. Some lansdcape painters do not; many +impressionists trust to God and their palette-knife; so the big men +are sufferers. Monet, it may be noted, essayed many keys; his +compositions are not nearly so monotonous as has been asserted. What +does often exhaust the optic nerve is the violent impinging thereon of +his lights. He has an eagle eye, we have not. Wagner had the faculty +of attention developed to such an extraordinary pitch that with our +more normal and weaker nerves he soon exhausts us in his flights. Too +much Monet is like too much Wagner or too much sunshine. + +The breezy effect with the poplars painted flat is an example very +unlike Monet. The church of Varengeville at Dieppe (1880) is a classic +specimen; so is the Pourville beach (1882). What delicate greens in +the Spring (1885)! What fine distance, an ocean view, in the Pourville +picture! Or, if you care for subdued harmonies, there is the ice floe +at Vetheuil (1881). + +The London pictures tell of the older artist--not so vigorous, a vein +of tenderness beginning to show instead of his youthful blazing +optimism. Claude Monet must have had a happy life--he is still a +robust man painting daily in the fields, leading the glorious life of +a landscapist, one of the few romantic professions in this prosaic +age. Not so vain, so irritable as either Manet or Whistler, Monet's +nerves have never prompted him to extravagances. Backbiters declare +that Monet is suffering from an optical degeneration--poor, overworked +word! Monet sees better, sees more keenly than his fellow-men. What a +misfortune! Ibsen and Wagner suffered, too, from superior brains. If +Monet ever suffered seriously from a danger to his art it +was--success. He was abused in the beginning, but not as severely as +Manet. But success perched on Monet's palette. His pictures never seem +to suggest any time but high noon, in spirit, at least. And he is +never sad. Yet, is there anything sadder under the sun than a soul +incapable of sadness? + +In his very valuable contribution to the history of the cause, +Theodore Duret, the biographer and friend of Whistler and Manet has in +his Les Peintres Impressionistes held the scales very much in favour +of Manet's priority in the field over Monet. It is true that in 1863 +Manet had drawn upon his head the thunderous wrath of Paris by +exhibiting his Dejeuner sur l'Herbe and Olympe--by no means a +representative effort of the painter's genius, despite its diabolic +cleverness. (It reveals a profound study of Titian, Cranach, and +Goya.) But his vision was in reality synthetic, not analytic; he was a +primitive; he belongs to the family of Velasquez, Ribera, Goya. He +studied Hals--and with what glorious results in Le Bon Bock! He +manipulated paint like an "old master" and did astounding things with +the higher tones of the colour scale. He was not an impressionist +until he met Monet. Then in audacity he outstripped his associates. +Discouraged by critical attacks, his courage had been revived by +Charles Baudelaire, who fought for Richard Wagner as well as for Poe +and Manet. To the painter the poet scornfully wrote: "You complain +about attacks? But are you the first to endure them? Have you more +genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud, I must tell you that +they are models, each in his own way, and in a very rich world, while +you are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." Sinister and +disquieting that last phrase, and for those who see in impressionism +the decadence of painting (because of the predominance given to the +parts over the whole) it is a phrase prophetic. + +Manet is a classic. His genuine power--technically speaking--lies in +the broad, sabre-like strokes of his brush and not in the niggling +_taches_ of the impressionists--of which the _reuctio ad absurdum_ is +pointillisme. He lays on his pigments in sweeping slashes and his +divisions are large. His significance for us does not alone reside in +his consummate mastery of form and colour, but in his forthright +expression of the life that hummed about him. He is as actual as Hals. +Study that Boy With the Sword at the Metropolitan Museum--is there +anything superficial about it? It is Spanish, the Spain of Velasquez, +in its beautiful thin, clear, flat painting, its sober handling of +values. The truth is that Manet dearly loved a fight, and being _chef +d'ecole_, he naturally drifted to the impressionists' camp. And it is +significant that Duret did not give this virile spirit a place in his +new volume, confining the estimate of his genius to the preface. +Mauclair, on the contrary, includes Manet's name in his more +comprehensive and more scientific study, as he also includes the name +of Edgar Degas--Degas, who is a latter-day Ingres, plus colour and a +new psychology. + +The title of impressionism has been a misleading one. If Degas is an +impressionist, pray what then is Monet? Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne are +impressionists, and in America there is no impropriety in attaching +this handle to the works of Twachtmann, J. Alden Weir, W.L. Metcalf, +Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Robert Reid, Ernest Lawson, Paul +Cornoyer, Colin Campbell Cooper, Prendergast, Luks, and Glackens. But +Manet, Degas! It would have been a happier invention to have called +the 1877 group independents; independent they were, each man pursuing +his own rainbow. We may note an identical confusion in the mind of the +public regarding the Barbizon school. Never was a group composed of +such dissimilar spirits. Yet people talk about Millet _and_ Breton, +Corot _and_ Daubigny, Rousseau _and_ Dupre. They still say Goethe +_and_ Schiller, Beethoven _and_ Mozart, Byron _and_ Shelley. It is the +result of mental inertia, this coupling of such widely disparate +temperaments. + +Nevertheless, divided tones and "screaming" palette do not always a +picture make; mediocrity loves to mask itself behind artistic +innovations. For the world at large impressionism spells +improvisation--an easy-going, slatternly, down-at-the-heel process, +facile as well as factitious. Albert Wolff must have thought these +things when he sat for his portrait to Manet. His surprise was great +when the artist demanded as many sittings as would have done the +painstaking Bonnat. Whistler shocked Ruskin when he confessed to +having painted a nocturne in two days, but with a lifetime experience +in each stroke of the brush. Whistler was a swift worker, and while he +claimed the honour of being the originator of impressionism--didn't he +"originate" Velasquez?--he really belongs to the preceding generation. +He was impressionistic, if you will, yet not an impressionist. He was +Japanese and Spanish, never Watteau, Monticelli, Turner, or Monet. + +MacColl has pointed out the weakness of the scientific side of +impressionism. Its values are strictly aesthetic; attempts to paint on +a purely scientific basis have proved both monotonous and ludicrous. +The experiments of the neo-impressionists (the 1885 group), of Signac, +Seurat, were not very convincing. Van Rhysselberge, one of the few +painters to-day who practise _pointillisme_, or the system of dots, is +a gifted artist; so is Anquetin. The feminine group is headed by the +name of Berthe Morisot (the wife of Eugene Manet, a brother of Edouard +and the great granddaughter of Fragonard), a pupil of Manet, the most +individual woman painter that ever lived; and Mary Cassatt, a pupil of +Degas, though more closely allied to the open-air school in her +methods. Miss Cassatt possesses a distinguished talent. As a school +impressionism has run down to a thin rill in a waste of sand. It is +more technical than personal, and while it was lucky to have such an +exponent as Claude Monet, there is every reason to believe that +Monet's impressionism is largely the result of a peculiar penetrating +vision. He has been imitated, and Maufra and Moret are carrying on his +tradition--yet there is but one Monet. + +We know that the spectral palette is a mild delusion and sometimes a +dangerous snare, that impressionism is in the remotest analysis but a +new convention supplanting an old. Painters will never go back to the +muddy palette of the past. The trick has been turned. The egg of +Columbus has been once more stood on end. Claude Monet has taught us +the "innocence of the eye," has shown us how to paint air that +circulates, water that sparkles. The sun was the centre of the +impressionistic attack, the "splendid, silent sun." A higher pitch in +key colour has been attained, shadows have been endowed with vital +hues. (And Leonardo da Vinci, wonderful landscapist, centuries ago +wrote learnedly of coloured shadows; every new discovery is only a +rediscovery.) The "dim, religious light" of the studio has been +banished; the average palette is lighter, is more brilliant. And +Rembrandt is still worshipped; Raphael is still on his pedestal, and +the millionaire on the street continues to buy Bouguereau. The amateur +who honestly wishes to purge his vision of encrusted painted +prejudices we warn not to go too close to an impressionistic +canvas--any more than he would go near a red-hot stove or a keg of +gunpowder. And let him forget those toothsome critical terms, +decomposition, recomposition. His eyes, if permitted, will act for +themselves; there is no denying that the principles of impressionism +soundly applied, especially to landscape, catch the fleeting, +many-hued charm of nature. It is a system of coloured stenography--in +the hands of a master. Woe betide the fumbler! + + + + +II - RENOIR + + + +The secret of success is never to be satisfied; that is, never to be +satisfied with your work or your success. And this idea seems to have +animated Auguste Renoir during his long, honourable career of painter. +In common with several members of the impressionistic group to which +he belonged, he suffered from hunger, neglect, obloquy; but when +prosperity did at last appear he did not succumb to the most dangerous +enemy that besets the artist. He fought success as he conquered +failure, and his continual dissatisfaction with himself, the true +critical spirit, has led him to many fields--he has been portraitist, +genre painter, landscapist, delineator of nudes, a marine painter and +a master of still-life. This versatility, amazing and +incontrovertible, has perhaps clouded the real worth of Renoir for the +public. Even after acknowledging his indubitable gifts, the usual +critical doubting Thomas grudgingly remarks that if Renoir could not +draw like Degas, paint land and water like Monet or figures like +Manet, he was a naturally endowed colourist. How great a colourist he +was may be seen at the Metropolitan Museum, where his big canvas, La +Famille Charpentier, is now hung. + +Charpentier was the publisher of Zola, Goncourt, Flaubert, and of the +newer realists. He was a man of taste, who cultivated friendships with +distinguished artists and writers. Some disappointment was experienced +at the recent public sale of his collection in Paris. The _clou_ of +the sale was undoubtedly the portrait of his wife and two children. It +was sold for the surprising sum of 84,000 francs to M. Durand-Ruel, +who acted in behalf of the Metropolitan Museum. Another canvas by +Renoir fetched 14,050 francs. A _sanguine_ of Puvis de Chavannes +brought 2,050 francs, and 4,700 francs was paid for a Cezanne picture. + +The Charpentier Family, originally entitled Portrait de Madame +Charpentier et Ses Filles, was painted in 1878, first exhibited at the +Salon of 1879, and there we saw and admired it. The passage of the +years has tempered the glistening brilliancies and audacious chromatic +modulations to a suave harmony that is absolutely fascinating. The +background is Japanese. Mme. Charpentier is seated on a canopy +surrounded by furniture, flowers; under foot a carpet with arabesque +designs. She throws one arm carelessly over some rich stuff; the hand +is painted with masterly precision. The other arm has dropped in her +lap. She is an interesting woman of that fine maternal type so often +encountered in real France--though not in French fiction, alas! Her +gaze is upon her children, two adorable little girls. A superb dog, a +St. Bernard, with head resting on paws, looks at you with watchful +eyes. One of the girls sits upon his shaggy hide. The mother is in +black, a mellow reception robe, tulle and lace. White and blue are the +contrasting tones of the girls--the blue is tender. A chair is at the +side of a lacquer table, upon which are flowers. Renoir flowers, dewy, +blushing. You exclaim: "How charming!" It is normal French painting, +not the painting of the schools with their false ideal of pseudo-Greek +beauty, but the intimate, clear, refined, and logical style of a man +who does not possess the genius of Manet, Degas, or Monet, but is +nevertheless an artist of copiousness, charm, and originality. Charm; +yes, that is the word. There is a voluptuous magnetism in his colour +that draws you to him whether you approve of his capricious designs or +not. The museum paid $18,480 for the Charpentier portrait, and in +1877, after an exposition in the rue Le Peletier, sixteen of his +paintings, many of them masterpieces, netted the mortifying sum of +2,005 francs. + +Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges, February 25, 1840. His +father was a poor tailor with five children who went to Paris hoping +to better his condition. At the age of twelve the boy was painting on +porcelain--his father had picked up some rudiments of the art at +Limoges. Auguste did so well, displayed such energy and taste, that he +soon fell to decorating blinds, and saved, in the course of four +years, enough money to enable him to enter the atelier of Gleyre. +There he met Sisley, Bazille--afterward shot in the Franco-Prussian +war--and Claude Monet. They became friends and later allies in the +conflict with the Parisian picture public. Renoir made his first +offering to the Salon in 1863. It was refused. It was a romantic +bit--a nude lady reclining on a bed listening to the plucked music of +a guitar. It seems that the guitarist, and not the lady, was the cause +of offence. It is a convention that a thousand living beings may look +at an undressed female in a picture, but no painted man may be allowed +to occupy with her the same apartment. In 1864 Renoir tried +again--after all, the Salon, like our own academy, is a +market-place--and was admitted. He sent in an Esmeralda dancing. Both +these canvases were destroyed by the painter when he began to use his +eyes. In 1868 his Lise betrayed direct observation of nature, +influenced by Courbet. Until 1873 he sent pictures to the Salon; that +year he was shut out with considerable unanimity, for his offering +happened to be an Algerian subject, a Parisian woman dressed in +Oriental costume, and--horrors!--the shadows were coloured. He was +become an impressionist. He had listened, or rather looked at the +baleful pyrotechnics of Monet, and so he joined the secessionists, +though not disdaining to contribute annually to the Salon. In 1874 his +L'allee Cavaliere au Bois de Boulogne was rejected, an act that was +evidently inspired by a desire to sacrifice Renoir because of the +artistic "crimes" of Edouard Manet. Otherwise how explain why this +easily comprehended composition, with its attractive figures, daring +hues, and brilliant technique, came to have the door of the Salon +closed upon it? + +The historic exposition at Nadar's photographic studio, on the +Boulevard des Capucines, of the impressionists, saw Renoir in company +with Monet, Sisley, and the others. His La Danseuse and La Loge were +received with laughter by the discerning critics. Wasn't this the +exhibition of which Albert Wolff wrote that some lunatics were showing +their wares, which they called pictures, etc.? (No, it was in 1875.) +From 1868 to 1877 Renoir closely studied nature and his landscapes +took on those violet tones which gave him the nickname of Monsieur +Violette. Previously he had employed the usual clear green with the +yellow touches in the shadows of conventional _paysagistes_. But +Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, and Renoir had discovered each for himself +that the light and shade in the open air vary according to the hours, +the seasons, the atmospheric conditions. Monet and Pissarro in +painting snow and frost effects under the sun did not hesitate to put +blue tones in the shadows. Sisley was fond of rose tones, Renoir saw +violet in the shadows. He enraged his spectators quite as much as did +Monet with his purple turkeys. His striking Avant le bain was sold for +one hundred and forty francs in 1875. Any one who has been lucky +enough to see it at Durand-Ruel's will cry out at the stupidity which +did not recognise a masterly bit of painting with its glowing, +nacreous flesh tints, its admirable modelling, its pervading air of +vitality. Renoir was never a difficult painter; that is, in the sense +of Monet or Manet or Gauguin. He offended the eyes of 1875, no doubt, +but there was in him during his first period much of Boucher; his +female nudes are, as Camille Mauclair writes, of the eighteenth +century; his technique is Boucher-like: "fat and sleek paint of soft +brilliancy laid on with the palette-knife with precise strokes around +the principal values; pink and ivory tints relieved by strong blues +similar to those of enamels; the light distributed everywhere and +almost excluding the opposition of the shadows; vivacious attitudes +and decorative convention." + +Vivacious, happy, lyrical, Renoir's work has thus far shown no hint of +the bitter psychology of Edgar Degas. His nudes are pagan, child women +full of life's joy, animal, sinuous, unreasoning. His _genre_ tableaux +are personal enough, though in the most commonplace themes, such as +Dejeuner and The Box--both have been exhibited in New York--the +luminous envelope, the gorgeous riot of opposed tones, the delicious +dissonances literally transfigure the themes. In his second manner his +affinities to Claude Monet and impressionism are more marked. His +landscapes are more atmospheric, division of tones inevitably +practised. Everything swims in aerial tones. His portraits, once his +only means of subsistence, are the personification of frankness. The +touch is broad, flowing. Without doubt, as Theodore Duret asserts, +Renoir is the first of the impressionistic portrait painters; the +first to apply unflinchingly the methods of Manet and Monet to the +human face--for Manet, while painting in clear tones (what magic there +is in his gold!), in portraiture seldom employed the hatchings of +colours, except in his landscapes, and only since 1870, when he had +come under the influence of Monet's theories. Mauclair points out that +fifteen years before _pointillisme_ (the system of dots, like eruptive +small-pox, instead of the touches of Monet) was invented, Renoir in +his portrait of Sisley used the stipplings. He painted Richard Wagner +at Palermo in 1882. In his third manner--an arbitrary +classification--he combines the two earlier techniques, painting with +the palette-knife and in divided tones. Flowers, barbaric designs for +rugs, the fantastic, vibrating waters, these appear among that long +and varied series of canvases in which we see Paris enjoying itself at +Bougival, dancing on the heights of Montmartre, strolling among the +trees at Armenonville; Paris quivering with holiday joys, Paris in +outdoor humour--and not a discordant or vicious note in all this +psychology of love and sport. The lively man who in shirt sleeves +dances with the jolly, plump salesgirl, the sunlight dripping through +the vivid green of the tree leaves, lending dazzling edges to +profiles, tips of noses, or fingers, is not the sullen _ouvrier_ of +Zola or Toulouse-Lautrec--nor are the girls kin to Huysmans's Soeurs +Vatard or the "human document" of Degas. Renoir's philosophy is not +profound; for him life is not a curse or a kiss, as we used to say in +the old Swinburne days. He is a painter of joyous surfaces and he is +an incorrigible optimist. He is also a poet. The poet of air, +sunshine, and beautiful women--can we ever forget his Jeanne Samary? A +pantheist, withal a poet and a direct descendant in the line of +Watteau, Boucher, Monticelli, with an individual touch of mundane +grace and elegance. + +Mme. Charpentier it was who cleverly engineered the portrait of +herself and children and the portrait of Jeanne Samary into the 1879 +Salon. The authorities did not dare to refuse two such distinguished +women. Renoir's prospects became brighter. He married. He made money. +Patrons began to appear, and in 1904, at the autumn Salon, he was +given a special _salle_, and homage was done him by the young men. No +sweeter gift can come to a French painter than the unbidden admiration +of the rising artistic generation. Renoir appreciated his honours; he +had worked laboriously, had known poverty and its attendant +bedfellows, and had won the race run in the heat and dust of his +younger years. In 1904, describing the autumn exhibition, I wrote: "In +the Renoir _salle_ a few of the better things of this luscious brush +were to be found, paintings of his middle period, that first won him +favour. For example, Sur la Terrasse, with its audacious crimson, like +the imperious challenge of a trumpet; La Loge and its gorgeous +fabrics; a Baigneuse in a light-green scheme; the quaint head of +Jeanne Samary--a rival portrait to Besnard's faun-like Rejane--and a +lot of Renoir's later experimentings, as fugitive as music; exploding +bouquets of iridescence; swirling panels, depicting scenes from +Tannhaeuser; a flower garden composed of buds and blossoms in colour +scales that begin at a bass-emerald and ascend to an altitudinous +green where green is no longer green but an opaline reverberation. We +know how exquisitely Renoir moulds his female heads, building up, cell +by cell, the entire mask. The simple gestures of daily life have been +recorded by Renoir for the past forty years with a fidelity and a +vitality that shames the anaemic imaginings and puling pessimisms of +his younger contemporaries. What versatility, what undaunted desire to +conquer new problems! He has in turn painted landscapes as full of +distinction as Monet's. The nervous vivacity of his brush, his love of +rendered surfaces, of melting Boucher-like heads, and of a dazzling +Watteau colour synthesis have endeared him to the discriminating." He +may be deficient in spiritual elevation--as were Manet, Monet, and the +other Impressionists; but as they were primarily interested in +problems of lighting, in painting the sun and driving the old mud gods +of academic art from their thrones, it is not strange that the new men +became so enamoured of the coloured appearances of life that they left +out the ghosts of the ideal (that dusty, battered phrase) and +proclaimed themselves rank sun-worshippers. The generation that +succeeded them is endeavouring to restore the balance between +unblushing pantheism and the earlier mysticism. But wherever a Renoir +hangs there will be eyes to feast upon his opulent and sonorous colour +music. + + + + +III - MANET + + + +In the autumn of 1865 Theodore Duret, the Parisian critic, found +himself in the city of Madrid after a tour of Portugal on horseback. A +new hotel on the Puerta del Sol was, he wrote in his life of Manet, a +veritable haven after roughing it in the adjacent kingdom. At the +mid-day breakfast he ate as if he had never encountered good cooking +in his life. Presently his attention was attracted by the behaviour of +a stranger who sat next to him. The unknown was a Frenchman who abused +the food, the service, and the country. He was so irritable when he +noticed Duret enjoying the very _plats_ he had passed that he turned +on him and demanded if insult was meant. The horrible cuisine, he +explained, made him sick, and he could not understand the appetite of +Duret. Good-naturedly Duret explained he had just arrived from +Portugal and that the breakfast was a veritable feast. "And I have +just arrived from Paris," he answered, and gave his name, Edouard +Manet. He added that he had been so persecuted that he suspected his +neighbour of some evil pleasantry. The pair became friends, and went +to look at the pictures of Velasquez at the Prado. Fresh from Paris, +Manet was still smarting from the attacks made on him after the +hanging of his Olympia in the Salon of 1865. Little wonder his nerves +were on edge. A dozen days later, after he had studied Velasquez, +Goya, and El Greco, Manet, in company with Duret, returned to Paris. +It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. + +About eight years ago Duret's definitive biography of Manet appeared, +Histoire de Edouard Manet et de Son Oeuvre. No one was better +qualified to write of the dead painter than Theodore Duret. A critic +of perspicacity, his enthusiasm was kindled during the birth throes of +impressionism and has never been quenched. Only a few years ago, after +a tribute to Whistler, he wrote of Manet in the introduction to his +volume on Impressionism, and while no one may deny his estimate, yet +through zeal for the name of his dead friend he attributed to him the +discoveries of the impressionists. Manet was their leader; he would +have been a leader of men in any art epoch; but he did not invent the +fulminating palette of Monet, and, in reality, he joined the +insurgents after they had waged their earlier battles. His +"impressionistic" painting, so called, did not date until later; +before that he had fought for his own independence, and his method was +different from that of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne and the rest. +Nevertheless, because of his notoriety--fame is hardly the word--he +may be fairly called the leader of the school. + +As a rule he was not an irascible man, if the unpleasant nature of the +attacks upon him is taken into consideration. With the exception of +Richard Wagner and Ibsen, I know of no artist who was vilified during +his lifetime as was Manet. A gentleman, he was the reverse of the +bohemian. Duret writes of him that he was shocked at the attempt to +make of him a monster. He did not desire to become _chef d'ecole_, nor +did he set up as an eccentric. When he gave his special exhibition his +catalogue contained a modest declaration of the right of the artist to +his personal vision. He did not pretend to have created a new school, +and he asked the public to judge his work as that of a sincere +painter; but even that mild pronunciamento was received with jeers. +The press, with a few exceptions, was against him, and so were nearly +all the artists of influence. Zola's aggressive articles only made the +situation worse. Who was this Zola but a writer of doubtful taste and +sensational style! The whole crowd of realists, naturalists, and +impressionists--the Batignolles school was the mocking title given the +latter--were dumped into the common vat of infamy and critical vitriol +poured over them. + +The main facts of Manet's career may be soon disposed of. His mother +was Eugenie Desiree Fournier; she was the goddaughter of Charles +Bernadotte, King of Sweden. Her father, a prefect at Pau, had rendered +services to Bernadotte which the latter did not forget. When she +married, in 1831, Auguste Manet, a distinguished judge of the Seine +tribunal, Bernadotte made her many valuable presents and a dowry. Her +three sons were Edouard, Eugene, and Gustave. They inherited from +their rich grandfather, Fournier. Edouard was born at Paris, Rue +Bonaparte, January 23, 1832. His brother Eugene became a doctor of +medicine and later married one of the most gifted of women painters, +Berthe Morisot, who died in 1895, after winning the praise of the most +critical pens in all Europe. Edouard was intended for the bar, but he +threw up his studies and swore he would become a painter. Then he was +sent abroad. He visited South America and other countries, and kept +his eyes wide open, as his sea-pieces proved. After his mother became +a widow he married, in 1863, Susanne Leenhoff, of Delft, Holland. She +was one of the early admirers of Schumann in Paris and played the A +minor piano concerto with orchestra there, and, it is said, with +success. She was an admirer of her husband's genius, and during all +the turmoil of his existence she was a friend and counsellor. + +The young couple lived with the elder Mme. Manet in the Rue de +Saint-Petersbourg, and their weekly reception became a rallying centre +for not only _les Jeunes_, but also for such men as Gambetta, Emile +Ollivier, Clemenceau, Antonin Proust, De Banville, Baudelaire, +Duranty--with whom Manet fought a duel over a trifle--Zola, Mallarme, +Abbe Hurel, Monet, and the impressionistic group. Edouard entertained +great devotion for his mother. She saw two of her sons die, Edouard in +1883 (April 30) and Gustave in 1884. (He was an advocate and took +Clemenceau's place as municipal councillor when the latter was elected +Deputy.) Mme. Manet died in 1885. The painter was stricken with +locomotor ataxia, brought on by protracted toil, in 1881. For nearly +three years he suffered, and after the amputation of a leg he +succumbed. His obsequies were almost of national significance. His +widow lived until 1906. + +_Manet et manebit_ was the motto of the artist. He lived to paint and +he painted much after his paralytic seizure. He was a brilliant +raconteur, and, as Degas said, was at one time as well known in Paris +as Garibaldi, red shirt and all. The truth is, Manet, after being +forced with his back to the wall, became the active combatant in the +duel with press and public. He was unhappy if people on the boulevard +did not turn to look at him. "The most notorious painter in Paris" was +a description which he finally grew to enjoy. It may not be denied +that he painted several pictures as a direct challenge to the world, +but a painter of offensive pictures he never was. The execrated +Picnic, proscribed by the jury of the Salon in 1861, was shown in the +Salon des Refuses (in company with works by Bracquemond, Cazin, +Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J.P. Laurens, Legros, Pissarro, +Vollon, Whistler--the mildest-mannered crew of pirates that ever +attempted to scuttle the bark of art), and a howl arose. What was this +shocking canvas like? A group of people at a picnic, several nudes +among them. In vain it was pointed out to the modest Parisians (who at +the time revelled in the Odalisque of Ingres, in Cabanel, Gerome, +Bouguereau, and other delineators of the chaste) that in the Louvre +the Concert of Giorgione depicted just such a scene; but the mixture +of dressed and undressed was appalling, and Manet became a man marked +for vengeance. Perhaps the exceeding brilliancy of his paint and his +unconventional manner of putting it on his canvas had as much to do +with the obloquy as his theme. And then he would paint the life around +him instead of producing _pastiches_ of old masters or sickly +evocations of an unreal past. + +He finished Olympia the year of his marriage, and refused to exhibit +it; Baudelaire insisted to the contrary. It was shown at the Salon of +1865 (where Monet exhibited for the first time) and became the scandal +of the day. Again the painter was bombarded with invectives. This +awful nude, to be sure, was no more unclothed than is Cabanel's Venus, +but the latter is pretty and painted with soap-suds and +sentimentality. The Venus of Titian is not a whit more exposed than +the slim, bony, young woman who has just awakened in time to receive a +bouquet at the hands of her negress, while a black cat looks on this +matutinal proceeding as a matter of course. The silhouette has the +firmness of Holbein; the meagre girl recalls a Cranach. It is not the +greatest of Manet; one could say, despite the bravura of the +performances, that the painter was indulging in an ironic joke. It was +a paint pot flung in the face of Paris. Olympia figured at the 1887 +exhibition in the Pavilion Manet. An American (the late William M. +Laffan) tried to buy her. John Sargent intervened, and a number of the +painter's friends, headed by Claude Monet, subscribed a purse of +twenty thousand francs. In 1890 Monet and Camille Pelletan presented +to M. Fallieres, then Minister of Instruction, the picture for the +Luxembourg, and in 1907 (January 6), thanks to the prompt action of +Clemenceau, one of Manet's earliest admirers, the hated Olympia was +hung in the Louvre. The admission was a shock, even at that late day +when the din of the battle had passed. When in 1884 there was held at +the Ecole des Beaux-Arts a memorial exposition of Manet's works, +Edmond About wrote that the place ought to be fumigated, and Gerome +"brandished his little cane" with indignation. Why all the excitement +in official circles? Only this: Manet was a great painter, the +greatest painter in France during the latter half of the nineteenth +century. Beautiful paint always provokes hatred. Manet won. Nothing +succeeds like the success which follows death. (Our only fear nowadays +is that his imitators won't die. Second-rate Manet is as bad as +second-rate Bouguereau.) If he began by patterning after Hals, +Velasquez, and Goya, he ended quite Edouard Manet; above all, he gave +his generation a new vision. There will be always the battle of +methods. As Mr. MacColl says: "Painting is continually swaying between +the _chiaroscuro_ reading of the world which gives it depth and the +colour reading which reduces it to flatness. Manet takes all that the +modern inquisition of shadows will give to strike his compromise near +the singing colours of the Japanese mosaic." + +What a wit this Parisian painter possessed! Duret tells of a passage +at arms between Manet and Alfred Stevens at the period when the +former's Le Bon Bock met for a wonder with a favourable reception at +the Salon of 1873. This portrait of the engraver Belot smoking a pipe, +his fingers encircling a glass, caused Stevens to remark that the man +in the picture "drank the beer of Haarlem." The _mot_ nettled Manet, +whose admiration for Frans Hals is unmistakably visible in this +magnificent portrait. He waited his chance for revenge, and it came +when Stevens exhibited a picture in the Rue Lafitte portraying a young +woman of fashion in street dress standing before a portiere which she +seems about to push aside in order to enter another room. Manet +studied the composition for a while, and noting a feather duster +elaborately painted which lies on the floor beside the lady, +exclaimed: "Tiens! elle a done un rendezvous avec le valet de +chambre?" + + + + +XII. A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU + + + +New biographical details concerning Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) +may never be forthcoming, though theories of his enigmatic personality +and fascinating art will always find exponents. Our knowledge of +Watteau is confined to a few authorities: the notes in D'Argenville's +Abrege de la Vie des Plus Fameux Peintres; Catalogue Raisonne, by +Gersaint; Julienne's introduction to the Life of Watteau by Count de +Caylus--discovered by the Goncourts and published in their brilliant +study of eighteenth-century art. Since then have appeared monographs, +etudes, and articles by Cellier, Mollet, Hanover, Dohme, Muentz, +Seailles, Claude Phillips, Charles Blanc, Virgile Joez, F. Staley, +Teodor de Wyzewa, and Camille Mauclair. Mauclair is the latest and one +of the most interesting commentators, his principal contribution being +De Watteau a Whistler, a chapter of which has been afterward expanded +into a compact little study entitled Watteau and translated from the +French text by Mme. Simon Bussy, the wife of that intimate painter of +twilight and poetic reverie, Simon Bussy, to whom the book is +dedicated. + +It is the thesis put forth and cleverly maintained by Mauclair that +interests us more than his succinct notation of the painter's life. It +is not so novel as it is just and moderate in its application. The +pathologic theory of genius has been overworked. In literature +nowadays "psychiatrists" rush in where critics fear to tread. Mahomet +was an epilept; so was Napoleon. Flaubert died of epilepsy, said his +friends; nevertheless, Rene Dumesnil has proved that his sudden +decease was caused not by apoplexy but by hystero-neurasthenia. Eye +strain played hob with the happiness of Carlyle, and an apostle of +sweetness and light declared that Ibsen was a "degenerate"--Ibsen, who +led the humdrum exterior life of a healthy _bourgeois_. Lombroso has +demonstrated--to his own satisfaction--that Dante's mystic +illumination was due to some brand of mental disorder. In fact, this +self-styled psychologist mapped anew the topography of the human +spirit. Few have escaped his fine-tooth-comb criticism except +mediocrity. Painters, poets, patriots, musicians, scientists, +philosophers, novelists, statesmen, dramatists, all who ever +participated in the Seven Arts, were damned as lunatics, decadents, +criminals, and fools. It was a convenient inferno in which to dump the +men who succeeded in the field wherein you were a failure. The height +of the paradox was achieved when a silly nomenclature was devised to +meet every vacillation of the human temperament. If you feared to +cross the street you suffered from agoraphobia; if you didn't fear to +cross the street, that too was a very bad sign. If you painted like +Monet, paralysis of the optical centre had set in--but why continue? + +It is a pity that this theory of genius has been so thoroughly +discredited, for it is a field which promises many harvestings; there +is mad genius as there are stupid folk. Besides, normality doesn't +mean the commonplace. A normal man is a superior man. The degenerate +man is the fellow of low instincts, rickety health, and a drunkard, +criminal, or idiot. The comical part of the craze--which was +short-lived, yet finds adherents among the half-baked in culture and +the ignorant--is that it deliberately twisted the truth, making men of +fine brain and high-strung temperament seem crazy or depraved, when +the reverse is usually the case. Since the advent of Lombroso +"brainstorms" are the possession of the privileged. Naturally your +grocer, tailor, or politician may display many of the above symptoms, +but no one studies them. They are not "geniuses." + +All this to assure you that when Camille Mauclair assumes that the +malady from which Antoine Watteau died was also a determining factor +in his art, the French critic is not aping some modern men of science +who denounce the writings of Dostoievsky because he suffered from +epileptic fits. But there is a happy mean in this effort to correlate +mind and body. If we are what we think or what we eat--and it is not +necessary to subscribe to such a belief--then the sickness of the body +is reflected in the soul, or vice versa. Byron was a healthy man +naturally, when he didn't dissipate, and Byron's poems are full of +magnificent energy, though seldom in the key of optimism. The revolt, +the passion, the scorn, were they all the result of his health? Or of +his liver? Or of his soul? Goethe, the imperial the myriad-minded +Goethe, the apostle of culture, the model European man of the +nineteenth century--what of him? Serenity he is said to have attained, +yet from the summit of eighty years he confessed to four weeks of +happiness in a long lifetime. Nor was he with all his superb manhood +free from neurotic disorders, neurotic and erotic. Shelley? Ah! he is +a pronounced case for the specialists. Any man who could eat dry +bread, drink water, and write such angelic poetry must have been quite +mad. Admitted. Would there were more Shelleys. Browning is a fair +specimen of genius and normality; as his wife illustrated an unstable +nervous temperament allied to genius. George Borrow was a rover, a +difficult man to keep as a friend, happy only when thinking of the +gipsies and quarrelling when with them. Would Baudelaire's magic verse +and prose sound its faint, acrid, sinister music if the French poet +had led a sensible life? Cruel question of the dilettante for whom the +world, all its splendor, all its art, is but a spectacle. It is +needless to continue, the list is too large; too large and too +contradictory. The Variations of Genius would be as profound and as +vast a book as Lord Acton's projected History of Human Thought. The +truth is that genius is the sacrificial goat of humanity; through some +inexplicable transposition genius bears the burdens of mankind; +afflicted by the burden of the flesh intensified many times, burdened +with the affliction of the spirit, raised to a pitch abnormal, the +unhappy man of genius is stoned because he staggers beneath the load +of his sensitive temperament or wavers from the straight and narrow +path usually blocked by bores too thick-headed and too obese to +realise the flower-fringed abysses on either side of the road. And +having sent genius in general among the goats, let us turn to +consumptive genius in particular. + +Watteau was a consumptive; he died of the disease. A consumptive +genius! It is a hard saying. People of average health whose pulse-beat +is normal in _tempo_ luckily never realise the febrile velocity with +which flows the blood in the veins of a sick man of genius. But there +is a paradox in the case of Watteau, as there was in the case of +Chopin, of Keats, of Robert Louis Stevenson. The painter of +Valenciennes gave little sign of his malady on his joyous lyrical +canvases. Keats sang of faery landscapes and Chopin's was a virile +spirit; the most cheerful writer under the sun was Stevenson, who even +in his Pulvis et Umbra conjured up images of hope after a most +pitiless arraignment of the universe and man. And here is the paradox. +This quartet of genius suffered from and were slain by consumption. +(Stevenson died directly of brain congestion; he was, however, a +victim to lung trouble.) That the poets turn their sorrow into song is +an axiom. Yet these men met death, or what is worse, met life, with +defiance or impassible fronts. And the world which loves the lilting +rhythms of Chopin's mazourkas seldom cares to peep behind the screen +of notes for the anguish ambushed there. Watteau has painted the +gayest scenes of pastoral elegance in a land out of time, a No-Man's +Land of blue skies, beautiful women, gallant men, and lovely +landscapes, while his life was haunted by thoughts of death. + +The riddle is solved by Mauclair: These flights into the azure, these +evocations of a country west of the sun and east of the moon, these +graceful creatures of Watteau, the rich brocade of Chopin's harmonies, +the exquisite pictures of Keats, the youthful joy in far-away +countries of Stevenson, all, all are so many stigmata of their +terrible affliction. They sought by the magic of their art to create a +realm of enchantment, a realm wherein their ailing bodies and wounded +spirits might find peace and solace. This is the secret of Watteau, +says Mauclair, which was not yielded up in the eighteenth century, not +even to his followers, Pater, Lancret, Boucher, Fragonard, whose pagan +gaiety and artificial spirit is far removed from the veiled melancholy +of Watteau. As we see Chopin, a slender man, morbid, sickly, strike +the martial chord in an unparalleled manner, Chopin the timid, the +composer of the Heroic Polonaise, so Watteau, morbid, sickly, timid, +slender, composes that masterpiece of delicate and decorative +joyousness, The Embarkment for Cythera, which hangs in the Louvre (a +gorgeous sketch, the final version, is at Potsdam in the collection of +the German Emperor). In these works we find the aura of consumption. + +None of Watteau's contemporaries fathomed the meaning of his art: not +Count de Caylus, not his successors, who all recognised the masterly +draughtsman, the marvellous colourist, the composer of pastoral +ballets, of matchless _fetes galantes_, of conversations, of +miniatures depicting camp life, and fanciful decorations in the true +style of his times. But the melancholy poet that was in the man, his +lyric pessimism, and his unassuaged thirst for the infinite--these +things they did not see. Caylus, who has left the only data of value, +speaks of Watteau's hatred of life, his aversion at times from the +human face, his restlessness that caused him to seek new +abodes--Chopin was always dissatisfied with his lodgings and always +changing them. The painter made friends in plenty, only to break with +them because of some fancied slight. Chopin was of umbrageous nature, +Liszt tells us. Watteau never married, and never, as far as is known, +had a love affair. He is an inspired painter of women. (Perhaps, +because of his celibacy.) He loved to depict them in delicious poses, +under waving trees in romantic parks or in the nude. A gallant artist, +he was not a gallant man. He had the genius of friendship but not the +talent for insuring its continuity. Like Arthur Rimbaud, he suffered +from the nostalgia of the open road. He disappeared frequently. His +whereabouts was a mystery to his friends. He did not care for money or +for honours. He was elected without volition on his part as a member +of the Academy. Yet he did not use this powerful lever to further his +welfare. Silent, a man of continent speech, he never convinced his +friends that his art was chaste; yet he never painted an indelicate +stroke. His personages, all disillusionised, vaguely suffer, make love +without desire--disillusioned souls all. L'Indifferent, that young man +in the Louvre who treads the earth with such light disdain, with such +an airy expression of sweetness and _ennui_, that picture, Mauclair +remarks, is the soul of Watteau. And, perhaps, spills his secret. + +Mauclair does not like the coupling of Watteau's name with those of +Boucher, Pater, Lancret, De Troy, Coypel, or Vanloo. They imitated him +as to externals; the spirit of him they could not ensnare. If Watteau +stemmed artistically from Rubens, from Ruysdael, from Titian (or +Tiepolo, as Kenyon Cox acutely hints) he is the father of a great +school, the true French school, though his stock is Flemish. Turner +knew him; so did Bonington. Delacroix understood him. So did Chardin, +himself a solitary in his century. Without Watteau's initiative +Monticelli might not be the Monticelli we know, while Claude Monet, +Manet, Renoir are the genuine flowering of his experiments in the +division of tones and the composition of luminous skies. + +Mauclair smiles at Caylus for speaking of Watteau's mannerisms, the +mannerisms that proclaim his originality. Only your academic, +colourless painter lacks personal style and always paints like +somebody he is not. Watteau's art is peculiarly personal. Its +peculiarity--apart from its brilliancy and vivacity--is, as Mauclair +remarks, "the contrast of cheerful colour and morbid expression." +_Morbidezza_ is the precise phrase; _morbidezza_ may be found in +Chopin's art, in the very feverish moments when he seems brimming over +with high spirits. Watteau was not a consumptive of the Pole's type. +He did not alternate between ecstasy and languor. He was cold, +self-contained, suspicious, and inveterately hid the state of his +health. He might have been cured, but he never reached Italy, and that +far-off dream and his longing to realise it may have been the basis of +his last manner--those excursions into a gorgeous dreamland. He +yearned for an impossible region. His visions on canvas are the +shadowy sketches of this secret desire that burned him up. It may have +been consumption--and Mauclair makes out a strong case--and it may +have been the expression of a rare poetic temperament. Watteau was a +poet of excessive sensibility as well as the contriver of dainty +masques and ballets. + +In literature one man at least has understood him, Walter Pater. +Readers of his Imaginary Portraits need not be reminded of A Prince of +Court Painters, that imaginative reconstruction of an almost obscure +personality. "His words as he spoke of them [the paintings of Rubens] +seemed full of a kind of rich sunset with some moving glory within +it." This was the Watteau who is summed by Pater (a distant kinsman, +perhaps, of the Pater Watteau tutored) as a man who had been "a sick +man all his life. He was always a seeker after something in the world, +that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all." Camille +Mauclair eloquently ends his study with the confession that the mere +utterance of Watteau's name "suffices to evoke in men's minds a memory +of the melancholy that was his, arrayed in garments of azure and rose. +Ah! crepuscular Psyche, whose smile is akin to tears!" + + + + +XIII. GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + + +I - GAUGUIN + + + +The key-note to the character of Paul Gauguin, painter and sculptor, +may be found in his declaration that in art there are only +revolutionists or plagiarists. A brave speech. And a proud man who +uttered it; for unless he wished to avoid its implications he must +needs prove his sincerity. In the short, adventurous, crowded life +vouchsafed him, Paul Gauguin proved himself indeed a revolutionary +painter. His maxim was the result of hard-won experiences. He was born +at Paris June 7, 1848--a stormy year for France; he died at Dominique +May 9, 1904. His father was a native of Brittany, while on his +mother's side he was Peruvian. This mixed blood may account for his +wandering proclivities and his love for exotic colouring and manners. +To further accentuate the rebellious instincts of the youth his +maternal grandmother was that Flora Tristan, friend of the anarchistic +thinker Proudhon. She was a socialist later and a prime mover in the +Workman's Union; she allied herself with Pere Enfantin and helped him +to found his religion, "Mapa," of which he was the god, Ma, and she +the goddess, Pa. Enfantin's career and end may be recalled by students +of St. Simon and the socialistic movements of those times. Paul's +father, Clovis Gauguin, wrote in 1848 the political chronicle on the +_National_, but previous to the _coup d'etat_ he left for Lima, there +to found a journal. He died of an aneurism in the Straits of Magellan, +a malady that was to carry off his son. After four years in Lima the +younger Gauguin returned to France. In 1856 a Peruvian grand-uncle +died at the extraordinary age of one hundred and thirteen. His name +was Don Pio de Tristan, and he was reported very rich. But Paul got +none of this wealth, and at fourteen he was a cabin-boy, feeble of +health but extremely curious about life. He saw much of life and +strange lands in the years that followed, and he developed into a +powerfully built young sailor and no doubt stored his brain with +sumptuous images of tropical scenery which reappeared in his canvases. +He traversed the globe several times. He married and took a position +in a bank. On Sundays he painted. His hand had itched for years to +reproduce the landscapes he had seen. He made friends with Degas, +Cezanne, Pissarro, Renoir, Monet, Guillaumin, and Manet. He called +himself an amateur and a "Sunday painter," but as he was received on +terms of equality with these famous artists it may be presumed that, +autodidact as he was, his versatile talent--for it literally was +versatile--did not escape their scrutiny. He submitted himself to +various influences; he imitated the Impressionists, became a +Neo-Impressionist of the most extravagant sort; went sketching with +Cezanne and Van Gogh, that unfortunate Dutchman, and finally announced +to his friends and family that "henceforward I shall paint every day." +He gave up his bank, and Charles Morice has said that his life became +one of misery, solitude, and herculean labours. + +He painted in Brittany, Provence, at Martinique, in the Marquesas and +Tahiti. He had parted with the Impressionists and sought for a new +_aesthetik_ of art; to achieve this he broke away not only from +tradition, even the tradition of the Impressionists, but from Europe +and its civilisation. To this half-savage temperament devoured by the +nostalgia of the tropics the pictures of his contemporaries bore the +fatal stamp of the obvious, of the thrice done and used up. France, +Holland, Spain, Italy--what corner was there left in these countries +that had not been painted thousands of times and by great masters! The +South Seas, Japan, China--anywhere away from the conventional studio +landscape, studio models, poses, grimaces! At Pont-Aven in 1888, +between trips made to Martinique and Provence, Gauguin had attained +mastery of himself; Cezanne had taught him simplicity; Degas, his +avowed admirer, had shown him the potency of the line; Renoir's warm +colouring had spurred him to a still richer palette; and Manet had +given him sound advice. A copy of the Olympe, by Gauguin, finished +about this time, is said to be a masterpiece. But with Degas he was +closer than the others. A natural-born writer, his criticisms of the +modern French school are pregnant with wit and just observation. What +was nicknamed the School of Pont-Aven was the outcome of Gauguin's +imperious personality. A decorative impulse, a largeness of style, and +a belief that everything in daily life should be beautiful and +characteristic sent the painters to modelling, to ceramics and +decoration. Armand Seguin, Emile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Filiger, +Serusier, Bonnard, Vuillard, Chamaillard, Verkade, O'Conor, Durio, +Maufra, Ranson, Mayol, Roy, and others are to-day happy to call +themselves associates of Paul Gauguin in this little movement in which +the idolatry of the line and the harmonies of the arabesque were +pursued with joyous fanaticism. + +Gauguin in an eloquent letter tells of his intercourse with Vincent +Van Gogh, who went mad and killed himself, not, however, before +attempting the life of his master. Mauclair has said of Van Gogh that +he "left to the world some violent and strange works, in which +Impressionism appears to have reached the limit of its audacity. Their +value lies in their naive frankness and in the undauntable +determination which tried to fix without trickery the sincerest +feelings. Amid many faulty and clumsy works Van Gogh has also left +some really beautiful canvases." Before Gauguin went to Tahiti his +Breton peasants were almost as monstrous as his later Polynesian +types. His representations of trees also seem monstrous. His endeavour +was to get beyond the other side of good and evil in art and create a +new synthesis, and thus it came to pass that the ugly and the formless +reign oft in his work--the ugly and formless according to the old +order of envisaging the world. + +In 1891 and 1892, at Tahiti, Gauguin painted many +pictures--masterpieces his friends and disciples call them--which were +later shown at an exhibition held in the Durand-Ruel Galleries. Paris +shuddered or went into ecstasy over these blazing transcriptions of +the tropics; over these massive men and women, nude savages who stared +with such sinister magnetism from the frames. The violent +deformations, the intensity of vision, the explosive hues--a novel +gamut of rich tones--and the strangeness of the subject-matter caused +a nine days' gossip; yet the exhibition was not a great success. +Gauguin was too new, too startling, too original for his generation; +he is yet for the majority, though he may be the Paint God of the +twentieth century. Cut to the heart by his failure to make a dazzling +reputation, also make a little money--for he was always a poor man--he +left Paris forever in 1895. He was sick and his life among the +Marquisians did not improve his health. He took the part of the +natives against the whites and was denounced as a moral castaway. In +1904 he wrote Charles Morice: "I am a savage." But a savage of talent. +In reality he was a cultivated man, an attractive man, and a billiard +player and a fencer. Paint was his passion. If you live by the pen you +may perish by the pen. The same is too often the case with the palette +and brush hero. + +Though Paul Gauguin failed in his search for a synthesis of the ugly +and the beautiful, he was nevertheless a bold initiator, one who +shipwrecked himself in his efforts to fully express his art. With all +his realism he was a symbolist, a master of decoration. A not too +sympathetic commentator has written of him: "Paul Gauguin's robust +talent found its first motives in Breton landscapes, in which the +method of colour spots may be found employed with delicacy and placed +at the service of a rather heavy but very interesting harmony. Then +the artist spent a long time in Tahiti, whence he returned with a +completely transformed manner. He brought back from those regions some +landscapes treated in intentionally clumsy and almost wild fashion. +The figures are outlined in firm strokes and painted in broad, flat +tints on canvas that has the texture of tapestry. Many of these works +are made repulsive by their aspect of multicoloured, crude, and +barbarous imagery. Yet one cannot but acknowledge the fundamental +qualities, the lovely values, the ornamental taste, and the impression +of primitive animalism. On the whole, Paul Gauguin has a beautiful, +artistic temperament which, in its aversion to virtuosity, has perhaps +not sufficiently understood that the fear of formulas, if exaggerated, +may lead to other formulas, to a false ignorance which is as dangerous +as false knowledge." + +All of which is true; yet Paul Gauguin was a painter who had something +new to say, and he said it in a very personal fashion. + + + + +II - TOULOUSE-LAUTREC + + + +I once attended at Paris an exhibition devoted to the work of the late +Count Toulouse-Lautrec. There the perverse genius of an unhappy man +who owes allegiance to no one but Degas and the Japanese was seen at +its best. His astonishing qualities of invention, draughtsmanship, and +a diabolic ingenuity in sounding the sinister music of decayed souls +have never been before assembled under one roof. Power there is and a +saturnine hatred of his wretched sitters. Toulouse-Lautrec had not the +impersonal vision of Zola nor the repressed and disenchanting irony of +Degas. He loathed the crew of repulsive night birds that he pencilled +and painted in old Montmartre before the foreign invasion destroyed +its native and spontaneous wickedness. Now a resort for easily +bamboozled English and Americans, the earlier Montmartre was a rich +mine for painter-explorers. Raffaelli went there and so did Renoir; +but the former was impartially impressionistic; the latter, ever +ravished by a stray shaft of sunshine flecking the faces of the +dancers, set it all down in charming tints. Not so Toulouse-Lautrec. +Combined with a chronic pessimism, he exhibited a divination of +character that, if he had lived and worked hard, might have placed him +not far below Degas. He is savant. He has a line that proclaims the +master. And unlike Aubrey Beardsley, his affinity to the Japanese +never seduced him into the exercise of the decorative abnormal which +sometimes distinguished the efforts of the Englishman. We see the +Moulin Rouge with its hosts of deadly parasites, La Goulue and her +vile retainers. The brutality here is one of contempt, as a blow +struck full in the face. Vice has never before been so harshly +arraigned. This art makes of Hogarth a pleasing preacher, so drastic +is it, so deliberately searching in its insults. And never the +faintest exaggeration or burlesque. These brigands and cut-throats, +pimps and pickpurses are set before us without bravado, without the +genteel glaze of the timid painter, without an attempt to call a +prostitute a _cocotte_. Indeed, persons are called by their true names +in these hasty sketches of Lautrec's, and so clearly sounded are the +names that sometimes you are compelled to close your ears and eyes. +His models, with their cavernous glance, their emaciated figures, and +vicious expression, are a commentary on atelier life in those days and +regions. Toulouse-Lautrec is like a page from Ecclesiastes. + + + + +XIV. LITERATURE AND ART + + + +I - CONCERNING CRITICS + + + +The annual rotation of the earth brings to us at least once during its +period the threadbare, thriceworn, stale, flat, and academic +discussion of critic and artist. We believe comparisons of creator and +critic are unprofitable, being for the most part a confounding of +intellectual substances. The painter paints, the composer makes music, +the sculptor models, and the poet sings. Like the industrious crow the +critic hops after these sowers of beauty, content to peck up in the +furrows the chance grains dropped by genius. This, at least, is the +popular notion. Balzac, and later Disraeli, asked: "After all, what +are the critics? Men who have failed in literature and art." And +Mascagni, notwithstanding the laurels he wore after his first success, +cried aloud in agony that a critic was _compositore mancato_. These be +pleasing quotations for them whose early opus has failed to score. The +trouble is that every one is a critic, your gallery-god as well as the +most stately practitioner of the art severe. Balzac was an excellent +critic when he saluted Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme as a +masterpiece; as was Emerson when he wrote to Walt Whitman. What the +mid-century critics of the United States, what Sainte-Beuve, master +critic of France, did not see, Balzac and Emerson saw and, better +still, spoke out. In his light-hearted fashion Oscar Wilde asserted +that the critic was also a creator--apart from his literary worth--and +we confess that we know of cases where the critic has created the +artist. But that a serious doubt can be entertained as to the relative +value of creator and critic is hardly worth denying. + +Consider the painters. Time and time again you read or hear the +indignant denunciation of some artist whose canvas has been ripped-up +in print. If the offender happens to be a man who doesn't paint, then +he is called an ignoramus; if he paints or etches, or even sketches in +crayon, he is well within the Balzac definition--poor, miserable +imbecile, he is only jealous of work that he could never have +achieved. As for literary critics, it may be set down once and for all +that they are "suspect." They write; ergo, they must be unjust. The +dilemma has branching horns. Is there no midway spot, no safety ground +for that weary Ishmael the professional critic to escape being gored? +Naturally any expression of personal feeling on his part is set down +to mental arrogance. He is permitted like the wind to move over the +face of the waters, but he must remain unseen. We have always thought +that the enthusiastic Dublin man in the theatre gallery was after a +critic when he cried aloud at the sight of a toppling companion: +"Don't waste him. Kill a fiddler with him!" It seems more in +consonance with the Celtic character; besides, the Irish are +music-lovers. + +If one could draw up the list of critical and creative men in art the +scale would not tip evenly. The number of painters who have written of +their art is not large, though what they have said is always pregnant. +Critics outnumber them--though the battle is really a matter of +quality, not quantity. There is Da Vinci. For his complete writings +some of us would sacrifice miles of gawky pale and florid mediaeval +paintings. What we have of him is wisdom, and like true wisdom is +prophetic. Then there is that immortal gossip Vasari, a very biassed +critic and not too nice to his contemporaries. He need not indulge in +what is called the woad argument; we sha'n't go back to the early +Britons for our authorities. Let us come to Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose +Discourses are invaluable--and also to be taken well salted; he was +encrusted with fine old English prejudices. One of his magnificent +sayings and one appreciated by the entire artistic tribe was his +ejaculation: "Damn paint!" Raphael Mengs wrote. We wish that Velasquez +had. What William Blake said of great artists threw much light on +William Blake. Ingres uttered things, principally in a rage, about his +contemporaries. Delacroix was a thinker. He literally anticipated +Chevreul's discoveries in the law of simultaneous contrasts of colour. +Furthermore, he wrote profoundly of his art. He appreciated Chopin +before many critics and musicians--which would have been an impossible +thing for Ingres, though he played the violin--and he was kind to the +younger men. + +Need we say that Degas is a great wit, though not a writer; a wit and +a critic? Rousseau, the landscapist, made notes, and Corot is often +quoted. If Millet had never written another sentence but "There is no +isolated truth," he would still have been a critic. Constable with his +"A good thing is never done twice"; and Alfred Stevens's definition of +art, "Nature seen through the prism of an emotion," forestalled Zola's +pompous pronouncement in The Experimental Novel. To jump over the +stile to literature, Wordsworth wrote critical prefaces, and Shelley, +too; Poe was a critic; and what of Coleridge, who called painting "a +middle quality between a thought and a thing--the union of that which +is nature with that which is exclusively human"? There are plenty of +examples on the side of the angels. Whistler! What a critic, wielding +a finely chased rapier! Thomas Couture wrote and discoursed much of +his art. Sick man as he was, I heard him talk of art at his country +home, Villiers-le-Bel, on the Northern Railway, near Paris. This was +in 1878. William M. Hunt's talks on art were fruitful. So are John +Lafarge's. The discreet Gigoux of Balzac notoriety has an entertaining +book to his credit; while Rodin is often coaxed into utterances about +his and other men's work. There are many French, English, and American +artists who write and paint with equal facility. In New York, Kenyon +Cox is an instance. But the chiefest among all the painters alive and +dead, one who shines and will continue to shine when his canvases are +faded--and they are fading--is Eugene Fromentin, whose Maitres +d'autrefois is a classic of criticism. Since his day two critics, who +are also painters, have essayed both crafts, George Clausen and D.S. +MacColl. + +Professor Clausen is a temperate critic, MacColl a brilliant, +revolutionary one. The critical temper in either man is not dogmatic. +Seurat, the French Neo-Impressionist, has defended his theories; +indeed, the number of talented Frenchmen who paint well and write with +style as well as substance is amazing. Rossetti would no longer be a +rare bird in these days of piping painters, musicians who are poets, +and sculptors who are painters. The unfortunate critic occasionally +writes a play or an opera (particularly in Paris), but as a rule he is +content to echo that old German who desperately exclaimed: "Even if I +am nothing else, I am at least a contemporary." + +Let us now swing around the obverse side of the medal. A good showing. +You may begin with Wincklemann or Goethe--we refer entirely to critics +of paint and painters--or run down the line to Diderot, Blanc, +Gautier, Baudelaire, Zola, Goncourt, who introduced to Europe Japanese +art; Roger Marx, Geoffroy, Huysmans, Camille Mauclair, Charles Morice, +and Octave Mirbeau. Zola was not a painter, but he praised Edouard +Manet. These are a few names hastily selected. In England, Ruskin too +long ruled the critical roast; full of thunder-words like Isaiah, his +vaticinations led a generation astray. He was a prophet, not a critic, +and he was a victim to his own abhorred "pathetic fallacy." Henley was +right in declaring that until R.A.M. Stevenson appeared there was no +great art criticism in England or English. The "Velasquez" is a +marking stone in critical literature. It is the one big book by a big +temperament that may be opposed page by page to Fromentin's critical +masterpiece. Shall we further adduce the names of Morelli, Sturge +Moore, Roger Fry, Perkins, Cortissoz, Lionel Cust, Colvin, Ricci, Van +Dyke, Mather, Berenson, Brownell, and George Moore--who said of Ruskin +that his uncritical blindness regarding Whistler will constitute his +passport to fame, "the lot of critics is to be remembered by what they +have failed to understand." Walter Pater wrote criticism that is +beautiful literature. If Ruskin missed Whistler, he is in good +company, for Sainte-Beuve, the prince of critics, missed Balzac, +Stendhal, Flaubert, and to Victor Hugo was unfair. Yet, consider the +Osrics embalmed in the amber of Sainte-Beuve's style. He, like many +another critic, was superior to his subject. And that is always fatal +to the water-flies. + +George III once asked in wonderment how the apples get inside the +dumplings. How can a critic criticise a creator? The man who looks on +writing things about the man who does things. But he criticises and +artists owe him much. Neither in "ink-horn terms" nor in an "upstart +Asiatic style" need the critic voice his opinions. He must be an +artist in temperament and he must have a _credo_. He need not be a +painter to write of painting, for his primary appeal is to the public. +He is the middle-man, the interpreter, the vulgariser. The +psycho-physiological processes need not concern us. One thing is +certain--a man writing in terms of literature about painting, an art +in two dimensions, cannot interpret fully the meanings of the canvas, +nor can he be sure that his opinion, such as it is, when it reaches +the reader, will truthfully express either painter or critic. Such are +the limitations of one art when it comes to deal with the ideas or +material of another. Criticism is at two removes from its theme. +Therefore criticism is a makeshift. Therefore, let critics be modest +and allow criticism to become an amiable art. + +But where now is the painter critic and the professional critic? +"Stands Ulster where it did?" Yes, the written and reported words of +artists are precious alike to layman and critic. That they prefer +painting to writing is only natural; so would the critic if he had the +pictorial gift. However, as art is art and not nature, criticism is +criticism and not art. It professes to interpret the artist's work, +and at best it mirrors his art mingled with the personal temperament +of the critic. At the worst the critic lacks temperament (artistic +training is, of course, an understood requisite), and when this is the +case, God help the artist! As the greater includes the lesser, the +artist should permit the critic to enter, with all due reverence, his +sacred domain. Without vanity the one, sympathetic the other. Then the +ideal collaboration ensues. Sainte-Beuve says that "criticism by +itself can do nothing. The best of it can act only in concert with +public feeling ... we never find more than half the article in +print--the other half was written only in the reader's mind." And +Professor Walter Raleigh would further limit the "gentle art." +"Criticism, after all, is not to legislate, nor to classify, but to +raise the dead." The relations between the critic and his public open +another vista of the everlasting discussion. Let it be a negligible +one now. That painters can get along without professional criticism we +know from history, but that they will themselves play the critic is +doubtful. And are they any fairer to young talent than official +critics? It is an inquiry fraught with significance. Great and small +artists have sent forth into the world their pupils. Have they +always--as befits honest critics--recognised the pupils of other men, +pupils and men both at the opposite pole of their own theories? Recall +what Velasquez is reported to have said to Salvator Rosa, according to +Boschini and Carl Justi. Salvator had asked the incomparable Spaniard +whether he did not think Raphael the best of all the painters he had +seen in Italy. Velasquez answered: "Raphael, to be plain with you, for +I like to be candid and outspoken, does not please me at all." This +purely temperamental judgment does not make of Velasquez either a good +or a bad critic. It is interesting as showing us that even a master +cannot always render justice to another. Difference engenders hatred, +as Stendhal would say. + +Can the record of criticism made by plastic artists show a generous +Robert Schumann? Schumann discovered many composers from Chopin to +Brahms and made their fortunes by his enthusiastic writing about them. +In Wagner he met his Waterloo, but every critic has his limitations. +There is no Schumann, let the fact be emphasised, among the +painter-critics, though quite as much discrimination, ardour of +discovery, and acumen may be found among the writings of the men whose +names rank high in professional criticism. And this hedge, we humbly +submit, is a rather stiff one to vault for the adherents of criticism +written by artists only. Nevertheless, every day of his humble career +must the critic pen his _apologia pro vita sua_. + + + + +II - ART IN FICTION + + + +Fiction about art and artists is rare--that is, good fiction, not the +stuff ground out daily by the publishing mills for the gallery-gods. +It is to France that we must look for the classic novel dealing with +painters and their painting, Manette Salomon, by Goncourt. Henry James +has written several delightful tales, such as The Liar, The Real +Thing, The Tragic Muse, in which artists appear. But it is the +particular psychological problem involved rather than theories of art +or personalities that steer Mr. James's cunning pen. We all remember +the woman who destroyed a portrait of her husband which seemed to +reveal his moral secret. John S. Sargeant has been credited with being +the psychologist of the brush in this story. There is a nice, fresh +young fellow in The Tragic Muse, who, weak-spined as he is, prefers at +the last his painting to Julia Dallow and a political career. In The +Real Thing we recognise one of those unerring strokes that prove James +to be the master psychologist among English writers. Any discerning +painter realises the value of a model who can take the pose that will +give him the pictorial idea, the suggestiveness of the pose, not an +attempt at crude naturalism. With this thesis the novelist has built +up an amusing, semi-pathetic, and striking fable. + +There are painters scattered through English fiction--can we ever +forget Thackeray! Ouida has not missed weaving her Tyrian purples into +the exalted pattern of her romantic painters. And George Eliot. And +Disraeli. And Bernard Shaw--there is a painting creature in Love Among +the Artists. George Moore, however, has devoted more of his pages to +paint and painters than any other of the latter-day writers. The +reason is this: George Moore went to Paris to study art and he drifted +into the Julian atelier like any other likely young fellow with hazy +notions about art and a well-filled purse. But these early experiences +were not lost. They cropped up in many of his stories and studies. He +became the critical pioneer of the impressionistic movement and first +told London about Manet, Monet, Degas. He even--in an article +remarkable for critical acumen--declared that if Jimmy Whistler had +been a heavier man, a man of beef, brawn, and beer, like Rubens, he +would have been as great a painter as Velasquez. To the weighing +scales, fellow-artists! retorted Whistler; yet the bolt did not miss +the mark. Whistler's remarks about Mr. Moore, especially after the +Eden lawsuit, were, so it is reported, not fit to print. + +In Mr. Moore's first volume of the half-forgotten trilogy, Spring +Days, we see a young painter who, it may be said, thinks more of +petticoats than paint. There is paint talk in Mike Fletcher, Moore's +most virile book. In A Modern Lover the hero is an artist who succeeds +in the fashionable world by painting pretty, artificial portraits and +faded classical allegories, thereby winning the love of women, much +wealth, popular applause, and the stamp of official approbation. This +Lewis Seymour still lives and paints modish London in rose-colour. +Moore's irony would have entered the soul of a hundred "celebrated" +artists if they had had any soul to flesh it in. When he wrote this +novel, one that shocked Mrs. Grundy, Moore was under the influence of +Paris. However, that masterpiece of description and analysis, Mildred +Lawson in Celibates--very Balzacian title, by the way--deals with +hardly anything else but art. Mildred, who is an English girl without +soul, heart, or talent, studies in the Julian atelier and goes to +Fontainebleau during the summer. No one, naturally, will ever describe +Fontainebleau better than Flaubert, in whose L'Education Sentimentale +there are marvellous pictures; also a semi-burlesque painter, +Pellerin, who reads all the works on aesthetics before he draws a line, +and not forgetting that imperishable portrait of Jacques Arnoux, art +dealer. Goncourt, too, has excelled in his impression of the forest +and its painters, Millet in particular. Nevertheless, let us say in +passing that you cannot find Mildred Lawson in Flaubert or Goncourt; +no, not even in Balzac, whose work is the matrix of modern fiction. +She is her own perverse, cruel Mooresque self, and she lives in New +York as well as London. + +In both Daudet and Maupassant--Strong as Death is the latter's +contribution to painter-psychology--there are stories clustered about +the guild. Daudet has described a Salon on varnishing day with his +accustomed facile, febrile skill; you feel that it comes from Goncourt +and Zola. It is not within our scope to go back as far as Balzac, +whose Frenhofer in The Unknown Masterpiece has been a model for the +younger man. Poe, Hawthorne, Wilde, and Robert Louis Stevenson have +dealt with the theme pictorial. Zola's The Masterpiece (L'Oeuvre) is +one of the better written books of Zola. It was a favourite of his. +The much-read and belauded fifth chapter is a faithful transcription +of the first Salon of the Rejected Painters (Salon des Refuses) at +Paris, 1863. Napoleon III, after pressure had been brought to bear +upon him, consented to a special salon within the official Salon, at +the Palais de l'Industrie, which would harbour the work of the young +lunatics who wished to paint purple turkeys, green water, red grass, +and black sunsets. (Lie down, ivory hallucinations, and don't wag your +carmilion tail on the chrome-yellow carpet!) It is an enormously +clever book, this, deriving in the main as it does from Manette +Salomon and Balzac's Frenhofer. The fight for artistic veracity by +Claude Lantier is a replica of what occurred in Manet's lifetime. The +Breakfast on the Grass, described by Zola, was actually the title and +the subject of a Manet picture that scandalised Paris about this +epoch. The fantastic idea of a nude female stretched on the grass, +while the other figures were clothed and in their right minds, was too +much for public and critic, and unquestionably Manet did paint the +affair to create notoriety. Like Richard Wagner, he knew the value of +advertising. + +All the then novel theories of _plein air_ impressionism are discussed +in the Zola novel, yet the work seems clumsy after Goncourt's Manette +Salomon, that breviary for painters which so far back as 1867 +anticipated--in print, of course--the discoveries, the experiments, +the practice of the naturalistic-impressionistic groups from Courbet +to Cezanne, Monet to Maufra, Manet to Paul Gauguin. There are verbal +pictures of student life, of salons, of atelier and open air. No such +psychologic manual of the painter's art has ever appeared before or +since Manette Salomon. It was the Goncourts who introduced Japanese +art to European literature--they were friends of the late M. Bing, a +pioneer collector in Paris. And they foresaw the future of painting as +well as of fiction. + + + + +XV. MUSEUM PROMENADES + + + +PICTURES AT THE HAGUE + +There are two new Rembrandts in the galleries of the Mauritshuis, lent +by Prof. A. Bredius, director of the Royal Picture Gallery at The +Hague. Neither is an "important" picture in the professional sense of +that word, but they are Rembrandts--at least one is indubitable--and +that suffices. The more credible of the pair is a small canvas +depicting Andromeda manacled to the rocks. Her figure is draped to the +waist; it is a solid Dutch figure, ugly as the one of Potiphar's wife +(in an etching by Rembrandt), and no deliverer is in sight. The flesh +tones are rather cold, a cadaverous white, but it is a Rembrandt +white. The picture as a whole is sketchy and without charm or mystery. +Nevertheless, the lion's paws are there. The other shows us a woman +reading at a table. The colouring is warm and the still-life +accessories are richly and minutely painted. Not a likely Rembrandt, +either in theme or notably so in treatment. We must bow, however, to +the judgment of the learned Bredius who made the ascription. These two +works are not as yet in the catalogue. It is a pity the catalogue to +this gallery is not as complete as those of the Rijks Museum. To +visitors they offer an abridged one, dated 1904. There are since then +many new pictures, notably a sterling Chardin, marvellously painted, +and an excellent landscape by Van Cuyp, both loans of Dr. Bredius. + +Otherwise this little collection is as choice and as entertaining as +ever. The usual tourist makes at once for the overrated Young Bull by +Paul Potter and never looks at the magnificent Weenix across the room, +the Dead Swan, with its velvety tones. The head of a young girl by +Vermeer, with its blue turban and buff coat, its pearl earrings, is +charming. And the View of Delft seems as fresh as the day it was +painted. The long facade of the houses and warehouses and the churches +and towers facing the river are rendered with a vivacity of colour, a +solidity in drawing, and an absence of too marked literalism which +prove that this gifted artist had more than one style. The envelope is +rich; there is air, though it be stagnant. Down-stairs is an +allegorical subject, The New Testament, which is not very convincing +as a composition, but warm in tint. The Diana and Her Companions must +have inspired Diaz and many other painters. But the real Vermeer, the +Vermeer of the enamelled surfaces and soft pervasive lighting, is at +Amsterdam. + +No place is better than The Hague for the study of the earlier +Rembrandt. Dr. Tulp's Anatomical Lecture is, after the Potter bull, +the most gazed-at canvas in the Mauritshuis. It is not in a good +condition. There are evidences of over-varnishing and cobbling; nor is +it a very inspiring canvas. The head of Dr. Tulp is superb in +characterisation, and there is one other head, that of a man with +inquiring eyes, aquiline profile, the head strained forward (his name +is given in the critical works on Rembrandt), which arrests the +attention. An early composition, we are far from the perfection of The +Syndics. The self-portrait of the painter (1629) is a favourite, +though the much-vaunted feather in the head-gear is stiff; perhaps +feathers in Holland were stiff in those days. But the painters flock +to this portrait and never tire of copying its noble silhouette. The +two little studies of the painter's father and mother are +characteristic. One, of the man, is lent by Dr. Bredius. Rembrandt's +brother (study of an old man's head) shows a large old chap with a +nose of richest vintage. The portrait is brown in tone and without +charm. The Susanna Bathing is famous, but it is not as attractive as +Simeon in the Temple, with its masterly lighting, old gold in the +gloom. The Homer never fails to warm the cockles of the imagination. +What bulk! What a wealth of smothered fire in the apparel! The big +Saul listening to the playing of David is still mystifying. Is Saul +smiling or crying behind the uplifted cloak? Is he contemplating in +his neurasthenia an attempt on David's life with a whizzing lance? His +sunken cheeks, vague yet sinister eye, his turban marvellous in its +iridescence, form an ensemble not to be forgotten. David is not so +striking. From afar the large canvas glows. And the chiaroscuro is +miraculous. + +The portrait of Rembrandt's sister, the Flight Into Egypt, the small, +laughing man, the negroes, and the study of an old woman, the latter +wearing a white head-dress, are a mine of joy for the student. The +sister's head is lent by Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot, the art expert. + +There are only thirty-odd Rembrandts in Holland out of the five +hundred and fifty he painted. Of this number eighteen are in the +Mauritshuis. Holland was not very solicitous formerly of her masters. +Nowadays sentiment has changed and there is a gratifying outcry +whenever a stranger secures a genuine old master. As for the copies, +they, like the poor, are always with us. America is flooded every year +with forged pictures, especially of the minor Dutch masters, and +excellent are these imitations, it must be confessed. + +There are only four specimens of Frans Hals here; portraits of Jacob +Pieterez, Aletta Hanemans, his wife; of William Croes, and the head of +a man, a small picture in The Jolly Toper style. The lace collar is +genuine Hals. + +Let us close our catalogue and wander about the galleries. German and +English are the tongues one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally. +The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at by hundreds. As a +picture painted by a very young man it is noteworthy. The head of the +beast is nobly depicted. But what of the remainder of this +insignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaningless +landscape? The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeins +are--two anyhow--of splendid quality. Of the Rubenses it is better to +defer mention until Antwerp is reached. They are of unequal value. The +same may be said of the Van Dycks. Look at that baby girl standing by +a chair. A Govert Flinck. How truthful! The De Heems are excellent +fruit and flower pieces. Excellent, too, the Huysums, Hondecoeters, +and Weenixes. There is a dead baby of the Dutch school (1661) which is +as realistic as a Courbet. We admired the small Memlic, or Memling, +and, naturally, the Metsus, Mierevelts, and Mierises. The Holy Virgin +and Infant Christ, by Murillo, is tender and sleek in colour. It hangs +near the solitary Velasquez of the museum, a portrait of +Charles-Baltasar, son of King Philip IV of Spain. It is not a +remarkable Velasquez. + +The Pieter Lastman, a Resurrection of Lazarus, is of interest because +this painter was a preceptor of Rembrandt. William Kalf's still-life +is admirable, and the Aert Van den Neer moonlight scene (purchased +1903) is a lovely example of this artist. Indeed, all the minor +Dutchmen are well represented. Potter's much-praised Cow in the Water +is faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over at our own +Academy exhibitions. The Van Goyen waterscapes are not all of prime +quality, but there are two that are masterpieces. Amsterdam excels in +both Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels. The Distant View of Haarlem of +the latter proved a disappointment. The colour is vanished quite, the +general effect flat. The Bol portrait of Admiral de Ruyter is a +sterling specimen. The Van de Veldes and Wouvermans are excellent. The +Good Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture, with its tricky light +and dark. The Teniers and Ostades no longer interest us as they did. +Perhaps one tires soon of genre pictures. The inevitable toper, the +perambulating musician, the old woman standing in a doorway, the +gossips, the children, and the dog not house-broken may stand for the +eternal Ostade, while the merry-makings of David Teniers are too much +alike. However, this touch of spleen is the outcome of seeing so many +bituminous canvases. + +Probably in no other painter's name have so many sins been committed +as in Rembrandt's. His _chiaroscuro_ is to blame for thousands of +pictures executed in the tone of tobacco juice. All the muddy browns +of the studio, with the yellow smear that passes for Rembrandtish +light, are but the monkey tricks of lesser men. His pupils often made +a mess of it, and they were renowned. Terburg's Despatch is an +interesting anecdote; so too Metsu's Amateur Musicians. There are the +average number of Dutch Italianate painters, Jan Both and the rest, +men who employed southern backgrounds and improvised bastard Italian +figures. Schalcken's candlelight scenes are not missing, though Dou +leads in this rather artificial genre. And every tourist led by a +guide hears that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse somewhere +in his picture. You leave Holland obsessed by that white animal. + +Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the surface of the artistic +attractions in this Hague gallery. Not the least of them is to look +out on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around the +emerald islet in the middle. The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and +months could not stale its variety. There are important omissions, and +some of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch. +But the Rembrandts are there, and there are the Potters, the Rubenses, +the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens--his Oyster Feast is here--the landscape +and marine painters, not to mention the portraiture, the Murillo, +Palma Vecchio, and the Titian. The single Roger van der Weyden, an +attribution, is a Crucifixion, and hangs near the Memlig. It is an +interesting picture. Of the sculpture there is not much to write. +Houdon, Hendrick de Keyser, Verhulst, Falconet, Blommendael, and +Xavery make up a meagre list. + +At Baron Steengracht's house--admission by personal card--on the +Vyverberg there is a wonderful Rembrandt, Bathsheba After Her Bath, a +golden-toned canvas, not unlike the Susanna over at the Mauritshuis. +It was painted in 1643, about a year after he had finished The Night +Watch, a jewel of a Rembrandt and the clou of this collection. There +are some weak modern pictures and examples by Terburg, Metsu, Flinck, +Jordaens, Cuyp, Potter, Brouwer--the smoker, a fine work; a Hobbema +mill and others. In the Municipal Museum, full of curiosities in +furniture, armour, and costumes, there is a gallery of modern +paintings--Israel, David Bles, Mesdag, Neuhuys, Bisschop, J. Maris, +Weissenbruch, Bosboom, Blommers, and Mauve. There are also Mierevelts, +Jan Ravensteyns, Honthorst, Van Goyen, Van Ceulen, and a lot of +shooting-gallery (Doelen) and guild panoramas; there are miles of them +in Holland, and unless painted by Hals, Van der Heist, Elias, and a +few others are shining things of horror, full of staring eyes, and a +jumble of hands, weapons, and dry colours. But they are viewed with +religious awe by the Dutch, whose master passion is patriotic +sentiment. + +There is the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the Wood), the royal villa, +a little over a mile from The Hague, in which De Wit's grisailles may +be seen. The Japanese and orange rooms are charming; the portraits by +Everdingen, Honthorst, Jordaens, and others are of historic interest. + + + + +THE MESDAG MUSEUM + + + +When we were last at The Hague the Mesdag Museum had just opened +(1903). There was no catalogue, and while the nature of this great +gift to the city was felt it was not until a second visit (in 1909) +that its extraordinary value was realised. The catalogue numbers three +hundred and forty-four pictures by modern artists, and there is also a +valuable collection of objects of art, bronzes, pottery, furniture, +and tapestries. Philip Zilcken (a well-known Dutch etcher) in his +introduction calls attention to the rare quality of the Mesdag Museum +and tells us that Mr. and Mrs. Mesdag van Houten bought for their own +pleasure without any thought of forming a gallery for the Dutch +nation. That came later. W.H. Mesdag is the well-known marine painter +whose paintings may be seen in almost every gallery on the Continent. +A native of Groningen (1831), he studied under Roelofs and while in +Brussels lived with his relative, Alma-Tadema; the latter is a +Frieslander. Mesdag excels in marines, painting great sweep of waters +with breadth and simplicity. His palette is cool and restrained, his +rhythmic sense well developed, and his feeling for outdoors truly +Dutch. He belongs to the line of the classic Dutch marinists, to Van +der Velde, Backhuizen, and Van Goyen. His wife, a woman of charm and +culture, died in the spring of last year. She signed her work S. +Mesdag van Houten. Her gift lies in the delineation of forest views, +interiors, portraits, and still-life. Her colour is deep and rich. + +A cursory walk around the various rooms on the Laan van Meerdervoort +impresses one with this idea: with what envy must any curator of any +museum in the world study this collection. Mesdag began gathering his +treasures at a time when the Barbizon school was hardly known; when a +hundred other painters had not been tempted by the dealers into +overproduction; when, in a word, fancy prices were not dreamed of. The +Alma-Tademas are among his best, little as we admire his vital marbles +and lifeless humans. An early portrait of his wife is here. +Bastien-Lepage has a preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, the +Mesdag Museum is rich in _frottis_, painted-in pictures, by such men +as Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupre. As we admire the +etchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to see half a dozen of +his paintings, chiefly scenes in the Orient. The same misty, fantastic +quality is present; he manipulates his colour, thinly laid on, as if +it were some sort of plastic smoke. Impressionistic as are these +canvases, there is a subdued splendor in them all. Bauer feels the +East. His etchings recall Rembrandt's line; but his paintings are +miles away in sentiment and handling. Bisschop (1828-1904) is +represented by a fine still-life, and among the various Blommers is +one with children playing in the water and on the sands; vividly +seized, this example. + +The late Theophile de Bock was an interpreter of nature and his +brush-work was fat and rich. His work is well known in America and +gains in value every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteen +specimens here of his best period. The Emile Bretons are early and +therefore different from his commercial productions. Of the Corots, +twelve in number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a weak one. +The famous Early Morning and View at Villeneuve-les-Avignon are hung. +The first depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow stream in +which is reflected a cloudless sky. In the centre two women in white +caps. The second is more elaborate in composition. The middle distance +is occupied by picturesque buildings dating probably from the Middle +Ages. In the foreground four persons are under the shadow of some +trees. An unusual scheme for Corot. His well-known characteristics are +present in the dozen; the tremulous leafage, the bright, pure light, +the Italian softness. And what do you say to a half-dozen Courbets, +all of his strong period, landscapes, still-life, a nude study, a dead +roe, a sunlit path, and a lake scene! Good Courbets are not numerous, +and these are good. The nude is a woman recumbent upon draperies. The +_pate_ is heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the silhouette +firm, yet delicate. The portrait of the artist by himself is massive. +It was probably painted in Ste. Pelagie. + +Coutures two, twenty-five Daubignys, and one of his son Karl. Daubigny +the elder is here in all his manners, dark pictures with big +foregrounds, intimate bits of wooded interiors, sand-hills, +streamlets, moonlights, coast scenes, evening effects, sunsets at sea, +twilights, sheep, broken rocks, and a study in crayon. + +Decamps and Delacroix come next in order. There are three of the +former, among the rest his Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one a +portrait of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his colour was most +sonorous and brilliant, are here, with a study of an undraped female +figure. La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau. +Dupre has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The one +Fortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels +are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of the +Binnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously rich +gamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered in +America. He should be better known; while his ideas are not +particularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was +Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and Matthys (the +latter living in London), are to be seen here in unexampled states. +Mauve, too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags, Taco Mesdag, a +brother and his wife are present. Also Ter Meulen, a gifted Dutch +artist. We have seldom seen better George Michels. The Monticelli +up-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a mountain path in the south of +France. The sun is disappearing behind a cluster of trees. Rocks in +the foreground. The scheme of colour is low for Monticelli, the forms +sharply accented. He could see line when he wished. The smaller +example is an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay the +colours on. + +Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture Hagar and Ishmael, +another the wonderful Resting Vintager. Alone these Millets would +cause a sensation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a trifle too +rhetorical for the simple-minded painter. Brown predominates in the +colour scale, the composition is rather conventional, an echo, +perhaps, of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the Vintager is +a masterpiece. Seated among the vines in the blaze of the sun, he is +resting and has removed his heavy sabots. The relaxed attitude after +arduous labour is wonderfully expressed. The atmosphere indicates +stifling sultriness. + +Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau--halt! There are twelve of this +French master, dramatic and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura is +the celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But it is too +bituminous in parts. A greater composition, though only a drawing, is +Les grands chenes du vieux Bas-Breau. Four large trees illumined by +sun-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk and pastel; Storm Van's +Gravesande; seven Troyons, one, Le retour du Marche, a masterpiece; +Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets; Weissenbruchs; +Zilcken etchings and two De Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery, +designed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and Gothic brass, +Oriental portieres and brass, old Delft, Japanese armour, various +weapons and lanterns, Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch and +Scandinavian, and a magnificent assortment of Satsuma pottery, Cmail +cloisonne, Japanese bronzes, Persian pottery, Spanish brasses, +majolica and bronzes and sculptures by Mattos, Constantin, Meunier, +and Van Wijk--the list fills a pamphlet. Next door is the studio of +the aged Mesdag, a hale old Dutchman who paints daily and looks +forward to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octogenarians are not +few. The climate is propitious; above all, the absence of hurry and +worry. To see The Hague without visiting this collection would be a +regrettable omission. + + + + +HALS OF HAARLEM + + + +In writing of Holland more is said of its windmills than its flowers. +It is a land of flowers. Consider the roll-call of its painters who +their life long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces. Both the +De Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose work still lives in the +mezzotints of Earlom--like David de Heem, he was fond of introducing +insects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety peaches and +roses--Seghers, Van Aelst and his talented pupil Rachel Ruysch, Cuyp, +Breughel (Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den Broeck, Margaretha +Rosenboom, Maria Vos, Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf, and many others +who excelled in this pleasing genre. Their canvases are faded, the +colours oxidised, but on the highways and by-ways the miracle is daily +renewed--flowers bloom at every corner, fill the window-boxes of +residences, crowd the hotel balconies, and are bunched in the hands of +the peddlers. A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses, +chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leaves +that are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivy +is used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht _Carsjens_ at +Leyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in a +floating garden. Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of Baron +Steengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone. It is full of +ivy growing low. Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention. +They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenious +surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away to +imitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden little +leafy lanes--what quips and quirks we have come across a few miles +away from the town! To see Haarlem and its environs in June when the +bulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle. In +the fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of the +various farms as the train passes. The many-coloured vegetable carts +remind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here. + +The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a tall +tower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by +Christian Mueller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the +world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand +pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful +organist produce adequate musical results. We had the pleasure of +hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a few +Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by the +A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonic +quality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy +squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so +mellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secret +of the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and the +blue of the old Delft china? There are no fancy "barnyard stops," as +John Runciman has named the combinations often to be found in +latter-day instruments. You understood after hearing the Haarlem organ +why Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues. Modern music, with its +orchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be a +sacrilege on this key-board. + +The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us. The Dutch claim +him as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg. +At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you may +ride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal. +But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in the +United States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort at +either town. Regrettable as was the burning of the old church at +Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerous +pictures painted in that picturesque region. Of course it will be, or +has been, rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and did not once +think of 125th Street; the old town is slightly unlike its modern +namesake. What a charm there is in this venerable forest. The Dutch of +Amsterdam, less than half an hour away, come down here on Sunday +afternoons for the tranquillity and the shade. You must know that the +sun-rays can be very disturbing in July. The canals intersecting the +town are pretty. They may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't look +so. Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though the people won't +acknowledge it. It is the case in Venice, which on hot August +afternoons is not at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget it +all in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float by, steered by a blond +youngster of ten and poled by his brothers. From the chimney comes a +light smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old sunlit towpath of +your boyhood; a tightening at your heart warns you of homesickness, or +hay fever. Oh, to be on the Erie Canal, you exclaim, as you sneeze. + +But the Town Hall Museum is hard by. It is the glory of Haarlem as the +Rijks Museum is the glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the bell +and the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and you are free to the +room where are hung ten large paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals. +Here are the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in chronological +order. Drop the catalogue and use your own eyes. The first impression +is profound; not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rembrandt's +profundity, but because of the almost terrifying vitality of these +portraits. Prosaic men and women, great trenchermen, devourers of huge +pasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-tankards, they live with +such vitality on the canvases of Hals that you instinctively lower +your voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly officers, +sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-looking old women regents are not +so disquieting as Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands with +you across the centuries, and finally you wonder why they don't step +out the frame and greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, of +obvious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid paint, but handled +by the greatest master of the brush that ever lived--save Velasquez. +How thin and unsubstantial modern painting is if compared to this +magician, how even his greatest followers, Manet and Sargent, seem +incomplete. Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, his +elliptical handling, never had the smiling confidence of Hals in +facing a problem. The Frenchman is more subtle, also more evasive; and +there is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact that we +encounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist--himself a great painter. Hals +had not the poetic vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a more +dexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according to the rubric of sheer +paint, sheer brush-work, not Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such a +virtuoso. Despite his almost incredible swiftness of execution, Hals +got closer to the surfaces of what is called "actual" life than any of +the masters with the exception of the supreme Spaniard. + +At Haarlem you may follow his development; his first big picture +painted in 1616; his last in 1664. He died at eighty-four. But at +eighty odd he painted two important canvases, the portraits of the +regents and of the lady regents. More summary as regards the +execution, with a manifest tendency toward simplifications, these two +pictures are very noble. The group of ladies, each a portrait of +character, pleases some more than the male group. They are not so +firmly modelled, and into them all has crept a certain weariness as of +old age; but what justness of expression, what adjustment of puzzling +relations! One lady follows you over the gallery with her stern gaze. +It recalls to us the last judgment look which a maiden aunt was wont +to bestow upon us years ago. The men regents will live into eternity +if the canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleasing, yet it +cannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere that circulates about the +vigorously modelled figures at the table. What a colourist! What +nuances he produces on a restrained key-board! The tones modulate, +their juxtaposition causes no harsh discords. The velvet black, +silvery grays, whites that are mellow without pastiness, and the reds +and yellows do not flare out like scarlet trumpets; an aristrocratic +palette. Really you begin to realise that what you formerly considered +grandfather tales are the truth. The great painters have been and are +not with us to-day. It is not a consoling pill to swallow for apostles +of "modernity." Hals is more modern than Sargent. + +These corporation and regent pieces are chronologically arranged. No. +88 is considered the masterpiece. It shows the officers of the +Arquebusiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures. Again each +man is a portrait. This was painted in 1633. The Regents of the +Elizabeth Hospital (1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style; +nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that chamber is alone worth the +journey across the Atlantic. Hals shows us not the magic of life but +the normal life of daylight in which move with dignity men and women +undismayed by the mysteries that hem them about. He has a daylight +soul, a sane if not poetic soul, and few painters before him so +celebrated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of the real. + + + + +PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM + + + + +I + +The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representative home of old Dutch +art. The Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety, +but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night +Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch +has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the +large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only +in temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed. +We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one +gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better +lighted than in its old quarters, The Night Watch now shows more +clearly the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the background, and +the cracks of the canvas are ill-concealed by the heavy coating of +varnish. If all the faults of this magnificent work are more plainly +revealed its excellences are magnified. How there could have been any +dispute as to the lighting is incredible. The new catalogue, the +appendices of which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes the +picture thus: + +"The Night Watch, or the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and of +Lieutenant van Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad daylight, +leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers. At their head, standing in the +foreground about the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenant +conversing. The former wears a dark dress, the latter a yellow costume +with a white sash, causing a brilliant effect of light. Near the +Captain, also standing out in full light, is a little girl, a dead +white cock hanging from her waistband." + +Then follow the names of the other personages in this strange scene. + +A commonplace happening is transfigured by the magic of a seer into a +significant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window looking +out upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman, +Eugene Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this canvas +full of flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled and confused. +The draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired; hands are carelessly +painted, the grouping haphazard, without symmetry, the general rhythm +full of syncopations, cross accents, and perverse pauses--empty +spaces, transitions not accounted for. And yet this painting without +personal charm--it is almost impersonal--grips your soul. It is not +alone the emotional quality of the paint. There are greater colourists +than Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in monochrome, +modelling with light. No, not the paint alone, not the mystery of the +envelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combined +makes an assault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that Captain +Cocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to the +spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strange +attribute by the genius of the painter, this Dutchman becomes the +protagonist in a soundless symphony of light and shadow. The waves +that emanate from the canvas suffuse your senses but do not soothe or +satisfy. The modern nervous intensity, missing absolutely in Hals and +his substantial humans, is present in Rembrandt. We say "modern" as a +sop to our vanity, but we are the "ancients," and there is no mode of +thought, no mood that has not been experienced and expressed by our +ancestors. Rembrandt is unlike any other Dutch painter--Hals, Vermeer, +Teniers, Van der Heist--what have these in common with the miller's +son? But he is as Dutch as any of them. A genius is only attached to +his age through his faults, said a wise man. Rembrandt is as universal +as Beethoven, a Dutchman by descent, as Bach, a Hungarian by descent, +as Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. But we must go to Leonardo da Vinci +if we wish to find a brother soul to Rembrandt's. + +There is a second child back of that iridescent and enigmatic girl +with the dead fowl. And the dog that barks as Jan Van Koort ruffles +his drum, what a spectre dog! No, the mystery of The Night Watch is +insoluble, because it is the dream of a poet. Its light is morning +light, yet it is the mystic light of Rembrandt, never seen on sea or +land. In The Syndics, that group of six linen-drapers, Rembrandt shows +with what supreme ease he can beat Hals at the game of make-believe +actuality. Now, according to the accustomed order of development, The +Night Watch should have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it by +two decades, and the later work contains far better painting and a +sharper presentment of the real. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninth +symphony; but composed before his Fifth, The Syndics. One figure in +this latter picture has always fascinated us. It is of the man, +Volkert Janz, according to Professor J. Six, who stoops over, his hand +poised on a book. Rembrandt has seldom painted with more sensitiveness +eyes, subtle corners of the mouth, and intimate expression. This +syndic is evidently superior to his fellows, solid, sensible Dutch men +of affairs. + +There is a landscape, purchased in 1900, a stone bridge, lighted by +rays darting through heavy storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of the +etchings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though the +Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece in +portraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is +bulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent gleams of the apparel +the chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the +anatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is more +corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on +anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait of +his father, is an ancient copy and a capital one. Old dame Elizabeth +Bas, with her coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handkerchief, is +a picture you return to each day of your stay. + +Hals at Amsterdam is interesting. There is the so-called portrait of +the painter and his wife, two full-length figures; the Jolly Toper, +half-length figure, large black hat, in the left hand a glass; and the +insolent lute-player, a copy, said to be by Dirck Hals, the original +in the possession of Baron Gustave Rothschild at Paris. And a fine +copy it is. + +The three Vermeers are of his later enamelled period. One is a young +woman reading a letter; she is seen in profile, standing near a table, +and is dressed in a white skirt and blue loose jacket. The Letter +shows us in the centre of a paved room a seated lady, lute in hand. +She has been interrupted in her playing by a servant bringing a +letter. To the right a tapestry curtain has been looped up to give a +view of the scene. The new Vermeer--purchased from the Six gallery in +1908--is now called The Cook; it was formerly known as The Milkmaid. A +stoutly built servant is standing behind a table covered with a green +cloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassau +earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from a +can. The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against the +white wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brown +petticoat, a dark-blue apron turned back, and a white cap on the head. +The light falls on the scene through a window to the left, above the +table. + +This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet galleries. It displays more +breadth than the Lady Reading a Letter, and its colouring is +absolutely magical. The De Hoochs are of prime quality. Greater art is +the windmill and moonlit scene of Hobbema, as great a favourite as his +Mill, though both must give the precedence to the Alley of +Middleharnais in the Royal Academy, London. But where to begin, where +to end in this high carnival of over three thousand pictures! The +ticketed favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes lag behind +their reputation. The great Van der Helst--and a prime portraitist he +is, as may be seen over and over again--is The Company of Captain +Bicker, a vast canvas. When you forget Hals and Rembrandt it is not +difficult to conjure up admiration for this work. The N. Maes Spinner +is very characteristic. Cuyp and Van Goyen are here; the latter's view +of Dordrecht is celebrated. So is the Floating Feather of +Hondecoester, a finely depicted pelican. The feather is the least part +of the picture. Asselijn's angry swan is an excellent companion piece. +We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises, +and other sterling Dutch painters. There is the gallery of Dutch and +Flemish primitives about which a volume might be written; their +emaciated music appeals. In expressiveness the later men did not excel +them. The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue +supplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master, +possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories are +Dutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table. Across their +knees are napkins. The white is from a Spanish palette. A youth +attired in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spectators, is +pouring out wine or water. The canvas is large, the execution flowing; +perhaps it portrays the disciples at Emmaus. + +The portraits of Nicholas Hasselaer and his wife Geertruyt van Erp, by +Hals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummate +artistry that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke of which sings +out, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught the +trick of brush-work--at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent could +have produced the collar and cuffs. A Whistler, a full-length, in +another gallery, looks like an unsubstantial wraith by comparison. Two +weeks' daily attendance at this excellently planned collection did no +more than fix the position of the exhibits in the mind. There is a +goodly gathering of such names as Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, and +others at the Rijks, but the display of modern Dutch pictures at the +Municipal Museum is more representative. The greatest Josef Israels we +ever saw in the style is his Jew sitting in the doorway of a house, a +most eloquent testimony to Israels' powers of seizing the "race" and +the individual. Old David Bles is here, and Blommers, De Bock, +Bosboom, Valkenburg, Alma-Tadema, Ary Scheffer--of Dutch +descent--Roelofs, Mesdag, Mauve, Jakob Maris, Jongkind, and some of +the Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupre, and others. The Six gallery is +not so accessible as it was some years ago. No doubt its Rembrandts +and Vermeers will eventually find their way into the Rijks Museum. + + + + +II + +Who was Herri met de Bles? Nearly all the large European galleries +contain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases the +pictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are more +erudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in former +years, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes. +Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint. +Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism for +overpainting. Between varnish and retouching it is difficult to tell +where the old master leaves off and the "restorer" begins. Bles, for +example, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fascinating subject to the +student; but are we really looking at his work? The solitary picture +of his here, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might have been +painted a year ago. (It is an attribution.) Yet this painter is +supposed to have been born at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died at +Liege, 1521. He was nicknamed Herri, for Hendrick, met de Bles, +because he had a tuft of white in his hair (a forerunner of Whistler). +The French called him Henri a la Houppe; the Italians +"Civetta"--because of the tiny owl he always introduced into his work. +He was a landscapist, and produced religious and popular scenes. Bles +has had many works saddled upon him by unknown imitators of Metsu, +Joost van Kleef, Lucas, and Duerer--who worked at Antwerp between 1520 +and 1550. Thierry Vellert was also an imitator. In the old Pinakothek, +Munich, there is a Henricus Blesius, which is said to be a +counterfeit, and others are in Karlsruhe, Milan, Brussels, and at the +Prado. + +The circular picture in the Rijks shows us in various episodes Adam +and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the Creation until the Fall. Around +the edge are signs of the zodiac. The colour is rich, the figures +delicate. The story is clearly told and is not unlike a "continuous +performance." You see Adam asleep and over him stoops the Almighty; +then Eve is shown. The apple scandal and the angel with the flaming +sword are portrayed with a vivid line that recalls the miniaturist. A +rare painter. + +Roeland Savery is an artist whose name, we confess, was not known to +us until we saw his work in the Rijks. The rich _pate_ and +bouquet-like quality of his colour recall Monticelli. His compositions +are composed, like Monticelli's, but much more spirited than the +latter. A stag hunt, a poet crowned at the feast of animals, Elijah +fed by the ravens, and the fable of the stag among the cows prove the +man's versatility. He was born about 1576 and died at Utrecht, 1639. A +pupil of his father, he first worked in Courtrai. The Bronzino Judith +holding the head of Holophernes is a copy, the original hanging in the +Pitti Palace. At Vienna there is a replica. Among the Bols (Cornelis, +1613-66) the portraits of Roelof Meulenaer and his wife, Maria Rey, +attract because of their vitality and liberalism. Then we come across +the oft-engraved Paternal Advice, by Gerard ter Borch (1617-81). Who +doesn't remember that young lady dressed in white satin and standing +with her back to you? The man in officer's uniform, admonishing her, +is seated next to a woman drinking from a wine-glass. The texture of +the dress and the artfully depicted glass are the delight of amateurs. +As a composition it is not remarkable. The man is much too young to be +the father of the blond-haired lady, and if the other one is her +mother, both parents must have retained their youth. The portrait of +Helena van der Schalcke is that of a quaint Dutch child standing; a +serious little body carrying a basket on her right arm like a good +housewife. It is a capital Ter Borch. Two beautiful Albert Cuyps are +painted on the two sides of a copper panel. On one side two merchants +stand at a wharf; on the other two men sit sampling wine in a cellar. +The colour is singularly luminous. + +Let us pass quickly the Schalckens and Gerard Dous. Dou's +self-portrait is familiar. He leans out of a window and smokes a clay +pipe. The candle-light pictures always attract an audience. Govert +Flinck (1615-60, pupil of Rembrandt) is a painter who, if he lived +to-day, would be a popular portraitist. Wherever you go you see his +handiwork, not in the least inspired, but honest, skilful, and genial. +Look at the head of the tax-collector Johannes Wittenbogaert, covered +with a black cap. So excellent is it that it has been attributed to +Rembrandt. Boland, we believe, engraved it as genuine Rembrandt. +Gerard van Honthorst's Happy Musician is another picture of prime +quality, and a subject dear to Hals. Hoogstratten's Sick Lady is an +anecdote. The young woman does not seem very ill, but the doctor +gravely holds up a bottle of medicine and you feel the dread moment is +at hand. How to persuade the patient to swallow the dose? She is +stubborn-looking. The Pieter de Hoochs are now in the same gallery +with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride. These interiors, painted with a minute, +hard finish, lack the charm and the colour quality of Vermeer. With +sunlight Hooch is successful, but his figures do not move freely in an +atmospheric envelope, as is the case with Vermeer's. The Small Country +House is the favourite. In front of a house a well-dressed man and +woman are seated at a table. She is squeezing lemon juice into a +glass. Behind her a servant is carrying a glass of beer, and farther +away a girl cleans pots and pans. The composition is the apotheosis of +domestic comfort, conjugal peace, and gluttony. We like much more The +Pantry, wherein a woman hands a jug to her little girl. The adjoining +room, flooded with light, is real. + +There is one Van der Helst we could not pass. It looks like the +portrait of a corpulent woman, but is that of Gerard Bicker, bailiff +of Muiden. A half-length figure turned to the left, the bailiff a +well-fed pig, holds a pair of gloves in his right hand which he +presses against his Gargantuan chest. His hair is long and curly. The +fabrics are finely wrought. Holbein the younger is represented by the +portrait of a young man. It is excellent, but doubtless a copy or an +imitation. To view five Lucas van Leydens in one gallery is not an +everyday event. His engravings are rare enough--that is, in good +states; "ghosts" are aplenty--and his paintings rarer. Here they are +chiefly portraits. Rachel Ruysch, the flower painter, has a superior +in Judith Lyster, a pupil of Frans Hals. She was born at Haarlem, or +Zaandam, about 1600, and died 1660. She married the painter Jan +Molener. Her Jolly Toper faces the Hals of the same theme, in a +cabinet, and reveals its artistic ancestry. Judith had the gift of +reproducing surfaces. We need not return to the various Maeses; +indeed, this is only a haphazard ramble among the less well-known +pictures. Consider the heads of Van Mierevelt; those of Henrick Hooft, +burgomaster of Amsterdam, of Jacob Cats, and of his wife Aegje +Hasselaer (1618-64). Her hair and lace collar are wonderfully set +forth. Must we stop before Mabuse, or before the cattle piece of the +Dutch school, seventeenth century? A Monticelli seems out of key here, +and the subject is an unusual one for him, Christ With the Little +Children. The Little Princess, by P. Moreelse, has the honour, after +Rembrandt, of being the most frequently copied picture in the Rijks. +The theme is the magnet. A little girl, elaborately dressed, is +seated. She strokes the head of a spaniel whose jewelled collar gives +the impression of a dog with four eyes. In Vermeer's Young Woman +Reading a Letter is a like confused passage of painting, for the +uninstructed spectator. She wears her hair over her ear, an ornament +clasping the hair. At first view this is not clear, principally +because this fashion of wearing the hair is unusual in the eyes of a +stranger. + +Jan van Scorel was born at Schoorl, near Alkmaar, 1495. He studied +under Jacob Cornelis at Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at +Utrecht. He died at Utrecht, 1562. When travelling in Germany he +visited Duerer at Nuremberg; resided for a time in Italy. The Italian +influence is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen, which formerly +hung in the town-hall of Haarlem. A replica is in the residence of the +head-master of Eton College, England. Mary is shown seated, richly +attired. She holds in her right hand a box of perfume, her left hand, +beautifully painted, rests on her knee. Behind is a mountainous +landscape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree. The head is north +Lombardian in character and colouring, the glance of the eyes +enigmatic. A curiously winning composition, not without _morbidezza_. +Scorel has five other works in the Rijks. The Bathsheba is not a +masterpiece. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is conventional, but the +Harpsichord Player was sold at Paris as late as 1823 as a Bronzino. +Perhaps it is only attributed to Scorel. It is unlike his brush-work. +The Painting of a Vault, divided into nine sections, five of which +represent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity. The portrait of Emperor +Charles V. as Pharaoh is pointed out by the gallery attendant, who +then retires and diplomatically coughs in the middle distance. + +The Mancini (pupil of Morelli and W.H. Mesdag) is entitled Poor Thing. +A little girl stands in a miserable room; mice run over the floor. The +colouring is rich. There are admirable Jakob Marises; but we wish to +follow in the track of the old fellows. Adrian van Ostade's Baker is +so popular that it is used for advertising purposes in Holland. The +baker leans out of his door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn. +Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture many times. An interior +with figures, seated and standing; same faces, poses, accessories. +Same valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure. A Merry Party is +the usual title. At The Hague in the Mauritshuis there is another such +subject; also in Antwerp and Brussels. But a jolly painter. Steen and +Teniers we may sidestep. Also the artificial though graceful +Tischbein. There is a Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionable +portrait painter (he painted the Empress Eugenie), and let us leave +the Titians to the experts. When you are in Holland look at the Dutch +pictures. A De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto, and there +is Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of violence. Fancy Vollon flowers +in the midst of these old Dutchmen. The Frenchman had an extraordinary +feeling for still-life, though more in the decorative Venetian manner +than in Chardin's serene palette, or the literalism of Kalf. +Whistler's Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager Baroness R. van +Lynden in 1900, is not one of that master's most successful efforts. +It is a whole-length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feeling +sentimental, un-Whistlerian, and, as we before remarked, wraith-like +and lacking in substance when compared to Hals. + +There is actually a Wouverman in which no white horse is to be +discovered. On Van der Werff and the romantic landscapist Wynants we +need not dwell. The miniatures, pastels, and framed drawings are of +goodly array. Of the former, Samuel Cooper (portrait of Charles II.), +John Hoskins, Peter Oliver, Isaac Oliver, Laurence Crosse, and others. +English, Dutch, and French may be found. The Liotard and Tischbein +pastels are charming. In the supplements of the catalogue we find +underscored a Descent from the Cross, an anonymous work of the Flemish +school (fifteenth century, second half). The dead Christ is being +lowered into the arms of his mother. It is evidently a copy from a +lost original in the style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are such +copies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another composition is labelled as an +anonymous work of undetermined school. The Christ hangs on the cross, +on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy women and St. John; on His +left jeering soldiers and scribes. On either side of the composition +is the figure of a saint much larger in size than the other figures; +St. Cosmus on the left, St. Damian on the right. The background is a +hilly landscape. An authority ascribes the work to the Catalonian +school, date about 1440. There were giants in those days. Antonello da +Messina has the portrait of a young man. It is an attribution, yet not +without some claim to authenticity. The Jan Provosts are mostly of +close study, especially The Virgin Enthroned. A certain Pieter +Dubordieu, who was living in Amsterdam in 1676 (born in Touraine), +painted the portraits of a man and a woman, dated 1638. Vivid +portraits. We must pass over the striking head of Hanneman, the Lucas +Cranach (the elder), and the thousand other attractive pictures in +this gallery. The Rijks Museum could be lived with for years and still +remain an inexhaustible source of joy. + + + + +ART IN ANTWERP + + + +After passing Dordrecht on the way down to Antwerp the canals and +windmills begin to disappear. The country is as flat as Holland, but +has lost its characteristic charm. It has become less symmetrical; +there is disorder in the sky-line, more trees, the architecture is +different. Dutch precision has vanished. The railway carriages are not +clean, punctuality is avoided, the people seem less prosperous, few +speak English, and as you near Antwerp the villas and roads tell you +that you are in the dominion of the King of Belgium. But Antwerp is so +distinctly Flemish that you forget that bustling modern Brussels is +only thirty-six minutes away by the express--a fast train for once in +this land of snail expresses. No doubt the best manner of approaching +Antwerp is by the Scheldt on one of the big steamers that dock so +comfortably along the river. However, a trip to the vast _promenoir_ +that overlooks the river gives an excellent idea of this thriving +port. The city--very much modernised during the past ten years--may +easily be seen in a few days, setting aside the museums and churches. +The quay promenade brings you to the old Steen Castle, and the Town +Hall with its _salle des marriages_, its mural paintings by the +industrious Baron Leys--frigid in style and execution--will repay you +for the trouble. The vestibules and galleries are noteworthy. We +enjoyed the facades of the ancient guild houses on the market-place +and watching the light play upon the old-time scarred front of the +cathedral that stands in the Place Verte. Then there are the +Zoological Garden, the Plantin Museum, the Theatre Flamand, the +various monuments, and the spectacle of the busy, lively city for +those who do not go to Antwerp for its art. You may even go to +Hoboken, a little town in the suburbs not at all like the well-known +Sunday resort in Jersey. + +The Royal Museum is displayed in a large square. It is a handsome +structure and the arrangement of the various galleries is simple. The +Rubenses, thirty-odd in all, are the _piece de resistance_, and the +Flemish and Dutch Primitives of rare beauty. Bruges is better for +Memling, Brussels for Van der Weyden, Ghent for the Van Eycks, yet +Antwerp can boast a goodly number of them all. She exceeds Brussels in +her Rubenses for the larger altar pieces are here, just as at +Amsterdam the Rembrandts, while not numerous, take precedence because +of The Syndics and The Night Watch. The tumultuous, overwhelming Peter +Paul is in his glory at Antwerp. You think of some cataclysm when +facing these turbulent, thrilling canvases. If Raphael woos, Rubens +stuns. In the company of Michel Angelo and Balzac or Richard Wagner he +would be their equal for torrential energy and vibrating humanity. Not +so profound as Buonarroti, not so versatile as Balzac, he is their +peer in sheer savagery of execution. Setting aside the miles of +pictures signed by him though painted by his pupils, he must have +covered multitudes of canvas. Like men of his sort of genius, he ends +by making your head buzz and your eyes burn; and then, the sameness of +his style, the repetition of his wives and children's portraits, the +apotheosis of the Rubens family! He portrayed Helena Fourment and +Isabella Brandt in all stages of disarray and gowns. He put them +together on the same canvas. He did not hesitate to show them to the +world in all their opulent nudity. Their white skins, large eyes with +wide gaze, their lovely children appear in religious and mythologic +pictures at every turn you make in this museum. You become too +familiar with them. You learn to know that one wife was slenderer than +the other; you also realise that other days had other ways. Titian +painted the portrait of a noble dame quite naked and placed her +husband, soberly attired, near by. No one criticised the taste of this +performance. Manet, who was no Titian, did the same trick and was +voted wicked. He actually dared to show us Nana dressing in the +presence of a gentleman who sat in the same room with his hat on. + +The heavy-flanked Percheron horses are of the same order as the Rubens +women. The Flemings are mighty feeders, mighty breeders, +good-tempered, pleasure-loving folk. They don't work as hard as the +Dutch, and they indulge in more feasting and holidays. The North seems +austere and Protestant when compared with this Roman Catholic land. +Its sons of genius, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, painted pictures that +do not reveal the deeper faith of the Primitives. No Christ or Mary of +either Van Dyck or Rubens sounds the poignant note of the +Netherlandish unknown mystic masters. + +But what a banquet of beauty Rubens spreads for the eye! With him +painting reached its apogee, and in him were the seeds of its +decadence. He shattered the Florentine line; he, a tremendous +space-composer when he so wished, wielded his brush at times like a +scene-painter on a debauch. The most shocking, the loveliest things +happen on his canvases. Set the beautiful Education of the Virgin, in +this gallery, beside such a work as Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, and +you will see the scale in which he sported. Or the Virgin and Parrot, +with a child Christ who might have posed as a youthful Adonis, and the +Venus Frigida--both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all his +religion. We prefer the Christ Crucified between Two Thieves or the +Christ on the Cross, the single figure, to the more famous Descent at +the Cathedral. But what can be said that is new about Rubens or Van +Dyck? In the latter may be noted the beginnings of deliquescence. He +is a softened Rubens, a Rubens aristocratic. The portraits here are +prime, those of the Bishop of Antwerp, Jean Malderus, and of the young +girl with the two dogs. His various Christs are more piteous to behold +than those of his master, Rubens. The feminine note is present, and +without any of the realism which so shocks in the conceptions of the +Primitives. Nevertheless we turn to his portraits or to the little boy +standing at a table. There is the true key of Van Dyck. He met Rubens +as a portraitist and took no odds of him. + +Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve is a variation of the picture in the +Brussels gallery. A Gossaert portrait catches the eye, the head and +bust of a man; then you find yourself staring in wonderment at the +Peter Breughels and Jerome Bosches with their malodorous fantastic +versions of temptations of innumerable St. Anthonys. The air is thick +with monsters, fish-headed and splay of foot. St. Anthony must have +had the stomach of an ostrich and the nerves of a politician to endure +such sights and sounds and witches. Such females! But Peter and his +two sons are both painters of interest. There are better Teniers in +Brussels, though Le Chanteur is admirable. Ostade's Smoker is a +masterpiece. Only four Rembrandts, the portrait of a woman, according +to Vosmaer and W. Burger that of his wife Saskia; a fisherman's boy, +the Burgomaster, and the Old Jew. Dr. Bode thinks that the last two +are by Nikolas Maes. The portrait of Eleazer Swalmius--the so-called +Burgomaster Six--is finely painted as to head and beard. The Antwerp +Museum paid two hundred thousand francs for the work. We must not +forget mention of a David Teniers, a loan of Dr. Bredius, a +still-life, a white dead goose superb in tone. + +Of the two Frans Halses, the portrait of a Dutch gentleman is the +better; the other was formerly known as the Strandlooper van Haarlem +and shows the vigorous brush-work of the master. It is the head of a +saucy fisher-boy, the colour scheme unusual for Hals. The Quentin +Matsys pictures are strong; among others the portrait of Peter Gillis +with his shrewd, strongly marked physiognomy. This is a Matsys town. +Every one looks at his old iron well beside the Cathedral and recalls +the legend of the blacksmith, as every boy remembers here Hendrik +Conscience and the Lion of Flanders. Van Reymerswael's The Tax +Gatherers, sometimes called The Bankers or The Misers, hangs in the +museum; that realistic picture with the so highly individualised +heads, a favourite of the engravers, holds its own. Both the Boutses, +Albrecht and Dirck, are shown in their Holy Families, and both are +painters of ineffable grace and devotion. + +Four Memlings of seductive beauty light the walls. One is a portrait +of Nicolo Spinelli. Christ and His Angels, the angels playing in +praise of the Eternal and other angels playing various instruments. +The two Van Eycks, Huibrecht (Hubert) and Jan, are well represented. +The St. Barbara, by Jan, is repeated in the Bruges Museum The Donateur +or Donor is a repetition of the original at Bruges. The Adoration of +the Lamb is a copy of the original at Ghent. There is tender beauty in +Jan's St. Barbara, and infinite motherly love expressed in his Holy +Virgin. Hugo van der Goes's portrait of Thomas Portunari is a marvel +of characterisation. Terburg has a mandolin player and Hobbema a mill +scene. The Van Orleys are interesting, and also the Van Veens. Gerard +David, a painter of exquisite touch and feeling, shows a Repose in +Egypt. Lucas Cranach's L'Amour is one of his Virgins transposed to the +mythological key. We have barely indicated the richness of this +collection, in which, of course, Rubens plays first fiddle--rather the +full orchestra. And with what sonority and luminosity! + +At the Cathedral his three masterpieces draw their accustomed +audiences with the usual guide lecturing in three languages, pointing +out the whiteness of the cloth in the Descent and the anatomy in the +Ascent. This latter work is always slighted by sightseers because +Baedeker, or some one else, had pronounced its composition "inferior" +to the Descent, but there are many more difficult problems involved in +the Ascent. Its pattern is not so pleasing as the Descent, the subject +is less appealing, and more sternly treated. There are more virile +accents in the Ascent, though it would be idle to deny that in paint +quality there is a falling off. Both pictures show the tooth of time +and the ravages of the restorers. At St. Jacques, with its wonderfully +carved pulpit, the St. George of Rubens hangs in a chapel. It has +darkened much during the last twenty years. Also there is another +Rubens family group with wives and other relatives. They thought well +of themselves, the Rubens family, and little wonder. + +The modern pictures at the museum are of varying interest--Braekeleer, +Stobbaerts, Verlat, Scheffer, Cabanel, David (J.L.), Wiertz, Wauters, +Wappers, some elegant Alfred Stevenses, De Bock the landscapist, +Clays, Van Beers, Meunier, Breton, Bouguereau, and a lot of +nondescript lumber. In the spacious approach there is one of +Constantin Meunier's famous figures. You rejoice that he followed +Rodin's advice and gave up the brush for the chisel. As a painter he +was not more than mediocre. + +The four Van der Weydens in the gallery of Primitives are not all of +equal merit. The Annunciation is the most striking. The early master +of Memling is distinguished by a sweetness in composition and softness +in colouring. Mention must be made of the De Vos pictures by the +Cornelis, Martin, and Simon. A portrait of Abraham Grapheus by the +first-named is one of the most striking in the museum, and the +self-portrait of the latter, smiling, is brilliant. Rombouts is a sort +of Adrian Brouwer; his Cavaliers Playing at Cards recalls Caravaggio. +Daniel Mytens's portrait of a lady is Rubenesque. + +And all that choir of elevated souls unknown to us by name, merely +called after the city they inhabited, such as the Master of Bray, or +by some odd device or monogram--what cannot be written of this small +army which praised the Lord, His mother and the saints in form and +colour, on missals, illuminated manuscripts, or on panels! The Antwerp +Museum has its share of Anonymous, that master of whom it has been +said that "he" was probably the master of the masters. Antwerp is a +city of many charms, with its St. Jacques, St. Andres (and its carved +pulpit), St. Paul and the Cathedral, and its preservation of the +Flemish spirit and Flemish customs; but for us its museum was all in +all. + + + + +MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS + + + +Considering its size and significance, Brussels has more than its +share of museums. At the beginning of the Rue de la Regence, near the +Place Royale, stands the imposing Royal Museum of old paintings and +sculpture. The Museum of Modern Art is around the corner and adjoins +the National Library, which is said to harbour over six hundred +thousand volumes. In the gallery of old art the effect of the +sculptors' hall, which is in the centre and utilises the entire height +of the building, is noble. The best sculpture therein is by Rodin and +Meunier; the remainder is generally academic or simply bad. Rodin's +Thinker, in bronze, is a repetition of the original. After the +wreathed prettiness of the conventional school--neither Greek nor +Gothic--and the writhing diablerie of Rodin imitators the simplicity +and directness of Constantin Meunier is refreshing. He was a man whose +imagination became inflamed at the sight of suffering and injustice. +He is closer to Millet than to his friend Rodin, but he lacks the +sweetness and strength of Millet. Selecting the Belgian workman--the +miner, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, the proletarian, in a +word--for his theme, Meunier observed closely and reproduced his +vision in terms of rugged beauty. The sentiment is evidently +socialistic. Like Prince Kropotkin and the brothers Reclus, the +Belgian sculptor revolts against the cruelty of man to man. He shows +us the miner crouched in a pitiful manner finding a pocket of coal; +men naked to the waist, their torsos bulging with muscles, their small +heads on bull necks, are puddlers; other groups patiently haul heavy +carts--labour not in its heroic aspect, but as it is in reality, is +the core of Meunier's art. That he is "literary" at times may not be +denied, but power he has. + +The early Flemish school of the fifteenth century is strongly +represented in several of the galleries up-stairs. And Rogier de la +Pasture, otherwise known as Rogier van der Weyden, is shown in five +pictures, and at his best. The Chevalier with the Arrow, a bust +portrait, will be familiar to those who have visited the Rijks Museum, +where a copy hangs. The robe is black, the hat, conical, is brown, the +background blue-green. The silhouette is vigorously modelled, the +expression one of dignity, the glance penetrating, severe. What +characterisation! The Christ is a small panel surpassingly rich in +colour and charged with profound pity. The body lies in the arms of +the Mother, Magdalen and John on either side. The sun is setting. The +subject was a favourite of Weyden; there is a triptych in Berlin and a +panel at The Hague. This Brussels picture has evidently been shorn of +its wings. There are replicas of the Virgin and Child (No. 650 in the +catalogue) at Berlin, Cassel, and Frankfort, also in the recently +dispersed collection of Rudolph Kann. Another striking tableau is the +head of a woman who weeps. The minutest tear is not missing. + +Hubert and Jan Van Eyck's Adam and Eve are the wings (volets) from the +grand composition in the Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent. They are +gigantic figures, nude, neither graceful nor attractive, but +magnificently painted. These portraits (they don't look as if they had +been finished in paradise) of our first parents rather favour the +evolutionary theory of development. Eve is unlovely, her limbs lanky, +her bust mediaeval, her flanks Flemish. In her right hand she holds the +fatal apple. Adam's head is full of character; it is Christ-like; his +torso ugly, his legs wooden. Yet how superior to the copies which are +now attached to the original picture at Ghent. There the figures are +clothed, clumsy, and meaningless. + +Dierick Bouts's Justice of Emperor Otho III is a striking picture. The +subject has that touch of repulsive cruelty which was a sign of the +times. Hans Memling's Martyrdom of St. Sebastian is another treasure; +with his portraits of a man, of Guillaume Morel and of Barbara de +Vlandenberg making an immortal quartet. The head of the man is the +favourite in reproduction. Morel is portrayed as in prayer, his hands +clasped, his expression rapt. A landscape is seen at the back. The +Virgin Surrounded by Virgins, by an unknown master of the fifteenth +century (school of Bruges), is one of the most amazing pictures in the +collection. It has a nuance of the Byzantine and of the hieratic, but +the portraits are enchanting in their crystalline quality. Quentin +Matsys' Legend of St. Anne is much admired, though for sincerity we +prefer The Passion of the Master of Oultremont. Gerard David's +Adoration of the Magi is no longer attributed to him. It was always in +doubt: now the name has been removed, though the picture has much of +his mellowness. Dr. Scheuring, the old man with the shaved upper lip, +beard, and hair over his forehead, by Lucas Cranach, and Jean +Gossaert's Chevalier of the Golden Fleece, are masterly portraits. Van +Cleve, Van Orlay, Key--perhaps a portrait of the bloody Duke of +Alva--also one of himself, Coello's Maria of Austria, are among the +sterling specimens in this gallery. + +We need not expect to find duplicated here the Rubens of Antwerp. The +most imposing example is the Adoration of the Magi, while his +portraits of the Archduke Albert and his Archduchess, Isabella, are +perhaps the best extant. The Calvary is a splendid canvas, full of +movement and containing several members of the well-known Rubens +family. Such devotion is touching. You find yourself looking for +Isabella Brandt and Helena Fourment among the angels that hover in the +sky above the martyred St. Lieven. The four negro heads, the Woman +Taken in Adultery, a Susanna (less concerned about her predicament +than any we have encountered), a curious and powerful portrait of +Theophrastus Paracelsus (Browning's hero), with a dozen others, make a +goodly showing for the Antwerp master. Otho Vaenius (Octave Van Veen), +one of the teachers of Rubens, is hung here. There are nearly a dozen +Van Dycks, of prime quality all. The Crucifixion, the portrait of an +unknown gentleman wearing a huge ruff and the winning portrait of a +Flemish sculptor, Francesco Duquesnoy, (on a stand), give you an +excellent notion of his range, though better Van Dycks are in France +and England. + +The portrait of an old man, by Rembrandt, is beginning to fade, but +that of an old woman is a superior Rembrandt. Of Frans Hals there are +two fine specimens; one, a portrait of Willem van Heythusen, is a +small picture, the figure sitting, the legs crossed (booted and +spurred) and the figure leaning lazily back. On his head a black felt +hat with a broad upturned brim. The expression of the bearded man is +serious. The only Jan Vermeer is one of the best portraits by that +singularly gifted painter we recall. It is called The Man with the +Hat. Dr. Bredius in 1905 considered the picture by Jean Victor, but it +has been pronounced Vermeer by equal authorities. It was once a part +of the collection of Humphry Ward. The man sits, his hand holding a +glove resting negligently over the back of a chair. He faces the +spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His +collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are +rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost +morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the +Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a +masterpiece of paint and character. + +The Old Lady Dreaming, by N. Maes, and the Jan Steen (The Operator) +are good though not remarkable examples. Jacob Jordaenses flood the +various galleries; Rubens run to seed as far as quality, yet +exhibiting enormous muscularity, is the trait of this gross painter. +The King Drinks--his kings are always drinking or blind drunk--his +nudes, which look like the contents of the butcher shops in Brussels, +attract throngs, for the anecdote is writ large across the wall, and +you don't have to run to read. Panoramas would be a better title for +these robust compositions. David Teniers's La Kermesse is the most +important work he ever finished. It is in good preservation. Amsterdam +has not its superior. There is an ordinary El Greco, a poor Goya, and +a Ribera downstairs. The French art is not enlivening. + +Philip Champaigne's self-portrait is familiar: it has been reproduced +frequently. Jean Baptiste Huysmans, a landscape with animals; he is +said to be an ancestor of the late Joris Karel Huysmans. The Mors +(Antonio Moro) is of value. But the lodestone of the collection is the +Primitives. + +The pictures in the modern gallery are largely Belgian, some French, +and a few Dutch and English. It is not a collection of artistic +significance. In the black-and-white room may be seen a few original +drawings of Rops. + +The Musee Wiertz is worth visiting only as a chamber of horrors. When +Wiertz is not morbid and repulsive he is of the vasty inane, a man of +genius gone daft, obsessed by the mighty shades of Rubens and Michael +Angelo. Wiertz was born in 1806 and died in 1865. The Belgian +Government, in order to make some sort of reparation for its neglect +of the painter during his troubled and unhappy lifetime, acquired his +country residence and made it a repository of his art. The pictures +are of a scale truly heroic. The painter pitted himself against Rubens +and Michael Angelo. He said: "I, too, am a great painter!" And there +is no denying his power. His tones recall the _pate_ of Rubens without +its warmth and splendour. When Wiertz was content to keep within +bounds his portraits and feminine nudes are not without beauty. He was +fanciful rather than poetic, and the picture of Napoleon in hell +enduring the reproaches of his victims (why should they be there?) is +startling. Startling, too, are the tricks played on your nerves by the +peepholes. You see a woman crazed by hunger about to cook one of her +murdered children; beheaded men, men crushed by superior power, the +harnessed body of Patroclus, Polyphemus devouring the companions of +Ulysses, and other monstrous conceptions, are all painted with +reference to the ills of the poor. Anton Joseph was a socialist in +sentiment. If his executive ability had been on a par with his ideas, +and if those ideas had been less extravagant, the world would have had +one more great painter; but his nervous system was flawed and he died +a melancholic, a victim to misplaced ideals. He wished to revive the +heroic age at a time of easel pictures. He, the half genius, saw +himself outwitted by the sleek paint of Alfred Stevens. Born out of +his due time, a dreamer of dreams, Wiertz is a sad example of the +futility of looking backward in art. + + + + +BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL + + + +On the way up from Brussels to Bruges it is well to alight at Ghent +for a few hours. There are attractions enough to keep one for several +days, but as our objective was St. Bavon (St. Bavo, or Sint Baafs) we +did not stay more than the allotted time. And an adventurous time it +was. The Ostend express landed its passengers at the St. Pierre +station and that meant the loss of half an hour. The Cathedral is +reached by the tramway, and there we found that as an office was about +to be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after its +completion. It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already the +choristers in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a moment to be +spared! The sacristan was a practical man. He hustled us into a side +chapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the great +picture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt in +prayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting obscure. We were +hemmed in, but by angels and ministers of grace. The chanting began. +Atmosphere was not needed in this large and gloomy edifice, only more +light. Gradually the picture began to burn through the artificial +dusk, gradually its glories became more perceptible. Begun by Hubert +in 1420 and finished by Jan in 1432, its pristine splendour has +vanished; and the loss of the wings--the Adam and Eve are in Brussels, +the remaining volets in the Berlin Museum--is irreparable despite the +copies. But this Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with its jewelled +figures of the Christ, of St. John the Baptist, St. Cecilia, and the +central panel with its mystical symbolism, painted in sumptuous tones, +the lamb on the altar, the prophets and ecclesiastics in worship, the +singing angels, is truly an angelic composition. + +The rain had ceased. A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glass +windows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which +glowed supernally. In the chancel the Psalms had died away and the +only sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors. The man +turned the lock. It was a return to the world as if one had +participated in a sacred ceremony. + +Bruges is invariably called Bruges-la-Morte, but it is far from being +dead, or even desperately melancholy. Delft, in Holland, after nine +o'clock at night, is quieter than Bruges. Bruges the Dead? No, Bruges +the Beautiful is nearer the truth. After reading Rodenbach's morbid +romance of Bruges-la-Morte we felt sure that a stay in Bruges would be +like a holiday in a cemetery. Our experience dispelled this unpleasant +illusion. Bruges is in daylight a bustling and in certain spots a +noisy place. Its inhabitants are not lugubrious of visage, but +wideawake, practical people, close at a bargain, curious like all +Belgians, and on fete days given to much feasting. Bruges is +infinitely more interesting than Brussels. It is real, while modern +Brussels is only mock-turtle. And Bruges is more picturesque, the food +is as well flavoured, there are several resorts where ripe old +Burgundy may be had at not an extravagant price, and the townsfolk are +less grasping, more hearty than in Brussels. + +The city is nicknamed a Northern Venice, but of Venice there is +naught, except the scum on the canal waters. The secular odour of +Bruges was not unpleasant in October; in August it may have been. We +know that the glory of the city hath departed, but there remain the +Memlings, the Gerard Davids, at least one Van Eyck, not to mention +several magnificent old churches. + +Let us stroll to the Beguinage. Reproductions of Memling and Van Eyck +are in almost every window. The cafes on the square, where stands the +Belfry of Longfellow's poem, are overflowing with people at table. It +is Friday, and to-morrow will be market day; with perhaps a fair or a +procession thrown in. You reach the Cathedral of St. Sauveur (Sint +Salvator), erected in the tenth century, though the foundations date +back to the seventh. The narrow lane-like street winds around the rear +of the church. Presently another church is discerned with a tower that +must be nearly four hundred feet high, built, you learn, some time +between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Notre Dame contains the +tombs of Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy, a lovely white marble +statue of the Virgin and Child ascribed with justice to Michael +Angelo, and a fine bow-window. We pass the Hospital of St. Jean, turn +up an alley full of cobblestones and children, and finally see the +canal that passes the houses of the Beguinage. The view is of +exceeding charm. The spire of Notre Dame and the apsis may be seen up +(or is it down?) stream. A bridge cuts the river precisely where it +should; weeping willows to the left lend an elegiac note to the +ensemble, and there is a gabled house to the right which seems to have +entered the scene so as to give an artist the exact balance for his +composition. Nature and the handicraft of man paint pictures all over +Bruges. + +We enter the enclosure with the little houses of the beguines, or lay +sisterhood. There is nothing particular to see, except a man under a +tree admiring his daubed canvas, near by a dog sleeps. The sense of +peace is profound. Even Antwerp seems a creation of yesterday compared +with the brooding calm of Bruges, while Brussels is as noisy as a +boiler shop. The Minnewater (Lac d'Amour) is another pretty stretch, +and so we spent the entire day through shy alleys, down crooked +streets, twisting every few feet and forming deceptive vistas +innumerable, leading tired legs into churches, out of museums, up +tower steps. + +That first hard stroll told us how little we could know of Bruges in a +day, a week or a month. Bag and baggage we moved up from Brussels and +wished that the clock and the calendar could be set back several +centuries. At twilight the unusual happened: the Sandman appeared with +his hour-glass and beckoned to bed. There is no night in Bruges for +the visitor within the gates; there is only slumber. Perhaps that is +why the cockneys call it Bruges the Dead. The old horse that drags the +hotel bus was stamping its hoofs in the court-yard; the wall of St. +Jacques, eaten away by the years, faced us. The sun, somewhere, was +trying to rub its sleepy eyes, the odour of omelet was in the air, and +all was well. This is the home-like side of its life. It may still +harbour artists who lead a mystic, ecstatic existence, but we met none +of them. Poetic images are aroused at dusk along the banks of canals, +bathed in spectral light. Here Georges Rodenbach, that poet of +delicate images, placed his hero, a man who had lost a beloved wife. +He saw her wraith-like form in the mist and at the end went mad. + +The Memlings hang in a chamber at the Hospital St. Jean; the Chasse of +St. Ursula is a reliquary, Gothic in design. They consist of a dozen +tiny panels painted in exquisite fashion, with all the bright clarity +and precision of a miniaturist, coupled with a solidity of form and +lyric elegance of expression. They represent the side of Memling's art +which might be compared to the illuminators of manuscripts or to the +artificers in gold and precious stones. There is a jewelled quality in +this illustration of the pious life and martyrdom of St. Ursula at +Cologne. But it is not the greatest Memling, to our thinking. A +portrait of Martin van Nieuwenhoven, the donator of the diptych, La +Vierge aux Pommes, is as superb a Memling as one could wish for. The +little hairs are a sign of clever, minute brush. It is the modelling, +the rich manipulation of tones (yes, values were known in those +barbarous times), the graceful fall of the hair treated quite as much +en masse as with microscopic finish; the almost miraculous painting of +the folded hands, and the general expression of pious reverie, that +count most. The ductile, glowing colours make this a portrait to be +compared to any of the master's we have studied at London, Berlin, +Dresden, Luebeck, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels. But Bruges is the +natural frame for his exalted genius. + +If the Van Eycks were really the first to use oil-colour--a fable, it +is said--Memling, who followed them, taught many great Italian +painters the quality and expressiveness of beautiful paint. There is +the portrait of Sybilla Sambetha, the serious girl with the lace veil. +Did any of the later Dutch conjurers in paint attain such +transparency? The Mystic Marriage of St. Catharine, a triptych with +its wings representing the beheading of St. John the Baptist--the +Salome is quite melancholy--and St. John at Patmos, is one of the +world pictures. The Adoration of the Magi, with its wings, The +Nativity, and Presentation in the Temple, is equally touching. For me +Memling's Descent from the Cross sounds deeper music than +Rubens--which is operatic in comparison. The Virgin type of Van Eyck +is less insipid than the Italian; there is no pagan dissonance, as in +the conception of Botticelli. Faith blazed more fiercely in the +breasts of these Primitive artists. They felt Christ's Passion and the +sorrow of the Holy Mother more poignantly than did the Italians of the +golden renaissance. We have always held a brief for the Art for Art +theory. The artist must think first of his material and its technical +manipulation; but after that, if his pulse beat to spiritual rhythms +then his work may attain the heights. It is not painting that is the +lost art, but faith. Men like the Van Eycks, Rogier van der Weyden, +Memling, and Gerard David were princes of their craft and saw their +religion with eyes undimmed by doubt. + +James Weak has destroyed the legend that Hans Memling painted his St. +Ursula for the benefit of St. Jean's Hospital as a recompense for +treatment while sick there. He was a burgher living comfortably at +Bruges. The museum is a short distance from the hospital. Its Van Eyck +(Jan), La Vierge et l'Enfant--known as the Donator because of the +portrait of George van der Paele--is its chief treasure, though there +is the portrait of Jan's wife; Gerard David's Judgment of King +Cambyses, and the savage execution companion picture; Memling's +triptych, St. Christopher bearing the Christ Child, and David's +masterpiece, The Baptism of Christ. Holbein never painted a head with +greater verisimilitude than Van Eyck's rendering of the Donator. What +an eye! What handling, missing not a wrinkle, a fold of the aged skin, +the veins in the senile temples, or the thin soft hair above the ears! +What synthesis! There are no niggling details, breadth is not lost in +this multitude of closely observed and recorded facts. The large eyes +gaze devoutly at the vision of the Child, and if neither Virgin nor +Son is comely there is character delineated. The accessories must fill +the latter-day painter avid of surface loveliness with consuming envy. + +But it is time for sleep. The Brugeois cocks have crowed, the sun is +setting, and eyelids are lowering. Lucky you are if your dreams evoke +the brilliant colours, the magical shapes of the Primitives of Bruges +the Beautiful. + + + + +THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + + +Out of the beaten track of sight-seers, and not noticed with +particular favour by the guide-books, the museum founded by Gustave +Moreau at 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld in Paris, is known only to a +comparatively few artists and amateurs. You seldom hear Americans +speak of this rare collection, it is never written about in the +magazines. In September, 1897, Moreau made a will leaving his house +and its contents to the State. He died in 1898 (not in 1902, as +Bryan's dictionary has it), and in 1902 President Loubet authorised +the Minister of Public Instruction to accept this rich legacy in the +name of the republic. The artist was not known to stranger countries; +indeed he was little known to his fellow-countrymen. Huysmans had +cried him up in a revolutionary article; but to be praised by Huysmans +was not always a certificate of fame. That critic was more successful +in attracting public attention to Degas and Rops; and Moreau, a born +eclectic, though without any intention of carrying water on both +shoulders, was regarded suspiciously by his associates at the +Beaux-Arts, while the new men he praised, Courbet, Manet, Whistler, +Monet, would hold no commerce with him. To this day opinion is divided +as to his merits, he being called a _pasticheur_ or else a great +painter-poet. Huysmans saw straight into the heart of the +enigma--Gustave Moreau is poet and painter, a highly endowed man who +had the pictorial vision in an unusual degree; whose brush responded +to the ardent brain that directed it, the skilled hand that +manipulated it; always responded, we say, except in the creation of +life. His paintings are, strictly speaking, magnificent still-life. No +vital current animates their airless, gorgeous, and sometimes +cadaverous surfaces. + +Like his friend Gustave Flaubert, with whom he had so much in common +(at least on the Salammbo side of that writer), Moreau was born to +affluence. His father was a government architect; he went early to the +Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and also studied under Picot. In 1852 he had a +Pieta in the Salon (he was born April 6,1826), and followed it the +next season with a Darius and a large canvas depicting an episode from +the Song of Songs. The latter was purchased for the Dijon Museum. At +the Universal Exhibition of 1855 he showed a monster work, The +Athenians and the Minotaur. He withdrew from the public until 1864, +when his Oedipus and the Sphinx set Paris talking. He exhibited until +1880 various canvases illustrative of his studies in classic +literatures and received sundry medals. He was elected a member of the +Academie des Beaux-Arts in 1888, replacing Boulanger. He was decorated +in 1875 with the Legion of Honour and made _officier_ in 1883. When a +member of the Institute he had few friends, and as professor at the +Beaux-Arts he disturbed the authorities by his warm praise of the +Primitives. Altogether a career meagre in exciting incident, though +singularly rich and significant on the intimate side. + +A first visit to the museum proved startling. We had seen and admired +the fifteen water-colours at the Luxembourg, among them the famous +Apparition, but for the enormous number of pictures, oil, +water-colour, pastels, drawings, cartons, studies, we were unprepared. +The bulky catalogue registers 1,132 pieces, and remember that while +there are some unfinished canvases the amount of work executed--it is +true during half a century--is nevertheless a testimony to Moreau's +muscular and nervous energy, poetic conception, and intensity of +concentration. Even his unfinished pictures are carried to a state of +elaboration that would madden many modern improvisers in colour. Apart +from sheer execution, there is a multitude of visions that must have +been struggled for as Jacob wrestled with the Angel, for Moreau's was +not a facile mind. He brooded over his dreams, he saw them before he +gave them shape. He was familiar with all the Asiatic mythologies, and +for him the pantheon of Christian saints must have been bone of his +bone. The Oriental fantasy, the Buddhistic ideas, the fluent knowledge +of Persian, Indian, and Byzantine histories, customs, and costumes +sets us to wondering if this artist wasn't too cultured ever to be +spontaneous. He recalls Prester John and his composite faiths. + +There was besides the profound artistic erudition another +stumbling-block to simplicity of style and unity of conception. Moreau +began by imitating both Delacroix and Ingres. Now, such a precedure is +manifestly dangerous. Huysmans speaks with contempt of promiscuity in +the admiration of art. You can't admire Manet and Bastien-Lepage--"le +Grevin de cabaret, le Siraudin de banlieue," he names the gentle +Bastien; nor ought you to admire Manet and Moreau, we may add. And +Huysmans did precisely what he preached against. Moreau was a man of +wide intellectual interests. Devoid of the creative energy that can +eject an individual style at one jet, as a volcano casts forth a rock, +he attempted to aid nature by the process of an exquisite selection. +His taste was trained, his range wide--too wide, one is tempted to +add; and thus by a conscious act of the will he originated an art that +recalls an antique chryselephantine statue, a being rigid with +precious gems, pasted with strange colours, something with mineral +eyes without the breath of life--contemporary life--yet charged with +its author's magnetism, bearing a charmed existence, that might come +from a cold, black magic; monstrous, withal possessing a strange +feverish beauty, as Flaubert's Salammbo is beautiful, in a remote, +exotic way. + +However, it is not fair to deny Moreau human sympathies. There are +many of his paintings and drawings, notably the latter, that show him +as possessing heart. His handling of his medium though heavy is never +timid, and at times is masterly. Delacroix inspired many of his +landscape backgrounds, as Ingres gave him the proportions of his +female figures. You continually encounter variations of Ingres, the +sweet, serene line, the tapering feet and hands. Some critics have +discerned the toe forms of Perugino; but such mechanical measurements +strain our notion of eclecticism. Certainly Moreau studied Bellini, +Mantegna, and Da Vinci without ever attaining the freedom and +distinction of any of them. His colour, too, is often hard and cold, +though not in the sumptuous surfaces of his fabrics; there Venetian +splendour is apparent. He can be fiery and insipid, metallic and +morbid; his Orientalism is at times transposed from the work of his +old friend the painter Chasseriau into the key of a brilliant, if +pompous rhetoric. + + + + +THE MOREAU MUSEUM + + + +This herculean attempt at reassembling many styles in a unique style +that would best express a certain frozen symbolism was the amiable +mania his life long of Moreau. He compelled the spirits to come to his +bidding. The moment you cross the threshold of his house the spell +begins to work. It is dissipated by the daylight of Paris, but while +you are under the roof of the museum you can't escape it. Nor is it as +with Rossetti, a mystic opiate, or with Wiertz, a madman's delirious +fancy. Moreau was a philosophic poet, and though he disclaimed being a +"literary" painter, it is literature that is the mainspring of his +elevated and decorative art. Open at random the catalogue full of +quotations from the painter's pen and you encounter such titles as +Leda and the Swan, treated with poetic restraint; Jupiter and Semele, +Tyrtaeus Singing During the Combat, St. Elizabeth and the Miracle of +the Roses, Lucretia and Tarquin, Pasiphae, the Triumph of Alexander, +Salome, Dante and Virgil, Bathsheba, Jason and the Golden Fleece. All +literatures were ransacked for themes. This painter suffered from the +nostalgia of the ideal. When a subject coincided with his technical +expression the result approximates perfection. Consider the Salome, so +marvellously paraphrased in prose by Huysmans. The aquarelle in the +Luxembourg is more plastic, more jewelled than the oil; Moreau often +failed in the working-out of his ideas. Yet, never in art has a +hallucination been thus set before us with such uncompromising +reality. The sombre, luxurious _decor_, the voluptuous silhouette of +the dancing girl, the hieratic pose of the Tetrarch, even the aureoled +head of John, are forgotten in the contemplation of Salome, who is +become cataleptic at sight of the apparition. Arrested her attitude +her flesh crisps with fear. Her face is contracted into a mask of +death. The lascivious dance seems suspended in midair. To have painted +so impossible a picture bears witness to the extraordinary quality of +Moreau's complex art. Nor is the Salome his masterpiece. In the realm +of the decorator he must be placed high. His genius is Byzantine. +Jupiter and Semele, with its colossal and acrian architectures, its +gigantic figure of the god, from whose august head emanate spokes of +light, is Byzantine of a wild luxuriousness in pattern and fancy. +Moreau excels in representing cataracts of nude women, ivory-toned of +flesh, exquisite in proportion, set off by radiant jewels and +wonder-breeding brocades. His skies are in violent ignition, or else +as soft as Lydian airs. What could be more grandiose than the Triumph +of Alexander (No. 70 in the catalogue)? Not John Martin or Piranesi +excelled the Frenchman in bizarre architectural backgrounds. And the +Chimeras, what a Baudelairian imagination! Baudelaire of the bitter +heart! All luxury, all sin, all that is the shame and the glory of +mankind is here, as in a tapestry dulled by the smoke of dreams; but +as in his most sanguinary combats not a sound, not a motion comes from +this canvas. When the slaves, lovely females, are thrown to the fish +to fatten them for some Roman patrician's banquet, we admire the +beauty of colour, the clear static style, the solidity of the +architecture, but we are unmoved. If there is such a thing as +disinterested art it is the claustral art of Moreau--which can be both +perverse and majestic. + +His versatility amazes. He did not always paint the same picture. The +Christ Between Two Thieves is academic, yet attracts because the +expression of the converted thief is remarkable. The Three Magi and +Moses Within Sight of the Promised Land do not give one the fullest +sense of satisfaction, as do The Daughters of Thespus or The Rape of +Europa; yet they suggest what might be termed a tragic sort of +decoration. Moreau is a painter who could have illustrated Marlowe's +fatuous line, "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia," and superbly; or, +"See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament." He is an exotic +blossom on the stem of French art. He saw ivory, apes, and peacocks, +purple, gold, and the heavens aflame with a mystic message. He never +translated that message, for his was an art of silence; but the +painter of The Maiden with the Head of Orpheus, of Salome, of Jason +and Medea, of Jupiter and Semele, will never fail to win the +admiration and homage of those art lovers who yearn for dreams of +vanished ages, who long to escape the commonplaces of the present. +Gustave Moreau will be their poet-painter by predilection. + +Once in the streets of prosaic Paris he is as unreal as Rossetti or +the Pre-Raphaelites (though their superior as one who could make +palpable his visions). In the Louvre--where the _Salon Carre_ is +little changed--Manet's Olympe, with her every-day seductiveness, +resolves the phantasies of Moreau into thin air. Here is reality for +you, familiar as it may be. It is wonderful how long it took French +critics to discover that Manet was _un peintre de race_. He is very +French in the French gallery where he now hangs. He shows the lineage +of David, one of whose declamatory portraits with beady eyes hangs +near by. He is simpler than David in his methods--Mr. C.S. Ricketts +critically described David as possessing the mind of a policeman--and +as a painter more greatly endowed. But Goya also peeps out from the +Olympe. After seeing the Maja desnuda at the Prado you realise that +Manet's trip to Madrid was not without important results. Between the +noble lady who was the Duchess of Alba and the ignoble girl called +Olympe there is only the difference between the respective handlings +of Goya and Manet. + + + + +PICTURES IN MADRID + + + +I + +The noblest castle in Spain is the museum on the Prado. Now every +great capital of Europe boasts its picture or sculpture gallery; no +need to enumerate the treasures of art to be found in London, Paris, +Vienna--the latter too little known by the average +globe-trotter--Berlin, Dresden, Cassel, Frankfort, Brussels, Bruges, +Antwerp, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, Naples, St. Petersburg, or Venice. +They all boast special excellences, but the Prado collection contains +pictures by certain masters, Titian, Rubens, Correggio, and others, +that cannot be seen elsewhere. Setting aside Velasquez and the Spanish +school, not in Venice, Florence, or London are there Titians of such +quality and in such quantity as in Madrid. And the Rubenses are of a +peculiar lovely order, not to be found in Antwerp, Brussels or Paris. +Even without Velasquez the trying trip to the Spanish capital is a +necessary and exciting experience for the painter and amateur of art. + +The Prado is largely reinforced by foreign pictures and is sadly +lacking in historical continuity whether foreign or domestic schools. +It is about ninety years old, having been opened in part (three rooms) +to the public in November, 1819. At that time there were three hundred +and eleven canvases. Other galleries were respectively added in 1821, +1828, 1830, and 1839. In 1890 the Queen-mother had the Sala de la +Reina Isabel rearranged and better lighted. It contained then the +masterpieces, but in 1899, the tercentenary of Velasquez's birth, a +gallery was built to hold his works, with a special room for that +masterpiece among masterpieces Las Meninas. Many notable pictures that +had hung for years in the Academia de Nobles Artes de San Fernando, at +the Escorial Palace, and and the collection of the Duke of Osuna are +now housed within the walls of the Prado. At the entrance you +encounter a monumental figure of Goya, sitting, in bronze, the work of +the sculptor J. Llaneses. + +The Prado has been called a gallery for connoisseurs, and it is the +happiest title that could be given it, for it is not a great museum in +which all schools are represented. You look in vain for the chain +historic that holds together disparate styles; there are omissions, +ominous gaps, and the very nation that ought to put its best foot +foremost, the Spanish, does not, with the exception of Velasquez. Of +him there are over sixty authentic works; of Titian over thirty. Bryan +only allows him twenty-three; this is an error. There are fifteen +Titians in Florence, divided between the Uffizi and the Pitti; in +Paris, thirteen, but one is the Man with the Glove. Quality counts +heaviest, therefore the surprise is not that Madrid boasts numbers but +the wonderful quality of so many of them. To lend additional lustre to +the specimens of the Venetian school, the collection starts off with a +superb Giorgione; Giorgione, the painter who taught Titian his magic +colour secrets; the painter whose works are, with a few exceptions, +ascribed to other men--more is the pity! (In this we are at one with +Herbert Cook, who still clings to the belief that the Concert of the +Pitti Palace is Giorgione and not Titian. At least the Concert +Champetre of the Louvre has not been taken from "Big George.") The +Madrid masterpiece is The Virgin and Child Jesus with St. Anthony and +St. Roch. + +It is easy to begin with the Titians, one of which is the famous +Bacchanal. Then there are The Madonna with St. Bridget and St. Hulfus, +The Garden of the Loves, Emperor Charles V. at Muehlberg, an equestrian +portrait; another portrait of the same with figure standing, King +Philip, Isabella of Portugal, La Gloria, The Entombment of Christ, +Venus and Adonis, Danae and the Golden Shower, a variation of this +picture is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, the other in the National +Museum, Naples; Venus Listening to Music, two versions, the stately +nude evidently a memory of the Venus reposing in the Uffizi: Adam and +Eve (also a copy of this by Rubens); Prometheus, Sisyphus--long +supposed to be copies by Coello; Christ Bearing the Cross, St. +Margaret, a portrait of the Duke of Este, Salom, Ecce Homo, La +Dolorosa, the once admired Allocution; Flight Into Egypt, St. +Catalina, a self-portrait, St. Jerome, Diana and Actaeon, The Sermon on +the Mount--the list is much longer. + +There are many Goyas; the museum is the home of this remarkable but +uneven painter. We confess to a disappointment in his colour, though +his paint was not new to us; but time has lent no pleasing _patina_ to +his canvases, the majority of which are rusty-looking, cracked, +discoloured, dingy or dark. There are several exceptions. The nude and +dressed full-lengths of the Duchess of Alba are in excellent +preservation, and brilliant audacious painting it is. A lovely +creature, better-looking when reclining than standing, as a glance at +her full-length portrait in the New York Hispanic Museum proves. One +of Goya's best portraits hangs in the Prado, the seated figure of his +brother-in-law, the painter Bayeu. The Family of Charles IV, his +patron and patroness, with the sheep-like head of the favourite De la +Paz, is here in all its bitter humour; it might be called a satiric +pendant to that other Familia, not many yards away, Las Meninas. There +are the designs for tapestries in the basement; Blind Man's Buff and +other themes illustrating national traits. The equestrian portraits of +Charles IV and his sweet, sinister spouse, Queen Maria Luisa, reveal a +Goya not known to the world. He could assume the grand manner when he +so willed. He could play the dignified master with the same +versatility that he played at bull-fighting. But his colour is often +hot and muddy, and perhaps he will go down to that doubtful quantity, +posterity, as an etcher and designer of genius. After leaving the +Prado you remember only the Caprices, the Bull-fights, and the +Disaster of War plates; perhaps the Duchess of Alba, undressed, and in +her dainty toreador costume. The historic pictures are a tissue of +horrors, patriotic as they are meant to be; they suggest the +slaughter-house. Goya has painted a portrait of Villanueva, the +architect of the museum; and there is a solidly constructed portrait +of Goya by V. Lopez. + +The Raphaels have been reduced to two at the Prado: The Holy Family +with the Lamb, painted a year after the Ansedei Madonna, and that +wonderful head of young Cardinal Bibbiena, keen-eyed and ascetic of +features. Alas! for the scholarship that attributed to the Divine +Youth La Perla; the Madonna of the Fish; Lo Spasimo, Christ Bearing +the Cross, and several other masterpieces. Giulio Romana, Penni, and +perhaps another, turned out these once celebrated and overpraised +pictures--overpraised even if they had come from the brush of Raphael +himself. The Cardinal's portrait is worth the entire batch of them. + +There is a Murillo gallery, full of representative work, the most +important being St. Elizabeth of Hungary Tending the Sick, formerly in +the Escorial. The various Conceptions and saints' heads are not +missing, painted in his familiar colour key with his familiar false +sentiment and always an eye to the appeal popular. A mighty magnet for +the public is Murillo. The peasants flock to him on Sundays as to a +sanctuary. There the girls see themselves on a high footing, a +heavenly saraband among woolly clouds, their prettiness idealised, +their costume of exceeding grace. After a while you tire of the +saccharine Murillo and his studio beggar boys, and turn to his +drawings with relief. His landscapes are more sincere than his +religious canvases, which are almost as sensuous and earthly as +Correggio without the magisterial brush-work and commanding conception +of the Parma painter. To be quite fair, it may be admitted that +Murillo could make a good portrait. Both in Madrid and Seville you may +verify this. + +A beautiful Fra Angelico, a beautiful Mantegna open your eyes, for the +Italian Primitives are conspicuous by their absence. Correggio is +magnificent. The well-known Magdalen and Christ Risen, Noli Me +Tangere! His Virgin with Jesus and St. John is in his accustomed +melting _pate_. One Del Sarto is of prime quality, The Virgin, Jesus +and St. John, called Asunto Mistico at the Prado. Truly a moving +picture, by a painter who owes much of his fame to Robert Browning. +His Lucrezia is a pretty portrait of his faithless wife. There are +Lotto, Parmigianino, Baroccio, Tintoretto, Bassano, Veronese, Domenico +Tiepolo, and his celebrated father the fantastic Giambattista +Tiepolo--not startling specimens any of them. + +In the Spanish section Ribera comes at you the strongest. He was a +personality as well as a powerful painter. Consider his Martyrdom of +St. Bartholomew. Zurbaran follows next in interest, though morbid at +times; but of Berragueta, Borgona, Morales, Juanes, Navarette, +Coello--an excellent portraitist, imitator of Moro--La Cruz, Alfonso +Cano, Luis de Tristan, Espinosa, Bias del Prado, Orrente, Esteban de +March--two realistic heads of an old man and an old woman must be set +down to his credit--Ribalta, influenced by Caravaggio, in turn +influencing Ribera--Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), Del +Mazo--son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible for dozens of false +attributions--Carreno de Miranda, Jose Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte, +the two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the younger a +nonentity, and others of the Spanish school may be dismissed in a +word--mediocrities. + + + + +II + +The secret of Titian's colour, the "Venetian secret," was produced, +some experts believe, by first painting a solid monochrome in tempera +on which the picture was finished in oil. Unquestionably Titian +corrected and amended his work as much as did Velasquez. It is a +pleasing if somewhat theatric belief that Titian and Velasquez, +duelled with their canvases, their rapier a brush. After inspecting +many of the Hals portraits the evidences of direct painting, swift +though calculated, are not to be denied. This may account, with the +temperamental equation, for the less profound psychological interest +of his portraiture when compared with the Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, +and Rembrandt heads. Yet, what superiority in brush-work had Hals over +Raphael and Rembrandt. The Raphael surfaces are as a rule hard, dry, +and lustreless, while Rembrandt's heavy, troubled paint is no mate for +the airy touch of the Mercutio of Haarlem. But Titian's impasto is +lyric. It sings on the least of his canvases. No doubt his pictures in +the Prado have been "skinned" of their delicate glaze by the +iconoclastic restorer; yet they bloom and chant and ever bloom. The +Bacchanal, which bears a faint family resemblance to the Bacchus and +Ariadne of the London National Gallery, fairly exults in its joy of +life, in its frank paganism. What rich reverberating tones, what +powers of evocation! The Garden of the Loves is a vision of childhood +at its sweetest; the surface of the canvas seems alive with festooned +babies. The more voluptuous Venus or Danae do not so stir your pulse +as this immortal choir of cupids. The two portraits of Charles V--one +equestrian--are charged with the noble, ardent gravity and splendour +of phrasing we expect from the greatest Venetian of them all. We +doubt, however, if the Prado Entombment is as finely wrought as the +same subject by Titian in Paris; but it sounds a poignant note of +sorrow. Rembrandt is more dramatic when dealing with a similar theme. +The St. Margaret with its subtle green gown is a figure that is +touching and almost tragic. The Madonna and Child, with St. Bridget +and St. Hulfus, has been called Giorgionesque. St. Bridget is of the +sumptuous Venetian type; the modelling of her head is lovely, her +colouring rich. + +Rubens in the Prado is singularly attractive. There are over fifty, +not all of the best quality, but numbering such works as the Three +Graces, the Rondo, the Garden of Love, and the masterly unfinished +portrait of Marie de Medicis. The Brazen Serpent is a Van Dyck, though +the catalogue of 1907 credits it to Rubens. Then there are the +Andromeda and Perseus, the Holy Family and Diana and Calista. The +portrait of Marie de Medicis, stout, smiling, amiability personified, +has been called one of the finest feminine portraits extant--which is +a slight exaggeration. It is both mellow and magnificent, and unless +history or Rubens lied the lady must have been as mild as mother's +milk. The Three Graces, executed during the latter years of the +Flemish master, is Rubens at his pagan best. These stalwart and +handsome females, without a hint of sleek Italian delicacy, include +Rubens's second wife, Helena Fourment, the ox-eyed beauty. What blond +flesh tones, what solidity of human architecture, what positive beauty +of surfaces and nobility of contours! The Rondo is a mad, whirling +dance, the Diana and Calista suggestive of a Turkish bath outdoors, +but a picture that might have impelled Walt Whitman to write a sequel +to his Children of Adam. Such women were born not alone to bear +children but to rule the destinies of mankind; genuine matriarchs. + +Rembrandt fares ill. His Artemisia about to drink her husband's ashes +from a costly cup reveals a ponderous hand. It is but indifferent +Rembrandt, despite several jewelled passages. Van Dyck shows at least +one great picture, the Betrayal of Christ. The Brazen Serpent only +ranks second to it; both are masterpieces, and Antwerp must envy the +Prado. The Crown of Thorns, and the portraits, particularly that of +the Countess of Wexford, are arresting. His Musician, being the +portrait of Laniere the lute-player, and his own portrait on the same +canvas with Count Bristol, are cherished treasures. The lutist is +especially fascinating. That somewhat mysterious Dutch master, Moro, +or Mor (Antonis; born in Utrecht, 1512; died at Antwerp, 1576 or +1578), is represented by more than a dozen portraits. To know what a +master of physiognomy he was we need only study his Mary Queen of +England, the Buffoon of the Beneventas, the Philip II, and the various +heads of royal and noble born dames. The subdued fire and subtlety of +this series, the piercing vision and superior handicraft of the +painter have placed him high in the artistic hierarchy; but not high +enough. At his best he is not far behind Holbein. That great German's +art is shown in a solitary masterpiece, the portrait of an unknown +man, with shrewd cold eyes, an enormous nose, the hands full of +meaning, the fabrics scrupulous as to detail. Next to this Holbein, +whose glance follows you around the gallery, are the two Duerers, the +portrait of Hans Imhof, a world-renowned picture, and his own portrait +(1498), a magical rendering of a Christ-like head, the ringlets curly, +the beard youthful, the hands folded as if in prayer. A marvellous +composition. It formerly hung too high, above the Hans Imhof; it now +hangs next to it. A similar head in the Uffizi is a copy, Sir Walter +Armstrong to the contrary notwithstanding. + +The Flemish schools are to be seen in the basement, not altogether a +favourable place, though in the afternoon there is an agreeable light. +Like Rubens, Jan van Eyck visited Spain and left the impress of his +style. But the Van Eycks at the Prado are now all queried, though +several are noteworthy. The Marriage of the Virgin is discredited. The +Virgin, Christ and St. John under the golden canopy, called a Hubert +van Eyck, is probably by Gossaert de Mabuse, and a clever +transposition of the altar piece in St. Bavon's at Ghent. The Fountain +of Life, also in the catalogue as a Jan van Eyck, has been pronounced +a sixteenth-century copy of a lost picture by his brother Hubert. We +may add that not one of these so-called Van Eycks recalls in all their +native delicacy and richness the real Van Eycks of Bruges, Ghent, and +Brussels; though the Virgin Reading, given as Jan's handiwork, is of a +charm. The Depositions, attributed to Rogier van der Weyden (De la +Pasture), are acknowledged to be old sixteenth-century copies of the +Deposition in the Escorial. The altar piece is excellent. But there is +a fine Memling, glowing in pigment and of beautiful design, The +Adoration of the Kings, a triptych, like the one at Bruges. In the +centre panel we see the kings adoring, one a black man; the two wings, +or doors, respectively depict the birth of Christ (right) and the +presentation in the temple (left). There is a retablo (reredos) in +four compartments, by Petrus Cristus, and two Jerome Patinirs, one, a +Temptation of St. Anthony, being enjoyable. The painter-persecuted +saint sits in the foreground of a freshly painted landscape, harassed +by the attentions of witches, several of them comely and clothed. To +be precise, the composition suggests a much-married man listening to +the reproaches of his spouses. Hanging in a doorway we found a Herri +Met de Bles that is not marked doubtful. It is a triptych, an +Adoration, in which the three kings, the Queen of Sheba before +Solomon, and Herod participate. A brilliantly tinted work this, which +once hung in the Escorial, and, _mirabile dictu_, attributed to Lucas +van Leyden. No need to speak of the later Dutch and Flemish school, +Teniers, Ostade, Dou, Pourbus, and the minor masters. There are +Breughels and Bosches aplenty, and none too good. But there are +several Jordaens of quality, a family group, and three heads of street +musicians. We forgot to mention an attribution to Jan van Eyck, The +Triumph of Religion, which is a curious affair no matter whose brain +conceived it. The attendant always points out its religious features +with ill-concealed glee. A group of ecclesiastics have confounded a +group of rabbis at a fountain which is the foundation of an altar; the +old fervour burns in the eyes of the gallery servitor as he shows you +the discomfited Hebrew doctors of the law. We may dismiss as harmless +the Pinturicchio and other Italian attributions in these basement +galleries. There is the usual crew of Anonimos, and a lot of those +fantastic painters who are nicknamed by critics without a sense of +humour as "The Master of the Fiery Hencoop," "The Master of the +Eccentric Omelet," or some such idiotic title. + +Up-stairs familiar names such as Domenichino, Bassano, Cortona, +Crespi, Bellino, Pietra della Vecchia, Allori, Veronese, Maratta, +Guido Reni, Romano need not detain us. The catalogue numbers of the +Italian school go as high as 628. The Titians, however, are the glory +of the Prado. The Spanish school begins at 629, ends at 1,029. The +German, Flemish, and Holland schools begin at 1,146, running to 1,852. +There are supplements to all of the foregoing. The French school runs +from 1,969 to 2,111. But the examples in this section are not +inspiring, the Watteaus excepted. There is the usual Champagne, +Coypel, Claude of Lorraine (10), Largilliere, Lebrun, Van Loo, Mignard +(5); one of Le Nain--by both brothers. Nattier (4), Nicolas Poussin +(20), Rigaud, and two delicious Watteaus; a rustic betrothal and a +view of the garden of St. Cloud, the two exhaling melancholy grace and +displaying subdued richness of tone. Tiepolo has been called the last +link in the chain of Venetian colourists, which began with the +Bellini, followed by Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Palma Vecchio, +Bonifazio, Veronese--and to this list might be added the name of the +Frenchman Watteau. Chardin was also a colourist, and how many of the +Poussins at this gallery might be spared to make room for one of his +cool, charming paintings! + +The Prado about exhausts the art treasures of Madrid. In the Escorial, +that most monstrous and gloomiest of the tombs of kings, are pictures +that should be seen--some Grecos among the rest--even if the palace +does not win your sympathy. In Madrid what was once called the +Academia de San Fernando is now the Real Academia de Bellas Artes. It +is at 11 Calle de Alcala and contains a Murillo of quality, the Dream +of the Roman Knight, Zurbaran's Carthusians, an Ecce Homo by Ribera, +of power; the Death of Dido by Fragonard; a Rubens, St. Francis, the +work of his pupils; Alonzo Cano, two Murillos, Domenichino, Tristan, +Mengs, Giovanni Bellini; Goya's bull-fights, mad-house scenes, and +several portraits--one of the Due de la Paz; a Pereda, a Da Vinci (?), +Madrazo, Zurbaran, and Goya's equestrian portrait of Charles IV. A +minor gathering, the debris of a former superb collection, and not +even catalogued. + +There are museums devoted to artillery, armour, natural sciences, and +archaeology. In the imposing National Library, full of precious +manuscripts, is the museum of modern art--also without a catalogue. It +does not make much of an impression after the Prado. The Fortuny is +not characteristic, though a rarity; a sketch for his Battle of +Tetuan, the original an unfinished painting, is at Barcelona. There +are special galleries such as the Sala Haes with its seventy pictures, +which are depressing. The modern Spaniards Zuloaga, Sorolla, +Angla-Camarosa are either not represented or else are not at their +best. There is a Diaz, who was of Spanish origin; but the Madrazos, +Villegas, Montenas, and the others are academic echoes or else feeble +and mannered. There are some adroit water-colours by modern Frenchmen, +and there is a seeming attempt to make the collection contemporary in +spirit, but it is all as dead as the allegorical dormouse, while over +at the Prado there is a vitality manifested by the old fellows that +bids fair to outlast the drums, tramplings, and conquests of many +generations. We have not more than alluded to the sculpture at the +Prado; it is not particularly distinguished. The best sculpture we saw +in Spain was displayed in wood-carvings. The pride of the Prado is +centred upon its Titians, Raphaels, Rubenses, Murillos, El Grecos, +and, above all, upon Don Diego de Silva, better known as Velasquez. + + + + +EL GRECO AT TOLEDO + + + +Toledo is less than three hours from Madrid; it might be three years +away for all the resemblance it bears to the capital. Both situated in +New Castille, Madrid seems sharply modern, as modern as the early +nineteenth century, when compared to the mediaeval cluster of buildings +on the horseshoe-shaped granite heights almost entirely hemmed in by +the river Tagus. It is not only one of the most original cities in +Spain, but in all Europe. No other boasts its incomparable profile, +few the extraordinary vicissitudes of its history. Not romantic in the +operatic moonlit Grenada fashion, without the sparkle and colour of +Seville or the mundane savour of Madrid, Toledo incarnates in its +cold, detached, proud, pious way all that we feel as Spain the +aristocratic, Spain the theocratic. To this city on a crag there once +came, by way of Venice, a wanderer from Crete. Toledo was the final +frame of the strange genius of El Greco; he made it the consecrate +ground of his new art. It is difficult to imagine him developing in +luxuriant Italy as he did in Spain. His nature needed a sombre and +magnificent background; this city gave it to him; for no artist can +entirely isolate himself from life, can work in _vacuo_. And El +Greco's shivering, spiritual art could have been born on no other soil +than Toledo. He is as original as the city. + +The place shows traces of its masters--Romans, Goths, Saracens, and +Christians. It is, indeed, as much Moorish as Christian--the narrow +streets, high, narrow houses often windowless, the inner court +replacing the open squares that are to be found in Seville. Miscalled +the "Spanish Rome," Gautier's description still holds good: Toledo has +the character of a convent, a prison, a fortress with something of a +seraglio. The enormous cathedral, which dates back to Visigothic +Christianity, is, next to Seville's, the most beautiful in Spain. Such +a facade, such stained glass, such ceilings! Blanco Ibanez has written +pages about this structure. The synagogues, the Moorish mosque, the +Alcazar are picturesque. And then there are the Puente de Alcantara, +the Casa de Cervantes, the Puerta del Sol, the Prison of the +Inquisition, the Church of Santo Tome--which holds the most precious +example of Greco's art--the Sinagogo del Transito, the Church of San +Vicente--with Grecos--Santo Domingo (more Grecos); the Convent, near +the Church of San Juan de los Reyes, contains the Museo Provincial in +which were formerly a number of Grecos; many of these have been +transferred to the new Museo El Greco, founded by the Marquis de la +Vega-Inclan, an admirer of the painter. This museum was once the home +of Greco, and has been restored, so that if the artist returned he +might find himself in familiar quarters. Pictures, furniture, carvings +of his are there, while the adjoining house is rebuilt in a harmonious +style of old material. Remain various antique patios or court-like +interiors, the sword manufactory, and the general view from the top of +the town. El Greco's romantic portrayment of his adopted city is as +true now as the day it was painted--one catches a glimpse of the scene +when the contrasts of light and shadow are strong. During a +thunderstorm illuminated by blazing shafts of Peninsular lightning +Toledo resembles a page torn from the Apocalypse. + +The cathedral is the usual objective; instead, we first went to the +church of Santo Tome. It is a small Gothic structure, rebuilt from a +mosque by Count Orgaz. In commemoration of this gift a large canvas, +entitled El Entierro, depicting the funeral of Orgaz, by El Greco, has +made Santo Tome more celebrated than the cathedral. It is an amazing, +a thrilling work, nevertheless, on a scale that prevents it from +giving completely the quintessence of El Greco. No doubt he was a +pupil of Titian; Gautier but repeated current gossip when he said that +the Greek went mad in his attempt to emulate his master. But +Tintoretto's influence counts heavier in this picture than Titian's, a +picture assigned by Cossio midway between Greco's first and second +period. Decorative as is the general scheme, the emotional intensity +aroused by the row of portraits in the second _plan_, the touching +expression of the two saints, Augustine and Stephen, as they gently +bear the corpse of the Count, the murky light of the torches in the +background, while overhead the saintly hierarchy terminating in a +white radiance, Christ the Comforter, His mother at His right hand, +quiring hosts at His left--all these figures make an ensemble that at +first glance benumbs the critical faculty. You recall the solemn and +spasmodic music of Michael Angelo (of whom El Greco is reported to +have irreverently declared that he couldn't paint); then as your +perspective slowly shapes itself you note that Tintoretto, plus a +certain personal accent of morbid magnificence, is the artistic +progenitor of this art, an art which otherwise furiously boils over +with Spanish characteristics. + +Nothing could be more vivid and various than the twenty-odd heads near +the bottom of the picture. Expression, character, race are not pushed +beyond normal limits. The Spaniard, truly noble here, is seen at a +half-dozen periods of life. El Greco himself is said to be in the +group; the portrait certainly tallies with a reputed one of his. The +sumptuousness of the ecclesiastical vestments, court costumes, ruffs, +and eloquent hands, the grays, whites, golds, blues, blacks, chord +rolling upon chord of subtle tonalities, the supreme illumination of +the scene, with its suggestion of a moment swiftly trapped forever in +eternity, hook this masterpiece firmly to your memory. It is not one +of the greatest pictures in the pantheon of art, not Rembrandt, +Velasquez, Hals, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, or Rubens; yet it +stands close to them all because of its massed effect of light, life, +and emotional situation. We confess to liking it better than the +Gloria at the Escorial Palace. This glorification of a dream of Philip +II does not pluck electrically at your heart-strings as does the +Burial of Count Orgaz, though the two canvases are similar in +architectonic. + +The Expolio is in the cathedral; it belongs to the first period, +before El Greco had shaken off Italian influences. The colouring is +rather cold. The St. Maurice in the chapter hall of the Escorial is a +long step toward a new method of expression. (A replica is in +Bucharest.) The Ascension altar piece, formerly in Santo Domingo, now +hangs in the Art Institute, Chicago. At Toledo there are about eighty +pieces of the master, not including his sculpture, retablos; like +Tintoretto, he was accustomed to make little models in clay or wax for +the figures in his pictures. His last manner is best exemplified in +the Divine Love and Profane Love, belonging to Senor Zuloaga, in The +Adoration of the Shepherds, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the +Assumption at the Church of St. Vicente, Toledo. His chalky whites, +poisonous greens, violet shadows, discordant passages of lighting are, +as Arthur Symons puts it: Sharp and dim, gray and green, the colour of +Toledo. Greco composed his palette with white vermilion, lake, yellow +ochre, ivory black. Senor Beruete says that "he generally laid on an +impasto for his flesh, put on in little touches, and then added a few +definite strokes with the brush which, though accentuated, are very +delicate... The gradations of the values is in itself instructive." + +His human forms became more elongated as he aged; this applies only to +his males; his women are of sweetness compounded and graceful in +contour. Some a mere arabesque, or living flames; some sinister and +fantastic; from the sublime to the silly is with Greco not a wide +stride. But in all his surging, writhing sea of wraiths, saints, +kings, damned souls and blest, a cerebral grip is manifest. He knew a +hawk from a handsaw despite his temperament of a mystic. "He who +carries his own most intimate emotions to their highest point becomes +the first in a file of a long series of men"; but, adds Mr. Ellis: "To +be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men." El Greco, like +Charles Baudelaire, cultivated his hysteria. He developed his +individuality to the border line across which looms madness. The +transmogrification of his temperament after living in Toledo was +profound. Born Greek, in art a Venetian, the atmosphere of the +Castilian plain changed the colour of his soul. In him there was +material enough for both a Savonarola or a Torquemada--his piety was +at once iconoclastic and fanatical. And his restlessness, his +ceaseless experiments, his absolute discoveries of new tonalities, his +sense of mystic grandeur--why here you have, if you will, a Berlioz of +paint, a man of cold ardours, hot ecstasies, visions apocalyptic, with +a brain like a gloomy cathedral in which the _Tuba Mirum_ is +sonorously chanted. But Greco is on the side of the angels; Berlioz, +like Goya, too often joined in the infernal antiphonies of Satan +_Mekatrig_. And Greco is as dramatic as either. + +Beruete admits that his idol, Velasquez, was affected by the study of +El Greco's colouring. Canaille Saint-Saens, when Liszt and Rubinstein +were compared, exclaimed: "Two great artists who have nothing in +common except their superiority." It is bootless to bracket Velasquez +with his elder. And Gautier was off the track when he spoke of Greco's +resemblance to the bizarre romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Greco +was, but not trivial nor a charlatan. As to his decadent tendencies we +side with the opinion of Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.: "Certain +pedants have written as if the world would be better without its +disorderly geniuses. There could, I think, be no sorer error. We need +the unbalanced talents, the _poetes damnes_ of every craft. They strew +the passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own. They fight +valiantly, a little at the expense of their fame, against the only +unpardonable sins, stupidity and indifference. Greco should always be +an honoured name in this ill-destined company." + +In the Prado Museum there is a goodly collection. The Annunciation, +The Holy Family, Jesus Christ Dead, The Baptism of Christ, The +Resurrection, The Crucifixion--a tremendous conception; and The Coming +of the Holy Ghost; this latter, with its tongues of fire, its +flickering torches, its ecstatic apostles and Mary, her face flooded +by a supernal illumination, mightily stirs the aesthetic pulse. The +Prado has two dozen specimens, though two of them at least--a poor +replica of the Orgaz burial, and another--are known to be by El +Greco's son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli; of the numerous portraits and +other pictures dispersed by time and chance to the four quarters of +the globe, we have written earlier in this volume, when dealing with +the definitive work on this Greek by Senor Manuel B. Cossio. El Greco, +through sheer intensity of temperament and fierce sincerity, could +pluck out from men who had become, because of their apathy and +grotesque pride, mere vegetable growths, their very souls afire; or if +stained by crimes, these souls, he shot them up to God like green +meteors. To be sure they have eyes drunk with dreams, the pointed +skull of the mystic, and betray a plentiful lack of chin and often an +atrabilious nature. When old his saints resemble him, when young he +must have looked like his saints, Sebastian and Martin. With his +ardent faith he could have confuted the Gnostic or the Manichean +heresies in colourful allegory, but instead he sang fervid hosannahs +on his canvases to the greater glory of Christ and His saints. Perhaps +if he had lived in our times he might have painted heads of +fashionable courtesans or equivocal statesmen. But whether primitive +or modern, realist or symbolist, he would always have been a painter +of dramatic genius. He is the unicorn among artists. + + + + +VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO + + + +Fearful that your eye has lost its innocence after hearing so much of +the picture, you enter the tiny room at the museum on the Prado in +which is hung Las Meninas--The Maids of Honour, painted by Velasquez +in 1656. My experience was a typical one. I went hastily through the +larger Velasquez gallery in not only a challenging but an irritable +mood. The holy of holies I was enraged to find, seemingly, crowded. +There was the picture, but a big easel stood in the foreground +blotting out the left side; some selfish artist copying, some fellow +thrusting himself between us and the floating illusion of art. In +despair I looked into the mirror that reflects the picture. I +suspected trickery. Surely that little princess with her wilful, +_distrait_ expression, surely the kneeling maid, the dwarfs, the +sprawling dog, the painter Velasquez--with his wig--the heads of the +king and queen in the oblong mirror, the figure of Senor Nieto in the +doorway, the light framing his silhouette--surely they are all real. +Here are the eternal simplicities. You realise that no one is in the +room but these painted effigies of the court and family of Philip IV; +that the canvas whose bare ribs deceived is in the picture, not on the +floor; that Velasquez and the others are _eidolons_, arrested in space +by the white magic of his art. For the moment all other artists and +their works are as forgotten as the secrets in the lost and sacred +books of the Magi. There is but one painter and his name is Velasquez. + +This mood of ecstatic absorption is never outlived; the miracle +operates whenever a visit is made to the shrine. But you soon note +that the canvas has been deprived of its delicate glaze. There are +patches ominously eloquent of the years that have passed since the +birth of this magisterial composition. The tonal key is said to be +higher because of restorations; yet to the worshipper these +shortcomings are of minor importance. Even Giordano's exclamation: +"Sire, this is the theology of painting," falls flat. Essence of +painting, would have been a truer statement. There is no +other-worldliness here, but something more normal, a suggestion of +solid reality, a vision of life. The various figures breathe; so +potent is their vitality that my prime impression in entering the room +was a sense of the presence of others. Perhaps this is not as +consummate art as the voluptuous colour-symphonies of Titian, the +golden exuberance of Rubens, the abstract spacing of Raphael, the +mystic opium of Rembrandt; but it is an art more akin to nature, an +art that is a lens through which you may spy upon life. You recall +Ibsen and his "fourth wall." Velasquez has let us into the secret of +human existence. Not, however, in the realistic order of inanimate +objects copied so faithfully as to fool the eye. Presentation, not +representation, is the heart of this coloured imagery, and so moving, +so redolent of life is it that if the world were shattered and Las +Meninas shot to the coast of Mars, its inhabitants would be able to +reconstruct an idea of the creatures that once inhabited old Mother +Earth; men, women, children, their shapes, attitudes, gestures, and +attributes. The mystery of sentient beings lurks in this canvas, the +illusion of atmosphere has never been so contrived. In the upper part +of the picture space is indicated in a manner that recalls both +Rembrandt and Raphael. Velasquez, too, was a space-composer. +Velasquez, too, plucked at the heart of darkness. But his air is +luminous, the logic of his proportion faultless, his synthesis +absolute. Where other painters juxtapose he composes. Despite the +countless nuances of his thin, slippery brush strokes, the picture is +always a finely spun whole. + +When Fragonard was starting for Rome, Boucher said to him: "If you +take those people over there seriously you are done for." Luckily +Frago did not, and, despite his two Italian journeys, Velasquez was +not seduced into taking "those people" seriously. His recorded opinion +of Raphael is corroborative of his attitude toward Italian art. Titian +was his sole god. For nearly a year he was in daily intercourse with +Rubens, but of Rubens's influence upon him there is little trace. Las +Meninas is the perfect flowering of the genius of the Spaniard. It has +been called impressionistic; Velasquez has been claimed as the father +of impressionism as Stendhal was hailed by Zola as the literary +progenitor of naturalism. But Velasquez is too universal to be +labelled in the interests of any school. His themes are of this earth, +his religious paintings are the least credible of his efforts. They +are Italianate as if the artist dared not desert the familiar +religious stencil. His art is not correlated to the other arts. One +does not dream of music or poetry or sculpture or drama in front of +his pictures. One thinks of life and then of the beauty of the paint. +Velasquez is never rhetorical, nor does he paint for the sake of +making beautiful surfaces as often does Titian. His practice is not +art for art as much as art for life. As a portraitist, Titian's is the +only name to be coupled with that of Velasquez. He neither flattered +his sitters, as did Van Dyck, nor mocked them like Goya. And consider +the mediocrities, the dull, ugly, royal persons he was forced to +paint! He has wrung the neck of banal eloquence, and his prose, sober, +rich, noble, sonorous, rhythmic, is to my taste preferable to the +exalted, versatile volubility and lofty poetic tumblings in the azure +of any school of painting. His palette is ever cool and fastidiously +restricted. It has been said that he lacks imagination, as if creation +or evocation of character is not the loftiest attribute of +imagination, even though it deals not with the stuff of which +mythologies are made. + +We admire the enthusiasm of Mr. Ricketts for Velasquez, and his +analysis is second to none save R.A.M. Stevenson's. Yet we do protest +the painter was not the bundle of negations Mr. Ricketts has made of +him in his evident anxiety that some homage may be diverted from +Titian. Titian is incomparable. Velasquez is unique. But to describe +him as an artist who cautiously studied the work of other men, and +then avoided by a series of masterly omissions and evasions their +faults as well as their excellences, is a statement that robs +Velasquez of his originality. He is not an eclectic. He is a man of +affirmations, Velasquez. A student to his death, he worked slowly, +revised painfully, above all, made heroic sacrifices. Each new canvas +was a discovery. The things he left out of his pictures would fill a +second Prado Museum. And the things he painted in are the glories of +the world. Because of his simplicity, absence of fussiness, avoidance +of the mock-heroic, of the inflated "grand manner," critics have +pressed too heavily upon this same simplicity. There is nothing as +subtle as his simplicity, for it is a simplicity that conceals +subtlety. No matter the time of day or season of the year you visit +Velasquez, you never find him off his guard. Aristocratic in his ease, +he disarms you first. You may change your love, your politics, your +religion, but once a Velasquez worshipper, always one. + +Mr. Ricketts, over-anxious at precisely placing him, writes of his +"distinction." He is the most "distinguished" painter in history. But +we contend that this phrase eludes precise definition. "Distinguished" +in what? we ask. Style, character, paint quality, vision of the +beautiful? Why not come out plumply with the truth: Velasquez is the +supreme harmonist in art. No one ever approached him in his handling +save Hals, and Hals hardly boasts the artistic inches of Velasquez. +Both possessed a daylight vision of the world. Reality came to them in +the sharpest guise; but the vision of Velasquez came in a more +beautiful envelope. And his psychology is profounder. He painted the +sparkle of the eyes and also the look in them, the challenging glance +that asks: "Are we, too, not humans?" Titian saw colour as a poet, +Velasquez as a charmer and a reflective temperament. Hals doesn't +think at all. He slashes out a figure for you and then he is done. The +graver, deeper Spaniard is not satisfied until he has kept his pact +with nature. So his vision of her is more rounded, concrete, and +truthful than the vision of other painters. The balance in his work of +the most disparate and complex relations of form, space, colour, and +rhythm has the unpremeditated quality of life; yet the massive +harmonic grandeurs of Las Meninas have been placed by certain critics +in the category of glorified genre. + +Some prefer Las Hilanderas in the outer gallery. After the stately +equestrian series, the Philip, the Olivares, the Baltasar Carlos; +after the bust portraits of Philip in the Prado and in the National +Gallery, the hunting series; after the Crucifixion and its sombre +background, you return to The Spinners and wonder anew. Its subtitle +might be: Variations on the Theme of Sunshine. In it the painter +pursues the coloured adventures of a ray of light. Rhythmically more +involved and contrapuntal than The Maids, this canvas, with its +brilliant broken lights, its air that circulates, its tender yet +potent conducting of the eye from the rounded arm of the seductive +girl at the loom to the arched area with its leaning, old-time +bass-viol, its human figures melting dream-like into the tapestried +background, arouses within the spectator much more complicated _etats +d'ame_ than does Las Meninas. The silvery sorceries of that picture +soothe the spirit and pose no riddles; The Spinners is a cathedral +crammed with implications. Is it not the last word of the art of +Velasquez--though it preceded The Maids? Will the eye ever tire of its +glorious gloom, its core of tonal richness, its virile exaltation of +everyday existence? Is it only a trick of the wrist, a deft blending +of colours by this artist, who has been called, wrongfully--the +"Shakespeare of the brush"? Is all this nothing more than +"distinguished"? + +Mr. Ricketts justly calls Las Lanzas the unique historic picture. +Painted at the very flush of his genius, painted with sympathy for the +conquered and the conqueror--Velasquez accompanied the Marquis of +Spinola to Italy--this Surrender of Breda has received the homage of +many generations. Sir Joshua Reynolds asserted that the greatest +picture at Rome was the Velasquez head of Pope Innocent X in the Doria +Palace (a variant is in the Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg). What +would he have said in the presence of this captivating evocation of a +historic event? The battle pieces of Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, and +Titian are destroyed; Las Lanzas remains a testimony to the powers of +imaginative reconstruction and architectonic of Velasquez. It is the +most complete, the most natural picture in the world. The rhythms of +the bristling lances are syncopated by a simple device; they are +transposed to another plane of perspective, there in company with a +lowered battle standard. The acute rhythms of these spears has given +to the picture its title of The Lances, and never was title more +appropriate. The picture is at once a decorative arabesque, an +ensemble of tones, and a slice of history. Spinola receives from the +conquered Justin of Nassau the keys of the beleagured Breda. Velasquez +creates two armies out of eight figures, a horse and fourteen +heads--here is the recipe of Degas for making a multitude carried to +the height of the incredible. His own portrait, that of a grave, +handsome man, may be seen to the right of the big horse. + +The first period of his art found Velasquez a realist heavy in colour +and brush-work, and without much hint of the transcendental realism to +be noted in his later style. The dwarfs, buffoons, the AEsop and the +Menippus are the result of an effortless art. In the last manner the +secret of the earth mingles with the mystery of the stars, as +Dostoievsky would put it. The Topers, The Forge of Vulcan, are +pictures that enthrall because of their robust simplicity and vast +technical sweep though they do not possess the creative invention of +the Mercury and Argus or The Anchorites. This latter is an amazing +performance. Two hermits--St. Antony the Abbot visiting St. Paul the +Hermit--are shown. A flying raven, bread in beak, nears them. You +could swear that the wafer of flour is pasted on the canvas. This +picture breathes peace and sweetness. The Christ of the Spaniard is a +man, not a god, crucified. His Madonnas, masterly as they are, do not +reach out hands across the frame as do his flower-like royal children +and delicate monsters. + +The crinolined princess, Margarita, with her spangles and furbelows, +is a companion to the Margarita at the Louvre and the one in Vienna. +She is the exquisite and lyric Velasquez. On his key-board of +imbricated tones there are grays that felicitously sing across alien +strawberry tints, thence modulate into fretworks of dim golden fire. +As a landscapist Velasquez is at his best in the Prado. The various +backgrounds and those two views painted at Rome in the garden of the +Villa Medici--a liquid comminglement of Corot and Constable, as has +been pointed out--prove this man of protean gifts to have anticipated +modern discoveries in vibrating atmospheric effects and colour-values. +But, then, Velasquez will always be "modern." And when time has +obliterated his work he may become the legendary Parrhasius of a +vanished epoch. To see him in the Prado is to stand eye to eye with +the most enchanting realities of art. + + + + +_CODA_ + + + +When a man begins to chatter of his promenades among the masterpieces +it may be assumed that he has crossed the sill of middle-age. Remy de +Gourmont, gentle ironist, calls such a period _l'heure insidieuse_. +Yet, is it not something--a vain virtue, perhaps--to possess the +courage of one's windmills! From the Paris of the days when I haunted +the ateliers of Gerome, Bonnat, Meissonier, Couture, and spent my +enthusiasms over the colour-schemes of Decamps and Fortuny, to the +Paris of the revolutionists, Manet, Degas, Monet, now seems a life +long. But time fugues precipitately through the land of art. In +reality both periods overlap; the dichotomy is spiritual, not +temporal. + +The foregoing memoranda are frankly in the key of impressionism. They +are a record of some personal preferences, not attempts at critical +revaluations. Appearing first in the New York _Sun_, the project of +their publication in book form met with the approbation of its +proprietor, William Mackay Laffan, whose death in 1909 was an +international loss to the Fine Arts. If these opinions read like a +medley of hastily crystallised judgments jotted down after the manner +of a traveller pressed for time, they are none the less sincere. My +garden is only a straggling weedy plot, but I have traversed it with +delight; in it I have promenaded my dearest prejudices, my most absurd +illusions. And central in this garden may be found the image of the +supreme illusionist of art, Velasquez. + +Since writing the preceding articles on El Greco and Velasquez the +museum of the Hispanic Society, New York, has been enabled, through +the munificent generosity of Mr. Archer M. Huntington, to exhibit his +newly acquired El Grecos and a Velasquez. The former comprise a +brilliantly coloured Holy Family, which exhales an atmosphere of +serenity; the St. Joseph is said to be a portrait of El Greco; and +there also is a large canvas showing Christ with several of his +disciples. Notable examples both. The Velasquez comes from the +collection of the late Edouard Kann and is a life-size bust portrait +of a sweetly grave little girl. Senor Beruete believes her to +represent the daughter of the painter Mazo and his wife, Francisca +Velasquez, therefore a granddaughter of Velasquez. The tonalities of +this picture are subtly beautiful, the modelling mysterious, the +expression vital and singularly child-like. It is a fitting companion +to a portrait hanging on the same wall, that of the aristocratic young +Cardinal Pamphili, a nephew of Pope Innocent X, also by the great +Spaniard. + + * * * * * + + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC + +BRAHMS, TSCHAIKOWSKY, CHOPIN, RICHARD STRAUSS, LISZT AND WAGNER + +12mo. $1.50 + +"Mr. Huneker is, in the best sense, a critic; he listens to the music +and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few words as +possible; or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping +strokes with a magnificent disregard for unimportant details. And as +Mr. Huneker is, as I have said, a powerful personality, a man of quick +brain and an energetic imagination, a man of moods and temperament--a +string that vibrates and sings in response to music--we get in these +essays of his a distinctly original and very valuable contribution to +the world's tiny musical literature."--J. F. Runciman, in London +Saturday Review. + +MELOMANIACS + +12mo. 31.50 + +Contents: The Lord's Prayer in B--A Son of Liszt--A Chopin of the +Gutter--The Piper of Dreams--An Emotional Acrobat--Isolde's +Mother--The Rim of Finer Issues--An Ibsen Girl--Tannhaeuser's +Choice--The Red-Headed Piano Player--Brynhued's Immolation--The Quest +of the Elusive--An Involuntary Insurgent--Hunding's Wife--The Corridor +of Time--Avatar--The Wegstaffes give a Musicale--The Iron Virgin--Dusk +of the Gods--Siegfried's Death--Intermezzo--A Spinner of Silence--The +Disenchanted Symphony--Music the Conqueror. + +"It would be difficult to sum up 'Melomaniacs' in a phrase. Never did +a book, in my opinion at any rate, exhibit greater contrasts, not, +perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of clearness and obscurity. It +is inexplicably uneven, as if the writer were perpetually playing on +the boundary line that divides sanity of thought from intellectual +chaos. There is method in the madness, but it is a method of +intangible ideas. Nevertheless, there is genius written over a large +portion of it, and to a musician the wealth of musical imagination is +a living spring of thought"--Harold E. Gorst, in _London Saturday +Review_ (Dec. 8, 1906). + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +ICONOCLASTS: + +A Book of Dramatists + +12mo. $1.50 net + +CONTENTS: Henrik Ibsen--August Strindberg--Henry Becque--Gerhart +Hauptmann--Paul Hervieu--The Quintessence of Shaw--Maxim Gorky's +Nachtasyl--Hermann Sudennann--Princess Mathilde's Play--Duse and +D'Annunzio--Villiers de l'lsle Adam--Maurice Maeterlinck. + +"His style is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in +which we are led to expect some significance, if not wit, in every +sentence."--G.K. Chesterton, _in London Daily News._ + +"No other book in English has surveyed the whole field so +comprehensively."--The Outlook. + +"A capital book, lively, informing, suggestive."--London Times +Saturday Review. + +"Eye-opening and mind-clarifying is Mr. Huneker's criticism; ... no +one having read that opening essay in this volume will lay it down +until the final judgment upon Maurice Maeterlinck is reached."--Boston +Transcript. + +OVERTONES: + +A Book of Temperaments + +_WITH FRONTISPIECE PORTRAIT OF RICHARD STRAUSS_ + +12mo. $1.25 net + +CONTENTS: Richard Strauss--Parsifal: A Mystical Melodrama--Literary +Men who loved Music (Balzac, Turgenieff, Daudet, etc.)--The Eternal +Feminine--The Beethoven of French Prose--Nietzsche the +Rhapsodist--Anarchs of Art--After Wagner, What?--Verdi and Boito. + +"The whole book is highly refreshing with its breadth of knowledge, +its catholicity of taste, and its inexhaustible energy."--_Saturday +Review, London._ + +"In some respects Mr. Huneker must be reckoned the most brilliant of +all living writers on matters musical."--_Academy, London._ + +"No modern musical critic has shown greater ingenuity in the +attempt to correlate the literary and musical tendencies of the +nineteenth century."--_Spectator, London._ + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +EGOISTS + +_A BOOK OF SUPERMEN_ + +Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barres, +Hello, Blake, Nietzsche, Ibsen and Max Stirner. + +With portrait of Stendhal, unpublished letter of Flaubert, and +original proof page of "Madame Bovary." + +12mo. $1.50 net + +"The best thing in the book happily comes first, the essay on +Stendhal. Closely and yet lightly written, full of facts yet as +amusing as a bit of discursive talk, penetrating, candid and very +shrewd, this study would be hard to beat in English, or, for that +matter, in French. It is, too, the best of the essays as regards +discrimination. There are no shades of Stendhal's genius, whether +making for good or for ill, that are missed by this analyst, and, +moreover, both the lights and shadows are justly distributed... He +seeks to show you the color of a man's mind, and it is evidence of his +validity as an essayist that straightway he interests you in the color +of his own. He is an impressionist in criticism... Such an essayist is +Mr. Huneker, a foe to dulness who is also a man of brains."--Royal +Cortissoz in _New York Tribune._ + +"JAMES HUNEKER: INDIVIDUALIST" + +"As a critic, whether of music, the plastic arts, of poetry or fiction +or philosophy, he is of those who never attain finality; but he is +always stimulating, provocative of thought, and by virtue of this +quality, not invariably possessed by critics, he is entitled to a +distinctive place in American letters." + +Edward Clark Marsh in _The Forum._ + +BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER + +VISIONARIES + +12mo. $1.50 net + +Contents: A Master of Cobwebs--The Eighth Deadly Sin--The Purse of +Aholibah--Rebels of the Moon--The Spiral Road--A Mock +Sun--Antichrist--The Eternal Duel--The Enchanted Yodler--The Third +Kingdom--The Haunted Harpsichord--The Tragic Wall--A Sentimental +Rebellion--Hall of the Missing Footsteps--The Cursory Light--An Iron +Fan--The Woman Who Loved Chopin--The Tune of Time--Nada--Pan. + +"The author's style is sometimes grotesque in its desire both to +startle and to find true expression. He has not followed those great +novelists who write French a child may read and understand. He calls +the moon 'a spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truth +beats at the bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-colored +cymbal'; a man moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant.' But +even these oddities are significant and to be placed high above the +slipshod sequences of words that have done duty till they are as +meaningless as the imprint on a worn-out coin. + +"Besides, in nearly every story the reader is arrested by the idea, +and only a little troubled now and then by an over-elaborate style. If +most of us are sane, the ideas cherished by these visionaries are +insane; but the imagination of the author so illuminates them that we +follow wondering and spellbound. In 'The Spiral Road' and in some of +the other stories both fantasy and narrative may be compared with +Hawthorne in his most unearthly moods. The younger man has read his +Nietzsche and has cast off his heritage of simple morals. Hawthorne's +Puritanism finds no echo in these modern souls, all sceptical, +wavering and unblessed. But Hawthorne's splendor of vision and his +power of sympathy with a tormented mind do live again in the best of +Mr. Huneker's stories."--London Academy (Feb. 3, 1906). + + * * * * * + +CHOPIN: + +The Man and His Music + +WITH ETCHED PORTRAIT +12mo. $2.00 + +"No pianist, amateur or professional, can rise from the perusal of his +pages without a deeper appreciation of the new forms of beauty which +Chopin has added, like so many species of orchids, to the musical +flora of the nineteenth century."--The Nation. + +"I think it not too much to predict that Mr. Huneker's estimate of +Chopin and his works is destined to be the permanent one. He gives the +reader the cream of the cream of all noteworthy previous commentators, +besides much that is wholly his own. He speaks at once with modesty +and authority, always with personal charm."--Boston Transcript. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Promenades of an Impressionist, by James Huneker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST *** + +***** This file should be named 13296.txt or 13296.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/2/9/13296/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Proofreaders Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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